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Egypt’s Children

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They are there by the thousands, the children of Egypt, a country with 2/3 of its population under 30 years of age. They have been born and raised entirely in the shadow of Mubarak’s regime. Huge numbers are illiterate and poverty-stricken. What they have developed in the past few weeks is hope, hope for a future without secret police, without tyranny, without fear. Today, they waited for hours in Liberation Square, singing and dancing and chanting, believing that when Mubarak spoke it would be to resign.

When he spoke it was to stunned silence, and then boos and then renewed chanting for him to leave, leave, leave. Mubarak came to power as a war hero, although I am unsure why, as both his wars were losses to the Israelis. He had until today, the support of the army, and the old generals. Today, he gave operational power to his  friend,  a man who had save his life, perhaps whom he trusted to do his bidding, another military man. The people in the square saw another old man.

Today also, a soldier in the square put down his rifle and joined the people. The rest of the military will have to choose whom to support: the old men in the palace, who rule like kings, or their brothers and cousins and sisters in the square. For the army is young too.

Egypt

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The people have been on the streets for a full week now, facing first the police, who have since run away, and now the soldiers, who have said they will not fire on their own people. Today someone or several someones, nascent leaders perhaps, called for a general strike and millions of people in the street. The government appears to be moving towards a change but still Mubarak clings to power. It’s a half a world away; a storm of protest will be playing out in the Egyptian desert while we are waiting for the winter storm that is coming. We have a decision to make sometime soon as well, about our government, about our elections, but because we are the luckiest nation in the world, here in the frozen north, it will be peaceful, orderly lines at the polling booths, with the most violence coming from puerile attack ads on television.

When we lose our communications, it’s the weather, not a dictatorial government that seeks to keep our thoughts from each other. Tyranny always plays it the same, and always the people will find a way. Remember the underground presses of the French revolution.

From food riots in Algeria, to the fall of the government in Tunisia, to the people in the streets, not just of Egypt, but of Yemen and Jordon as well, the world is a more dangerous place this week. There may be leaders emerging who will take Egypt towards democracy and freedom and away from theocracies and despots, and with it the other countries in the region who have been held down too long.

The people are demanding that Mubarak leave by Friday. It will be a long three days.

Death Penalty

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PM’s remarks rekindle debate on the death penalty – The Globe and Mail.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario/man-acquitted-in-baby-sons-death/article1877244/

These two stories from the Globe and Mail, the first reporting on the response to the Prime Minister’s “musings” on the death penalty, the other reporting a man who has been acquitted of the murder of his child 19 years ago, a death for which he was convicted, went to prison, having been bullied into a confession, and suffered social disgrace for all that long time, demonstrate the constant battle that must be fought against those who would return us to primitive practices. There are only a few countries in the world who actually have the death penalty, China, Saudi Arabia and the USA among them, even in the latter state after state is repealing it.
In this country we have seen over and over again the demonstration of innocence of the wrongfully accused, who would have been killed by the state had we retained the death penalty. The death penalty does not act as a deterrent; it does not decrease the rate of other violent crime. It serves no purpose but revenge.
When I think about the death penalty, I remember that this act of killing would be done in my name, that I would bear responsibility as a citizen for taking the life, that it was my hand on the trigger or plunger or pulling the switch. I won’t be a party to it, and neither will the Supreme Court, which has ruled against it.
I don’t think we should give Harper and the Conservatives a majority. I think they are constrained from carrying our their deeply fundamentalist agenda only by their minority position.

Prisons

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http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/922295–expanding-prisons-getting-it-right-on-crime

The web address of this editorial in the the Toronto Star this morning is a little misleading. I was as astounded as the editorialist to read of the conversion of Newt Gingrich to the side of those of us who are against the expansion of prisons. It would seem that the Harperites are operating about ten years behind American conservatives. The prisons are full of petty thieves and the drug addicted(many of whom are the same people) and serve as finishing schools for criminals. Amongst the things they do not do are: halt recidivism, especially with dollars going to buildings, not programs; address a soaring crime rate–the evening news notwithstanding, it is lower–; treat the mentally ill within the walls; or decrease the use of illegal drugs. As far as I understand it, the prisons are incapable of keeping drugs out of the buildings themselves.
The amount of money spent is staggering. According to the Star editorial, 68 billion dollars/year in the USA. 68 billion! A fraction of that amount would go a long way towards mental health programs, literacy programs, drug rehabilitation, housing the homeless. According to the Star, the amount of new money here over 5 years will be 5 billion. That’s new money, for new beds, not for refurbishing the old prisons that are a crumbling disgrace.

The list of the root causes of crime goes on and on, but tossing people into a revolving door system that turns out ever more hardened criminals is not, to my mind, the answer. I think that Corrections(and isn’t that a misnomer) needs to look at the hospital system, which has turned from a totally inpatient to a largely outpatient system, trying to care for people in their homes, as opposed to beds in an institution as it was when I started(40 years ago). They could begin by eliminating prison time for petty crime and soft drug offenses, turning to community-based initiatives, saving prison for those so dangerous that there is nothing to do except lock them up.

Freedom of Information

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Canada ranks last in freedom of information: study – The Globe and Mail.

You knew this, didn’t you? Harper had a lot to say about freedom of information before he was elected. Now that’s it his government’s information, suddenly we have no access compared to other democracies, and we’re the go-to guys on how not to implement freedom of information acts.

It’s embarrassing, that’s what it is. And a little frightening. What is it they don’t want us to know?

Sakineh

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Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani may not face death by stoning, says prosecutor | World news | The Guardian.

The attempts by the Iranian government to “spin” this story become ever more convoluted. This piece in the Guardian brings the news up do date. First of course, she has not been executed, and the prosecutor of her home province has recently suggested that the original sentence of death by stoning may be changed. Change to what, he didn’t say. In recent weeks, she has been taken out of prison, to her home, in order to”confess” on television. The government has arrested two German reporters for trying to interview her son. Now she is said to be suing these two men, a suit that wouldn’t likely be settled until after her execution.

I don’t know if the people of Iran believe these outrageous statements and postures. Certainly I see no reason to believe that anything that is officially allowed is likely to be the truth. The Iranian people have had their revolution subverted, their rights subtracted, and now live in a land of subterfuge. I hope one day they can reclaim their rightful place as heirs to a glorious civilization.

Assange- Hero or Criminal?

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The report today is that Assange, who is fighting extradition and is in a British jail, without bail as he was deemed a flight risk, has been moved to an isolation facility. Why he was moved is not clear-perhaps for his protection from other inmates? The sexual assault charges, even by Swedish standards are a real stretch. Why is he fighting extradition? Keeps him in the public eye, doesn’t it?

Both Mastercard and Visa have “blacked” wikileaks to prevent the organization from getting donations. In response, hackers flooded both organization with data requests in an attempt to shut them down. Assange has denied any involvement with that plan.

I still fail to see the heroism in what this organization is doing. The information that has been leaked is raw data, unconfirmed, quotes alleged to be from one or another government official, whether true or not, whether gossip, innuendo, malicious lies, etc. Who knows? If the stated purpose is to bring down governments and corporations by preventing communication, how is that different from other forms of terrorism? And I for one don’t want the world to have less communication, and that, I think, will be the result. Less communication, more misunderstanding, more bad decisions based on too little information because no one wants to run the risk of being quoted.

I don’t think this guy is a hero; I think he is a fanatic, who has set himself up as the champion of truth and freedom.

Wikileaks

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11847824

Wikileaks is threatening to reveal millions of confidential diplomatic papers, which they hacked from secure government servers, with the express purpose of holding the US government to account.

I think we should remember that the US, during much of the time covered by these documents, was and remains in a state of war, as we do in Afghanistan. Diplomacy between countries, has never, anywhere, included frank disclosure of all details, in a great lump, to all the people of the world. The folks at Wikileaks seem to think that they are capable of deciding what will be safe to reveal, not putting people at personal risk, or countries at risk of war.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11047811

The link above leads to a profile of the charismatic founder Julien Assange, a man who is said to go for weeks while eating little and sleeping less. Apparently we are to believe that a sleep-deprived, malnourished fanatic is the best person to filter through diplomatic cables and e-mails, decide they won’t put people in harm’s way or start wars, and release them  to a shocked population. Not to forget that this man is stealing the intellectual property of others.

I agree that governments lie to us, ours certainly does, spin after spin, and perhaps I’m like Diogenes, looking for that one honest man in politics who will tell us the facts, put them in context and lead a party of clarity and honesty, but I don’t want vast quantity of so-called facts, filtered by Assange’s acolytes, and released around the world for their shock value.

By the way, what has happened to the diplomatic pouch? Wikileaks can’t hack what isn’t in cyberspace.


Off to Spain

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I have been watching a lecture series on DVD, produced by The Teaching Company, taught by Professor Brooks Landon of the University of Iowa,  entitled Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft. This is my first exposure to a university level course in writing, although I have taken other on-line practical writing courses and attended workshops, and read books on the subject, all practical, none with the in-depth discussion of the sentence as an art form, not considering just its function, but the way in which phrases and clauses, vowels and consonants play against and with each other. I’m enjoying this series, although some of the concepts are so new to me, that I will watch it a second time, take notes, do the exercises and explore at greater length some of the concepts, as well, I might add, as learning the new vocabulary, not included in the language I learned in medical school. It seems a practical course in many ways and it is great fun.

Sakineh: She’s still in that prison. I see that the Iranians have accepted five hundred thousand dollars as the price of an American woman accused of spying and released this week. Some people in Oman arranged it, so we are told. I wonder what it would cost to buy the freedom of Sakineh and the others.

Spain: I’ve spent the last few months trying to learn some Spanish, using the course supplied by RosettaStone, enough to be polite, and not assume that everyone that I meet speaks English. I did the same with Italian several years ago, finding that it took at least two years to gain enough language to communicate a little. It becomes more difficult as I get older, or so it seems. We’re leaving shortly, so this will be my last posting for a while, unless I have access to a computer somewhere along the way.

Madness in Iran

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Iranian woman could be executed this week, son says – The Globe and Mail.

It’s so horrifying, it’s hard to keep writing about it. I can’t imagine living it. Sakineh remains in that hell-hole of a prison, at the mercy of authorities who have no sense nor compassion. Ramadan ends so her son, who hasn’t seen her for weeks, believes she will be executed sometime after Thursday.

An idiotic British newspaper publishes a picture purporting to be Sakineh without a headscarf. It isn’t; it’s another woman, but the sadists in that prison lash her 99 times, again. How much can one woman endure? The Iranians do all this in the name of religion. I don’t believe it. I think the people in charge have the same sadistic, murderous minds and souls that Nazi concentration camp guards had, and in a better world, they would be the ones in the prisons.

The British newspaper bears considerable responsibility. What did the editors think would happen to Sakineh when they published that picture? Or do they share the same sadistic mind-set, oblivious to the suffering of their victims?

Please sign the petition http://www.freesakineh.org