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MODERN WOES IN ANCIENT COMMUNITY
TheStar.com | Columnist | Samaritans run out of brides
Samaritans run out of brides
OAKLAND ROSS/TORONTO STAR
Husney Kohen, one of Kiryat Luza's 12 hereditary priests, explains the history of the Samaritans at his museum in the West Bank village.



Israeli radio towers seen as latest threat in West Bank village
Jun 30, 2009 04:30 AM
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Oakland Ross
MIDDLE EAST BUREAU

KIRYAT LUZA, West Bank- It is no easy matter to be a Samaritan, much less a good one, in these stressful times.

The list of their grievances is considerable: apparent health problems, an export embargo on their famous tahini, and, most worrisome, a shortage of brides.

Samaritans must endure the mysterious scourge of the seven nearby communications towers – most of them Israeli-built and controlled – whose electromagnetic radiation is deemed to be a health hazard.

"Our people suffer headaches because of this," grouses Husney Kohen, one of this venerable community's 12 hereditary priests. "Maybe this will eliminate us from existence."

Samaritans also have to contend with the rejection of their renowned tahini, made from ground sesame seeds.

"Our sauce is kosher," says Kohen, an elegant 65-year-old dressed in a grey robe. "It is the very best in the world."

For the past 18 months, Israeli customs officials have barred import of the sauce, made in a local factory that provides a livelihood for 10 Samaritan families – or did.

"The Israelis tell us it's a security issue," Kohen complains. "Why? This is another obstacle in the life of the Samaritans."

Samaritans are weighed down by an even greater burden – the curse of too few Samaritan brides.

"For all the world, we haven't enough girls," Kohen says. "We are suffering from this problem for the past 200 years."

Greetings from Kiryat Luza, a somewhat careworn village perched high atop Mount Gerizim, the holiest place in creation for the people who dwell here, members of what is possibly the smallest religious sect in the world and certainly among the oldest.

Kohen, a grey-bearded father of five, lives with his family in an apartment above the Gerizim Center and Museum, of which he is founder and curator.

Next door, a half-dozen concrete pits burrow into the ground.

Here, the Samaritans celebrate Passover each year by sacrificing a small flock of sheep as an act of gratitude to God for allowing them – along with those other Israelites, also known as Jews – to escape enslavement in Egypt.

Many people know the parable of the good Samaritan, the passerby who, in the Gospel of Luke, cared for a battered man whom he found lying half-dead on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

But the Samaritans – that is, the people of Samaria, as the northern West Bank is sometimes called – existed for centuries prior to that New Testament tale.

Their split with Judaism was sparked by conflict over the location of the first Jewish temple.

Jews believe the structure, built on the site of the biblical tale of Abraham and his son Isaac and destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, was located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Samaritans are convinced it stood here on Mount Gerizim near the Palestinian city of Nablus in what is now the West Bank.

Once, Samaritans numbered more than 1 million people, Kohen says. By 1917, following a history of persecution, their ranks had dwindled to just 146.

The community has recovered somewhat, with a current worldwide population of about 750, roughly half of whom reside in Kiryat Luza. The rest live in the town of Holon in Israel.

The two communities associate with each other quite freely, for Palestinian Samaritans are allowed to carry Israeli passports and to drive Israeli-registered vehicles.

"We hope to be a bridge to peace," Kohen says.

Like observant Jews, Samaritans cherish the menorah, celebrate Passover, and mark the Sabbath on Saturdays, when they refrain from answering the telephone or switching on any electrical devices.

They worship in synagogues, have their own version of the Torah, and conduct religious ceremonies in an ancient type of Hebrew.

But the shortage of Samaritan women of marriageable age has led to inbreeding.

Kohen reacts testily when this subject is raised, estimating the incidence of genetic defects among Samaritans at no more than 3 per cent of the population.

"God allows us to marry our cousins," he insists. "If God allows me to do something, why is He going to harm me for doing it?"

Still, Samaritan men have been seeking to marry women from outside the community for at least the past 90 years.

Five formerly Christian women, originally from Ukraine or Russia, now live in Kiryat Luza with their Samaritan husbands, as do three converts from Islam, originally from Turkey or Azerbaijan.

That's the good news.

The bad news has to do with those seven communications towers that many here regard as a modern plague upon an ancient people.

"If you want to help the Samaritans," says Kohen, "you must write something about the antennae."

Court rules for Franken in U.S. Senate fight

Jun 30, 2009 02:32 PM
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BRIAN BAKST
Associated Press Writer

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Minnesota Supreme Court today ordered that Democrat Al Franken be certified as the winner of the state's long-running Senate race.

The high court rejected a legal challenge from Republican Norm Coleman, whose options for regaining the Senate seat are dwindling.

Justices said Franken is entitled to the election certificate he needs to assume office. With Franken and the usual backing of two independents, Democrats will have a big enough majority to overcome Republican filibusters.

Coleman hasn't ruled out seeking federal court intervention.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said the earliest Franken would be seated is next week because the Senate is out of session for the July 4th holiday.

Coleman's appeal hinged largely on whether thousands of absentee votes had been unfairly rejected by local election officials around the state.

The unanimous court wrote that "because the legislature established absentee voting as an optional method of voting, voters choosing to use that method are required to comply with the statutory provisions.''

They went on to say that "because strict compliance with the statutory requirements for absentee voting is, and always has been required, there is no basis on which voters could have reasonably believed that anything less than strict compliance would suffice.''

Officials in China's Xinjiang province imposed a curfew as part of a crackdown on protesters as Han Chinese clashed with Uighurs in the provincial capital on Tuesday.

After bringing in riot police to break up multiple protests, the Xinjiang regional government announced that a curfew would be imposed from 9 p.m. on Tuesday to 8 a.m. on Wednesday local time.

The curfew is needed to "avoid further chaos," said Xinjiang's Communist Party secretary Wang Lequan.
A Han Chinese man holds a stick as he walks past riot police troops in Urumqi on Tuesday.A Han Chinese man holds a stick as he walks past riot police troops in Urumqi on Tuesday. (Nir Elias/Reuters)

Riot police using loudspeakers appealed to about 300 marchers to stop their destructive behaviour as they threw rocks, smashed shop windows and knocked down food stalls run by ethnic Uighurs in Urumqi on Tuesday.

Many of the protesters waved wooden sticks, pipes and shovels while chanting "Unite" and "Modern society," according to eyewitness accounts.

"They attacked us. Now it's our turn to attack them," a man in the crowd told Reuters.

As the demonstrators entered a predominantly Muslim area and approached a mosque, police used tear gas to break up the crowd.
200 Uighurs block road

The Han march followed an earlier protest of about 200 people from the Uighur minority that resulted in a standoff with security forces and blocked off a main road.

At least 156 have died in ethnic violence in the northwestern province of Xinjiang since Sunday.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said an extraordinarily high number of people had been killed and injured in the rioting, and she called for a full inquiry.

"I urge Uighur and Han civic leaders, and the Chinese authorities at all levels, to exercise great restraint so as not to spark further violence and loss of life," she said. "This is a major tragedy."

The Uighurs — an ethnically Turkic, predominantly Muslim group — make up the majority in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China bordering Central Asia and Mongolia.

Their relations have often been tense with the ethnic Han Chinese who predominate in the country. Many Uighurs feel they're discriminated against by the government in Beijing and a Uighur separatist movement has existed for decades.

The protests started in the provincial capital of Urumqi on Sunday, when demonstrators gathered to demand justice for two Uighurs killed in June during a fight with their Han co-workers at a factory in southern China.

The protests turned into the deadliest ethnic unrest in the region in decades.

There were also reports protesters waving the Uighur flag and calling on China to end ethnic discrimination in Xinjiang were demonstrating outside China's embassies in Norway and Turkey on Tuesday.
Protests spreading

Tuesday's clashes happened in front of a group of reporters who were being shown the aftermath of Sunday's riots in Urumqi, The Associated Press reported.
A group of Uighurs protest in Urumqi, China, on Tuesday.A group of Uighurs protest in Urumqi, China, on Tuesday. (Ng Han Guan/Associated Press)

Security officials reported also having to break up a separate protest at a train station in Urumqi and riots had also broken out in Kashgar on Monday.

Uighurs told reporters their husbands and children had been arrested.

One woman, who asked not to be named, told The Associated Press police came through her neighbourhood Monday night and strip-searched men to check for cuts and other signs of fighting.

"My husband was detained at gunpoint. They were hitting people, they were stripping people naked. My husband was scared so he locked the door but the police broke down the door and took him away," said the woman.

Urumqi Communist Party secretary Li Zhi told a news conference Tuesday more than 1,000 people have been detained.

"The number is changing all the time," Li said. "We will let those who did not commit serious crimes go back to their work units. But to those criminal suspects trying to flee, we will never let them off."

Li also confirmed internet and mobile phone service has been restricted in parts of the city.

Clownfish, seen swimming among anemones in Indonesia, are highly dependent on coral reef ecosystems. (Canadian Press)

Climate change threatens to snuff out the world's coral reefs within the next half-century, a group of scientists led by David Attenborough warned on Monday.

Several prominent scientists and marine experts gathered at the Royal Society in London, England, to discuss the future of the world's coral reefs. After the meeting, they called on world leaders to make greater cuts in carbon emissions.

"A coral reef is the canary in the cage as far as the oceans are concerned," said Attenborough, speaking after the meeting.

"They are the places where the damage is most easily and quickly seen. It is more difficult for us to see what is happening in, for example, the deep ocean or the central expanses of ocean," the renowned British naturalist and broadcaster said.

The reefs provide important fish habitat and protect coastal areas from flooding. They support a vast array of marine ecosystems, which humans in turn depend on for sustenance — be it for food or the economic benefits yielded by tourism.

The scientists at the meeting warned that if carbon emissions continue to grow at current rates, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could reach 450 parts per million by 2050 — up from around 387 ppm today.
Acidity threatens reefs

Oceans absorb around a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide. This process creates carbonic acid, and seawater that acidifies creates an inhospitable environment for coral — existing coral can bleach and die, while new coral is unable to grow.

"When we get up to and above 450 ppm, that really means we're into the realms of catastrophic destruction of coral reefs and we'll be moving into a planetary-wide global extinction," said Alex Rogers, one of the scientists in attendance. He said carbon dioxide levels below 350 ppm were necessary to ensure healthy reefs.

"The only way to get to 350 ppm or below is not only to have major cuts in CO2 emissions but also to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere through measures such as geo-engineering," said Rogers, who is the scientific director of the International Program on the State of the Ocean.

Rogers said the vulnerability of the corals should spur decisive action by world leaders when they meet in Copenhagen at the end of the year to strike a climate pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

"Essentially coral reefs are on death row and Copenhagen is one of the last opportunities for a reprieve," said Rogers. "Because if we carry on business as usual collapse is inevitable, whereas if we decide to do something about it we can make a difference to the current trajectory."

Stories of brutality from China's protests
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Zhang Xiangying, a Han Chinese woman who was injured during ethnic clashes recuperates at People's Hospital in Urumqi, western China's Xinjiang province, Wednesday, July 8, 2009.



Protest photos
Jul 08, 2009 01:47 PM
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Bill Schiller
Asia Bureau

URUMQI, CHINA – Nearly 72 hours after an ethnic clash between Han Chinese and minority Uighurs claimed 156 lives, there was a measured mix of stability and tension here today – underscored by bitterness.

As soldiers saturated the streets of the violence-weary city today, its residents took to the streets for the first time in three days, bringing with them stories of shocking brutality.

"The Uighurs raped a woman in my neighborhood, then threw her body from a second floor balcony and set it on fire," Guo Liang, a Han Chinese woman said as she walked along North Jiefang Street.

"Why do they feel hatred towards us? You tell me," she spat. "They don't respect us at all. You've really got to question why we should tolerate them."

Across town at one of the city's main mosques – a place of worship that had been smashed and sacked by a Han mob yesterday – a man said he saw the bodies of two dead Uighur women who had been slain on the street just a few doors down.

"These were two older Uighur women in their late 60s – beaten to death, right in front of the Agricultural Bank. They used iron bars and sticks," he said. "I saw this with my own eyes."

A crowd of young Uighur men crowded in nodding: a number said they saw it too.

Asked for his name the man refused.

"Are you kidding? No way," he said, then used his right hand to make a slit throat gesture under his chin.

Both accounts were impossible to verify.

Thousands of army reinforcements toting automatic weapons were moved in overnight from neighbouring Qinghai province, reinforcing already substantial numbers of regular, riot and armed police who had flooded the city.

Radio reports said Chinese President Hu Jintao was leaving a G-8 meeting early to fly home from Italy.

And state media was engaged in a full-court press to try to cool emotions.

But the thinking on the street, it seemed, was that there were still scores to settle.

No one was happy with the way things were unfolding: not the Han Chinese, not the Uighurs – not even the minority Kazaks.

Twenty-five year-old firefighter Jiang Umar was stunned and confused.

"I'm a Kazak and Kazaks speak the same sort of Turkic language as the Uighurs. We both believe in Islam. ... And yet, until today I dared not to go out on the streets," he said.

Like most citizens here, he'd been shut up in his apartment for almost three days.

Last night he learned that a young friend of his – also a Kazak – had been slain in a nearby neighbourhood.

He was at a loss to understand such a senseless killing, he said.

The Kazaks and the Uighurs are almost cousins, he said, and yet he no longer feels safe.

As he spoke, a long cavalcade of military trucks drove by in the distance with teams of soldiers chanting "Protect the People!"

In the Uighur quarter surrounding the Han Teng Geli Mosque, young Uighurs recounted how yesterday a throng of Han Chinese men carrying sticks and metal bars rampaged along Jiangnanhou Alley near the mosque, overturning food stalls and smashing every restaurant window in sight.

Shards of broken glass and upended carts still littered the alley.

About 30 restaurants in all appeared to have been smashed.

As a young group of Uighurs repeated their eye-witness accounts of the marauding crowd, a man, who appeared to be Han Chinese, stopped to listen.

After a few minutes he thrust out an accusatory finger at the youths shouting, "Quit trying to inflame ethnic emotions!"

Instantly the crowd moved in on him, led by a middle aged woman, and wild shouting ensued – the man yelling in Chinese, the crowd responding in the Uighurs' Turkic language

Though clearly outnumbered, the man and a few of his friends wouldn't back down.

As the shouting escalated the crowd in the alley suddenly grew larger and some – including this reporter – tried to separate the two sides.

Finally a battalion of soldiers in full battle gear with batons, shields and guns appeared and moved in to disperse the crowd.

Later, one of the Uighur youths complained of continuing surveillance by the state's security forces.

"Whenever three or four of us gather, even on a street corner, they're constantly watching us," he said.
Colin Perkel
THE CANADIAN PRESS

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – A helicopter crash in Afghanistan that killed three soldiers, two of them Canadian, apparently occurred when the chopper clipped a security wall while trying to manoeuvre in a blinding cloud of dust, The Canadian Press has learned.

Sources familiar with the tragedy said the Griffon C-146 smashed to the ground and burst into flames.

The crash on Monday killed Master Cpl. Pat Audet, 38, of Montreal, a flight engineer, and Cpl. Martin Joannette, 25, a gunner from St-Calixte, Que. British Capt. Ben Babington-Browne, 27, from the 22 Engineer Regiment, Royal Engineers, was also killed.

Three other Canadians aboard were hurt, one seriously.

It is common in parched southern Afghanistan for helicopters landing or departing at operating bases to become engulfed in the dust whipped up by their rotors.

With a second Griffon in the air nearby, the pilot lifted off and struggled to orient the helicopter in the whirled-up dust storm compounded by gusty conditions that cut visibility essentially to zero, the sources said.

The helicopter veered too close to the reinforced security perimeter, which is designed to ward off suicide bombers and direct fire from insurgents.

Military authorities have declined to talk officially about the circumstances of the crash as an Air Wing investigation has been launched. They will only say publicly that enemy action had been ruled out, despite Taliban claims of having shot down the craft.

The sources said the chopper that was already in the air may have contributed to the adverse conditions surrounding the crash. They stressed that the formal probe may yet uncover other factors that led to the tragedy.

The two pilots in the downed chopper survived. Canadian military rules bar publication of the names of deployed flight crew.

The two choppers, part of Canadian Helicopter Force Afghanistan based at Kandahar Airfield, had flown to a remote American forward operating base in the Tarnak va Jaldak district of southwest Zabul province, about 80 kilometres northeast of Kandahar city.

The flight just outside Canada's normal area of operations in Kandahar province was to pick up the British engineer.

Under normal operating protocols – essentially for reasons of security – the Griffons fly in pairs, allowing them to keep an eye on each other. The crews depend heavily on sight to know where the other is at any given moment, and the flying itself also relies to a significant degree on visual orientation.

"We feel mixed emotions of pain and frustration," Lt.-Col. Marc Bigaouette, commander of the helicopter force constituted little more than six months ago, said Tuesday.

"The incident ... was not expected."

Like other military officials, Bigaouette refused to discuss the circumstances of the crash, citing the investigation.

Audet and Joannette were expected to be repatriated on Thursday.

Their deaths brought to 124 the number of soldiers killed since Canada joined the international stabilization effort in Afghanistan in 2002.
ul 08, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (33)
Carol Goar

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley's belief that laid-off workers would stay home and collect pogey if the government improved jobless benefits was once widely shared.

In the mid-1990s, most western policy makers turned away from the welfare state, convinced they were creating a culture of dependency.

The dominant view, at the time, was that the best way to fight unemployment was to strengthen the work ethic. And the best way to do that was to make labour more rewarding than leisure.

Academics wrote papers calling for more work incentives. Commentators amplified the message. Economists warned that employment insurance (EI) costs would balloon if governments didn't shift course.

Jean Chrétien bought into the theory. So did Bill Clinton. So, to varying degrees, did European leaders.

But it was a just theory. It was based on assumptions about human behaviour and calculations about the trade-offs between employment and idleness.

When researchers actually went out and talked to people, they got a couple of surprises.

The first was that the majority hated being unemployed. It wasn't only a matter of lost income. They longed for daily social contact, a sense of purpose and a structure to build their lives around. The level of unemployment benefits was of little importance to them.

The second was that individuals who lost their jobs typically experienced a decline in physical and mental health. The link between unemployment and morbidity is so strong and consistent that it undermined the proposition that people would choose not to work.

Nor was there much empirical evidence to support the theory.

Countries with generous jobless benefits such as Denmark didn't have particularly high unemployment rates. Countries with modest benefits such as the United States had low unemployment in good times but higher-than-average unemployment in lean times.

The current American unemployment rate is 9.5 per cent. The Danish rate is 3.5 per cent.

Today, the notion that deprivation keeps indolence in check has largely fallen out of favour – except in the U.S. Republican party, right-wing think-tanks and the government of Stephen Harper.

That is the principal obstacle confronting the task force appointed last month to draft an employment insurance reform strategy. To make headway, the three Liberals and three Conservatives will have to find a way over or around it.

As things now stand, 60 per cent of Canada's unemployed do not receive EI payments: 25 per cent because they've been out of work for too long; 10 per cent because they haven't accumulated enough hours to qualify for benefits; a handful because they were fired for misconduct, quit their jobs voluntarily or didn't file a claim; and the rest – mostly self-employed workers and independent contractors – because they aren't covered by the program.

Before the mid-'90s retrenchment, just 20 per cent of the unemployed didn't get EI.

Not only has eligibility been tightened, the wage replacement rate has been chopped repeatedly. In EI's heyday, it was 75 per cent. Today it is 55 per cent.

Moreover, the program is inequitable. Claimants in high-unemployment regions need 420 hours of paid work to qualify for EI benefits. Their counterparts in low-unemployment regions need 700 hours (910 hours if it's their first claim).

This might have been reasonable when Canada had a few pockets of persistent joblessness in an otherwise healthy labour market. In a nation-wide economic downturn it makes little sense.

Despite all this, Harper and his ministers worry about coddling freeloaders, undermining the work ethic and displeasing their party's right-wing base.

If the government clings to these priorities, a nation that is already hurting will be permanently damaged by a recession for which it refused to plan and a jobless recovery for which it refuses to prepare.

Carol Goar's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.


Local kids recovering from E. coli infections
Wed, July 8, 2009
HEALTH: Three children fell ill in London


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By JOHN MINER

Three London children who have been hit with E. coli infections are recovering and no new cases have been confirmed, the Middlesex-London Health Unit said yesterday.

"At this point they seem to be doing fine. They are not out of the woods. They will have to be followed closely for about a year and have regular assessments," said Cathie Walker, manager of the infectious disease control team at the health unit.

Health officials issued an advisory June 27 telling people not to eat ground beef or kofta purchased from the Westmount Halal Food Store between June 2 and June 27.

Two of the sickened children had consumed spiced ground beef purchased at the store.

Walker said the health unit is still awaiting final lab test results of the meat, but initial results have failed to pinpoint a source for the E. coli infection.


"It is all kind of a mystery," she said.

John Miner is Free Press health reporter. john.miner@sunmedia.ca

QUESNEL, B.C. - A provincial park in central B.C. remained closed Wednesday following a cougar attack, the first reported incident in at least 25 years.

The B.C. Conservation Officer Service said it has set up snares in Pinnacles Park after a team were unsuccessful in tracking down the animal.

"The predator attack team has left the area," said officer Michael Krause. "The snares are left in the immediate vicinity of the attack and, if there is no activity, we expect to reopen the park on Friday."

A local woman and her two sons - aged five and seven - were walking through the park Saturday when a cougar jumped out of the forest and attacked the older boy.

"It happened very quickly and it was gone very quickly," said Krause.

The woman does not remember fighting the animal off her son, said Krause, adding it's very rare that a cougar would just leave once it was "focused on prey."

The boy suffered scratches to his face, cheek, ear and back. He was taken to hospital for stitches.

The service has issued a warning to local residents about possible cougar attacks this summer.

"There's nothing you can do about prevention but something you can do if you encounter a cougar at any point in time, especially with children,'' said Krause.

"Basically, make yourself large. Mark sure the cougar understands that you're a human, not prey. And fight like hell if it does attack.''
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

BISHKEK - Russia, seeking to offset growing U.S. influence in Central Asia, has asked Kyrgyzstan to allow it to open another military base in the impoverished nation, a senior Kyrgyz official said on Thursday.

Russia and the United States both operate their own military bases in Kyrgyzstan, an arrangement security analysts see as a symbol of Moscow's rivalry with Washington for control over the strategically important region bordering Afghanistan.

A senior Kyrgyz government official told Reuters that Moscow had asked Kyrgyzstan to allow it to open another military base in southern Kyrgyzstan.

"Russia voiced this request itself," the source said on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue. "Russia wants to restore its influence."

The source made his remarks shortly after a Russian delegation led by Igor Sechin, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's powerful deputy, and Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, visited Bishkek this week.

Speculation that Moscow might be seeking another base in Central Asia emerged after Kyrgyzstan agreed last month to allow the United States to continue using its Manas air base, reversing an earlier, Russia-backed decision to shut it.

Moscow's aggressive push for more influence in Central Asia also contrasts with a largely cordial atmosphere during U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Moscow this week.

The Kremlin confirmed that talks had taken place in Bishkek.

"I can confirm that Deputy Prime Minister Sechin and Defence Minister Serdyukov were there and held talks," Kremlin spokeswoman Natalya Timakova said on the sidelines of a Group of Eight summit in Italy.

She refused to elaborate on the topics discussed. The Foreign Ministry and the Defence Ministry declined comment.

The Kyrgyz source said Russia wanted to use an abandoned Soviet-era military facility near the city of Osh in the densely populated Ferghana valley — a strategic location near China and Afghanistan — as a foundation for a new base.

"The issue is being discussed currently," the source said, adding that the facility still had good military infrastructure.

The U.S.-operated Manas air base opened in Kyrgyzstan in 2001 to support military operations in Afghanistan. Like Russia's Kant air base, it is located near the capital Bishkek.

Kyrgyzstan announced its decision to close it after securing pledges of $2 billion in aid and credit from Russia, which has long been uneasy with the U.S. military presence in a region it sees as part of its traditional sphere of interest.

The United States agreed to pay $180 million to Kyrgyzstan for the use of the Manas air base, an important transit point for troops and equipment en route to Afghanistan.
© Copyright (c) Reuters

When Winifred Hall entered her friend Sheila Scholnick's home in Vancouver's west side after she was locked out, the place looked as though there had been a burglary.

"The house had been ransacked," the elderly B.C. woman told CBC News, her voice shaking.

A Jewish altar lay overturned in the living room of the Dunbar area home, with its candles and Torah lying on the floor. Upstairs in the bedroom, dresser drawers had been emptied and underwear was scattered on the bed.

The culprits: British Columbia's Public Guardian and Trustee, a provincial agency set up to protect the financial and legal affairs of those declared mentally incapable of handling it themselves.
What is the public guardian?

Each province and territory has a public guardian.

Their job is to protect society's most vulnerable, but they are intended to be a service of last resort — only becoming involved when a person is deemed incapable and no other solution is available. The agency can make decisions on the person's behalf on a temporary basis, such as:

* maintaining or selling property.
* filing tax returns.
* paying bills.
* receiving and depositing income.

Sometimes such agencies will gain control of more personal matters such as health care, place of residence, nutrition, hygiene and clothing.

Public guardians typically take over responsibilities on behalf of those found incapable when there are no others — such as a relative — available, capable and willing to take over the affairs.

While the public guardian is supposed to protect society's most vulnerable citizens, Hall and several others are describing it as a ruthless organization abusing the rights of the very people it claims to protect.

It was late 2007 when Hall came home to padlocks on the door of the Blenheim Street house where she had lived with the owner and her late friend, Sheila Scholnick, for the past two years. The public guardian allowed her briefly back into the building to retrieve her belongings, but that was all.

"I became like a hobo. I had nowhere to go," said Hall, who contends her property also went missing while she was locked out, including her British passport, some cash and personal files.

Hall and another friend of Scholnick, Michaelyna Burianyk, say the public guardian made Scholnick's last months of life miserable, not even allowing Scholnick back in the house to celebrate her 80th birthday. Scholnick died last fall.

"At that point, she said 'This is going to kill me.' And she said, 'This, this is so wrong,'" says Burianyk.
Agency won't explain

B.C. Public Guardian and Trustee Jay Chalke said ransacking a house would be "ridiculous and unacceptable." He wouldn't comment about the specific case but said that the agency typically does an exhaustive search of a premise when they take control of a person's financial affairs.

"You'd be amazed at the places we find wills, stock certificates, and money — hidden between the pages of a book or underneath carpets. And so we do have to conduct a thorough search," said Chalke.
Winifred Hall, left, and Sheila Scholnick, right, lived together for several years in Scholnick's B.C. home.Winifred Hall, left, and Sheila Scholnick, right, lived together for several years in Scholnick's B.C. home. (Amanda Stutt/CBC News)

"Our written policy is that our investigators leave the property at least as good as they found it."

But lawyer John Lakes, who has dealt extensively with the public guardian, says poor judgments are sometimes the result of overworked, disengaged caseworkers, as well as the result of a cumbersome bureaucracy.

"Well, unfortunately — just like a lawyer — the PGT is trained to be negative," said Lakes.

"You're dealing with a big bureaucracy. You're dealing with a turnover of people. Part of the problem is what they'll do is take sides too early."

For about six months before being turfed from the home, Hall had Scholnick's enduring power of attorney after Scholnick was admitted to a nursing home following a fall in May 2007.

With that enduring power of attorney, she had the ability to act in her friend's name even when Scholnick lost decision-making capacity, but that right was nullified by the public guardian when it assumed control of the elderly woman's finances.

In fact, it was Hall who called the public guardian, concerned that Scholnick was being swindled by a man who had begun visiting Scholnick at the nursing home. She alleges the man manipulated Scholnick into withdrawing money from her debit account to give to him.
'All-or-nothing' legislation

Hall hoped the agency would freeze Scholnick's account to keep it from happening again. But instead, the Public Guardian took control of Scholnick's affairs, emptying all but $50 out of her accounts and informing Hall that her power of attorney had been revoked.

"It should be noted that you did not take measures to protect the finances of Mrs. Scholnick in enacting your role as power of attorney and instead sought remedy by calling our office," Public Guardian regional manager Colleen Koch wrote in a letter to Hall.

Hall began a letter writing campaign to the public guardian, the province's attorney general and the ombudsman. What she found was that current laws give the public guardian complete control over a person's legal and financial affairs.

Under the Patients Property Act, the agency has the power to enact statutory guardianship without any court process.

Laura Watts, the Centre for Elder Law's national director, says the public guardian should only step in when necessary — when there is no default power of attorney and no willing or capable family member to assume control.

She adds that abuse of powers of attorney is rampant, but often those deemed incapable of managing their affairs get caught in what Watts refers to as the "hammer of all-or-nothing" legislation.

"It's like flipping a switch — a person's either got all [of their] rights or none."

There's no way to know how many complaints like Hall's have been lodged against the public guardian since freedom of information requests were denied due to privacy concerns.

The agency publishes audited financial statements and details of how it invests clients' assets, but won't give specific details of how money is spent to family members.
Family loses out

Even when the family is still in the picture, the public guardian has been accused of unfairly taking control over the affairs of its elderly clients.

When Rose Landers was deemed incapable of managing her own affairs due to dementia and was placed in a nursing home, she lost control of her finances to the public guardian in October 2008 following a probe into allegations of financial abuse.

That probe was sparked by a relative who complained to the public guardian about the sale of one of Landers's properties. Some of the proceeds of the sale were given to family members, including her granddaughter, Marion Landers.
Rose Landers had hoped to pass on her money to her granddaughter Marion Landers, shown here with her sons Solomon and Bilal.Rose Landers had hoped to pass on her money to her granddaughter Marion Landers, shown here with her sons Solomon and Bilal. (Amanda Stutt/CBC News)

Shortly after, the agency took over joint investments and emptied a bank account containing about $100,000 that the 99-year-old shared with Marion.

The two also jointly own three properties, and those are also under threat. In mid-May 2009, the public guardian informed Marion's lawyer that they are now investigating the possibility of challenging her ownership on all three shared properties.

"This is ridiculous. I don't understand how they can do this," said Marion. "They are trying to force me into a position where … one of the properties goes into foreclosure."

Marion and her two children, Solomon and Bilal, live in one of the houses and she says she couldn't even afford to rent an apartment on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside if she was forced out.

In the end, the agency told Marion Landers that they'd found no evidence of abuse. But the agency still hasn't returned the money, with the exception of about $4,000.

"It's almost like gangsterism. Their behaviour is very gangster like," said Marion.

Slow Down: How Our Fast-Paced World Is Making Us Sick

By Linda Buzzell, AlterNet. Posted July 2, 2009.

Living under unnatural time pressures causes a myriad of psychological, social and physical ailments.


Not so very long ago, humans -- like the rest of the animals and plants on earth -- moved through our natural cycles at nature's pace. Time was marked by the passing of the seasons, the life cycles of human, animal and plant life and the yet grander cycles of the moon and the other celestial bodies.

Homo sapiens, a late-appearing species in the long history of our unimaginably ancient planet and universe, evolved during the recent (as the universe views these things!) Pleistocene era, adapted for a life intimately connected with and expressive of our natural surroundings on the African savannah and beyond.

And this is how we lived for millennia.

In the last 150 years, however, the human relationship with time has radically changed. Some say the problems started earlier, with the development of agriculture or writing, but it was really the Industrial Revolution -- the rise of the Machine -- that put humans in thrall to mechanical processes and machine time. And the recent exponential speeding up into Cybertime has accelerated the process still further. Industrial time was bad enough (Charlie Chaplin did a wonderful job of visualizing that "cog in the wheel" feeling in his film "Modern Times") but Cybertime can be dizzyingly discombobulating for a Pleistocene primate.

And that's how many modern people feel -- completely frazzled and out of synch with our deepest selves.

The results of this disconnection from nature and nature's pace show up in therapists' and doctors' offices every day. Living under unnatural time pressures causes a myriad of psychological, social and physical ailments. Delinked from the natural rhythms of our bodies and the rest of the planet, we struggle with diminishing success to adapt to the strange mechanical and disembodied world we have created.

As a practicing psychotherapist and ecotherapist, when I see patients who are suffering from depression or anxiety I ask them to keep a time-journal in which they record the hours and minutes spent each day outside, as well as the hours spent inside in front of a screen. My clients are often shocked to realize how disassociated they have become from nature and our species' natural ways of living, and the effect this disconnection is having on their psyche. In fact, a 2007 study from the University of Essex shows that a daily "dose" of walking outside in nature can be as effective at treating mild to moderate depression as expensive antidepressant medications that can sometimes have negative side-effects.

Time poverty is now a recognized psychological and social stressor. In a speeded-up, highly complex society, there just isn't enough time for everything: our demanding jobs, our interlocking bureaucratic responsibilities (taxes, insurance, legal issues), our loved one, kids, our community (including the rest of nature), plus commuting and keeping up with traditional media and endless 24/7 online communications. Constantly rushing to keep up as we inevitably fall further behind, we find ourselves destroying not only our own health, but our habitat and the habitat of the people, plants and animals with whom we share the planet.

In my recently published book, Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind (Sierra Club Books, 2009) therapists and experts from many backgrounds discuss some of the ways that nature can help to heal problems like stress and anxiety. What suggestions can ecotherapists offer to help us slow down to a more natural pace of living? Here are a few simple things that can make a difference:

* Reconnect with place. We can learn to resist the constant rushing around and settle into and tend a beloved location, taking time to learn its secrets and hear its whisperings.
* Reconnect with companion and wild animals. Animals slow us down to our natural animal rhythms, which is why animal-assisted therapy works so well at lowering blood pressure and healing psychological ills of many kinds. The simple act of petting a cat or watching the birds flit through the trees is profoundly healing.
* Reconnect with plants. A simple pot on a windowsill slows us down to the pace of a seed, a seedling, a leaf and a flower. A tree on the street, if contemplated and touched, offers its blessings during a busy day.
* Reconnect with the cycles of human life. Instead of demanding that we remain in perpetual-teenager mode (the preferred state in our society, it seems), allowing ourselves to become true initiated adults and then elders honors the natural pace of human life rather than fighting it. Nature teaches us that seeds emerge, plants flourish, bloom, fruit and then wither and slip away -- valuable wisdom for our own lives when we encounter the inevitable transitions in our own and others' lives.
* Reconnect with our wild bodies. Untamed nature is to be found not only in far-away wilderness but in the wilds of our bloodstream, our digestive processes, our breath. Any practice that brings our attention back to our bodies is wilderness ecotherapy. Yoga and ecstatic dance offer release from the controlling modern ego and access to what ecopsychologists call "the ecological self." And once we reach peace with our animal bodies, our souls naturally open up to the larger Spirit in which we are embedded.
* Spend more time outdoors in wild nature. Most of us are indoors most of the time. Our bodies and souls cry out for long walks on a beach, contemplation in a forest or a few minutes in a nearby vacant lot near a stream. These times slow life down to a healing, natural pace.

Making just a few of these simple changes can radically shift how we feel. Ecopsychological research is now proving that reconnecting with nature and more natural living performs a host of psychological miracles, including lowering depression, improving our sense of well being, calming our anxieties, raising self-esteem and giving us a sense of belonging to the great whole of which we are a part.




Linda Buzzell, M.A., MFT is the co-editor with Craig Chalquist of the new anthology Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, just released by Sierra Club Books (May 2009). She is a psychotherapist and ecotherapist in Santa Barbara.

Congress, CIA director weren't told of secret program
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Officials stand in the front lobby of the CIA's Langley, Va. headquarters in this file image.

Mysterious project has ended, Panetta says
Jul 10, 2009 01:25 PM
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Pamela Hess
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON – CIA Director Leon Panetta has terminated a "very serious" covert program the U.S. spy agency kept secret from Congress for eight years, a House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman said today.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky is pressing for an immediate committee investigation of the classified program, which has not been described publicly. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said he is considering an investigation.

"The program is a very, very serious program and certainly deserved a serious debate at the time and through the years," Schakowsky told The Associated Press in an interview. "But now it's over."

Democrats revealed late Tuesday that CIA Director Leon Panetta had informed members of the House Intelligence Committee on June 24 that the spy agency had been withholding important information about a secret intelligence program begun after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the U.S.

Schakowsky described Panetta as "stunned" that he had not been informed of the program until nearly five months into his tenure as director.

Panetta had learned of the program only the day before informing the lawmakers, according to a U.S. intelligence official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity today because he was not authorized to discuss the program publicly.

Panetta has launched an internal probe at the CIA to determine why Congress was not told about the program. Exactly what the classified program entailed is still unclear.

The intelligence official said the program was ``on-again/off-again" and that it was never fully operational, but he would not provide details.

Schakowsky, a Democrat, said today that the CIA and Bush administration consciously decided not to tell Congress.

"It's not as if this was an oversight and over the years it just got buried. There was a decision under several directors of the CIA and administration not to tell the Congress," she said.

Schakowsky, who chairs the Intelligence subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said in a Thursday letter to Reyes that the CIA's lying was systematic and inexcusable. The letter was obtained by The Associated Press today.

She said Reyes indicated to her the committee would conduct a probe into whether the CIA violated the National Security Act, which requires, with rare exceptions, that Congress be informed of covert activities. She told AP she hopes to conduct at least part of the investigation for the committee.

She said this is the fourth time that she knows of that the CIA has misled Congress or not informed it in a timely manner since she began serving on the Intelligence Committee two and half years ago.

In 2008, the CIA inspector general revealed that the CIA had lied to Congress about the accidental shoot down of American missionaries over Peru in 2001. In 2007, news reports disclosed that the CIA had secretly destroyed videotapes of interrogations of a terrorist suspect.

She would not describe the other incident.

Schakowsky said she thinks Panetta is changing the CIA for the better, adding that the failure to inform Congress was indicative of ``contempt" the Bush administration and intelligence agencies under him held for Congress.

"Many times I felt it was an annoyance to them to have to come to us and answer our questions," she said. "There was an impatience and a contempt for the Congress."

The House is expected to take up the 2010 intelligence authorization bill next week. It includes a provision that would require the White House to inform the entire committee about upcoming covert operations rather than just the "Gang of Eight" – the senior members from both parties on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and the Democratic and Republican leaders in both houses.

The White House this week threatened to veto the final version of the bill if it includes that provision.

Democratic aides said the language may be softened in negotiations with the Senate to address the White House's concern.

But Schakowsky said the wider briefings are the best remedy to avoiding future notification abuses.

Republicans charge that Democratic outrage about the Panetta revelation is just an attempt to provide political cover to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who in May accused the CIA of lying to her in 2002 about its use of waterboarding.

What Pelosi knew about the CIA's interrogation program and when she knew it – and why she did not object to it sooner – is expected to be emphasized by Republicans during debate over the intelligence bill.

Hunter Thompson Knew It Well: Robert McNamara's Vision for America Was Imperial and Elitist

By Joe Costello, AlterNet. Posted July 7, 2009.

The death of Robert McNamara is a time to remember how dangerous the idea of technocrats running Washington has been.


The announcement of Robert McNamara's death brought the good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson to mind. These two men were contemporaries on the public and political stage. While vastly different in so many ways, Thompson and McNamara were profoundly American and their stories offer some thoughts on where we are today.


McNamara entered public view first, while entering the public stage as Defense Secretary for JFK, Thompson was hitching a ride on a smuggling boat to disembark on the shores of Columbia with a few dollars in his pocket, spending a couple years in South America honing his skills as a journalist. Thompson, though younger in age by a couple decades, was a much older American. Nietzsche said true radicals were much older than their times, and this was true of Hunter. Thompson was a son of the old republic; high school graduate, relished his independence, considered the Bill of Rights sacred, became an outstanding member of the free press, and in his one attempt in electoral politics ran locally for Sheriff of Pitkin County Colorado.


McNamara on the other hand was very much of a younger age, a product of the 20th century, of the republic as it evolved from the twin challenges of the Depression and World War II. He had a degree from Harvard Business School and rose to be President of Ford Motor Company. Mr. McNamara defined the word technocrat. He had a fanatical faith in the omniscience of numbers and models, which as Defense Secretary, he would use monstrously on the people of South East Asia. "The Best and the Brightest," David Halberstam ironically labeled McNamara and his fellow cohorts who conducted the Vietnam War.


Today, Mr. McNamara's ilk remain very much in charge. Our political system is even more centralized than it was when he was at Defense. The idea that technocrats can run a large and unwieldy government is the true-faith of DC. While we are no longer bombing SE Asia, we kill with the same technical ferocity in the illegitimate wars of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. While our auto companies, no longer the shining star of global industry, still remain vital to the health of the US economy, or so we are told from DC. And behind the present financial fiasco, we find any number of well educated young men working in elaborate offices and manipulating numbers and formulas thinking they control the world. And yes, at the same time committing fraud after fraud, and lying through their teeth every step of the way.


Mr. McNamara's America is a fairly ugly place, it is in so many ways against the politics of this republic's founding. It is imperial, elitist, and predatory. Today, we are in desperate need of Dr. Thompson's sensibility to castrate power, to uphold the idea that anyone with great power, deserves even greater distrust. A revival of the truth that any system of self-government, needs no great power, no great leaders, it needs good citizens. We all need a little more of the strength of the old republic about us, not to avert our eyes from the belly of the beast, but to stare straight at it, and get involved to change it.


Doctor Thompson had scary accurate political instincts. He was a self-appointed Doctor of Journalism, whose beat he said was the death of the American dream. About a year before he left, he said the final half of the 20th century in America would look to history as a "party by a bunch of rich kids." That's quite an epithet for a couple of generations who were the wealthiest and most widely educated in world history. That, as the good Doctor would say, is heavy stuff Bubba.



Joe Costello is a communications and energy consultant. He served as communications director for Jerry Brown's 1992 presidential campaign and senior advisor on Howard Dean's 2004 campaign.

GLOBAL VOICES
TheStar.com | Global Voices | Healing the hidden wounds of soldiers
Healing the hidden wounds of soldiers


Star Investigation: The war at home
War at home: Military rethinks suicide tally

Jul 13, 2009 04:18 AM
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Craig and Marc Kielburger

In yoga, the warrior pose represents the spiritual strength of the person performing the move.

As Lucy Cimini slowly leads her students into the posture at the Central Mass Yoga Institute, it takes on new meaning.

The men standing firm-footed with their arms outstretched are not your typical yoga students. They are warriors – actual ones, not just spiritual.

Cimini’s Yoga Warriors program, which was started for veterans of Vietnam and has grown to include those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, uses the tenets of the meditative discipline to teach coping strategies for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Men come out the service and they are just so stressed out,” she says. “It’s very hard to get veterans to come forward and join a group like that. When they’re in it though, they know it actually helps them.”

Help can be one of the hardest things to ask for, especially for veterans. PTSD has often held stigma in the armed forces. Historically, it was referred to as battle fatigue or shell shock before being officially recognized as an illness in 1980.

We’ve come a long way in combating that stigma since WWII, when Lieutenant General George S. Patton famously slapped a young man who wept in the hospital. But that stigma still there, and the incidence isn’t getting any lower.

It’s estimated about 20 per cent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from the illness characterized by flashbacks, anxiety and depression. In January, the U.S. army disclosed they lost more soldiers that month to suicide than enemy fire. Britain this year launched an unprecedented suicide watch that encouraged soldiers to get help.

Asking for help in dealing with this life-altering disorder is tough enough, but actually finding care can be harder. Even though strides have been made in Canada and the United States to correct the problem, both countries suffer from a shortage of providers and compensation systems that are often difficult to navigate.

In 2007, the American Psychological Association pegged the vacancy rate for active-duty psychologists at 40 per cent. While the Army has invested more money into rooting out the problem, shortages still exists.

In Canada, an existing national shortage of psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health nurses and social workers has resulted in year-long waiting lists even outside the military for disorders relating to accidents and physical or sexual abuse.

“For every senior officer or departmental official who told us of initiatives being taken to improve military health care generally, and mental health diagnosis and treatment in particular, we heard at least one junior rank who told us the system was not working for them,” said a recent report from the House of Commons Defence Committee on the effects of PTSD. “The phrase ‘falling through the cracks’ was heard so often it lost its notoriety.”

Catching the symptoms of PTSD and depression early is essential to successfully treating and dealing with its effects. But, although emphasis is placed on preparing our troops for the physical aspects of fighting a war, the psychological aspects are often overlooked.

Cimini, whose Yoga Warriors program is currently being expanded across the United States, is now corresponding with an instructor in Iraq who could teach the art to soldiers in the field.

“What we’re trying to do is catch the combat stress and give the soldiers the tools to deal with it before they come back,” she says. While she is still discussing this expansion, the idea is the kind of initiative that could save money, distress and, most importantly, lives.

Providing adequate care to the men and women of our service is essential. But, it’s important to remember not all wounds are visible. Sometimes, it's the hidden wounds that need the most attention.

Marc and Craig Kielburger are children's rights activists and co-founded Free The Children, which is active in the developing world. Their column appears Mondays online at www.thestar.com/globalvoices

GLOBAL VOICES
TheStar.com | Global Voices | Healing the hidden wounds of soldiers
Healing the hidden wounds of soldiers

Star Investigation: The war at home
War at home: Military rethinks suicide tally
More Global Voices
Junior Journalists
Jul 13, 2009 04:18 AM


In yoga, the warrior pose represents the spiritual strength of the person performing the move.

As Lucy Cimini slowly leads her students into the posture at the Central Mass Yoga Institute, it takes on new meaning.

The men standing firm-footed with their arms outstretched are not your typical yoga students. They are warriors – actual ones, not just spiritual.

Cimini’s Yoga Warriors program, which was started for veterans of Vietnam and has grown to include those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, uses the tenets of the meditative discipline to teach coping strategies for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Men come out the service and they are just so stressed out,” she says. “It’s very hard to get veterans to come forward and join a group like that. When they’re in it though, they know it actually helps them.”

Help can be one of the hardest things to ask for, especially for veterans. PTSD has often held stigma in the armed forces. Historically, it was referred to as battle fatigue or shell shock before being officially recognized as an illness in 1980.

We’ve come a long way in combating that stigma since WWII, when Lieutenant General George S. Patton famously slapped a young man who wept in the hospital. But that stigma still there, and the incidence isn’t getting any lower.

It’s estimated about 20 per cent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from the illness characterized by flashbacks, anxiety and depression. In January, the U.S. army disclosed they lost more soldiers that month to suicide than enemy fire. Britain this year launched an unprecedented suicide watch that encouraged soldiers to get help.

Asking for help in dealing with this life-altering disorder is tough enough, but actually finding care can be harder. Even though strides have been made in Canada and the United States to correct the problem, both countries suffer from a shortage of providers and compensation systems that are often difficult to navigate.

In 2007, the American Psychological Association pegged the vacancy rate for active-duty psychologists at 40 per cent. While the Army has invested more money into rooting out the problem, shortages still exists.

In Canada, an existing national shortage of psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health nurses and social workers has resulted in year-long waiting lists even outside the military for disorders relating to accidents and physical or sexual abuse.

“For every senior officer or departmental official who told us of initiatives being taken to improve military health care generally, and mental health diagnosis and treatment in particular, we heard at least one junior rank who told us the system was not working for them,” said a recent report from the House of Commons Defence Committee on the effects of PTSD. “The phrase ‘falling through the cracks’ was heard so often it lost its notoriety.”

Catching the symptoms of PTSD and depression early is essential to successfully treating and dealing with its effects. But, although emphasis is placed on preparing our troops for the physical aspects of fighting a war, the psychological aspects are often overlooked.

Cimini, whose Yoga Warriors program is currently being expanded across the United States, is now corresponding with an instructor in Iraq who could teach the art to soldiers in the field.

“What we’re trying to do is catch the combat stress and give the soldiers the tools to deal with it before they come back,” she says. While she is still discussing this expansion, the idea is the kind of initiative that could save money, distress and, most importantly, lives.

Providing adequate care to the men and women of our service is essential. But, it’s important to remember not all wounds are visible. Sometimes, it's the hidden wounds that need the most attention.

Marc and Craig Kielburger are children's rights activists and co-founded Free The Children, which is active in the developing world. Their column appears Mondays online at www.thestar.com/globalvoices

Legal aid boycott grows over paltry paycheques
COLIN MCCONNELL/TORONTO STAR
Catherine Currie, shown in her Toronto office, has been a defence lawyer for 17 years. Given her experience, she is entitled to $96.95 an hour under Legal Aid Ontario's billing tariff. But, as she points out, most defence lawyers are also small business owners with operating expenses. Here's how her pay gets reduced: $96.95 (hourly rate) — $39/hr. (overhead, which includes $1,100/month for rent and $300 in office expenses) — $16/hr. ($32,000 a year, or $16 an hour based on a 40-hour work week) — $1/hr. (for pension, based on $2,000 a year to an RRSP) = $40.95 (hourly rate, if Currie doesn't work longer hours than Legal Aid billing limit)
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RATES BY PROVINCE

A sampling of top hourly rates paid to private bar lawyers through legal aid.

NWT $135 or $805 per day

Ontario $96.95

B.C. $92.29 with an enhanced rate of $125 an hour for complex cases

P.E.I. $80, $95 for murder cases

Alta. $84

Sask. $80

Manitoba $80

Nfld. $55

NOTE: In some provinces, such as Saskatchewan, most legal aid cases are handled by government staff lawyers
Jul 13, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (24)
Tracey Tyler
LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER

Last fall, in the middle of a schizophrenic breakdown, a 21-year-old man approached a woman in the parking lot of a north Toronto supermarket and asked for directions. As she began writing out a map, he stabbed her in the neck.

Charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and weapons charges, the man was suddenly facing the maximum penalty under the Criminal Code – life in prison.

Despite the gravity of the charges, Catherine Currie, a Toronto lawyer appointed to represent him, was allowed to spend just 15 paid hours preparing his defence – the billing restriction imposed by Ontario's embattled legal aid plan.

Strict billing caps and meagre hourly rates are fuelling a rapidly growing legal aid boycott in Ontario. It began June 1 in Toronto, where more than 300 criminal lawyers stopped accepting legal aid certificates for homicide and guns and gangs cases.

Lawyers in Kingston and northwestern Ontario joined the boycott, which in the past week spread to Barrie, Sudbury and Hamilton. That pushed the number of protesters to more than 400, nearly half of all criminal lawyers in Ontario.

Defence lawyers understand their case is a tough sell, given it involves lawyers and accused criminals, two groups unlikely to attract sympathy. "Nobody cares. That's the problem," says defence lawyer Chris Kostopoulos.

One of his own cases is an example of why he doesn't represent legal aid clients at bail hearings.

Under Legal Aid Ontario rules, lawyers can be paid for no more than two hours of work on these cases, at a top rate of $96.95 an hour. A recent non-legal-aid bail hearing required 19 hours of work for Kostopoulos, three hours of preparation and 16 hours in court. Had he taken the case on legal aid, those 19 hours would have earned him $10.32 an hour, before expenses.

Three recent provincial reports have recommended raising legal aid rates, but Attorney General Chris Bentley recently told the Criminal Lawyers' Association board of directors that he can't commit to an increase.

Brendan Crawley, a spokesman for the attorney general's ministry, notes the McGuinty Liberals implemented a 15 per cent tariff increase that had been promised by the Conservatives in 2003, but was never funded.

"These investments don't make up for the 15 years of cuts and freezes that came before," Crawley acknowledges.

For Currie, one inescapable fact needs to be recognized: the justice system is designed to be adversarial, with trials an equally matched contest between the prosecution and the defence. Yet defence counsel are usually the lowest-paid professionals in the courtroom.

Over the past 20 years, pay for legal aid lawyers has increased 15 per cent. Crown attorneys, meanwhile, have had raises of 57 per cent in the past 10 years. Provincially appointed judges' salaries have increased 83 per cent in the past two decades.

The hourly limits mean that lawyers like Currie work many hours free.

She recently spent more than 30 hours working on behalf of another mentally ill man who was charged with a series of incidents that included stepping on his wife's toe, stealing a TTC conductor's hat and falling asleep in a drugstore. She got the most serious charge – aggravated assault – withdrawn. Her client received a conditional discharge after pleading guilty to assault.

But while she saved the system thousands of dollars in trial costs, Currie wasn't rewarded. She could bill legal aid for 8.5 hours work.

Raising the hourly rate to between $105 and $140 an hour, as recommended eight years ago in a report done for the province, would cost approximately $120 million, the Criminal Lawyers' Association believes.

Patrick LeSage, former chief justice of the Superior Court of Justice, and former law professor Michael Code, recommended Ontario follow the legal aid model developed by British Columbia, which pays lawyers an enhanced fee of $125 an hour for complex cases.

Although the boycott raises the spectre of accused people not getting experienced lawyers to defend them against serious charges, Crawley said the government "will do what is required to avoid social justice implications."

"Lawyers with appropriate skills are still taking cases, and Legal Aid Ontario is monitoring the situation," he told the Star.

Legal Aid Ontario issued 68,541 certificates last year to people charged with criminal offences, at a cost of $103 million. Of those, 646 were for homicide cases, which accounted for $14 million in criminal defence expenditures.

And Currie's bills? In the supermarket stabbing case, she billed legal aid for two hours of work on his bail hearing and another 15 hours to prepare for the trial, where he was found not criminally responsible due to his mental disorder.

She could also charge six hours for her time in court. The total: $2,410.62.

Currie was permitted to bill another 12 hours for an Ontario Review Board hearing to determine if he should remain in a psychiatric hospital.

He will stay in hospital with minimum restrictions while officials work on a plan for releasing him back into the community. Currie's bill: $1,745.

Grand total for saving someone from possible life in prison: $4,155.62.

Taking Shorter Showers Doesn't Cut It: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change

By Derrick Jensen, Orion Magazine. Posted July 13, 2009.

Are we taking the easy route? Dumpster diving wouldn't have stopped Hitler, and composting wouldn't have ended slavery.


This article was first published in the July/August 2009 issue of Orion Magazine.

Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.

Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

Or let’s talk energy. Kirkpatrick Sale summarized it well: “For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption—residential, by private car, and so on—is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government [he forgot military]. So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution.”

Or let’s talk waste. In 2005, per-capita municipal waste production (basically everything that’s put out at the curb) in the U.S. was about 1,660 pounds. Let’s say you’re a die-hard simple-living activist, and you reduce this to zero. You recycle everything. You bring cloth bags shopping. You fix your toaster. Your toes poke out of old tennis shoes. You’re not done yet, though. Since municipal waste includes not just residential waste, but also waste from government offices and businesses, you march to those offices, waste reduction pamphlets in hand, and convince them to cut down on their waste enough to eliminate your share of it. Uh, I’ve got some bad news. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States.

I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.

So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option. At this point, it should be pretty easy to recognize that every action involving the industrial economy is destructive (and we shouldn’t pretend that solar photovoltaics, for example, exempt us from this: they still require mining and transportation infrastructures at every point in the production processes; the same can be said for every other so-called green technology). So if we choose option one—if we avidly participate in the industrial economy—we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet.

Besides being ineffective at causing the sorts of changes necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet, there are at least four other problems with perceiving simple living as a political act (as opposed to living simply because that’s what you want to do). The first is that it’s predicated on the flawed notion that humans inevitably harm their landbase. Simple living as a political act consists solely of harm reduction, ignoring the fact that humans can help the Earth as well as harm it. We can rehabilitate streams, we can get rid of noxious invasives, we can remove dams, we can disrupt a political system tilted toward the rich as well as an extractive economic system, we can destroy the industrial economy that is destroying the real, physical world.

The second problem—and this is another big one—is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”

The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.

The fourth problem is that the endpoint of the logic behind simple living as a political act is suicide. If every act within an industrial economy is destructive, and if we want to stop this destruction, and if we are unwilling (or unable) to question (much less destroy) the intellectual, moral, economic, and physical infrastructures that cause every act within an industrial economy to be destructive, then we can easily come to believe that we will cause the least destruction possible if we are dead.

The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned—Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States—who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.

© 2009 Orion


Derrick Jensen is an activist and the author of many books, most recently What We Leave Behind and Songs of the Dead.

The Hell We're Leaving Behind in Iraq

By Jodie Evans, AlterNet. Posted July 2, 2009.

The U.S. has not taken responsibility to restore the country it destroyed.


Not long after the statue of Saddam fell in Firdos Square, several CODEPINK women and I returned to Iraq. We'd first visited in February during the time Bush proclaimed, "The game is over" and announced his plans for "shock and awe." We'd learned then how much Iraqis loved Americans and did not want our disrupting their country; they asked us to let them deal with Saddam because the change had to come from within or it could be a disaster. We fell in love with Iraq and felt totally safe there, taking cabs in the wee hours of the morning, walking at 2 a.m. on the Tigress and driving to many parts of the country.


Returning a few months later, however, we found the country devastated. Bustling markets were empty, the streets were those of a ghost town. Electricity was rare if at all and gas lines were miles long. U.S. soldiers in Humvees sped down the streets with an embarrassing arrogance. Jerry Bremer had just arrived and had issued 100 edicts that infuriated every Iraqi. The story on the street was that it only took Saddam a month to get the country back in shape after the Gulf War, thus, impatience and anger toward the U.S. were growing. Over and over, we heard from Iraqis, "We had one Saddam and now we have hundreds."

We were in Iraq to see how to support women in the transition, going to meeting after meeting of how they were going to be included. Zainab Salbi from the non-profit peace group Women for Women International (W4WI) was in many of those meetings with us, including a reception that Bremer threw inside the Coalition Provisional Authority, now the Green Zone. Her father was Saddam's pilot and her mother had sent her to the U.S. to marry out of concern for her safety. I talked to Zainab a few days ago to learn about her most recent trip to Iraq.

"In six years they have destroyed Iraq," her eyes teared as she began to tell me what she found. She used the image of a pen trying to balance on the tip of her finger to describe Iraq now: balancing but very unstable. Since she was there last it is a bit safer. Women who had been in exile and hiding for four years were starting to reemerge. But more than 70 percent of the women are not sending their daughters to school. I asked her about the women from the Bremer reception, 20 women have been killed and most others are gone.


When I asked about Baghdad, she asked which one. "There are two distinct Baghdads, the red one and the green one," she said. "And they do not relate. On the red side, they call the Americans the 'friendly other side'.


The Embassy/Green Zone is another city within a city, now one-fourth of Baghdad, she explained. It was built for 5,000 employees and already people are having to double up, it has burst past 5,000. Most of those who live there are not Iraqi but Ugandan, Peruvian, Burmese, etc. They cannot leave the Green Zone, so they have no idea about what is outside the walls. She overheard a conversation about a car bomb while she was inside and learned three soldiers were killed. She wondered why do the United States sends people to Iraq to get double pay and hazardous benefits when they are not even going outside the walls.


U.S. soldiers were still a part of Baghdad while she was there. People are still living without electricity but it has gotten a bit better, something like two hours on and three hours off, she said, this change has helped to engender the window of calm she experienced. It was still spring and she felt like the flowers of Iraq was beginning to bloom again. There was more hope because less violence, but the country still is very fragile.


There is nothing made in Iraq for sale. Not even those fantastic cucumbers we loved so much on our drives through the country. Bremer had created a five-percent flat tax for imports in one of his edicts, so Iraqi can't produce anything. It will always be cheaper to bring in products from the from outside. No other country would ever allow such a thing. The Bremer policies were made to destroy Iraq from the inside out.


I asked Zainab about her grandfather's house, a beautiful home on the Tigres River where she had held her first classes for W4WI there six years ago. She has since closed W4WI because it became too dangerous, in the meantime it had become a torture den then a brothel. This turned the conversation to trafficking, which she said is horrendous. Most of the girls in prison are between the ages of 12 to 18. They were kidnapped, taken to Syria or surrounding countries, trafficked and when they got sick or too old were brought home to the authorities. Because they didn't have the right papers they were put in jail. Midwives also told her of a huge increase in abortions resulting from the prostitution.


Just six years ago, only the old and very religious were covered, women were employed everywhere and Baghdad University was bustling with young women. Now it is bleak. Zainab was able to go uncovered but it is still mandatory for the Iraqi women. Most businesses she visited had no women working, not to say they did not try, but they're just fired within days. Some older women were able to keep their jobs but young women have no way in. She said the university was very sad with much less women. Women, young women have been sent back to the dark ages.


She too can't find the way to affect the gridlock of people believing it is over. The U.S. has not taken responsibility to restore the country it destroyed. Iraqis need us to hold those responsible who have done this to them and to leave them to rebuild from the shambles. She left our conversation with this: "It basically looks like we do own it and have created our own kind of hell out of it."



Jodie Evans is a co-founder of Codepink: Women For Peace and environmental, peace and justice activist for more than 30 years.