Diane Weber Bederman

Is there a fix for health care on remote areas of Canada?

Five-year-old Brody Meekis died from strep throat. No, this is not a report from 50 years ago or from a third world country. This happened in Canada, May 2014. He lived in Sandy Lake First Nation, 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. Gloria Galloway wrote in the Globe and Mail that his death “casts a critical light” on the inadequacies of health-care delivery on First Nations reserves. Sadly he wasn’t the only child to die from this treatable disease. Five months earlier a four year old from a different reserve had also died from strep. Ms. Galloway wrote “Many things went wrong in the treatment of Brody Meekis, many of them related to a shortage of medical resources in the remote indigenous community where, as with other Canadian reserves, the responsibility for health care lies with the federal government.”

Abortions of baby kangaroos

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, one of the candidates for the Republican nomination for President was asked recently why he had changed his views on abortion from being in favour to being against it. He said it happened the day he was with his wife, pregnant with their second child, during an early first term obstetric exam.

Democracies must not Kill the Messenger

I recently watched the movie "Kill the Messenger" which was released in the fall of 2014. It's the story of journalist Gary Webb who in 1996 began looking into links between Nicaragua's drug-running Contra rebels and the CIA. He published his findings under the title "Dark Alliance" in the San Jose Mercury News in which he submitted that a US-backed rebel army in Latin America was supplying the drugs that made their way into some of Los Angeles' poorest neighbourhoods. More importantly, he tied the CIA to the drugs. "For the better part of a decade a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tonnes of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles, and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency."

Charles Schumer: The Iran Deal and the Banality of Evil

Dear American Jewish brothers and sisters: There has been an attempt by the left, the self-designated defenders of social justice, to guilt you into believing that you cannot be loyal to America and loyal to Israel. That what is good for America is not necessarily good for Israel and vice versa. Charles Schumer, who refers to himself as shomer Israel-guardian of Israel,has posited this question. It is a thinly veiled attempt to justify backing of the Iran Deal, as if this deal were good for America.

Selling fetal body parts-It's Progressive

On July 22 Juan Williams, a progressive pundit on Fox (yes, there are democrats on Fox), was appalled by the release of a video taken by The Centre For Medical Progress that revealed Dr. Mary Gatter, the medical director for Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, talking about the selling of fetal baby parts. I was watching the conversation unfold. This occurred one week after another video had been released with Dr. Debora Nucatola, Senior Director of all medical services for Planned Parenthood.

Western Arrogance may lead us to Armageddon

There is an assumption in the West that with enough "love" and money Islamic countries will change their ways. They will see the light of Western culture. The arrogance, or the ignorance, or the willful blindness, or all three, that played a role in "Deals with the devil" takes one's breath away. July 15, 2015, the day after "The Deal" was signed these human rights organizations- Center for Supporters of Human Rights, United for Iran, Südwind: All Human Rights for All in Iran, Iran Human RightsDocumentation Center, Impact Iran, Ensemble Contre La Peine de Mort (ECPM), Arseh Sevom, and Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation- said "Tuesday's breakthrough shows change is possible." After all "Iran's president came to office on a two-pronged platform of alleviating economic sanctions and improving human rights." Well, Iran's President did get the economic sanctions removed by agreeing to the rules put on the table by Obama and friends.

Is that Progressive? Or regressive?

I recently listened to a programme on the CBC about the killing of twins in some Nigerian tribes. This has been going on for some time. I found references from the early 1990s “In Abuja, it is believed that the birth of a set of twins is a sacrilege which brings misfortune both to the family and the village, they see twins as children formed by the devil and therefore are evil. They are poisoned or strangled after they are forcefully taken from their mothers by masquerades that the women are not allowed to see. The ritual continues by building altars on the walls of their huts to the spirits of the slain babies and sacrifices are made to ward them off from returning.”

How to create killers and other haters

Tabitha Southey wrote in the Globe and Mail that “killers don’t just spontaneously generate.” She was referring to Dylann Roof, the man who murdered nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. In her opinion Roof became a racist killer from the literature he read-on-line, specifically from the Council of Conservative Citizens whose information about black/white relationships was, to put it nicely -skewed. Well deceitful. Actually hateful. The false information could push someone over the edge into “action” against people of colour. And it did.

“We must fight without fear and without mercy against our enemies”

I met Israel’s newly elected Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked at the offices of the Minister of Justice, a rather nondescript building, located in East Jerusalem. Her office is spacious but simply furnished. The wall behind her desk is filled with books. Her desk was clear except for some platters of vegetables and carafes of water for the many people she sees each day.

Quick fix for healthcare in Canada-stop the banking hours!

We have doctors who are unhappy with remuneration and Personal Support Staff just unhappy. We have wait times for MRI’s and hip and knee replacements. People with mental illness are kept waiting up to a year for a psychiatrist. I believe I have a quick-fix for our health care needs in Ontario, if not all of Canada.

CBC provides new definition for balanced reporting

Last March I once again contacted the CBC regarding their bias-this time against the Harper Government’s response to the Supreme Court ruling allowing the right to wear the niqab during the citizenship ceremony. The Harper government is appealing the decision. For two days CBC Metro Morning with Matt Galloway pushed back against the government with interviews from people who are in favour of wearing the niqab.

By word and deed Muslim extremists are terrorizing the West into submission-the meaning of Islam

We have watched as Western media pilloried Pamela Geller for creating an event that put the spotlight on the intolerance of Islam, especially in the West. Osama Siblani, publisher of “Arab American News,” the largest and most widely circulated Arab American publication in the United States stated: “Let me talk a little bit about ISIS. ISIS is a hate group exactly like Pamela Geller. She is drawing killers, she makes killers, she is inviting killers to come in.” … “She is worse than ISIS.” We allow Muslim extremists to attack free speech against Islamic practices while we tolerate the demeaning and denigrating of Christianity and Judaism in the name of free speech. Double standard? Or fear? Whatever the reason we are permitting others to destroy our democracy.

Riots in America

President Obama has responded to the riots in Baltimore by blaming the media. "One burning building will be looped on television over and over and over again, and the thousands of demonstrators who did it the right way, I think, have been lost in the discussion."

If I were a Muslim I'd be embarrassed

One cannot talk about Muslims or Islam without being accused of racism or religious hatred when in fact it is about culture. We must not speak badly of Islam or Muslim for fear we may upset Muslims and they become radicalized and commit acts of terror. I suggest media pundits have promoted Islamophobia to shame those of us who see the danger in aspects of Islam into keeping quiet.

The media chooses to vilify Israel and the Jewish people

We are now hearing confirmation from many sources, including Amnesty International, that Hamas committed war crimes against Israel during Operation Protective Edge. 'Misfired Hamas rockets' killed children in Gaza "Rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militant groups during last summer's conflict in Gaza amounted to war crimes, Amnesty International says."

Obama: Time to go back to the ethic, defend all democracies and reclaim western values

It is said that one should hold ones friends close and ones enemies closer. Then there is betrayal of ones friends. Barack Obama is President of the free world because the President of the United States takes on that role. He’s betraying his friends. Or sacrificing them.

A woman's right to choose

Vardit Ravitsky is an associate professor in the Bioethics Program at the School of Public Health, University of Montreal. She became a mother at 43 and is now advocating for the Quebec government to pay for all IVF treatment for women over 43. It seems in Quebec the health minister wants to limit free IVF to women under 42. (note : I have no idea why this is happening)

Where is the land of Israel?

This past weekend Doug Saunders of the Globe and Mail opined on the "situation" in Israel. He is nostalgic for the Rabin years "to bring things back to pre-1967 normalcy." It would be "a solution based on mutual compromise, ratified in the Oslo accords of 1993 and 1995."

Welcome to the New Journalism Where Media Mob Mentality rules.

What are our expectations of the media? Mine are rather simple; fact check before printing because in this age of instant messaging you can't take back an error; and base editorial opinions on facts-facts that are relevant to the argument.

Yippee! It’s Anti-Israel Apartheid Week; no, it’s Israel Apartheid Week

Yippee! It’s that time again. That exciting university-condoned Jew-bashing time of year.