Author: ginny200

Iran elected to the UN Commission on the status of Women

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Canada ‘deplores’ Iran’s appointment to UN women’s rights panel.

I missed this report in May but noticed a reference to it in an article about Sakineh. The leader of Iran likes to go to the United Nations and give his demented speeches. Iran is a country, and I suppose its leader has a right to go to the UN, but for the Assembly to elect Iran, a country in which women are no more than chattels and in which they are subjugated to torture, lashing and stoning, is reprehensible. Our government has spoken out against this travesty. I hope our representative holds Iran accountable at every available opportunity.

Remember Sakineh. Please sign the petition at http://freesakineh.org/

Sakineh

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The Globe and Mail reports this am that the stoning of Sakineh may go forward. This was according to the head the Judiciary in Tabriz. As well, a so-called human rights commissioner  “Mohammad Javad Larijani, the head of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, lashed out against the international campaign to spare Ms. Mohammadi Ashtiani, while pointing out that stoning is rarely used.”

Further we are told that the regime has to hire rentathugs to carry out these appalling sentences. Only countries that treat their women as equal partners in the world can move into the 21st century, in my view. All others are mired in the superstition and brutality of the past.Women of Iran are increasingly educated to university level and make up a high proportion of graduates.How long must they be kept subjugated and treated as male possessions?

http://freesakineh.org/ to sign the petition

Free Sakineh, Cont.

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Campaign to stop Iranian’s execution grows – The Globe and Mail.

The Globe and Mail reports this am that Canadian diplomats in Iran were unable to confirm that the death by stoning sentence has been commuted. The more voices the better, calling for an end to this barbarism. The petition can be found at the link below.

http://freesakineh.org/

Free Sakineh

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Reports this morning tell us that the Iranian judiciary have commuted the death by stoning of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to death by some other means. Prior to this she endured 99 lashes and torture to extract a confession which she has recanted. Stoning takes at least 10 minutes as the stones are supposed to be fist sized and not thrown hard enough to kill right away. At the same time, buried up to her neck in sand, the woman cannot breathe.

It is impossible to feel enough outrage towards this barbarism. It is possible to take one small step towards adding voices to the calls for her release. Heather Reisman and others have instituted a petition that is credited with preventing the stoning. but Sakineh will still die, now having her neck broken or her life squeezed from her by the hangman’s rope. Perhaps they have learned how to make that process lengthy as well. The link to the petition follows:

http://freesakineh.org/

Toronto Police Inquiry

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First the Toronto Police was all praise for the actions of the police, now they want an inquiry. Not a full public inquiry, mind, but just one man, looking into what happened. No parameters have been set, and this inquiry will not be into the role of the Mounties, or the OPP.

To me the most egregious action was what happened on Sunday night: the rounding up of citizens, holding them in difficult circumstances without regard for their need for food, water, toilet facilities or ongoing medical care, including for example insulin, anti-epileptic drugs, cardiac medication. People in the crowd said the police wouldn’t talk to them, so how were they to judge whether an individual had needs that should be met. I’ve heard people say that the people shouldn’t have been there. That’s not the point. They had the right to protest, and they surely had the right to be walking along the street minding their own business, even if that business was watching the crowd.

To me the questions are who made the decision to corral those people, on what basis and did the man or men in charge know the decision was taken before or after they saw it on television. It doesn’t really need a public inquiry, just some frank talk from however high the questions have to float before they are answered. I understand Harper has gone for a photo-op to Saskatchewan, so perhaps McGuinty or Miller will have to do.

On another note, it cost 4 million dollars or thereabout for the Queen’s whole visit. A reckoning on the 1 billion dollars spent for security would be nice while they are telling us some facts.

Canon Rebel T1i

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I got a new camera for my birthday, a replacement for the venerable Minolta SLR and the point and shoot digital I had been using. The Canon Rebel T1i was small enough and light enough to fit my hands, and I thought, foolishly as it turned out, that I could transfer the skills I’d developed with those cameras to the new one. I opened the book, started to play and realized that the abilities of the camera outstripped the knowledge of the photographer.

The instruction book wasn’t as obscurely written nor as minutely printed as I had expected. On the other hand, the menus seemed to go and on to different levels of complexity. I decided to take advantage of the lesson that came with the camera and one evening sat with a very young woman, and went over it all. I recommend this as a way to become more comfortable with a new camera. One of my first pictures appears below.

Was Dr. Johnson right?

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So here’s the thing. No one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money-Samuel Johnson. Is that true? Or do people write because their creativity is driving them, or because it’s a convenient hobby, or to exorcise their demons?

So I’m writing. Currently, the third book in a series about a doctor/genealogist who keeps finding corpses. Waiting patiently for me to return to it, is another, with a different protagonist. They’re on my mind, walking around with me, intruding on whatever else I want to do.

And I’m blogging, and a few people are reading.

And I’m trying to learn marketing in this electronic age – Facebook, and Twitter and finding groups to join and other writers to talk to.

When I started I just wanted to see if I could. Next,  I wanted to see if anyone would publish what I’d written. And now, well, I don’t think I’m a blockhead but so far very little money.

I’m still writing, so either I am a blockhead, or  it fills some other need, or answers some other call. I don’t know yet, but I still have stories to tell, so writing it will have to be, money or no. Oh,and yes, I want readers. No point in putting down in words except to communicate.

G20 police action

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Many voices are calling for a public, not police inquiry into the police action in Toronto at the G20. The latest is Tabitha Southey writing in the Globe and Mail yesterday.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/of-a-million-g20-stories-in-this-taken-city-this-was-mine/article1627063/

There are comments to her article, including one from a chap who seems to think that we live in a police state where citizens can be arbitrarily ordered off the street by police. He seems to be confusing, as another reader pointed out, the police with the law. In one of Rex Stout’s novels, a policeman is demanding entry to Nero Wolfe’s house. “Open up, in the name of the law,” he demands. the character Archie Goodwin answers mildly, “As you Know, it’s the law that keeps you out.” It’s the law that allows protest that is peaceful.

I watched the protest on Sunday night of the G20 from beginning to end. I watched demonstarters and journalists, dog-walkers and cameramen being encircled, held for “processing’ and bussed off to ..?where? Unlike the day before, I saw no one in black masks( the sight of which enrages me); I saw no vandalism. I admit that for a while the people did occupy the center of an intersection as they were prevented from going forward with their march. I understand they were told three times to move. Apparently this is a magic number after which the police can move in with their circle of armed men.

Ms Southey says she was terrified. I can believe it. I, sitting in my safe living room at more than 100 kilometres away, was shocked and appalled. If the police and the politicians who set the rules have an explanation for the people of this country, let’s hear it. If they knew there were violent individuals, armed and dangerous, in the crowd, show us the evidence. Bring them to court.

Ms. Southey also reports individual policemen mocking the psychiatric patients who had come out onto the street. (I’m not sure how people on the street were being identifies as psychiatric patients. I don’t imagine they were wearing signs.)  Can anything have been more frightening to a disturbed mind than the sight of large men, dressed in black, with helmets and truncheons and guns, harassing and mocking? there appears to be a need for training on many levels.

Who were the police on the streets? Were they Toronto police, OPP(as those on the ground were reporting) members of police forces from other cities? Were they angry because of their experience with the Black Bloc the day before? Ms. Southey reports that they seemed to be spoiling for a fight.

For an another point of view, read Christie Blatchford in the same edition of the Globe and Mail at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/self-anointed-g20-journalists-should-get-real/article1627346/

In her article, most of which has to to with the journalists behaviour, she mentions that police were picking people up for a breach of the police or for a breach of the peace that hadn’t yet taken place. She says this is under the old common law. I believe that the rights and freedoms under the constitution supersede that.

It all took place on a sunny afternoon, in Toronto. Only nature, a severe thunderstorm, seemed to intervene and bring an end to all of it.