Tommy Douglas, and a Better World For All of Us
What Might Have Been, and What Will Surely Come To Be

May 26, 2004Decision CanadaRaymond Tomlin

Tommy Douglas, first
leader of the NDP

At present in Canada, we are in the throes of a federal election.
Although the choices before us are not quite the same Tweeledum and Tweedledee that has been the case in the past, as the Liberal Party and the Progressive Conservatives vied for the reigns of power, truth be told there’s still not a great deal that separates the two parties, or even Canada’s traditional third party, the New Democratic Party, under new leader Jack Layton.
Oh sure, the Conservative Party is no longer Progressive, and even the last leader of the PC’s, Joe Clark, finds himself campaigning on behalf of Liberal candidates, and against the right-wing forces of the presently constituted — and still socially conservative — Conservative / Reform / Alliance party.
Today, we offer a voice from the past, that of Tommy Douglas, the founder of Medicare, and the first leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. Mr. Douglas helps us to remember a time in the not-so-distant past when the idea of truly building a better world was an honourable and reasonable goal, when we worked collectively with members of our communities to transform a patriarchial consumerist society into an egalitarian society where want and injustice would become but distant concepts.
Tommy Douglas was the most influential politician never to be elected Prime Minister. He pursued his humanist ideals relentlessly until they became so mainstream that rival politicians claimed them as their own. Douglas battled hard to bring the New Democratic Party to legitimacy in its first ten years, following the formation of the party in 1961. He was often criticized for his singular idealism but through it all Douglas was undeterred, convinced that he was helping to create a better, more humane society.
VanRamblings offers Tommy Douglas’ voice, as a reminder of what might have been, and what will surely become our shining future.

A Potpourri: Gadgets, Tips & Tricks, and The End Of Mac

May 25, 2004Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

Clicker Heaven: Tunes, Films and, Now, XP

Snapstream Media has just released a new PC-based clicker to add to your blooming bouquets of remote controls. The name of this new must-have device, the Firefly PC Remote.
The FireFly package comes with a standard-size remote control and a transceiver that plugs into a U.S.B. port on your computer. Once set up, with the click of a button the FireFly can play, pause and manoeuvre through tracks in your computer’s digital audio collection, play CD’s and videos, and zip through photo slide shows on your PC’s monitor.
The Firefly PC Remote works seamlessly with more than 80 existing multimedia programmes, including RealPlayer, QuickTime, MusicMatch Jukebox, Windows Media Player, WinAmp, InterVideo WinDVR and iTunes.
Tune Up Your Windows XP Machine (for Free)

In the June issue of PC World, contributing Editor Stan Miastkowski publishes a step-by-step computer guide that will help boost your XP-based computer’s system performance, and make upgrading easier than ever.
It’s a Plane, It’s a Cell Phone, It’s a Car

How Stuff Works publishes a provocative look into the future, with a front-page story about Toyota’s ‘concept car’, the PM. In addition to seating only one person and having its hubless wheels driven by electric motors, the PM incorporates wireless networking so that drivers can surrender control to another human-driven PM and relax as someone else drives them to work. And it reclines!
Something Is Stirring At Apple

According to high tech gadfly Robert X. Cringely, Apple may be in the throes of making the decision to get out of the hardware business. This would mean not only the end of Macintosh hardware but a transformation of Apple into “a software company (not unlike Microsoft) that also sells little hardware devices,” producing devices such as the iPod. Thought-provoking.

George Bush Never Looked Into Nick’s Eyes

May 25, 2004PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Michael Berg, left, collapses to the ground,
and is comforted by his son, David,
after learning of his son’s death

Nick Berg has already disappeared from the front pages of newspapers. Although many haunting questions remain about Berg, 26, and his odyssey in Iraq, the murky circumstances surrounding the events which led to his horrific execution at the hands of Iraqi militants linger.
Besides being a human tragedy, Nick Berg’s death two weeks ago represented, as well, an ominous development for the Bush administration, which continues to struggle not only with the disastrous impact of the prison scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib detention facility, but with the almost daily Iraqi terrorist bombings which kill innocent civilians, and American armed forces personnel. With the White House trying to curb attacks by insurgents before the June 30 handover to a caretaker Iraqi government, the spectre of Iraqi terrorists ratcheting up the violence endures as more than a dim prospect.
In an essay published in The Guardian this past weekend, Michael Berg places the responsibility for his son’s death — and for the war in Iraq — at the feet of George W. Bush. Mr. Berg calls for an immediate end to the war in the Middle East, and censures the U.S. President as a man who “doesn’t have to bear the consequences of his acts.”
Mr. Berg offers further condemnation of the U.S. Secretary of Defense …

Donald Rumsfeld said that he took responsibility for the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners. How could he take that responsibility when there was no consequence? Nick took the consequences.
Even more than those murderers who took my son’s life, I can’t stand those who sit and make policies to end lives and break the lives of the still living.

We mourn tragic loss, all the more so when the death of a loved one was as unnecessary and preventable as the death of Nick Berg.

A Parent’s Worst Nightmare: The Prison Abuse of Juveniles

May 24, 2004PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Laura Talkington’s son after he was attacked on Nov. 1, 2003, by
another ward in a California Youth Authority facility in Stockton, California.
Photos were taken by CYA infirmary staff.

Every parent’s worst nightmare revolves around what harm their child might come to when away from the care and control of the family unit. There is no greater heartbreak for a parent than when a child unleashes familial bonds and harm befalls a loving — if misguided, and even at times obstreperous — child. Imagine, then, how Laura Talkington feels.
In a piece written for the Pacific News Service, Ms. Talkington describes her fear at visiting her son and the horror of watching him lose himself and become another person, at how he has become hard and afraid due to the abuse heaped upon him, by both guards and other prisoners.

I have not been able to be a mother ever since my son went to the California Youth Authority, the state’s system of youth prisons. I have spent the last four years watching him appear in the CYA visiting room with cuts, choke marks and bruises. He has been attacked by other youth or staff more than 40 times. I have seen him lose confidence in himself, become cold and depressed and fearful for his life. And the whole time, I have not been able to do one thing about it. Except lose sleep … What the CYA calls rehabilitation, the rest of us call tortuous abuse.

Mark Martin, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, provides more chiiling details on the abuse these children suffer. And because, as we’ve found most recently with the published pictures and video of the torture of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. troops that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, VanRamblings offers this disturbing video as graphic testament to the abuse suffered by children at California’s quasi-jails for kids.