Hunt On For Killer

Hungry for attention, so much so that there are no boundaries of human decency and morality that he will not transcend in a horrifying march to the kind of dreadful notoriety reserved for society's disgust and dread of sadistic psychopaths so narcissistic that their personal satisfaction and need for celebrity will impel them to the most degraded and unimaginable atrocities.

Identified by one of his chosen names of Luka Rocco Magnotta, and considered the logical and obvious suspect in a grisly murder of another young man in Montreal, this 29-year-old's visage, whose personality so utterly rejects normalcy, gazes out at the public from every newspaper in Canada.  It is hardly surprising that he has a connection with another of Canada's vile psychopaths, Carla Homulka.  Like her he is a misfortune on society.

This is his personality, utterly warped, beyond the psychotic impulses of those who momentarily lose their sense of societal restraint in committing to violent acts of depravity.  This is a man who revels in depraved behaviour so utterly beyond human understanding that he prides himself in his love of destroying life.  He takes to the Internet to boast of his interest in defying normal human values and the boundaries of morality.

Right now, after busying himself with a plan to fulfill his dreams of celebrity as a feared figure who will commit to the most unbelievable excesses of human descent into lunacy, he must be a very happy man.  He has achieved the attention he has so long craved.  The loathing and disgust that people felt for him for his taped acts of cruelty against helpless animals gave him his start.

And now, he has completed the circle, committing the most vile acts his deformed mind could conceive of.  Taking the trouble to very carefully video his planned slaughter of a helpless man, dismembering the body, and then abusing the remains, and finally bundling up discrete portions in another determined choreograph to bring the bright lights of infamy to shine upon him.

Where would the receipt of a mailed package containing a human foot, and a hand in the process of putrefaction and decay most receive attention?  Why forwarded to very the symbols of political power and governance which act would bring in police forces at every level of investigation to determine the source of the grisly message.  A message completed by his deliberate clues left for discovery.

This man has laid out his utter contempt for human society by describing his penchants and desires.  His affection for himself and his lust for attention have combined to produce a monster of revolting proportions.  He has fled, to protect himself from the obvious outcome were he to be apprehended to face trial for his actions.  But he will soon become bored at being wherever he has secreted himself.

He will long to re-create the same reaction from the public once again, to enable him to feel proud of himself, to preen and to strut and to convince himself that his complete lack of human decency somehow makes him superior to those whom he so obviously feels judge him by a standard that is applicable only to the meek and the fearful.

And when he once again strikes out, as his need for notice will compel him to, committing yet another act of desecration of humanity, he will be followed, and he will be captured, and another one of society's monsters will be dealt with in the only way that is possible, to keep society from further harm.

A Short and Tragic Life

Bad things happen to people that no one can foresee and none can prevent.  Imagine yourself to be a 23-year-old single mother of a seven-year old child.  Single women with families are notoriously cited as being hugely disadvantaged in any society, even one as wealthy as Canada.  Single mothers are disproportionately represented among the poor of society.

Needless to say, if a mother is poor, then her children are poor as well, lacking the comforts and the security that children in two-parent families may have in the knowledge that there are two parents to look to their futures and usually at least one secure paycheque, sometimes two.  Often, a low-paying, difficult job is all that keeps single mothers off welfare.

Victoria Shachtay was a single mother, a very young woman who was wheelchair-bound as the result of a 2004 car accident.  She was permanently disabled, and was the recipient of a $1-million court settlement.  She planned to live off the interest from that settlement.  And to ensure that the money was secure and well invested she entrusted it to the management of a former police officer, turned financial consultant.

"Basically [Victoria] threw her money at him and listened to his promises", her sister explained.  Victoria and her daughter, also named Victoria, lived on the west side of Innisfall.  This is a town with a population of fewer than ten thousand people, roughly 100 kilometres north of Calgary.  Brian Malley, the financial planner whom Victoria Shachtay trusted, also lived in the town.

In November of 2011 something quite startling occurred; particularly strange for a small town.  A package had been delivered to Ms. Shachtay, and when she opened it, the package exploded, killing her.  Police responded immediately but there was no one to rescue.  Seven-year-old Victoria hadn't been at home at the time. 

Police claimed they had no clues to one of the strangest crimes they'd ever seen.

Who would deliberately plan to kill a 23-year-old wheelchair-bound woman?  Could it have been the result of a drug deal gone bad?  Might the bomb in the parcel have been meant for someone else, and Victoria Shachtay just happened to have received it through a dreadful error? 

Six months passed before police felt confident enough to move in to make an arrest.  The well-liked and trusted Brian Malley, the financial planner to whom Victoria Sachtay had entrusted the funds through which she planned to be able to finance her life and that of her daughter, had not, after all, managed the $625,000 entrusted to him, as promised.

Mr. Malley has not been charged with theft, although it seemed, unbelievably, that as and when Ms. Shachtay attempted to withdraw living expenses from her carefully tended nest egg, there was nothing there to draw from. 

He has been charged with first-degree murder, one charge of causing an explosion with a substance likely to cause serious bodily harm, and one count of sending an explosive device.

Victoria Sachtay's sister Sarah is "extremely angry", but not, however, surprised at news of Mr. Malley's arrest.  "Everyone knows that it's the person you know the most and least expect. Certainly I had no idea", her brother Derek said. 

It took no fewer than 70 investigators months in attempting to understand what had occurred and why it had, and who had inscribed the fate of this young mother and her child on a bleak, black slate.

 

Unalloyed Loyalty

He's sweet enough in appearance and obvious willingness to be a trusting and trustful companion to melt the heart of the most hardened.  A tiny terrier who by an accident of fate, met up with a group of Chinese cyclists celebrating their graduation with an adventurous bicycle trip of substantial proportions.  The tiny stray was hungry when it came across the students on Highway G318 in the Qinghai Tibet Plateau, in Sichuan Province.


One of the bicyclists threw a chicken drumstick to the little dog.  After that the little dog's loyalty was assured.  He came across and adopted the cyclists on the fifth day of their 1,600-kilometre expedition.  Remaining with them for the 20 days it took to complete their bicycle venture.  Xiao Sa, as the little dog was named by the young men, managed, along with the cyclists, to clamber over 12 mountains in excess of 13,000 feet.

Despite inclement weather and storms, along with physical exhaustion, as one cyclist after another dropped out of the group of friends, 22-year-old Xiao Yong described an ongoing scenario where the little dog's determination and devotion ensured that they kept going.  "There was one day when we climbed the 14,700-foot-tall peak of Anjiala mountain", he said.

"We did over 40 miles uphill and at the end I had to get off my bike and push.  The dog ran ahead of me and stopped at a crossroads. She waited for a while, but got bored because I took so long, so ran back, put her paws on my calves, and started licking me."

The little terrier, he said garnered sufficient inner resources to run with the cyclists for their average of 50 to 65 kilometres each day.  Occasionally, Xiao Yong would pick little Xiao Sa up to carry him on the back of his bike in a box.  He slept on their raincoats, and shared their rations of custard tarts, boiled eggs and sausages.

"Once, a large dog started chasing us along a series of dark tunnels and his barking drew a whole pack of others.  I put Xiao Sa on my bike and started peddling desperately.  One of my bags was ripped, but otherwise we got away."

Unsurprisingly the saga of the long and arduous trip shared by the little dog, whose name means "Little Sa", captured the imagination of the Chinese public.  And its reward was expressed not only in its newfound celebrity as a sustained and energetic little athlete, but as the companion of the young man who has since adopted him.

Xiao Yong, meet Xiao Sa.

The Queen Of Flight

Indefatigable, and tireless, quite obviously.  Even more obvious, enthusiastic and eager to share her talents and her love of flying with any who came to her to take advantage of her knowledge and experience as a flight instructor.  This was a woman who knew what she liked and was determined to live the way it pleased her to.  She passed well beyond elderly by the time she died at age 103 in Tennessee.

She outlived two husbands and was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame at Dayton, Ohio.  She became the manager of a small airport at Morristown, Tennessee in 1953.  And there, over a fifty-year time-span she busied herself among other absorbing and enjoyable duties teaching roughly five thousand student pilots, and certifying over 9,000 pilots for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

Evelyn Johnson, who has died aged 102, was an aviatrix known as “Mama Bird” who made it into the Guinness Book of Records as having the most flying hours of any woman and the most of any living person. Evelyn Johnson Photo: AP

And if that wasn't in and of itself distinguishing enough for the record books, she became the oldest flight instructor in the world, teaching others to fly until she reached the age of 96.  She learned to fly herself, in 1944.  And over the years she logged 57,635.4 flying hours throughout her sixty years as a pilot; roughly equidistant to flying 12 times to the moon and back.

For two decades she operated a flying service, taking cargo, passengers and sightseers in trips around the United States.  She experienced two complete engine failures, but managed always to keep her aircraft aloft without a crash.  Her flying-hours record is distinguished as the greatest number of flying hours attributed to any living person.

But there was another individual, Ed Long, who managed to fly a greater number of hours, over 64,000.  Before his death in 1999, his last words were reputed to have been : "Don't let that woman beat me".  As luck would have it, she tried but didn't quite manage to surpass Mr. Long's exceptional flying record.  Glaucoma took its toll, and a car accident that resulted in one of her legs being amputated complicated the issue.

Even as she was forced by such circumstances to give up flying, she continued to manage the airport at Morristown until she reached the age of 101.  Amazing woman that she was.

"Be Aware"

The moral of this story is that you can never be too alert.  You can never succumb to the comfortable feeling that you are so well versed in the mechanics of the open road and driving, along with human nature and peoples' propensity to take things for granted, that you can too, with impunity.  You might find yourself in a very awkward situation through no fault of your own, aside from letting down your guard.

And people who drive motorcycles are extremely vulnerable on a road that is shared with those who drive trucks and SUVs, and vans and other modes of conveyance.  All such vehicles, including the compacts, sub-compacts, Smart Cars and inattentive drivers in them, are susceptible to inadvertently placing themselves in danger by not paying due and careful attention.

Worse, much worse, they place others in potentially dangerous situations when they relax normal driving vigilance by observing what and who they are sharing the road with, from bicycle riders to motorcycle drivers, to transport trucks or any other motorized conveyance.  This is a truth, well known to Don Dobson, 72 years of age, who took his BMW motorbike out for a spin on Woodroffe Avenue of a lovely Saturday morning.

He discovered himself to be dreadfully inconvenienced, en route to the closest hospital, still in the morning hours.  Mr. Dobson has long acted as a motorcycle safety advocate.  He would have been enormously chagrined and surprised during the process of being hit by a SUV, if he could remember the event.  A grim reminder of our mortality.

When firefighters arrived from a nearby station, they discovered Mr. Dobson pinned under the front of the Toyota SUV, with some kind of fluid pouring from its engine.  A call had been made for the heavy-rescue squad with its extraction equipment to appear on the scene, immediately if not sooner.  The firefighters decided there was no time to wait for the imminent arrival of the experts.

Three of them lifted the front of the SUV, allowing paramedics to haul Mr. Dobson out from under and away from the wreck, spiriting him into the ambulance nearby.  Mr. Dobson has no memory of the almost-catastrophic encounter that might have taken his life; he regained consciousness en route to hospital.

May has been proclaimed Ottawa's 'motorcycle awareness' month.  A factoid that appears to have been lost to most drivers.  "It's called inattentional blindness", Mr Dobson said later, in discussing how some drivers seem unable to see what is directly in front of them.  "(The accident) is a wake-up call to all of us.

"Nobody is invulnerable.  Until driver training includes attention to other people on the road and drivers pay attention to what's around them, we're going to have a lot of problems."  He was, after his near-brush with death, in fine enough fettle, having sustained a series of painful bruises and a mild concussion.  He plans to be back on his bike before long.

Charges have been laid with respect to the incident.  "I'm just glad I wasn't a few seconds faster in to the intersection.  Because then the (car) would have driven into my leg", he sighed.  Or worse.

 Criminally Demented, But Legally Sane

"You are not the ones I am targeting.  I consider you as brothers.  It's a coup; I must save Norway from Islamization."  Anders Behring Breivik

The Norwegian police whose response and behaviour had been so dismal on that fateful day of July 22, 2011, have come under great scrutiny and criticism from the public.  Their pathetic handling of a dire emergency that left 69 mostly young people dead from the deliberate slaughter imposed on young leftists whom Anders Breivik accused of being traitors to their country seemed inexplicable.

It can hardly be a comfort to them now to receive fulsome praise for their professional performance, during his trial for mass murder of the man who, to make a political/ideological point, decided to bomb a government building in Oslo, killing eight people there before decamping to the island of Utoya where the Workers' Youth League had a summer camp.

The testimony given to the court in Oslo by the head of local police operations outlined the picture of  a man who was fully self-possessed, calm, and determined to carry out a plan he had practised to perfection.  He was psychically removed from the bloody carnage, fear and mayhem he had committed, feeling fully justified in his choreographed play as the Grim Reaper.

While dealing deserved death to the youth wing of the ruling Labour Party that he loathed, holding them responsible for the influx of Muslim immigrants into the country of his birth, and which process was transforming Norway from a white, Christian country to one more resembling the Middle East, he co-opted tactics he so admired that were perfected by Islamist jihadists to make his point.

His point was to startle the country into a realization that the Muslim invasion was altering Norway beyond recognition.  And he would be the one to mobilize action against the invading horde.  His actions would prompt a change of government, an insistence that Muslims be expelled from the country, and all would be well, Norway returned to 'normal'.

What he succeeded in doing was to shock and horrify normal human beings at the vileness of his actions as the entire world condemned his act of brazen, inhuman butchery as the actions of an unbridled lunatic.  In that way he utterly resembled those he both detested and admired; jihadist Islamists.  But it was also his craven self-awareness and narcissistic personality that strikes those watching his trial unfold.

His personal fears for his own secure, physical well-being even as he was brutally butchering terrified teens who attempted to flee for their lives.  And he, with the greatest of composure, in the assuring uniform of a Norwegian policeman, carefully and with great precision killed them.  Bemoaning the fact that he hadn't killed more.

He is sane, and he is demented.  He is sanely demented. 

Mordant Observations From The Scene

"Lots of dead or dying bodies.  Thought I was in a morgue", wrote a female Canadian mountain climber in a tweet sent out to her followers.  She was in a kind of morgue, in point of fact.  One that was located in the great out-of-doors, at a height that most people could not imagine themselves being landscaped within.  But this was the kind of environment that this mountain climber thrived upon. 

The danger inherent in the ascent, the dauntingly grim geological features and the unexpected climate seizures that could take the day from a clear sunny atmosphere to sudden white-out conditions with freezing sleet and impossible high winds, let alone the chance of an avalanche occurring, or the wind shoving the unfortunate off the slippery slope of the hostile mountain, made it all the more thrilling.

As an accomplishment.  To know that she had faced the worst that nature could summon in her conflict with the human spirit, bringing all the inclement weather condition combinations at her disposal, with the elements of high winds which together with the cold could scorch the lungs, and the rarified oxygen-thin atmosphere adding its threats to survival.

But this was a woman who had already summitted many of the world's most inaccessible, and difficult peaks.  And she did so with her sturdy spirit of endurance and strength, endowed with an athletic body and a mind that simply refused to harbour fear that she might be the next one that death would claim. 

She was merely an onlooker of the dread events that occurred to others, while an active participant in the success that came also to others.

It was beside the point that her group had been forced to turn back before making the summit.  Back to base camp, to rest, to consider whether they might wish to push forward, upward and onward on another day when the weather conditions appeared more auspicious to success.  If not, she would have to return on another occasion, to attempt the summit of Mount Everest again. 

She knew what she was about, the fiercely adverse conditions she would face.  She had climbed four of the seven major summits of the world.  Not a bad record.  And the fever to climb would not allow her to rest before she had managed to surface atop all seven.  Her oxygen regulator had frozen on this occasion and she had climbed four hours without the oxygen she needed to remain fully capable and alert.

She had packed her gear, prepared to admit this would not be the year she would successfully summit Mount Everest.  And then, she changed her mind.  Planning within the week to give it another try. 

A Unionized Cause Celebre

"Maybe it's time to get into the streets of Ontario and start the same kind of movement that they have in Quebec to demand that tuition be lowered and that we start working towards free university."  Sid Ryan, President, Ontario Federation of Labour

And out he went to march along with the university student demonstrators on Tuesday.  Urging that Ontario students also become involved.  He's in support of what the students are doing, but he's not advocating for violence.  He just wants his iced cake served with tea.

The students, albeit representing a minority among the minority that have been out marching on the streets of the province's cities, have been demonstrating their unconcern with the law. Beyond the fact that many of them have lobbed rocks and bricks at police, have smashed shop windows, have illegally blocked traffic and created havoc, they have gone out en masse to defy the law.

After having defied court injunctions whose purpose was to have them cease harassing those majority students in the province who wished to attend their university classes, and obstructing their way into those classes.

These are, of course, the students who claim that the provincial legislature in increasing their tuition fees over a seven-year-period to eventually represent about 17% of the cost of their education (the government that has done this in view of its massive provincial debt and increasing deficit) is an undemocratic one.

The students have their rights in a democratic society and they mean to exercise those rights.Which most definitely do not include intimidation, harassment, violence, threats, public mischief and criminal behaviour.  All of which they feel they are entitled to commit, because they are, quite simply, entitled.

And they have the support of many of their university instructors.  Whose own unions have quietly encouraged the students and proffered funding to mount legal challenges.  And now unions in Ontario have become involved in support of the 'striking' students, funding them as well.

After all, the current union leaders recognize the emerging human material from which their future leaders will emanate, and these students require encouragement, they feel.

Although they are perfectly capable of their own volition of challenging democratically elected lawmakers, and breaking the law in the process, proving without a doubt they are fully capable of taking their place as future union leaders.

Innocent/Guilty

Absolutely, unthinkably hideous.  A lively young man of 24 taking a bus as a routine event, heading back home from a temporary summertime job as a carnival worker.  Fortune was not with that young man.  His name was Tim McLean. 

And his friends and his family mourn him.  When we speak of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time, there are many examples that old adage would fit.  Tim McLean's passage on that Greyhound bus near Portage La Prairie, Manitoba in 2008 qualifies in large measure, in blazing highlights, in fact.

His was a totally unexpected, absolutely gruesome end. 

His murderer, Vince Li, was found not guilty of decapitating and cannibalizing Tim McLean.  Horrified bus passengers, desperately rushing off the bus watched, mesmerized and disgusted, as Mr. Li went about his grisly carnage.  The bus was locked from the interior and when RCMP police arrived there was a standoff.  Mr. Li was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.

His dreadful act of murder was considered to be the result of a psychotic outbreak occasioned by Mr. Li's undiagnosed condition of schizophrenia.  Mr. Li has been treated at the Selkirk Mental Health Hospital for the criminally insane.  He takes medication and his progress is monitored by staff psychiatrists.  Who now deem him to be well balanced and able to stroll the grounds of the Selkirk Centre safely, in the company of hospital personnel.

He hopes eventually to be able to leave the facility.  He now accepts that he has a mental illness that requires ongoing treatment.  He recently submitted to an interview that took 45 minutes in total at the forensics unit of the Selkirk Centre in Manitoba.  His interlocutor was Chris Summerville, CEO of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada.

"In 2004, I didn't know what it was.  I now know what it is.  I began to hear voices that normal people do not hear.  I thought I head the voice of God telling me to write down my journey.  The voice told me that I was the third story of the bible.  That I was like the second coming of Jesus.  I was to save people from a space-alien attack.  that is why I travelled around the country.  I am not sure of all the places I went to.  I now know that it was schizophrenia I was suffering from", he explained.

"I bought a knife at Canadian Tire.  I bought it for any emergency for the journey to protect myself from the aliens.  I was really scared...  I believed he was an alien.  The voices told me to kill him.  That he would kill me or others.  I do not believe this now.  It was totally wrong.  It was my fault.  I sinned.  But it was the schizophrenia."

When asked do you remember what had occurred, he responded that he clearly remembered what had happened.  "I try to forget it.  I try to stay busy here.  It is painful to think about.  I feel nervous.  I feel painful.  I am embarrassed.  It was wrong."  "My thinking is becoming normal.  I don't think weird things.  I take my medication, Olanzapine, every day.  I am glad to take it.  I don't have any weird voices anymore."

"I understand people are scared because of my behaviour on the Greyhound bus.  I am not at risk for anybody.  I don't believe in aliens.  I don't hear voices.  I would call my doctor if I heard voices again.  Yes, I understand their fear."  "I should have been killed at that time.  I still believe that.  But I am thankful that the RCMP didn't."

"I would like to say to Tim McLean's mother 'I am sorry for killing your son.  I am sorry for the pain I have caused.  I wished I could reduce that pain'."

Is the public prepared to have this man released, as he hopes eventually he will be, to take his place in society again?  He thinks he should be, eventually.  The mother of the man he murdered has worked tirelessly to see the passage of "Tim's Law": it holds that any mentally insane person who kills someone would not ever be released from custody.

"I don't think so, that that should happen.  Mental illness is an illness.  It is treatable.  My schizophrenia is not the real me, but it is an illness."  He would know, he said firmly, if he were to become ill again, and he would know because he would be "Hearing voices, stopping my medication and starting to believe in aliens.  God would not tell me to do something bad", he said. 

But then, back in 2008 he believed that God was telling him how to respond to a perceived threat that so obviously terrified him, that he calmly slit a living man's throat, ferociously kept at it until he had succeeded in removing head from neck, then proceeded to consume parts of the still-warm flesh.  Conscious of what he was doing, because he is capable of clearly recollecting it.

He can never be happy, he said also.  "No.  I can never forget the Greyhound bus."

 Life-Risky Mountain Climbing

"I sat Yasuko down in Beck's lap," Madsen recalls, "but he was pretty unresponsive by that time, and Yasuko wasn't moving at all.  A little later I saw that she'd laid down flat on her back, with snow blowing into her hood.  Somehow she'd lost a glove - her right hand was bare and her fingers were curled up so tightly you couldn't straighten them.  It looked like they were pretty much frozen to the bone.

"I assumed she was dead", Madsen continues.  "But then a while later she suddenly moved, and it freaked me out; she sort of arched her neck slightly, as if she was trying to sit up, and her right arm came up, then that was it.  Yasuko lay back down and never moved again."  Jon Krakauer: Into Thin Air

A lot of people have died on Mount Everest in the Himalaya.  And on that expedition-crowded day of May 10, 1996 a record number died in one day; it represented the deadliest season in the history of Mount Everest.  Jon Krakauer, an experienced summitteer, wrote of his experiences on that fateful day, up the mountain and within the 'Death Zone' above 25,000 feet where extreme cold and exhaustion, and high winds and oxygen-depletion took its toll.

History has a habit of repeating itself.  There was a 'traffic jam' on that fateful day in May, the most auspicious month for such ascents, and considered to be the optimum climbing season, and a similar situation that revealed itself in May of 2012, sixteen years later.  Five people died on Everest this week.  Weather conditions were atrocious, and people were dreadfully fatigued, coming down off the peak.

A Canadian woman, Shriya Shah-Klorfine, was blown to her death off the mountain by a sudden storm.  South Korean Song Won-Bin, 44 is missing, but the Nepali government assures it it was simply "not possible for him to have survived.  A German national, Dr. Eberhard Schaaf died of altitude sickness - or alternately was swept away by an avalanche, and Chinese national Wangyi Fa was killed by the same high winds that took Ms. Shah-Klorfine, born in Nepal.

"[One man] was basically hallucinating, he took his hat off, his gloves were thrown away and then he kind of reached out and looked at me ... he kind of reached out to me, kind of in a zombie-lake fashion", related U.S. climber Jon Kedrowski to a Colorado Fox News affiliate.  Oxygen deprivation, extreme fatigue, they take their toll.

And everyone is desperately exhausted, so much so that they must concentrate on their own survival.

Ms. Shah-Klorfine, the Nepali-Canadian, 33 years of age, was summitting as an aspirational dream.  "Nothing is impossible in this world, even the word 'impossible' says 'I M POSSIBLE'!", she wrote on her website.  She was among a group of 150 climbers who grasped the opportunity of what looked like good weather ahead, to press on for the summit.

In all, there were over 300 aspirants to the top that day, Saturday, May 19th.  Altitude sickness and extreme cold took their toll at the 8,000-metre level, the "Death Zone".  This year's push to the top was marked by extremely dangerous conditions as well.  A mix of loose snow and slick surfaces as a result of the mountain's warmest spring on record.

This kind of extreme mountain climbing adventure is life-risky.  The British Medical Journal in 2006 put the death rate at one fatality for each ten successfully-concluded climbs.  Those who manage to make it to the peak experience a one-in-twenty chance they won't survive the descent.  Those who die on Everest remain there.  Over 200 dead climbers are visible from various aspects on the trails and mountain slopes.

It is an immense mountain.  With a single passage or trail or pathway in most areas which people must traverse.  With such a crowded group of mountain enthusiasts negotiating the trails, time elapses waiting for the line to thin out as each takes his/her turn at the tricky, difficult passes and climbing areas, negotiating ice and snow and geological irregularities and assistive bridges and ladders.  Waiting is dangerous.

Two Sherpas died on the mountain that day that five foreigners lost their lives.  The Sherpas perished in the service of those who come to the region to challenge their own nature and endurance and that of the mountain.  The Sherpas died in an effort to make a living for themselves and their families.

There is a vital time limit for ascending and descending to minimize danger.  And danger is always present.  Five climbers dead in 2012; eight climbers who died in the blizzard of 1996 that Jon Krakauer wrote of.

A Teachable Moment

Paul Chiasson, the Canadian Press

It has been well publicized how involved, introspective, curious, and concerned Prince Charles has always been on matters as diverse as the environment, architecture, art, agriculture, vegetarian-organic food, and the welfare of others.  All the more surprising that he failed to discern that he had disappointed the expectations of one female.

Of course, Prince Charles has famously disappointed the expectations of more than one female.  And managed, in the end to meet those of another.  But it is obvious from this sez-it-all photograph of one member of the fair sex who had been graced with the tender task of gifting the monarch-in-waiting with a floral bouquet, that her expectations have been dashed.

These were her flowers, her nosegay, which she so generously proffered to him in the full expectation that the elderly grey-haired man with the wrinkled skin who towered over her would understand that he was given the opportunity through her generosity to heft the flowers, and then sweetly return them to her possession.

It is clear from what we can discern from this touching photograph that Prince Charles - inadvertently or not - has sorely misunderstood the situation.  This was to have been her moment, her flowers in reflection of her talent, youth and beauty.  How could he have so misinterpreted the event?

Surely this trauma - trifling to the onlooker no doubt, amusing to those standing nearby who were able to view the girl's facial expression and so-obvious body language - will haunt her all the days of her life.

As this little girl goes through life, she will emote her frustrations as a superb thespian on the stage, without a doubt, wowing her audience with the authenticity of her pain.  She will doubtless write a best-seller 'tell-all' book relating her experience with the British Royal family.

He will live to rue the day.  Gallantry and  chivalry have their place.  And he somehow misplaced them.

Commendations Versus Justice

It is a sadly paradoxical situation when a professional who has been engaged as such for two decades momentarily betrays the raison d'etre behind his profession.  All the more so when he has, over the course of his career as a police officer, been the recipient of numerous commendations.  Someone whose record as an officer of the peace stands above his peers in the opinion of his peers and those who come in contact with police officers.

St. Chris McGuinness has a service record bulging with 53 pages of recognition and commendations.  His "unique skills" demonstrated throughout his career encouraged a high degree of praise for his work as an Ottawa police officer from senior homicide detectives, a handful of police chiefs, two deputy Ottawa police chiefs, a federal Crown prosecutor and a provincial Crown prosecutor.

All of these people were hugely impressed with Sgt. McGuinness's performance and professional skills.  "He has probably the best set of people skills of anyone I have known.  He is someone whom others choose to call upon for help", wrote assistant Crown attorney Kevin Phillips, describing St. McGuinness further as "an extremely intelligent ... natural leader."

"I would also say that he developed an impressive reputation as top-rate investigator, a reputation that lasts to this day.  Simply put, Chris McGuinness is an excellent police officer."

There exists a host of other sincere and appreciative statements of recognition by colleagues and Sgt. McGuinness's superiors praising the level of his work, his capability, his personability and his professionalism. The praise speaks generously of his "unblemished integrity", his "loyalty". His reputation as a police officer goes beyond the opinion of him held by members of his own profession. 

There are also letters from people who ran afoul of the law and whom he went out of his way to aid and to sagely and helpfully counsel.  And then there is one from a wife of a former colleague, both themselves police officers.  The husband was in end-stage ALS and Sgt. McGuinness made it his business to regularly visit with and help care for the man.

"Chris is an exceptional human being who was able to show my dying husband so much compassion and respect.  Brian passed away Oct. 8, 2010.  He was very close to his family but he did not ask for them to be there that day.  He did ask for Chris", was the testimonial written on St. McGuinness's behalf by the wife of the deceased.

Sgt. McGuinness has been temporarily removed from active duty, deployed as a case manager while he has been the subject of an internal affairs disciplinary hearing.  This is the police officer who, on St. Patrick's Day of 2010, drove his vehicle into a utility pole, then pulled away, striking another vehicle before abandoning his car.

He has admitted to having consumed beer with some friends that evening before getting into his car and driving off.  He has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, and has expressed deep remorse for behaviour that could have resulted in a serious accident as driving under the influence often does, occasionally taking someone's life in the process.

The incident is all the more serious since it was a police officer, and one of long standing, who happened to indulge in this kind of unlawful, dangerous driving.  The question here is whether or not his past record should be held in consideration of balance against charges brought against him.  On the one hand he has been scrupulously aware of his professional obligations, carrying them out in an honourable manner.

On the other hand, during what appears to be a brief period of injudicious decision-making, he behaved extremely poorly to the extent that he posed a public threat.  This is the proverbial tough nut to crack.  People do make mistakes, and this represents someone imbued with a particular sense of public obligation who momentarily fled that obligation.

Family Values

Federal prosecutor Celine Harrington feels that 38-year-old Terry Phillips is due a prison sentence of between 2-1/2 to three years as a social penalty matching his second conviction of dealing crack cocaine.  He was, in fact, on probation from his first conviction, for which he served six months, when he was apprehended for selling an undercover police officer crack cocaine.

Trouble is, Terry Phillips has two children, one a teen-age boy who is autistic, and the other a little three-year-old girl.  A happy, smiling child by all accounts.  At least that's the way she looked, wearing her Mickey Mouse T-shirt, holding on to her Daddy's hand, as he took her along to one of the five drug deals he was engaged in.

Presumably, the task of looking after the child fell to him, that day.  And matters of necessity taking precedence what option had he as a good and caring father other than to take the child along with him, so he could keep a keen and protective eye on her?  As it happened, he also brought the little girl to his sentencing hearing, where the judge felt her presence inappropriate and the mother whisked her away.

His lawyer argued forcefully for the "caring and thoughtful" family man that Terry Phillips so obviously represents.  "A period of incarceration will have a negative impact on this man, his family and the community as a whole", said the accused's lawyer.  And without a doubt it most certainly will have all of that.

He is a changed man, committed to becoming a "positive person".  He pledged to Ontario Superior Court Justice Lynn Ratushny that he is determined to make a better life for his family.  Which gave the prosecuting attorney the opportunity to interject that this was the same "song and dance" that was brought out the last time around, with the previous crack-dealing episode.

"He brings his three-year-old toddler with him ... despite the violence associated with drug dealing.  An innocent three-year-old girl holding her dad's hand to do a drug deal.  Are those the actions of a good father?"  The evidence is there, the moment captured on police surveillance photographs.

"Are those the actions of a good father?" was the closing argument of the federal prosecutor.  Depends.  Squeezed in tight below that news article was another, of four family members, father, mother, son and daughter, all accused by the RCMP of exporting cocaine to Australia, Russia, India, the U.S. and a few European countries.

There are 62 charges in all, levelled against the family.  So it's hard to say; the above might be an instance of grooming the next generation.  And it might simply be a befuddled father whose values have been horribly compromised, and who really, truly intends to turn himself around and devote himself to being a good father to his two children.

Who really knows?

 Salvaging the Costa Concordia

"The only way that we could think of doing it was to right the ship the same way that it keeled over, just like a film on rewind."  Silvio Bartolotto, General Manager, Micoperi

Filippo Monteforte / AFP - Getty Images

The sunsets over the cruise liner Costa Concordia aground in front of the harbour of Isola del Giglio after hitting underwater rocks on Jan. 13.

And so a project of unprecedented proportions representing the largest salvage operation in history is set to proceed. 

The wreck of the luxurious ocean liner, one of the largest, most expensive in the world, lies on its side in the Tuscany region of Italy.  The cost of salvaging it will be in the neighbourhood of $300-million.  And it is set to begin a few days' time.  The timing is critical; a confidential report claims the wreck is at risk of sinking within a year because wave action and the ship's enormous weight were distorting the hull.

The salvage companies must secure the wreck to prevent it from slipping off the reef it is captured on, and then into deeper water.  The technical challenge is monumental.    Lying off the Tuscan island of Giglio, the wreck is a grim reminder of the hubris of human beings, in particular its captain, who paid scant attention to safety and regulations when he authorized an irregular 'salute' that resulted in the debacle that ensued.

Over four thousand passengers and crew were removed from the ship in lifeboats.  Some few people swam ashore.  Thirty-two people lost their lives on January 13 when the ship hit the reef where it went aground.  The Costa Concordia weighs over 44,000 tons, is 290 metres long, about the size of three football fields.  Representing an immense technical challenge to tow it to port and break it into parts.

Marine life on the seabed is to be removed before the work begins, then replaced, in respect of the natural environment.  Sixty poles are to be driven into the sea floor to stabilize the wreck from the land side and where a series of underwear platforms measuring 40 metres by 40 metres on the open sea side will be fixed.  Workers will weld metal tanks to be filled with water onto the ship sides and drag the wreckage to an upright position with two cranes.

The ship is to be refloated by emptying the tanks, pumping out the hull, and towing it to port.  "Once we right it, we need to refloat it relatively quickly", explained Richard Habib, managing director of the U.S. Salvage company Titan which co-jointly won the project bid with Italian off-shore rig company Micoperi.

Changing Demographics

There was a greater number of children born in the United States in 2011 to ethnic minorities than to white families, according to newly-released data.  It is 'early days' yet, but a whopping alteration in the complexion of the country's demographics is well on its way. 


The U.S. Census Bureau was able to determine the social, racial and economic divisions that have altered modern-day America.  White baby-boomers must now be agreeable to paying taxes that will have the effect of ultimately funding the education and welfare of a hugely diverse ethnically younger population.  But isn't that, after all, how America prides itself, as the 'melting pot' of the world community?


In the year to July 2011, according to the figures given, 50.4% of babies born in the U.S. were offspring of visible ethnics.  For Hispanics the breakdown was 26%; 15% black, 5% Asian.  Mixed marriages accounted for the remaining 4.5 %.  And might it not just be possible that with a greater number of ethnics making up a somewhat larger proportion of the aggregate, discrimination will diminish?


Whites currently represent 63.4% of the American population, and are slated to remain a majority of the American population until 2050, when a dramatic shift will take place, with a shrinking portion of the workplace population paying taxes to sustain economic growth.


White American women now present with a median age of 42, in comparison to age 27 for Hispanics, matching the peak age for fertility.  The current situation of a deep polarization of American politics will complicate matters, with the exploitation of differences between people to make political points, rather than celebrating equality of opportunity for the greater good of the country.


"These babies are soon to be filling up our schools, our labour force and transforming the U.S. population as a whole.  It's really children who are at the forefront of racial and ethnic change in the United States.  There's a huge gap in the racial-ethnic composition of the children in the U.S. compared with older adults, who are mostly white", explained a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau in Washington.


Sociologists in the U.S. warn that it is imperative that these children be exposed to a good sound education.  Without higher education opportunities available to them, the workforce will be less competitive on the international scene, unable to match the pressures certain to evolve from emerging economies in Asia.


What that represents is an enormous challenge, requiring a determination to alter perspectives and appreciate values that will allow the new reality to emerge in a fashion that will ultimately benefit the country well into its future.

Misogyny

Nurture cannot always trump nature.  Karen Boden, 54 years of age, living in Vancouver, could not have foreseen that her son whom she loved as a child, would become a man whom she feared as an adult.

"The justice system has to know that Josh should not be released on bail.  He should not be back on the streets until he deals with his anger, gets therapy and gets off drugs and alcohol.  Many, many women are just not safe from him."

This is not a typical mother's attitude and warning and statement about a beloved son.  But Josh Boden is not a typical son, either.  His list of convictions and charges are voluminous, from sexual assaults and assaults to more sexual assaults.  And doubtless drug convictions as well.

His mother is so fearful of him she has sought protective custody and attempted to change her appearance in hopes her son would not readily recognize her.  She is desperate that her son receive the help he needs, and not be released out of custody.  And she is intent on being able to offer his three-year-old son an opportunity at a life without his father's influence.

"This is my grandson, and just like Josh was, he's a beautiful little boy and a happy child, and I want him to have a better life than his dad.  As long as Josh is out of jail and near his son, I can't risk seeing my grandson."

She loves her son, but his violence which she attributes to his taking steroids, along with sports-related concussions have taken their toll.  As have his addictions to drug and alcohol, which he was evidently introduced to from the age of eleven. 

He was scouted as a teen, as a promising young athlete.  And he spent three years with the B.C. Lions.  Their 2007 season was his last.  And he is now 25 years of age.  Convicted of two sex assaults last December, due to be sentenced in July.  Out on bail on other charges, of assaulting two men and uttering death threats.

His mother blames other people in the sports field for having introduced her son to steroids, money, cars and lots of "available" women.  He was charged with the assault of his former girlfriend in 2008.  She was a young mother, a tanning-salon owner.  Her uncertainty over testifying at his trial led to his acquittal.

Shortly afterward there were other charges relating to firearms.  Which was when he was given the boot by the Hamilton Tigercats.  "Josh threw away his own career opportunities", says his mother.  In response to her son having blamed his former girlfriend for "ruining" his football career.

A year after he was charged with sexual assault on this same girlfriend, she was murdered in her home, leaving her young daughter motherless.  Her death remains "an active and open investigation", with Josh Boden considered a "person of interest".

The Passion of Belief Over Reasonable Debate

"I was simply trying to develop a scientific understanding of this 'miracle' and to look at it from a scientific point of view.  Distributing this water and claiming it was a cure-all was irresponsible.  It could have been infected with bacteria."  Sanal Edamaruku

Now that is the voice and the reasoning of an intelligent man.  That is also the voice and the reasoning of a man accused of 'blasphemy, lies and defamation'.  An objective view of the situation would tend to place most people in the position of agreeing with Mr. Edamaruku.  But, unfortunately, there is a vast distance between intellectual rationality and spiritual emotion.


And never the twain, alas, do quite meet in harmony.


In a suburb of north Mumbai, the business capital of India, the church of Our Lady of Velankanni in Andheri, has a statue of Jesus on the cross.  Unaccountably, other than the result of a miracle, someone noticed that water was dripping from the feet of the Christ.  Which caused thousands of faithful worshippers to gather to see the miracle for themselves.


The faithful are not named faithful for nothing.  It was a miracle.  They came in their thousands to look, to wonder, to pray and pay homage.  And to collect the precious liquid in bottles, to drink it as a cure for whatever ailed them, from arthritis to cancer.  No word yet whether any of the faithful experienced miracle cures from the miracle liquid.


Was the statue of Christ weeping? 


Mr. Edamaruku, who is, surprise! an atheist, is the president of India's Rationalist Association.  He heard of the commotion and, two weeks on, visited the church.  He did this "in the public interest".  But his visit to the church and his explanation of what had occurred was less than palatable to the faithful.  Who declared him despicable for having come to the conclusion that the drips were a result of a malfunctioning toilet.


He now faces blasphemy charges that could result in a prison term of up to three years.  Faith is not debatable.  It is what it is, and may not be interfered with.  And India has a 152-old blasphemy law to prove just that.


Joseph Dias from the Catholic-Christian Secular Forum has brought legal action against Mr. Edamaruku, insisting that his comments were quite simply "intolerable".

"His remarks were blatantly false.  The abnormal phenomenon was captured live on TV and the media for two days and no plausible explanation could be found as to why the crucifix was dripping with water. This was blasphemy, lies and defamation."

India's legal code places a ban on "any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities".  A laudable piece of social engineering in an attempt to ensure acceptance, equality and forbearance.  And it excludes rational explanations of seemingly otherworldly interventions.


"The water came from a toilet", Mr. Edamaruku stated conclusively.  "It was not a miracle."

Deadly Assault

"Sean Murphy was a man at the wrong place at the wrong time and he lost his life for no reason. 

"It was violence that was unprovoked, reckless, brutal and senseless."  Ontario Superior Court Justice Lynn Ratushny

Justice Ratushny also felt reason to call into question the sincerity of Mohamed Jama Yusuf's apology.  And then she sentenced him for "violently and callously", mortally attacking a 51-year-old man who was inebriated and unable to defend himself.

After Mohamed Jama Yusuf brutally beat 51-year-old Sean Murphy to insensibility he walked off, high-fiving a friend at the bar where he had been drinking.  He obviously proved his masculine prowess by kicking and stamping on the slighter Sean Murphy, a stranger to him, and too drunk to repel his attacker.

And then, later on, when Mr. Yusuf returned to Edmonton where he was from, he indulged in some bragging about "stomping an old man in Ottawa".

Mr. Murphy died in hospital three weeks after he was attacked just after 12:00 a.m. in the parking of a store near Merivale Road and Shillington Avenue.  He died of pneumonia occasioned by the brain injury caused by the viciousness of the injuries he had received, meted out to him by Mr. Yusuf who rejoiced in his "stomping an old man in Ottawa".

It was, declared Justice Ratushny "particularly repugnant" that one of Mr. Yusuf's friends, Abdulhakim Mohammed, took the opportunity of Mr. Murphy convulsing and unconscious to go through the man's pockets to take possession of whatever he could find there, after he'd been brutalized and fallen off his bicycle.

For punching a vulnerable cyclist in the head for no particular reason, then completing the assault by stomping and kicking him as he lay unconscious on the pavement, and ultimately causing his death as a result of the injuries sustained, Mohamed Jama Yusuf was sentenced to 7-1/2 years in prison.

A little less than 6-12 years remain for Mr. Yusuf to serve out his sentence, given credit for time already served.  That's the price that society enacts as a disciplinary measure for viciously taking an innocent life.

Tarnishing the Force

His lawyer claims that alcohol played no role in the crash caused by his client.  Despite that his client accompanied a friend to St. Louis's Bar and Grill on St. Patrick's Day last year, admitting to having had "some beers".  After he left the drinking establishment, he just happened to crash his 2001 Honda Accord into a utility pole on Montreal Road at 1:00 a.m.

Alcohol, under the circumstances obviously did indeed play a role in this incident.  A clear enough case of driving under the influence.  After the driver hit the pole a pedestrian entered the scene, concerned about the driver.  The driver backed up and gunned the accelerator, almost hitting another vehicle.  turning onto the Vanier Parkway, he rear-ended a taxi near Donald Street.

The driver passed the taxi, exiting onto Highway 417, driving west to the Nicholas Street off-ramp, where he abandoned his damaged car a little later near Henderson Avenue and Templeton Street.  Did no one think to call the police?  His dangerous, erratic, irresponsible driving might have killed another motorist, a pedestrian, even himself.

Oh, he was the police.  An Ottawa police sergeant with 20 years under his professional belt.  He was, in the past as it happens, the recipient of commendations from lawyers, chiefs of the Ottawa police and other forces, community groups and colleagues, according to testimony given to the police disciplinary hearing he stood before.

He pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and failing to report an accident under the Highway Traffic Act.  The Ottawa police prosecutor recommended demotion from the rank of sergeant to first-class constable for a period of eight months, his salary taking a hit of about $7,000 for the period in question.  He had earlier received a conditional discharge.

St. Chris McGuinness is expected to complete a year of probation.  He was fined $250 and his driver's license was suspended for a year.  He pleaded guilty both to the criminal charges and the Police Services Act charges, both of which he was commended for, for taking "responsibility".

Given the gravity of his conduct, the seriousness of the charges against him, and the single outstanding fact that these actions were taken by a 20-year veteran of the Ottawa police force who chose to drink and drive, the penalties imposed upon this man are fairly light.

Not a terrifically great message to send to the community about drinking and driving.

Because He Loves Her

Women really appreciate being desired, loved and cherished.  It is all, in fact, most women really want out of life.  A companion with whom they can share life, whose interests converge with their own, and for whom they are prepared to offer love and companionship in exchange for the same proffered.  Women rarely bargain for abuse when they agree to a life-partnership with a man expressing love for them.

But that is the questionable offering that many women realize they have been offered.  They simply did not recognize it for what it represented, behind a more palatable facade of empathetic caring and fond regard.  So when the relationship stagnates into a contest of wills and ill will becomes the fare of the day, everything - love and trust - disintegrates and it really is time to part.

But then, controlling men are not readily appeased by an appeal to fairness and justice.  Explaining that interpersonal affairs simply haven't worked out to an agreeable intimacy and it is time to part, seems to infuriate these men.  They evolve from merely verbally and physically abusive to violently threatening.  And once the first episodes of brutality occur, it seems to become a habit, and much easier for the man to commit them.

And all because he loves her.  Because Robert James Johnston of Ottawa so very much loved and continues to love his one-time partner, he viciously attacked her meaning to kill her because he could not bear life without her.  He would not kill himself, just her.  "This is what you wanted.  I just can't be without you.  I can't let you go", he repeated as he smashed her face repeatedly into a bathroom faucet, the hardwood floor.

"If you are not going to be with me, you are not going to live.  I have to do this because I'm not going to jail.  I have to kill you", he explained as he tried to snap her neck.  Over a forty-minute period of concentrated attacks, the woman pleaded with him to check on their daughter, all of nineteen months, and by herself in another room of the Kanata house they shared.

Her co-workers, concerned at her absence from work, contacted police.  When three police officers entered by knocking down the door, Johnston informed them his partner's injuries resulted from an accident.  The police thought they were looking at a corpse.  She had a severe gash across her forehead, exposing her skull, while the blows had shattered or fractured multiple bones in her face.

Five days in hospital followed.  Permanent brain damage is the result.  But Johnston informed the interviewing detective that his partner was the "love of his life".  "She's my one and only.  I'm in love.  True love.  I've made her my life."

Living Green

Green the colour of money changing hands, not the kind of green necessarily that aids the environment, as it happens. 

Toronto's previous mayor, David Miller, had a brilliant idea in 2009; to reduce the common use of disposable plastic shopping bags by giving them monetary value.  If people were forced to pay 5-cents for each bag, they would think twice about their disposability, and re-use them, or utilize more permanent, durable carrying devices rather than the giveaway plastic shopping bags.

The campaign was successful in that it alerted people to the fact of the bags' constant use-and-misuse.  People became more aware, and chose to replace the bags with re-usable types made of hardier fabrics.  And in this way became more responsive to the need to take individual action, even on such a small scale.  But was it small-scale thinking? 

The bags cost 1-cent apiece to produce, and were considered a convenience offered to customers, as a service item. Now all retailers have seen the light; how they could appear to be environmentally responsible by withdrawing the casual hand-outs of free disposable plastic shopping bags, and making them pay for themselves - in spades. 

In Ottawa alone consumers spend between $1-million and $2-million on plastic bags, at 5-cents a pop.  And that's taking into account the restraint imposed upon thoughtful people who accustom themselves to the avoidance of using the disposable bags.

So while a segment of the population has responded to the end of free bags by responsibly taking it seriously and choosing alternative methods of conveying retail purchases, another segment simply pays the additional freight and gets on with life. According to the latest figures, however, the use of plastic bags, once giveaways, has been reduced by 53%, and that's pretty good. 

A large number of bags have been diverted from landfills.  On the other hand, those disposable plastic bags had other uses; people used them to line kitchen garbage pails and set them out fully loaded into large green or black garbage bags come garbage collection day.  Plastic bags, then still ended up in land fills, full of kitchen waste and other household detritus.

What isn't so good is the windfall the 5-cent-a-bag levy has represented in profits for retailers.  In Toronto, retailers have been able to collect over $5.4-million from bag fees annually in profit.  Some of the larger grocery chains use a portion of the profits to donate to charity.  Loblaws committed to $1-million annually over three years to the World Wildlife Fund.

Sobeys set up their Earth Day Canada Community Environment Fund with a $1.1-million gift.  Metro has the Green Apple School Program to which it reportedly donated over $2-million.  Good public relations, but no cigar.  That still leaves them with profit that would better go to municipalities to assist them in producing and conducting what is termed greening initiatives.

Advantages and profits realized are tough nuts to crack when recommendations to surrender them are brought to bear.

Rising To The Challenge

It seems that in China, nothing succeeds without excess.

It seems that in China, anxiety is so acute among students for a good showing with respect to their intellectual prowess (or memorization capabilities) in college entrance exams, that they will do anything to sharpen their wits and enable themselves to perform outstandingly.  They rise to the challenge before them in a manner unheard of elsewhere.

Of course the challenge is held to be a most intimidating one.  It is held within the population that the June college entrance exams represent a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  Failure is not to be countenanced.  Success in passing those entrance exams will dictate whether or not a candidate may attend a prestigious university.

That kind of opportunity - or lack of it - can determine the outcome of someone's life trajectory.  Future careers and the success that comes with achieving the heights can completely transform someone's life.  The outcome of that test will be instrumental to a degree not seen elsewhere (all right, in Japan as well) of sublime opportunities.

So here's the brilliant solution.  In central China classrooms come equipped with intravenous drips.  That's a school-approved-and-supplied assist to anxious students eager to ensure their futures.  Students about to write exams, hooked up to bottles of amino acids feel they are in this way preparing themselves for what is rightfully theirs.

Where elsewhere students study and cram and worry about their performance, in Hubei province the students use those drips to prepare for the challenge of exercising their brains to extract the data they require to pass those formidable exams.

This photo taken on Friday, May 4 shows a classroom equipped with dozens of intravenous drips filled with amino acids, hanging from the ceiling, to assist over 30 students in preparing for the National College Entrance exams, at the Xiaogang No.1 High School in Xiaogang City, China's Hubei province.    (AFP)

There are no harmful health effects, according to school official Gao Pingqiang.  "The school will not suspend the injection and we will continue if students want it", he said.  Yet another official at the school claimed the drip had the result of improving students' physical condition, boosting their energy levels.

Within China itself, comments by members of the public are revealing: "The group intravenous medication by students does not mean the students are sick, it means that society is sick", was posted on the Chinese version of Twitter.

Educating Girls

Canadian troops, along with other NATO and ISAF troops viewed it as a high priority to ensure that girls in Afghanistan be able to attend school.  That was not the initial focus of the united incursion into Afghanistan to be sure, but this objective became a high-focus one that gave pride to international troops.

Ousting the Taliban whose misogynistic agenda kept girls and women in isolation was incidental to the purpose at hand, to destroy the equanimity and safe haven of al-Qaeda.

Religious zealotry, its violence and anti-humane focus destroyed the lives of Afghan women.  Afghan girls banned from receiving an education could only anticipate an early marriage, a life of drudgery and child-bearing, hidden in the confines of a home they could not venture beyond without the presence of a male relative, and completely covered, head to foot.

Much of that still exists in the far rural and mountainous areas of the country, but in the urban centres matters improved immeasurably, with schools being built, and health clinics, most with international funding and many with the co-operation of international troops and humanitarian groups.

Women were forbidden from working outside the home to support themselves if they were widowed, under Taliban rule. Music, colour, happiness was also forbidden.  The resilience of the Taliban was unexpected.  They have managed, year after year, to reappear for yet another spring offensive, growing bolder and more numerous, more heavily armed, capable of constructing more complex IEDs than previously.

And while international military trainers are doing their best to turn the Afghan army and police into capable professionals, no one is under any illusions that with the eventual dispersal of foreign troops the Taliban will again present as a formidable, fearful and fear-inspiring presence in the country.  Even now, they have almost complete control of some provinces.

Just recently a hundred mixed or girls' schools were closed in Ghazni province as a result, according to the Ministry of Education which describes the matter as a result of a Taliban campaign against educating girls.  When any of the schools defiantly reopen despite threats from the Taliban, parents of girls are fearful of permitting them to return to class, in the face of threats.

In eleven provinces where the Taliban have popular support, 550 schools have been closed.  "Most of these are girls' schools and it is obvious that the Taliban are responsible for the threats against them,"  said a ministry spokesperson.  Attackers burned down a large girls' school in Khogiani district on the border with Pakistan.  Five additional schools have since closed.

A roadside bomb in an eastern province targeted the vehicle of five education department workers but they survived.  They were later gunned down in a firefight, according to local officials.  In southern Helmand province where the Taliban are strongly represented, 100 of the 170 schools that were forced to shut have been re-opened.  For how long is anyone's guess.

President Karzai has urged the Taliban to make a halt to their campaign against the education of girls.  "I call on the Taliban elders to avoid this and let our children get educated", he appealed in a radio address last week.  Appealing to the Taliban, those whom he has taken to calling 'brothers'.

The Right To Be Religious

In a country like Canada it is a given that anyone may practise the religion of their choice.  We have those rights guaranteed us through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  We have the right to do as we wish, the right to speak, the right to free assembly, the right to practise the religion of our choice: 

freedom of conscience, and religion; freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; freedom of peaceful assembly; and freedom of association.

All Canadians are held to be equal under the law, with the right to equal protection and equal benefit without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.  Of course there are perceived societal constraints, and there are also unspoken and generally accepted social restraints on impinging on the rights of others.

In an effort to be entirely fair to minorities, there is a social effort to make people who represent minorities feel welcome and slightly more entitled than the mainstream majority, when it comes to gender identification, colour, religion, that kind of thing.  Everything is not as equal as we would like it to be.  For to entitle one group we manage to disentitle another.  Christians in today's world where one is enjoined to be politically correct, suffer a kind of undercurrent of discrimination.

Which leads some to become assertively defensive about their beliefs.  Above and beyond how some, believing that their religion alone is the one true and authentic religion, have an unfortunate tendency to scorn and deprecate the values of others who do not subscribe to their particular vision. 

When 19-year-old high school student William Swinimer was given a five-day suspension from his Nova Scotia school for wearing a T-shirt that some other students complained about, public sentiment was clearly with him.

Another instance of a devoted Christian being faulted for the quality and intensity of his devotion to his religion.  Wearing a yellow T-shirt with the wording "Life is Wasted Without Jesus", is just another slogan, why take offence, as other students clearly must have, to complain to their school administration.  After all, William Swinimer was simply exercising his right to express his belief.

The administration of Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin, Nova Scotia, changed their mind.  They informed young Swinimer that he could, after all, wear that T-shirt on his return to school after his suspension, given him for defying the vice-principal's explicit instruction not to continue wearing the offending garment to school.

The publicity surrounding the event, and the embarrassment suffered by the school administration was occasioned by the young man contacting the media after having been given that disciplinary suspension.  Disciplined unfairly because he expressed his devoutness, simply unfair and un-Canadian.  But his father has decided to remain in high dudgeon over the matter, declaring his son would not return to school.

The school had initiated a few forums for students and teachers and any other interested individuals to discuss the issues involved.  The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission along with the province's justice and education departments, psychologists and school staff were all to be involved, to bring greater understanding to the issue, and possibly, peace.

This has become for the Swinimers, however, a more complex issue.  They are defending their brand of religion against the Philistines of the education system.  Swinimer senior contending that he sends his son to school for an education in the basics of language, mathematics, science, not religious and social enlightenment. 

Swinimer junior contends the wearing of the T-shirt day after day resulted from his right to freedom of religion having been violated.  "I don't know about other schools, but I've been very discriminated against because of my Christianity.  There are all kinds of religions in my school ... [but] just for talking about Christianity, I've been called up to the office many times", he complained.

And then, a few words from the vice-president of the student council who explained her version about the shirt and its offshoot response.  "It started with him preaching his religion to kids and then telling them to go to hell.  A lot of kids don't want to deal with this anymore."  Perhaps young Mr. Swinimer is a bullying, righteous proselytizer?

Don't others who attend his school have the right to expect that their views about religion or lack of it should be respected as well?

Nightmare of Ungovernability

The ailing economies of the European Union have created a backlash in those populations whose governments are being held, feet to the fire, for irresponsibly bringing them to the point of that dreaded austerity and cut-backs in hopes of bringing fiscal health back to the fore.  One government after the other has been tossed, from Italy to Greece and France, and Spain is next in line.

Silvio Berlosconi is history, although he did show up as an honoured guest at Vladimir Putin's restoration to the Russian presidency celebrations.  Italian voters joined their other European counterparts in expressing their rage over austerity policies being imposed upon them.  French Socialist leader Francois Hollande has informed Berlin that Paris wishes to renegotiate the agreed-upon fiscal pact.

Those dreaded tax hikes, pension cuts and labour reforms have ensured a furious reaction from European society accustomed to the comforts of a socially-responsive universal welfare program that all have become accustomed to and resist losing.  It is not their free social-welfare spending habits that have incurred their national debts, but the association with the euro and the EU, and the imposition of strictures related to both.

In North America, workers could only dream of successfully evading paying tax to their governments as was so common in Greece and elsewhere.  In North America, those long, carefree, routine summer holidays that France enjoyed, shutting down the country, was something of the stuff dreams were made of.  Good salaries and benefits entitlements, evasion of tax payment and insistence that government listen to the people not the other way around formed the basis of popular governments in Europe.

The violent protests and anti-austerity backlash by voters in Greece and France took no one by surprise.  And the stock markets and the euro currency reacted predictably.  In Greece, popular opinion rages with refusals to honour the sovereign debt, and if the country goes into default, can it be possible people cannot foresee a far more difficult time ahead for themselves, their country and future investment prospects?

German chancellor Angela Merkel, rigidly prepared to apply her own country's values and careful monitoring of their spending through prudent fiscal management, has no wish to renegotiate the agreed-upon fiscal discipline treaty, although she is open to working with Francois Hollande.  Who claims Paris will not ratify the treaty without additional measures to promote economic growth.

With the kind of performance that may toddle along as a result of Europeans' unwillingness to be fiscally prudent, financial markets will be unwilling to keep lending to countries that cannot guarantee their loans will be repaid.  It is simple arithmetic.  Europe is facing hard times on the heels of a protracted recession.

There are few palatable options left to consider other than to finally accept the reality that hard times call for hard decision making.  The uncreditworthy will be deemed too dangerous to continue funding.  The euro doesn't appear to have truly succeeded in providing diverse economies, cultures and traditions with a reliable single currency.

Ditch it all, and everyone fend for themselves?  Unity in financial distress becomes difficult when several countries which practise restraint and responsibility find themselves in the position of paying heavily to bail out those countries that value loose funding formulas for social spending that people become accustomed to and demand.

So it's out with the old government, in with the new that purports to share the outrage of the electors.  And it will be instructive to see how successful they feel they can be in prosecuting their idea of fiscal responsibility, expecting the Eurogroup and the International Monetary Fund to ride to their rescue.

Decline of the U.S. of America

All empires, sooner or later, outlive themselves, become shadows of what they formerly were, and fade into history, to be later read about and studied in an effort to determine what, why, and how?  The United States of America had a good run.  It cannot be called world domination, though it most certainly did seek to dominate the politics, the economies and the cultures of the world.

On the other hand, it also felt an obligation to come to the rescue of other countries of the world in distress.  At those times when it was not itself distressing some other countries of the world by attempted rescues they hadn't called for.  But then it must also be considered that there was and remains a prevalent morality built into the culture itself.

For the United States, the concept of democracy has been vital, impeded somewhat by its dedication to capitalism, to be sure.  But it has also been wedded to fairness, justice and the promotion of human rights as a core issue of human relations and the responsibility of any government to its population.  It has also had the responsibility, both self-imposed and outward-demanded, that it police the world.

It has had the advantage of a large population, an educated one, within a robust economy and an advanced production base.  It has been ventured that the United States is one of the most religious countries of the world.  It certainly has more than its share of various denominations of churches, and people who attend them.  Its traditional economic clout, balanced politics, and republican democracy has served as a model for the West.

Its popular culture is celebrated throughout the world.  Not particularly for good reason, but because of the power of its ability to record and entertain with the various ways in which it presents human frailties, from the schlock of tender love extended in often tragic circumstances, and the human spirit overcoming all obstacles, to its glorification of human violence in all its gory, miserable details.

And then there is its immense military, which more than anything else, enhances the country's aura of power and might.  Its defence budget of $698-billion in 2011 represents 43% of total military spending in the world.  China spent $119-billion, representing 7.3% of the world total.  In contrast, Britain, France and Russia together spent about $59-billion each, collectively representing 11% of the world's total.

That immense sum represents 4.8% of the country's gross domestic product, spent on defence.  Which represents a far lower figure than what was spent during the Vietnam War, far less even than during the Korean War.  Even under the Reagan administration in the 1980s, the U.S. spent more than what it now spends proportional to its GDP.

The country operates 700 military, naval and air bases in over 100 countries from Western and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and the Far East.  Over a dozen intelligence agencies monitor world events for the American government.  China has recently acquired its first aircraft carrier, although more are in the planning stages.  The U.S. navy has a dozen aircraft carriers, along with cruisers, destroyers, submarines and marines in patrol of the world's oceans.

There are hints and whispers, both regretful and gloating, that the United States' power is on the wane.  But is it?  We should actually hope not.  Because when the sheriff is in town the riff-raff tend to behave themselves.  Trading nations worldwide benefit from the U.S. navy patrolling the sea lanes of the world; in doing so free trade is protected from pirates and other unwholesome predators.

What other nation on this planet goes out of its way to manage and protect international protocols and approaches?  Most other countries are completely self-interested; they proffer assistance to other countries in return for allegiance and both that way benefit.  The greater number of allied friendships any strong country can manipulate, the better off it, and they are until a falling-out occurs.

Some countries are held to very high standards of national behaviour on the international scene.  Certainly the United States qualifies as the leitmotif of stern and unbending morality, as a yardstick that other countries of the world can aspire to - or not.  We should understand that, despite many instances where the United States may have failed in its self-imposed role as arbiter of justice, it has also triumphed in many more.


As the fortunes of America go, so do international fortunes.  We should hope that there is no true waning of the strength and power of the United States.  Because, like it or not, much depends on it.

Reducing Maternal and Child Morbidity

Canada has one of the highest rates of multiple births following in-vitro fertilization in the world.  Doctors working in Canadian fertility clinics customarily heed the wishes of their clients and routinely transfer more than one embryo at a time during IVF.  They know the high risks this practise poses to women and their unborn babies, but they're giving their paying clients what they demand.

And the clients demand value for their money.  The cost of IVF averages $12,000 per treatment, and it is not always successful.  Many couples, desperate for a child of their own, mortgage their homes to pay for that cost.  And in doing so they fixate on maximizing the success of a single cycle of IVF.  For them that means increasing the potential of success by transferring more embryos.

For the women who engage in this kind of risky practise, what may occur to them as a result can be miscarriage, high blood pressure, kidney damage and postpartum hemorrhage serious enough to require life-saving transfusions.  For babies born by this practise, the risks include prematurity, low birth weight, respiratory distress, infections, hearing and vision problems or cerebral palsy as well as other types of irreversible neurological damage.

None of these risks represent anything to minimize in the impact on mother and child.  They are all serious byproducts of a formula that dangles the hope of motherhood at one end, with the risk of severe health impairment on the other, with the impetus toward either hanging on the thread of an expensive treatment to aid fertility.

What too commonly results is multiple births.  Twins are six times more likely to die in their first year of life than are single children.  The risk of death increases twelve-fold for triplets.  Twins are four to six times more likely than single babies to suffer from cerebral palsy. 

There are no winners in this risky lottery with life.  But counselling couples of the risks inherent in transplanting multiple embryos doesn't seem to influence their decision-making.

With this knowledge and experience readily available, clinics in Canada continue to transfer two, three or more embryos at a time.  While fertility specialists claim their only goal is to achieve a healthy single pregnancy and live birth, this is not what is occurring.  Canada's 28 private fertility clinics reported 1,274 multiple pregnancies in 2010, including 1,193 twins, 76 triplets and five quadruplets.

Evidently, there is a solution.  General society must be agreeable to funding the IVF procedure through the public purse.  "The Quebec experience is an ideal example of the impact that funding can have on the establishment of a successful (elective single embryo transfer) program and concomitant reduction in the multiple pregnancy rate."

While Quebec funds IVF, it does so under the understanding that only one embryo should be transferred.  "If you take away the financial component, like what's happening in Quebec and many other places in the world where it's legislated and paid for, then you get multiple pregnancy rates decreasing significantly", according to Dr. Jon Barrett, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

To many people it represents an unpalatable solution, to fund a couple's fertility program to enable that couple to have children with their own DNA.  An unfair burden on the rest of society. But the outcome of cost to society in caring medically for a woman whose multiple-birth experience has left her with lingering health problems, let alone the costly care required by her affected offspring turns out to be far more expensive.

On the one hand, it is understandable that many of us would balk at paying through a common purse to enable a couple to have a family.  You want them, you pay for them; it's logical.  On the other hand, people fall victim to their own lack of intelligent planning, their intelligent choices hampered by their emotional turmoil regarding the subject.

Perhaps, all that being so, we might be persuaded to invest up front in funding IVF for those who qualify, if the result would be far fewer twins in neonatal intensive care units in our hospitals.

What's a Life Worth?

The misfortune of mislaying something, forgetting completely about it, overlooking its presence, ultimately losing it is something that happens to all of us sometime or other.  But mislaying a human being, losing track of his whereabouts, resulting in his being placed in a state of near-death?

Unless it's an infant, a baby, any individual could simply 'find' themselves as it were.  Walk away from a situation where they've been forgotten and obviously neglected.  Unless, of course, that person has been incarcerated, and is unable to free themselves.  Left to your own devices in a dim, dank jailcell, what to do?  You become thirsty, hungry, disoriented.

This is what happened to 23-year-old Daniel Chong in Los Angeles.  He had gone to the house of a friend to celebrate a day some people celebrate smoking marijuana, April 20.  Planning to smoke some pot.  He stayed overnight.  Just his luck, the following day the house was raided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.  Who took Mr. Chong and eight others into custody.

Suspecting them of running an Ecstasy operation.  They did, in fact, find 18,000 Ecstasy pills in the house.  All nine of the young men, students, were taken to a county detention facility.  Mr. Chong hadn't been charged, but he was left in a windowless cell, alone, without food, water or access to facilities.

Completely forgotten.  One of the suspects had been released, seven others were taken to another detention facility.  No one seems to have missed Mr. Chong, wondered where he was, looked for him, or made any enquiries.

He was discovered five days later.  Desperate for hydration, he drank his own urine.  At the time he was found he came perilously close to kidney failure, and was breathing with difficulty.  Five days in hospital followed, three in intensive care.

He has filed a lawsuit against the DEA for $20-million.