Further Rants for June

There shall be wars and rumours of war.

Listening to the news reveals a litany of man's inhumanity to man. The triumph of celebrity over justice in the Bill Cosby Trial or the election of a president. The treatment of a sexual assault victim in a court of law is nothing short of shameful and a definite deterrent to coming forward. The latest mass shooting becomes so common as to be ho-hum.

There are enough natural disasters and suffering to go around without man-made aggressions. Fires set by lightening, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and landslides. Saturday the Toronto Area was under a tornado watch and today a severe thunderstorm watch. June 18.

Talk of raising the minimum wage raises cries from business that they can't afford to pay. But wouldn't putting more spending power in the hands of low wage earners increase business? Landlords including government in the case of public housing resist spending funds on measures to improve the safety of high rises unless forced to by legislation enforced by inspections. A recent fire in England has dramatically brought the issue to the fore with an increasing death toll. The yearly opening of private pools is already being marked by deaths in those facilities. A coming long weekend will be marked by carnage on the highways.

Baby Boomers are dropping like flies, every week we seem to hear of yet another group of celebrities who have passed on, dying no longer seems to be a politically correct term. More troubling personally is the fact that more and more the people succumbing to one illness or another are younger than I.

"Democracy is the worst form of government there is, except for all the rest." Winston Churchill. When did the common man ever have a proper grasp of what was in his best interest. First Britons voted to leave the European Union—Brexit; then they voted to emasculate the government that has to negotiate the process. Britain is either in or out, there is no cherry picking of aspects of union AND there is a price to be paid for leaving, there are huge costs involved. Oops!

Human migration and the aspirations of those migrants inundate small countries and neighbourhoods leading to resistance to change among the traditional residents of those localities. The threat of such change has even led European Nations to resist immigration and I'm all too familiar with the fear of the "Hispanic Menace" or the annoyance in South Florida at the Cuban invasion. I know my own frustration at the thought that the possibility of offending a visible minority means our schools and public spaces no longer celebrate Christmas. When one is stressed by illness or a sick child the desire to be comfortable speaking to a health care worker whose cultural and language background is one's own can be very strong. After all one is not in a foreign country where one needs an interpreter to get medical care. Expressing such desires may not be politically correct but that doesn't make them go away. The fact that a mother made such a request in nearby Mississauga has caused a social media and political frenzy.

Having had to use Oakville's Taxi system I learned that perspective drivers are allowed an interpreter when they take their taxi license test, but the customer is offered no such service. Would it be too much to ask that my driver speak one of Canada's official languages and know the town and its surrounding neighbourhood? Does this make me a racist? That my driver was a doctor or lawyer in his country of origin is quite another matter.

I realize that racist arguments can sound very reasonable, after all there are sections of the Bible that justify slavery. Opposing racism and xenophobia in theory is easy, it's quite another matter when your new neighbour starts cooking curry in the next apartment daily, starts hanging their laundry from tree branches or starts beating his wife.

Feeding babies on demand, that is, when they cry, teaches us to associate food with comfort and contributes to obesity in adults. After all we refer to comfort foods.

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June Rant 2017

Hate mongers such as Ernest Zundel, alas a Canadian, have long promoted the anti-Semitic agenda that states that the systematic liquidation of 6 million Jews under the Hitler Regime during WW#2 and at least 3 million gays, Roma, mentally challenged never happened. I suppose it shouldn't surprise us that gun lobbyists are now claiming that atrocities such as the Sandy Hook Massacre was created by actors as a ruse to encourage anti-gun legislation. Ironic then that a group of Republican NRA supporters were recently targeted by gun violence.

That the gun-man was in part protesting the Trump Presidency, a movement I could get behind, serves only to show that such violence begets only more violence and serves solely to damage the cause.

At the same time a group of protesters enacted a Handmaids Tale like silent sit-in at a hearing that would lead to legislation making planned parenthood, access to birth control, and abortion more difficult for women. Restricting reproductive care for women hardly seems motivated by Christian Love.

Misogyny in all its forms is alive and well in our society. I find it ironic that mothers, too many of them members of single-parent families are responsible for raising male chauvinist pigs.

In a world that is rapidly running out of resources to support its burgeoning population women who remain single, couples who choose to be childless, and birth control measures are receiving social and legislative support. In this context I fail to understand what fears motivate homophobia. What threats do gays pose? Sexual predation is an equal opportunity crime.

I may find points of disagreement with my Muslim Brothers but so long as they do not attempt to impose them on me or any other unwilling individuals they are welcome to practice their faith in my neighbourhood. Remember, it was Muslims who opposed the introduction of Sharia Law to Canada.

The cheap clothing you buy at Wal-Mart may well have been produced in a Sweat Shop in Bangladesh which employs women and children at starvation wages in appallingly unsafe conditions over long hours. Similar strategies motivate resistance to increased minimum wages, legislation governing safe working conditions, hours of work, work-breaks, over-time pay and unions that support such causes.... Even supposedly good Christians refuse to engage in the discussion as too politically controversial. Human rights have always been political.

Remind the Donald Trumps of this world that the greatness of any nation is defined by its treatment of the most vulnerable members of its society. Residents of an apartment that was home to those on social welfare for years complained about the dangerous conditions in their high-rise apartment home. Last night the building turned into a towering 22-storey inferno in London. Even in Toronto careless smokers tossing lit cigarette butts off balconies are responsible for a massive number of apartment fires. Smokers have a dreadful habit of treating the environment as their private ashtray. How often have you seen matches and butts fly from open windows of cars on the highway and how many of those and broken glass are responsible for grass and forest fires?

The theme in all of this is individual responsibility for collective welfare. No man is an island but part of the main. Love for the divine however it is you conceive of her/him, and love for fellow man is a central tenet of all great religions. It's time one nation under God remembered that.

Much has been made of the need for increased defense spending of late. How about redirecting those funds to universal health care, drug plans, guaranteed annual income, safe housing, clean water, education.... Reduce the war on drugs and crime and spend the funds on making people's lives safe, healthy, and meaningful. If you want to stimulate the economy put more funds in the hands of the poor, reducing taxes on the rich who already own more than they can find room for will only serve to increase the divide between wealth and poverty.

Do we need increased police budgets and even more invasive security measures, or should we work to improve the lives of those who are attracted to terrorist causes and lives of crime so that such measures are unnecessary. Got to love the rich kid who complains that his parent's taxes are going to go up to support the building of a community swimming pool when he already has one in his back yard.

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