Leading Ladies

Going backward in time, in social custom, back to another era entirely.  The people have chosen.  And women in Egypt now have an entirely new, yet very elderly tradition to inform their social norms.  Modesty certain does have its place, yet intelligent choices and logic also have their place.  What practical sense does it make for women living in intemperately warm climates to completely encase themselves in stifling dark-coloured fabrics?

Covering themselves in lengthy garments that do not provide for freedom of air passage, let alone physical movement; awkward, concealing and accepting of a pernicious demand of male-dominated societies that demand their women not be seen nor heard by any but themselves, and even then discreetly.  The Taliban in Afghanistan decreed that all women must wear the burqa, and even so, fully covered and concealed, forbidden to present themselves in public without a male family escort.

To exhibit the foolish and unacceptable effrontery to defy those edicts was to bring down the deserved wrath of young men wielding whips and batons, enforcing rules.  Egypt may not go quite that far as to institutionalize that totally demeaning unequal relationship between women and their modest garb, but since the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is on the cusp of sharing ultimate power with the military, it will come to some vestige of female public constraints.

The Muslim Brotherhood plans to restore friendly relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran which were sundered by the signing of a peace treaty with Israel.  Whether that determination presages a break with Israel is yet to be determined; the Brotherhood has already announced that there are Judaic holy sites within Egypt that will hitherto be off limits to Jewish worshippers.

Egypt is a sovereign country and it may do whatever it wishes to do.  The women of Egypt who live liberated lives of equality and who dress in whatever manner personally suits them may find their choices somewhat curtailed in the near future.  If, as seems likely, the military and the Brotherhood reach an accord for joint administration, the military will opt to rule the country's foreign relations up to a point, along with its security.

While the Brotherhood will largely content itself with the social aspects of administering the country's fortunes, from finances, the budget and the economy to the social contract in acceptable social presentation that will affect women.  It is doubtful that women would be denied educational and workplace opportunities, but nothing is beyond the realm of possibility in the application of fundamentalism.

Naglaa Ali Mahmoud, wife of president-elect Mohammed Morsi, appears nothing like the wives of former Presidents Mubarak and Sadat.  She is sedately and almost-completely covered in a black all-encompassing robe, absent only the niqab.  To many more westernized Egyptians she exemplifies backwardness.  Yet she appears as well a woman who has involved herself in the social affairs of her people.

While her husband attended university in the United States she did volunteer work, helping women who wished to convert to Islam.  When on their return to Egypt he taught engineering, she instructed young women about marriage duties.  Even in that strictly patriarchal society, Mr. Morsi speaks glowingly of his wife, that having married his cousin eleven years his junior was "the biggest personal achievement of my life.

If that impression remains, despite his having achieved the presidency, there may be hope for Egyptian women, after all.

Insanely Deranged

Norway's poster boy for lunacy and mass murder in the name of saving civilization from the marauding hordes of religious fanatics has his country's psychiatric experts somewhat puzzled.  That he is certifiably insane most would agree, but not all.  The Norwegian psychiatric community appears to be split in their diagnoses, from concluding that he is a paranoid schizophrenic to other mental derangement measurements. 

As, for example, narcissistic personality disorder, autism-spectrum disorder, Tourette's syndrome and paranoid psychosis.  Why not, for the sake of conformity, simply accept them all?

Norway has a compassionate conscience on full display.  Slaughter 77 innocent Norwegians in the name of delusional championing of tradition being overtaken by an alien culture with a sinister intent, and you are logically assumed to be mad.  And mad certainly does describe the fantasies that have occupied the mind of Anders Breivik.  Although he denies, denies, denies that totally unwarranted and certainly unwanted designation.

For he is actually a knight in shining armour - at the very least a self-designed uniform to distinguish his reasoned mission to save European Christendom from its own near-sighted indifference to an organized, fanatic take-over by Muslim crusaders for Sharia and the long-lost-to-be-recaptured Caliphate.  And to bring the attention of Europeans and their politicians to the horrific reality of that gradual assimilation of European culture, history, heritage, religion into Islam's great, gaping maw, the solution is to slaughter young Norwegians.

Well, the gruesomely deliberate and well-orchestrated computer game modelled on the man's favourite sword-and-sorcery-themed World of Warcraft that patiently taught him to aim without wincing, murder without compassion, continue with no glances back, did gain him the attention he craved, although the notoriety his dreadful acts garnered him also highlighted not his vision and his noble sacrifice on behalf of the culture he loved, but his total mind-derangement.

"You do not believe that such things can happen.  I still don't quite believe it."  Breivik's mother

But happen they did.  Her son became hopelessly mired in a maelstrom of emotions gone awry, conclusions bearing little resemblance to reality, solutions that would forever ensure him a place in the history of his country as a monstrous anomaly within a nation of reasoned, sane and deliberate-minded people.  "To send a political activist to a mental hospital is more sadistic and evil than to kill him!  It is a fate worse than death", he declared.

And that, in fact, is the fate that awaits him, irrespective of how the court will finally rule.  History will identify him as a madman.  His incarceration for a life sentence will be subject to renewal after 21 years.  Nothing will obliterate from the nation's memory the horrors this man visited upon them.  And since, according to the experts who closely examined his sagging mind, should the man ever by some slender chance be freed back into society he would most certainly plan and stage another atrocity.

Anders Behring Breivik confessed to a bombing and shooting massacre last summer that left 77 dead in Norway
Photo by Solum, Stian Lysberg/AFP/GettyImages

So the rational solution appears to be that he will remain forevermore within Oslo's Ila Prison.  Either the prison itself as one found to be sane while suffering a multitude of emotional and intelligent excesses causing him to become quite berserk, or within a newly-planned and yet-to-be-built wing of that prison.

For it appears that Norway's Health Directorate has hatched a solution of sorts to his incarceration; the building of a new psychiatric wing within the prison, purpose-built to house this infamous son of Norway.  There he will stay for posterity should he be found insane.

He will be kept in isolation for fear he may attack other prisoners, and they must be protected from him, while he must be protected from the possibility that other prisoners might consider attacking him.  That ruling is expected to be announced toward the end of August.  In anticipation of the designation, and the man's future within the specially-built psychiatric unit, compassionate plans to ensure that he is not too lonely and depressed at his plight have been considered.

Authorities have expressed concern that it is inhumane to restrict Breivik to solitary confinement ad infinitum.  Prison officials are considering introducing "friends" to him to alleviate his lonely future.  Those hired for that purpose will be assigned to play indoor hockey and chess with Anders Behring Breivik. 

For while he must most certainly be disciplined for the carnage he committed, he must not suffer mental anguish unduly.

Influencing Children's Diets

That old adage of "You can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink", is as true of horses as it is of children.  In this instance, however, it is healthy, nutritious food choices offered to children that causes them to balk with disinterest at the offerings.  Children prefer what their mouths and their appetites find more appealing.  Commercially prepared and altered convenience food that is distinctly unhealthy in comparison to whole, unadulterated foods.

And school boards, making an earnest and well-meaning attempt to guide children toward better eating patterns are discovering, to their dismay, that the best laid plans of responsible school boards do often go astray.  Talking reasonably to children about the need to consume healthy whole foods rather than junk food simply doesn't work.  They know what their taste buds appreciate and that's what they're consumed with, as a matter of speaking.

The Ottawa-Carleton School board is facing a loss of revenues that will put them firmly in the red.  Cafeteria revenues are down substantially, with children deciding with great deliberation to pass by the healthy offerings in favour of going outside the school to pick up junk food available at nearby establishments that sell the heavily salted, larded and sugared food and drinks they far prefer.  Leaving the board faced with a $900,000 loss.

The Toronto District School Board has its own woes with respect to its own $1.2-million cafeteria food shortfall.  "We put a man on the moon 40 years ago.  don't tell me that we can't make healthy, delicious, tasty, attractive food for teenagers in the province of Ontario in 2012", said Premier Dalton McGuinty recently at a press conference.  It's not moon science, however, that teens will eat what appeals to them, not what their elders consider best for them.

Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and British Columbia have all undertaken the mission to regulate what their students can purchase at school cafeterias.  With varying levels of success.  A gradual change-over as has been the experience with the Halifax Regional School board, resulted in far more success; something that Edmonton has been able to emulate.

"We had to get ourselves up and running and determine what was an unhealthy choice.  Because french fries by themselves once in a while is not an unhealthy choice but eating every day it is", explained a spokesperson for the Edmonton Public Schools. 

Revenue loss is a serious matter, because it is linked to additional programming.  Cafeteria funds are used for field trips, academic tournaments, clubs and sport teams; in some places revenues support cafeteria infrastructure and maintenance.  School officials warn that the revenue losses will result in parents having to pay more for their children's school activities, and elsewhere cafeterias may be forced to close.

Closing cafeterias will be further inimical to the health of students in lost after-school activities, and growing obesity problems.  Life is complicated.

Banning Child Cancer Safety Measures

"Although school-based immunization delivery systems generally result in high numbers of students completing immunization, a school-based approach to vaccination sends a message that early sexual intercourse is allowed, as long as one uses 'protection'..."

That interpretation of the various levels of government within the provinces, allied with school boards, to provide free immunization protocols for young girls between Grades 5 and 9 to protect them from cervical cancer, was sent out by officiating Catholic bishops to families of students in the Catholic school board.

The human papillomavirus vaccine that prevents the four strains of the sexually transmitted virus that most commonly lead to deadly cervical cancer is seen to be a positive solution to a socially serious risk of contracting a dread disease.  In their medical wisdom scientists and health professionals have come to an agreement that attacking the problem head on to protect young girls from the potential of contracting human papillomavirus represents a public good.

Years ago, the controversy over the need to proceed with these vaccinations appeared to be settled when Ottawa provided a grant to enable school-aged girls to receive free vaccinations at school.  Other provinces decided to take the same protective route as Ontario.  In Alberta the Catholic School Board, guided by area bishops, have balked at taking this step.

A professor of pediatrics and a bioethicist with the University of Calgary explained that HPV Calgary attempted to make available to the  Catholic School Board, the latest evidence in support of the vaccine.  That overture was spectacularly unsuccessful.  "If you are an immigrant, if you are not so affluent, if you don't have a car, if you're very dependent on an hourly wage, it is very unlikely that you'll get immunization", said Dr. Ian Mitchell.

"So we saw this decision by the Catholic School Board as affecting all children, but really affecting the most vulnerable children."  Bishop Frederick Henry of Calgary, along with other Alberta bishops, have raised an effective resistance to immunization.  Catholic school students were given a copy of a letter from the six bishops advising their parents to protect their children from "counterproductive influences and potential abuse".

In contrast, the Edmonton Catholic board permitted the girls attending their schools to be vaccinated, and close to 70% of the girls accepted the opportunity to arm themselves against HPV.  The issue of promiscuity following immunization has been effectively put to rest by studies that find no correlation between the HPV vaccine and a growing incidence of casual sex.

Oh My, Another One

"Greed is a vice that makes normally rational people act irrationally.  It plays exceedingly well into the old maxim 'If it looks too good to be true it usually is'.  This case proves that both theories are alive and well."  Justice Harrison Arrell

The pastor/founder of Dominion World Outreach Ministries located in Toronto, and just incidentally also a founder of Fight for Justice, a group whose purpose is to improve the lives of the African-Canadian community has turned out not to be the fount of honest deliverance to his faithful followers he portayed himself as.  Pastor Marlon Gary Hibbert is obviously a man of many parts.

Held in very high esteem as a man of the cloth.  A man dedicated to battling racism and poverty of the spirit.  A busily involved man who looked to other avenues to support his passion for involvement in the lives of those who entrusted their spiritual well-being to him.  He obviously felt he could exploit their trust for the opportunity to manipulate their finances as well as their souls.  His ambitions encompassed both the spiritual and the material alike.

He hadn't, as it happened, to work too hard to persuade the faithful that as a "man of God", he would be good to his word.  And as his word would have it, he had the intellectual wherewithal and finance experience to wisely invest the savings of some of his notable parishioners.  Guaranteeing them a respectable return on their savings invested with him.  So from 2006 to 2008 millions of dollars were handed to him for investment.

Largely through word of mouth among the members of the church.  His own relatives were not spared, nor were fellow pastors, even one in his own church.  Who trusted him because he was a "man of God", like themselves.  All the victims, in fact, claimed they believed their money was in safe hands because Mr. Hibbert was a pastor.  Judge Arrell's response to that was a snort of "stupidity". 

Those who were taken by Pastor Hibbert wept as they testified at the Ontario court and the Ontario Securities Commission, speaking movingly of the difficulties they now face as a result of their lost savings.  In total Mr. Hibbert bilked those investors out of over $8.2-million.  Gone now, without much of a trace.  A moral victory came through on the judge's order that Mr. Hibbert pay his victims $100,000 in legal fees.

The Ontario Superior Court judge declared the pastor to be a liar, fraudster and a cheat.  Not much comfort to those who were trusting of him and who are now bereft of their life savings.  He was ordered previously to pay back the money invested - along with the 5% monthly in guaranteed interest.  "As a result of his actions the plaintiffs lost all they invested with him", stated Judge Arrell.

The Ontario Securities Commission gave the total loss for over 200 investors as $8.2-million in principle, over $13-million in promised interest.  "The defendant testified that he was simply a bad bookkeeper and businessman; that he had sloppy business and accounting practices; and that he was the victim of world-wide financial markets gone awry.  I disagree", wrote Judge Arrell.

Scant comfort to the afflicted, unfortunately.  Adding to their misery the fact that the pastor's wife sold their palatial home, the only remaining asset: "It is significant to this court that it learned after the trial that during it she listed and sold the home in question.  Such conduct is outrageous and worthy of sanction.  The fraudulent conveyance was a significant and important part of this litigation as the only remaining asset of the defendants would appear to be this house."

The plaintiffs remain disconsolate and bereft, residing in a shared metaphorical House of Misery.

Sovereign Privilege/Diplomatic Immunity

Members of the international diplomatic community have immunity from prosecution in the countries to which they are assigned as diplomatic delegates of their country.  Usually diplomatic staff pick up nasty little citations for traffic offences, mostly for parking where they should not.  Sometimes the embassies to which they are attached pay the fines, and often enough they do not.  And the municipalities where the embassies are located really can do nothing about it, since they have diplomatic immunity.

Diplomatic immunity, by and large, is a good thing.  Remember that old adage: don't shoot the messenger?  Well, that 'messenger' referred to was usually a foreign national representing his/her country abroad.  And, in long-gone days, royalty was known to commit to death emissaries of a foreign country with which they might have become right royally displeased.  For example, at times of conflict. Until such time as a code was invoked to spare the lives of such emissaries.

The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations ensures the safety and well-bring of foreign emissaries.  Those foreign emissaries, on the other hand, are expected to obey the laws of any country they happen to be posted to.  Very serious crimes merit special attention; usually the host country looks to the foreign country of which the diplomat is a citizen for guidance in prosecuting their own.  Breaking off relations usually results in an expulsion of a diplomat.

People with diplomatic immunity as a result of their appointed political position as an emissary are expected by their country to behave in an exemplary manner following the customs of the country they are posted to, respecting their laws, and furthering the interests of their own country within the alien one. Given human nature it is natural enough for people to occasionally overlook their obligations and feel themselves to be entitled to behaviour otherwise not acceptable.

As a Commonwealth country it is customary for Canada to appoint a state representative to act in lieu of the English Monarch who is Canada's formal head of state.  There are appointments made on the federal and provincial levels for those individuals to act in ceremonial roles on behalf of the Queen of England who happens also to be Queen of Canada and all other Commonwealth countries.

In Quebec a lieutenant-governor was appointed who has been identified post-appointment as having illegally claimed expenses to the tune of $700,000 entirely unrelated to her posting mandate.  Former lieutenant-governor for Quebec, Lise Thibault, has been found guilty on two counts each of breach of trust, fraud and creating false or counterfeit documents.


She has invoked the privilege of immunity as an ex-viceroy.  Claiming that as the Queen's former representative in Canada she should be immune from prosecution on fraud charges, through sovereign privilege.  The Monarchist League of Canada has decided not to intervene, but to remain neutral, believing that no one is above the law, including royalty and its representatives.


Rather a refreshing take on the matter.  Clearly, the provincial appointment hardly anticipated that this would result in someone taking criminal advantage of a royally privileged role.  And clearly, the queen, were she to hear of this, would certainly not be amused.

"Strict Proof Thereof"

The disgustingly vile rapist, sexual predator, sadistic torturer, and murderous former commander of Canada's largest military base is challenging the validity and legality of a woman whose home he invaded and whom he raped and tormented.  He insists that her claims of traumatic emotional injury, aside from physical harm are not credible.

He denies from the height of his socially-responsive, moral judgement capabilities that she could possibly have suffered a loss of dignity as a result of his raping her, is now dependent on therapy and medical attention through the trauma she suffered when he assaulted her and she feared for her very life.  In filing a statement of defence, Russell Williams "denies" that his victim(s) "are entitled to the relief claimed".

This man stood trial on 88 criminal charges.  Those charges included murder, sexual assault and break and enter, among many others.  At the time of being charged, and before his trial took place, this man who felt no compunction whatever in entering the homes of his neighbours, looting them of young girls' underwear that he would later pose in and take photographs of, expressed concern for his wife's well-being.

It was, he informed authorities, a top priority that his wife suffer as little indignities and harassment as conceivable.  And his wife, Mary Elizabeth Harriman, has gone to some length to protect herself and to ensure that she remained out of the public eye.  She and her husband arranged to transfer co-owned property to her name for a nominal sum to legalize her ownership and hold it exempt from potential penalties.

This is one of the charges that the victim, Laurie Massicotte, has levelled against the pair.  Both of whom she is suing, along with the Ontario Provincial Police, for $7-million on the basis of her pain and suffering, mental distress and loss of economic advantage.  Her inclusion of the OPP in the suit relates to their not having informed vulnerable women int he area that a sexual assailant was in the area.

It also relates to their having insisted, when they entered her home after Russell Williams had departed,  that she remain bound, defenceless and nude, until a forensic expert arrived.  She remained in that position, helpless and miserable for fully five hours, with a covering thrown over her after their response to her desperate 911 emergency call.

Russell Williams' home invasion of September 20, 2009, when he blindfolded and bound her, sliced off her clothing, raped and demeaned her through photographing her forcefully in her state of vulnerability for his later gratification, ruined her life. Her action against him and his wife should be dismissed, however, according to Russell Williams.  That, despite his admission of having "assaulted" her. 

This is the man who tortured and murdered 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd of Belleville, and 38-year-old corporal  Marie-France Comeau, who worked at CFB Trenton under his command.  The family of Jessica Lloyd has also filed a lawsuit, as has done another "Jane Doe" victim.

Ms. Massicotte in her suit lodged with her three daughters as co-plaintiffs, claims that Ms. Harriman fraudulently took ownership of both shares of the $700,000 house after her husband's arrest, attempting to protect it from anticipated lawsuits.  This is the same Mary Elizabeth Harriman who complained bitterly when RCMP entered her home under a search warrant and left 'scratches' on her hardwood floor.

Demanding compensation.

Suspended/Fired

They're grade ten students, ages ranging around 15 years or thereabouts.  And they're curious.  They know all about the world they live in.  It's a fascinatingly gruesome one.  They play video games based on violent encounters and death.  They can imagine violence, and they are capable of displaying and using it, and they do on occasion.  But death is an alien concept; the knowledge that it happens is there, but there is a missing link; their imaginations go so far and no further.

There are issues and occurrences to which they are indifferent, neutral and dismissive, and they have no interest whatever in pursuing them, irrespective of whether from doing so they can gain valuable knowledge.  But the bizarre, the crudely anti-social, the product of twisted minds hold an irresistible pull of mesmerizing force, and represent what they would like to explore further.  They may be repelled by what they see or learn, but their curiosity must be satisfied.

Not all of the students in the class at the high school in southern Montreal, Cavelier-De Lasalle, being 'taught' by a new teacher were agitating for him to facilitate their viewing of a video that held the recorded actions of a demented murderer were willing to view it, but the majority of the class clamoured for the teacher to agree.  And he did.

Most of these 15-year-olds had experienced the frisson of excitement from viewing on television or through the Internet, forbidden acts of criminal and morally repulsive interactions between people whose scruples and ethical judgement are not remotely normal.  They thought it would be fascinating, this group of 15-year-olds, to view in their classroom, scenes of torture, mutilation, murder, necrophilia, dismemberment and cannibalism.

All the more compelling because these were not actors cleverly being passed off as victim and predator.  This video was the real thing; filmed during the commission of a series of criminal acts too horrendous for many to believe in its graphic depiction of the depths to which human nature can plunge. There is not too much left to the imagination by all accounts. 

And there is not too much left, after viewing those acts of a horribly disturbed psyche, to imagine any human being aspiring to achieve the pinnacle in vile notoriety as an outcast of society, someone who has deliberately transgressed even the boundaries of brutality and savagery.  And, the action of the teacher, in finally acceding to the pleading of the class, exceeded his allotted share of common sense.

That he took care to omit some of what he considered the more obscenely dreadful portions of the video hardly excuses his lack of judgement.  Any part of that documented incident of human depravity transcending all notions of the limits of suffering that might be imposed upon another human being by an unspeakably foul sadist would represent an excessive abomination.

Not for anyone to view, much less impressionable (despite their entrenched expressions of having seen it all) young people upon whose memories those acts will be seared all the days of their lives.  For this was no game, this was someone who deliberately mounted a well-planned and choreographed execution whose commission was meant to convey horror as he inflicted a gory death to a human being.

The teacher has been dismissed by the school board after having initially been suspended with pay.  There is nothing he could say in his defence that might allow his action to be regarded as a teaching opportunity and a learning experience.  His inability to foresee the outcome of his impulsive act of submission to a group of young peoples' whims is more than adequate assurance he does not belong at the head of any class in the teaching profession.

Playing For Time

"We are keeping them separated and every two weeks we try to bring them together again, but Bibi reacts immediately by hissing at him.  He then responds aggressively to her, so we have to separate them again.  The only way we can get them apart is by using tomatoes, which are, fortunately, irresistible to them.  We could not carry them away from each other because they are too heavy."

Ah, tomatoes, those famous "love apples".  This, then, must be the kindly intervention of marriage counsellors anxious to restore normal family life in yet another instance where two long-time lovers joined in holy matrimony have suddenly turned against one another.  She, with her sharp, wounding tongue, and he with his threats to let loose his anger in physical violence.

It is so dreadfully sad when those who have loved one another so passionately, and who have shared with one another the joys and sadness that a life together brings, decide that they can no longer abide each other's close and intimate company.  It's hard on them, hard on the offspring.  And then think of the property they've acquired over the years, and have shared with much affection and dedication to the continuance of their wedlocked state.

Such contracts are not to be taken lightly; they represent a covenant both with each other, to have and to hold in sickness and in health, and with nature itself.  For it is nature that has designed the creatures, both male and female, and the link between them for the preservation of the species.  It is nature, in her perfection as a brilliant designer of life and habitude that has gifted her creatures with emotions to care for one another.

They've lived together for over a century!  No, they're not in their end-of-life dotage, not quite yet.  For they may still, though they're each 115 years of age, live in fairly good health until they reach the venerable, creaking age of 175.  Giant Galapagos Tortoises do, after all.  "They are both 115 years old.  They have been together since they were young, eventually becoming a pair.  But, for no reason that anyone can discover, they just can't stand each other any more."

Tortoises?  Sharing the distinction of sudden aversion with another's presence, with humans, who also unaccountably, turn against one another, despite the investment of years together?  Bibi, it appears, took exception to Poldi's attentions on one occasion that started it all, this dreadful lack of goodwill that has erupted between them.  In her state of agitation at his ministrations toward her, she bit his shell.

And he has never forgiven her.  Staff at the Reptile Zoo in Klagenfurt, Austria, which has housed the pair for 36 years, realize that Bibi just seems to want to be alone.  "We have staff trying to engage the two in interacting, and we hope that they might find their harmony again.  We were told that it is very rare that, after so many years, animals who are a pair fell apart, but that is where we are.  We are still hopeful."

Each weighs over 100 kilograms.  Whenever they are introduced to each other again in the vain hope that they will forgive one another and wish to embrace in loving harmony again, Bibi hisses at Poldi.  For his part, he lunges violently at her. 

Haven't we seen this scenario somewhere before?

Keeping Tabs

Well, Jimminy Cricket, too busy to look after yer kid?  Isn't that, after all, an absolute necessity? 

To keep tabs on three young children wouldn't seem too heavy a burden for two people.  Many parents do just that, and do it extremely well.  They've got it together, as it happens, assigning top priority to that task; knowing where their children are, ensuring that when they're out in public they're close by.  And most obviously, remembering to include them when you return home.

That caution first and foremost in every parent's mind.  Always lurking deep in the subconscious of the attentive, supporting and loving parent is the horror of possibly forgetting about a child, somehow managing to leave the child behind.  And, then, it happens, and terror sets in, fear of the potential of the unknown occurring, and that child never being seen alive again. 

As for the child him/herself, finding themselves abandoned - for let's face it, as far as a child is concerned that is abandonment - that kind of trauma can mark the child for life.  Trust the parent again?  Not bloody likely.  Begin clinging to the parents, fearful of independence, losing the sensation of curiosity and adventure?  Likely enough. 

So was this an state affair the parents were attending, where their attention was focused elsewhere than on the children?  For this was, after all, none other than British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha who more or less lost track of their eight-year-old daughter, Nancy.  Each assuming, naturally enough, that the other was looking to her welfare.

They'd gone on a family outing of a Sunday, visiting a country pub.  Kids in a pub, egad!  Well, this is Britain, after all, indoctrinate them early.  Let's just hope that little Nancy hadn't visited the washroom because her bladder got all sudsy.  But there it was, she had gone to the bathroom and the parents decided it was time to return home.  Mother scooped up the other two, and no one noticed Nancy wasn't with them.

While she was in the washroom, Prime Minister Cameron got in one vehicle with his bodyguards, and his wife assumed her place in another vehicle with the other two children.  And off they drove.  No one in either vehicle noticing the absence of the child.  Until they disembarked.  To discover one of the brood not in attendance. 

Whereupon they called The Plough and there she still was.

"They are their children and they take responsibility for them.  No one is going to face disciplinary action.  This was an error", said a spokeswoman stoutly.  In defence of the non-attention on the part of the bodyguards.  But who is prepared to defend the parents? 

And let's face it, if two people cannot take charge of three young children and do it properly, is one of them truly capable of looking to the well-being of a nation?

Well, obviously he must have brooded on this, hoping that no one would notice, and as time went by no one seemed to.  And then Mr. Cameron took the initiative to have his government set up a program for parents of young children to learn in classes specially for that purpose, how to raise them.  Safely.

Namibia: Mansions Planned to Keep President Safe

This little news flash certainly inspires one to confidence and pride in the legacy of African responsibility that seems to play out over and over again.  Confidence and pride in that the wealthier countries of the world community continue to transfer significant portions of their treasury to the African continent, to ensure that people who live lives of dire poverty can have those lives improved, as long as their governments gratefully accepting international assistance, use it to their peoples' advantage.

There's that old adage about gift-giving; once that gift changes hands the giver has no say whatever in how it is used.  Of one's own free one one makes a gift, transferring something of value to someone else who may then do with it what they will.  And charity too is a gift, one that elevates the giver, and benefits the receiver.  Except that funding handed over to impoverished nations is meant to improve the lot of all those who inhabit the country, it is not the private preserve of that country's leading elite.

At least, that's the way we would like to interpret the exchange.  After all, why would any democratic, advanced country of the world willingly deprive itself of money it could use internally to good advantage for its own civic well-being and that of its population, if it knows of a certainty that to proffer it, personal greed will benefit. But the proof manifests itself fairly consistently; international aid never quite seems to filter down to benefit those who need it.

On the other hand, that might seem to be a warped perspective by those who feel that by administering the affairs of their struggling country with its sparse economy and needy population, they are entitled to all the perquisites of royalty.  And this seems a particularly African predeliction, as it seems to happen.  Take, for example Namibia, which is planning to build a number of "mini state houses" for its president.

Four years ago a splendid official residence was built for President Hifikepunye Pohamba in Windhoek, Namibia's capital, at a cost of $73.4-million.  The president's clique claim that the string of presidential mansions that are in the planning stages are an imperative.  To spare the head of state the dreadful ordeal of spending the night on occasion in hotels where others have stayed and where "many evil things happen".

So, at an initial cost of a reputed $20.7-million - close to the total of Namibia's annual aid from the European Union, a series of mansions in each of the country's 14 regions is to be built, at a total cost of $146.8 million.  This is a brilliant initiative, as it happens, of the ruling Swapo party.  There are critics, of course, who bemoan that as a waste.

For President Pohamba, like the potentate he is, has a private jet and alternately a helicopter at his disposal, which could simply fly him back to the capital, if staying over at a hotel is so offensive to his majesty.  They money, they bleat rationally, would be far more useful spent on medicine for hospitals, textbooks for schools, or boosting the pensions of the elderly who live on $60 a month.

Little wonder there are aspirants at large who would dearly love to take the place of reigning heads of states of Africa.  There is one, in fact, in Ottawa, temporarily working at a rather menial job, but whose supporters consider him the new president of a new country.  This is a tribal group from Adwal State, currently part of Somaliland, which itself declared itself to be a nation, breaking away from Somalia.

A photo of the good man was recently published in a local newspaper, showing him as the president-elect of Awdal State, awaiting its declaration of independence and recognition by the international community.  He sits regally within an interior obviously meant to convey the impression of sumptuous wealth.  As tribal and national aspirations go, this appears to fall neatly into a long-established pattern.

'We consider Awdal State occupied land,’ says Rashid Hersi, the elected president of a region that is seeking separation from Somaliland. From his Barrhaven home, he gets daily updates on conditions on the ground in Awdal State, and stays in contact with his ministers.    Photograph by: Bruno Schlumberger , The Ottawa Citizen

Her Moral Responsibility

In the protest-and-arrest/incarceration saga of anti-abortion protest veteran Linda Gibbon, her supporters refer continually to the fact that she is a grandmother.  This 63-year-old woman has grandchildren, yet makes the decision of her free will to neglect her grandchildren for the greater goal, as she sees it of defending the rights of the unborn.  She deprives her grandchildren of her grandmotherly presence, to represent herself as a determined saviour of three-month foetuses.

To each their own.  So fully invested in her self-appointed crusade, she could be a grandmother to her grandchildren and still engage in her protests on a different level, less confrontational, for example, less offensive to the laws of the land that protect the rights of others, and focus on an educational component of that social battle to further the 'rights of the unborn'.  The fact that she is a grandmother, in actual fact, is completely irrelevant to the issue.

Her age and her status are used as a ploy for sympathy with her plight.  One that is completely self-fulfilling; she is doing what she has seen fit to do.  Age, her grandmotherly status, does not necessarily confer wisdom on the chronological bearer of those years, and this woman is a prime example of age being responsible for solidifying a personality invested in a habit of stubborn resolve.  She appears content with the cost of her resolve to her freedom.

She contends she is not surprised that the Supreme Court has ruled against her.  She feels justifiably, despite spurning the laws meant to protect the rights of others, to disobey what she claims to be an 'unjust' law.  The price extracted of her freedom to pose before abortion clinics with her sign and silently and purposefully present as a spokesperson for a child which nature will never mature from the foetus to be aborted, is one she chooses.

She finds value in her crusade; she would not persist if it did not fulfill an inner need that she has imposed upon herself.  She is right, in her insistence that a woman carrying the burden of a pregnancy she does not want that might result in the birth of a child she does not want, must see the pregnancy through to fruition and bring an unwanted child into the world - and the woman who has struggled with her conscience and decided to abort, is wrong.

However, Justice Marie Deschamps did not agree with Linda Gibbon. 

"The question is whether the provisions of Ontario's Rules of Civil Procedure governing motions for contempt orders preclude the application of Sect.127 which makes it a criminal offence to disobey a court order.  The courts below ... held that they do not.  I agree.  In my view, the exception in Sect.127 is meant to apply where there is an express alternative statutory response to failures to obey court order.  I would dismiss the appeal."

Twenty times arrested for violating an injunction.  Holding up a sign within 18 metres of the Scott Clinic in Toronto.  A temporary injunction dating from 2008, but a lawful one nonetheless.  A technicality to those who support her, particularly her lawyer.  Her righteous determination to offend the law and offend the sensibilities of those who also have made their own choices of their own free will, speaks of stupidity, less of moral determination.

She awaits a court appearance  on her picketing charges at abortion clinics, refusing to remain 150 metres away from their doors, rather than confronting the women who use the services.  When and if this woman is permitted to leave prison, her intention is to do as she has always done: "When I get back I'm sure you will find me in front of one of the Toronto clinics."

The Wounded

"The Taliban knew it was Christmas Day and I knew they were likely to take advantage of that.  The next day we had about 27 IEDs (improvised explosive devices; roadside bombs) go off in five hours ... there were bodies everywhere.  I saw four of those explosions.
"The driver and crew commander both blew out the top of an armoured vehicle and there's a young reservist guy in the back and he blows out the top, too.  but he gets up and doesn't even check himself before he starts trying to pick up the pieces of his buddies and stay alive at the same time.  He was a true hero."

This, from a discharged member of Canada's military, Jamie Teather, who, along with his wife, Cyndi, another former member of the military, is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.  He was security manager at Forward Operating Base Wilson in 2008.  He was a sharp-shooter/sniper, a member of the Pathfinder squadron, she was a skilled technician in weapons maintenance.

He, four years after that deployment, suffers from chronic anxiety and has problems sleeping.  She finds herself deep into periods of emotional despair.  "I never wanted to take medication", she said in an interview.  "It's like you've crossed the line, like you're a loser.  There is a huge stigma in the military attached to taking meds.  But like I told the doctor, if Jamie and I are going to survive one of us has to be medicated."

Data was just recently released by the U.S. military, in the wake of their military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Their problems with returning members of the military seem to be no less severe than what is occurring with Canada's military returnees from the battlefield.  At CFB Petawawa, there are plenty of veterans in dire need of support for their mental fragility.  Suicides and attempted suicides have not been uncommon; the clinic there estimates up to a dozen attempts in a typical month.

In the United States, figures have been released indicating there is one successful suicide made each and every day, the fall-out of people returning from active duty abroad and bringing home with them severe depression, alcoholism, drug-addiction.  At CFB Petawawa three disparate units have been set up to deal with the health issues and emotional instability of veterans, under the rubric of Warrior Support Services.

But, as it happens, there is a long wait for attention in the "trauma and stress support program".

Members of Canada's military are proud of their service.  Many have opted to return time and again to the field of action.  And they finally return, too many of them, mentally maimed, seeking help, desperate to find it, but feeling that the help proffered is inadequate to their needs.  Over 150 PTSD-diagnosed soldiers are currently receiving some level of treatment on the base, or at an Ottawa-based clinic.

These returned military personnel are finding it difficult to re-adjust to life back in society in war-free Canada.  They struggle with their inner confusion, inner rages.  Families are being torn apart, marriages disrupted.  Undoubtedly, it was ever thus during such times of stressful situations when a nation sends its young people to fight in a war that is, like all wars, brutal and transgressive of human nature.

Canada has invested hugely in new, more technologically advanced equipment to ensure that Canadian forces are well suited-out for their tasks at hand; defensive as well as offensive.  The critical problems of attempting to heal wounded psyches that have come too close and personal to the deadly effects of combat reveal that all societies are faced with an end-product of minds shattered by the wrenching experience of deadly conflict.

 The Responsibility of Free Will

"These manufacturers neglected to warn consumers, including children and teenagers, about the harmful aspects of their products", fulminated Quebec Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier, righteously.  And British American Tobacco (Imperial Tobacco Canada), Rothmans, Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds are put on notice that the province has launched a suit for $60 billion against them.

That's punishment for manufacturing, advertising and selling a product that has been horribly injurious to the health of society.  This, from a government that has traditionally been in cahoots with those purveyors of ill health, through enabling their products' sales, while the government skims off handsome revenues through the imposition of taxes.

That money, going into the government's general fund would also pay for the hospitals and the medical professionals' fees for looking after the resulting impaired health of those addicted to tobacco.  Quebec is not alone in its search to recover funding it has been liable for, in looking to the care of its citizens; Ontario, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland have launched their own lawsuits.

Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are right behind.  Not to be left out, Alberta will also seek to recover damages from those dastardly tobacco manufacturers and purveyors of ill health.  Action taken by state governments in the United States have led the way.  Their successful prosecution, proving that the tobacco companies knew from their own research how deadly a product they flogged, has prompted others to follow suit.

And they have and they will continue to do so.  It's a slam-dunk, after all.  "This action", protested Imperial Tobacco Canada was hypocritical, "even more duplicitous when one considers the major role played by the government of Quebec and the governments of other provinces in the sale of other products for which the risks are well known, including alcohol and gambling."  Ah, yes, that is perfectly true.  And so?

That hefty $60-billion, characterized as a "cash grab" by Imperial Tobacco Canada's vice-president of law, represents damages related to the immense cost picked up by the province of treating patients from the 1970s - and well into the future - until 2030.  Of course, in the 1970s it was well enough known that tobacco caused cancer.  It didn't stop people from smoking then, and it doesn't stop people now either, other than that the proportion of people who do smoke has decreased.

Governments are, of course, almost as guilty as the tobacco manufacturers.  Prohibition never really works, so government does the next best thing; it permits gambling, alcohol, smoking, knowing that addiction will prevail, and revenues through taxation will stuff government coffers.  And just incidentally help pay for the whatever remedial after-the-fact issues evolve.

The other, separate lawsuit launched by two million Quebecers seeking $27-billion is yet another of these absurd suits.  These are people who knew that they were gambling with their health by choosing to smoke.  No one insisted they begin smoking, it was common knowledge that smoking is both seductively habit-forming and that its practise leads to an abuse of one's body.

But it served the purpose of people who felt they had the right to exercise their own judgement.  And now they look to the courts to exercise a different judgement on their behalf.

P.T. Barnum: One Born Every Second

 

Popular culture truly is a strange human phenomenon.  It captures peoples' attention, their imaginations.  They want to be seen as being part of what is current, what is popular, different, totally cool.  They won't be left behind.  In the same token what passes for popular culture encompasses values that are shallow and without much integrity as far as meaningfulness is concerned.

The hysteria created over celebrity, over acts of societal alienation adopted as a means of proving how hip one is, and raising crude lyrics to the status of a religious devotion, of glorifying violence and sexism, and divisions within society in a culture of ignorance, defiant of acquiring education, is nothing if not dreadfully sad.

The media has followed Hollywood in portraying violence as normal to human existence.  Love between two people being nothing exceptional until and unless it is paired with uniquely strange occurrences, inclusive of violence.  Recreational drugs and misuse of alcohol are integral parts of the celebrity culture and enhance the way of life that the cool and the hip gravitate toward.

A popular cult figure in the entertainment field seeks to maximize his already inflated public esteem among his followers by 'designing' footwear, another status symbol hotly sought by the followers of pop fashion.  He is certainly not alone in branching out and initiating a one-man industry to rake in more profits; everyone with any connection to popular culture and celebrity associates their names with perfume, designer clothing, whatever sells.

It is the celebrity of their names that sell the mediocre products.  And the 'rarer' and more 'precious' those items appear in the minds of the purchasers, thanks to the well-oiled machinery of the advertising/public relations industry, the more can be commanded in the purchase price.  Three thousand pairs of the new Nike Air Yeezy IIs (no one craving to own such items would even snigger at the nomenclature) to be produced.

"Armored animalistic forms imbue the upper.  Hand-skived anaconda textured leather quarter panels are embellished with a debossed Vac-Tech Nike Swoosh.  The molded rear is sculpted with a reptilian-inspired spike".

And so, a star is born, an object of intense desire to be owned, and worn and paraded before those so much less fortunate than the owners who bask in the brilliance of the admiration showered upon them, as 'cool', 'with it'.  Along with the cool comes a vocabulary that barely resembles civil language in its deliberate uncouthness: "I'ma give it to you like this: The people that wear their pairs is people that wanna get fresh, they wanna look fly."

Hype works, it most certainly does.  Canadian youth lined up for hours in Ottawa and Toronto hoping to have the opportunity to shell out $299 for a pair of ridiculous, but status-conscious footwear.  Like the madness that overtook Holland when tulips were valued at an absurd price hundreds of years ago, these Nike-produced, celebrity-designed shoes are listing on eBay at $3,000 to $7,000.

But some fortunate bozo lucked in by scoring a rare black-and-ink preorder pair for only $90,000 on auction at eBay. 

Earth's Vulnerable Biosphere

"Once the shift occurs, there'll be no going back.  [A shift or tipping point is] speculation at this point, but it's one of those things where you say: 'Hey, maybe we better find out', because if it's true, it's pretty serious."  Arne Mooers, Simon Fraser University

A report that researchers finalized and which was published in the journal Nature states in a summation: "Humans now dominate Earth, changing it in ways that threaten its ability to sustain us and other species."  And, as the lead author, Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrated biology at the University of California, Berkley, states: "It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point."

Should that scientific speculation come to fruition, in other words, it could very well be catastrophic, claiming that "a state shift" might very well be mere decades away from occurring.  Of course, well-meaning and reputable scientists have often enough in the past given dire warnings of dreadful occurrences sitting on the cusp of disaster for humankind as related to the condition of our Planet.

We're still here.  The warnings did not, in the end, result in a "state shift" that was calamitous in its effect, from warnings about population density and the Earth's inability to feed all those people, to warnings many decades ago about what was termed "the Greenhouse Effect", that never quite materialized.  Unless one might wish to claim it simply metamorphosed into Climate Warming.

A conference that took place in 2010 questioned whether human activity could potentially set off a "state shift".  The questions were there but the answers were tantalizingly elusive.  Twenty-two biologists, ecologists, theoreticians, geologists and paleontologists took up that challenge, to eventually produce the report published in Nature.  They reviewed past "state shifts", the most recent of which represented the last Ice Age.

The report claims that the world's climate is on a warming trajectory that is occurring so swiftly that mean global temperature by 2070 (or a few decades before) will be higher than it has been since the evolution of humankind, according to their scrutiny of records and educated scientific hypotheses as a result of putting all those wise heads together in consultation.

In support of the world's present population of seven billion, roughly 43% of the Globe's land surface has been turned over to agricultural or urban use.  By 2045 the world's population is expected to rise to nine billion; current trends, they say, suggest that fully half of Earth's land surface will be altered by humans by 2025.

Which is "disturbingly close" to a possible global tipping point.  Hence the "state shift".  Can the Earth tolerate that shift?  Can we?

Professor Mooers hopes they are proven wrong.  "It would be great if the naysayers were right, I wouldn't have to worry", he said, as one of the report's co-authors.  "But there is no evidence to suggest they are right.  The evidence is the opposite."

Unpalatable food for thought.

Cleared of Sex Assault

Looking enormously pleased exiting the Elgin Street courthouse, lawyer Paul Lewandowski alongside client Gazban Abdalrahman, who must be quite relieved - as the presiding judge dismissed the sex assault charges brought against him, both expressing satisfaction with the trial outcome. 

A rather chastened accuser must be experiencing feelings of puzzlement and insecurity at just about the same time.  She was led, through the courtroom interrogation to say that she might have invented the accusations she levelled against the one-time taxi driver, whose license was revoked and who is now anxious to resume a normal life, including his taxi driver license renewal.

If he is indeed innocent of the charges brought against him by a woman of 40 with her intellectual capacity stunted by a hereditary condition she was born with, one can only heave a sigh of congratulations for evading having been found guilty as charged.  One would wish that escape to reflect innocence, not the further manipulation of an uncertain mind of a Down Syndrome sufferer.

Who claimed, with no little amount of indignation that the driver had attempted to take advantage of her vulnerability.  She was offended at what she claimed was his unwanted touching and suggestion that they have sex, and later purported anger expressed against her for refusing him. 

Accusing her of racism, disliking him for being Arab.  Might someone with the mental capacity of his woman-child have been capable of inventing the story?

Complete with his rejoinder at her refusal and condemnation of him that he would have been perfectly within his rights to behave as she claims he had done with her, in his country of origin?  If so, what might have led her to such an accusation.  Down Syndrome people are generally portrayed as gentle and unassuming.

"I believe an Innocent man has been dragged through the mud for two years in a situation he had no control over.  At the end of the day people presume you are guilty on charges like this, and even though there is lip service to the presumption of innocence, at the end of the day he has had this stigma over his head for the last two years", explained lawyer Paul Lewandowski of his client's misfortune.

The camera installed for precautionary measures in the taxi cab took photographs continually; every 30 seconds when the vehicle was moving.  The woman had insisted that the assault through which she was afflicted was some six minutes in duration, although earlier testimony had declared her to be uncertain about the very concept of time.

In viewing the results of the photographs, nothing remotely amiss was determined.  The driver did move to restore the woman's seat belt for her when she had detached it.  And she testified that she was annoyed over that incident, confiding she preferred to do such things herself.  "He was ensuring my safety.  I guess I didn't want it.  I am deeply sorry for all of this happening", she said.

She later also commented that she had claimed "a lot of things I probably shouldn't have said", to the police.  With the conclusion of her testimony the Crown prosecutor felt it would be "unfair" to expect the jury to find Mr. Abdalrahman guilty of the allegations brought against his character, beyond a reasonable doubt.

And that reasonable doubt lies, for the most part, in the uncertainty the woman felt under the questioning she had undergone that led her to doubt her own memory.  Under questioning from Mr. Abdalrahman's lawyer, she agreed with him that she might have been in error in her interpretation of what the taxi driver was attempting to do when he made an effort to restore her seat belt back in position.

Confusing that action with an intentional move toward unwanted sexual touching.  People with Down Syndrome have a childlike reaction of trying to please others.  And it is certainly difficult to say whether this represented just such a case.  No one, perhaps, will ever know of a certainty.

But Mr. Abdalrahman is now free to resume his previous line of work, anxious to have his taxi license reinstated.  "He wants to get his life back.  His life has been in shambles", stated his lawyer.

That Start In Life

"A lot of child-bearing moms are on those medications.  We would see one (NAS baby) every three or four months.  The hospital now sees, one, two or three a month."  Dr. Pradeep Merchant, chief of neonatology, The Ottawa Hospital

Canadians at the present day represent some of the highest users of prescription opioids in the world.  Opioid consumption in the country has doubled over the last ten years.  Despite that knowledge and the complications that arise from that fact, there is nowhere in Canada among the provinces where the rates of opioid use is declining.


"Physicians are prescribing these (drugs), legitimately in many cases, but sometimes over-prescribing" said Dr. Kimberley Dow, professor of pediatrics at Queen's University in Kingston, co-chair of the Provincial Council for Maternal and Child Health task force on neonatal abstinence syndrome.


And this is important.  Both that women who are pregnant feel they should be taking drugs, and that doctors are willing to accede to their patients' requests for prescriptions.  No one among the public, let alone the medical community seems to recall the lesson that the use of Thalidomide during pregnancy to combat morning sickness should have taught us.


There are universal campaigns undertaken to convince pregnant women not to drink and not to smoke, both practices which are harmful to the developing foetus, let alone the woman carrying a child.  Rates of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), have doubled in Canada, the result of a rise in legitimate and illicit use of prescription opioids, from sea to sea.


In 2010-11, 654 newborns were diagnosed with NAS, quite an increase from 171 in 2003-04.  "The numbers are very, very significant - you hear it from all over the province, and all over the country.  The burden is huge.  These kids stay in hospital sometimes months to get them off the drug", according to Dr. Gideon Koren, director of Motherisk Program at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.


A study published in the Journey of the American Medical Association a month ago revealed that the number of women in the U.S. using opiate drugs has also increased five-fold over the last ten years.  Now that's utterly astounding.  It doesn't take the mind of a genius to understand that everything crosses the placenta.


Narcotic-addicted mothers make a deliberate choice to use methadone during pregnancy.  "It's safer for the mom, it reduces risk and it provides a better pregnancy outcome."  But it is also long-acting, staying longer in the baby's system.  Some 85% of babies exposed to methadone in the womb develop one sign at least of drug withdrawal.


The concentration of drug in the baby's blood equals that of the mother.  When the placenta transference is cut off at birth the baby's drug supply vanishes and they experience the same withdrawal symptoms as an adult coming off heroin.  Central nervous system irritability characterized by high-pitched crying, frantic feeding, tremors and seizures.


What responsible woman would know this and still continue to take drugs while pregnant?  What intelligent woman would choose to become pregnant and carry a pregnancy through to delivery, while a prisoner of drugs?  And then watch her baby vomiting, feverish, diarrhetic.


Standard treatment for such babies is the administration of morphine, slowly reducing it as signs of withdrawal diminish.  But then, the long-term consequences of NAS are unknown.  "We're just beginning to look at this phenomenon."

No Rush, Just Judgement

She is a 40-year-old woman, who accuses a man who drove a ParaTranspo vehicle of molesting her.  Chronologically she is 40 years of age.  The man she accuses, Gazban Abdalrahman, happens also to be 40 years old.  He, purportedly, is in full possession of normal intellectual and physical faculties.  She was born with Down Syndrome.

She is reputedly capable of 'reading and colouring', but incapable of managing her finances.  She struggles with the concept of time and is not capable of fully living on her own, independently.  This, according to the prosecutor in the criminal case that the woman has brought against the man whom she accuses of sexual harassment.

She is, however, fully capable of realizing her right not to be unwillingly touched and handled by a man.  She is adamant that she wants "justice served", because, she said to the detective who investigated her complaint: "I don't want this to happen to anyone else."  Nor, obviously is she anxious to ever herself have a repeat occurrence.

And the "this" she speaks of is several incidents where this woman of 40 with the instincts and trust of a child suffered the unwanted physical advances of someone who was aware of her vulnerabilities and attempted to take advantage of her.  Of course, it is his word against hers; one of those classic "she said, he said" situations, somewhat complicated by her personal limitations.

"I didn't like it.  I felt awful, weird, like being abused", she told Detective Guy Seguin, who responded to her official complaint.  "I said, 'don't.  That's not appropriate.  I just want to go home'."  She volunteers her services at a group home.  There, he attempted to kiss her. 

On an earlier occasion, Gazban Abdalrahman, employed by Capital Taxi as a subcontractor for the specialty bus service, and transporting the woman home from the group home, fondled her.  This was the second sexual assault.  A week earlier the same man drove her - she recounted during the trial now taking place - to a secluded parking lot, suggesting they have sex.

Mr. Abdalrahman has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault.  The video made by police of her statements to Det. Seguin was played in the court, where she explained that as he was driving her home on the Queensway he reached toward her and began "pawing" at her, while she sat reading on the front seat.

She said the driver was angry with her when she recoiled at his advances.  He accused her of not accepting him because he was Arabic.  She said that he informed her that in the country from which he emigrated he could do what he had had done with no fear of repercussions.

"He can't do that here.  Maybe in his own country he can do it, but this is Canada, and he can't do it here", she said.  And then asked if he could be deported, having earlier assured the detective that the complaint she lodged was all about his actions, having nothing whatever to do with the man's race or religion.

Very Best Regards

Abdul Aziz ibn Muhammad ibn Abdul Rahman ibn Abdul lateef Al Shaikh
'Abd al-'Aziz ibn 'Abdillah āl ash-Shaikh

"The world is manufacturing airplanes and we are still telling a woman 'leave the mall' because you've got nail polish on your fingers."  Sheik Abdullatiff Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh

Now that is amazing, refreshing, cause for hope for the future of Saudi Arabian women.  Sheik Sheikh is said to be a moderate - hardly reflected in his garb and appearance, but nonetheless - recently appointed by King Abdullah to head Saudi Arabia's religious police.

A woman who has not been identified was confronted at a shopping mall by the religious police, tasked with maintaining public order and decorum.  This woman obviously challenged both decorum and public order because she had the effrontery to have painted her nails.  The wearing of nail polish is an affront to those afflicted with Islamism, obviously.

The fast-thinking woman, incensed at the encounter, thought to film the resulting argument she experienced protesting to the police that she was engaged in nothing amiss, had merely done what most women everywhere do; ornamented herself most fetchingly.  Which did not appear to appease the outraged police.

She then posted her three-and-a-half minute video on YouTube.  Its reflection of police telling her to "get out" of the shopping mall, appears to have found universal favour.  It has attracted over a million hits.  Doubtless, people fascinated at the absurd spectacle that it represented.

Sheik Sheikh has since issued an order prohibiting the religious police from "harassing people".  And just to drive his directive home without any room for doubt, he has threatened "decisive measures against violators."

About time, but as the wise old saying goes, better late than not at all.  It's a toehold in the door leading to eventual recognition of women as independent, resourceful, intelligent and equal in that most conservative of Middle East nations.

Canada's Fisheries Act

The federal government is not particularly trusted nor beloved by the country's scientists.  The simple fact being that science in this country feels it is being threatened, that its progress is being hampered by a government that sees too little practical value in practical science and environmental sciences, opting instead to shift priority funding to the kind of science that accelerates manufacturing and trade.

The Canadian Society For Ecology and Evolution has sent an open letter of protest to the Conservative government over proposed revisions to the Fisheries Act that would have the effect, in their opinion, of placing 80% of the country's 71 freshwater species at risk of extinction.  The letter is co-signed by the government's own former main independent advisory body on species at risk, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

The threatened closure of the world-famed Experimental Lakes Area near Kenora in northwestern Ontario is another issue of contention.  "In my time working in the U.K. government I never saw any sign that any of the behaviour, practise or actions of the Canadian government would be even remotely tolerated", said Nick Dulvy, recruited by Simon Fraser University to the post of Canada Research Chair in Marine biodiversity and Conservation.

If the proposed changes to the Fisheries Act contained in Bill C-38 go through, the legislation would eliminate one of the most effective environmental components of federal law - the standing ban on any activity that is proven to result in "harmful" alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat.  On this matter a case in point is not too difficult to identify.

The invasive Asian snakehead fish from China, imported into Canada live for food represents a dreadful threat to the preservation of native Canadian fish.  These predator-fish are barred entry to the United States legally, but they have been introduced nonetheless.  Likely live for Chinese accustomed to eating them in their native surroundings, and possibly through importation for aquariums.

As with such problem species, when they become too large for the aquarium, unthinking people set them loose in the nearest waterway.  In the United States biologists recognize they have become a threat, as a voracious, predatory fish that consumes all living things wherever it happens to find itself.  There was much ado over closing off aquatic entry to the Great Lakes to halt the fish's progress in infecting North American waters.

The snakeheads have ruined some southern U.S. waterways, consuming everything, leaving devastation behind.  They are amazingly resilient creatures, capable breathing out of water, and of travelling overland on their fins, some great distances, a peculiar adaptation for a fish, more than amply amplifying their threat to native species.  They have been reputed to capture small pets venturing too close to the beasts' lairs.

And now they are suspected of having made their way into British Columbia; Burnaby has been placed on the alert for their presence, and ichthyologists are attempting to search out those places where snakehead spotters claim they've been seen and identified.  The fear being that they will make their way into B.C. rivers and completely disrupt salmon runs, for starters. 

Canada has seen fit not to outlaw the importation of live snakeheads for human consumption.  Likely for fear of offending Chinese-Canadians accustomed to having the fish on their tables.  In all likelihood, once the situation was adequately explained to the community, they would doubtless give it their blessing that the fish only be allowed importation after being caught and processed for food.

As things stand at present, it is too late to apprehend the eventual invasion of snakeheads.  But the federal government should leave such decisions in the hands of those who know best how foreign species impact on native species, and govern the country's needs in this direction accordingly.

Jeremy Wade holds a giant snakehead, a native of Southeast Asia and some areas of India. The most aggressive species of snakehead, it is capable of growing to over 3 feet in length and weighing over 40 pounds.

Stabbed

What a dreadful thing to happen to anyone.  In Ottawa, a man was found by police on April 24 lying on a street, unconscious around Morissette Avenue and Caldwell Street.  The man had duct tape binding his feet.  And he was suffering from multiple stab wounds.  Needless to say, police rushed the poor man to hospital. 

This must speak of the dark underbelly of the city, where people are unsafe, and criminals perform their sociopathic deeds.

The poor man's name is Biley Abdourahman.  And there is a bit of a police file history behind his name.  The (law-abiding) parents of a girl who'd had her cellphone stolen, thought they would use the cellphone to lure the man who stole it to a meeting with them and confront him with the theft, taking possession of their daughter's cellphone to restore it to her.

The thief was tricked into thinking he was invited to a "party" when the parents sent messages to their daughter's stolen BlackBerry.  The thief, and the parents showed up at a Baseline Road McDonald's restaurant.  And there, as the mother grabbed the cellphone out of Biley Abdourahman's hands, he reacted by slashing the father, then stabbing him in the forearm.

Moments before he had pulled out his knife and threatened to stab the mother.  Which was when the girl's father entered the fray.  And received significant nerve and tissue damage to his arm when Biley Abdourahman stabbed him.  Immediately afterward, the nasty little thug fled with a friend. 

For reasons of his own he turned himself in to police a month later.  He was released on bail, to a treatment program.  It appears something went awry with that plan, for he was tossed out of the program and returned to jail.  Bail was given him for a second time, allowing him to vanish into the underworld from where he came.

And it was not until he was found by police, bound and the victim of stab wounds that he turned up again. Seems his lifestyle, values and those he hangs around with had some ideas of their own on how they feel about Biley Abdourahman.  He must make it a habit to offend people.  Perhaps a drug deal gone bad?

Bad penny, that one.

 Entitled, Driven, Arrogant

"As I got closer I could see the yellow of a down suit - it was a climber lying still on his side.  His oxygen mask was off and his nostrils were white, frostbitten.  I asked him his name and what group he was with but only got a slurred, unrecognizable response."

That was a scene that played out on the slope of Mount Everest on May 20, when a Polish climber had been abandoned by his team, which decided to leave him there, in the death zone, and themselves push on to ascend the peak of Everest, achieving their goal, and sacrificing one of their members to do so. 

Another team of climbers, coming across the dying man abandoned their summit attempt.  They spent their time instead in the humanitarian effort to bring the man down to one of the lower camps, from the South Col where he was lying in the snow, close to unconsciousness and death.

Ten climbers have died this climbing season on Mount Everest.  The month of May is seen as the window of opportunity, after which weather conditions are considered to be far too violently inclement to attempt the push to the summit.  Even with ideal weather people are exhausted, disoriented by the high altitude and oxygen deprivation.

They die on the slopes, some falling down crevasses, never to be seen again, others suffer from strokes, and yet others, like the Polish mountaineer, left to perish, freezing to death, while others climb right past them, unflinching in the reality of death, disbelieving that it could happen to them, fiercely determined to make the summit and realize their ambition.

That was a British team that had made the decision to bypass their ambition and instead save another human life.  Another British climber spoke later of the effect it had on him, seeing the human carnage on the mountain slope.  "On our ascent, we actually passed three of the dead and another two who were in an awful state."


In the opinion of an American summiteer who himself ascended successful as part of a team from the National Geographic Society on May 25, "a fully 25%" of those he witnessed attempting the ascent obviously lacked adequate training, let alone useful experience.  "This is a mortal sport, not tennis or bowling.  You make one mistake, the mountain might forgive you, but if  you make two or three, you die."

It would appear that over a four-day period this year, no fewer than 548 people decided to make the effort to the top.  Averaging out to 137 people each of those four days.  "Experienced climbers can make their own way and get away from the crowds.  But for those that have to stay on the fixed lines, everyone has to move at the speed of the slowest person."

People become besotted with the very idea of achieving the seemingly impossible physical feat of endurance and strength that it takes to commit to the climb of Everest.  They don't do this independently, since they are, at best, amateur climbers, people of athletic ability and skills who envision themselves being able to boast that they succeeded.  They pay between $70,000 to $110,000 to commercial guides.

After paying that kind of money, they are resistant when and if their guides tell them they risk losing their lives and it's best to turn back.  They insist on going forward, exhaust themselves, and become liabilities to the other climbers.  One man spent four days near the 8,000 'death zone' area, despite the low oxygen level and freezing temperatures, refusing to descend without reach the summit.  He was finally rescued, suffering frostbite.

"The mountain didn't kill these people, they killed themselves.  In many cases, the Sherpas told the client, 'You are moving too slowly, you are going to die' and the client refused - and they died.  They viewed the summit as more important than their own life."  Likely they viewed the attempt as possible, refusing to believe they hadn't the strength, stamina and determination to make it.  Reality occasionally escapes people.

The Nepalese government charges $10,000 per permit per person.  "More expeditions mean more royalty and more revenue for the government.  Because expeditions have become so commercial, there is much less stress on training.  Poorly trained climbers without enough exposure to the climate are going up who have no idea about the need to acclimatize to the oxygen levels and hardships."

And they simply do not come back down again under their own steam.  It's estimated that the commercial tour guides earned something in the neighbourhood of $31-million from the estimated 446 foreigners who aspired to climb the mountain this year, with $5-million going into government coffers. 

"Bath Salts"

The illicit recreational drug pharmacopoeia just keeps growing.  And, it seems, with each new introduction into man-made chemicals whose use can alter perception and create hallucinatory delusions, changing peoples' personalities, slowly altering the integrity of their physical bodily organs, and eventually taking their toll on the quality of life, the situation becomes more dire.

A new concoction, a synthetic cocaine product which physically resembles an innocuous household substance used in bath water, has been named "bath salts".  Harmless-sounding nomenclature for yet another dangerous drug that can lead otherwise-normal people toward psychotic behaviour.  This is yet another powerful new drug.  It is composed with the active agent of Methylenedioxypyrovalerone.

For those who dislike tongue-twisters, and that one certainly qualifies, it can be shortened to MDVP, mephedrone or methylone.  "I've been working in addictions for 19 years - and this is the first drug which really has me concerned", was the interestingly alarming statement expressed by the director of addiction services in northern Nova Scotia, during an interview.

Hospital emergency rooms have had to deal with roughly three cases weekly of people on bath salts experiencing duress, over the past several months.  "We are concerned ... because in an unusually short period of time - anywhere from one month to two months - folks are going from using this drug to having very severe, negative consequences....

"Police and emergency physicians are having problems because this is a stimulant similar to speed, and you are having that amped-up extra strength and aggression.  These folks are experiencing psychosis, so they don't really know what's going on - imagine that in the back of your squad car."

In addition to which are the side-effects.  Which include elevated core body temperatures, heart problems and muscle deterioration.  This cheap-to-produce and highly addictive drug is beginning to look like yet another problem of potentially huge dimensions for society; for those who use it, suffering its end-effects, and for those who encounter people suffering psychiatric effects of the drug.

It is entirely possible that the Miami man who was shot to death by police who had responded to an emergency call for help when, in broad daylight, in public, that man was seen to be chewing off the face of a homeless man - and when confronted by police, refused to stop - was under its influence.  He succeeded in eating the man's nose, mouth, eyes and cheeks, leaving him in critical condition.

The drug renders to its users superhuman strength.  People using it can become paranoid, hallucinate and be taken with urges to commit horrible violence.  One question remains:  why it is that people choose of their free will to experiment with such dangerous compounds to begin with.