human rights

Another sensible programme gone

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Prison rehab program axed due to budget cuts – Canada – CBC News.

The CBC reports this morning that the government has cancelled the rehabilitation programme that has operated successfully in prisons, helping prisoners fight addiction and return as better and safer citizens to the outside world.

This government has curious pseudo-logic — put more people in prisons so you have to build more prisons, and make sure the prisoners continue to be addicted so they will reoffend when they hit the streets, and justify the increase in prisons.

Humane civilizations treat those who fall within their care, the elderly, the poor, the disabled, the sick, and yes the prisoners, many of whom fall into the last two groups as well, with compassion. It does the country no good whatsoever to return the untreated addicted to the streets.

The more bizarre the actions of this government, and that’s without considering Peter McKay, the better Thomas Mulcair looks.

Writing

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I’ve started on a project suggest by James Scott Bell in his book Plot and Structure in the Write Great Fiction series from Writers Digest Books. Essentially it’s a method for internalizing plot structure. it involves reading and then analyzing the structure of six novels of a type you would like to write. It will take time away from the actual writing of the sequel to The Facepainter Murders. It’s close to completion, but will need a rewrite for the second (or 10th) draft. I tend to revise as I go along, but I think, after reading Bell’s book, that I should consider just writing, and revising with a second draft of the whole thing. That is for the next book, however.

If you’re a writer or want to be one and haven’t looked at this series of books on writing, I’d recommend it.

Our lovely fall resurgence of summer seems to be over. The temperature is falling and so is the rain. A good time to begin my reading.

Another plan is to catalogue the books in this house and they are everywhere. Fortunately, I have a program on my Mac, called Delicious Library 2, that uses the InSight camera to read the bar codes on the books and record them in a library format.

I was glad to see that the Saudi King had the good sense to rein in the driving police or whoever they are that wanted to flog that woman in Saudi who dared to ?!drive a car. How subversive. And how sad that so many countries can’t or won’t understand that they and their people will never advance while keeping more than half their population unengaged.

Sakineh is still in prison. Please sign the petition. http://freesakineh.org/

Saudi Women’s Rights

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http://www.amnesty.ca/SaudiArabia/5.php

A woman in Saudi Arabia, who had started or joined an online movement to allow women to drive, has been detained, along with her brother, after she put a video of herself driving on the internet. In 1990 a group of religious scholars issued a fatwah(edict) against women driving. Why? Who knows? Just another example of the inequality women endure in that country. The abhorrent guardianship  system that restricts women’s movements unless accompanied by a male “guardian” is another of the human right abuses that continue there.

I think the men of Saudi Arabia should be embarrassed and ashamed that they treat the women of their country like children, and allow religious police to arrest them, abuse them, beat them, force them into false confessions and sentence them to such inhumane punishments as lashing for such crimes as wearing “indecent” ie western clothing.

Sakineh

Sakineh remains in prison.

http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/zpravy/havel-launches-ai-campaign-in-support-of-political-prisoners/638683

The link above details the Amnesty campaign to free her and two other political prisoners. Havel, of the Czech republic, himself a former political prisoner believes his own release came much sooner because of voices raised from outside.

http://freesakineh.org/

Please sign the petition.

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.