Wisdom is the result of a happy marriage between intelligence and experience.
© Carl Dow, Editor and Publisher, True North Perspective
Friday, March 12, 2010, Vol. 5, No, 14 — 218
"True North is for opinion leaders"
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"Why would a dead anti-Russian combatant named Khattab send a sleeper to Canada
to wake up seven years later just to chauffeur someone around? It just seems counter-intuitive."
— Professor Brian Williams — 452 words.
By Paul Rogat Loeb
TruthOut.org
We can learn a lot from the tales we tell about our heroes. I once had the privilege of appearing on a CNN show with Rosa Parks. "We're very honored to have her," said the host. "Rosa Parks was the woman who wouldn't go to the back of the bus. She wouldn't get up and give her seat in the white section to a white person. That set in motion the year-long bus boycott in Montgomery. It earned Rosa Parks the title of 'mother of the civil rights movement.'" — 1,159 words.
By Chantal Hébert
Toronto Star
MONTREAL — For decades, discretion has been the better part of valour for many Quebec federalists. But now two post-Olympics polls hint at a federalist coming-out. — 591 words.
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Editor's Notes
Friday, March 12, 2010
True North Perspective
Vol. 5, No. 14 (218)
By Geoffrey Dow
Managing Editor
True North Perspective
I think it was 1980, the year I saw my first woman subway driver. I was a teenager, heading to a party with friends, when Mike stopped, pointed, and shouted, "Look! There's a woman driving the train!" And we did stop, we did look; we thought there was nothing wrong with such a thing — indeed, I believe we all thought it was a good thing — but the sight of a woman driving a train was one we had never before experienced. — 600 words.
"News is what (certain) people want to keep hidden. Everything else is just publicity."
PBS journalist Bill Moyers.Your support makes it possible for True North to clear the fog of "publicity" and keep you informed on what's really happening in the world today. Please send your donation to:
Carl Dow, True North, Station E, P.O. Box 4814, Ottawa ON Canada K1S 5H9.
By Carol Goar
The Toronto Star
More than 2,000 Torontonians took part in this year's International Women's Day march. It was the biggest turnout in years. The gorgeous springlike weather might have had something to do with it. It might have been a spillover from the recent protests on the prorogation of Parliament. Or it might have been a response to the government's latest attempt to scrap the gun registry, created as a living legacy to the women killed by a feminist-hating gunman at Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. Judy Rebick thinks the reason goes deeper. — 643 words.
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By Alex Binkley
True North Perspective
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency plays a key role in agriculture and food production enforcing rules and regulations set by Health Canada to ensure the safety of food produced or imported into Canada. — 548 words.
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By Steve Anderson
TheTyee.ca
There is something uniquely powerful about everyday people having access to the Internet from tiny devices in their pocket. That ubiquitous access to each other creates possibilities that are worth fighting for and saving. The mobile- and wireless-accessed Internet, combined with emerging open web and open-data applications, has the potential to usher in a new era of connectedness and, with it, dramatic changes to social practices and institutions. If we get digital public policy right, Canada could become a leader in mobile communications, leading to empowerment, job creation and new forms of entrepreneurialism, expression and social change. — 778 words.
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By Jeffrey Simpsons
The Globe and Mail
North Bay is not far from Ottawa — 50 minutes by plane, four and a half hours by road — but the city and, indeed, all of Northeastern Ontario, might just as well be a million miles away from the national capital. — 737 words.
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CBC News
About one-third of Canada's population — up to 14.4 million people — will be a visible minority by 2031, Statistics Canada projects.
The country's foreign-born population is also expected to rise to as much as 28 per cent, about four times faster than the rest of the population, the Statistics Canada study projects. — 345 words
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By Jonathan Montpetit
The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — A Muslim woman in Quebec has been kicked out of a language course for the second time because of her refusal to remove a religious face covering. The Egyptian immigrant made headlines last week when it was revealed provincial Immigration Department officials expelled her from a government-sponsored French class several months ago after she refused to take off her niqab. — 589 words.
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The Canadian Press
Travellers the world over know the pains of flight delays due to fog, weather, late pilots or just plain busy airports. But how about a delay due to a hockey game? — 166 words.
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By Brian Williams
Anchor and managing editor
TheDailyNightly.Msnbc.msn.com
After tonight's broadcast and after looting our hotel mini-bars, we're going to try to brave the blizzard and fly east to home and hearth, and to do laundry well into next week. Before we leave this thoroughly polite country, the polite thing to do is leave behind a thank-you note. — 330 words.
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The Sudbury Star
If anyone was voting yes to Vale Inco's offer to settle the eight-month strike by United Steelworkers, they were not admitting it out loud in the halls, the basement and the parking lot of the Caruso Club on Thursday morning and early afternoon. — 905 words.
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By Alberte Villeneuve-Sinclair
True North Perspective
Alberte Villeneuve-Sinclair is the author of The Neglected Garden and two French novels. Visit her website to learn more www.albertevilleneuve.ca.
This year, International Women's Day celebrated its 100th anniversary. Yes, it was first marked in 1910. This year's theme is "Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all". If I look back on my own life, I can attest we have made progress. — 1,183 words.
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Spirit Quest
By The Rev. Dr. Hanns F. Skoutajan
Throughout my life I have been surrounded and nurtured by strong and compassionate women. Having just come through International Women's Week (March 8 - 12) these special women have come to my mind. — 901 words.
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From the Desk of Alex Binkley, Contributing Editor
Canada West Foundation
CALGARY, Canada — A new report from the Canada West Foundation answers a key question about parliamentary reforms: What is a reformed Senate for? The debate about Senate reform often slips into a discussion of technical details. This paper skips to an examination of the ultimate goal of Senate reform: healthier Canadian democracy. — words.
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Health Watch
CBC news
A deficiency of vitamin D in study subjects has surprised doctors at the McGill University Health Centre. A study, released last week, found that 59 per cent of study subjects had too little vitamin D in their blood and nearly a quarter of the group had serious deficiencies. — 290 words.
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By Milton Diamond
The-Scientist.com
Pornography. Most people have seen it, and have a strong opinion about it. Many of those opinions are negative—some people argue that ready access to pornography disrupts social order, encouraging people to commit rape, sexual assault, and other sex-related crimes. And even if pornography doesn't trigger a crime, they say, it contributes to the degradation of women. It harms the women who are depicted by pornography, and harms those who do not participate but are encouraged to perform the acts depicted in it by men who are acculturated by it. Many even adamantly believe that pornography should become illegal. 1,085 words.
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By Vanessa Richmond
AlterNet.org
Sexual pleasure without shame is one of the defining characteristics of third-wave feminism. But some avidly pro-sex feminists are increasingly pointing out that casual hookups may not be the best way to achieve it. Slate's Jessica Grose reports on the trend in "The Shame Cycle: The new backlash against casual sex." — 1,398 words.
In case you missed it ... and always worth repeating
Let's say that news throughout human time has been free. Take that time when Ugh Wayne went over to the cave of Mugh Payne with news that the chief of his group had broken a leg while chasing his laughing wife around the fire. That news was given freely and received as such with much knowing smiles and smirks to say nothing of grunts of approval or disapproval. — 688 words.
By John Vidal
Mail & Guardian
AWASSA, Ethiopia — We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia's largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 50 acres* — the size of 20 soccer fields. — 2,385 words.
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By Rose Aguilar
AlterNet.org
On Monday afternoon, a controversial Utah bill that charges pregnant women and girls with murder for having miscarriages caused by "intentional or knowing" acts, was signed into law by Gov. Gary Herbert. — 2,132 words.
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Space-Travel.com
MOSCOW — France has put aside some $1 billion to buy 14 Soyuz carrier rockets from Russia, French satellite launch firm Arianespace CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall said Tuesday. "We have ordered 14 Soyuzes from the Russian Federation; the contract's cost is about $1 billion. These are ambitious plans," Le Gall said at a Russian-French business forum, held as part of President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to France. — 396 words.
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The Economist
Xinran Xue, a Chinese writer, describes visiting a peasant family in the Yimeng area of Shandong province. The wife was giving birth. "We had scarcely sat down in the kitchen", she writes (see article), "when we heard a moan of pain from the bedroom next door…The cries from the inner room grew louder—and abruptly stopped. There was a low sob, and then a man's gruff voice said accusingly: 'Useless thing!'
"Suddenly, I thought I heard a slight movement in the slops pail behind me," Miss Xinran remembers. "To my absolute horror, I saw a tiny foot poking out of the pail. The midwife must have dropped that tiny baby alive into the slops pail! I nearly threw myself at it, but the two policemen [who had accompanied me] held my shoulders in a firm grip. 'Don't move, you can't save it, it's too late.' — 3,817 words.
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Interview
'I don't want to be famous. I want our people to get enough rice'
By Anne Elizabeth Moore
TruthOut.org
"My name is Saem, and the name of my group is the Messenger Band," the singer more formally known as Vun Em explains. We are in Phnom Penh's Meta-House, where four members of the six-member Messenger Band are about to give a quick a cappella concert to the reporters ex-pats, and tourists gathered. It's not their usual venue. The Messenger Band was formed by the Cambodian NGO Women's Agenda for Change in 2005 to bring the concerns of the young women who move to the city to earn money for their families back to the provinces. They write songs in the traditional folk style, and choreograph moves to accompany their laments, and villagers are often riveted: the subjects of these songs are their daughters, their nieces, their friends. — 1,491 words.
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By Bruce Bower
ScienceNews.org
As St. Patrick's Day approaches, it may pay to keep in mind that there is a kernel of truth to the stereotype that large men are especially prone to being DWI — dangerous while intoxicated. — 540 words.
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Science
National Science Foundation
A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov. The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is starting to leak large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming. — 1,126 words.
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By Les Blumenthal
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly off the United States' Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change, scientists say.
They warn that the oceans' complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted. — 989 words.
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Looking forward ...
Agence France-Presse
SAN FRANCISCO — IBM researchers on Tuesday said they have discovered a way to make Earth-friendly plastic from plants that could replace petroleum-based products tough on the environment. — 318 words.
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By Tamara Pearson
Venezuelanalysis.com
MERIDA — Yesterday Venezuela celebrated International Women's Day with a ceremony involving 200,000 women and some of Venezuela's highest political female leaders. The women also formed a Bicentenary Front of Women. Meanwhile, a National Assembly committee is discussing women's right to abortions. — 503 words.
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Reality Check
By Gareth Porter
InterPress Service
WASHINGTON — For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand. — 1,095 words.
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TerraDaily.com
CONCEPCION, Chile — Looters in Chile have handed back stolen goods worth two million dollars, the government said, as the country mourned the hundreds killed in last month's earthquake and tsunami. — 611 words.
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Rear-view Mirror
By Ellen Hodgson Brown, J.D.
TruthOut.org
Edited by True North Perspective
Editor's Note: As the health reform debate continues to rage in the United States, some Americans have looked north in hopes of learning lessons from Canada's more-than fifty-year history of publicly-funded health care. The following article has been edited only to remove specific references to the American political situation at the time of its original publication back in January.
[How is it that all industrialized countries except the United States have managed to foot the bill for universal health care[?] How is it that they can afford it when we can't? Do they have some secret funding source that we don't have? In the case of our nearest neighbor, Canada, the answer is actually that they do. At least, they did for the first two decades of their national health service — long enough to get it up and running. — 1,988 words.
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Money and Markets
By Jeff Rubin
The Globe and Mail
It's Wednesday, and the week's U.S. oil inventories numbers will soon be out. I have no clue what they will say, nor much interest, either. But others do. Exactly why oil traders and speculators think the data has anything to do with the state of world oil demand is beyond me. I suppose, like Pavlov's dog, they're only doing what they're trained to do. But their training comes from a world that no longer exists. — 492 words.
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From the Desk of Mike (The Hammer) Garvin
By Joseph B. White
Wall Street Journal
By 2050, there could be two billion cars on the road—twice as many as there are today—and 40% of them could be electric. That's the view of Peter Voser, the chief executive officer of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC. — 913 words.
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By Adam Linhardt
KeysNews.com
As authorities nationwide warn motorists of the dangers of driving while texting, Florida Keys law enforcement officers add a new caution: Don't try to shave your privates, either. — 512 words.
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Annals of Education
By Chris Joyner
USA TODAY
JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi county school board announced Wednesday it would cancel its upcoming prom after a gay student petitioned to bring a same-sex date to the event. — 576 words.
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Interview by Zofeen Ebrahim
InterPress Service
KARACHI — Dressed in an abaya (long, loose gown worn by women to cover their dress) and a headscarf, Naseem Hameed cannot be recognised as she alights from a crowded, rickety public bus to reach her destination — the sports stadium. — 1,212 words.
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Film and television
By Geoffrey Dow
True North Perspective
Original published at Edifice Rex Online
Now that Katherine Bigelow has made history as the first woman to an Oscar for best picture, you might conclude that women have finally taken their rightful place at Hollywood's creative centre stage. — 1,732 words.
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By Megan Carpentier
The Guardian UK
At this year's Oscars, Kathryn Bigelow won best director and her film, Hurt Locker, won best picture despite criticisms from veterans that it failed to take into account much of the daily life of the men and women serving in Iraq or Afghanistan and criticisms that the film itself was as pro-war as it was pro-soldier. Although Bigelow dedicated her award to the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, she didn't touch on the lies that sent them there to risk their lives in pursuit of a political coup. — 690 words.
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Ottawa author Randy Ray and his co-author Mark Kearney of London, Ont. have published their ninth Canadian book, The Big Book of Canadian Trivia, which is now available in stores and on the authors' Web site at: TriviaGuys.com.
The latest Ray-Kearney effort is best described as a "greatest hits" book that contains the best Canadiana from their previous eight books, plus a considerable amount of new material.
In one big book readers will find all the trivia and facts about Canada they need to know: there are stories of important Canadian artifacts and history including what became of Canada's World War II spy camp.
All regions and provinces are covered, as well as important Canadian figures like John Molson, Elizabeth Arden and Russ Jackson.
If that isn't enough there will also be pieces explaining whatever happened to such Canadian icons as the last spike, labour leader Bob White, hockey tough guy Dave "The Hammer" Schultz, the first skidoo, swimmer Marilyn Bell and the first Tim Hortons donut shop.
Some items are "classics." Others are little known facts. Approximately 25 per cent of the material has never before appeared in print.
This fascinating Big Book brings together for the first time in one package the most notable facts and trivia from the archives of the trivia guys' collection.
The Big Book of Canadian Trivia is published by The Dundurn Group of Toronto.
The short story, The Old Man's Last Sauna, a groundbreaking love story, in the Friday, April 24 edition of True North Perspective, concludes the collection titled The Old Man's Last Sauna, written by Carl Dow. On Friday, April 17, you'll find O Ernie! ... What Have They Done To You! The series began Friday, February 20, with Deo Volente (God Willing). The second, The Quintessence of Mr. Flynn, Friday, February 27. The third, Sharing Lies, Friday, March 6. The fourth, Flying High, Friday, March 13. The fifth, The Richest Bitch in the Country or Ginny I Hardly Knows Ya, Friday, March 20. On Friday, March 27, One Lift Too Many, followed by The Model A Ford, Friday, April 3. The out-of-body chiller, Room For One Only, Friday, April 10. The series closed Friday, April 24, with the collection's namesake The Old Man's Last Sauna, a groundbreaking love story. All stories may also be found in the True North Perspective Archives.
Prolific best-selling Ottawa author and publicist Randy Ray has developed a website to promote his publicity services, which he offers to authors, publishers and companies. Mr. Ray has helped many clients get their message out across Canada on CTV, CBC Radio, CH-TV, A-Channel and Global TV, and in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Sun, Halifax Herald and many Ottawa-area weekly newspapers. Mr. Ray's web site is: www.randyray.ca. He can be contacted at: (613) 731-3873 or rocket@intranet.ca.
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Link not working? Story not loading? Can't click on the links? Got another computer problem? Never fear! Carl is here!
If you have any problems with accessing the newsletter or problems with your computer, send an email to Carl Hall chall2k5@gmail.com , and he will be more than happy to assist you.
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Archives
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Carl Dow, Editor and Publisher
Geoffrey Dow, Managing Editor
Yvette Pigeon, Associate Editor
Dennis Carr, Sustainable Development Editor
Benoit Jolicoeur, Art Director
Ian Covey, Director of Photography
Carl Hall, Technical Analyst and Web Editor
Randy Ray, Publicity
Contributing Editors
Anita Chan, Australia
Canada
Alex Binkley, Ottawa
Dennis Carr, Vancouver
Rosaleen Dickson, Ottawa
Tom Dow, Sudbury
Bob Kay, Montréal
Randy Ray, Ottawa
Alberte Villeneuve-Sinclair, Ottawa
David Ward, Ottawa
Harold Wright, Ottawa
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