Saturday, January 06, 2007

Dump the politicians who defect and desert

Dahn Batchelor's Opinions

The following is a presentation that will be given at a public meeting on Jauary 23, 2007 in Toronto in which the issues being discussed at that meeting are related to elections in Ontario.

Let me say right from the beginning; I do not like politicians. They are one of the mysteries of Canadian life. They comprise of a bundle of paradoxes, they are shrewed as a fox, naïve as a schoolboy and sometimes, as crooked as Al Capone. Notwithstanding that, we need them so we vote them into office in hopes that they just might be interested in our best interests more than they are of their own.

I am not here to denounce politicians per se as a Canadian entity as I don’t have the time to do that. Rather, I am here to make a recommendation as to how we might solve some of the problems constantly facing Canadian voters.

One problem I am speaking about is the one where politicians desert the political parties that they were voted into by the citizens in their ridings thereby creating an electoral problem of having to have an unnecessary and expensive by-election. This is a common problem in both provincial and federal politics. It is referred to as a defection.

Unscrupulous, deceitful, nefarious, unprincipled, repugnant, underhanded, scheming, unconscionable, disgraceful, and dishonourable. Those are just a few of the words that came to mind of many people in Belinda Stonach’s riding when she deserted her party and made her surprising move to the Liberals. Of course, Belinda Stonach was no different then the male members of parliament that have crossed the floor to another party in the past.

Scott Brison a Nova Scotia MP deserted the Progressive Conservatives to join the Liberal party when the PCs and Alliance parties merged.

Just recently, Prime Minister Stephen Harper added a Liberal backbencher, Wajid Khan to his Conservative caucus in a move that could provide a buffer against the threat of his minority government's defeat in the coming months. The additional Tory seat in the House of Commons gives the party 125 MPs, and means that all three opposition parties will likely have to gang up to defeat the minority Conservative government and force an election. Liberal Jim Karygiannis (Scarborough-Agincourt) said Khan would do whatever he could to get ahead, and had never let political affiliations get in the way. "This is his style," he said, adding that Khan became friendly with provincial Tories before latching on to Martin's Liberal leadership bid. Khan's riding office manager Stefano Pileggi said he had no advance warning of the switch. He said, "We came in this morning, turned on the TV, that's how we found out,"

Khan was first elected as a Liberal MP in 2004 and he was re-elected last January. His move to the Tories proved unpopular among people in the vicinity of his Queen St. S. riding office in Mississauga's west end. Norm Scherb, a Khan volunteer campaign worker in the last election said angrily, "I feel my vote has been stolen today." I think Anthony Bischoff from Streetsville said it best when he said upon hearing of the defection; “You don’t vote Liberal because you like the Conservatives.”

They were speaking for the majority of Canadian voters. We elect people to office for two reasons. The first is because they will serve the political party in which we hope will protect our collective interests and the second reason is that we feel that the candidate we vote into office is the best person for the job.

For that candidate to switch political parties during his or her time in office is in effect committing a fraud on the voters who elected that person. The defection, irrespective of the motive, is a betrayal of trust that the electors had for the person they voted in.

The second problem that voters are facing is one of desertion. I am speaking of those politicians who decided to desert their political office to enrich their prospects by running for another office.

I remember in the late 1970s, a municipal alderman in our area was running for office again. I learned that he also was planning to run in an upcomming election as a member of the Ontario Legislature in two years time. At a public meeting I asked him if he was going to desert us in the middle of his term as our alderman if he got elected as our MP. He replied and I quote, “There is no law that says I can’t run for two offices at two diffcerent times.” He lost both elections.

On September 8, 2006, Liberal MP Joe Fontana announced that he would run for Mayor in London against current Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best. On September 20, 2006, he formally resigned his seat in the House of Commons in order to run for Mayor. The good news is that he was unsuccessful, losing to Mayor DeCicco-Best. The bad news is that his desertion necessated a by-election.

In the 1999 and 2003 general elections, Gerald Kennedy was elected to represent the new district of Parkdale-High Park. Following the latter, he became province's Minister of Education in the Liberal Party of Ontario government of Dalton McGuinty. In 2006, he resigned his cabinet post in order to seek leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. Now the citizens in his riding will have to have a by-election.

These practices have to stop. Canadian voters are constantly reminded that they should vote. It is the civic thing to do. How many are going to vote in the next election if they believe that it is possible that the person they choose to represent them will either defect to a party that was not their first choice or alternatively desert them in the middle of their term, thereby leaving them to face a by-election?

The Americans have to their credit, partially solved these problems. Everyone running for office in the United States runs for office at the same time. This means that if a politician is going to desert his office to run for another office, it will happen near the end of his or her term in office.

Giving Ontario voters the right to recall MPPs who defect to another party during their term in office between elections will further ensure that politicians are more accountable to the people they serve. They will risk being defeated at the by-elections that will follow their defection.

I think watching a politician who chooses to defect at the risk of being defeated at the inevitable by-election that will follow his defection and subsequently gets defeated at the polls will put a gleam in the voter’s eyes that are not unlike the gleam in the eyes of a young child who has just opened a toy at Christmas.

I believe the way to stop politicians from deserting their posts in mid-term so that they can run for office again in a different setting is to make them pay for the by-elections that invariably must follow.

There are honest politicians who will remain at their posts and will serve their constituents faithfully. They don’t need to be written about. Their deeds speak for them. I am writing about the bad ones who defect and desert. They are the ones we have to be protected from.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Politicians pay raises are obsecene

Dahn Batchelor's Opinions

I am annoyed by the Ontario Legislature's decision to boost MPP salaries by 25 per cent. Backbenchers pay increased by $22,000 a year to $110,775. What really make their actions obscene is that most of them claim that they run for office from a sense of public service. That’s hogwash. According to the way they talk, they would work for the minimum wage and still run for office from a sense of duty to their fellow citizens. More hogwash.

Premier Dalton McGuinty back in 1996, when he was running for the Liberal leadership, explained at some length that he wanted to become premier so he could bring the kind of common-sense, problem-solving approach his parents taught him to the entire province. His paycheque has now jumped $39,000 to $198,620 annually. The hogwash just keeps piling up.

Labour Minister Steve Peters – who along with other cabinet ministers will see his pay go up $596 a week or $31,000 annually to $157,633
By comparison, the governor of New York state is paid $179,000 (U.S.) and state legislators $79,500. In Michigan, the governor's salary is $172,000 while legislators make $79,650.

When the former New Democratic premier Bob Rae was asked in December 2006 why he wanted to be federal Liberal leader. He said, "The reason is because I love this country.” He was careful to not mention that he gets $147,700 as an MP. Are we to believe that his salary has no bearing on his real motive to be a member of parliament?

There are exceptions however. Ontario Conservative Leader John Tory, a wealthy lawyer from a wealthy family, made about $4.5 million a year before he entered provincial politics. It's doubtful that he's doing his current job for the money. So, it's odd that he assumes everyone else is. Tory is one of those who say that unless MPPs' salaries are substantially increased, the best and brightest will go elsewhere. The hogwash is getting deeper.

Is there a positive correlation between salary capacity and political ability? Consider Paul Martin. He made a bundle running Canada Steamship Lines. But as prime minister, he was a bit of a loser. David Emerson is another highly paid corporate big shot drawn into the world of federal politics. But as a functioning politician, the one-time Liberal turned Tory is a disaster.

There is no doubt in my mind that most politicians do work long and hard. There are exceptions of course but when it comes to their incomes, service to their fellow citizens is irrelevant.

The governing Liberals refuse to raise the minimum wage from $7.75 to $10 an hour and instead only raised it another twenty-five cents to eight dollars an hour. They also refused to raise welfare rates to a level that would allow those on social assistance to live above the poverty line.

Those who receive the minimum wage, in the doughnut shops, pizza joints and sweat shops of the province, work long, hard hours. Eight dollars an hour is not a living wage but the politicians believe that that’s all these unfortunate workers are entitled to.

Finance Minister Greg Sorbara (another wealthy individual drawn to politics supposedly for non-monetary reasons) argued that an increase in the minimum wage would devastate the economy. He argued that if employers were forced to pay minimum-wage pizza-delivery drivers more, they would fire these Ontario workers and outsource the jobs to China. If that happened, the waiting time for service would be astronomical. The hogwash is now overflowing.

As for increasing welfare rates, the government tells us that this too is a no-no. They say that eliminating poverty would undermine the incentive structure by permitting the lazy poor to sit at home drinking beer and watching TV. Careful where you walk----there is hogwash under foot.

True, politicians in Ottawa – and even on some municipal councils – make more than MPPs. But this sorry state of affairs occurs only because of trade distortions. Let’s outsource Queen's Park’s politicians by electing cheaper MPPs from the developing world who could stay in their home countries and vote on bills via the Internet.

The vote – with 77 Liberal and Progressive Conservative MPPs in favour of the raise and seven New Democrats against – was the MPPs' last official business before beginning their long Christmas break. NDP House leader Peter Kormos said of the raise. "It's the height of arrogance, it's the height of greed, it's the height of avarice. I am curious as to what he is going to do with his raise.

But not all New Democrats appeared on side with their leader, with MPPs Rosario Marchese (Trinity-Spadina) and Gilles Bisson (Timmins-James Bay) absent from yesterday's vote. Both privately favoured the increase.

Hampton and several of his MPPs committed to give their raises to charity, although they could have opted out of the wage increase under terms of the bill. Hampton said he would keep giving the raise to charity after the next election. Hey, wake up. If he really felt that the pay raise was inappropriate, then why didn’t he refuse it instead of giving it to charity and probably getting a tax cut as a direct result of his so-called ‘generosity’.

Scrooge said it best in the Christmas Carol. Bah! Humbug!

Should mercy killing be punishable by imprisonment?

Dahn Batchelor's Opinions

There was no doubt in anyone's mind that 12-year-old Tracy Latimer
was severely handicapped. She suffered from cerebral palsy, a motor function disorder which is usually acquired at birth as a result of lack of oxygen in the brain at birth. The victims of this illness can suffer varying degrees of mental retardation, (although some victims possess normal intelligence) slurred speech, difficulty in seeing and hearing, partial or total loss of use of limbs or involuntary movement of the limbs, loss of or delay in acquiring sphincter control, difficulty in sucking and swallowing, etc.

Tracy suffered from extreme cerebral palsy. She had the mentality of a 3 month-old baby, her severely damaged brain sent chaotic messages to muscles in her limbs and back, causing her terrible pain as the muscles were abnormally tightened. By the time she was 8, her rampaging back muscles had twisted her spine sideways and even after the surgeon cut some tendons to allow the muscles to relax, by the time she was 11, her back curvature was worse than before. After an operation in 1992, her backbone was fused and that seem to help to some degree. She could sit for unlimited periods of time. The ball socket in her hip had meanwhile slipped out of place and that made any movement of her leg extremely painful. She couldn't feed herself, wash or otherwise clean herself in any manner. Her future looked extremely dim.

According to the doctors, eventually she wouldn't suffer the same kind of pain she was suffering during the years before her death but the pain she was suffering from up to the time of her death was agonizing. Robert Latimer concluded that she had suffered enough and that it might be years before the pain finally subsided. He didn't want his daughter to suffer anymore.

The burden placed on the parents of such victims is enormous. The victims practically need 24-hour care, they cannot be left alone, they must be fed, bathed, wiped, dressed, carried about--the list of inconveniences to the long-suffering parents is endless. The older the victim, the greater the burden. Many are embarrassed by it all and tend to shy from strangers and in some cases, even friends. As the child grows, the burden placed on the parents is increased until it almost becomes unbearable.

Iain Benson, a lawyer from B.C. who practices constitutional law, wrote in The Law Times, a legal periodical, " It is easier, far easier to attach a gas hose than carry a child's bent body day after day. It is easier, far easier, to inject a patient with a drug with the intention of killing them, than treat pain and assist in reducing suffering as part of a compassionate community." unquote. I totally concur with his concerns.

In October 1993, 44-year-old Robert Latimer of Saskatchewan, carried his pain-ridden daughter to the cab of his truck and placed her onto the seat and then inserted a hose into the window in which the other end was connected to the exhaust. He was forced to watch his daughter writhing while inhaling the deadly carbon monoxide filling the enclosed space within the cab of his truck. Her father would have obviously suffered terrible anguish (that which cannot be described by anyone except by those who have killed a loved one out of an act of mercy) as he watched his daughter slowly dying before his eyes.

Dying by carbon monoxide is not an easy way to die. The victims suffer from severe headaches and nausea before they lapse into unconsciousness and death, the latter which comes about when the carbon monoxide forces oxygen from the blood cells. Tracy would have lived several minutes at least in that enclosed tomb and perhaps during her final moments of life, wondering why her father was doing this to her.

He then took the lifeless body of his daughter from the cab and placed her in her bed. His wife not being aware what her husband had earlier done to their child, tried to awaken Tracy from what her mother thought was a sound sleep. Then she discovered the horrible truth.

Robert called the police and as to be expected, he was arrested and charged with the 1st degree murder of his daughter.(later reduced to 2nd degree)

His first conviction was set aside because of stupidity on the part of the crown attorney (in the USA, district attorney) with reference to the choosing of a jury and as to be expected, he was tried a second time.

Again he was convicted of 2nd degree murder. In Canada, first degree homicide is murder when the killer premeditates the death of another and Latimer admitted to the police that he had planned to kill his daughter several days before he killed her. The police in sympathy for him, charged him with second degree murder and the crown attorney didn't object. The jury had no other choice but to find him guilty of 2nd degree murder.

But what really perplexed the jury was the kind of sentence he would get. They all knew the law. They knew that in Canada, anyone convicted of 2nd degree murder is automatically sentenced to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole available to the prisoner only after serving a minimum of ten years in prison. They correctly presumed that the judge wouldn't increase the eligibility date to the maximum of 25 years but they didn't like the idea that Latimer would have to serve at least ten years in prison before being released. They had recommended to the judge that Latimer only serve one year in jail even though the law normally didn't give the judge that right to give Latimer only one year in jail.

Then something happened that has never happened before in Canada.
Latimer's lawyer asked the judge to rule that forcing Latimer to serve a minimum term of ten years in prison (even though the law says that he must) is unconstitutional.

Section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights states that 'everyone has the right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.' There can be no doubt that making a person convicted of 2nd degree murder serve a minimum of ten years imprisonment is not unusual since those sentences are awarded many times to people who kill others.

The real issue was whether or not the sentence of a minimum of ten years of imprisonment in Latimer's case constituted cruel punishment.

When someone kills another, it is as a general rule, premeditated with malice towards the victim. But in Latimer's case (as with all cases of mercy killing) he loved his victim and was compassionate towards her and acted in what he believed was her best interest.

Although everyone was sympathetic to Robert Latimer, there were many who felt that he didn't have the right to kill his daughter. Various advocates for the disabled felt that only a disabled person has the right to decide when his or her life should come to an end. I agree with that concept however in Tracy's case, she, having the mentality of a three-month-old baby, was hardly in a position to make that kind of decision for herself. Obviously the doctors wouldn't make that kind or decision for her. If such a decision was to be made, it would have to rest with Tracy's parents.

Robert Latimer took on the responsibility without consulting his wife. That was, in my opinion, a decent thing to do because if his wife had become involved in the decision making, she too could have been charged with and convicted of 2nd degree murder. Robert chose to take upon his own shoulders, the decision, the anguish that accompanies such a deed and the blame and consequences of his action that invariably followed.

Justice Nobel had two enormous tasks before him. He first had to make a determination of whether or not a ten-year minimum sentence in a case like this was unconstitutional. But his second task was even harder. He had to decide if Latimer merited this kind of consideration.

Even if he was to rule that Latimer was to serve a minimum of ten years in prison, he or his lawyer could ask the federal government for its perogative of mercy, that is, a pardon in which he would be released which would reduce his sentence to time served.

After much soul searching, Justice Noble decided that mercy was due to Latimer and he sentenced him to one year in a provincial jail and one year under house arrest in which he is to remain on his farm except when authorized to leave by his probation or parole officer.

In actual fact, he is eligible for parole after he serves a quarter of his time although he may be expected to serve at least six months in jail. His time under house arrest will no doubt be considerably reduced also.

I think what Justice Noble was trying to say was that he understood Latimer's plight but he felt that anyone who makes that kind of decision, such as the one made by Latimer, must be prepared to satisfy society's need for atonement as his or her personal anguish wasn't enough.

The Canadian Minister of Justice, Anne McLellan said the day after the jury found Latimer guilty the second time, "I was struck, as I am sure all of you were, with the intense and very diverse reactions to the situation, the very tragic and difficult situation presented in Latimer. I think Canadians are deeply conflicted on these issues." unquote.

I have had the good fortune of recently meeting a woman (Mrs. Jenny John) a lady in Ontario in her forties who has a daughter who also suffers from cerebral palsy, albeit, her daughter doesn't suffer with the severity that Tracy did. Jenny's daughter is 15 years old and must be cared for as she is unable to care for herself.

Jenny's husband and father of their handicapped child was unable to cope with her handicap so when she was seven, he deserted her and her mother. Jenny remarried but her second husband couldn't accept the fact that he had a step daughter that was (in his own words) an embarrassment so he too deserted the child, his wife and his two girls she bore him. Then, if that wasn't enough for Jenny, her oldest son deserted her and refuses to acknowledge that he has a sister that is so severely handicapped. He refuses to even visit her or his mother and other siblings.

Jenny told me that at one point in her life, she seriously considered killing her daughter. She felt that her daughter was living a meaningless life and that the burden of caring for her handicapped daughter was far greater than she was mentally and emotionally prepared to bear.

But it must be considered that what put Jenny in such a severe state of depression (that invariable brought to the fore, the thought of killing her child)was the loneliness and hopelessness of being deserted by her two husbands, her friends and her oldest son and to make matters worse, no-one was offering her emotional support, not even her church.

But Jenny didn't kill her child and I asked her why. She said, and I will quote from our conversation.

"My daughter was a gift from God to me. I wanted a daughter and I got a daughter. It wasn't my place to decided that God's gift was to die. I love my daughter very much and I could never live with myself if I were to take it upon myself to end my daughter's life simply because she didn't turn out to be like the daughter I expected." unquote

I didn't ask Jenny what she would have done if her daughter suffered from severe pain like Tracy Latimer did because Jenny's daughter doesn't suffer from that kind of pain. The question would have been academic and inappropriate under the circumstances.

Clair Hoy, a noted Canadian columnist, in an article he wrote for The Law Times said in part; "Tracy Latimer is dead. Her father didn't ask her if she wanted to die. He didn't search for options like sending her to an institution, which, while painful, surely is a better solution than death." unquote.

Ian Benson in his article with The Law Times, said in part; "….it is not kindness to kill another person. Kindness, rooted in compassion (from the Latin compassio--to suffer with) is a world away from the selfish acts that is now trendy to call merciful." unquote.

These two issues are uppermost in the minds of everyone who has thought about mercy killing, either as a victim or as a loved one. Advances in medicine have advanced to such a state, that pain can be controlled and become to some degree, bearable. But there are some illnesses that no amount of drugs will ease the agony of the victims. A good example of this is cancer in the lungs. The victim slowly suffocates to death--a fate that has to be one of the most agonizing and terrifying of all. Then there is the paraplegic who is blinded and deafened by an accident to boot and merely lies in bed, oblivious of everything around him, 24 hours a day, year after year with nothing left in his or mind but thoughts of the past and no one really caring whether he lives or dies.

Can anyone truly argue that such victims have to continue to live the rest of their lives like that? How does anyone rationalize that kind of existence? To quote a cliché, "It isn't prolonging life--it's prolonging death."

In one country in Europe, the doctors are permitted to hand a fatal pill to a patient and let the patient end his own life. In the USA, a doctor helps
severely ill patients end their own lives. Some doctors will indirectly let a patient end his or her own life by placing three pills on their night table and tell them to take a pill if the pain become unbearable. The doctors warn them however not to take three at one time as the pills will kill them. The doctors know that the patients will take all three at once so that their life and agony will finally end.

But in situations like this, the victims of these illnesses have the choice and the ability to exercise their choice.

What do we do with those who are unable to bring about their own deaths or worse yet, don't even understand what is happening to them, because of their mental handicaps?

Perhaps in the next millenium, there will come a time when a panel of doctors and judges will make that decision for them but until then, parents are making the decisions for their children and in some cases, children are making that decision for their parents and in other cases, spouses are doing the same for their spouses.

The complexities of issues surrounding capital punishment and abortion pale when compared with euthanasia. Until these issues are addressed, we will continue to have mercy killing at its worst--that is, victims or their loved ones doing it themselves--some by stuffing kleenex down their own throats so that they will suffocate to death, others who will place pillows over the faces of their loved ones so that they too will suffocate--and of course, placing loved ones in the cab of trucks so that they can die of carbon monoxide--the list of methods is endless.

In summation, I would like to quote from a paper I wrote that was published in November 1973 in Modern Medicine of Canada, a medical journal (and also published in other medical journals around the world) My quote sums up what my feelings are about mercy killing and it is something that must be considered by anyone, be they a victim, a loved one forced to resort to mercy killing, and more importantly, by those in the medical profession that are aware of the problem and also the judiciary who may some day have to rule on it.

"…….study the case of 1927 which took place in the United States when a man who, after watching his little daughter dying of tuberculosis and gangrene of the face, heard her screaming, months on end, driving him mad, took the pitiful creature into his bathroom and drowned her. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, knowing that he acted out of remorse and that his act was a humane act. They knew he would suffer forever, never be able to block out of his mind the sight of his little girl, grasping his arms, and not making any attempts to fight the death which was going to end her misery. Justice Branson at his trial said; 'It is a matter which gives food for thought when one comes to consider that, had this poor child been an animal instead of a human being, so far from there being anything blameworthy in the man's action in putting an end to its suffering, he would actually have been liable to punishment if he had not done so.'

Carrying knives on our streets should be illegal

Dahn Batchelor's Opinions

Back in the 1970s a man was walking on Dundas Street in downtown Toronto when suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his back. As he turned, he gasped "Why?" He was dead before he hit the sidewalk. At the trial of the killer, he was asked 'why' again and the killer told the prosecutor that he wanted to see what it was like to kill a human being. In September 1992, another man was stabbed by a man who just walked out of a crowd and stabbed him and then ran away. Neither knew each other. In March 1993, another man was in his car when a crazy thought that the motorist had stopped his car too close to him. The crazy pulled out a Japanese Samural sword and stabbed the motorist. During the summer of 1993, a man slashed a 15-year-old girl in a subway station with a razor. Neither knew each other.

In 1993, there were 630 killings in which 31% were the direct result of stabbings. That means approximately 195 killers that year walked around the streets with knives on their person for the purpose of killing someone. Those figures haven't changed that much since then.

Thousands upon thousands of people carry knives in their pockets or in sheaths hanging from their belts when they walk down our streets every day and their purpose is to either use the knives for intimidation, (robbery or sexual assault) self defence (they are looking for trouble) or murder. (exacting revenge or thrill killing)

There just doesn’t seem to be any legitimate reason why anyone nowadays should be carrying a knife within the confines of a community.

Admittedly, there was a time when men would carry small pocket knives to trim their cigars or clean their pipes and those were legitimate uses. And of course, anyone hunting or camping in the bush should have one also. But how can anyone walking our streets nowadays, justify carrying a knife, especially a concealed hunting knife hanging from their belt?

Most persons who are carrying knives these days, when stopped by the police, say that they are carrying their knives for protection. That is clearly against the law. Anyone carrying a concealed weapon is contravening section 89 of the Criminal Code. The offence is completed when the person takes steps to hide the weapon from view. When they say that they are carrying it for protection, that is the evidence needed to establish that the person intends that his knife should be considered as a weapon. All it takes to be convicted is concealing what is intended to be used as a weapon. Motive is immaterial in instances like this.

As we all know, even small children are carrying knives and many have used them on other small children. Taxi drivers and pizza drivers are very often robbed and in many cases, stabbed for a few dollars. Often violent sex offenders carry these knives not only for intimidation but to murder their victims so that they won't talk.

The law should be enforced vigorously. Anyone found with a concealed weapon, especially a knife, no matter what it's size should be arrested and charged under section 89 of the Code. Perhaps sixty days in jail will get the message across that honest and peaceful people do not need to carry knives on their person. They can always flee their attackers.

If such a law was enforced vigorously, them perhaps these constant robberies, sexual assaults and murders will be reduced in considerable numbers.

I appreciate the fact that many of these kinds of thugs are capable of carrying guns and of course that has to be addressed also but if we don't punish them for carrying knives on their person, how can we expect them to obey the law about not carrying guns?

Should there be restrictions om Muslim women wearing face coverings?

A burqua is a cloak that covers all but a woman’s hands and feet. In includes a small mesh-like area which allows Muslim women to see, but covers their bodies in order to maintain their modesty. The niqab on the other hand is a veil covering the face but leaving the eye area clear. The word hijab used in the Qur'an for a headscarf or veil is called khimār

Recently, the Dutch cabinet said it was proposing a bill banning clothing that covers the face in public, targeting in particular Muslim woman wearing the burqa or niqab.The ban would be imposed in public and "semi-public" places such as schools, courts, ministries and trains. They claim that it's a public safety measure, saying that garments covering the face may make others feel threatened and that suicide bombers in particular could use burquas to hide the explosives more easily. I am concerned that young Muslim women, especially those 'jihadists' who are teens who are in head-to-toe attire may be forced to carry bombs strapped around their bodies.

Dutch Muslims have objected at the proposed government ban of face veils, saying it infringes on their religious rights. No matter what we may think of Islam, veils, or burkas, they may have a point. What these women wear is a vital part of freedom of expression, and in this case of expression as per a custom- values fundamental to a liberal society. In a liberal society, it is simply assumed that (barring workplace safety issues, or balaclavas in banks), they can wear what they like in public. Many Muslims maintain that it is not the government's business to dictate fashion or tell them what they should wear, any more than it is the government’s business to tell them what they should believe or what they can and cannot do in bed.

A hitherto unknown group calling itself the ‘Just Swords of Islam’ issued a warning to Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip in the first week of December 2006 that they must wear the hijab or face being targeted by the group's members. The warning was directed primarily against female students in a number of universities and colleges who do not cover their heads in line with Islamic tradition. The group said its followers a week earlier threw acid at the face of a young woman who was dressed "immodestly" in the center of Gaza City.

Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense? To do so, I would consider myself a moral coward so I will speak my mind.

I don't care if Muslim women wear Burquas in Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Africa, the United Arab Emirates, or any other Muslim nation. However, when they choose to live in Europe or North America, they have to adjust themselves to our customs if it conflicts with our security and well-being. For example, Afghan girls are now free to remove their burquas, which were strictly enforced under the Taliban regime.

As an example of sheer stupidity, some Muslim women who have applied for driver’s licences in some jurisdictions where photos of the drivers must be on the licences, have insisted that they be photographed wearing the burquas so that their faces are hidden and not shown on the liences. How long will it be when these stupid women begin demanding that photographs of their faces not be placed in their passports? These women in my opinion are so daft, they want to spend their days looking at life through a slit. It doesn’t say much for that part of female race with respect to their intelligence or lack thereof.

It’s ironic when one thinks of it. The veil was a symbol of prostitution sanctioned by a religion some 7000 years back. The veil used to identify woman as willing prostitutes who want to be taken to bed by any strangers. Further, prostitutes dedicated to the fertility Goddess were working at the Temples in Canaan. They were required to cover their bodies and faces when entering the temples.

Face coverings make communication and integration into a new culture more difficult, hampering efforts to integrate immigrants into society. According to Reuters this shouldn't present much of a problem in the Netherlands, since only about 50 women in that country actually wear a burqua as they're are already illegal in schools and on public transportation in the Netherlands. However, this law doesn't seem as strict as the French law prohibiting religious attire of any kind (crosses or head scarves) in public schools.

The right-leaning coalition in the Netherlands said that it would look for a way to outlaw the wearing of all Muslim face veils. The grounds for a ban were laid last December when parliament voted in favour of a proposal to criminalize face coverings, as part of a security measure. There have been several instances in India were unknown persons wearing burquas so that they could defeat the purpose of the surveillance cameras, subsequently robbed the stores so I can see why the Dutch authorities are concerned about face coverings.

Why do these women cover their faces in the first place since there is nothing in the Qur'an directing them to do so. The answer is quite simple. It’s their menfolk who are demanding that they do so. They don’t want any other man gazing upon the faces of their women with lust. Give me a break. Why, for example, would a man look upon the face of a sixty-year-old woman with lust? I don’t care if this custom goes back hundrds of years ---- it’s utter nonsence. I strongly doubt that these women are happy wearing their black burqas on a hot summer day while gardening in their back yards. How they must yearn to go swimming in the cool waters of the lake, sea or ocean nearby.

I have nothing but contempt for any man who insists that his wife or adult daughters wear this form of attire. They obviously don’t trust their womenfolk and that by itself is an insult to these women. These men have only their own interests in mind and not the best interests of their wives and adult daughters. I think it actually detracts from the woman’s active witness to her faith, by focusing only on one aspect of it - exagerated ‘modesty’ - covering herself from ‘lustful gaze’ - and misses out a far more important part, which is her witness to her faith lived out through her life, a life which is best served by fully engaging with her fellow humans. Head to toe coverings negate such women to a cypher, a woman must cover herself from lust; as if all men are lustful animals. Do all men, especially since they are assumed by many Muslim husbands and fathers, of women wearing such clothing, appear to them as predators? Do they not deserve more trust and respect than to be assumed to be lascivious uncontrollable rutting brute beasts when in the presence of their women? If women feel so at risk from male sexuality (as if wearing a burqua protected women from being raped and mistreated anyway) that they must cover up in full, then the problem lies with the menfolk of their aquanitance.

I find it very hard to believe that any of these unfortunate women; if given a choice, would continue to wear such foolish attire. I doubt any "moderate" Muslims wear full burquas. It is only a small proportion of Muslim women who are tricked into believing that there is a religious obligation to do so. The burqua is a symbol of old cultural custom that has no place in a modern liberal society especially since facial identification is a pretty fundamental part of western society. If you take away male intervention and assume that Muslim women wear the veil without any coercion from the men in their lives, then I would argue that it is therefore a political act and has nothing whatever to do with the women’s modesty.

Itis also highly rude in our society to not show your face when talking to someone whether it be wearing sunglasses or wearing a veil over one’s face.

One Muslim perception may well be that the west is not in the best position to preach to Muslim women about what types of attire denote and encourage female self- determination. I am not suggesting that these women, go out and buy a dress, put away their shalwar kameez and saris, or even to ban their burquas, I am simply saying that when they talk to someone, they should show their faces. Nothing in Islam prevents this, its not a sin and it is not a sign of disrespect. Nowhere in the Qu’ran does it say that the Muslim women’s faces must be covered at all times when in public.

Women have covered their bodies for centuries. There are plenty of ways for them to dress modestly. What we culturally understand to be ‘modest’ does not mean they have to cover up their entire bodies. Surely the point of modesty and modest dress is so that the woman’s intellect, opinions, faith, character can come through loudly and clearly and truthfully. The niqabs and burkas seem to take that away by acting as ostentatious masks - and masks are usually worn to disguise the persons wearing them.
Western women put on makeup and wear nice clothes to feel attractive. It is a perfectly natural instinct for a human being to try to look attractive. Men groom themselves to look attractive to women so why can’t women do the same? The issue is whether a society/culture should impose restrictions on one sex that it is not prepared place on the other sex. The key difference between Saudi Arabia and Western society is that the latter does not make women second class citizens as the Saudis seek to do. In western society it is not Muslim men’s place to pass judgment on what women can and can’t wear.

We must not forget that that when Ataturk was the leader of Turkey, he ordered that the fez was not to be worn. No one in Turkey wears a fez and it is an accepted practice to not wear a fez in Turkey. In Canada, most men do not wear fedoras on their heads anymore. In fact one rarely sees a man wearing any hat nowadays. They can if they want to but few men do. Japanese women no longer have their feet bound so tight that if unbound, they couldn’t walk. Customs change and we all change with them.

I sincerely hope that the day will come for the Muslim women forced by custom to wear the burquas, when they can shed them and enjoy the fresh air that will strike their bodies and enjoy the sun’s rays as it shines on them. When that day comes, these women will then truly be liberated.

Sunday, December 31, 2006

Saddam's execution was necessary

Dahn Batchelor's Opinions

While clutching a Quran and refusing a hood, Saddam Hussein stood on the gallows before sunrise on December 30th 2006, to be executed by vengeful countrymen after a quarter-century of remorseless brutality that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and led Iraq into disastrous wars against Iran and Kuwait.

The "Butcher of Baghdad," as he was known to millions of his oppressed people in Iraq, died at 6:05 a.m. in Iraq, hanged by the neck with a 3-cm rope looped around his neck until he was dead.

He was executed after being found guilty for his role in the 1982 killings of 148 Shiite Muslims – rounded up and executed without trial after a botched assassination attempt in the Iraqi city of Dujail. Had he not been sentenced to death for those crimes, he certainly would have been sentenced to death for the murder of over 180 thousand Kurds who were killed while he was the dictator of Iraq.

I believe that a great many people worldwide including myself felt a certain feeling of satisfaction when we watched on TV (soon after his execution) the hangmen placing the noose around this despot’s neck. We were cognizant of the history of this man’s brutality. He gassed thousands of men, women and children in their villages, he ordered some of his victim’s tongues cut out before they were executed, others were lowered into vats of acid while still alive, others still were ground up in large grinders while still alive. Other victims, including children were placed in cells in which they were then subjected to mustard gas while they lay writhing and screaming on the floor of their cells. Some were thrown from high buildings while handcuffed.

al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a dominant party in the country's governing coalition said after Saddam’s execution, "He killed millions of Iraqis in prisons, in wars with neighbouring countries, and he is responsible for mass graves.” The list of obscenities brought about by him and his two evil sons could go on and on but space doesn’t permit me to give my readers the full picture of their brutality against their own people.

Despite the fact that this human monster was executed after being found guilty of the murder of the 148 Shiite Muslims, there are sob sisters who maintain that he shouldn’t have been executed. Pope Benedict XVI's top prelate for justice issues, Cardinal Renato Martino, took such a tack, noting Saddam's execution punishes "a crime with another crime ... the death penalty is not a natural death."

I suppose that this prelate’s premise for his remarks was that God will wreak Man’s vengeance, not Man. Unfortunately, God wasn’t really around when Saddam’s victims were being slowly tortured to death in the hideous ways only an evil person could bring about. If God was present during the pain Saddam’s victims were undergoing when their tongues were being cut out, God was merely a bystander.

As I see it, we as human beings have the right to bring justice to others providing that it is done honestly and the accused are given their right to defend themselves. Some say that Saddam didn’t get a fair trial. I don’t know enough about what took place in his trial but surely, all that was needed to convict him was proof that he ordered the execution of 148 men and boys who didn’t get a trial. That fact was shown in evidence and that by itself is suffice to say that he was guilty as charged.

Some will say that the International Court in The Hague should have tried him. If he was tried by that court, he still would have been found guilty but he wouldn’t have been executed because that court doesn’t have the authority to sentence its convicted defendants to death.

I believe that his execution may act as a balm to sooth some of the the anguish suffered by Iraqis who lost loved ones under Saddam’s rule. In my opinion, his execution was absolutely necessary. For those who don’t agree with me, consider what happened to Idi Amin, the ruthless dictator who slaughtered so many Ugandans when he was in power. He lived in luxury during his remaining years in exile before he died of old age. Saddam may not have lived in luxury if he had to serve a life sentence in prison but the idea of him still breathing when one considers how many hundreds of thousands of innocent people died under his rule, is obscene.

I believe that what was shown on Iraqi television said it for all when after airing national songs after the first announcement, it displayed a tag on the screen that read “Saddam’s execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq’s history.’’

After his execution was shown on television worldwide, there were many who objected to the manner in which the onlookers in the execution chamber insulted and mocked Saddam moments before he was dropped into the void. The complainers said that it had reduced the serenity of the execution to a mad house. It was in my opinion fitting that in the last moments of this human monster's life that he should hear their insults. It must be remembered that he felt that he was so omnipotent that he forbade anyone from mocking him. On one occasion, he ordered that one of his own generals who was overheard mocking him, was to have his tongue cut out and then executed. Seconds before Saddam's life was ended abruptly, he heard common folk jeer him. A great ending for such a monster. He is very lucky he died so quickly. I could tell from the length of the rope, that his neck was broken instantaniously. He fared far better that the leaders of the Nazi regime. The executioner in Nuremburg made sure that they strangled at the end of the rope. Some strangled for as much as twenty minutes. If anyone should have strangled for twenty minutes, it was Saddam.

Hopefully, other tyrants around the world are getting the message that they too may be executed by their own people just as Saddam and the dictator of Romania were. If their executions can bring about that message, then Saddam’s recent execution is a lesson being taught to them. I hope they learn it soon before they too are put to death by their own people whom they are abusing.

Letter to a chief of police about a bad cop

Dahn Batchelor's Opinions

This letter was mailed at the end of December 2006 to William Blair, the chief of police of the Toronto Police Service in which I expressed my concerns about a rogue cop under his command.

Dear Sir:

By way of introduction, I am a criminologist and an advisor to the United Nations on criminal justice. Over the years I have participated in various committees at the request of several ministries in Ontario and I have spoken on such topics as the complaint procedures with respect to police forces. In 2005 and 2006, I was a guest speaker at three forums on justice in Bangkok, Lima and Brussels. Because of my many speeches around the world at UN forums etc., I am mindful of how fortunate we as Canadians are in having checks and balances within our system of justice.

In one of your messages to the citizens of Toronto, you said in part;

The men and women of the Service, on a daily basis, exemplify our seven core values: honesty, integrity, fairness, respect, reliability, teamwork and positive attitude.

When you spoke those words, you spoke of the men and women collectively and for the most part, you were quite correct in expressing your sentiment and mine also with your choice of words.

Unfortunately those words don’t exemplify the words of all your police officers. It is one of those officers whose conduct is so egregious that it has compelled me to write you. I am speaking of Sergeant Elliott of 23 Division.

Until I heard the decision of Superintendent Tweedy with respect to the hearing he conducted on December 13, 2006, I didn’t know much about Elliott other than the fact that it was he who was the fool, along with other supervisors, who encouraged the traffic ticket quota system in 23 Division.

But as I listened to Supt. Tweedy’s decision further, it became apparent to me that Elliott did something far worse. He tried to frame two innocent police officers with an offence of trying to bring into fruition a cover-up of their alleged misconduct. Let me quote from my notes:

Elliott had a second conversation with the civilian station operator, which he claimed that she told him that the officers approached her and asked her to not to say anything to anyone about a report and further, to say that she never spoke to them about it. Sergeant Elliott claimed Ms. McGahey (the civilian) was upset about being put in such a difficult position.

Sergeant Elliott admitted at the hearing that it was a very serious allegation of misconduct he was adding to the other two charges he had filed against the two officers because it would be tantamount to the officers encouraging a civilian member to participate in a cover-up of the alleged misconduct of the two officers he had charged earlier.

When Sergeant Elliott was challenged that he never told anyone about this alleged cover-up, he responded by stating that he told Complaints Investigator, Sergeant Tretter of the cover-up and suggested to her that she take a statement from Ms. McGahey.

Ms. McGahey stated there was no suggestion of any attempt on the part of the officers to ask her to lie on their behalf.

Superintendent Tweedy said in his decision that in his opinion, no cover-up existed. He added that if Sergeant Tretter was informed of such a cover-up, she would have stated so to him.

What is interesting about this allegation on the part of Elliott is that he didn’t make any reference to it in his memo book or prepare a report to his unit commander about his new and very serious allegation. Further, he didn’t tell the Service prosecutor about this new allegation until a week before the hearing and that was seventeen months after the fact.

I think the Service prosecutor was too generous when he said that Elliott misunderstood and misstated what Ms. McGahey told him about the conversation that she had with the two officers. It must be kept in mind that his star witness’ (Elliott) testimony at this juncture of the hearing was going so far down the toilet, a plumber couldn’t have recovered it.

I believe that Supt. Tweedy was more correct in his conclusion about Elliott’s testimony when he said that his testimony caused him concern; was not sufficiently persuasive and was frequently contradictory.

I don’t believe that the conversation between Elliott and Ms. McGahey was unclear at all. I am sure that Elliott merely asked her if she passed on his message to the officers with respect to the report and she confirmed that she did. There would have been no need to press the matter further. As stated earlier, Ms. McGahey never told him about an attempt on the part of the two officers to get her to participate in a cover-up.

By Elliott testifying that Ms. McGahey told him that she was asked to participate in a cover-up by the two officers; he perjured himself.

Police officers who perjure themselves in hearings or trials are unquestionably a risk to everyone, be they police officers or citizens charged with crimes. Society relies on the honesty of police officers. The thought of innocent people being convicted on perjured testimony is very frightening.

Take the case of Zimmerman of New York City who many years ago was convicted on the perjured testimony of a police officer who didn’t like the man personally and was out to destroy him. Zimmerman was only twenty- five minutes from the electric chair when the governor stayed his execution. After he served twenty years in prison, the police officer on his deathbed confessed that he had falsely accused Zimmerman of a murder he knew he hadn’t committed. Zimmerman was subsequently released from prison and the city gave him $1 million dollars in compensation.

Further, Elliott tried to convince officers’ in 23 Division to not socialize with one of the officers he charged because that officer reported his bad conduct to his superiors. By doing this terrible deed, Elliott intended to seriously malign and subjected the officer to immense torment.

I am mindful of section 57(1) of the Police Services Act which says that “a complaint may be made by a member of the public only if the complainant was directly affected by the policy, service or conduct that is the subject of the complaint.”

This letter is not to be construed as a complaint filed against Sergeant Elliott by myself or on behalf of any other person but is instead a letter of concern by a citizen who lives in Mississauga but is in Toronto many times and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the Toronto Police Service.

I know that I don’t have to remind you that once in a while, police services in various cities get rogue cops and they can cause a lot of misery to the citizens they are sworn to protect.

But when you get a police officer, especially a sergeant who tries to frame innocent cops to further his purpose, whatever it may be, the credibility of that sergeant diminishes to the point that his role as a police sergeant is damaged beyond any hope of repair. Younger police officers should be able to look up to their sergeants for advice and direction instead of looking down at their sergeants with contempt. What value is Sergeant Elliott’s service as a sergeant if those below his rank, those who serve with an equivelent rank and those who are above his rank are contemptuous of him as a fellow officer?

I am interested in knowing what action, preferably by way of a Police Act hearing, is going to be instituted against Sergeant Elliott.

I am sure that if your police force were to demote this individual back to the rank of Police Constable, the message will get across to others of his ilk that there are consequences to behaving in the manner that this sergeant did. Certainly his lack of Crime Stoppers procedures with respect to reporting is evidence that he is not paying attention to what he has been told. It would create a situation where younger officers would be looking to him for advice on a subject he knows nothing about.

I am curious to know if you are going to let this sergeant’s conduct slide or alternatively, begin the process of disciplining him. In my respectful opinion, the latter approach would appear to be in the best interests of his fellow officers and the public at large.

__________________________________________________________________________________

I will let you know if he replies to my letter and what he says in it.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Would you trust this member of parliament?

Dahn Batchelor's Opinions

This letter was sent on June 10, 2006 to a member of the Canadian Parliament who accepted large donations from small children whose father was supporting him in his run for office again. This was against the law. He ran for the leadership of the Liberal Party but was soundly defeated.

Joe Vope
Member of Parliament 520 Bronson Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario
K1R 7Y9

Dear Mr. Vope:

I am deeply concerned that a member of parliament such as yourself would accept donations from young children for his leadership race, notwithstanding the fact that the money really came from the children’s father.

As you know, there is a limit on the amount of money that private individuals can donate to politicians running for federal office, the limit being $5,400.

There is obviously a very good reason for this. If there was no limit and a multi-millionaire wanted to have a great deal of influence over the politician he has sponsored, that politician may find it very difficult to ignore the demands of the person who put him in office. It would also be conceivable that such a donor would receive preferable treatment over a constituent who doesn’t have enough money to live on and therefore couldn’t contribute to the politician’s fundraising campaign.

It is apparent to most if not all Canadians that the executive of Apotex Inc who contributed $27,000 to your coffers under the guise that it was his children, ages 11 and 14 who made the contributions, tried to go around the limitation by claiming that each of his children made the contributions. You in turn decided to thwart the intent of the limitation by accepting the money.

The actions of this executive as I see it, is tantamount to lobbying for your cooperation with respect to his business. When executives of companies begin lobbying members of parliament, it is a sure sign that their companies have lost their fight in the civil service and the cabinet. Anything that that executive or anyone else from his firm does in attempting to influence you will be looked upon by the citizens of Canada as lobbying at its worst.

It is an insult to all Canadians that both of you really thought that we are so naïve that you could pull this off and get away with it. Judging by the manner in which you tried to justify your actions, I strongly suspect that you would also accept donations from the estates of deceased pets if no one found you out.

The fact that you returned the money is evidence that you finally realize that you were wrong in accepting it in the first place.

Your political party is already reeling from the corruption that took place when it was in power and now you have the audacity to run for the leadership of the Liberal Party. It must be obvious to you by now that Canadians recognize that excellence in the ranks of political parties is as rare as excellent in command. It is a fallacy that members of parliament are of a standard that makes them excellent. Admittedly, there have been some exceptions and such men have shown the body politic that they were highly qualified for the task of leading our country. But surely, you are not going to tell us that your qualities as a politician and as a potential leader of your party are based on your excellence as a member of parliament. To do so is to insult our intelligence.

Alas, the time for your departure has come. Let me quote from Sir Allan MacNab in his May 23, 1856 speech when he addressed the Canadian members of parliament on his resignation as Canada’s Prime Minister. He said;

“If I am supported by their voice, I will feel that I am right. If condemned, I am ready to retire into private life, and, perhaps, I am now fitted for little else.”

I don’t know if you are fitted for little else but you surely have been condemned and it is time for you to retire into private life.

I rarely write politicians but when I do, it is because they have behaved badly while in office and every one of them I wrote to, either left politics on their own or were defeated at the polls but none of them reached their goals they had aimed for, to wit; becoming leaders of their parties or their governments.

Aside from ability, Canadians search for honesty in politicians and if honesty is found suspiciously lacking in a politician, that man or woman is considered unsuitable for office, and either voted out of office or put to such shame, that he or she leaves office on his or her own initiative.

In the days when Rome’s influence was at his peak, disgraced generals fell on their own sword. I don’t want you to fall on your sword. Simply pack up your things and slip out of Ottawa on your own in the dark of night and let those hopefuls running for the leadership of your party try to bring some credibility back to their party without you hanging around their necks like the albatross of the Ancient Mariner.

Trusting that you will act responsibly, I remain,

Yours truly

Dahn Batchelor

Naturally, he didn't write me back

Friday, December 15, 2006

A grinch wants Christmas tree removed from lobby

Dahn Batchelor's Opinions

It never fails. The fools emerge when the full moon appears in the sky and they also show up at Christmas time. A Toronto judge standing firm by her decision to keep a Christmas tree out of her downtown courthouse lobby, created a furor in Toronto during the second week of December 2006. Madam Justice Marion Cohen ordered the tiny plastic tree removed saying it's not an appropriate symbol to non-Christians. I can’t help but wonder if she would have given such an order if she was a Christian instead of a Jew. Court employees called the move stupid and insulting, considering the fact that the tree has been in the lobby every Christmas for decades.

Many people of all faiths regard Christmas trees as a symbol of peace and that symbol should negate the feelings of people who believe that the Christmas trees are merely placed in public buildings as a means of pushing the Christian faith on non-believers. Such decorated trees are things of beauty and as such, is an entrenched touchstone representing peace with every culture and faith represented in Canada and elsewhere.

This isn’t the first time this kind of stupidity has surfaced. An airport on the West Coast of the United Sates had to remove their decorated trees because of a threatened lawsuit by a Rabbi. There is some Christmas controversy at the Michigan capital. The tree at the statehouse in Lansing has some people upset. On December 13, 2006, atheists joined with the group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State to protest calling the tree a Christmas tree. The protesters say calling the tree a Christmas tree endorses Christianity and violates the First Amendment.
The clauses in the First Amendment of the American Constitution states that the establishment of religion and free exercise of religion not only protect the diversity within Christianity, but also guarantee religious liberty and equality to the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism.

During the 1986-1987 Christmas season, the government of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, permitted the Holy Name Society, a Roman Catholic organization, to display the nativity scene on the grand staircase inside the main part of the county courthouse in Pittsburgh. The issue as to whether or not this contradicted the First Amendment of the American Constitution was decided upon by the US Supreme Court in July 1989. A majority of the members of the court joined in an opinion holding that the nativity scene display violated the establishment of religion clause. Their reason was that the Nativity scene was displayed in a manner that violated the establishment of religion clause, because the county, by associating itself with the display, did not merely acknowledge Christmas as a cultural phenomenon but celebrated the holiday in a way that had the effect of endorsing a patently Christian message.

Justice Blackmun, writing for the court also added however that the Christmas tree was the predominant element in the display and it by itself did not endorse Christian belief and for this reason, it could stay. He also said that the display of an 18-foot Chanukah menorah; owned by a Jewish religious organization placed in front of a city-county office building from December 22 to January 13 of the following year did not have the effect of advancing religion so as to violate the establishment of religion clause of the Federal Constitution's First Amendment, where the menorah stood next to a 45-foot Christmas tree.

Not all religious celebrations of Christmas located on government property violate the establishment of religion clause of the American Constitution's First Amendment; since it is not unconstitutional for a group of parishioners from a local church to go caroling through a city park on any Sunday in Advent or for a Christian club at a public university to sing carols during their Christmas meeting, and because activities of this nature do not demonstrate the government's allegiance to, or endorsement of, the Christian faith; notwithstanding that not all proclamations of Christian faith located on government property are permitted by the establishment of religion clause just because they occur during the Christmas holiday season.

I would be remiss however if I didn’t mention that the Christmas tree does have some historical roots going back to Christianity. Some historians trace the lighted Christmas tree to Martin Luther. It has been said that Martin Luther began the tradition of decorating trees to celebrate Christmas. One crisp Christmas Eve, about the year 1500, he was walking through snow-covered woods and was struck by the beauty of a group of small evergreens. Their branches, dusted with snow, shimmered in the moonlight. When he got home, he set up a little fir tree indoors so he could share this story with his children. He decorated it with candles, which he lighted in honor of Christ's birth. He attached lighted candles to a small evergreen tree, trying to simulate the reflections of the starlit heaven---the heaven that looked down over Bethlehem on the first Christmas Eve. Obviously for safety sake, Christmas lights have replaced candles.

Late in the Middle Ages, Germans and Scandinavians placed evergreen trees inside their homes or just outside their doors to show their hope in the forthcoming spring. Our modern Christmas tree evolved from these early traditions so it follows that evergreen trees being placed inside homes and buildings and even outside did have other meanings other that which Martin Luther envisioned.

The Christmas tree tradition most likely came to the United States with Hessian troops during the American Revolution, or with German immigrants to Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Christmas tree market was born in 1851 when Catskill farmer Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds of evergreens into New York City and sold them all. By 1900, one in five American families had a Christmas tree, and 20 years later, the custom was nearly universal.

If Martin Luther’s reasons for placing candles on the evergreen trees was to symbolize the stars of heaven that were seen on the night of Jesus Christ’s birth, why can’t they simply be regarded nowadays as a means of adding beauty to the trees? Admittedly, placing angels on the tree or a lighted star at the top of the tree are definitely symbolic of the Nativity Scene but beautiful glass balls are not nor are any other decorations.

If the Jews and the Muslims and any others of varying beliefs want to celebrate this holiday season by putting up decorations in public places during this time of the year, let them do it but they shouldn’t be objecting to anyone putting up Christmas trees in public places if the purpose of the display is to remind everyone who sees them, that it is evidence that we wish upon all people, peace and goodwill.

A few days after the grinch in the Toronto courthouse told the staff there that the tree had to be removed, the Attorney General of Ontario ordered that the tree was to be put back were it was. He also said that in the new year that he would hold meetings to decide whether Christmas trees could be placed in provincial public buildings. The premier of Ontario quickly said that there will be no such meetings and that Christmas trees can be placed in such public buildings during the Christmas season.

Dishonest law students

Dahn Batchelor's Opinions

A number of years ago,a law school in Toronto learned that a large number of law students were cheating on their exams. This is a copy of a letter I sent to the editor of a large newspaper in Toronto about my concerns of such behavior.

I am deeply concerned about the discovery that a great many University of Toronto law students had chosen to mislead law firms with respect to their marks at the law school. This places the law firms in a disadvantageous position; that is not knowing whether or not the applicants are as qualified as they claim to be.

A letter written by more than 50 law students to their law professor, although not condoning this kind of conduct, said that increased tuition, an emphasis on corporate jobs and the constant barrage of recruiting, creates an environment where some students might feel pressures to cheat.

All of us feel pressures to cheat. The pressures of everyday living can cause all of us at some time or another to exaggerate to some degree about our qualities in order to get ahead.

But suppose a doctor applies for a position in a hospital in which he really isn’t qualified to handle. And suppose he gets the job based on his lies. And suppose his patient dies because he didn’t have the qualifications to do such a complicated operation. Would we forgive him because after all, the pressures of life caused him to lie about his qualifications?

Suppose a man applies for a job as a life guard and he has the necessary live-saving training, awards and experience but he neglects to mention that he suffers from nerve damage to one of his arms. And suppose while trying to rescue a drowning person, he fails because his bad arm hasn’t enough strength in it to be put to proper use. Should we forgive him because he needed a job?

We put a great deal of faith in lawyers and trust them with our freedom, our peace of mind and our money. That is why we expect them to be men and women of integrity.

A young law student who chooses to cheat and lie his way into his profession is not a person of integrity. Simply put, such a person is a liar and a cheat. I am forced to ask a rhetorical question. “Are you prepared to put your freedom, your peace of mind and your money into the hands of a lawyer who would lie to you and cheat you simply because he has succumbed to the pressures of life?”

I think the law students in their collective letter said it best when they said, and I quote; “Certainly the individual choice of each student to cheat is beyond justification. A person’s morals are truly tested when temptation is high and these students failed the test.” unquote.

There are enough bad apples in the lawyer’s bin already without having to pile in more rotten apples. These students who are found to have failed the integrity test, should be expelled from their law school. Those students who didn’t lie and cheat with reference to their marks, who approached the prospective law firms with their integrity intact, are to be complimented. They are made of the right stuff. They will develop into the kind of lawyers that we will feel comfortable with when everything we have that is dear to us, is in their capable hands.

The Law Society removes rotten apples after they have been in the bin too long. I think the law school should remove the rotten apples before they are placed in the bin. To do otherwise, is to not care about the quality of the bin.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Dangerous Dogs

Dahn Batchelor's Opinions

This is a letter I sent to the Premier of Ontario on August 30th 2004. After he read it, he wrote me back and said that he would pass it on to the Attorney General of Ontario. Within months, the Attorney General brought in a bill befor the legislature banning pitbulls in Ontario. The bill became law the following year.

Dear Sir:

Ontarions are facing and have been facing for a very long time, a very serious problem with respect to dangerous dogs.

The universally recognized dangerous dogs are; Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, Husky breeds, Staffordshire, Bull Terrier, German Sheppards, Tosa Inu and Dobermans.

In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 25 breeds of dogs were involved in 238 fatal dog bites from 1979-1998. More than 50% of the deaths where the breed was known were caused by Pit Bull type dogs and Rottweilers.

I don’t have statistics for Canada or Ontario however it must be apparent to you as it is to everyone else that we really do have a very serious problem in Ontario as it relates to dangerous dogs.

I think it is time to get rid of these dogs by phasing them out.

The United Kingdom has taken steps to solve their problem. In 1991, their parliament passed the Dangerous Dogs Act.

1.—(1) This section applies to—
(a) any dog of the type known as the pit bull terrier;
(b) any dog of the type known as the Japanese tosa; and
(c) any dog of any type designated for the purposes of this section by an order of the Secretary of State, being a type appearing to him to be bred for fighting or to have the characteristics of a type bred for that purpose.
(2) No person shall—
(a) breed, or breed from, a dog to which this section applies;
(b) sell or exchange such a dog or offer, advertise or expose such a dog for sale or exchange;
(c) make or offer to make a gift of such a dog or advertise or expose such a dog as a gift;
(d) allow such a dog of which he is the owner or of which he is for the time being in charge to be in a public place without being muzzled and kept on a lead; or
(e) abandon such a dog of which he is the owner or, being the owner or for the time being in charge of such a dog, allow it to stray.


3.—(1) If a dog is dangerously out of control in a public place—
(a) the owner; and
(b) if different, the person for the time being in charge of the dog,is guilty of an offence, or, if the dog while so out of control injures any person, an aggravated offence, under this subsection.

I think it is time to bring in legislation to solve this problem. If not, then many more people in our province will eventually be maimed and killed by these dogs.

On your website, you have said, and I quote;
Our government is working with Ontarians to deliver real, positive change. We’re listening to Ontarians about where they want to go — and we’re leading the way there.

I think if you bring in legislation that prohibits the breeding of dangerous dogs in Ontario, your government will deliver a real, positive change to Ontarions.

Do you have the courage to bring in such legislation? If not, then your statement that you are listening to Ontarions is a farce. If another child dies because of an attack by a dangerous dog, that child will have died because we don’t have legislation in Ontario that can prevent these needless deaths.

Do we have to adjust to the alien's ways?

I believe that it is advantageous for all Canadians and citizens of other countries to accept immigrants to our countries. The immigrants bring their culture with them that adds to the mosaic of our countries.

But I get quite annoyed when I read about demands that many immigrants and other minorities make on those of us who have lived here all our lives and who insist that we adjust ourselves to their demands.

Here is a case in point. In November 2006, in the city of Montreal, a Hasidic school (a very orthodox Jewish school) made demands upon a local YMCA which was next door to them, that the Y frost four of their windows so that young men in the Y would not stare at the young women who were exercising in the school. Finally, the Hasdic school gave the Y money to pay for the frosting of their windows.

It is beyond me as to why the Y succumbed to this kind of abuse from a neighbour. It’s like your neighbor telling you that you have to frost your bedroom window so won’t see your neighbour’s wife when she is undressing in their bedroom. If I were being abused like that, I would tell the jerk to get some blinds.

In 2001, some Hasidic Jews in Montreal strung up fishing line along utility poles so that they could create an extended eruv. (an area where they may carry on activities which otherwise would be prohibited on Saturdays)

I don’t care whether they choose to carry on activities normally prohibited to them on Saturdays but if they wish to do that, they should restrict those areas to their homes or any other place that is theirs and not do so in the public domain. It’s like your cat peeing on your neighbour’s lawn as a gesture to your neighbours that your cat has enlarged its territorial domain beyond your own property.

Some ultra-Orthodox Jews in Montreal recently made demands on the police force in that city that only male officers should interview
female suspects or witnesses of that sect because the male ultra-Orthodox Jews may not want to talk with the female officers.

Pure unadulterated RUBBISH

These people aren’t the only ones who make foolish demands. When Baltej Singh Dhillon was accepted into the RCMP, he faced a choice — serving his country or wearing his turban. He chose to fight for his religious rights. In 1990, the federal government finally removed the ban preventing Sikhs in the RCMP from wearing turbans.

How long will it be before Sikhs while working in our mines, on construction sites or serve in our armed forces begin making the same demands? The problem as I see it is, if Sikhs can wear turbans while serving with the RCMP, how long will it be before another minority citizen insists that he wear a headdress of his own choosing while serving in a police force?

A number of years ago, a Moslem schoolgirl in the United States demanded that her school not play Christmas carols in her school. She said that she was not a Christian and that the carols offended her.

More utter unadulterated GARBAGE

Probably the worst offender of this kind of nonsense is the Quebec government. They made a law that prohibits store owners from printing English words on their signs. They also passed a law that said that instruction in the kindergarten classes and in the elementary and secondary schools shall be in French only. That would mean that all the thousands of English speaking students would not be taught English at all, a language that is universally excepted all over the world.

The Supreme Court of Canada denounced that law by saying that it was inconsistent with s. 23 of the Charter and was of no force or effect.

Section 23 of the Charter is entitled Minority Language Educational Rights and provides the citizens of Canada, whose first language learned and understood is that of the English or French linguistic minority population of the province they reside in.

I do not concern myself about accepting a world of differing cultures and languages. It’s the world we live in. I do however have concerns about immigrants and religious zealots who would throw their cultures, beliefs and languages in our faces and then treat us as if it is we who are the aliens who must succumb to their demands.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

The bill of rights for young offenders. What has happened since 1986?

The following is the speech I gave at the Second International Conference on the Rights of children in trouble with the law that was held in Brussels on October 24, 2006

In September, 1980 when I attended the Sixth Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders held in Caracas and presented my paper on the need for a bill of rights for young offenders, the United States delegation agreed with my proposal and the next day they brought forth a resolution asking the delegates to instruct the United Nations Secretariat to conduct world-wide meetings for the following five years to draft up such a standard. In 1985, the propose bill of rights, called the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (the Beijing Rules) was discussed at length at the Seventh Congress held in Milan and accepted and finally approved and passed by the U.N. General Assembly in January 1986.

The Rules were to have an effect on millions upon millions of children around the world, children in need of protection from abuse in our justice and correctional systems. To the children in trouble with the law in many of the signatories to the convention, the Rules were a godsend.

Alas, some signatories have since 1986, ignored some of the various rights that were to be afforded to these unfortunate children. It is the purpose of this paper to give descriptions of some of the abuses that was heaped upon some of these young offenders who were supposed to be protected under the auspices of these Rules.

In 1980, my main complaint that prompted me to suggest the creation of a bill of rights for young offenders was about problems related to government correctional facilities housing young offenders. A quarter of a century later, there are still problems in young offender correctional facilities and this is still my main complaint. Section 13.5 of the Rules states that “while in custody, juveniles shall receive care, protection and all necessary individual assistance----social, educational, vocational, psychological, medical and physical----that they may require in view of their age, sex and personality.”

What follows are some of the horror stories that have come to light of what has occurred inside some of these young offenders facilities for boys and girls in one particular continent alone.

Established by both law and policy, the institutions were supposed to rehabilitate and treat children charged with misdeeds ranging from refusing to attend school to homicide.

A 48-page report made public in 2003 by investigators in one country painted a bleak picture of the privately run institutions as debilitating dumping grounds for troubled children. Woefully underfinanced, understaffed and ill-equipped, the institutions and their poorly trained workers doled out a volatile mix of physical and verbal abuse and in some institutions, mandatory Bible study, but at the same time, they withheld basic medical care and a decent education — all in violation of the Covenant that country signed with the United Nations.

Investigators who descended on the institutions four times in 2003 found ample evidence to declare that children as young as 10 were being mistreated.
Here are some examples of the mistreatment those children were subjected to.
Boys and girls were routinely hogtied and placed in dark cells, shackled to poles or locked in restraint chairs for hours for minor infractions such as talking in the cafeteria or not saying "Yes” or “No, sir."

Girls were made to run while carrying tires and boys while carrying logs, sometimes to the point of vomiting and they were often forced to eat their own vomit.
Boys and girls were also choked, slapped, beaten and attacked with pepper spray as a form of punishment.

Girls at a training school for girls who misbehaved or were on suicide watch were stripped naked and left in a windowless, stifling cinder-block cell, with nothing but the concrete floor to sleep on and a hole in the floor for a toilet, for several days and sometimes even a week at a time. One girl had been locked in a bare cell while naked for 114 straight days.

The ‘Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice’ clearly states that young offenders who are in correctional facilities should be properly medically cared for and yet there are some young offender facilities where this edict was not being adhered to.

The acting head nurse at the aforementioned training school ignored children's injuries and illnesses, refused to help girls fainting from heat and she even blocked children from having access to the visiting doctor. The nurse at another boy’s training school was seen immunizing two children for Hepatitis B with the same needle. Dental care was nonexistent, and the dental clinic at that training school was a mess of mouse droppings, dead roaches and long-expired medicines.

A 16-year-old boy in one of the young offender training camps should have been in a hospital instead of doing construction work and then being forced to do pushups. The boy collapsed with a severe lung infection at the camp for delinquents.

After doing construction in the morning, he was assigned to leaf cleanup. When he balked, staffers ordered him to do calisthenics. When he refused again, they put him in an isolation barracks. When he fought back, they placed him in a ''control position.'' When he defecated on himself, they carried him to a shower. When he would not get dressed, they put clothes on him and helped him do more calisthenics. At one point, the staff helped the boy do push-ups by grabbing his belt and pulling him up and down. Shortly after that, the boy died.

At the time of his death, the boy’s lungs were filled with pus - the byproduct of pneumonia, bronchitis and strep and staph infections. He had been sick with empyema, an accumulation of pus in the lining between his left lung and chest cavity, which had been reducing the elasticity in his left lung for weeks. Finally, after that hellish day at the institution, his heart stopped beating for lack of oxygen. That privately run young offender’s facility was closed down.

When the court sent a fifteen-year-old boy to another young offender’s facility in March 2003 after a string of burglaries, he hoped to get treatment for his bipolar disorder, which relatives say arose from sexual abuse he suffered at age 3. But in letters to his father, the boy was soon begging to be transferred to a state mental hospital.

Despite the fact that he was to be given psychiatric treatment, he had only been visited by a therapist for two minutes. He had been given his punishment but denied what he needed most----psychiatric treatment.

Though mentally ill and retarded children belong elsewhere, 66 to 85 percent of the training schools' students were found to have mental disorders and 9 percent were suicidal. Yet psychiatrists spent an average of just one day a month on campus, mainly performing court evaluations and not treating patients. Individual staff members handled as many as 30 children each, allowing for little of the personal attention as required by law. New students at some institutions were kept out of classes for three to five weeks, violating compulsory attendance laws. They were routinely pulled from class for work details, and those in isolation got sporadic instruction or none at all.

In the year 2001, there was an investigation into the death of a 14-year-old boy at a desert boot camp for troubled youth. He was dehydrated delirious and forced to eat mud by his counselor. Other campers told of abusive treatment they said they had suffered at the hands of staff members who were not much older than the children they were supervising. Children at the camp were punched, kicked, handcuffed and forced to swallow mud regularly. The younger campers were often made to ingest dirt that turned to mud after staff members poured water into their mouths. They said they were allowed to wear only black sweat pants and sweatshirts in temperatures that regularly exceeded 37 degrees Celsius and were physically abused for asking for food, water or medical attention. That privately run camp was shut down also.

The 14-year-old boy was one of many children to die in a series of incidents in recent years at so-called wilderness therapy camps for young people in which rugged conditions and tough discipline are used to break antisocial and, in many cases, criminal habits. Many of the camps were not regulated by government authorities but were run by private organizations.

At one such camp, on one occasion, all the campers were told to lie on their backs alongside one another after which the teenage staff members wearing boots, ran across their chests. Complaints, the boys said, were answered with physical punishment. They would make the boys stand up at attention, and if they moved they'd punch the boys in their stomachs. In one instance, the campers were made to place rocks along a trail and if the boys didn't do it right, the teenage staff members would stomp on the boy’s arms. In one instance, a boy’s arm was broken as a result of being stomped on. The boys said they were frightened of the man in charge of the camp. It was alleged that he once held a knife to the throat of an older boy who wanted to quit the program.

In one training school, the girls were repeatedly pepper-sprayed while running up and down a hill 125 times. If a girl stopped to catch her breath, the staff member nearest her would pepper spray her in her face.

In many of these privately run young offender facilities, there was no real supervision and as such, the young inmates were often brutalized by stronger inmates.

The stupidity and brutality, is not entirely in the domain of privately run juvenile correctional facilities. In one government institution in a large Canadian city, a sixteen-year-old boy was constantly teased by other inmates and made to eat his own vomit off the floor. He had had enough and after he was locked in his cell, he wrapped a bed sheet around his neck and hanged himself with the other end of the bed sheet tied to a metal bar at the top of his bunk

It was here that the real stupidity of the staff ran amok. The guard, who walked by and saw him hanging, wasn’t able to cut the dying boy down because he had been forbidden to carry a knife when doing his rounds.

He reached for his radio and finding it missing, he left the youth hanging by his neck and walked to a control station at the end of the range to summon help. He not only walked to the control centre to avoid panic but stopped on the way back to put three youths who were in an open area back into their cells — a process that involved unlocking and then relocking the cells. When he finally got back to the victim’s cell, the boy was near death.

The prison nurse who after being informed that the boy was hanging by his neck, neglected to bring any resuscitation equipment with her and had to return to the health station for it, and another officer who arrived at the cell could not cut the youth down because he too did not have with him the C-shaped knife used for such emergencies.

This mentally ill youth, who was awaiting trial on charges of stealing cheques from relatives, managed to end his life on Oct. 1, 2002 while under a suicide watch-----he died hours later after he was rushed to a hospital.

The stupidity of the staff occurred that night despite the fact that at least five other inmates in that correctional facility had earlier attempted to hang themselves using sheets.

The 130-bed detention centre for 16- and 17-year-old youths awaiting trial had previously been condemned by that province’s child advocate as being chaotic and unsafe. It too was finally closed down.

Experts say there is little mystery about how the facilities for young offenders reached such a state. Public concern for treating juvenile offenders had waned, as had the attention of child-advocacy groups, to battles considered already won. Legislators had repeatedly cut financing for the young offender facilities saying the need for more funding wasn’t there.

Some countries are filling their juvenile halls and training schools with children guilty of lesser offenses — either to justify the costs of new detention centers, or because no other option exists. Many of the poorest countries have no group homes or short-term treatment centers for young offenders. They end up using training schools as a catch basin for all the child and youth problems in their countries.
Experts on juvenile justice say that what was happening in those training schools was by no means rare. There are many young offender facilities that all had their horror stories.

If the treatment of young offenders in the United States and Canada; two countries that love freedom and their children, is so shabby in some of their young offender correctional facilities, imagine if you will what happens to imprisoned young offenders in third world countries where those countries don’t have the money to build suitable facilities and train staff on how to treat their young charges.
Nevertheless there are ways we can improve the lot of these most unfortunate children.

First, get rid of the privately operated young offender facilities or alternatively, have more state control over them. It seems that this is where most of the abuse lies.

Second, each facility should have a committee of concerned citizens called “visitors” inspecting the facilities. A Young Offender Facility Visitor Program should be set up for each young offender facility so that well meaning and respected persons, such as judges, criminologists, social workers, psychologists, retired nurses, retired correctional officials and perhaps even sports or entertainment personalities can visit these correctional facilities regularly and talk with young offenders on a one-to-one basis who wish to express their concerns about their wellbeing to the Young Offender Facility ‘visitor’ who is interviewing them. This would be especially helpful for those
incarcerated young offenders who don’t have visits from family members,
relatives or friends of the family.

Hong Kong has such a program. It works for them. In certain parts of India, they have a Prison Visiting System which acts as a potential tool for prison reforms. It works for them also. If these visitor programs can work in these countries, it should work elsewhere.

Canada used to have grand juries inspecting prisons but that concept ended years ago. Now imprisoned citizens can write their provincial ombudsman if they have a complaint. That works for adults but it is highly unlikely that young children will avail themselves of that opportunity to express their grievances. This is why this writer believes that a Prison Visiting Program is a more appropriate way of resolving the problem of child abuse in young offender facilities.

Recently, Amnesty International aired a complaint on television in which they described the abuses heaped upon young children in Nicaragua who were kept in custody for months in police cells.

The question that comes to the fore is; who is responsible for these crimes against these young offenders?

The answer, to some degree can be found, ironically enough, from the words of one of the most horrible human beings that ever inhabited this world. His statement however that he made at his trial is so applicable in situations like what took place in the institutions I have just written about. His name was Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz. He said in part;

“This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centres, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people and later by the prisoners who were freed, were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies and men who laid violent hands on the detainees.” unquote

Hosse wasn’t hanged because of the individual violence committed on the prisoners by his underlings but because he supervised the extermination of his prisoners. But his reference to his guards and others committing brutal assaults on his prisoners is so apt when considering what has been done to the young offenders in the institutions that I have written about. The senior staff in those institutions were indifferent to the plight of the young offenders just as Hosse was indifferent to the plight of his prisoners.

It is my belief that the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules on the Administration of Juvenile Justice should be amended by including references to privately run young offender correctional facilities and police cells.
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Dr. Dahn Batchelor is a Canadian criminologist and practices criminal law as an court advocate and has addressed United Nations Congresses in Geneva (1975) Caracas (1980) Milan (1985) Cairo (1995) Vienna (2000) and Bangkok, (2005) He was a supervisor in a young offender’s correctional facility in Canada in the mid 1950s. His email address is dahnbatchelor@rogers.com