New Heights for Human Rights

The Ottawa Citizen has published an article on the amazing human rights activist David Kilgour. Finally, this hard working activist is getting the recognition he deserves. See the link to the story.

Meetups

I started a MeetUp group for people 50+ who want to socialize with others their age. I've gotten a good response and met some amazing people.

Who knew? Social networking for Boomers :):) It works!

I don't know if it's harder to find a group to socialize with when you're older. Seems that way, although there are a lot of amazing people who are interested in the same things you are. No boring tea parties (we are going to learn to play bridge though)

This is exciting! What a use for the internet well, besides blogging :):)

The other news is I'm attending a 10 day workshop called Successful Contracting and Consulting - an accelerated program to give you skills to start a business. Learn guerrilla marketing in a day. Really! the workshop leader was amazing and we now have the outline for our marketing plans. Now that's impressive.

TILMA

On April 1st, the BC and Alberta governments' Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) came into effect. It is a far-reaching free-trade pact which was signed without a public consultation or any debate in the legislature. The Council of Canadians is urging citizens to take a closer look at the agreement. Key areas of concern include:TILMA takes away the power of the provincial and local governments to pass any measures (laws, regulations, programs, etc.) that restrict investment, trade, or labour mobility.TILMA will result in the radical de-regulation of the B.C. and Alberta economies. All government measures will be open to challenge - even measures designed to protect the environment and public health are vulnerable to attack from corporate lawsuits with compensation penalties as high as $5-million.The complaints will be judged by an unelected and unaccountable panel of trade lawyers, behind closed doors. The public will not have any input into the panel.To learn more about TILMA and find out about local citizen actions, visit the TILMA link.

Sending Women into Combat

As a feminist, I supported sending women into combat. Dammit, if men can do it, so can we.

That was before the face of war changed. These days it appears it's just as much a public relations battle to win minds as a battle to kill soldiers. Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post, makes a good point for NOT sending women into battle. (see links for the whole article - Mother of All Blunders).

Parker's two compelling arguments are a) the West appears to be weak for sending it's women into combat and b) women are more likely to be used as propaganda tools if they are captured. Read the complete article, it's more than worth your time.

Homeless in Vancouver

Vancouver has a growing homeless problem. Part of it is due to cuts to mental health facilities as long as 10 years ago and partly because the various levels of government have ignored or bungled support for the residents of the downtown east side for at least as long.

With the Olympics coming in 3 years, the SRO (single room occupancy) hotels in the downtown east side were being bought up by speculators and spiffied up. How these people were going to recoup their investment in the few weeks around the Olympics is a mystery to me. I'd be very surprise if a family from Lethbridge is going to vacation in a neighborhood like the downtown east side.

Sam-I-am Sullivan, our mayor has proposed fining the homeless/indigents. City hall has even set up a $300,000 program to collect the fines. This is such a ludicrous idea I don't even know where to start. These people can't even scrape together enough money to provide niceties such as a roof over their head and these geniuses think they can muster up $75 to pay for a municipal fine .. then schlep over to city hall to pay it. I guess they're expected to pay on their cell phones and their platinum MasterCard.

The one bright light here .. is the provincial government bought 10 SRO hotels and a couple of condo developments in the past two months. They accomplished this through a numbered company, so hopefully they were able to acquire these properties at a fair price. This provides shelter for 495 people. These people are already in these hotels/condos, so no new beds have been created, but at least these buildings will be protected as social housing.

Simma's guest column

China's brave fighters for democracy can take hope from the lessons of the past and the current news from Poland to be free again.

They can also know the typical follow will be the fate of the Communists who are doing their killer work in China, in North America and around the world.

The news story here foretells the fate of those engaged in the mass murders of Falun gong in China. It is the tyrants' fate recorded throughout history.

"POLLAND PURGES COMMUNITY COLLABORATORS.Facing up to its Past/New law aims to identify people who served as secret police informats." Dateline is Gdansky (van sun, page C 11, top right Page C11, April 2/07)

The spies and immigrants planted throughout North America have good reason to hide out in Canada and do the dirty work for the Beijing mass murderers...

What is happening in former Communist Poland, they should know will happen to them in the not-too-distant future as the news from China tells as 20 million have left the Communist Party because of their bloody policies.

More people have been slaughtered since theCommunists took power in the 1960's (said to be 90 million) than were slaughterd by Hitler in his holocaust and Stalin in his endless purges.

Today's news from P{oland tells us this:

"Almost two decades have passed since dictatorship gave way to democracy in Poland, but after years of burying memories and avoiding the subject, this country is finally grapling with it sommunist Past. On March 15, a controversial law went into effect requiring an estimated 700,000 civil servants, teachers, and journalists to sign and oath declaring whether they collaborated with the communists secret police before the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Anyone caught lying or who refuses to sign, is fired.

"In January the new archbishop of Warsaw quite after admitting he had been an informer. Since then dozens of priests in this devout Catholic nation, have likewise been ousted as cllaborators shaking the public faith in an institution that was long seen as the only religious refuge for the totalitarian rule."

People who tasted freedom-- and know the slavery and cruelty....and massacre of tyrants--can never return to that life.

The Communists working as spies and infiltrators inside our cities, province and federal government agencies obviously should be screend out. And our own leaders -- bureaucrats and elected pro-China supporters -- should be warned that even in Canada they will be found and rooted from their careers. Unlike the anti-democracy Communists they will at least have trial and punishment under our rule of law.

But history from the beginning of time shows that tyrants and their collaborators, or supporters for greedy goals in the free world, ultimately face their support and involvement in creating and supporting the pain, torture and mass murder in totalitarian nations like Poland and China

Change Everything

The web site changeeverything gives everyone the chance to voice their opinion about changes they'd like to make. It's sponsored by Vancity Savings, a local credit union that supports green causes. Their president Dave Mowatt has been trained by Al Gore to present the Inconvenient Truth slide show.

envirowoman has a substantial following as she tries to remove plastic from her life. I've been inspired by her and now always use re-usable bags at the grocery store.

I'm slowly getting into the habit of walking to the grocery store and the the green grocer, two blocks farther up the street. This green grocer supports local growers in the summer, so I'll get exercise walking the five blocks, keep the air a bit cleaner by not using my car and i can eat locally which in turn keeps the air cleaner by reducing the trip from the producer to me as well as supporting local farmers.

Not a bad result from one small change leading to a larger change.

Falun Gong Rally

On Saturday the 31st of March I joined some friends to celebrate the 30 million people who have resigned from the Chinese Communist party.

The rally was organized by the local Falun Gong society who are being persecuted by the Chinese communists.

My friend Simma spoke at the Rally, as well as a human rights lawyer and the president of the local hospital workers union.