My opinion

Black Bloc

/ ginny200 / 1 Comment

News | About Vancouver | Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games | CTV Olympics.

The protest groups at international events as diverse as the G8 and G20 meetings to the Olympics seem to have become fixtures. According to the article above, a group of anarchists move from protest to protest, dressing in black clothing and wearing masks. It seems to me their only real objective is a day out, play-acting their fantasies, and harming other people as they go.
“Oh but we never hurt people,” they cry.
Really? What about the people whose cars they damaged, and the small shop owners who sees a month’s income disappear to pay for broken windows. Whose cars were they: perhaps a young couple just starting out in life, or a single father, or an elderly woman clinging to her independence?
“Oh but the cause, the noble cause,” they answer.
Cowards and thugs, I say, likely escaping from boring, tedious, low-level jobs, if indeed they have any.
Martin Luther King didn’t hide his face. Mahatma Ghandi didn’t draw courage from being part of a mob. Protest on, peaceful and non-violent marchers. The rest of you, leave.

Behavioural analysis unit

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Special OPP unit deeply involved in Williams investigation.
Highly-specialized OPP unit credited for speedy arrest – The Globe and Mail.

Both of these articles contain some information about the Behavioural analysis units, but I wanted to know more about the training and effectiveness.

So who are the profilers, how are they trained, and how effective are they? As to the latter, one article in 2007, suggested not very. (Taking Stock of Criminal Profiling: A Narrative Review and Meta-Analysis
Snook et al. Criminal Justice and Behavior.2007; 34: 437-453) However, in that paper, the analysis included “self-described” profilers. Currently, according to an excellent article on a Government of Canada website, in
order to apply for the training program, a candidate must meet the following requirements:

Be a police officer in good standing;
Possess a minimum three years’ recent experience in the investigation of interpersonal violent crime;
Possess superior investigation skills, documented in writing, in the area of interpersonal violence;
Possess a demonstrated ability to articulate thoughts both orally and in writing;
Speak, write, understand and read English fluently;
Be approved and sponsored by an ICIAF member in good standing;
Be recommended in writing by the appropriate official of the agency employing the candidate;
The agency employing the candidate must agree to cover all training costs;
The agency employing the candidate must confirm in writing that the candidate will work primarily as an analyst for at least the final year of the training program and three years thereafter.
Once admitted to the roughly two-year program, the candidate must study or obtain training in the following areas: sex offenders and typologies, sexual homicide, legal pathology, crime scene reconstruction, homicide investigation, investigation into suspicious death, child abduction and abuse, interviews and interrogations, normal and abnormal behaviour (psychiatry and psychology), preparation of analyses, threat asses sment, arson and attempted bombings, as well as a professional development course for instructors. The candidate must also familiarize himself with media and public relations strategies, blood spatter analysis, computerized case association systems (ViCAP, ViCLAS), laboratory procedures for criminal analysis and scientific content analysis (SCAN) (ICIAF, 2005).

The candidate must also complete a minimum of six months of investigation work supervised by a member of the ICIAF or the FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes (NCAVC), including at least two months of supervised work at NCAVC. At the end of the training, the candidate must pass an examination. The candidate is presented with a case and has thirty days to write up an analysis and prepare an oral defence before the members of an evaluation committee, whose decision must be unanimous. After one year as an associate member in good standing, an application for full fellow status may be submitted to the ICIAF (ICIAF, 2005). Canada currently has four analysts who are full fellows: two employed by the RCMP and two by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP). Three candidates are currently registered in the training program (two employed by the OPP and one by the RCMP). The Sûreté du Québec employs two analysts, but their status is unknown.
(Human Rights Commission, Government of Canada) The complete article is very interesting and is available on line at http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/research_program_recherche/profiling_profilage/page4-en.asp

The Williams case involved the Ontario Unit.
The advantage the profilers have now, over those in the past includes the vast amount of information available online and being gathered into databases, like ViCLAS, available to law enforcement all over the world.

A Serial Killer?

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Tire tracks led police to Williams – The Globe and Mail.
This article reads like a story outline for Criminal Minds, including a behavioural analyst from the OPP. The headline says that tiretracks in the snow led to the Colonel being a suspect, so perhaps I mean CSI.
I hope that this is not a horrendous mistake, of the sort we have seen too many times in this country. Names like Morin and Marshall and Truscotte come to mind. If the Colonel is guilty, the question becomes, how did the military miss such a degree of pathology? The top brass thought he was great. What did the men and women, especially the women, think of him? And if there were complaints, who buried them? And if he is guilty, what about other countries where he was posted, and unexplained murders or assaults there? It could get deeper and uglier and much sadder.

Snow

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‘Snowmageddon’ slams mid-Atlantic; utilities race to restore power – CNN.com.

Commentators on Canadian news sites are full of self-praise, along the lines of ” Come on folks, this is routine in St. John’s.” Yes it is, but they are used to it, and the people down in Washington are not.

We had a taste of this last year. Four big snowstorms and the guys who plough were all on strike and it lasted for weeks. The schools were closed so often that I had small patients of kindergarten age who only had been to school a few days by the end of April.

But the streets were kept open, most of them in town anyway, by neighbours who used their snowblowers on sections, and others in pickup trucks with ploughs attached.

We usually have three big storms a winter, and two of them have passed us by, staying well South of the Great Lakes. Great you say? Maybe, but we will need water this summer, and the snow is a big source. Besides, yet another winter with temperatures below -20 C means more roses and other perennials missing from my garden in the spring. I say, bring on the snow.

A hands-free world for workers on the road – The Globe and Mail

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A hands-free world for workers on the road – The Globe and Mail.
So the guys whose cars are their offices are frustrated because of the new rules. What’s interesting in this article in the Globe and Mail, is that some businesses have put stringent rules in place to prevent employees from working en route. Productivity is rising, and employees have reduced the time spent on electronic devices while in the car on their personal time.
When did the car become an office? Was it the invention of the Blackberry, or the first “car phone” wired in, and connected to a mobile operator sometime in the seventies. And what were all these people doing while hurtling along at 100km plus – sending e-mails, faxing, consulting with clients? Take a person who manages other people’s money. Out of the office, travelling to meet one client, talking to three or four others on the way, faxing off documents on his way home, he seems not to need an office or an assistant with all the attendant costs. But how secure are you in the advice you’re getting from someone who can’t even take the hour he’s in the car to listen to music, or the news, or just to think. I hope its my account he’s remembering, not someone else’s.
Or the real estate broker, making the big deals by the side of the road-itinerant, ungrounded and insecure.
Or, and I’ve been here, answering a call from the hospital and trying to sort out complex medical data and give advice, all while controlling a dangerous machine in the midst of other dangerous machines.
I think we need to return to a more civil way of life, with business conducted in offices, giving the man in the story in the Globe, and the rest of us, a few minutes to think and reflect on our way to appointments, and perhaps arrive alive.

Economists

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Eight weeks left until I see my last patient. Every day brings a new goodbye.
Yesterday I submitted my CME for 2009. Because we are going to keep our licenses active, that means more CME in 2010. It’s difficult, but I think it would be harder to just stop and never read a word of medicine again.
Oh and the stock market has fallen again. Yet another reason to keep the license active, at least until next year.
Review: How Markets Fail, by John Cassidy – The Globe and Mail. An interesting review of this book about economists and their inability to predict, control or explain the markets.
This week was a good example of the emotional irrationality the rules those who buy and sell. Obama wishes to regulate the banks. A good thing, right. As far as I can see it was regulation that save the Canadian economy from the depths others have reached. But no. The young men in red suspenders have apparently learned nothing, and think the sky will fall if bankers aren’t allowed to pillage economies, paying themselves outrageous salaries as they play with the lives and money of others.
By the way, the US economy has made 5.7% increase in the GDP in last quarter, but the economists don’t expect it to last. Tell me why I should believe them.

Retirement

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I’ve been away from the blog for a few days–a combination of a vicious cold and retirement planning. Before we started this retiring process, I had little idea of the complications, or the number of phone calls I would have to make.
We started with the managers of our RRSP’s and were reassured(we think) that there is enough money to last– always assuming we don’t live to be a hundred.
But that was only the beginning. Then came the decision about license to practice. To keep or not to keep? And so another round of calls to organizations known by their initials– the OMA, RCPSC, CMA, CPSO and so on.
What to do about the office charts, and referrals to other specialists? And then talking to the patients. Conversation after conversation. How to get followup care? Where will the charts be? What about the medications? And what are you going to do in your retirement, Doctor?
Reviewing the charts, writing or dictating letters to other doctors, deciding what to keep and what to shred. that last led to another round of calls. How long must we keep the charts? The answer to that is ten years, unless the patient is a child, and then until the child is twenty-eight years old. I have seen babies this year, so those charts will be in the facility in Toronto until 2038. I will be eighty-two years old in 2038, and still paying someone to provide access to those charts. Amazing.
Some days I think it would be easier to just carry on.

New rules ‘a big, big hit’ to Canadian magazines – The Globe and Mail

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New rules ‘a big, big hit’ to Canadian magazines – The Globe and Mail.

The Globe and Mail reported this morning on the new rules for small magazines in this country. Small means fewer than 5000 circulation. That criterion leaves only Macleans, Chatelaine, and perhaps one or two others. Oh,and those, mostly from the west, such as The Western Producer, which specifically target the farming population. No other niche in our culture is important to the Tories. In fact, judging by their approach to anything cultural or historical, if the book or magazine or film or painting or photograph or music doesn’t involve business, it isn’t of any importance what so ever.
This present legislation recognizes the needs of only the farmers, and western farmers at that. I imagine the polls show that they are Tory supporters.
What’s next? Are only those museums devoted to the history of the Hereford, or wheat, or oil going to get support?
And one last thing. The final decision on who gets funding rests with the Minister and his decisions are irrevocable. No wonder Harper thinks we don’t need Parliament. He’s turning our government from a democracy into a quasi monarchy, with himself as king, giving his ministers total power and leaving us with no recourse. He’s started with the arts. Where will it end?

Elites

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The government says only the elite object to their ant-democratic action. Elite is code word for educated, I think, coming as the comment did on the heels of a statement by 100 professors against the prorogue. So let’s do the math. In 2007, university completion rates for those 24 to 64 was 24.6%. Almost 51% of the population had post-secondary qualifications, trade, college or university. The percentage of people who objected strongly to the Conservative action was 58%. So, does that mean that only uneducated people support the Conservative action? Or is there a strong objection in all segments of the population.
I think the Canadian people know when their leaders don’t respect them, and I think that is what is happening now. Elite, indeed. It doesn’t take a university degree to understand when a leader is hiding from the people paid to question him and his policies. The people will hold him to account as they did Brian Mulroney.