Accessing Higher Education/Quebec

Quebec university and CEGEP students have returned early to classes in an attempt to catch up on time lost last spring when many university and college students, supported by their unions, decided to 'strike' in protest of the provincial Liberal government's plan to increase tuition costs to more closely reflect reality.  Though the tuition increase had the support of the public, nothing was resolved.

The new fees are in effect.  The students are still striking.  The new premier-presumptive of a minority PQ government urges the students not to bother sending in their tuition fees until after the election.  When, presumably, she will take steps with her governing party, to forgive student tuition altogether.
 One small step for student 'democratic' rights, one big step for tax increases.

The striking students who represented a small proportion of the province's student body, were vociferous, angry, disruptive and obnoxious in their bid to draw attention to their rejection of the increase.  They termed it an assault against democracy that the government had the audacity to raise tuition at a time when provincial coffers are badly strained.

They considered themselves to be demonstrating democracy in action when they blocked highways and bridges, destroyed public property, held up traffic, threatened other students and called them 'scabs' and worse, leaped onto desks, smashed computers and stopped classes from proceeding.  As they practised their version of democracy, the majority of the province's students who wanted to continue classes were restrained from doing so.

That majority of students decided to invoke a lawful procedure to ensure that the strikers refrained from interrupting classes and the law agreed with them, issuing an injunction.  Which the democracy-obsessed striking students simply ignored, continuing to be obstreperous and disruptive, disallowing other students from pursuing their studies.

Now that classes have resumed, the striking students who have been relatively quiescent all summer, have resurrected their outrage to re-commence their predations on their fellow students, violently interfering with their right to an education.  In response to which, a class-action lawsuit is being organized by Quebec university students over their frustration by the student strikes.

There will be 25 universities and junior colleges named in the class-action suit, along with the Quebec government.  The plaintiffs claim that action taken was insufficient to allow them access to classrooms and to complete their courses. Damage includes lost work experience, lost tuition fees, lost summer jobs.

Not to worry: with the upcoming election in a few day's time, there will be a new government in power, one whose head is anxious to support the student strikers to the benefit of all.  A new Parti Quebecois government will see to it that more stringent rules will be imposed on language restrictions so that graduates from Quebec universities will be more unprepared than ever to join the workforce.

Confined to one language,with little-to-no-proficiency in the universal language of North American business, perhaps the students will consider in the future the possibility and efficacy of suing the new PQ government for restricting their opportunities for full and well-remunerated employment in the outside world of real life.

Female Obesity and Breast Cancer

"Obesity seemed to carry a higher risk of breast cancer recurrence and death, even in women who were healthy at the time that they were diagnosed, and despite the fact that they received the best available chemotherapy and hormone therapy.
"Insulin levels are known to be higher in patients who are obese because they develop insulin resistance... (and) insulin can stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells."  Researcher Joseph Sparano, associate chairman of medical oncology at the Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care in the Bronx, New York

Results from previous studies into the relationship between female obesity and worsening cancer outlooks have provided what appears to be a clear link between obesity and heightened opportunities of breast cancer.  Along with a fiercer outcome in women who have already been diagnosed with breast cancer.  A new study has confirmed that breast cancer is likelier to return and to prove fatal, for overweight women.

Hormones linked to body weight may also fuel tumour growth in the most common form of breast cancer, identified as estrogen receptor-positive cancer.  The study was based on data from trials sponsored by the U.S. National Cancer Institute - of women with stages I, II and III breast cancer who received standard treatment with dosages of drugs calibrated to reflect the women's weight.

Researcher Joseph Sparano and his colleagues discovered that compared to women of normal weight, those who were obese were 40% likelier to experience a breast cancer recurrence over the study period of eight years, and fully 69% more likely to die from breast cancer.  Those women who were merely overweight, but not obese, demonstrated a trend toward higher risk of both recurrence and death with increasing weight.

That link between obesity in women and the prevalence and ferocity of the disease turned out to be particularly strong for women with the most common type of breast cancers, estrogen-receptor-positive.  The new study, emphasized the researchers, does not prove that additional weight and fat directly impact certain breast cancers, only that it appeared to be "biologically plausible".

"There is as yet no proof that women with cancer are capable of improving their long-term prognosis by undertaking weight loss.  The highest priority is just getting through the chemotherapy if chemotherapy is necessary and taking their endocrine therapies.

"But for those who are obese or overweight, there may be additional benefits that one can achieve through diet and through weight reduction that may produce a reduction in the risk of recurrence that's just as significant as the reduction that they get from the standard therapies", explained Dr. Sparano.

Parsimonious Tippers

So, Vermonters have the impression that French Canadians visiting their fair State and eating at their restaurants have a faint appreciation for the niceties that obligate us to respect the low wages of wait staff and honour their service with appropriate tips. I wonder how that came about?  Oh, evidently they have noticed that French Canadians are loathe to leave more than a 5% tip after a meal.

That would rankle.  "A few times a week, we get tables that will eat for $100 and leave, like, three bucks or $5.  And 100 percent of the time for stuff like that, it's French Canadians.  Not all French Canadians do that, definitely not, but, when it happens, it's always French Canadians.  Basically it's large bills that get loose change as a tip."

How socially inadequate.  And here French Quebecers think of themselves as cosmopolitan.  Where would they get that idea?  A misplaced sense of style, obviously.  Sad, when style and social grace is so completely lacking just where it should be most evident.

At some restaurants in Vermont, it appears that a practise has ensued, that when a waiter observes that his clients speak French they are identified as French Canadian and in anticipation of a dismal tip, a 20%  gratuity will be added to the invoice handed over at the conclusion of the meal.  "No restaurant here has a policy to do that, mainly because it's illegal.  But sometimes servers will do it.  It's at the waiter's discretion."

The issue was recently revealed when a resident of Vermont complained at having realized that 18% had been added to her bill at a restaurant for the third time, once the waiter heard her speaking French.  She spoke French sure enough, but she has lived in the U.S. for 30 years.  She objected to the imposed gratuity, and it was withdrawn.

But that incident shed light on a growing phenomenon; waiters identifying French Canadians and shielding themselves from an anticipated low tip by figuring it into the bill.  "It's really discouraging.  They're lovely people, so I don't know where it comes from.  But most of the time, they leave between five and seven percent", said one waitress.

A manager at a Burlington bistro and cafe was of the opinion that Quebecers were unaware that the minimum wage for wait staff in Vermont is $4.10 hourly.  Whereas that rate is double, at $8.25, for Quebec restaurant and bar staff.  That most certainly is a generous-minded interpretation.  Quebecers have the reputation in the U.S. of being cheapskates.

They would hardly know that French Canadians also don't, as a rule, respond generously to requests from charities.  On average, French Canadians prefer not to give donations to charities. But they are not at all loathe to take charity from other Canadians in the way of Federal government taxation transfers to boost the province's social services.

And, right in line with that, many French Canadians are wonderfully adept at manipulating themselves into positions of permanent public social assistance, otherwise known as welfare, because it beats working for a living.  Though they certainly don't have a monopoly on it.

 The Conjoining of May and December

Another unfortunate Senate of Canada revelation.  Senator Rod Zimmer, 69 years of age has had his personal life hit the front pages.  Not that he's done anything politically amiss. But one does have a sober second thought about the intelligence and perspicacity of a 69-year-old man, presumably intelligent enough to have incurred the admiration of those in power, to elevate him to the Senate of Canada.

Even in these socially enlightened times, however, a niggling little unease over the disparate age of a man and his wife might occur when one is apprised of the fact that this man married a young woman one-third his age.  The age, in other words, of his granddaughters, if he has any.  In fact,the young woman's own grandmother is a year younger than her husband, Senator Rod Zimmer.

Perhaps Senator Zimmer fancies that whatever was good enough for King David during biblical times is good enough for him.

1 Kings 1:1-4 ¹ When King David was very old, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him. ² So his attendants said to him, “Let us look for a young virgin to serve the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm.”³ Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful young woman and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. ⁴ 

Maygan Sensenberger, 23, appears to be Senator Zimmer's Abishag.  Her grandmother, 68-year-old Rita, informed the press that "she gets upset easy if anything's wrong with her husband.  He is quite a bit older than Maygan and she does worry a lot about him ... if she thought there was something wrong with Rod she would be very, very upset."

Maygan Sensenberger is in a spot of difficulty, having had to appear in court because of having made quite a fuss on a flight to Saskatchewan from Ottawa. It is alleged that the young woman threatened to kill her husband and "take down the aircraft".  Quite possibly, because her elderly husband was ill and she was dreadfully concerned about him, in her excited state she garbled the message and it came out quite alarmingly wrong.

It is likelier, giving the testimony of a fellow passenger who came to the aid of the Senator and his lovely young wife, that Maygan Sensenberger said something more like that she was about to ask the pilot to land the plane in fear of the experience being enough to kill her husband, as he was ill, his chest constricted and she feared his death.

"I never at any time felt threatened.  And all of the frustration she expressed while I was there was targeted around the medical condition and the health of her husband.  She saw us doing the primary work so she was continuing to speak out.  She was continuing to say, 'What's happening?  Is he OK?  Tell me he's going to be OK.  Why aren't you doing more?  Why aren't you doing something?"

This, from Scott Wright, formerly an ambulance attendant who volunteered assistance when the flight crew asked for anyone with medical experience to come forward to assist the senator and his wife.

Happy one-year-wedding anniversary, grandfather, granddaughter.

Having Fun

That's what it's called when you're bored, when everything seemingly goes too smoothly and there is too little tension in your life.  You've achieved all you've set out to do, and in so doing there seem few challenges left to make life interesting.  And then, newlyweds who have it all come up with a new 'fun project'.  To make additional use of that long-planned-for and expensively-acquired bridal gown.  It will never be used again, so why not do something really different with it.

Maria Pantazopoulos, 30 years old who just bought a house of her own, began work as a real estate agent, was married in June, took a honeymoon in the Caribbean and was really, really happy, according to her best friend, thought up a lark.  She had a photo shoot planned, a photographer willing to take part in her ditsy but oh-so-much-fun plan to memorialize herself in her wedding gown, to accompany her to Rawdon, 75 kilometres northeast of Montreal.
Maria Pantazopoulos via Facebook

This is a trend, evidently named "trash the dress".  Where brides pose happily for photographs in their wedding gowns after the event has taken place, choosing what they feel to be unconventional settings to prove how clever and unique their creative thought processes are.  

"She's a really fun girl, and she just didn't want her wedding dress sitting in a box in the closet. She said 'I want to have fun with my wedding dress.  I want to have great pictures and memories of me in my wedding dress'."

 Ill-thought-out high spirits, a sense of adventure, a game, having fun, surprising one's friends with the results.  They're surprised now, and she is in the past tense, although there will be photographs for her parents and her husband and her brother to treasure, of Maria Pantazopoulos in her wedding dress in a truly unlikely setting.

ROBERT VOS/AFP/Getty Images  ‘Trash the dress’ photo shoots are intended to look like high-fashion magazine spreads.

"She had her wedding dress on and she said, 'Take some pictures of me while I swim a little bit in the lake'.  She went in and her dress got heavy, I tried everything I could to save her.  I jumped in; I was screaming and yelling; we tried our best", said the photographer, in anguished memory.

Two police officers arriving soon after Maria went under the water, and photographer Louis Pagakis was unable to save her, shed their uniforms and jumped into the water to find her.  Eventually, however, a scuba diver arrived with his gear and retrieved her body.

Apple's Best-Case Scenario

If you're a huge conglomerate of celebrity status, with your products in feverishly high demand, recognized as an industry leader in every respect, from research and innovation, production and sales, and you're launching a lawsuit against another large corporation whom you accuse of plagiarism, it helps immeasurably if the lawsuit is heard in a court nearby where your corporate operations are located.

All the more so if the corporate interests doing the suing have lodged a somewhat-credible complaint against a competitor who just happens to be a foreign manufacturer.  Inbred bias isn't too hard to detect when an American court and a jury comprised of locals who may be involved at some level apart from national pride, in judging the activities of a foreign-based counterpart are invoked.

And added to that an element of seeking to undermine the influence of another corporate entity through its connection to the party being sued, and you've got a win-win situation for the company that has achieved the status of the largest, most prosperous manufacturing-and-service company on the Planet.  Yet Apple Inc. had its nose out of joint by the fact that its competitor, Samsung, sold more iPhone and iPad units than they do.

The verdict handed by a U.S. jury is a sweeping legal victory for Apple over Samsung with the claim that Samsung's Galaxy line of phones among others violated Apple's patents.  Samsung has sold 22.7 million smartphones and tablets that Apple insists uses Apple's technology.  Apple demands Samsung withdraw its most popular cellphones and computer tablets from the U.S. market.


The supreme irony in all of this is that Apple buys all of its computer components from Samsung.

The result of the trial awarding Apple $1.051-billion in damages from Samsung was predicted.  Industry insiders looked at the makeup of the jury, selected from Silicon Valley where Apple's founder Steve Jobs, remains a revered technological pioneer, both before and after his untimely death.  The issue boiled down to whether or not Samsung's products had the look and feel of the Apple products.

Unsurprisingly, they do.  Now, other companies that sell smartphones based on Google's operating system, also used by Samsung's devices will be looking at paying royalties to Apple for its Android OS. Apple's shares on the stockmarket have zoomed, and Samsung's have plummeted.  In earlier lawsuits in other countries in Australia, Britain and Germany, Apple lost their lawsuit against Samsung.

The icing on the cake for Apple with its own operating system is putting a kink in Google's freely-offered operating system.


A court in South Korea came to a more balanced conclusion, finding both companies to share for the blame.  Samsung was ordered to stop selling ten of its products including the Galaxy SII phone.  And Apple was banned from selling four different products, including its iPhone 4, in recognition of Samsung's counter-suit against Apple.

Will such utter domination of the market for these products of one company be in the best interests of consumers?  Will this advance research and innovation worldwide?  Will the cost to own and operate these products remain reasonable, or be set to rise exponentially?

Microsoft redux.

Physician/Patient Power Point

Those practising in the medical professional are still looked upon as special, their medical knowledge and their diagnostic-and-treatment abilities rendering them in some peoples' judgement as close to god as any human is about to get.  People trust them, hold them in admiration, respect them.  They have knowledge that is not shared by the general public.  Wisdom is ascribed to them of a kind not normally seen in the general, non-medical-profession public.

Doctors and other health professionals earn salaries commensurate in large part with their education, with their practise and experience, with the esteem in which they are held in society.  The shortage of doctors and other medical professionals practising in Canada is a matter of acute concern.  There are far too many people who do not have the comfort of having a family physician.  Doctors' skills are needed to keep a society well-functioning.

So they are respected, and they are well compensated financially.  So well compensated that the salaries they earn, even in a country where universal medicare puts a cap on earnings that would not occur elsewhere, are considerably above those earned by other professionals in other prestige categories of social service or business.  No one really begrudges physicians their relative wealth.  They are generally held to be hard-working and the judgement they exercise can be a matter of life-or-death to their patients.

In the presence of their doctors, people are usually given to being compliant.  Following doctors' orders.  For if those orders are contested, or not obliged, the doctor could very well be disgruntled enough at the lack of co-operation to withdraw his services.  Or claim, should health go awry, that though she/he did his/her duty to the patient, the patient failed to do his due duty to his own welfare.

There's a certain amount of intimidation factored into the patient-health-professional relationship.  And here we come to an issue that a group of Ontario doctors are finding wanting within their own professional cohorts in the province.  The Province of Ontario, facing the prospect of a growing deficit has asked some high-earning professional groups for some wage concessions.  Doctors and those in the teaching professions take exception to this singling out of their professions.

Doctors in particular, claim as a group under the Ontario Medical Association that they are being short-shrifted, and the public, as a result, is facing a potential down-grade of services due them.  Anti-cutback petitions targeting the public and patients are going the rounds; not just in newspaper advertisements, but in doctors' offices where patients are asked to sign such petitions.

"Doctors are there for the patient's well-being, not to persuade patients to support their political positions", reads a release by Medical Reform Group, a doctor-operated public health care advocate.  While they may not be averse, as a public-interest non-profit, to the stance taken by their professional body with the petition arguing against a freeze on doctors' wages, they don't appreciate doctors taking the issue to their patients.

Patients being confronted by the petitions will read that the proposed freeze: "will impact my doctor's ability to provide care for me and my family", calling on the provincial government to "negotiate in good faith with doctors for an agreement what will protect Ontario health care".  The cuts which the OMA estimates in the $1-billion ballpark are cited to represent a "serious risk to health care in our community and across the province."

And this is what patients are confronted with and asked by their doctors' office staff or their doctor him/herself, to sign.  "In our view, anything that would enlist the patient's support for a political goal of the physician would be problematic. The OMA would no doubt argue that physicians being paid more is in the patient's best interest - that may or may not be true - but it's clearly still a political issue", stated Dr. Gordon Duyatt, MRG president, a medical researcher at McMaster University.

Dr. Guyatt speaks of the power dynamic between doctor and patient: "The patient's experience could be that if they didn't support the physician's political aim, the physician might in some way be unhappy with them.  If that person is operating on your eye the next day, it might make you a trifle nervous", he explained.  To the consternating objections of the OMA spokesperson who labelled the assertion "insulting".


Let's hear it for Dr. Guyatt and other Ontario doctors who have signed on to the Medical Reform Group.

Smoking Awareness Setback

Physician and other non-smoking groups lobbying for greater government efforts to alert smokers to the dangers of tobacco use recently criticized Health Canada for its tardiness in coming to a decision over larger graphic displays on tobacco products.  Those larger displays illustrating the gruesome health effects over time of tobacco use are now law in Canada. 

Other developed countries of the world had already made the change.  Nothing, however, changes the fact that Canada's was the first such initiative, persuading other countries to follow suit.

The health-information campaign has had its success, making inroads into peoples' consciousness that in continuing to smoke, or beginning to smoke and becoming entrapped in a cycle of dependence, has persuaded a great number of people to embrace smoking cessation.  But cigarette use is still on the upsurge in developing countries where more people, at earlier ages, begin smoking and start a life-time habit injurious to their health.

And, without doubt, there are some individuals who, despite knowing how injurious smoking can be to their future health and what can lie in store for them as a result of smoking, fail to be impressed by these efforts.  Theirs is the attitude, largely, that they will not be manipulated by government or anyone else.  That if they wish to use tobacco they will do so and damn the consequences.  The cost to society in providing health care to this demographic is enormous.

And now comes word that in the country that most exemplifies the virtues of free enterprise and the glories of the free marketplace, a U.S. appeals court has struck down a law requiring tobacco companies to comply with graphic health warnings.  This decision contradicts an earlier appeals court's ruling.  Making it possible that the U.S. Supreme Court will have to address the issue to settle this obvious legal dispute.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is held by this new ruling to have violated corporate speech rights.  The FDA argued the images of rotting teeth and diseased lungs depicted on the graphic warnings for consumers by edict of law is a true representation and needful to warn consumers, most particularly young people, about the risks inherent in smoking.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 45-million Americans smoke.  That cigarettes represent the leading cause of preventable death in the Unite States is beyond question.  The World Health Organization prediction is for 8 million people annually killed by 2030 through tobacco use impacting human health, if governments do not take the matter seriously enough to impede the inevitable from occurring.

In March, the U.S. Surgeon General warned use of tobacco products by youth has reached epidemic proportions; in the United States one in four high school seniors now smoke regularly.  Australia took a further initiative to limit smoking advertising, banning company logos on cigarette packs.  The European Union has taken note, and is considering a similar ban.

But in the United States five tobacco companies have challenged the FDA rules: Reynolds American Inc., Lorillarad Inc., Commonwealth Brands Inc. owned by Britain's Imperial Tobacco Group Plc, Liggett Group LLC, and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. Inc.  The prodigious and expensive lobbying that the tobacco companies engage in speaks to their bottom line.

In its majority ruling the appeals court found that the labelling requirements from the FDA violated corporate speech rights, arguing:

"This case raises novel questions about the scope of the government's authority to force the manufacturer of a product to go beyond making purely factual and accurate commercial disclosures and undermine its own economic interest - in this case, by making 'every single pack of cigarettes in the country (a) mini billboard for the government's anti-smoking message", Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The FDA, according to the reasoning producing the judgement "has not provided a shred of evidence" to indicate that the graphic labels would reduce smoking.

 What Sizzling Story Is That?

Rupert Murdoch's news empire's revelations of sinister methods undertaken to obtain news scoops provided ample entertainment for the British reading public for a good while.  It also pointed out just how close relations were between government and that news empire's highest paid directors.  And the fallout from disclosure and denunciation of illegal and immoral practises in the production of news snooping at the lowest level for the lowest common denominator resulted in a pall being cast over the gathering and publishing of tabloid-style news.

The Royal Family was fair game, even if unfair investigative methods and underhanded tactics were used, up until the unfolding debacle of News of the World.  And there were enough scandals to keep the tabloids thanking their lucky stars that the younger cohort of the British Royal Families, Windsor Incorporated, were bent on behaving in a rather cheeky manner, letting their sexuality hang out for all to appraise and muse over endlessly.

Queen Elizabeth II was decidedly not amused.  She was appalled, and chagrined and bemoaned her 'annus horribilis'.  Much of the scandals centered largely around the antics of her daughter-in-law, named by some the Princess of Tarts, seen by far many others as a sympathetic and vulnerable, and hugely wronged figure of tragic, albeit wayward proportions.

And here, by Jove, is her younger son, whooping it up in a style she never quite mastered, although she was no slouch at garnering the attention of her adoring public.  Her son, Prince Harry, is equally adored and evidently equally endowed with poor judgement and a penchant for public display, even in matters where the public should be firmly excluded.

Millions of people have viewed Prince Harry having a lark, buck naked, astride a young woman equally unclad, disporting themselves happily, but not as privately as should have been done.  The young man's minders were obviously busy with their own affairs, or quite simply disinterested in proffering sage counsel to a man of 27 who really should be mature enough to understand that as a symbol of royalty, third in succession to the Crown, and in respect of his grandmother, discretion is truly the better part of display.

"We are not against [Prince Harry] letting his hair down once in a while.  For us this is about the freedom of the press", explained managing editor of The Sun.  "We've thought long and hard about this.  The Sun is a responsible paper it works closely with the Royal family.  We take heed of their wishes."  However, doing proper service to the public, which has already been exposed to the excess of joy expressed by Harry, was paramount.

Who can blame them?  There was, after all, no religious fatwa proclaimed against the publication of details already well enough known.  One of Harry's guests in his private Las Vegas hotel suite took some incriminating photos, and then distributed them.  Just in fun.  To prove what a delightful chap Harry is.  Somewhat lacking in self-discipline perhaps, but a barrel of laughs.

Disporting himself, recalling how much fun old Henry VIII had, and he was king, for heaven's sake.

The Sun; DANIEL SORABJI/AFP/GettyImages “Today The Sun is publishing the make Prince Harry party pictures our readers have been prevented from seeing in print," reads an explanation on Friday's cover. "We are doing so despite warnings from the Royal Family’s lawyers," it reads.

The Ultimate Male Arrogance

"I believe this is a mistake.  There are people of goodwill on both sides of the abortion issue and we need to send a message to voters that there is room in the Republican Party for differing perspectives....  The Republican Party would be well served to recognize in its platform that you can be pro-choice and still be a good Republican."  Scott Brown, Massachusetts Republican

What has been revealed about the Republican Party in the United States lately may not be a "war on women" exactly; it may more accurately simply be a gender-based assault on cerebral and social functioning, a kind of antediluvian reaction to one of society's more intractable and polarizing convictions revolving around women's right to control the issue of their own bodies.

But as far as positively influencing American women as potential voters for the Republican Party may be concerned, it's a step backwards.  The revelation that the platform of the Republican Party is a denial of the right of women to access abortion, terminating an unwanted pregnancy, to the extent that all abortions would be forbidden by law, inclusive of those caused by rape, has done the Republicans no good at all during this election season.

It's not all that far to November that women will conveniently overlook the asinine statement by Republican Todd Akin that a "forcible" rape would not result in a pregnancy because women are capable of biologically controlling whether or not they will become pregnant; the body kicking in to reject a pregnancy in the instance of a "forcible" rape.  No one has explained the provenance of an "unforcible"' rape.

And while there have been rumours that she-wolves (bitches) in the wild are capable of re-absorbing a foetus during times of food shortages, never has medical science come up with the whopper that human females are capable of restraining normal biological function to rejection of the formation of those differentiated cells in comprising a foetus in the wake of a rape.

Most helpfully for their own political cause, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee pointed out that Akin was "far from alone" in his redefining of rape and his crusade to deny access to health care through the restriction of federally funded abortion procedures to women made victims of "forcible" rape.

It hasn't helped Mitt Romney's presidential prospects to have been ambushed by this revelation that his newly-chosen vice-presidential running mate, a financial whizz at a time when the U.S. really needs some economic intelligence to grapple with its looming deficit and growing debt, alongside the very possible slide from feeble recovery back into serious recession, to the realization that Paul Ryan co-sponsored Akin's rape bill.

"I'm proud of my pro-life record.  But Mitt Romney is the top of the ticket and Mitt Romney will be president and he will set the policy of the Romney administration", asserted Paul Ryan, referring to Mitt Romney's more relaxed acceptance of a woman's right to choose abortion rather than carry an unwanted pregnancy.

What this controversy has revealed in stark blazing colours is that the Republican Party's "no exceptions" position on abortion has represented their position since 2000.  It has rarely been openly discussed as it is now being spoken about, previously.  Republicans are just now awakening to the possibility that they may be acutely damaged by this publicly-perceived "war on women".

It is a well-earned fear.

They Like Us!  A Lot...

Well, retailers close to the U.S.-Canada border do like Canadians an awful lot.  They don't feel they're being invaded, not at all, when hordes of Canadians drive over the border for a day of shopping.  In fact, while most Americans view Canadians, their continental neighbours and largest trading partners with something quite close to indifference, it's a different story with the retail industry. 

Bearing in mind that this isn't entirely a new reality, but under the circumstances of low economic retail activity overall in the U.S., Canadians are more welcome than ever.

That is to say, Canadians making those countless trips for the exclusive purpose of shopping.  Filling up their gas tanks, moseying about in supermarkets, buying their weekly quota of milk, eggs, dairy products, chicken.  Canadian marketing boards aren't all that popular with Canadian consumers, although they are wildly popular with producers.  Saving a dollar here, a dollar there, is big with some Canadians, well worth the drive to come home with that feeling of shopper satisfaction.

And the traffic from Canada to the United States has been fiercer than ever before.  Canadians have been going stateside in record numbers thanks to a few new and very much appreciated items added to the allure of shopping there.  For one thing, new duty-free exemptions have kicked in nicely, permitting Canadians making overnight trips to declare $200-worth of purchased goods (up from the previous $50) free and clear.  And then, of course, the stronger Canadian dollar as well, at par with or slightly above the U.S. greenback.

"There was concern with the higher exemptions that it could prompt increased shopping trips into the U.S.  Certainly the recent data suggests that's what played out."  Paul Ferley, economist, RBC

Statistics Canada's most recently released report indicates overnight trips to the United States rose to 1.9-million, an increase of 7.5% from the month before.  Car travel is the most popular mode of transit, accounting for over 1.2-million trips.  Canadian retailers are somewhat less than thrilled, most particularly those operating close to the U.S.-Canada border. 

"There was a lot of attention in the media and elsewhere in respect to the increased border exemptions, so it's not surprising that there was increased activity at the border", commented David Wilkes, a senior vice-president at the Retail Council of Canada.  "Until we address the root causes we are going to continue to see consumers going to the U.S. seeking the best value for their dollar."

Let's see now, the most popular items are likely electronics, they're considerably less expensive in the U.S.  For most people it's an irritating puzzle that automobiles, electronics, clothing, household products, books, virtually most consumables, are less expensive in the U.S.  Not always, of course, but usually.  Consumers don't think of what's involved, they're just resentful that they have to pay more for all manner of consumer items than their American neighbours do.

There are many reasons why things are cheaper in the U.S.  Economies of scale, lower fixed costs, a larger domestic market, to begin with.  Then there's the reality of a larger un-unionized workforce, the fact that American workers earn less on average than Canadians do, and at the same time they work harder.

Does it really make all that much sense to make those cross-border shopping trips to save a few dollars?  To many people it just doesn't seem reasonable; they're the people who prefer to buy at home.  To many others the trip is an opportunity to get out, look around, have some fun, because shopping represents fun to quite a number of people.

They can always justify those cross-border shopping trips by reminding one another that our friends, the Americans, need all the help they can get to dig themselves out from under their financial doldrums, with the retail sector reporting poor sales in tandem with an unemployment rate that doesn't seem interested in budging. 

Besides which, the friendly glow that emanates from the welcome they get from U.S. retailers speaks for itself.

They've just got to remember when they pass through the border not to inform the U.S. border authority that they're bringing citrus fruits along with them.

Old-Fashioned Nature

Scorn nature at one's peril. 

But we do, nonetheless, push to achieve another kind of reality, one that confounds nature, but which expresses the sometimes bizarre reality that many of us wish to live and celebrate.  And could there possibly be anything more bizarre and strangely absurd than an individual born female, opting to become a transgendered male deciding despite having undergone both surgery and hormonal alterations (having kept the uterus intact) to become a mother?

Only Trevor MacDonald who decided to keep his uterus and not make genital alterations but did undergo surgery to remove his female breasts in favour of a more male chest appearance, decided to give birth to a child as a 'father', not as a decidedly more traditional 'mother'.  It's only a convention to him, after all.  And, as a father of a very young child, he wished to give his child all the advantages that nature offers to offspring of human beings.

He would breastfeed his son.  The La Leche League Canada group, committed to breastfeeding as a natural course that provides a baby and infant with a superior start in life, gave Mr. MacDonald invaluable assistance.  Teaching him the use of a supplemental feeding tube using donated breast milk.  As a former female having undergone a pregnancy as a male doing the normally impossible; bearing a child, he still produced a small amount of breast milk.

Not enough to suffice, not nearly.  So Mr. Macdonald breastfeeds from both his chest/breast, and through the medium of a long thin tube giving the baby donated breast milk.  Mr. MacDonald has had five years of being a male, having transitioned from female to male at age 22.  To allow himself to become pregnant with the aid of his partner, he temporarily halted his normal dosage of chemical testosterone.

"I overcame significant challenges in order to breastfeed", he explains, "and I believe that this background, combined with leader training, will enable me to effectively help others", he wrote in a letter to the La Leche League.  However, the response from the league was less than satisfying to Mr. MacDonald's expectations: "Policies do preclude men from becoming Leaders".

Mr. MacDonald has aspired to many things in his young life; wishing to turn from a woman into a man, and succeeding.  Determining that simply because he refused to continue life as a woman need not deflect him from becoming a father, and proceeding to do just that.  And then deciding that, having accomplished those milestones, nothing should deter him from becoming Leader of a breastfeeding support group for the La Leche League.

Except, of course, that the La Leche League feels otherwise.  Informing him that since he identifies as a father it would be "difficult to represent LLL philosophy".  For, according to the league, "A Leader needs to be able to help all women interested in breastfeeding.  Fathers are able to help in other ways."  A doubtless crushing disappointment.

Reasonably enough, they remind the father who managed to accomplish the seemingly impossible feat of a man giving birth to a child - other than that nature bestowed that gift upon him when it fashioned him originally as a woman - that "You acknowledge that some women may not be comfortable working with a male Leader."  Case closed?


As far as Mr. MacDonald is concerned this is all terribly tedious and old-fashioned.  There are no limits to what human beings can aspire to.  It's always been known that men - and women too, as well - can become asses if they are so inclined.  He just went one better, becoming a man from a woman, and then having his cake and eating it too.

Regarding mothering and fathering as two distinct concepts, according to Mr. MacDonald is "old fashioned".  For, as it happens, "A lot of people live in between on the gender spectrum and they parent in all kinds of ways."

Yes.  Indeed.

The Ignominy of Queens Park

Countering complaints from Jewish groups that Queens Park, the seat of Ontario provincial government, is offering legitimacy to an virulent anti-Israel group advocating for the destruction of Israel under the banner of al-Quds Day advanced by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the legislature's sergeant-in-arms serenely responded it is all permissible in the name of free speech.

Free speech, then, permits the presence of flags and banners advocating violent destruction of a free state, and the logos of terrorist groups.

The sergeant-in-arms, Dennis Clark, explained his handling of the application process, along with the speaker of the legislature, assuring his critics that the issue would be handled more delicately this year, with fewer provocative speakers and an absence of Hezbollah symbols.

And, according Speaker Dave Levac, the application by the Pro-Palestinian International Day of Al-Quds Day was confirmed to have been given approval.

So that makes for quite odd bedfellows; the Government of Ontario and the Government of Iran agreeing that Al-Quds Day was deserving of being honoured in both countries.  In the country of its origination with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamist Revolution declaring that Israel must be destroyed and Jerusalem retaken for the Arabs of the Middle East and specifically the Palestinians.

And in Canada, where similar rallies were planned for Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto.  The Edmonton co-organizer crowed that his group had no trouble at all securing a permit to similarly present at the Alberta legislature.  "We feel a human rights duty to not be silent about oppression in other parts of the world", said Hosein Taghaddos.

Speaking in nomenclature readily understood and righteously supported by leftist-liberals who have no problems, it would appear, with the notion that life is as simple as they would have it, that there are oppressors and the oppressed, that the Republic of Iran is not a threat to world peace and security with its nuclear plans but Israel, which has been forced to fight for its existence over the length of its existence, represents a condemnatory state.

Tehran rallies for al-Quds Day

With the current president of Iran telling worshippers at Tehran University that "The Zionist regime is a malignant cancer, if even one cell remains on Palestinian land, the current situation will continue in the future. Zionists want to spread."  And the massive rallies in Tehran holding aloft banners in support of the "Palestinian resistance to the Israeli regime."  Although the Hezbollah flags seemed not in evidence in Toronto this year, they featured large in Tehran.

"Imagine, for instance, a neo-Nazi group, the Klu Klux Klan or an anti-gay group coming to the grounds of the legislature the year before.  Let's say it's an anti-gay group proclaiming gay people are behind all the injustice in the world ...  Is there a chance the same group would be permitted to use the grounds again?  Not a chance.  We feel there's a double standard here", expostulated Howard English, senior vice-president at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Toronto-based defence lawyer Sayeh Hassan, along with fellow pro-democracy Iranian Canadians set themselves up to appear at the anti-Zionist rally to counter the "hate rally".  "I don't think this sort of thing has any place on Canadian government space.  If they want to have a rally, go have it somewhere else - not somewhere that's a symbol of our Canadian democratic values."

Pride?  Really?

"There's an urge inside.  I get a tense, nervous feeling.  You've got to express that side of you.  I've got a woman tapping lightly inside my head, asking to come out, and it gets stronger - until I actually dress and let her out - she keeps banging harder and harder."  Paul Lindsay

Paul Lindsay, by his own account, always wanted to be able to dress like a woman, even as a child.  At puberty he was drawn to wearing women's clothing.  A compulsion that he kept well hidden until he was 48 years of age.  By that time he had long been married and was a father of two teen-age children, a boy and a girl.  Teens, needless to say, don't anticipate discovering that either of their parents is not what they appeared to be; they trust that their father and their mother will always be just that.

In Paul Linday's case, he will always be the father of those two children for he did, after all, father them.  His biology as a male made that possible.  His wife of long standing viewed him as a masculine partner and they enjoyed what would be characterized as normal conjugal relations: ergo, the children.  Throughout it all Paul had an inescapable yearning to dress himself in clothing not normally worn by men; stockings, girdles, skirts; items of apparel that would certainly turn heads.

But there's a photograph of Paul Lindsay, and he certainly makes a presentable-enough-appearing woman.  He looks comfortable in the persona.  He would be, since just after he married his wife, Paul began acquiring female garb which he would tuck away secretly in a small crawl space of the apartment they shared.  When his wife was absent from home that was his opportunity to indulge.  He did not divulge to her his fascination with wearing women's clothing.

Fearing, and with good reason, that her reaction would be a visceral one; disbelief and distaste.  And who could blame her?  What woman would expect to be informed by her husband that he thinks her clothing is great, so much so that he too would enjoy wearing them, would she mind?  It would be a rare woman who did not react with shock and a numbing sense of betrayal.  Which is just what happened with Paul, when he informed his wife he liked to cross-dress.

"I said, 'I like to cross-dress'.  She was stunned and didn't believe it.  She shut down and didn't want to talk after that.  In hindsight, I think I couldn't keep the secret anymore - more than just being open about it."  Their marriage was on the skids, in any event.  And Paul decided to break the news to his children, son 19, daughter 17.  His son quietly took the news, stating his father had taught him tolerance.  For his daughter it was a little different; she was fearful of what would happen to their relationship; father/daughter.

"It was weird just trying to figure out what was going on and how to handle it.  I was afraid that he was transsexual and that I'd lose my dad, which wouldn't have been OK.  It's like someone died.  Finding out he's a cross-dresser was a relief, because I got to keep my dad."  More or less.  Sometimes her dad is a man by the name of Paul Lindsay, and sometimes he's a woman named Amanda Ryan.  Paul/Amanda call the female persona Paul's 'femme'.

When Paul is fully dressed as Amanda he wears earrings, makeup, nail polish, hip pads, high-heeled shoes, a dress, wig, and breast forms.  When he is arrayed in this manner people still do a double-take; evidently the male in him remains in full evidence.  The human mind is a strange thing.  It exercises control in psychologically perverse, confounding, confusing ways.  That's quite the gender contortion; slipping from male to female.  Representing another mystery of the unknowable human mind.

Paul spends time on hair removal, undergoing laser treatments on beard and arms.  He sometimes waxes his back and chest, shaves his legs, trims his eyebrows.  And Paul/Amanda do a lot of public education.  "I think that we've accomplished a great deal, the attitude of the public has changed a lot.  Ten years ago, attitudes were very stereotypical.  We were perceived as 'sexual deviants, perverts, and pedophiles'.  Now, when I say the term 'transgender' the response is, 'Oh, I've heard about that, tell me more'.  To me, that's a quantum leap.  It opens the door to conversation and education."

As a male, Paul continues to try to sustain intimate relationships with women.  Once, about a month after initiating a new relationship he told the woman about his need to cross-dress.  Her response was that she was fine with the situation and they had a four-year relationship.  In the final analysis, however, the relationship broke down, because the woman wanted a male who was positive about his gender, not someone who would meander from one identity to the other.

"Amanda", he explains, "is a significant part of my life - not one I want to repress anymore.  If someone is not interested in getting involved with me as a whole, then why bother being involved?  I'd rather be true to myself.  I spent too many years trying to figure out who Amanda is to simply give up on that."

So he has figured out who Amanda is, then?  As though life isn't complicated enough.

"I Told Her I Loved Her"

"Her family blamed me for murdering her.  They said I shot her or something.  They said my family helped hide the evidence.  I was shocked... I think I deserve an apology."  Andrew Cardinal

 She was there, beside him, and restless and annoyed, and then suddenly, when he looked up, she wasn't there at all.  Gone, and he assumed she'd just stubbornly retraced their steps to return to the remote camp they had vacated earlier in the day, seven kilometres back, in dense brush.  They had finished their rabbit-trapping trip in Northern Alberta, and were preparing to decamp.  And that's when he discovered, at that juncture that the keys to their ATV weren't in his possession after all.

Which prompted him to kneel down to sift through the detritus at their feet - pine needles, decaying leaves - to see if he could find the keys.  "Next thing you know, I'm talking to myself.  I thought she took off back to the cabin."  And that was July 31.  Andrew Cardinal was unable to find his wife, Rhonda.  Not that he didn't look everywhere he could think of, but she was nowhere he could determine.

He halted his search for the missing keys, and set out on foot.  He thought he'd just come across her by retracing the steps they'd earlier taken.  She wasn't at their hunting camp.  He went back to where they'd ended up when he discovered his keys to be missing.  Not there either.  So out he went on foot again, to the highway and rescue. Two weeks went by and no sight of her, nothing at all. 

The RCMP used ATVs, a search helicopter, and swept the area with the help of community volunteers and members of their family.  Ah, yes, the family.  Some of them, very upset about Rhonda Cardinal's absence, accused her husband of having murdered her.    When she was eventually found, she had no explanation for having gone missing; simply that she had "blacked out", woke up lost, and began her wandering.

As for Rhonda Cardinal, she said later she had heard a helicopter, but since she was in dense woods, knew she couldn't be seen.  She kept walking, through muskeg, eating berries where she could, falling asleep every night under trees, exhausted with the effort.  At one point she found an isolated cabin, broke into it, found canned food, water and a change of socks for her blistered feet.  She remained there for several days before setting out again.

After another short walk she found herself on a road, and a few minutes later a truck appeared.  Which brought her back to Calling Lake, where her husband was waiting.  "I told her I loved her.  And I told her I was happy she was alive", said her husband.  The moral of that story: stay put.  Two heads are better than one, and two bodies clasped together at night are both warming and comforting.

Who Knew?

"I think they need to take it very seriously.  It's much mores significant than a lot of other environmental health risks that people react to, for example [plastics ingredient] bisphenol-A and throwing out all the plastic baby bottles, when the risk is quite a bit smaller than radon.

"The problem is that that risk is tangible and you can blame someone: the people who made those bottles.  With radon, you can't blame anyone, because it's naturally occurring.  You can't smell it, see it or taste it.  And it's not immediate, it's long term."  Kelly Bush, Health Canada spokesperson

The public is vaguely aware that there are harmful chemicals and other substances all around us, in the earth we and our homes stand upon, in the air we breathe, and in the food we eat.  For the most part, arsenic exists naturally, and it's a deadly poison, but we take it up in such minuscule quantities in the natural environment it poses no risk to our health, unless there's something like a chemical spill from an industrial site; mercury or something lethal of that nature contaminating the environment.


But radon.  Seeping without our awareness into homes and in the event, representing the cause of lung-cancer deaths, far more than previously estimated by Health Canada?  A recently-undertaken study has concluded that radon in the environment (radioactive gas), is quite prevalent in some areas.  So much so that it represents about 16% causative of lung cancer cases; whereas the previous estimate held that number to be 10%. Because of exposure to radon naturally produced when soil-based uranium degrades, about 3,200 Canadians die on an annual basis. 

Radon reduction needs to be increased, urge researchers at Health Canada, publishing their results in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry.  And, according to Kelly Bush of Health Canada, it's an "uphill battle" to inform people, despite the increased public awareness and warning efforts of Health Canada.  People are simply more comfortable setting aside the notion of harms in the soil, whereas man-made substances that threaten health and safety are addressed.

"I get the calls from the 40- or 50-year-old Canadians with lung cancer who have never smoked and they say 'I wish I had known', or 'I wish I had tested'.  And that's what keeps me going", she states, recommending that Canadians everywhere have their homes tested for radon levels.  There are do-it-yourself testing kits sold at hardware outlets.  Alternately, professionals can be hired to do the testing.  And then, according to the results, corrective action taken. 


Kits cost about $50.  If radon levels exceed 200 Bqm3, "active soil depressurization" should be undertaken, whereby a pipe is installed in the earth below the house foundation, fed outside the house in a process that ends up drawing over 90% of the contaminated air away from the home.  The cost of the procedure ranges from $1,000 to $3,000. 


Radon is the next largest cause of the most deadly type of malignant lung cancer, after smoking.  Homes in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick are likelier than other provinces to register high levels of radon exposure.  One in five Manitoba and New Brunswick homes register above the permissible limit of radon gas.  But 7% of houses nationally register levels of radon above 200 Becquerels per cubic metre of air, alerting to the need of correction.

Op-Ed: Why the Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant

Published: Sunday, March 18, 2007 4:46 PM

History lessons are often incredibly simple.

Paul E. Marek

Paul E. Marek is a second-generation Canadian, whose grandparents fled Czechoslovakia just prior to the Nazi takeover. He is an educational consultant specializing in programs that protect children from predatory adults.

► More from this writer

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War II. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

“Very few people were true Nazis,” he said, “but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”

We are told again and again by experts and talking heads that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unquantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behea
The fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.
d, murder, or execute honor killings. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority,” and it is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a war-mongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across Southeast Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians - most killed by sword, shovel and bayonet. And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving”?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt; yet, for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because, like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians and many others, have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us, watching it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

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Superior Non-Animal Training Methods

"Canadian federal animal welfare guidelines require that alternatives to animal use be used whenever available, and the (Department of National Defence) is continuing to violate these provisions since superior non-animal methods are widely available and in use around the world instead of crude animal labs.

"In addition to the surgical trauma course in Canada, some trainees are also sent to (DRDC Suffield in southern Alberta) to take part in a 'live agent training' course in which pigs are exposed to nerve agents like sarin and mustard gas. 

"The animals suffer seizures, irregular heartbeats, difficulty breathing, bleeding and possibly even death."  Justin Goodman, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

PETA has acquired a reputation as a sometimes-violent, always controversial, adamantly-dedicated animal rights group whose methods of countering animal abuse strikes many within the public as difficult to accept.  Their ongoing campaigns in defence of animal rights have made them many enemies and there are countless skeptics about how useful their confrontational tactics really are.  But they do get headlines, and plenty of publicity.

A report recently published in the journal Military Medicine outlines that there are six of twenty-eight NATO countries which have never moved away from the use of live animals - mostly pigs and goats - in the training protocols of battlefield doctors.  At a time when "superior non-animal training methods are widely available", according to one of the study's co-authors.

"Growing public concern for animal welfare, advances in computerized medical simulation technology, educational considerations and economic barriers have drawn a critical eye to animal use in military medical training", states a study by Shalin Gala and Justin Goodman from PETA, and Maj. Michael Murphy, from the Indiana University School of Medicine, along with Marion Balsam, former commander of Virginia's Naval Medical Centre Portsmouth.

Canada, the United States, Norway, Denmark, Poland and Britain continue to train trauma surgeons in the treatment of "penetrating injuries, gunshot wounds and amputation hemorrhaging", along with injuries suffered as a result of exposure to chemical agents, according to the report.  Which concludes that "further scrutiny is needed by military leadership and civilian policy-makers to determine what opportunities exist to replace animal use with other methods."

An unidentified official from the Canadian Department of National Defence had this to say: "I can confirm that as a member of the Canadian Council on Animal Care which establishes the national norms on the use of vertebrates in research, teaching and testing, DND does, when no other scientifically valid alternative exists, use animals in defence research/training activities."

Isn't it past time to stop?  There are more than enough sophisticated computer-enhanced models capable of producing very similar data to that acquired with the use of live animals, exposing them to tortuous methods of experimentation, causing pain and death.  Surely advanced societies invested in responsible management of research and health care are capable of better than this?

Provincial Long-Term Care Challenge

"He went into the room of an old man, who told him to get out, and Mohamed pushed the man.

"'They said, we're arresting him,' and they put handcuffs on him, put a bag over his head and took him away.  It was really devastating.  The way they handled it was scary, the worst thing that's ever happened to us."  Laki Ali, mother of Mohamed Ahmed, 24, 6-4, 279 lb., mentally challenged.

Perhaps, in retrospect, not the worst thing that has ever happened to them.  Being abandoned by husband and father who returned from his diplomatic posting in Ottawa to Somalia to live on his own, leaving his family to fend for themselves, might have been the worst thing.  Or, when Mohamed Ahmed spent three months in the Innes Road detention centre after he was charged with assaulting his sister in 2010.

Where, according to Laki Ali, Mohamed's desperate mother, the inmates there beat her son.  And she is certain that the beating caused a stroke; in any event he had a stroke.  And then there was the time - one of many - when he became angry, chased his mother around her second-floor apartment, and she fell from the balcony while trying to escape Ahmed, in the process fracturing her pelvis, hip and left foot.

Ahmed's brothers and sisters want nothing to do with their brother.  They're getting on with their lives and they've no time to waste trying to cope with his temper tantrums.  Nor with anything else relating to him.  Ahmed requires assistance in bathing, getting dressed and eating.  He is developmentally delayed, seriously so.  He experiences seizures, has poor impulse control and when he's agitated, lashes out.

During his aggressive episodes he's more than a handful at 6'-4", weighing in at 279 pounds.  He is said to have the mental capacity of an 8-year-old.  An unruly, physically powerful 8-year-old, extremely difficult to reason with or control.  When he was admitted to The Ottawa Hospital for treatment of a medication reaction his mother refused to take him home, admitting she could no longer cope.

Trouble is, there are no open places for people requiring long-term care.  Ontario has no fewer than 11,000 people awaiting their turn for residential supports, and many appear to be in situations as difficult to cope with as Mohamed Ahmed's.  He remained in a private room at The Ottawa Hospital while social workers tried to find a place for him.  The hospital estimated it cost them $1,500 daily to provide for Ahmed.

He was unhappy at the hospital's neurological unit, and attempted on several occasions to run away.  The last time that happened his mother brought him back, and that's when he went into the room of an elderly man instead of his own room and took offense when the man ordered him away.  He was rough with the old man, and rough toward a police officer who appeared on the scene.  The Ottawa Hospital discharged him and won't entertain the possibility of re-admitting him.

"Either I took him home and put his safety and my safety at risk, or I let him go to the detention centre", said Mohamed Ahmed's mother Laki Ali, in despair.

Charter Violation

For police officers who testify that they have been inadequately trained to observer the letter of the law in attempting to pursue their profession upholding public safety and security, it may be a subterfuge attempt to distract legal authorities from their course of action.  It certainly doesn't work very well.  There is an obvious conflict between professional conduct that seeks to painstakingly ensure that no laws have been disrupted in the pursuit of acquiring evidence against society's maladjusted anti-social elements, and police anxious to bring them to justice.

As has been evidenced yet again where a justice has dismissed evidence of a fairly serious nature obtained by an zealous law enforcement officer, enabling the accused to walk away from charges brought against them.  Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey ruled that Const.Nicholas Benard of the Ottawa Police Service was guilty of committing a "serious" breach of Charter rights when he obtained a warrant to search the Robinson Avenue residence of Michael Parks.

Police have long relied upon a network of underworld characters who would be agreeable to releasing information to them that might prove to be useful in obtaining evidence against criminals.  That these informants are part of the criminal network of any city is obvious; they are on the inside of the wrong side of the law and as a result are privy to information not known to law enforcement agents.  Those law enforcement agents value the information given them furtively by informants.

And, when possible, use that valuable information to the best they are advantaged to.  In the case of Constable Benard, information he received from members of the criminal underworld alerted him to the fact that an illegal drug-handler was in possession of forbidden weapons.  The tip Constable Benard received from two confidential informants led him to seek a warrant from a justice of the peace.  Informed there was a backlog of such requests, he decided, after conferring with colleagues and superiors, to try another tack.

The second time around he informed the justice of the peace that the matter was one of urgency, involving a prohibited weapon.  Which enabled him to obtain a telewarrant, one issued in recognition of urgencies where it is impracticable for the applicant to appear before a justice of the peace or a judge. 
"I do question how the situation all of a sudden became urgent just hours after leaving the courthouse except that urgency is necessary to get a warrant", wrote the judge disparagingly.

"The officer said at no time did he receive information that the gun was going to be used or more.  Clearly no urgencies or exigencies existed or the warrant would have been submitted earlier", she wrote.  The grounds leading to the warrant request were lacking urgency.  Both informants described the man whose house was searched as a "back-end supplier" of cocaine to street dealers, with a handgun in his residence.  With ample time involved to proceed along approved methods.

The judge, while admitting she was "acutely aware" of a societal interest in prosecuting gun crimes, could not see her way clear to permitting the seizures from the home of the individual charged in view of the illegal manner of seeking and issuance of the search request warrant.  Exculpating himself, Constable Benard claimed never to have taken a search warrant course, with no formal education about warrants.

The issue here is that despite what has been taken as a "serious" breach of required methodology, police had seized a stolen semi-automatic Beretta handgun along with a Taser, six rounds of .22-calibre ammunition, two 12-gauge shotgun shells and a quantity of Oxycocet pills.  The charges brought against two men, the home owner, Michael Parks and his friend Michel Gallinger included possession of a loaded prohibited firearm which charge alone carries a three-year mandatory minimum prison sentence.

The evidence, however, was dismissed.  All counts against the two men were discharged.  And, although the judge was supremely concerned with the letter of the law, and had she not been and the men had faced justice with the help of the evidence, it is likely the lawyer retained by the two men might have invoked the very issue that the judge had identified.  Either way, it represents a travesty that criminals of this ilk can be identified, evidence brought, charges laid, and because of shoddy police work, they walk away.

Fact Or Fiction?

"The sun could explode and we would all die, but modelling based on the most extreme events that we know of says we do not believe a catastrophic return to the stone age is on the cards."  Andrew Richards, severe risk analyst at National Grid

July 5, 2012 M6.1 Solar Flare Full DiskCredit: NASA/SDO/AIA The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured this image of the sun during an M6.1 flare that peaked at 7:44 AM EDT on July 5, 2012. The image is shown in the 304 Angstrom wavelength, which is typically colorized in red.

There is uncertainty around the reality of the sun reaching a peak in its ten-year activity cycle.  A heightened risk that a massive solar storm could knock out power grids, satellites and communications.  We are highly dependent on the anticipated reliability of those power grids, satellites and communications.  Our civil, defence, infrastructures depend on that reliability.

"Governments are taking it very seriously.  These things may be very rare but when they happen, the consequences can be catastrophic", explained space weather specialist Mike Hapgood of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Britain.

It is estimated that there is an approximately 12% chance of a major solar storm each decade.  The last such major solar storm occurred one hundred, fifty years ago.  Technology, one hundred, fifty years ago was in its relative infancy.  In the past fifty years science and inventive humankind have converted the world's advance in technologies beyond what most fertile-minded science fiction writers might ever have imagined.

What's more the inter-relatedness of technologies on an international scale is boundless.  We can realistically anticipate a proverbial domino effect should an interruption in mass communications or energy grid take place discretely, for there are few boundaries that cannot be breached by enmeshed systems.

The magnetically charged plasma that the sun twists out in its coronal mass ejections is a threat.  There have been ample instances in the past of just how intrusive and destructive those millions of tonnes of gas hurtling through space can be.  With little advance warning, Earth can potentially become engulfed by that magnetically charged plasma.

The force of that energy is indescribably powerful.  We have no protection against such a force of nature, no magical iron shield that would keep all that we depend upon intact.  Geomagnetic storms are unpredictable and chaos-causing.  Imagine stranded trains, hospitals plunged into darkness and incapacity, miners trapped underground - this can happen anywhere.

With charged particles forced through satellites at hundreds of miles per second, none can withstand the pressure.  Radio communications with planes aloft can be taken out of commission with solar storms affecting the ionosphere, Earth's upper atmosphere where long-range radio waves travel.  Internet capability? Forget it.

Governments are only just beginning to realize the impact and import of this disaster scenario courtesy of sun flares.  "Politically, it started to get some purchase about three years ago.  We know they are real effects, but we are nowhere near there, in terms of our understanding", explains Andrew Richards at the National Grid.

North American and European scientists monitor the sun, and issue warnings to their governments, to power companies satellite operators and airlines.  To take evasive action if at all possible. Work previously performed relating to a greater understanding about space weather and the impact it may or may not have on Earth is relatively new, dating back only twenty to thirty years.

Scientists alert to disastrous sun spot events, fearing the worst and raising an alarm would have at most a few days to prepare network transformers for action to possibly spread the electrical load as much as possible when such a storm hits to avoid overload and collapse.  There's nothing quite like that potential to fix the mind.

 Medical or Legal?

"In an era of people dying of horrible opportunistic infections and prolonged agonizing deaths, it was a major impetus for many to engage in safer sex practices.

"We had a disease that was sexually transmitted, a disease that carries all kinds of connotations with it.  It brings out the worst in people when it comes to looking at people's sexual practices, sexual preferences and having sex.  We went through a period of stigma and death."  Don Kilby, M.D., Director of Health Services, University of Ottawa

In the early 1980s and up to the 1990s, contracting AIDS was a death sentence.  A slow, agonizing death was guaranteed those who become AIDS infected.  Until the advent of retroviral drugs people lived in fear of experiencing a lonely, agonizing and long-drawn-out journey to death.  "People were sick and people were dying."  Twenty years later, people are able to control HIV infection, and live fairly normal lives.

What HIV-infected men deplore, however, is that they must reveal to any potential sex partners that they are HIV-positive.  And this is the law.  Whether or not their HIV condition is under control and is not deemed to be infectious, the Criminal Code of Canada states they are legally obliged to disclose their HIV status to their sexual partners.

Criminal charges can be laid if they ignore that obligation.  And they could be facing charges ranging from aggravated sexual assault to murder.  In fact, there have been instances where heterosexual men have not divulged their status to female partners and the women subsequently learned they were infected, and some of those women have died of HIV-related causes as a result.

People with HIV must maintain their condition to ensure it is under control with life-long regular medical checkups that monitor viral loads and CD4 cell counts.  the viral load represents the amount of HIV in someone's bloodstream; the higher the viral load, the faster the CD4 cell count falls, which impacts the body's immune response, increasing opportunistic infection potential.

When the viral load is diminished dramatically or undetectable there is then little to no opportunity of transmission to someone else.  Those with a dropped CD4 count resulting from high viral loads must take daily medication to reverse the situation.  And as a result of the availability of antiretrovirals HIV has been altered from representing a death sentence to having a disease that can be treated, not cured.

In 1998 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that people with HIV had a legal obligation to inform someone before taking part in sexual acts, that they have a disease carrying a "significant risk".  Violation of that law is liable to prosecution, whether or not the virus is transmitted. 

"Unfortunately, I think it is normalizing (criminalization).  It is bringing the criminal law and the language of the legal system into everyday discussion of HIV.  It becomes more natural to use criminal law to describe something that is a health issue.  It is a medical diagnosis that is determining potential criminality", explains an objector, Patrick O'Byrne, Associate professor at University of Ottawa.

On the other side of the equation is the opinion of Carissima Mathen, law professor at the University of Ottawa.  "It's an issue about the conditions under which people are entitled to choose with whom they have sexual contact.  It is a personal autonomy and a personal choice issue that the criminal law seeks to protect."

"But I do think that a person is entitled to that information if they ask for it.  If you don't give it to them, we are entitled to look into the why and I think there is the possibility that a crime has occurred."

The trouble is, people may not always enquire, out of a sense of delicacy, hoping that their sex partner will choose to divulge their status beforehand.  Which is precisely why there is a law requiring people with HIV to take the initiative and make that information known before engaging in sex.

Despite that people with HIV feel themselves to be disentitled to normal relations just like anyone else.  The simple fact is, they're not just like anyone else.  They may infect someone else with HIV.  There is no cure for it.  Their casual attitude might result in someone else having to undergo the same drug regimen and constant medical checks they must.

Diabetes is also a lifetime balance with a threat to human health that is desperately dire.  People with diabetes must see their doctors constantly to check the state of their heart, eyes, kidneys, nerves.  Their need to inject insulin multiple times daily, to test their blood sugar levels, to ensure proper management is roughly analogous to HIV sufferers.

But those with diabetes cannot threaten the health of their sex partners; diabetes is not transferable to others by contact, HIV is.