Addicted to Excitement

Perhaps more accurately, addicted to the varied roles that engender attention, acclaim, the kind of notice normally accorded celebrities of one kind or another.  For someone owning varied attributes, intelligence, beauty, physical prowess - the allure of presenting as an original, authentically athletic, obviously desirable individual, imbued with talent on many levels of human aspirations - admiring attention becomes addictive.

High-powered men, engaged in politics, in the upper echelons of corporate affairs, those who have attained great wealth, or whose professional achievements in science, medicine, sport, art, theatre have gained them a devoutly admiring following often succumb to the attraction of dalliance with fervent hangers-on.  It is most commonly recognized as an overt attribute of musicians and sport figures.  Less commonly exercised other than covertly by others.

For the most part, it is male figures who indulge in exercising their options for a wide range of sex partners.  Other than in exceptional circumstances where those celebrated figures have portrayed themselves as other than given to relaxed morals in exuberant promiscuity, these peccadilloes are usually shrugged off as irrelevant to their extraordinary talents and of little consequence.

When they have burnished a reputation for impeccable behaviour and are then discovered to have been leading a secret life of disguised libertinism, obeying their libidinous cravings, they are exposed to the disappointed opprobrium of those who once set them on the pedestal of quasi-immortal fame in recognition of their outstanding performances in their professions.

So why be surprised when a woman does the same thing?  Perhaps because it's a woman who appears wholesome and unaffected by her supreme physical abilities.  Like former U.S. Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton.  Who, in an interview with the website Smoking Gun once her double life was outed, explained that she found the escort business she was clandestinely engaged in "exciting".
FILE - In this Feb. 27, 1999, file photo, Suzy Hamilton reacts after winning the women's 1,500 meter run with a time of 4:13.96 at the USA Championships athletics meet in Atlanta. he three-time Olympian has admitted leading a double life as an escort. She apologized Thursday, Dec. 20, 2012, after a report by The Smoking Gun website said she had been working as a prostitute in Las Vegas. Photo: John Bazemore / AP

"She took "dates" in Las Vegas, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston under the alias Kelly Lundy, working for Haley Heston's Private Collection.  Charging hefty fees of $600 each hour of her services, or ten times that amount for her full attention for a full day.  "I met Haley with the idea of fulfilling a fantasy and only doing this for the short term.  Well, after my first date I was hooked, and have been doing my best to visit Las Vegas as often as my schedule allows."

Suzy Favor Hamilton poses for a portrait at her home in Shorewood Hills a suburb of Madison, Wis. in 2012. The three-time Olympian has admitted leading a double life as an escort. She apologized Thursday after a report by The Smoking Gun website said she had been working as a prostitute in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Michael Sears) Photo: Getty Images / SL

Not that this 44-year-old mother of a 7-year-old boy, wife of her college sweetheart has a lot of spare time.  She runs her own business.  She is hired by organizations to deliver motivational speeches.  She does promotional work for Disney and for the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon series.  And her real estate business in Wisconsin (with her husband) keeps her quite busy.

They are an affluent couple, living a satisfying life.  She has appeared in commercials for well-known brands like Nike, Reebok and Pert Plus shampoo.  She is fit and beautiful and has no problem attracting attention.  She also seems to have no problem with the fact that her husband is unhappy, knowing about her double life.  "He tried to get me to stop. He wasn't supportive of me at all."

That must be quite the understatement.  Would she have expected him to be?  And here's the kicker; she is rather put out that she was outed.  She had informed several of her casual partners in the business of her real identity.  And someone she 'trusted' repeated what was told to him in confidence; you know how such men like to brag of their conquests, of their sexual contacts...? 

To her this represented an unforgivable transgression of trust.  She blames herself for being too "trusting".  This is rather an astonishing interpretation of trust.  Trust, one might logically think, is what her husband and her son have in their wife and mother.  Only to have discovered (at least her husband) that trust was misplaced. 

But for exceptional athlete and world running champion Suzy Hamilton, her trust in someone in her secret business was misplaced.  "He totally broke all the rules by outing me.  I don't want to be like him because he is scum.  And I will not become scum to make myself feel good."  And so - there!

Disclosing HIV

Disclose, reveal, tell the truth, inform a sex partner to enable him/her to make a choice representative of true consensual agreement.  Or, simply put, face the consequences.  Surely that is more than fair and just.  After all, if ignorance of the facts and the potential for complicating one's life through trust of one's fellow man might cause harm to the individual without full knowledge it should be incumbent upon the individual harbouring a dread disease to divulge that fact.

Rather than compromise the health and security of another human being.  In the event that the individual who has HIV believes themselves to have a low viral load not likely to communicate to another person, does that still take them off the hook of moral responsibility?  Those in that position believe that to be the case.  Others, not so much.  The instances where people with AIDS have gone on to infect others by not disclosing the truth represents one too many cases of wilful neglect causing great harm.

The Supreme Court of Canada has brought down its decision, and it does compromise to a degree.  Having ruled that an individual living with the virus does not necessarily legally have to disclose their health status to a sex partner if a condom is being used and they have what is termed 'low viral loads'.  Not for them, evidently, to rule on the morality of permitting a sex partner to assume that all is well and no danger attaches to sex with someone who seems fine. 

Deception in love and war and politics take place all the time.  Usually the law does not abet deception.  On the other hand, it is said by those for whom the matter holds great moment, that the scientific medical community feel fairly assured about the lowered incidences of communicability of the disease under certain circumstances.  A matter that should surely be left to the personal discretion of a fully informed sex partner, as a courtesy at the very least, so that the sex act between two people is truly 'consensual' in nature.

"However, on the evidence before us, the ultimate percentage risk of transmission resulting from the combined effect of condom use and low viral load is clearly extremely low - so low that the risk is reduced to a speculative possibility rather than a realistic possibility." 
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin

On the positive side the court reinstated three convictions against Clato Lual Mabior, a former resident of Winnipeg who served a jail sentence and was deported to his native South Sudan subsequently.  This man was convicted in 2008 for failing to disclose his HIV-positive state to no fewer than nine women he had sex with.  He also had sex with a 12-year-old girl.  He had been convicted on six counts of aggravated sexual assault and served nine years in prison.

So then, outside the limits of low viral loads and condom use, the ruling holds that for any "realistic possibility of transmission of HIV" as a result of unprotected sex, the condition poses "significant risk of serious bodily harm" and requires, then, that HIV-positive individuals have an obligation under the law to disclose their medical condition.

"They say you're going to be criminalized if you don't disclose, if there's any realistic possibility you have transmitted the virus, no matter how low.  They pretty much went as far as they could have gone in the direction of criminalization", said Isabel Grant, an expert on HIV disclosure law, University of British Columbia. 

Which is as it should be; intimacy and trust and human health require no less than honest revelation of a potential risk.

Stunning Social Failure

 

What an incredible indictment of society, an utter and complete failure of parents and their extended families to give emotional support and guidance to young children.  And those young children, from infancy onward, left to their own devices to attempt to understand their place in the world that surrounds them.  A world where their parents have no emotional attachment and sense of responsibility.

Where, instead of security and comfort, the child is exposed to neglect and brutality.  A result of which a child who never in his life had any meaningful direction, no one to positively pattern himself after, anyone whose values would be a credit to society, is now, at age thirteen, accused of first-degree murder in the killing of his two-year-old half brother and the sexual abuse of another, five-year-old half-brother.

Children naturally enough know very little but what they observe and what they experience and what they suffer.  What has been done to them and considered normal, is what they have been given instruction to repeat, themselves.  At the age of two, Cristian Fernandez was discovered wandering a street in South Florida, naked, dirty.

He was in the charge of his grandmother, who was herself found to be in a motel room, shooting up cocaine, while his fourteen-year-old mother was absent completely.  His father was convicted of sexual assault and Cristian was sexually assaulted by a cousin, later beaten by his stepfather, who then committed suicide.

The State of Florida has decided in its prosecutorial wisdom in the search for justice to charge the boy as an adult.  He is, understandably, the youngest inmate awaiting trial in Duval County whose conviction of first-degree murder, if he is indeed found guilty, may bring him a lifetime in prison as a consequence of his actions.

This is a child who was horribly deprived of all the comforts and emotional support and societal, ethical and moral guidance that children have every right to expect.  That his direction in life has been morally depraved is the responsibility first of his family, and second - albeit at a remove - of the society in which he lives.

If the young boy is detached from what occurs around him, and reacts without anticipating what will result, it doesn't represent a mystery why that could be.  He should be brought to trial in a youth criminal court.  What this young boy whose needs were denied and himself abandoned to the fate that developed really needs is a return to the very basics of what it is to be a human being.

If rehabilitation is a goal for adult offenders of society's normatives, why would it not be far more of a necessity in recognition of the boy's humanity-  denied, for Cristian Fernandez?

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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Avoidable Tragedies

"She's on I think 17 different medications.  She needs operations.  She needs therapy.  One day she's going to need special accommodations in her home.  She's going to need 24-hour care.  There are tremendous, significant bills and it's a situation of really quality of life."  Charles Willinger, Attorney-at-law

Mr. Willinger's client, Charla Nash is "in total darkness", "without eyes, without hands".  She is "permanently scarred, emotionally, physically". She has amassed millions of dollars in medical and other bills. The 51-year-old woman, a resident of Stamford, Connecticut, "endures loneliness, despair and suffering beyond anyone's comprehension in this room". 

The room spoken of being in fact, a chamber where Claims Commissioner J. Paul Vance conducted a hearing into Ms. Nash's claim against the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.  "I hope and pray that the commissioner will give me my day in court", said Ms. Nash.  "And I also pray that I hope this never happens to anyone else again.  It is not nice."

That is a masterful understatement of reality.  Ms. Nash has undergone a complete face transplant.  There are no guarantees that the transplant will not, one day fail.  She had two hands transplanted, and they did fail; she is now without hands, although she hopes to undergo at some future date, another operation to restore what she has lost.

A 200-pound pet chimpanzee, on the loose, tore off Ms. Nash's nose, lips, eyelids and hands before it was shot dead by police.  She was also blinded.  The attack took place in February 2009, after she was asked by a friend to help her entice the runaway animal back to its home in the owner's house.  When she agreed to help, she was attacked in that process by the animal.

"There is no claim that the state directly caused Ms. Nash's injuries.  The state did not own or possess the chimp that attacked her", claimed Assistant Attorney General Maite Barainca.  But in fact, the issue of the chimp's growing threat to society had not been overlooked by the state agencies.  While state officials contend they did not have the authority to seize the animal, they were warned of the danger involved to the public.

A state biologist had written a memo to state officials in 2008, outlining the potential of the animal seriously causing harm if it felt threatened, characterizing its presence in the community as an "accident waiting to happen."  The biologist warned state authorities that the chimpanzee had reached maturity, "is very large and tremendously strong."

"I am concerned that if he feels threatened or if someone enters his territory, he could seriously hurt someone."  His reports were obviously carefully filed away.  But not forgotten; the animal was commonly referred to as "the gorilla in Stamford". 

For her part, Ms. Nash had this to say about her dreadful experiences: "I miss home.  when you're in a facility, you're alone.  It's hard.  But I'm thankful that I'm still here."

 A Disobedient Wife

"My daughter always said she wouldn't stop studying, and would one day become important, having to travel to work in a convoy of cars.  But now she is under a tonne of clay."

Photo:wfiupublicradio

Afghan women in eastern Afghanistan lead tightly circumscribed lives. Most wear burqas, the body-concealing garment, when out of their homes. 

A young woman in Afghanistan, aspiring to make something of herself, to attend school, to study and to attain an education, and to fulfill a personal dream to make an impression of usefulness in her society, to garner respect for what she could accomplish, to live a life of promise.  But then, this is Afghanistan, and girls and women are not independent, and they cannot choose what kind of life they may live.

That choice is taken from them, when, as is traditional, their family sees fit to oblige the girls to marry someone of their parents' choice.  Someone the girls have never met.  Someone who in all likelihood has no intention of honouring them as a human being, but using them for their breeding potential, as a servant, as someone who will be in thrall to do their bidding without complaint.

For there is no one to complain to.  And it is perfectly permissible - indeed, recommended - that Afghan men beat their wives to remind them constantly who it is who controls decision making, and it is not the women.  The women of Afghanistan must be discreet and modest, and most learn early in life how that is accomplished - through the medium of a dark blue head-to-toe covering in a hot climate where the burqa stifles and makes movement awkward and uncomfortable.

The mother mourning the death of her daughter Tamana calls out: "My daughter!  Why did they kill you so brutally?" while screaming her pained anguish in the cemetery 65 kilometres north of Kabul.  The young woman was killed by a relative in what is commonly refrred to as an "honour killing".  An event that is growing rapidly as violence steadily grows in Afghanistan against vulnerable women.

The murders of 52 girls and women in the past four months has been recorded by Afghanistan's independent human rights commission.  Of those murders 42 were classified as honour killings; double the number that had been committed in all of the year before.  President Hamid Karzai's anxiety to reach a truce and understanding with the Taliban has been cited as the reason.

The situation where women and girls were banned under the Taliban from education, voting, working outside the home, where they were not permitted to be out in public without a male family escort, where music and dance were banned, is threatening to return.  The government of President Karzai appears to be backsliding on its stated commitment to women's rights and equality.

A week ago, Hanifa Safi, head of women's affairs in eastern Laghman province was killed when a bomb planted on her car exploded.  "Unfortunately incidents against women do occur.  The government is doing what it can", stated Siamak Herawi, a government spokesperson.

Tamana was fifteen years old.  She died close to where a 21-year-old woman was publicly executed by the Taliban a month before for alleged adultery before a crowd of approving, cheering Afghan men.   Tamana was forcibly married to her cousin.  She had refused his overtures for months.  She was beaten and killed for being "disobedient".

No one has been arrested for her death.  But the man who her family knows killed their daughter gave his sister as a bride to Tamana's brother as compensation.  This is an Afghan social practice.

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?

 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.

Hunt On For Killer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Be Aware"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mordant Observations From The Scene

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commendations Versus Justice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Punishment: Death

Capital punishment, though many countries of the world are now eschewing that final, irreversible punishment for crimes against society, still takes thousands of lives each year, in countries for which criminal punishment is felt to merit death rather than cluttering up state prisons with penalties of life imprisonment. 

In some countries, like Canada, for example, which abolished capital punishment in 1976, a life-sentence for first-degree murder of police officers or prison guards will net the accused 25 years.

Those countries of the world practising capital punishment are headed by China, the most populous country in the world, where, over the last four years, thousands were executed; in excess of six thousand prisoners in 2007 alone were executed for their crimes.  Crimes punishable by the death penalty there include tax fraud, drug offences, corruption and property theft.

In order of numbers executed by the state through capital punishment, the countries are listed as China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, United States, Pakistan, Yemen, North Korea, Vietnam, Libya, Afghanistan, Japan, Syria, Sudan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Egypt, Indonesia.  After which the remaining countries' annual executions are in the single digits.

In Iran, capital punishment is merited for convictions of murder, rape, adultery, pedophilia, sodomy, drug traffickers, armed robbery, kidnapping, terrorism and treason.  About 360 prisoners met their end in 2011, most for drug trafficking.  Under the above-stated categories, political prisoners accused of acting against the interests of the state are executed, as are homosexuals.

In Saudi Arabia, offences range from murder, rape, armed robbery, repeated drug use, apostasy, adultery, witchcraft and sorcery, to qualify for the death penalty.  Executions can be effected by beheading with a sword, stoning or firing squad, as well as by crucifixion.  Between 2007 and 2010, 345 executions were carried out by public beheading.  In 2011, the last reported execution for sorcery took place.

Iraq executed 34 people in 2012 on one day alone.  The death penalty will be imposed for 48 crimes which include damage to public property as an example of non-fatal crimes.  In 2011, 313 people were sentenced to death, over half convicted of murder.  Others were charged as drug traffickers, kidnappers for ransom and rape, and three were executed for blasphemy charges.

In the United States capital punishment is related only to homicide crimes including aggravated murder, felony murder and contract killing.  Execution method varies, with the most common technique being lethal injection.  A 2011 Gallup poll indicated that 61% of Americans favoured capital punishment, with 35% opposing it.

In Yemen the death penalty is applied for offences including murder, drug trafficking, rape, sexual offences and speech or action offensive to Islam.  Adultery is punishable by death by stoning.  Death sentences are often passed after court proceedings falling short of international standards for justice at fair trial.

Iran executes a greater number of people than any other single country, including China, on a per capita basis.

That's All Right, Then

Now, that's inspiring.  It might indeed inspire copy-catters.  Assuming that individuals who might be attracted to subterfuges of that magnitude in the commission of horrendous crimes, having the faculties to plan a web of intrigue so simple yet so complex.  And assuming that they can read.

Ved Parkash Dhingra stabbed his wife to death seven years ago.  But he was deemed through expert testimony to have been insane at the time of the murder, according to an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling.

Normally, read the court's 17-page document setting out its decision, it is a "rule of public policy", that someone who murders may not share in the victim's estate.  Makes eminently good sense.  There should be nothing approximating a 'reward' for the taking of a human life.  But since that particular psychotic outbreak has been attributed to temporary insanity, why then...

Mr. Dhingra cannot be held legally responsible for the death of his wife whom he repeatedly stabbed and bludgeoned.  Kamlesh Dhingra lost her life to her husband's rage.  He was charged with second-degree murder, but a court found him not to be criminally responsible.  He had, evidently, suffered a schizoaffective disorder.

When the trial wrapped up, Mr. Dhingra proceeded to the logical next step, having evidently recovered his senses.  He applied for his wife's $51,000 life insurance policy.  After all, he has been deprived of his wife, and compensatory benefits, though they will never, ever make up for his loss, will diminish his grief somewhat, one assumes.

Their son, Paul Dhingra, appears not to approve.  Perhaps he knows and judges his father somewhat differently than the experts.  He had attempted to block the application submitted by his father to collect that $51,000.  And an Ontario Superior Court judge believed the son to be quite correct, and supported his contention that his father was not eligible under the circumstances to collect that insurance.

The Ontario Court of Appeal, in its wisdom, judged otherwise.