Abortion defender Norma Scarborough has died

Norma Scarborough, was the sensible soul of the pro-choice movement in Canada, died April 2. A mother of five children, she had compassion and a helping hand for the unwillingly pregnant. She was a founding member of CARAL and its president for several very important years, 1984 – 92. Thus she was of of the people supporting Dr. Henry Morgentaler in his struggle to bring safe, legal abortion to Canadian women.  In January of 1988 Canada’s Supreme Court struck down the criminal law on abortion because it violated women’s right to life, liberty, and security of the person. In other words, the law coerced women and put them in danger.

Louis DuLude recalls:

Once, I asked Norma why she cared so much about women’s right to an abortion. She told me that in the 1940s, when she was in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, one day she came back to the barracks and found a colleague moaning in bed. There was blood everywhere but the woman hadn’t summoned help because she was afraid to be punished because she had had an illegal abortion. Norma told me that the woman bled to death. She never forgot it. Asked later to help start a movement to legalize abortion, she didn’t hesitate for a minute before saying “yes.”

Louise Dulude

Residential schools in Canada

I mean residential schools for aboriginal peoples. John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts blogged about the Roman Catholic residential schools scandal in Ireland, and that reminded me that I hadn’t covered the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in Canada. In 2007, it Canada’s parliament formally apologized for the wrongs done and a compensation package of $1.9 billion was put in place. You can read about it on the CBC’s Residential Schools FAQ.

The main purpose of the schools was to separate children from their ancestral culture. This purpose is now considered to be genocidal, I suppose because to obliterate a culture has similar effects in history as obliterating a people.

Canada has 281 cases of Mexican swine flu

The Mexican flu is slowly but surely spreading in Canada. One woman in her 30s has died in Alberta and the flu contributed to her death.

• 56 in Nova Scotia (had 3 of the original 4 cases)
• 3 in Prince Edward Island
• 2 in New Brunswick
• 16 in Quebec
• 76 in Ontario (has 15% of the population)
• 1 in Manitoba
• 2 in Saskatchewan
• 41 in Alberta (had 1 of the original 4 cases)
• 76 in British Columbia

see more Political Pictures

Debunking junk history

Gavin Menzies has a number of dubious hypotheses about historical events. One is that the Chinese explored large parts of the world in the fifteenth century. He suggests that Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, and others followed Chinese maps. Others have taken Menzies’ idea and run with it.

In 2006, Paul Chiasson published a book, Island of the Seven Cities, explaining how the Chinese settled in Nova Scotia in 1421. As evidence, he shows an aerial photograph that he says was taken in the 1920s, showing traces of roads and foundations.

This web site, The ‘1421′ Myth Exposed, takes on those myths.

In this section, Island of the Seven Cities Exposed, Andrew Hanam thoroughly debunks that claim with a series of properly dated photos. The archaelogical evidence cited by Chiasson turns out to be modern firebreaks and drilling sites.

Other sections of The ‘1421′ Myth Exposed debunk the Chinese discovery of Australia, the massive size of Chinese junks suggested for oceanic voyages, and a “1418 map” that was produced within the last fifty years.

Boneheads and brazen liars

Steve Harper for trying to keep Canadian citizens out of Canada

Abousfian Abdelrazik has been taking shelter in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum for years but Canada won’t let him fly home because there was a security watch on his name. He’s never been in trouble and has since been cleared by security groups, but that’s not good enough for Harper: the man’s an Ay-rab, after all.

Order the government to bring him home now, lawyers for Abousfian Abdelrazik asked a federal court judge yesterday, insisting that years of broken promises and duplicity must finally end.

The repeated, and always-tougher, requirements imposed by the government “can only be considered bad faith and reprehensible conduct in the extreme,” Paul Champ said. He asked Federal Court Justice Russel Zinn to “order the government to repatriate” Mr. Abdelrazik, who remains on the UN blacklist of al-Qaeda suspects despite being cleared by Canada’s antiterrorist agencies.

Mr. Champ said the government should be ordered to get Mr. Abdelrazik home by whatever means it chooses, whether on a commercial flight or a government jet, as long as the order brooks no further delay.

The government’s latest claim, that its hands are tied by the United Nations, amounts to “deliberately twisting what these resolutions mean to try and come up with a means to try and block” Mr. Abdelrazik’s return, Mr. Champ said.

Only a few hundred metres from the court building, opposition MPs railed during a raucous Question Period at Foreign Min[i]ster Lawrence Cannon for his treatment of Mr. Abdelrazik.

“The minister can no longer hide. There are no second-class citizens in this country,” said Liberal Bob Rae, referring to the assurances of a senior UN official who told The Globe and Mail that Canada could bring Mr. Abdelrazik home any time it wanted because the travel ban imposed by the blacklist didn’t bar citizens from returning home.

Mr. Cannon rejected the view of Richard Barrett, the senior UN official responsible for administering the UN’s al-Qaeda and Taliban list.

“This does not change anything,” Mr. Cannon said, adding that the government interpreted the UN resolution differently. “The government of Canada takes its international obligations very seriously.”

….he was imprisoned nearly six years ago in Sudan.

…. When more than 200 Canadians chipped in to buy him a ticket last month and Etihad Airlines offered to fly him to Montreal in defiance of the American “no-fly” list, separate from the UN blacklist, Mr. Cannon announced he was refusing Mr. Abdelrazik what had been previously promised, a one-way-home emergency travel document.

And now, Harper is appealing the court’s decision that Canada must ask for our child soldier, Omar Khadr, back from the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Khadr was 15 and unconscious, and had been shot twice in the back, when he was captured by U.S. marines. Despite that, some of them are sure that of the nine people in the house, Omar was the one that threw a grenade at them. The others were all killed. Khadr was kept confined for two years before he got to see a lawyer. So much for habeas corpus and the right to a representative! But in spite of World Court rulings that a child soldier is not fully responsible for his or her actions while under the control of adults, Harper doesn’t want him back: he’s an Ay-rab! I can’t think of any other reason. Besides the small-minded meanness of the typical Conservative politician, that is.

Brian Mulroney for stupid lying

The former Liberal Conservative Prime Minister can’t remember what he did with all the money. First he sued the government for suggesting that he did anything wrong—and collected damages. Then he admitted that, yes, he did take hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash payments from an industry lobbyist.  But he says he didn’t do anything for it. So he’s not even an honest poliitician: he doesn’t stay bought.