Tag: Individual Rights

Pucker Up, Idiots!

In an age where people like Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and Rick Lazio have a “pulpit” in which to spew their uninformed bullshit — and are taken seriously — it makes me so very thankful there are people, like the folks at Democracy Now!, willing and able to counter their hate!

For a couple weeks, now, the mainstream media has been way too busy reporting what I deem to be the height of idiocy. The Right-Wing, sure, but their blacklash against a “proposed construction of an Islamic community center [not a Mosque] in Lower Manhattan,” specifically. I’ve avoided commenting on it thus far, mainly because it’s so bloody ridiculous, I wasn’t sure where to begin. Then today on Democracy Now! they go and devote an entire broadcast to this very issue. Do yourself a favour, and check it out, for some desperately needed context…

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In the Face of the Unthinkable

Yesterday on Democracy Now! Emily Henochowicz was interviewed. Which for personal reasons, yesterday marked the 14th anniversary of my accident, was rather symbolic. For those unaware, Emily is a “twenty-one-year-old American art student who lost her eye [while in the West Bank] in May after being shot in the face by an Israeli tear gas canister at a protest against Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla.”

Now it isn’t my intent to get drawn in to arguments about what happened, I’ll refrain from comment, this time. Rather I’d most like to comment on the aspects of her story for which we share a connection, seeing what August 5th represents for me every year. Having the unthinkable occur and being forced to live the rest of a life with the result. I can, most definitely, relate.

And empathize…

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So Proud to Be a Canadian

Yesterday on Democracy Now!, Maude Barlow, perhaps “the most important water justice activist in the world,” was interviewed about Wednesday’s UN declaration calling water a fundamental human right;

The United Nations General Assembly has declared for the first time that […] clean water and sanitation is a fundamental human right. In a historic vote Wednesday, 122 countries supported the resolution, and over forty countries abstained from voting, including the United States, Canada [to my country’s credit, if a silver lining can be seen in “our” abhorrent behaviour, at least “we” didn’t vote against this resolution] and several European and other industrialized countries…

I urge all my fellow country people to wander over and bask in the pride of what it truly means to be a Canadian…

The Shoe and The Other Foot

Would you get a load of this? This is my 300th post. And as it just so happens I got something pretty interesting — well I think — to write about, too. Huh.

Yesterday a friend forwarded me a link to a BBC article about a “Locked-in” man’s right-to-die. She was interested in my take. Seeing how I was once in nearly the exact same predicament — although Tony Nicklinson’s “syndrome” sounds like the Cadillac model of the “syndrome” I experienced, he can eat and nod, I couldn’t. However the more I contemplated the story, and the complex issues seemingly at hand, the more convoluted my stance became.

I’ve written about this issue previously, at the beginning of February of last year Eluana Englara, an Italian woman in the throws of a “17 year coma, as a result of a car accident,” and was having her “fate,” if you will, decided by people other than herself. Simply because she wasn’t in the position to make her wishes known. I’ll say it again, this was, and always will be, a very complicated issue. One for which there is no easy answer…

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