A Case Study In Parallels

The Tamil population of Sri Lanka has long hoped for and agitated for a sovereign state of their own. Long persecuted by the majority Sinhalese population of the country, they have chafed under a rule and a religion that is not their own, that has no intention of defending their rights, and that views them as second-class citizens. Their discriminated-against authenticity led to the rise of a violence-prone 'liberation' group, the Tamil Tigers.

And most Tamils were in support of the activities of the Tamil Tigers, viewing them as their potential liberators from Sinhalese rule, leading to a potential state of their own. There were, in fact, legitimate, legal and diplomatically-political Tamil leaders who sought to persuade the government of Sri Lanka, over time, that the needs of Tamils should no longer be overlooked. And who had it in their long-range plans to steadily work toward sovereignty.

The Tamil Tigers brutally murdered them, just as they murdered thousands of Sri Lankan Sinhalese in their violent and determined march toward the creation of a separate state for Tamils. Yet most Tamils still viewed the Tigers as their champions, regardless of the terrorists' use of suicide bombers, of their unregenerate dedication to blood-letting, and despite their extortionate protocol of demanding financial support from Tamils.

In the end, the government of Sri Lanka, through a long-drawn-out war of attrition punctuated by various truces, broken one after the other by the resurgent Tigers, decided it was now or never, they would enter 'Tiger territory' and battle the insurgents to insensibility. In the process of which, the Sri Lankan government and its army sacrificed tens of thousands of Tamil Sri-Lankan civilian lives.

The Tigers themselves used the Tamil civilians as living shields, and took their adolescent children to train them as fighters, wreaking their own version of havoc, hardship and fear among those whom they claimed to represent. Hundreds of thousands of Tamils were trapped in the conflict zone, and 20,000 died in bombed bunkers and open spaces which the army claimed would be protected.

The Tamil Tigers were finally defeated, their leader killed, the rag-tag remnant displaced in total disarray. The government of Sri Lanka maintains "welfare villages" for the displaced Tamil civilians where inadequate food and medical help for the severely wounded prevails, and the onset of disease claims hundreds of victims daily from among the refugees.

The UN Human Rights Council exonerated the government of Sri Lanka from any excesses or perceived wrong-doing, and in fact praised the government for its success in finally routing the Tamil Tigers.

In the Middle East, Palestinian interests are represented by two disparate and mutually antagonistic groups; the secular-based PLO through Fatah, and the Islamist group Hamas. Each is dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel which was established on lands formerly claimed by the Palestinians through a UN-mandated partition; one portion of the land to Jews the others to Arabs. The establishment of a Jewish state on formerly Arab land viewed as vile anathema in Muslim societies.

Fatah, who has long represented the interests of the Palestinians, has earned a reputation for unscrupulous self-availment, its leaders becoming wealthy by siphoning off funding given by the international community for the sustaining of Palestinians and infrastructure-building in the support of a civil society. In suing for what they claim to be rightfully theirs, Fatah, its member-militias, and Hamas, latterly political, have all wrought huge damage to Israeli infrastructure, and conducted bloody carnage through attacks on its citizenry.

Violent, aggressive acts of mass murder, corruption, political one-upsmanship have marked the legendary actions of the leaders of the Palestinians and their militias dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the concomitant recapturing of all the territory that they insist must be returned to Palestinians. Truces have been announced, a protective wall has been built around Israel, the Gaza strip has been abandoned, but nothing has availed toward peace.

One peace treaty after another has been launched under the auspices of interested Western sources, and one after the other has failed. Israel has been compelled to agree to many difficult concessions, and the Palestinians appear to accept these concessions and promise some of their own, most notably a cessation of violence and the instigation of further violence, during the course of which peace talks collapse.

In response to ongoing rocket attacks from Gaza across the border into Israeli communities year after year without cease, and the additional provocations of the seizing of members of Israel's military, the attempts to abduct even more, the IDF is finally given orders by the government to invade Gaza to route the Hamas terrorists who have been threatening even greater incursions and rocket attacks.

During the course of which counter-attack, one thousand Palestinians are said to have been killed. Israel claims that a large percentage of that number represents Hamas militias. Those very militias who also used Gazan Palestinians as living shields, who thought nothing of firing off missiles from among crowded urban populations, and who placed weapons depots in schools, mosques and villages.

The United Nations has now launched an enquiry into the Gaza conflict. The UN Human Rights Council initially tabled a resolution finding Israel guilty of "massive violations" of human rights. It is now in the process of conducting an investigation whose purpose is to prove its unequivocal denunciation of Israel as a human-rights violator.

Powerful enmities selectively chosen and launched in a massive display of breathtaking hypocrisy.

Positive Plans for the Future

It's antagonistic to the kind imagination to submit to the reality that the world can and does breed people so devoid of humanity that they seek to destroy the lives of others. Psychopaths whose only thought is for their own status, their desires and their progress on the road to life's fulfilment. Combine emotional immaturity with a distinct lack of empathy for the fortunes of others and you have a social monster.

In her defence, psychiatrist Dr. Julian Gojer claims that the murderer by diktat of 14-year-old Stefanie Rengel in January 2008 presents no future harm to society. Predicated, he qualified, on whether or not she pairs up with another male figure in future upon whom she could prevail to do her bidding, and murder someone else whom she feels has been disrespectful to her reputation.

"Gentle and intensive rehabilitation" and a youth-sensitive sentence that would place her in a youth facility should be the result of the dual convictions for murder, according to Dr. Gojer. She, along with her accomplice, a love-sick (sex-ardent and hormone-addled) young man who finally succumbed to the murderous insistence of his lover, have been found guilty of first-degree murder.

Without her shrill insistence that Stefanie Rengel be killed - her boyfriend who executed the murder, stabbing the young girl outside her home six times, leaving her to die in the snow, alone - the chilling murder would never have occurred. Sex was the generous reward for the convicted girl's paramour, when he completed the task set him.

Her psychiatrist, in her defence, has informed that she has "positive plans for the future and does not endorse ongoing thoughts of wanting to harm anyone". In direct contradiction of the testimony given by another psychiatrist who had extensively interviewed and studied the character and personality of this psychopath, who read her as a severely flawed psyche.

Who, if another situation presented itself where she felt herself to be slighted, she would revert to the same vicious behaviour, striking out and insisting on violent physical harm to be visited to her presumed detractor. The prosecution's professional witness characterized the convicted murderer as having compassion only for herself, with no remorse expressed for her young victim.

One can only imagine the anguish of the mother who raised this child. And wonder if it comes anywhere near matching that of the mother, brother and father of Stefanie Rengel, the young girl who was targeted for murder because an older girl felt the younger one had 'disrespected' her - in the parlance of youth culture.

Now the young murderer's lawyer and her consulting psychiatrist feel that lenience is the order of the day. She knew not what she demanded. Yet even while Stefanie Rengel's body lay cold, stiff and as-yet undiscovered in the snowy street where she died, that murder was celebrated by rancid sex between the two murderers.

The convicted, satisfied by an order well executed, put the event away and out of mind, going on to resume the normalcy of existence. For which no penalty need be paid.

In Defence Of Defence

Democratic Congress in the United States is furious at what they term the wholesale deception that was perpetrated by the Bush administration, orchestrated by former Vice-President Dick Cheney, that gave orders to the CIA to develop a mission of targeted assassinations of al-Qaeda operatives, with specific instructions that the under-cover, extremely covert operation not be revealed to Congress.

Well, what might they expect from a Republican administration, one that had been handed an internal disaster of huge proportions, and a black eye as well, for which they were accountable through intelligence neglect, courtesy of fanatical jihad?

This was an emergency response to a situation that galvanized the world in outrage at the monumental catastrophe mounted against United States citizens, which gained world-wide sympathy for the shocking trauma suffered by the country as a whole, with its sudden realization of exactly how vulnerable they had become.

The executive branch galvanized its security and intelligence arms to action, in the very real fear that the 9/11 attack represented the first salvo, and more, far more, was to come.

What price safety of a nation? The CIA operatives who cultivate secrecy and are trained to act as modern-day dark knights with a mission to dispatch all those who present a grave and present danger to the nation have been accused of masterminding and executing professional assassinations in the past.

How might this situation be seen as deserving less of a response than previous historical situations presenting as dangers to American interests? Congress was made aware, in 2001, when then-President Bush authorized the targeted killing of al-Qaeda agents.

The recent manufactured outrage manifested by the Democrats revolves around the $1-million spent on a secret 8-year intelligence operation in the development of 'hit squads' whose mission it would be to kill al-Qaeda leaders. An operatopm that was in the planning stages and which was taken seriously, but which never progressed to execution.

The program remained in existence on paper, while it never resulted in operational status, and was closed by the new CIA Director, Leon Panetta. Why the uproar? Why now does the House Intelligence Committee demand that the CIA provide documents about the program?

Ah, to launch a full-fledged investigation, to crucify the Republicans and their CIA henchmen (scapegoat George Tenet), to prove how superior the Democrats are morally to the previous administration.

Targeted assassinations?

What are the unmanned aerial vehicles, the drones (UAVs) being increasingly utilized in Pakistan and Afghanistan, other than robotic assassins. This is a Democrat-majority government in the United States, heavily reliant on a growing fleet of drones whose purpose it is to target and to bomb and to successfully eliminate Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders wherever and whenever they can be isolated.

Thus far al-Qaeda operatives, spokespeople, weapons experts, chemical and biological experts, commanders and logisticians have been dispatched through the medium of the drones, seen as "high-value" targets. The Obama administration, in fact, has stepped up the use of the Predators. What is this but the superiority of unfathomable depths of hypocrisy?

Oh. Right. The CIA's failure to brief Congress was in violation of U.S. law.

Canada's National Heritage

Canada, a vast piece of Earth's geography second only to that of Russia, has been privileged by location and nature with a wide network of fresh-water lakes, the envy of the world. Canada's great boreal forest that encompasses a green area extending from Newfoundland to the Yukon is greater in volume than those other famous forests and jungles of the World, inclusive of the Congo Basin, the Amazon and the Russian Taiga.

The great boreal forests of Canada store greater amounts of wetland- and lake-freshwater than exists anywhere else on Earth. The boreal absorbs more carbon in its vast acreage of trees, bogs, soil and peatlands than elsewhere on this planet. Within it are supported billions of migratory songbirds, huge caribou herds, millions of waterfowl and shorebirds, and populations of predatory animals like wolves, grizzly and polar bears, wolverines and lynx.

Canada's vast ocean shorelines and ocean-sovereign extensions from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic have been recognized, like the immense boreal forests, as being needful of federal and provincial protection through legislation enacted to ensure these geographic and oceanic areas are granted heritage protection status. And the current federal government, along with its provincial counterparts have responded to that need.

The ecological value to the country, to its people, the recognition of its responsibilities to ensure these areas are not degraded through misuse, spoilation and encroachment, has been signalled by most recent actions of all levels of government in the work they and environmental groups which spur the governments to action engage in to protect endangered species and their sometimes-fragile habitat.

Climate change, increased population, strains expressed on natural resources by increasing energy demands all conspire to present as challenges to the preservation of Canada's natural resources, those that cannot be extracted, but their beauty and utility protected. National park-protection designations are ongoing. The challenge is to preserve these world-class natural resources from pillage-for-profit.

And thanks to the dedication of citizen groups, environmentalists, First Nations, biologists and social scientists, and groups such as the David Suzuki foundation, all of whom act as moral spurs to government action, Canada is in fairly good shape to face the future proud, but not complacent, that it protects its natural heritage.

The Contrasts of Reality Opposed to Humbug

In both the House and Senate, White House negotiators pressed for the broadest possible legislative language, including authorization to engage in wide-ranging activities on U.S. territory.
The language of the proposed resolution authorized the President "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." A sweeping mandate. Minutes before the vote, the White House officials had pressed for even more - after "use all necessary and appropriate force", they wanted to insert "In the United States", to, essentially, grant war powers to anything a president deigned to do within the United States. Senators shot that down. That would be without precedent. A resolution passed in the Senate by a vote of 98 to 0 and in the House by a vote of 420 to 1. The One Percent Doctrine - Ron Suskind

Embarrassing the powerful Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi by claiming that she had prior knowledge of the extent to which the CIA was committed to extracting information from 'war on terror' detainees was not at all polite. Ms. Pelosi denied, denied, denied that she had been briefed by the CIA in September 2002. Suggestions that she had been briefed that waterboarding was taking place, and that she had no reaction quite annoyed Ms. Pelosi.
Understandably. When one fulminates righteously it is never taken lightly when one's nose is rubbed in the stink of prevarication.

According to reports of several attendees at these briefings, administration officials explained that the system would be used to hunt known or probable terrorists, their supporters, and their financiers. It could also handle broadly wrought searches, like massive keyword searches for those who were speaking about terrorist operations and - as was already underway - all calls between the United States and Afghanistan. Some concern was voiced by congressional Democrats about civil liberties, but informed questions were difficult to pose: the program was so secret that they couldn't even consult their staffs. The One Percent Doctrine - Ron Suskind

Congressional oversight of covert activities is a principle that distinguishes the United States from other countries. It is an ideal that is central to the checks and balances - the counteracting ambitions, as Madison and others had attested - that prevent abuses of power. In this case, and scores of others, those fighting the "war on terror" decided it was an unaffordable luxury. The One Percent Doctrine - Ron Suskind

"Enhanced interrogation methods" were neither implied nor directly reported, as far as she and her Democratic colleagues are concerned, and they're sticking by their story. "We were kept in the dark. That's something that should never, ever happen again", fulminated Dianne Feinstein, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Her committee was informed of the illegal plans of the CIA to assassinate key al-Qaeda members in late June, she said. Dick Cheney, true to his 'one percent doctrine', deliberately ordered that Congress not be briefed.

Experts on Osama bin Laden often advise, "Listen to what he says. It's all there. He says what he means." In this one case, that was also true of the Vice President. So much is in that one statement, so much more, in its way, than the bold, blood-quickening calls to bring "infinite justice" to our enemies abroad - and, yes, maybe hiding among us - evildoers who would soon taste the fury of might sharpened by right. Not that those calls to arms weren't effective. They were; just maybe not suited for the challenge America now faced. The real action, Cheney said, would not happen with armies assembled and banners waving. It would happen in the shadows. The One Percent Doctrine - Ron Suskind

In a conference, House Speaker Pelosi elucidated: "they don't come in to consult. They come in to notify. They come in to notify. And you can't -- you can't change what you're doing unless you can act as a committee or as a class. You can't change what they're doing." Denying that she had abrogated her rights and responsibilities, she was merely a helpless pawn. Now that she is Speaker of the House she has clout and she can, in hindsight, thunder against the CIA and the Republicans who ordered them to act.

Washington, day by day, had already become the bustling capital of a twilight struggle - the so-called "war on terror", a term that was settling unevenly into the global vernacular. Close facsimiles had been floated for a week or so after the attacks and before President Bush used it, just so, in his landmark speech of September 20, 2001, declaring before a joint session of Congress that "Our 'war on terror' begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." The One Percent Solution - Ron Suskind

What actually has changed in U.S. policy? What is the big mystery here? Did the United States act differently in focusing on the trauma visited upon it directly in its homeland than it has done in innumerable occasions in the past, in its covert, often violent, nation-disrupting way? America's weight in the world owes much to the weight it throws around. It has been responsible for many unfortunate decisions causing great upheaval throughout the world. It views itself as the great liberator, the universal emancipator. Its people are wedded to their vision of their nation as the conscience of the world. And often enough it does present in that vein.

There is a long history of American companies, often large, notable companies, working in secret concert with the U.S. government. Western Union, in fact, had been at the front of that procession. A company Western Union bought in the 1860s called the American Telegraph Company banned messages in cipher during the Civil War at the behest of the War Department. during World War II, all U.S. telegraph companies forwarded copes of international cables to the federal government. the program "Operation Shamrock" continued after the war and was unknown to Congress and top intelligence officials. The One Percent Doctrine - Ron Suskind

"The CIA briefed me only once on some enhanced interrogation techniques, in September 2002, in my capacity as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee. I was informed then that Department of Justice opinions had concluded that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques was legal. The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed", Nancy Pelosi informed an MSNBC interviewer on May 15.

It is simply too inconvenient to be embroiled in responsibility for the actions and reactions of a Republican-led government whose executive branch was heavily reliant on a handful of people whose view of how government should work, in isolation and secrecy undermined the concept of true democratic rectitude and justice. And that's life, and that's human nature unbound.

Something had to give - and it did. Little by little. The dilemma of (George) Tenet's role was diabolical. Intelligence was the oxygen of the "war on terror", with CIA carrying burdens of collection, analysis, and operations beyond the capabilities of a seasoned, coordinated intelligence authority ten times its size. The agency, meanwhile, was neither seasoned in the complexities of fighting both terrorism and weapons proliferation, nor particularly well coordinated. The One Percent Doctrine - Ron Suskind

The writer Ron Suskind, formerly senior national affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and a Pulitzer Prize winner for feature writing, conducted extensive, exhaustive interviews with willing and as he puts it "former officials with the CIA, the FBI, the White House and also with the NSC, the State, Defense, and Treasury Departments and assorted others. A significant number, as well are still inside the government. This latter group includes a few officials at various departments who were granted unofficial permission to try to answer my questions." For obvious reasons of political diplomacy, their names are omitted.

The torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay; the construction of the great terrorist-catching machine, with its communications head and financial body; the self-interested use of classified materials to carry forward political ends; the very concealment of the true nature of what's been happening since 9/11 in favour of a sanitized, "need to know" version - are all means that, whatever their advertised value, strike at the nation's character. The One Percent Doctrine - Ron Suskind

But the simple fact is, all the material, the information, the direct quotes, the informed conjectures, and description of actual events were published, by this reputable author, three years ago. during which time all the data contained in The One Percent Doctrine were available to the curious, those who wished to be informed, and of course those in office in the United States who might wish to avail themselves of information hitherto unknown to them, they now profess.

Where is their credibility?

Deuteronomy 16:20 reads: "Justice, Justice, This you must pursue." Justice - an overused word these days - is not mentioned twice, however, for added emphasis. Here Hebrew scholars agree - and they don't agree on much - that it's once for the ends, and once for the means. The One Percent Doctrine - Ron Suskind

Righteous Militance

And we think in Canada that unions are out of control and out of whack with reality, demanding excessive wage increases and benefits for their members, particularly those working in public-union sectors, at various levels of government. Whose wages now handily exceed that of workers in the private sector on average, and whose benefits alone are gold-plated and give no quarter to taxpayer-funded exhaustion, particularly in this reeling economy.

Toronto is suffering under the retirement-benefits demands of its municipal employees. Resolute that they will not surrender one iota of privilege that they have assembled over the years from municipalities incapable of establishing firm guidelines for earned entitlements. Municipal services have come to a sudden halt. And a metropolitan area of multiple-millions of people finds itself without its accustomed cushion of a plethora of services.

If the population of the city ever had any sympathy for unions and municipal workers it has now dwindled and diminished to the point of no return. They would gladly hand over those contentious jobs to the growing hordes of newly-unemployed, desperately anxious for work, to forestall their potentially perilous new future of joblessness and new dependence on employment insurance, and ultimately, welfare.

But here's taking things to new heights, in France. One supposes that Canada's municipal workers are looking on with interest.

In a town 250 kilometres southwest of Paris where 366 employees are being laid off by a auto parts manufacturer, New Fabris, which is closing its gates in response to the financial meltdown, particularly as it now affects vehicle manufacturing, workers have barricaded themselves inside the factory.

Threatening that if their demands for a heftier bail-out per employee is not forthcoming by the end of the month they intend to blow the building to smithereens with the gas canisters they have set into place for that explosive demonstration of worker might. "Are we capable of blowing up the factory?" prodded the employees' union official. "Yes, we are capable."

And since the Chatellerault factory has parts worth Euro-2-million including a new Renault machine worth the same amount, their threat has arrested the attention of the owners. A large loss to focus the mind on. The workers and their union insist that automakers Renault and PSA-Peugeot both of which account for 90% of the barricaded factory's custom, pay them $48,300 each on the loss of their jobs.

The factory for which they work has been declared bankrupt. The two car manufacturers insist it is not their responsibility to pay out compensation to the New Fabris workers, reasonably enough. The New Fabris director claims the company is prepared to pay redundancy pay to workers, but not in the amounts demanded.

This new kind of union-worker militancy is perhaps a step up from withholding services, and certainly but a step away from the more common type of protest against job losses - the spate of boss-napping that has swivelled attention from the rest of the industrialized world facing financial hardships, toward France, the country of entitled-citizenship-everything.

Gag-Inducing

Chrétien 'thrilled' by rare honour from Queen

Well, I'll just bet he is. Some Canadians, however, hearing this news might be somewhat less than thrilled. It's not only wretchingly unbelievable, it's retchingly incredible that Queen Elizabeth II regards former Prime Minister Jean Chretien as praiseworthy in his 'commitment to Canada' to the extent that she is prepared to personally award him the distinction of being appointed a member of the Order of Merit.

This is one busy woman, is Queen Bess. Highly motivated, intelligent and herself dedicated beyond belief to her country and her exalted place in its political and social spheres. She maintains a rigorous and high-profile, energetic schedule, one that would floor the capacities and dedication of far younger women, and she does it with distinction and elegance, a credit to her upbringing as a British royal, and to the traditions she exemplifies.

But boy, did she get this one wrong. Who on earth advises her on matters like this? And just think, Iggy is now inspired that he may too aspire to achieve such a high distinction. Arghh!

Deteriorated Security

In Afghanistan currently there are 90,000 coalition forces fighting the fanatic Taliban, intent on once again taking over the administration of that perennially war-torn and poverty-stricken country. A nation of people known for their resistance to occupation. And they have had a long acquaintanceship with occupation, centuries on centuries of occupation by foreign troops.

It is said that Afghans have never and will never accommodate themselves to the acceptance of being occupied indefinitely by foreign forces.

The description of 'fierce and proud' most certainly applies to the people of Afghanistan. The description 'weary and miserable' can also be applied to the people of Afghanistan. What people would not be, given their history?

The country is preparing for its second election process, since the ouster of the Taliban from governing the country. During the first election process, the first the country had ever undertaken, people could go out to vote in relative safety. Since that time the insurgency has retaken a larger portion of the country.

How does a conventional army - a coalition of conventional, modern, well-armed armies - battle a rag-tag group of irregular fedayeen, armed with rifles and busy making IEDs to demoralize and kill as many of the foreign invaders as possible? With the use of unmanned drones, robot airborne killing machines unleashing missiles that have an unfortunate tendency to create larger mayhem than intended.

A government that is rife with corruption: "Half of parliament are fundamentalists and warlords and criminals - looters, smugglers - they are all there", according to Kabul University political science professor Wadir Safi. "They must abolish this judicial system, abolish this parliament, abolish this government."

In whom can the people place their trust, the government incapable of defending them against the Taliban, or the Taliban whose growing strength and determination increases their recruits from among the rural population base? The government, in league with foreign armies, cannot create employment, safeguard schools and hospitals, and is complicit in the deaths of innocent civilians through its dependence on the international community.

The propaganda of the Taliban has been extremely successful in pointing out the deaths of civilians - even when they have been killed by the Taliban, attributing those deaths to the foreign military presence - could be prevented, that good Muslim men should be defending their homeland, along with the Taliban. The Taliban, after all, are Afghans, not foreign invaders.

The much-vaunted pull-out of some U.S. troops from Iraq and their deployment in Afghanistan has thus far resulted in nothing much. The additional 21,000 American troops have not resulted in anything comparable to the Iraqi 'surge'. Instead there are greater incidences of IED deaths to British, American and Canadian troops.

The new NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. General Stanley McChrystal has asked Washington to forward additional troops, over and above the 21,000 so recently arrived. This is a government that has not been able to win the 'hearts and minds' of its own people. And this is an ideologically-driven religious war that is not being won.

Roma, Discriminatory Injustice

People called "gypsies" have been written about for literal ages. Thomas Hardy wrote of gypsies in some of his books. Gypsies were always thought of as being on the wrong side of the law. They lived in caravans, and moved about constantly. They did engage in co-opting domestic animals for their personal use, to the ire of their estate owners. Some owners of large estates, however, looked kindly on them, taking pity on their poverty and constant movement, allowing them temporary stays on their property.

But the reputation of gypsies as untrustworthy verging on the criminal remained. Yet their colourful costumes, jewellery and beautiful women were legendary and much admired. Their music and their legends were exotic and held an attraction for many within staid and 'normal' society living their conventional lives, dreaming of the romance of the gypsy life in comparison as infinitely more satisfying than their own.

It's somehow hard to imagine that to the present era, gypsies, Roma, remain discriminated against. That in European countries there is a continuing covert social movement to isolate them, to ensure that they remain disadvantaged, to ignore their plight and to visit physical harm to them from disgruntled and vicious racists. Civil societies aren't thought of, in this era, as being so utterly prejudiced, but they obviously are.

Human nature loves nothing better than a perennial scapegoat, one without champions to defend them. And now Czech Republic Roma, who have been persecuted over the years, and remain so, are desperately attempting to find safe havens and opportunities for their futures, abroad. Canada has seen a large increase in the numbers of Roma applying for asylum. Even so, this represents a minuscule proportion of the emigrants that Canada sees annually.

Why the reluctance to accept Roma to Canada? Are we little better than those countries whose social generosity and laws are not sufficient to embrace and accept Roma? While the world spurns those whom they term "gypsies", the world of fashion, romance and jet-set culture has absorbed the exotic beauty of what is termed the 'eclectic gypsy' look. Are we not utterly mad?

Illegal Immigrants

Can't say I'm too awfully thrilled with the decision of Canada's immigration authority to return a couple originally from Pakistan back to that country. They've lived for ten years in Canada as refugees, having applied for status back in 2000. They will be returned to a country torn by vicious religious sectarian violence, as the government of Pakistan attempts to control the ascendancy of fanatical Islamists, Pakistani Taliban.

Mohammud and Seema Sabir Sheikh are accused of having misled Immigration Canada by not reporting that they had, before seeking refugee status in Canada, moved back and forth from Pakistan to Dubai, trying to find a safe haven for themselves. As Pakistanis, even though they're Muslim, they could not find defining status in Dubai.

They had few other options, although they had reached Canada via the United States, before the current 'country of first asylum' agreement between Canada and the U.S. had been signed. They are the parents of three grown children, and a fourth, a five-year-old girl, born in Canada. Their older children have been granted status in Canada.

But because the former Pakistani husband of their older daughter had contacted Canadian immigration authorities, (in an obvious attempt to to punish the family), to inform that they had sought status first in Dubai, they are held to have lied on their application. "They were going back and forth between Dubai and Pakistan. It's impossible to get status in Dubai so what are their options?"

This, from a lawyer representing the family. The distraught parents, being hauled off by immigration officers who had arrived unannounced at their Montreal apartment, had to make a snap decision about their youngest child. To remove her with them from Canada, or to leave her in the care of her 26-year-old sister and 21-year-old brother. The child has been left with her older siblings.

The deportation order brought against the parents is clearly brutally unjust. There are times when personal intervention of the Minister is required, and this appears to be one of those times. Humanitarian grounds should be evoked and respected, and the family re-unified.

He Feels Their Pain

And well he might, having been witness to his own mother's fears of being able to afford the medications and treatment she required, trying to battle her mortal bouts with cancer. He is a man committed to social justice. And attempting to fulfill his vision of social justice in the country whose highest executive station he achieved through the ballot box of popular opinion. He promised his countrymen that with his help they could achieve anything they set out to do. Yes, they could, and he would help them.

He has helped them in ways, up to now, they could scarcely have conceived they and their country would be facing up to. A great economic collapse of their free enterprise financial system, inadequately overseen, and vastly out of control. Americans are now experiencing unemployment at a rate no one might have anticipated during the time of the last election. Nor did anyone ever think, in the United States, that the engine of their automative industry would be truncated to the degree that has occurred.

Much less that the public would inherit a substantial portion of the assets and future of that industry. Nor that the public would take unto itself a tremendous burden of future debt in an effort to stimulate a horribly wounded economy. And who among them ever imagined that in quitting Iraq they would once again take on Afghanistan with the nightmare of battling irregular 'insurgents' only becoming increasingly and morbidly dangerous?

So here is the promise to give America's people the kind of health care system any caring and just industrialized state should provide for the protection of their people's health and longevity. That 15% of the population unable to afford to buy into their own health insurance package now to be covered by the state, finally. Fully 70% of the electorate waits with bated breath, in support of their president's health initiative.

For with steadily growing unemployment and the loss of health benefits, the number of people uninsured, not covered for basic health coverage is growing. Job insecurity has added to the troubles in the United States, sending consumer confidence plunging, and with it hopes of a speedier economic recovery. This is not a very good time, economically, to launch another expensive universal program for the country.

But there has never been a good time to do just that, according to the more fiscally conservative types who themselves have never had to worry about their own health coverage. Now President Obama has to turn the vaunted American free enterprise system on its head, hitting health insurance companies where their bottom dollar drops. And in attempting to improve preventive care he comes up against American social values.

Or lack thereof, with the mass marketing and acceptance of convenience foods that bear little nutritional resemblance to real food. The eager and ongoing consumption of food products that have been so utterly adulterated with chemicals, high fat content, sugar and salt have impacted deleteriously on the health of Americans. This is where obesity sets in. And the morbidly obese population is growing incrementally.

Lack of proper nutrition, lack of motivation to exercise, a love affair with the automobile have all inextricably combined to produce a population assailed as never before with ill health which medical science can tend to, but the cost to do so has crippled the resources of an already-unhealthy economy.

What a miserable spiral. And good luck.

A Michael Jackson World

Michael Jackson was the ultimate celebrity-figure in a world that adores celebrity. Eccentricity of the kind that he exhibited before becoming monstrously obsessive about himself and his inclinations to 'own' often peculiar and often downright macabre possessions only served to enhance his appeal. No one seemed to think too much about his monumental ego evinced by his exhibitionism and his dire need to be adored.

If he was not crowned by the public, then he would simply proceed to crown himself.

And if he represented American royalty, then his offspring similarly inherited the privileges of royalty. Money can buy quite a lot and quite a lot of money can buy almost everything. It cannot buy self-respect, although with his ill psyche he did expend a fortune in altering his physical presence so he could no longer be taken for a prideful African-American.

Irrespective of which, African-Americans lost no time in lamenting their great loss with his self-imposed death, acclaiming him as the bridge between the 'races'. With particular emphasis on the black charlatans whose agenda he served without even knowing it.

This man's outrageously protean adventurism, his great celebrity and failed promise as a human being has inspired many others, those with talent and those without, those with wealth and those without, those with social standing and those without, to emulate many of his excesses. People have fallen in love with exhibitionism, with self-regard, with presenting as being extraordinary when in fact they're all too often pathetically pedestrian.

Everyone wants to disseminate to the entire world how wonderful they feel they are, certain that others will acclaim them finally, for the truly superior people that they are. Dismal mediocrities present themselves as outstandingly worthwhile. A pernicious and all-absorbing
fascination with self owing to self-fabrication and delusion has overtaken common sense.

People stand prepared to present themselves on television programs, revealing their social ineptitudes and personal failings. "Reality" programs abound with people convinced of their superiority. When the truth is they are sadly devoid of intelligence, succumbing to the false allure of the kind of mass populism that would see everyone worthy of admiration, adulation simply because they reveal intimate details about themselves.

No one wants to maintain a discreet and decent social privacy, rather they're intent on giving all the sad and futile details of their intimate lives. How distant is that from intelligent.

Yet here is the wife of the newly-appointed head of the legendary British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, revealing on a Facebook site for all the world to relish, personal details of her husband, Sir John Sawers. What, possibly, could impel someone to such extreme stupidity? Well, the world has become one giant cesspool of stroked egos, convinced they are so extraordinary that everyone else is waiting to hear everything about them.

In the case of Sir John Sawers, and Lady Shelley Sawers, little more need be said. The world is suffering from mass dementia, showing and telling, like kindergarten children on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Mindless twits, all.

Hard Truths Told and Digested

Only a black man, only a black man who is president of a free and democratic country, only a black man who is president of a free and democratic country whose father experienced life as a black man living in a corrupt African milieu could express those truths. That Africa will only be saved from its current state of ineptitude, disease, turmoil and tribal battles when it decides to become mature enough to shed corruption and the propensity of its leaders to cheat their populations of what is rightfully theirs.

All the attention and the hand-wringing and the administrative and material and volunteer-agency support sent to Africa is as nothing to the greater need of those countries whose leaders remain convinced that foreign aid of any kind is meant for their personal aggrandizement. Africans, U.S. President Barack Obama stressed on his visit to Ghana - one of the few African countries making a realistic attempt to fairly represent the needs of its people, and practising as a true democracy - must and can do better.

"No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny and now is the time for it to end." Africans shelter themselves from the reality of their own failure to develop and mature, by claiming to have been set back immeasurably by forced colonialism, and while there is a certain reality to that claim, it's too tired and redundant at this time to remain forever the 'reason' why African cannot attempt to do better for itself.

The foreign aid representing billions of dollars of investments by wealthy countries of the world has proven to be useless. It is absorbed by the tyrants, the dictators who rule, and the people continue to live impoverished lives, assailed by diseases that could be battled with simple mechanical means available for little expenditure, but of disinterest to those who rule. Education for the young, health systems for the population, equal opportunities for people to thrive, encouragement of basic agriculture to feed the population fall by the wayside.

"We must start with a simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans. The West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants", President Obama lectured. "In my father's life it was partly tribalism and patronage in an independent Kenya that, for a long stretch, derailed his career, and we know that this kind of corruption is a daily fact of life for too many."

The choice of Ghana for the president's first visit to an African country, as the first black president of the most powerful country on Earth is instructive. He chose an emerging African success story as his podium to address the rest of Africa, most of which is staggering under the burdens of war, famine, corruption, disease. "Here in Ghana, you show us a face of Africa that is too often overlooked by a world that sees only tragedy or the need for charity.

"The people of Ghana have worked hard to put democracy on firmer footing, with peaceful transfers of power even in the wake of closely contested elections. Government institutions that attend to the needs of the people, independent courts that uphold their rights, and a sense of unity that transcends tribal and religious differences will help Africa meet its vast potential. Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions", he said.

How many will he have offended and angered, one wonders, nailing on the head what is horrendously wrong with the Continent?

Matters Canadian

Immigration and National Identity Issues

Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney insists more immigrants to the country should impel themselves to learn to integrate into Canadian society. Among other issues, those who plan to emigrate to Canada and who successfully apply and are approved should be prepared to learn one of the two official languages; both if possible, English at the very least. There are government-funded language courses, although a mere one-quarter of landed immigrants take advantage of them.

"Newcomers have a right to be different, but a duty to integrate. They also have to take the initiative. We want people to be Canadians first and foremost, to be proud of and maintain their own traditions and heritage,but not at the price of developing Canadian identity."

Personal Cupidity

A Montreal doctor has sued Air Canada for payment as compensation for having agreed to assist a passenger in medical distress. Dr. Henry Coopersmith, flying executive class to Paris in 2006 was asked by a flight attendant if he might lend his professional expertise to assist with an ill passenger. He attempted to broker two free executive-class tickets from the airline in exchange for his services. When the airline declined he sued, the result being that they have been ordered to pay Dr. Coopersmith compensation of $1,000. Judge David Cameron was not dreadfully impressed with Dr. Coopersmith's 'exaggerated' claim, but agreed to compensate him regardless. So much for good citizenship.

Happenstance Incredulity

Three Americans, residents of Oklahoma, one of the U.S. states accustomed to being on the receiving end of nature's violent wind-and-rain assaults on a regular basis, were vacationing in northern Ontario at a resort south of Ear Falls, northwest of Thunder Bay. To be sure that is a wonderful and breathtakingly beautiful wilderness area in Canada. An area not particularly noted as being the recipient of viciously violent weather systems. Yet for these three Oklahomans, the decision to holiday there and take their leisure at Fisherman's Cove resort off the shore of Lac Seul, was fateful indeed. A weather system posing as a 'possible' tornado passed through the resort. Two bodies have been retrieved, while police continue to search for the third man.

The Incorruptible

It is simply not to be. There are those who seek out adventures of the flesh. He is not among them. Prime Minister Berlusconi, whose exploits in the bedroom have become the sensation of the international community, exemplifying the hot-blooded sensuality of the Latin male, is another story altogether.

Did he really feel that his enthusiasm and exercise in brotherly agape might convince Prime Minister Stephen Harper that opportunities abounded and he is foolish to steadfastly cast them away? It simply would not do. It could not happen.




There are those for whom such blandishments and encouragements may work, those already capable of and experienced in indulging themselves. As, for example, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, readily swayed to an appreciation for the voluptuous and the attainable, those who succumb to the allure of power and what it begets. But Canada's Prime Minister Harper?

Not likely, not at all likely.