Food for thought

Five hundred people rallied in the Duferin Grove Park neighbourhood to
protest mayor Ford's cuts to services. Still on the chopping block are
cuts to libraries, the arts, parks, fire, and police. A teacher said
that half of his students rely on the library for internet access and
stated, "These cuts are going to have a detrimental effect on the black
and brown people in wards 1 and 2." Racism is alive and well in covert
ways in Toronto, although the wealth/poverty aspect is strong in the
mix. A black man with a good job will be able to afford internet access
just as well as a white person of the same income level. In other words,
it's mainly economic.

There is money available to society of course to be able to do whatever
society wants. Proof is the ever- increasing wealth of the rich. One
example is that of ex-Yahoo executive, Carol Bartz, who, when fired over
the phone (nice guys) announced that the board f---ed me over" to
Fortune magazine. The upshot is that she may lose a $10 million payout
because she has a non-disparagement clause in her employment contract.
To bandy such money about and then close things like libraries is a sick
symptom of a profit society. Work to get rid of it
Another example of the stupidity of cuts in the face of massive wealth
are the planned cuts by the provincial government to the program that
guarantees visits and calls by nurses to new mothers, specifically
targeting those with feeding problems. I remember in the forties and
fifties that new mothers were able to take their babies to a free clinic
to have its health, checked, discuss problems with a nurse, and receive
free bottles of concentrated orange juice, cod liver oil, and malt with
vitamins. The wealthier we get, the more the workers get shafted!

How about this one -- there are calls for providing proper housing with
sewers and access to clean water, and end to poverty, overcrowding, and
work, especially for youth. Is this in the Third World (never to be
promoted to Second or First?)? No, it's right here in Canada, on the
First Nation's reservations. The nineteenth century herded them off
valuable land, and since then they have been forgotten, by-passed by an
increase in wealth of the nation. The measures, by the way, are to
combat the growing number of teen suicides.

If anyone doubts the influence of the US government on ours, the
Toronto Star article (Sept 3, 2011) should dispel them. It writes,
"Secret US government cables show a stunning willingness by senior
Canadian officials to appease American demands for a US-style copyright
law here." Apparently the American government is virtually writing the
law for us! This Harper government is particularly susceptible to this
kind of arrangement as shown by our security forces handing over
information and even bodies to the US to be sent for torture. John Ayers