Politics

Sakineh

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Iran stoning case woman ordered to name campaigners | World news | The Guardian.

Sakineh is apparently still alive and being questioned, one fears tortured, so that her jailers may know the names of those who are coordinating the campaign to save her. As well, according to the article in the Guardian, her sons are being warned to keep silent. The message to the jailers has to be that there are hundreds of thousands of us, all independent. Heather Reisman initiated the campaign here, but now it has a life of its own. No coordination, just people who believe that the barbarism has to stop. Please sign the petition. http://freesakineh.org

Census Lost

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Statistics Canada chief falls on sword over census – The Globe and Mail.

The headline above suggests the the Chief Statistician resigned because he did something wrong. At least that is my understanding of the phrase “fall on your sword”. In fact he resigned because Minister Clement, and of course Prime Minister Harper in that tightly controlled cabinet, placed him in an untenable position. Clement said that he, Mr. Sheikh supported the government position because he had given them the options. Today Mr. Sheikh said that the suggested voluntary long form cannot replace the mandatory short. He said this in the fewest possible words. “It cannot.” Then he resigned.

I’m no longer sure what this core support group is that the Tories are pandering to. The opposition to this move in the census is drawn from the widest cross-section of citizenry that I can recall, including: powerful business groups; provinces; social, education and welfare planners; and ordinary citizens like me, who think we need to have an OBJECTIVE measure of how we’re  doing as a country. The census tells us who we are, what the health issues are and where they are, what are the educational needs, how much money is being made and who’s making it and how. In short it gives us the facts, without the government spin. If you want to be told only what the government wants you to hear, whatever its political stripe, then you won’t care about this change. If, like me, you want to know what is happening to our country, then object. Write to your MP; write to the paper; consider  with care your vote in the next election.

Saving Sakineh

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Iran’s Sakineh Be Stoned Possibly Today: Despite Total Lack of Evidence :: Hudson New York.

The article above states the belief that the death sentence for Sakineh may have taken place as early as yesterday. Nothing in the press today to confirm that outcome. The writer believes that the execution of Sakineh and all the others jailed and condemned to stoning may happen quickly to decrease the bad press Iran is receiving. I think the even if Sakineh is not saved, the international campaign must continue, to prevent this happening to all the others in the same situation in Iran. Please sign the petition at http://freesakineh.org

The Canadian Census

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Topic : Canada Census – thestar.com.

The Star this morning has a list of recent articles within its pages on the subject of the 2011 census. Many of the arguments in favour of retaining the long-form census in its present form, with the mandatory aspect, come from the folks who depend on its information to design everything from the next red hot gadget to policies governing higher education and hospitals. Young people planning a career can search for information about job prospects and health care managers on the population trends within their area. Do they need more nursery bassinets  or nursing homes?
What about power needs? The Conservatives say the state has no business asking you how many bedrooms are in your house? Do you know a better way to judge the size of a house, and its likely power requirements?

I’ve been an amateur genealogist for some years now. Long enough to have endured the privacy commissioner’s decision, now retracted, to disallow all future access to census data for genealogical purposes. It was to have begun with the 1911 census but both that and the 1916 are available online. At least, the information from the short form is.

At this time genealogy is a popular pastime. Television programs such as Who Do You Think You Are and Ancestors in the Attic have loyal followings. Future genealogists however will find their past locked away in the vaults, even if their ancestors, us, filled out the forms.

Trivial you say? Perhaps. The need for information in all government departments, in industry, in social and educational planning is not. I think it is important that we understand the make-up of our country. In short, how we are doing? The census, in place in all countries in the sphere of the British Empire since 1841, has been the source of reliable information. Why is the government so intent on fixing what isn’t broken?

Oh, and don’t tell us people have complained. Not according to StatsCan, or the privacy commissioner. We know that’s a conservative  American problem, not ours. As usual, Tories pandering to their base support and their heroes across the border.

Facts are so troublesome. No wonder the Tories don’t want us to have access to them. We might understand just how incompetent and ideologically driven they are.

Will I fill out my long form if I get one? Yes indeed. Not because I think the government has chosen the right path, but because I want future information to be as accurate as possible in the circumstances. And that will introduce my bias into their data.

Saving Sakineh

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It’s a crime to be a woman in Iran – The Globe and Mail.

Margaret Wendt’s excellent column in the Globe this morning goes beyond telling us Sakineh’s story to that of the many women killed and imprisoned by this regime.

Sakineh matters; one person matters; all of the people awaiting death for this non-crime matter. Please sign the petition. The madmen in charge of Iran appear to have some response to the world’s outrage. Make them hear you.

http://freesakineh.org/

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/

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.

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.