We Say "No" to Labour Unions Funding Quebec Protesters

The Canadian Press, in Globe and Mail, May 22, 2012
Out-of-province money is flowing toward Quebec student activists amid warnings their protest movement could persist into the summer.

Trade unions based outside Quebec have already confirmed sending more than $36,000 into the bank accounts of the province’s largest student federations.
Union leaders in the rest of Canada say they’re now asking their memberships to vote on new donations for the student groups.
In another gesture of support, several union delegations headed to Montreal for a large protest Tuesday, while sister events were scheduled in different cities inside and outside Canada, including New York and Paris.

The executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers said Tuesday that his union could approve a financial contribution for the students in the next day or two.
“We’re actively considering it,” said James Turk, whose association represents 66,000 teachers and other academic professionals across Canada.
It is not easy for those of us outside the province to comprehend all the subtle nuances of the situation in Quebec. However, if the labour movement in Canada is ready and willing to add more public scorn to an already weakened public image, then vote to send money to the protesting students.
While affordable access to post-secondary education is an important social value, and keeping tuition fees as low as possible is an integral component of that goal, protest in the face of facts that demonstrate Quebec already has the lowest tuition fees in the country, and lower than many other countries, and the university system in Quebec is in serious need of more sustainable funding, nevertheless, street protests without serious intent to resolve the dispute is a serious threat to the capacity of any government to govern.
Also while the recent law may have aspects of 'repression' and regretable clauses, comparable to the War Measures Act, there does not seem to be any sign that these protesters are interested in a negotiated, mediated or arbitrated settlement of the issues.
Political opponents of both the government and the federal state can and will drive their propaganda "truck" into the breach created by the protests and the impasse between the protesters and the government.
And, adding union funds to an already boiling pot will only enhance the opportunities forpolitical instability, unrest and deepening divide between Quebec and the rest of Canada.
Already, there are many voices, ordinary people, across the country, who speak about "letting Quebec go" for the simply reason that they have "had it up to here" with their threats to create a separate nation.
Union funds, even on a small scale, could easily be perceived and portrayed as supporting of other political steps beyond the tuition fee question, including separation.
Here is one vote, should I be in a position to be asked, that will oppose sending funds to the student protesters in Quebec. And I would urge as many as possible to reject any move to funnel union money into the streets, in protest of the government's attempt to adequately fund post secondary education in that province.

Public Money goes through back door to Christian private schools..."shell game"

By Stephanie Saul, New York Times, May 21, 2012
When the Georgia legislature passed a private school scholarship program in 2008, lawmakers promoted it as a way to give poor children the same education choices as the wealthy.
The program would be supported by donations to nonprofit scholarship groups, and Georgians who contributed would receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits, up to $2,500 a couple. The intent was that money otherwise due to the Georgia treasury — about $50 million a year — would be used instead to help needy students escape struggling public schools.
That was the idea, at least. But parents meeting at Gwinnett Christian Academy got a completely different story last year.
“A very small percentage of that money will be set aside for a needs-based scholarship fund,” Wyatt Bozeman, an administrator at the school near Atlanta, said during an informational session. “The rest of the money will be channeled to the family that raised it.”
A handout circulated at the meeting instructed families to donate, qualify for a tax credit and then apply for a scholarship for their own children, many of whom were already attending the school.
“If a student has friends, relatives or even corporations that pay Georgia income tax, all of those people can make a donation to that child’s school,” added an official with a scholarship group working with the school.
The exchange at Gwinnett Christian Academy, a recording of which was obtained by The New York Times, is just one example of how scholarship programs have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children.
Spreading at a time of deep cutbacks in public schools, the programs are operating in eight states and represent one of the fastest-growing components of the school choice movement. This school year alone, the programs redirected nearly $350 million that would have gone into public budgets to pay for private school scholarships for 129,000 students, according to the Alliance for School Choice, an advocacy organization. Legislators in at least nine other states are considering the programs.
While the scholarship programs have helped many children whose parents would have to scrimp or work several jobs to send them to private schools, the money has also been used to attract star football players, expand the payrolls of the nonprofit scholarship groups and spread the theology of creationism, interviews and documents show. Even some private school parents and administrators have questioned whether the programs are a charade.
Most of the private schools are religious. Nearly a quarter of the participating schools in Georgia require families to make a profession of religious faith, according to their Web sites. Many of those schools adhere to a fundamentalist brand of Christianity. A commonly used sixth-grade science text retells the creation story contained in Genesis, omitting any other explanation. An economics book used in some high schools holds that the Antichrist — a world ruler predicted in the New Testament — will one day control what is bought and sold.
The programs are insulated from provisions requiring church-state separation because the donations are collected and distributed by the nonprofit scholarship groups.
A cottage industry of these groups has sprung up, in some cases collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in administrative fees, according to tax filings. The groups often work in concert with private schools like Gwinnett Christian Academy to solicit donations and determine who will get the scholarships — in effect limiting school choice for the students themselves. In most states, students who withdraw from the schools cannot take the scholarship money with them.
Public school officials view the tax credits as poorly disguised state subsidies, part of an expanding agenda to shift tax dollars away from traditional public schools. “Our position is that this is a shell game,” said Chris Thomas, general counsel for the Arizona School Boards Association.
Calling this scam a "shell game" is an understatement.
It is a duplicitous scheme to generate the core of a theocracy, and those who can should apply for injunctions in the eight states in which it is operating.
Like the super-pac's that can, without worry about crossing some "ethical" line, pour truckloads of cash into the campaign of a chosen candidate, (thanks to the Supreme Court's decision on Citizens United), these "groups" are at arms length, permitted by state law, and endorsed by a tax credit that in real time funds the private schools of the christian right.
Are the people of these eight states aware of what is going on in their jurisdiction?
If they are aware, are they planning to find legal counsel to block the operation of these groups?
If they are aware, and, after petitioning their state representatives, find a deaf ear, are they prepared to recall those representatives that have already supported this scam?
If they are not ready to draw a line in the sand, against this duplicity that operates under the guise of the "aid to poor students" banner, while funding the students already attending the christian private schools, then they will have to be held accountable when their state legislature is held hostage by those same students whose education they are currently subsidizing.
This kind of religious hypocrisy is so heinous and so deeply embedded in the U.S. culture, in some parts of the country, that it will require more weeding than most farmers will have to do this year to ensure the growth of their crops.

Save the Great Lakes...cries the Council of Canadians...and we concur

From the Council of Canadians website, May 21, 2012
“Great Lakes Need Great Friends” tour now underway
The Great Lakes of North America form the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world, holding more than 20 per cent of the world’s surface freshwater and 95 per cent of North America’s. They provide life and livelihood to more than 40 million people and are the economic centre at the heart of the continent. Yet the Great Lakes of North America are in serious trouble. Multipoint pollution, climate change, over-extraction, invasive species, and wetland loss are all taking their toll on the watershed.
With a patchwork of limited government protection that is hampered by inadequate funding and differing political priorities, the Lakes urgently need people to join together to forge a new future for them, one that will ensure the Lakes will thrive for generations to come. To help forge links and build relationships in communities surrounding the Great Lakes’ waters, the Council of Canadians recently launched the “Great Lakes Need Great Friends” tour.
Council of Canadians National Chairperson Maude Barlow, along with important guest speakers, will be on this eight-city speaking tour for the Great Lakes. The tour kicked off in Toronto on May 15, was in Hamilton on Wednesday, Thunder Bay yesterday, and continues to Kingston, Sarnia, Tiny Township, Owen Sound and London, Ontario
Visiting eight Canadian cities, and with allied groups, several U.S. cities the “Great Lakes Needs Great Friends” Tour will help:
•Foster connections along the Great Lakes by making the links between current fights against threats such as fracking, bottled water withdrawals, invasive species, and nuclear waste storage and shipments.
•Cultivate a Great Lakes stewardship by encouraging people to recognize they not only have a right, but a responsibility to protect the Great Lakes’ waters.
•Invite community involvement and encourage inspiring actions that will help shift the current market economy priorities that govern the Great Lakes to priorities based on commons and public trust principles.
Protecting the future of the Great Lakes is in all of our hands. When communities come together with passion and purpose, they can change political priorities and shape a better future for our shared water. We invite communities and organizations to join us in this exciting campaign to build a new Great Lakes commons vision that prioritizes people and the environment over industry and commodification, and builds a healthy vibrant future for our shared water.
http://canadians.org/water/documents/greatlakes/FS-Great-Lakes-Commons.pdf
http://canadians.org/water/documents/greatlakes/HB-Great-Lakes-Commons.pdf

Born and raised on the shore of Georgian Bay, nothing I can say or do to help raise awareness of this important natural resource could ever do justice to the hours of recreation, the gallons of clean water my family and I have enjoyed, the millions of people who depend on the largest fresh-water resource on the planet, nor the work of the Council of Canadians to protect this life-giving supply of fresh water.
It is not only the wind-swept pine trees, seemingly growing out of the cracks in the granite on the pancake islands, painted against a Georgian Bay sunset that brings people joy and hope and renewed life; it is also the fact that people depend on this body of water to stay alive.
And, our continual contamination, literally without regard for its "finite" quality, demonstrates both our indifference and our insensitivity to its fragility. Our relationship with this beautiful, bountiful and yes, dangerous life force is so delicate, important and potentially irreversible, should we ever come to the place where we have destroyed it for future generations.

Reality check on Iran-Israel dispute

By Geneive Abdo — Special to CNN, from GPS on CNN website, May 21, 2012
Geneive Abdo is director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute in Washington. 

Iran is set for nuclear talks Wednesday with members of the U.N. Security Council, and the Obama administration, as well as some Iranian and European Union officials, expressed optimism that a compromise will be reached.
But it is useful to examine Israel’s long-term objectives for a bit of a reality check.
During a recent trip to Israel, where I met government officials, one issue became clear: for many in the Israeli government, Iran has already crossed the red line. Unless Iran halts all enrichment and dismantles its nuclear program, the diplomatic process is irrelevant to many Israeli officials.
The Israelis are not willing to wait for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to make the political decision to move toward developing a nuclear weapon; by then, it is too late. This is a major point of difference between Israel and the United States and the European Union — one which the nuclear talks will not resolve. The Americans and Europeans are trying to buy time by stating repeatedly that Khamenei has not yet made the decision to develop a nuclear bomb. But this is of no comfort to the Israelis.
According to a report Saturday in the New York Times, Obama administration officials said the P5+1 — the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany — were prepared to offer a deal to the Iranians that would include easing restrictions on the sale of technology, such as airplane parts and assistance to Iran’s energy complex.
Even if Iran were to accept such a deal, it is highly unlikely the regime would make concessions in turn to meet Israeli demands.
Iran demands the right to a nuclear program, including enrichment. But the Israelis will accept only the long-standing P5+1 position of no enrichment. Even if, as former Iranian ambassador Hossein Mousavian suggests, that an offer be made to limit enrichment at 3.5% to 5%, this is not enough for Israel.
Iran also wants an end to sanctions. But the sanctions are the only measures that have pacified Israel. There is talk that the P5+1 might offer a deal that would involve pushing back the scheduled oil embargo on Iran, which is due to take effect July 1. This would only antagonize Israel.
Iran could agree to permit inspectors full surveillance of its centrifuges. But the Israelis have little or no trust in Iran and believe that while inspections might address the part of Iran’s nuclear program that is visible, they wouldn’t do much to monitor nuclear technology the Iranians may have hidden from the international community.
So why all the optimism? The P5+1 needs to buy time to avert a unilateral attack by Israel. And the Iranians need ongoing diplomacy to push back the oil embargo.
As the talks draw near, high-ranking Iranian officials have been making daily statements predicting the talks will be a great success. For once, it seems Iran and the West are on the same page.
The only negative statements have been made by Saeed Jalili, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator. Jalili mentioned Thursday that Iran considers using nuclear energy its right and will not budge from this position.
Iran’s development path is not reversible, he said, adding that any additional pressure on Iran will only result in further resistance and progress. In the long term, these statements are likely to more accurately reflect Iran’s position.
The Israeli clock has already run out. Whatever patience Israel is demonstrating is merely to respect President Obama’s wish to get through the November election without an incident.
But it is likely that after November, there will no longer be a pretense of optimism from any side.
The views in this article are solely those of Geneive Abdo.
If the views expressed here are valid, credible and based on "reality," once again, for political purposes, we have "kicked the can down the road" without effectively resolving the impasse.

• Naturally, the Obama administration does not want a military conflict between now and November when the American people will vote in another presidential election.
• Naturally, the Israeli people and government do not trust the Iranians in their public display of innocence about nuclear enrichment.
• Naturally, (it would seem) there is a double standard with respect to nuclear weapons, given Israel's fairly large stockpile, while refusing a similar weapon to Iran.
• Naturally, the group of P5 +1 wants the UN agency IAEA to have the right to full inspection of Iran's facilities.
• Naturally, support for Iran, against the decisions of P5+1 will come from Russia and China.
• Naturally, should Iran develop nuclear weapons, other Middle East countries will seek to obtain them.
• Naturally, North Korea, Iran, and potentially Pakistan (already a nuclear power) will make whatever developmental secrets available to whatever state, in opposition to the west, seeks nuclear weapons.
• And finally, naturally, the UN has been, is and will be impotent to reach an effective and enforceable agreement to bring this conflict to a resolution...

And so naturally,

• we can expect both a full-court press to develop nuclear weapons by Iran
• we can also expect an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities by Israel (eventually joined by the U.S.) shortly after the U.S. elections
• we can also expect other Middle East countries to take sides in such a conflict
• we can also expect the UN to twiddle its collective fingers while the conflict escalates
• we can also expect Iran to retaliate against Israel, resulting in many casualties on both sides
• we can also expect, following a military "chapter" in this story, some cease-fire, that merely band-aids the distrust and the contempt that Iran has for Israel's existence
• we can also expect the price of oil, shortly before, during and after the conflict, to rise considerably
• we can also expect the U.S. president elected in 2016 to have to deal with this evolving conflict both politically and militarily, as well as make another attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Ho Hum...doesn't this get tiring?

Obama turns to corporations to feed hungry...implications

By Geoffrey York, Globe and Mail, May 18, 2012 With many G8 governments failing to keep their promises on fighting hunger in the developing world, U.S. President Barack Obama has turned to big multinational corporations to fill the financial gap.

Mr. Obama’s new scheme, touting $3-billion in food projects by 45 companies such as Pepsi and DuPont, is an attempt to harness the private sector to find innovative solutions to the hunger crisis in Africa and elsewhere
The coalition of companies, dubbed the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, will work on everything from seed technology and irrigation projects to farm financing and infrastructure. It aims to lift 50 million people out of poverty over the next decade.

But critics say it is a meagre sum of money for a massive problem, and the wrong approach to fixing African agriculture. And because of its long-term nature – with some projects spread over 10 years – the corporate money is unlikely to be helpful for immediate crises such as the devastating droughts in the Sahel region of West Africa, where 14 million people are suffering food shortages, and in the Horn of Africa, where nine million people need food.
Mr. Obama’s announcement was the kickoff of a weekend of international summitry, including the G8 summit at the Camp David presidential retreat near Washington. Food security will be high on the G8 agenda.
“When tens of thousands of children die from the agony of starvation, as in Somalia, that sends us a message we’ve still got a lot of work to do,” Mr. Obama said in a speech on Friday to a symposium on global food security in Washington.
“It’s unacceptable,” he said. “It’s an outrage. It’s an affront to who we are.”
Senior U.S. officials were defensive about the corporate involvement, insisting that it wasn’t an attempt to offload the hunger crisis onto the private sector. But the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Rajiv Shah, acknowledged there will be fears of “a multinational takeover of African agriculture.”
Mr. Obama denied he was dumping the problem into the laps of business. “I know some have asked, in a time of austerity, whether this New Alliance is just a way for governments to shift the burden onto somebody else,” he said. “I want to be clear: The answer is no.”
But the most recent G8 pledge on fighting hunger, announced at a summit in 2009, is still far from fulfilled. About $22-billion was pledged for food and agriculture, yet only about 58 per cent of that amount has been spent so far, according to U.S. estimates. Moreover, some of the spending was on traditional food handouts, rather than the long-term projects that were promised.
Robert Fox, executive director of Oxfam Canada, said the $3-billion corporate plan is a small amount of money for a world where nearly a billion people are chronically hungry.
“We don’t see a lot new in this,” he said. “We’re quite concerned that it’s a shrinking response to a growing problem.”
Mr. Obama’s emphasis on multinational corporations is the wrong focus, since most of Africa’s food is produced by small farmers, especially women, Mr. Fox noted.
“If you want to make progress where the needs are greatest, it’s not in industrial agriculture or high-tech solutions.”

Every little effort to confront the billion people who are hungry helps.
However, the fact that the G8 countries have not met their commitments made in 2009 is unacceptable.
Money is, has been, and will be available to fight wars, yet it is not available to reduce starvation.
That simple statement is its own indictment of the people of the developed world, and their political leaders.
It is not rocket science to note that, given the scale of the problem, and its potential political impact..(people will eventually fight and kill for survival) the world abandons the starving at its peril.
Whether this $3 billion initiative will help to develop new seeds and new technologies and new training for the people to whom it is targeted is unknown.
Yet everyone knows that those who are hungry and have not been given the opportunity for an education are much more  likely to become entrapped in gangs, in terrorism and in criminal behaviour. Where there is no food, and no legal system and no effective governance and no education, we have a warm petrie dish for growing the cancer of terror. And the cancer will spread impacting the military budgets and the national security budgets of "rich" countries, no matter the religious underpinnings of those conflicts.
On Sunday, we were privileged to listen to the new "czar" of Italy, Mario Monti, on GPS with Fareed Zakaria, who asked Mr. Monti if democracy can cope with the multitude of national debt/deficit problems. His answer, delivered in perfect, even eloquent, English, focused on the tendency for political leaders everywhere to address short-term problems, failing in the process to address their long-term implications.
Hunger, climate change and global warming, arms sales from rogue nations like Iran, and short-term pandering to the voters, for the purpose of being re-elected...these are endemic problems that, when combined result in eunuch governments, especially when viewed in retrospect, for the implications of their denial.
Democracy may be evolving into the triumph of the wealthy individuals, much as it did historically, in the "gilded age" of the1920's, and leaving those "outside" the boardrooms of power in effect disenfranchised, even if they have the right to vote. Oligarchy, after so many wars and political upheavals to replace it with something more akin to representative government, may once again have to be overthrown.
And whether that removal comes in the form of a gradual evolution, or a more climactic eruption, or as we are seening in the Middle East, a series of "minor" eruptions under the cloud of three or four major potential military-political crises is still unclear.
While corporations will always be available to drop a few shekels of "aid" into the huge cauldron of need, given the tax benefits of such beneficence, governments declare their impotence and their indifference by reverting to corporate hand-outs. Governments, also, in so doing, declare their increasing dependence on those corporations, and hence help to erode their assumption of what has been until now, their legitimate responsibility.
When governments fail to meet basic needs of the people, both at home and around the world, in a shrinking planet, they erode the confidence of the people in the capacity of those governments to serve the needs that confront their own people and the people of the undeveloped countries, whose fates are so inextricably tied as to be one...given a common need for food, for clean water and air, for health care and education, honourable work and shelter.
Those needs are common irrespective of the "ideology" of the governments in every country. And the voices that speak for those needs must never be side-lined at the table where military and economic policy makers shout their proposals for "action" or for reprisals.
A single decade goal of lifting 50 milllion out of povery is worthy. However, in relative terms, with nearly a billion people chronically hungry, the proposal does not go very far.
And all our hands are covered with the guilt, and the shame and the potential for conflict that our collective failures of our governments to meet legitimate obligations to the hungry. And only full compliance with minimal goals, already committed, will assuage that guilt, shame and collective political entropy.

Canadian Policing under attack....what's next?

By Alex Neve, Toronto Star, May 19, 2012
Alex Neve is secretary general of Amnesty International Canada.
A prominent human rights body meeting in Geneva is asking questions about the way police in Ontario respond to native land rights protests.

This week, Canada makes its regular report before the United Nations Committee against Torture — the independent expert body that oversees the international human rights treaty for the prevention of torture and ill-treatment. The committee has asked Canadian representatives to explain why recommendations that came out of the landmark Ipperwash inquiry into policing and aboriginal protests in Ontario have not been implemented. Standards for police use of force, police accountability and respect for the right to protest are all matters protected in international human rights law.
The report from the high-profile inquiry was issued five years ago this month. The Ontario Provincial Police claims all the recommendations directed at the force have been addressed. And for its part, the provincial government appears satisfied the OPP’s work is done.
Last year, however, Amnesty International published a detailed case study of how the OPP responded to protests over a long-standing, unresolved land claim in the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Belleville. On two occasions, in 2007 and 2008, the OPP mobilized hundreds of officers, including its highest level of response, the Tactics and Rescue Unit, commonly known as the sniper squad. This preparation to use lethal force against Mohawk activists took place despite the fact that no evidence has ever been presented that the protest constituted a serious threat to public safety.
In the April 2008 incident, a confrontation between protesters and police escalated to the point that OPP officers aimed high-powered rifles at unarmed protesters and bystanders. During the subsequent trial of activists charged in connection with the incidents, the trial judge commented on the efforts that many of those arrested had made to prevent tensions with police and non-aboriginal counterprotesters from escalating. In contrast, the judge noted that miscommunication among the OPP, including a broken promise not to arrest protesters escorting elders from the site of the confrontation, had contributed to the situation erupting out of control.
During the trial, questions were raised about whether the OPP had followed its own policies for minimizing the use of force in responding to aboriginal protest. One officer with the Tactics and Rescue Unit acknowledged that he was not very familiar with those policies.
The Ipperwash inquiry was held in response to long-standing concerns over a similar incident in 1995 when a police sniper shot an unarmed protester, Dudley George, after the OPP moved to break up the occupation of Ipperwash Provincial Park. That land has since been returned to the Stony Point First Nation in recognition of its legitimate claim to the land.
The May 2007 report of the Ipperwash inquiry provided a clear account of how the failure to reach a timely and just resolution in indigenous land disputes fuels frustration and protest. The inquiry report also stressed that a heavy-handed response to occupations and protests is inappropriate, unjust and even dangerous.
Crucially, the inquiry report recognized that the rule of law that police and government must respect and uphold is complex. The rule of law necessarily includes the right of protesters to speak out, and to be safe from harm while doing so. The rule of law also includes respect for indigenous people’s rights to lands and territories that are affirmed in treaties and the Canadian Constitution.
During the inquiry, the OPP emphasized the importance of a new policy framework it adopted after the killing of Dudley George. The Framework for Police Preparedness for Aboriginal Critical Incidents states that the OPP will “make every effort prior to understand the issues and to protect the rights of all involved parties . . . ” and “promote and develop strategies that minimize the use of force to the fullest extent possible.”
The inquiry report endorsed the framework, but it went even farther. Noting that police and politicians are often under intense public pressure to end aboriginal protests quickly, the inquiry took up a recommendation from the OPP calling for the province to adopt a similar “peacekeeping” model as official policy across all relevant departments and to promote public understanding of the need for such an approach.
The inquiry report also called on the province to ensure that the OPP’s implementation of its own framework is subject to an independent assessment to determine how effectively the approach has been adopted into OPP procedures and organizational culture.
Five years later, despite the McGuinty government’s pledge to fully implement the Ipperwash inquiry, the government has yet to adopt the recommended province-wide policy on aboriginal protests. Nor has there been an independent assessment of how well the OPP is living up to the policy framework that it promoted to the inquiry.
The questions being asked about the treatment of aboriginal protesters by police are valid. It’s unfortunate that they have to be asked Geneva, rather than being answered at Queen’s Park.
And then there is the recent report on policing at the 2010 meeting of the G20 in Toronto.
By Tabatha Southey, Globe and Mail, May 19, 2012
This week’s scathing report by Ontario’s independent police watchdog concluded that the police used excessive force during the G20 protests, that the mass arrests were unlawful and that there were numerous breaches of constitutional rights.

And, indeed, the G20 was a weekend of excess in every way. It seemed as if too much money had been spent on the whole affair. I was reminded of parties I once attended in the mostly unfurnished, newly rented homes of freshly successful film directors. Sometimes I’d think, “What is it that does this to people? A man earns some decent money and all of a sudden there’s an ice swan on the table.” A 30-year-old guy starts making $2-million a year, and suddenly he’s throwing his 50th wedding anniversary party. He forgets himself. He forgets the demographic he will be serving that weekend.
Close to $1-billion was spent on security for the G20 gathering. It was as if the officials won policing a summit in a lottery. Ostentatious displays of policing were everywhere – hundreds of riot-gear-clad officers charging repeatedly through peaceful crowds, banging their massive riot shields like so many big-screen TVs ordered in bulk for the guest bathroom.
Like the ice swan, these expenditures bore almost no relation to the events at hand. The independent police reviewer this week wrote exactly what struck me most as an observer: “It is fortunate that, in all the confusion, there were no deaths.”
“He’s maniacal,” the report records one officer saying of the on-duty incident commander who ordered that 400 peaceful protesters be detained on conspiracy to commit mischief. They, along with various passersby, tourists, observers and journalists, were kettled for hours, in torrential rain, without, as some officers at the scene suggested, first being given a chance to disperse peacefully.
In all of this, the investigation of a man who was headed to a role-playing game and transporting a longbow and arrows – with the tips cut off and replaced with bits of pool noodle wrapped in a sock – resulted in police officials displaying these “weapons” as trophies. Trust me, people, we’ll know when the nerds attack: Some of them are wizards.
Little wonder we are reading letters to the editor like this one: (From the Globe and Mail, May 19, 2012)
Policing in Canada is broken – and not just the RCMP
Across this land, we constantly hear ugly policing stories. Just a few: tethering a teen in Victoria to a jailhouse door, multiple taser discharges in Vancouver’s airport, one-way trips in the winter in Saskatoon, strip searches in Ottawa, the behaviour of the Toronto Police Service at the G20, and more.

Can it be corrected? Yes – if the police want to fix it. They created the mess, they are capable of correcting it: The police have to stop investigating themselves or another force; they can charge officers who clearly act inappropriately; they can admit and accept their errors.

The events in Toronto took place under the command of the chief. The responsibility for these events must move up in the chain of command. With such a scathing report, if there is ever a chance to start to clean up Canada’s broken policing, now is the time. Does the chief of the Toronto Police Service have the fortitude to start in his own office?
Robert D. Townsend, Saanich, B.C.
Known as a relatively decent, civil and orderly society, Canada has regarded police and the efforts to "police" unruly citizens as a noble duty and a usually successful containment.
However, with the Vancouver riots, following the Canucks failure to win the Stanley Cup in 2011, and the recent fourteen-week street protests in Quebec over rising tuition rates, one has to wonder if an essential public service itself needs more or more effective oversight.
Clearly the public behaves in ways never really contemplated in most cities and towns, as witnessed in the protests coincident with G-20 meetings, where opponents of the corporate culture that accompanies globalization, along with increased evidence of a growing gap between have's and have-nots, along with a growing sense of powerlessness on the part of the masses, and
Clearly, too, Canadian police forces have not been prepared for the exigencies of such protests, especially for the sincerity of those participating. And politicians, naturally and historically, have to  maintain public order, there is an inevitable potential explosion around the next corner, depending on the ire of the public and the preparedness (or lack thereof) of the authorities.
In the heat of the moment, one does not have the luxury of deciding whether 'this protest' is legitimate or frivolous, and those charged with keeping order have to confront real people and real actions in real time.
And also in the heat of the moment, normally civilized people can and often do become unruly, disorderly and even destructive...perhaps venting emotions unable to find release heretofore.
Respect for the law, for the government, and for those responsible for keeping public order, like the falling respect in other public institutions, has never been lower. And, for the letter writer to place the blame, for example in the G-20 fiasco on the Chief in Toronto is simplistic.
We all contribute to the culture that witnesses its own unravelling. We all have to examine our attitudes and beliefs and perceptions about the importance of both law and order and legitimate protest against stupid or ill-thought, or repressive steps by our political leaders. And one thing is certain, the more "stupid" those proposing the laws, the more likelihood will be the public protest.

Psychiatrist apologises for 'reparative therapy' study on gays

By Benedict Carey, New York Times, May 18, 2012
Now here he (Dr. Robert Spitzer) was at his computer, ready to recant a study he had done himself, a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change.

What to say? The issue of gay marriage was rocking national politics yet again. The California State Legislature was debating a bill to ban the therapy outright as being dangerous. A magazine writer who had been through the therapy as a teenager recently visited his house, to explain how miserably disorienting the experience was.
And he would later learn that a World Health Organization report, released on Thursday, calls the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.”
Dr. Spitzer’s fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, as if choking on the words. And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared.
“I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.”...
The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy.

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake at 4 o’clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him.
In 1998, I encountered the belief that reparative therapy could and would change a homosexual "back to his rightful position of heterosexuality" in the Episcopal church in Colorado. One clergy in the Diocese of Colorado even claimed to have, as evidence of the success of his work, "one of those positively impacted by the treatment" studying at the seminar for those planning to enter the priesthood.
In the most strongly worded memo I have ever written, I opposed the clergy's belief as not only repressive and counter-intuitive but also as preventive of the higher goal of the acceptance of gays as gays. Patronizingly, he informed me that "he would pray for me" and our conversation terminated.
Now, some fouteen years later, the psychiatrist whose reputation hinged on a misguided study in 2003, to demonstrate the positive effect of "reparative therapy" has apologized to the gay community.
It would seem that the truth will eventually find the light of day, although it may take decades, perhaps even centuries for that to happen.
Even to consider classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder is, was and always will be an insult to the gay and lesbian community. And for those at the highest levels of the psychiatric discipline of contemporary medical science to do so has hopefully been finally put to rest and will not recur.
It could, however, take decades for those, like the clergy in Colorado, to learn of this apology, and to permit a transformative experience of enlightenment to shift their perspective from a bias against, to an affirmation for the gay and lesbian community.
With the State of California about to debate a bill that would declare the treatment "dangerous" and the World Health Organization calling the therapy "a serious threat to the health and well-being --even the lives--of affected people" one wonders how long it will take church leaders, in all faiths, to reject the therapy in the same unequivocal manner.
Subject impact statements that demonstrate the negative consequences of reparative therapy, in effect telling the subject that his sexual orientation is wrong and he can and will right himself in the eyes of God by returning to heterosexuality include evidence not only of depression and loss of confidence but also thoughts and plans of suicide.
And everyone knows that one of the principle clauses of the Hippocratic Oath, taken by all medical practitioners, is "to do no harm" to the patient.
Would that a similar commitment be required of those practicing as religious leaders.