Go Home, Yankee

No one has designated US as the world's sheriff / policeman, but it insists to be one. Poverty & economic injustice is rife at home but apparently, over a $100 billion are used every year to keep 150,000 troops stationed abroad in 800 bases in 70 countries around the world. Can there be any other country which is a bigger occupier of foreign lands & become an occupier by force?

Most troops / soldiers in that 150,000 count just joined the military to travel, partying & be with foreign women & men (why would soldiers, stationed in Germany, be not happy with an anti-prostitution charge in the US Military Code of Conduct; after all, it's for protecting the women, which is supposed to be all about "feminism" & curbing sexual degradation of women). After all, what's the point of 38,000 troops in Germany for the past 70 years or so. These young men & women merely want to get out of their small towns, get a free education in the military (essentially, get brainwashed to kill the other guy because the other guy is always a "terrorist") & party. A few unfortunate end up fighting in volatile regions or drummed up wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria etc.

Another point in the article which astonished me was that brothels were deliberately set up for American troops & remained legal in Okinawa, Japan until 1972, 14 years after they were banned in the rest of Japan. That's the value American military & soldiers, who are supposed to be carrying the flags of liberty, equality, feminism, democracy etc to other countries, place on women's dignity. As long as it's American, British, Canadian women, equal rights & justice become the word du jour. But as soon as its Japanese, Chinese, German, Russian, Iraqi, Egyptian, or woman of any other nation, all that talk of equal rights for women & their dignity merely become words without any substance or meaning.

As usual, the Americans are best in teaching the world one thing & one thing only; how to be the greatest manipulator, liar, & hypocrite in the world. Say one thing & do another !!!

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http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21704817-presence-american-troops-foreign-soil-growing-more-controversial-go-home

At the end of July the United States army announced plans to hand back 15 square miles (40 square km) of land on Okinawa to the Japanese government. This will be the biggest land return in the island, home to almost 30,000 American troops, since the United States’ formal occupation ended in 1972. The decision follows the rape & murder of a local woman & big anti-American protests in June.

Opposition to American bases has increased recently in Turkey, too. In the wake of July’s failed military coup, many Turks have accused American soldiers on the Incirlik air base of being among the plotters. Three days after the coup Yusuf Kaplan, a pro-government journalist, tweeted: “USA, You know you are the biggest terrorist! We Know All the Coups are your work! We are not stupid! #procoupUSAgohome.”

America has more overseas military bases than any other nation: nearly 800 spread through more than 70 countries. Of the roughly 150,000 troops stationed abroad, 49,000 are in Japan, 28,000 in South Korea & 38,000 in Germany; the total cost to the American government, with war zones excluded, is up to $100 billion a year. For much of the 20th century, overseas military facilities were justified as a bulwark against the Soviet threat; as that faded, other reasons to stay soon emerged. Since the 1990s, wars in the Middle East have meant that countries such as Bahrain & Turkey have gained strategic importance. (American strikes on Islamic State (IS) are launched from the Incirlik base.) More recently, China’s growing naval power has prompted America to reinforce its presence in the Pacific.

Home support for foreign bases peaked a year after the September 11th attacks, when 48% of Americans thought projecting military might was the best way to reduce the terrorist threat. Today, although about the same number still believe that, 47% think it creates hatred & leads to more terrorism. (The divide falls along partisan lines, with 70% of Republicans supporting military force, & 65% of Democrats opposing.) When it comes to overseas bases themselves, though, Americans, for the most part, are “completely unaware” of them, says David Vine, associate professor of anthropology at the American University & author of “Base Nation: How US Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World”. If they consider them at all, he says, “most people would think the US military is good so US bases, wherever they are, must be a good thing”. During the presidential primaries Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, questioned the need for, & the expense of, so many overseas bases. No other candidate did.

False assumptions about the costs of funding America’s overseas military presence could, in part, explain the public’s ambivalence. According to Mr Vine, even “so-called experts within the military” believe the bases do not cost America much because foreign governments foot a large part of the bill.
In reality, he explains (& according to an estimate by the RAND Corporation in 2013), keeping members of the armed forces overseas, rather than within the United States, costs between $10,000 & $40,000 extra for every man & woman involved.

Within the armed forces, an overseas posting is still seen by many as a perk of the job & one of the main reasons to sign up in the first place. “For maybe 75% of the people I talk to, travelling is the biggest thing that gets them,” says Staff Sergeant Marco Lopez, a recruiter based in Los Angeles. Another recruiter, Staff Sergeant Andrew Murray, based in Tennessee, explains that a lot of new recruits “are looking to get out of small-town Tennessee; when I tell them about my experience in Europe, they just light up.” Europe, particularly Germany, seems to be one of the most popular destinations for army recruits. The sergeants found Germans particularly friendly & welcoming; Europe’s rich history attracts some, while Sergeant Murray enjoyed being able to visit “a different city every weekend, partying and sightseeing”.

Before going overseas, American troops are given a detailed briefing on what to expect & how to behave. Sergeant Murray says he was warned that Germans are not good at queuing, & that it was a good idea “to tone down the patriotism”; Sergeant Lopez, when stationed in Seoul, was told to avoid areas known for prostitution. Not all those enlisted take the briefings on board, as the recent events in Okinawa have made clear. Uncle Sam’s pay-cheques feed the economies of areas with army bases, but mostly through the soldiers’ patronage of night clubs & bars—which can lead to trouble.

In the past 15-20 years the Pentagon has taken steps to improve relations between its overseas outposts & local communities. Most of these have involved trying to rein in wayward soldiers. In 2006 an anti-prostitution charge was added to the United States Military Code of Justice (to the outrage of some American troops stationed in Germany, where prostitution is legal). The Department of Defence also reported an increase in the number of sexual-assault cases taken to courts martial, from 42% in 2009 to 68% in 2012. But Japan remains an outlier: within navy & marine-corps units stationed there, only 24% of those charged with sexual offences were court-martialled in 2012, the latest date for which data are available.

The United States has 85 military facilities scattered across Japan—a legacy of American occupation after the second world war. Three-quarters of the territory occupied is on the string of islands making up Okinawa, along with more than half of the 49,000 military personnel. Okinawans resent the heavy burden they have shouldered, as well as the American presence itself—particularly the brothels. These were deliberately set up for United States troops & remained legal on the island until 1972, 14 years after they were banned in the rest of the country. The protests in June over the most recent rape victim were the latest in a long line of anti-American demonstrations. The largest came in 1995, when 85,000 Okinawans took to the streets following the gang-rape of a 12-year-old girl by three American soldiers.

In the past, the presence of American troops has also sparked more general protests. During the cold war West Germany played host to more American military facilities than any other country, up to 900 by some definitions, incorporating schools & hospitals as well as sports complexes & shopping centres. Local communities protested against the noise & disruption from constant military manoeuvres. Opposition reached its peak at the end of the 1980s, fuelled further by growing anti-nuclear sentiment. Leftist groups, the Red Army Faction & the Revolutionary Cells also launched violent attacks against American army headquarters & kidnapped military personnel, objecting to the mere physical presence of America in their country.

Miss you, miss you not

Almost 30 years later, the withdrawal of American troops from Germany is well under way: in 2010 the army announced it was handing over 23 sites to the German government. “We don’t miss them, but we weren’t wanting them to leave either,” says Hans Schnabel, a business-development manager in charge of converting old army bases in the Bavarian city of Schweinfurt, where up to 12,000 soldiers & their families were stationed before it closed in September 2014. After the cold war resentment in Germany towards the bases, & American forces in general, became more subdued; recent protests, such as one in June outside the Ramstein base against alleged support for drone operations, are fewer & quieter. At Schweinfurt, says Mr Schnabel, local people even think of the base with nostalgia: they are building an “American house” to remember those stationed there, & the streets around the new housing development (once the barracks) will be given names such as California Strasse and Ohio Strasse.

In contrast, America’s military presence in Turkey, as in Okinawa, is still a focus of thriving anti-Americanism today. The relationship began well enough: in 1946, when the USS Missouri sailed into Istanbul, the show of American might was warmly welcomed. It foreshadowed Turkey’s accession to NATO six years later & the stationing of American troops across the country. American enclaves in Ankara, & sailors’ weekend jollies in Izmir & Istanbul, contributed to a change in public opinion. By the end of the 1960s “Go home Yankee” signs greeted disembarking American sailors & soldiers. In the 1970s, as in Germany, leftist revolutionary groups resorted to increasingly extreme tactics in their attempts to “liberate” Turkey from American imperialism: the Turkish Revolutionary Army abducted 4 American airmen in March 1971 & 3 NATO engineers the next year.

Since then, America’s military presence in Turkey—though far less substantial than in Japan—has been seen by many as an unwanted encroachment on Turkey’s independence. In 2003 Turks protested against the war in Iraq & proposals for America to station military personnel at the Mersin naval base. When the USS Stout docked in Bodrum in 2011, members of the Turkish Communist Party stood on the shore chanting anti-American slogans. 3 years later, in two separate events, members of the Turkish Youth Union targeted American sailors & NATO soldiers in Istanbul, putting white sacks over their heads & throwing red paint over them. A similar incident occurred at Incirlik air base in April this year. Even a visit by President Barack Obama, during his trip to Turkey in 2009, drew crowds of angry protesters shouting “Yankee go home” & “Get out of our country.”

The latest attacks against America’s military presence in Turkey, however, mark a shift. Since the Syrian war broke out, the United States has increasingly used the Incirlik base to support the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), implying that it might also support an autonomous Kurdish state carved out of Turkey. America & its armed forces have long featured in conspiracy theories, too, particularly those involving Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric living in self-imposed exile in the United States. The recent attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is proof to many Turks of a Gulenist-American alliance, & of the subversive influence of American armed forces in the country. The closure of Incirlik air base for a short time immediately after the coup added fuel to the conspiracy theories. Mr Erdogan himself seems to be using America as a scapegoat, intentionally ramping up hostility towards the personnel stationed there.

The strategic importance of Incirlik for America’s campaign against IS means that keeping American combat boots on Turkish soil is more in America’s interests than Turkey’s. But given that anti-Americanism in Turkey is one of the few sentiments uniting an increasingly undemocratic & destabilised country, American troops will have to tread carefully: they are likely to become bigger, not smaller, targets as internal tensions mount.

In many other countries both sides, despite sporadic differences, have an equal interest in Americans staying. After the protests in 1995 in Okinawa, America & Japan agreed to close Futenma, the marine air base in the overcrowded city of Ginowan, & to build a new facility in Henoko, a fishing village. The plan failed to appease locals—who re-elected anti-base politicians such as Takeshi Onaga, Okinawa’s governor, in June’s local elections—but Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, is pressing ahead with it anyway.

He has particular reason to try to smooth tensions between the two sides. North Korea’s flaunting of its nuclear weapons & China’s aggression in the South China Sea mean his plans for strengthening Japan’s military defences must go ahead, & the United States’ armed forces are an essential part of this. Some 47% of Americans would agree with Mr Abe: they are in favour of extending America’s military presence in Asia to counter Chinese power. But 43% are opposed. America, despite what its enemies sometimes suppose, is never really thrilled to be the world’s policeman—especially if the world proves ungrateful.

UN peacekeepers sexually abused hundreds of Haitian women & girls

Another one of those articles highlighting how UN "peacekeepers" took advantage of vulnerable people in vulnerable situations. Regardless of who stoops so low in the society, helping someone to gain sexual favours is always wrong. However, if this would've been done by non-UN & some groups in Middle East or Africa, not only that group of people is maligned but the whole religion is dragged through the mud & dirt. But when UN "peacekeepers" do the same thing, it's a back-page news (assuming it's considered news at all in the first place). Western hypocrisy at its peak !!!

When the 2011 movie, "The Whistleblower," showed how UN "peacekeepers" sexually abused girls in war-torn Bosnia, & how UN tried to cover up the whole scandal, the world didn't demand answers from UN for what it has done wrong. UN "peacekeepers" realizing that their actions carry no adverse consequences for themselves or for UN, carried on, business as usual. Now, although, the allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers have spread out from Cambodia to Central African Republic to Haiti; thanks to Western media, UN & the world public still won't take any substantive corrective measures & punish those who did wrong.

Well, UN "peacekeepers" will keep doing what they do best; sexually abusing women, girls, & boys in countries where they are sent to serve & protect the vulnerable general public. Doesn't it seem like that UN is starting to become better in hiding scandals nowadays than to actually prevent wars & chaos in the world?
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https://www.rt.com/news/266179-un-peacekeepers-haiti-sexual/

According to a new UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report obtained by the news agency, a third of alleged sexual exploitation & abuse involved minors under 18.

The shocking conclusions were revealed after investigators interviewed 231 people in Haiti who claimed they were forced to perform sexual acts with UN peacekeepers in exchange for basic necessities.

“For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication & household items were frequently cited as the 'triggering need,'" the report says. Those living in the city or in its vicinity had sex in exchange for “church shoes, cell phones, laptops & perfume, as well as money,” report says.

“In cases of non-payment, some women withheld the badges of peacekeepers & threatened to reveal their infidelity via social media,” the report says.

The UN explicitly bans the “exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex,” & discourages relationships between UN staff & those who are under their care. However, only 7 of the interviewed victims “knew about the United Nations policy prohibiting sexual exploitation & abuse,” the report states.

The report ... makes no reference to the time frame of the alleged violations, but the 7,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti started in 2004. The investigation also does not mention the number of peacekeepers involved.

The report says that the lack of any clear action is “demonstrating significant underreporting,” while noting that assistance to those that suffered is “severely deficient.” The average investigation by OIOS takes more than a year, according to AP.

Sexual abuse by peacekeeping troops, some 125,000 of which are currently deployed around the world, has undermined the credibility of their missions. A rapid increase in prostitution & abuse in Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Sudan & Kosovo were documented after UN peacekeeping forces moved in.

Earlier this year it was revealed that UN peacekeepers raped & sodomized starving & homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as 9.

However, the number of documented cases of sexual abuse & exploitation by members of UN peacekeeping missions was 51 in 2014, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general's latest annual report on the issue.

Criminal Minds, S1E12 (quote 2)

This quote is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Aurora Leigh":

   Shall I fail?
   The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase,
   'Let no one be called happy till his death.'...
   To which I add,-Let no one till his death
   Be called unhappy. Measure not the work
   Until the day's out and the labour done;
   Then bring your gauges. If the day's work's scant,
   Why, call it scant; affect no compromise;
   And, in that we have nobly striven at least,
   Deal with us nobly, women though we be,
   And honour us with truth, if not with praise.

Although, this quote seems simple enough, looking at the context of the whole passage, it seems to me that Elizabeth Browning was saying something along the lines of speaking truth to women in our lives. If we don't like something they have done in both their professional and/or personal lives, then we should give them an honest judgement of their work.

At the same time, we can expand it to include the general public. Like she says, we cannot judge someone's life to be a failure until his/her death. Death spells the "work done" for an individual. Life is full of ups & downs. So, one can't say about another's life to be a waste until that person has died. The "performance review" of life can only be done after the life ("work") has ended.

Are Universities complicit in sexual violence?

So, while government leadership of Canada, US, European nations, Canadian provinces, & US States, invade or want to invade South Asian, Central Asian, Middle Eastern, & African countries to liberate those women & get those women justice, women in their own countries are suffering sexual assaults & not getting justice from their own leaders.
 
International Women's Day is celebrated with so much fanfare in Western countries, which by the way, are also known as "civilized" & "developed" countries, but be it the rights of Native women in Canada or students in universities all over North America, or the rights of female officers in Canada's RCMP or North American military forces, they are being trampled with nary a peep from civilian leadership.
 
Their rights of justice & fair treatment are not an issue because these women are not considered equal in society. They suffer even more if they are a minority, & not a middle-class / upper-class Caucasian woman. Civilian, judicial, & even military leaderships of all these Western countries enthusiastically harp about equal rights for both genders, but few, if any, walk the walk.
 
But, hey, we had to invade Afghanistan to liberate those women & get them those rights which are not apparently available to women in North America. Or we can't have veil wearing Muslim women in Canada because Canada is a transparent & open society where everyone is equal & a veil & hijabs are misogynistic pieces in a backward religion, practiced in backward, uncivilized, barbaric countries? It seems to me that Afghani, Iraqi, & Muslim women are far more luckier than North American non-Muslim women because so many powerful leaders of the Western countries are looking out for them. (sarcasm intended)
 
So, how about we clean up our own act first before point fingers at other countries & religions & purport to lecture them on treatment of women before we haven't cleaned up our house. All those commitments & acts of liberation of women sound a bit hollow when your own house is full of rubbish.

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Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz garnered worldwide attention last year when she started lugging her dorm mattress around campus to protest the university’s decision that the man she says raped her in her dorm room was “not responsible” for the assault. Known around the world as Mattress Girl, she’s become an icon in the discussion around sexual assault on campuses & how universities are failing to take complaints of abuse seriously.
 
Since then, several female students from Canada have followed her lead & opened up about their own experiences.
 
Now, a new U.S. documentary about sexual assault on campus, The Hunting Ground, features interviews with dozens of women who were attacked on US campuses & who say that the only thing worse than the assault itself is how the university mishandled their cases after they reported them.
 
The film’s director, Kirby Dick, who also directed 2012′s The Invisible War—a film about rape in the US military—... talks about his latest project, how universities are complicit in perpetuating sexual violence on campuses, & what needs to change.
 
Q: What do you hope the outcome of the Title IX investigation will be? And will it change the way university administrations treat sexual assaults on campus?
 
A: ... no one in higher education wants sexual assaults to happen on campus, but they are so incentivized to keep it covered up. Maybe this film will help switch the incentive so that people–alumni, parents, students–will start demanding that schools be more transparent, that they take responsibility. What I’d really like to see is college presidents coming forward, on the record, on television, saying that this is an important issue at our school. I would like to see college presidents acknowledge that they have failed in the past & say they will personally take responsibility for making sure that changes take place. I think they could also apologize to the hundreds, if not thousands, of survivors on campus who have been mistreated over the past few decades. When you see college presidents going on the news talking about it in this way, that will signal that change has happened.
 
Q: There has been intense national attention in the US on the issue of sexual assault. The White House recently released PSAs about it, universities are introducing ‘Yes Means Yes’ sexual assault protocols, & the federal department of education is cracking down. Do you think the time has come when we will see permanent changes, or are you worried this is just a fad?
 
A: I’m very worried. I’m hopeful, but also worried. A lot of people thought this issue was addressed in the ’70s. People are shocked that it’s still happening on campuses. And of course it wasn’t, & not only that, it was buried again. This is an issue that will take at least a decade to change. This is not something that will happen overnight. It’s going to take a national effort & hopefully the film plays a role, but there’s a lot of other people that need to take control. It should be society’s responsibility.
 
Q: The film is full of deeply personal stories from women—& a couple of men—who experienced horrible abuse. What have you taken away from this?
 
A: When you’re doing the interviews, you’re just struck by how courageous these women are, in most cases, & sometimes men. And also just how vulnerable they were when they were assaulted & came forward, & still are, because they are young women taking on a centuries-old institution. It’s a combination of being very saddening & very enraging. I think that’s what you see in the film. Then of course, you see the hopeful piece with the students coming forward & taking action. As a filmmaker, I really want to be able to present, in a powerful & profound way, the truth of what is happening so that we can, as a nation, finally address it.

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/movies/the-hunting-ground/

Stephen Harper & the niqab gambit

It's funny how politicians / leaders everywhere around the world play upon one & only one emotion of public: fear. Politicians, essentially, treat the general public as little children. Just like parents make up scary stories to make their kids to do something, e.g. eat their veggies, politicians take a small incident, blow it up a thousand times, & scare people to do their own bidding.

So be it the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ("North America is against the development of South America") or the Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini ("immigrants are to blame for the poverty of South Africans") or Mr. Nigel Farage of UKIP blaming Islam & Muslims (behind the cover of anti-immigration) for economic woes of UK or Mr. Stephen Harper preaching Islamophobia to the Canadian crowds. What they all forget are the consequences of their statements? We can see the dire consequences of King Goodwill's statements in South Africa right now. Now, Mr. Zwelithini is asking for calm & blaming the media for misinterpreting his statements but the damage is already done. People are dead. Families are destroyed. Livelihoods are stolen. Those people who lost their lives won't come back now.
 
Since, the current government of Canada can't exactly win on job creation or economy, let's scare people about Islam & Muslims. Will Mr. Harper take responsibility when a Muslim woman, who is veiled or even simply wearing a hijab, is assaulted on the streets of Toronto? Will Quebecers come out in the support of Muslims when a Muslim woman is assaulted on the streets of Montreal?

After all, the general public keeps proving itself gullible, naïve,  & a fine example in idiocy; they will believe anything & will diligently act upon it, too.
 
Majority of general public (all over world) = sheep = zombies ... all follow one without thinking.
 
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One recent poll put the Conservatives in first place in Quebec City, with similar results in the swath of mostly rural regions west of the province’s capital city.
 
... by coming out against the wearing of the face-covering niqab during a citizenship oath, which was the subject of a recent court decision, & the threat of another terrorist attack on Canadian soil, Harper hit upon a strain of collective fear in the province—where, as another recent poll suggests, nearly 80% of people are worried about a terrorist attack & the indoctrination of young Quebecers by Islamist extremists.
 
And what goes for Quebec goes for the country as a whole. The recent threat of an attack ... has only underscored the Canada-wide support for the government’s new anti-terrorism bill, which, according to recent polling numbers, is at nearly 85%.
 
Since the terrorist attacks in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, the Prime Minister has taken to peppering his speeches with the words “jihad” & “terrorism,” whether speaking in Montreal or British Columbia or Brisbane, Australia. His national poll numbers have trended steadily upward, while the two opposition parties, the NDP & Liberals, have seen a corresponding decrease, according to poll aggregator Éric Grenier. “Jihadi terrorism, as it is evolving, is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced,” Harper said in the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill recently. “We will not be intimidated by jihadist terrorists,” he said in Delta, B.C., in a speech otherwise devoted to infrastructure spending.
The message seems clear: Appealing to Canadians’ baser fears doesn’t only work—it’s also a rare source of national unity.
 
Quebec’s Muslim population more than doubled between 2001 & 2011, in large part because of Quebec’s immigration policy favouring new arrivals from French-speaking countries. This influx of French-speakers, primarily from North Africa, were decidedly different in appearance & in their religious practices, spurring the so-called “reasonable accommodations” debate.
 
Fear of Muslims erupted in Quebec’s overwhelmingly white hinterland (the very area Harper covets today) over the spectre of mosques on their skylines & pork-free fèves au lard at the sugar shack. The town of Hérouxville, home to exactly zero Muslims, banned public stonings.
 
Then the attacks started. Certainly, Quebecers were as aghast as the rest of the world at the various terrorist attacks against Western targets. Yet the attacks against soldiers in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu & on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill were a special kind of horror: Both perpetrators were pure laine francophone, born-&-bred Quebecers ostensibly radicalized by fundamentalist imams & the outer margins of the Internet.
“The fact that these 2 guys were from Quebec was a wake-up call,” says Quebec MNA Nathalie Roy, the critic for secular matters for the right-of-centre Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ). “It’s unthinkable that Quebec citizens would go so far as to renounce our values & our rights.” The attack on Charlie Hebdo, in which Islamist gunmen killed 12 in & around the office of the Paris-based satirical magazine in January, had particular resonance in Quebec. Proportionally, it received nearly 3 times the media coverage in the province than elsewhere in the country, according to Influence Communication, a Montreal-based media-monitoring company.
 
The issue of Muslim & societal values came up yet again with a recent Federal Court decision that struck down a prohibition on the wearing of the niqab while taking the public citizenship oath. Like most court decisions, there are nuances to what Federal Court Judge Keith Boswell wrote. The issue wasn’t about identification, since the woman in question, Zunera Ishaq, had already shown her face to citizenship authorities.
 
Nor did Boswell’s decision outright allow for the wearing of the niqab during the oath. It only quashed a 2011 government directive barring the Muslim face-covering during the ceremony because it prevented citizenship judges from “allowing the greatest possible freedom in the religious solemnization,” as outlined in the citizenship regulations.
 
These nuances were mostly overlooked in the ensuing outrage over the Federal Court decision. This outrage was at a full boil when the Prime Minister first announced his government’s intention to appeal Boswell’s decision during a stop in Victoriaville, Que.
 
... Harper’s statement, uttered in both official languages, was a master stroke of quotable outrage. “I believe, & I think most Canadians believe, that it is offensive that someone would hide their identity at the very moment where they are committing to joining the Canadian family,” he said. “This is a society that is transparent, open, & where people are equal. And that is just . . . I think we find that offensive.”

Among those who listened at Harper’s side was Victoriaville Mayor Alain Rayes. Born of Egyptian immigrants, Rayes has been mayor of the city of 45,000 since 2009. A fit 43-year-old with a ready smile & an informal way about him, Rayes is being heavily courted to run for the Conservatives in the next election. He says the vast majority of his constituents see eye-to-eye with Harper on the topics of terrorism & societal norms.

“It’s an aberration to hear [NDP Leader] Thomas Mulcair say he is against the anti-terror bill, or to hear [Liberal Leader] Justin Trudeau say he finds it normal that a person doesn’t remove her niqab during a citizenship oath. I’m not against the veil or freedom of religion, but there is a limit,” Rayes says.
 
The CAQ, meanwhile, proposed a motion to perform background checks on anyone requesting a permit to build a mosque in Quebec, as well as a law banning any form of speech that “goes against the values inscribed in Quebec’s charter of rights.” It was voted down in Quebec’s National Assembly.
 
This makes for fertile political ground for the Conservatives, says Quebecer Stephen Brown. “In Quebec, if a deeply unpopular prime minister comes & says, ‘I want to protect you & your culture,’ he’s going to have an immediate audience. The fear of extremist Islam, which is justified, is like political catnip,” says the 28-year-old volunteer with the Quebec-based Canadian Muslim Forum.
 
The Tories may find this a winning strategy outside of Quebec, as well. An Angus-Reid poll published in mid-February suggested that 82% of Canadians support Bill C-51, the Conservative government’s anti-terrorism legislation. An earlier Angus-Reid poll, published about a month after the attacks in Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu & Parliament Hill, suggests why this support is so high. 62% of Canadians (including 60% of Quebecers) believe homegrown terrorism is a serious threat.
 
The terrorist attacks in Canada in 2014 have had a similar effect on public opinion as the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, says University of Toronto professor & terrorism law expert Kent Roach. In both cases, politicians leveraged the collective fear of terrorism to pass more stringent laws. “Like the Anti-Terrorism Act enacted after the 9/11 attacks, Bill C-51 is an omnibus bill that is being enacted amid fears of additional terrorist attacks. In both cases, there are almost daily media accounts of terrorist threats to Canada,” Roach says ... .
 
Citizenship & Immigration Minister Chris Alexander sent out a note to supporters criticizing the Federal Court for its stance on the niqab. He also noted his government’s intention to appeal the decision “allowing people to wear the hijab,” thus, knowingly or not, conflating the niqab & the hijab, 2 very different articles of clothing. (The term hijab is widely used to describe a head scarf that doesn’t cover the face.) ... And it took just over a week into his tenure as Canada’s new defence minister for Jason Kenney to proclaim the “high probability of future jihadist attacks from within”—a contention, coincidentally or not, that 62% of Canadians believe, according to the Angus-Reid poll. (A bit of perspective: Canadian-born terrorists were responsible for the deaths of 2 people in 2014; in 2011, according to the most recent Statistics Canada data, 2,158 Canadians died in motor vehicle accidents.)
 
As the Conservatives have shown across the country, fear of jihadists & face-coverings alike is a far more exploitable subject that also happens to dovetail with the government’s tough-on-crime agenda. “If I were Stephen Harper’s political adviser, I’d tell him to do exactly what he’s doing,” says Brown of the Canadian Muslim Forum. “Fear is the most powerful human emotion &, if people are afraid, they will be willing to give you more power in the name of protecting them.” In promoting this fear in Quebec & beyond, perhaps Stephen Harper has found the key to national unity after all.

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/the-niqab-gambit/

Inside the RCMP's biggest crisis

Canadian Prime Minister, Mr. Stephen Harper, says that veils have no place in Canada because they are against Canadian values of equality between genders. On international women's day, which being celebrated for more than 100 years now, the world celebrates the equality between genders. Developed countries of the West often deride the "backwards" developing countries, especially the Islamic ones, for not giving more rights to women. Admittedly, some countries are indeed horrible in that regard. Heck, due to Western countries' leadership being silent on Islamophobia, their public thinks that Islam is a misogynistic religion, & hence, Islamophobia is on the rise across North America & Europe.

Here are stories from survivors who are employees of one of the most prominent & respected organizations of Canada; Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) or aka, Mounties. Canadian, American, & British militaries have similar problems, but this article is not about that.

Where are those much-celebrated women's rights? Heck, where are those basic human rights of dignity, self-respect, & justice? Kindly ask yourself that would these women trade places with women in Saudi Arabia, where they won't even be allowed to drive a car by themselves, & save themselves from suffering mental & psychological anguish to the point some can't even get out of their house, anyway? Which is more worse of the two options?

Another issue which the cases of these women showed that they are bullied in the force to shut up & toe the line. I thought Ontario & other provinces teach about bullying & its dangers to kids, as little as, 10 year old. It seems like educated adults, not some uneducated hillbillies, are bullying their fellow officers. Who should learn about bullying then? Especially, since, when psychology has proven time & time again that kids learn from their adults (monkey see, monkey do). What will these kids learn, then, from their daddies who bully & harass their fellow female officers to the point that many quit the force, suffer from PTSD,  unable to work for life, & even their relationships take a heavy toll?

Problem is that these Western countries seem "developed" because of shiny new gadgets. Even a monkey gets fascinated by shiny new metal objects. Heck, some species of birds even collect shiny metals. Are we, humans, at the same level as those monkeys & birds? Is that progress? Does that consider "developed"? These problems are hidden under wraps. They don't make the nightly news often (heck, even when they do, how many actually watch it). The more I read the news, the more I see problems just not existing, but growing in these so-called, advanced, open, & developed countries. (Please keep in mind that I'm not saying that developing countries are devoid of problems. They, indeed, have problems of their own.)

People often say this that we should look into ourselves first before pointing out other's faults. I believe that statement fits right in in this case. You can't or shouldn't blame or label other countries as "backwards" or religions as "misogynistic", when your own backyard is full of litter.

The article also shows how governments of "developed" countries paint a picture of democratic governments & non-corrupt organizations operating under the rule of law, even though, almost all organizations, right from the top of PMO (Prime Minister's Office) are corrupt. When PM Harper felt like that these stories coming out of RCMP could have damaging reverberating consequences, he quickly tried to implement quick & easy fixes instead of trying to fix the core of the problem; changing the organization's culture, which can take time & not visible enough. Pandering for votes, I see. I thought that only happened in corrupt "developing" countries. On top of that corruption, RCMP itself trying to delay the hearings of lawsuits by twisting the arm of judicial branch of the government, in the hopes that the plaintiff or victim give up on her fight for justice & just forget about the whole thing. Once it's out of sight of the media, who will ever care.

Although, there are so many more points I want to make here, but then why empty my mind all here, since I have more articles & even documentary commentaries on similar issues. Plus, the article is very good in exposing the problems & very long, so I'll let you read the article (I know most people won't read this article because people in "developed" world don't want to be shown their own faults & people in "developing" world want to emulate every bit of "developed" world to the point where it may even destroy them, so they will turn a blind eye to these problems.)

Disclaimer: I used Saudi Arabia merely as an example & not a supporter of Saudi Arabia's harsh, heavy-handed, treatment of women.
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The role of RCMP spokesperson in B.C. is a big one. Mounties confident & clever enough to land the job become the effective voice of policing in a province where one third of the national force’s officers serve. So when 2 officers who held that position became embroiled in separate sexual harassment cases in recent years—one as a female complainant; one as a male accused—the symbolism was hard to ignore. These were, after all, people who personified the organization.

One was Insp. Tim Shields, ... who held the post for 10 years until 2011. ... Shields has been accused in separate civil suits of sexual harassment against 2 female RCMP members, & the specific allegations are ugly. He is alleged, among other things, to have exposed his genitals to one woman while riding in a police cruiser; another woman claims he tried to undress her &, at one point, confined her in a washroom, where he forced her to touch him.

Yet Shields has held his place within the RCMP hierarchy as he deals with the suspicion hanging over him. His current position of district duty officer comes with a desk at the force’s posh new Green Timbers headquarters in Surrey, B.C., & sends him to major incidents across the Lower Mainland. Only after the second woman’s lawsuit landed did he go off on what the RCMP described as “administrative leave” &, even then, a laudatory biography of him remained on the force’s B.C. website.

Not so Catherine Galliford. The 48-year-old went public in 2011 with her story of chronic sexual harassment & bullying by male colleagues that ultimately cost her her career, her home, multiple friendships & her health. (Shields is not implicated in her case.) Once a familiar face from media interviews & RCMP news conferences, she is now a recluse, trapped inside her mother’s suburban Vancouver home by agoraphobia & crippling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Doctors fear she will never regain her health. Nor will she ever work again.

What drives her is a hope that in telling her story, she’ll help make the RCMP more accountable & welcoming to the women coming up behind her. In 2012, she filed a lawsuit against the attorney general of Canada, the minister of justice for British Columbia, & 4 fellow officers, alleging “persistent & ongoing” sexual harassment & workplace intimidation. She tells Maclean’s that much of her 16 years on the force were spent “either fending off my bosses who were trying to have sex with me, or trying to fend off the senior officers who were trying to destroy my credibility behind my back—individuals who wanted the high-profile jobs I was getting.” By 2004, “going into work was actually making me physically ill,” she says. “I would have to wait outside in the parking lot for 15 minutes to stop myself from shaking. I was terrified of going inside.”

There is much yet to be told of these 2 officers’ stories: The allegations against Shields have not been proven. His lawyer, David Butcher, refused to comment. A civil trial of Galliford’s case was postponed 2 weeks ago for lack of sufficient court time.

But the peverse logic of their respective fates in many ways exemplifies the challenge before the RCMP. 4 years after Galliford shone a light on a crisis of sexual harassment & retribution within the force, female Mounties tell Maclean’s that the same old syndrome persists: Faced with a revelations of harassment, they say, the RCMP too often manages to protect the accused harasser while punishing the victim.

The Mounties insist they’ve recognized the problem &, armed with new tools, are poised to act. Laws that came into force 2 months ago have beefed up Commissioner Bob Paulson’s powers to fire perpetrators, while long-awaited processes for resolving harassment complaints are on the books. “I think, if you step back from it, you can see that the organization has taken this seriously,” says Assistant Commissioner Craig MacMillan, the RCMP’s officer in charge of professional responsibilities. “It’s taken some fairly dramatic steps in a relatively short period of time.”

Yet the accusations have kept coming. 5 women have followed Galliford’s example by filing sexual harassment lawsuits. And, later this spring, an Ontario lawyer will seek to certify a class action lawsuit against the RCMP on behalf of 380 female claimants, representing all 10 provinces. Former RCMP constable Janet Merlo is the lead plaintiff. She says she endured near-daily harassment on the job— everything from sexualized banter & sex toys left in her desk, to a dressing-down for getting pregnant. She quit the force in 2010, taking a medical discharge. Sandy Zeitzeff, the lawyer on the class action, expects the number of plaintiffs to grow to 1,500.

In short, Canada’s police force is on the brink of a massive credibility test, with no shortage of women saying its fixes are too little, & that they come too late.

Atoya Montague believes 2 factors can curse a female Mountie’s career: confidence & intelligence. “The more beautiful you are, the more feminine you are, the more willing you are to speak up, the worse you’ll be treated,” she says.

Montague was 27 when she became a civilian member of the RCMP in 2002. The outspoken former senior communications strategist for Canadian Tire was thrilled to land the job, & thrived in the endless crises that made up her 10- to 13-hour days as second-in-command of communications for the RCMP’s B.C. operations, known as “E Division.” Early in her career, she was identified as articulate, intelligent & level-headed. She was “the strongest woman I’d ever met,” says her friend Mary Roka, co-founder of the tech start-up GoTo.

Montague, now 39, is a shell of her former self. “She’s unrecognizable,” says Roka. She won’t answer her phone & has difficulty leaving her small rented condo. She has crippling osteoarthritis & high blood pressure, both related to stress. “They broke her,” says her friend Siobhain Andreasen, a Toronto actuary. “She was an unbreakable person.”

In her 13 years with the RCMP, Montague claims she was the repeated target of sexual harassment, bullying & discrimination. Her former co-worker Sherry Wright says she witnessed Montague being pushed out of meetings & ignored by their all-male senior management staff. When Montague was named to the RCMP’s integrated security unit for the 2010 Olympic Games, Wright says Montague’s desk was placed in a storage closet, where she was stationed for months, isolated from the team’s male leadership, despite having a senior leadership position as director of communications.

By then, Roka was begging her to quit the force. When Montague first started with the Mounties, the pair would grab lunch together in the E Division cafeteria. But, over time, Roka says she grew so uncomfortable with the sexual comments & innuendo directed at her by Montague’s boss at the time (not Shields) that she stopped visiting. Still, Montague refused to complain.

But by 2011, the near-daily indignities had pushed Montague to the edge. She was plagued by migraines & anxiety. She distanced herself from her family & friends. Eventually, her partner left, too. The former gym rat could no longer find the energy to ride her bike. Eventually, after seeing her family doctor, she took a medical leave.

Then, one day in 2013, a young, female Mountie told Montague she was being sexually harassed by her male superiors. Montague became enraged: “I realized if I didn’t say something, this was going to keep happening.” In August 2013, she filed a lawsuit against Tim Shields, the attorney general of Canada & the minister of justice of B.C., alleging sexual harassment & discrimination.

In her statement of claim, Montague alleges she was sexually harassed & discriminated against by several male superiors, including Shields. She alleges that while driving to the B.C. Interior in 2003, Shields showed her “his erection through his jean shorts & made sexual advances.” She alleges Shields asked her to “have sex with him & advising her that he could easily pull over the car so that he could perform oral sex on her.” Montague alleges Shields exposed himself to her in a similar incident in a police car in 2008 & “again made similar unwanted & unprompted sexual advances.” None of the allegations against Shields has been proven in court.

In her lawsuit, Montague alleges Shields was not alone in harassing her. In one incident, she alleges she was surrounded by the male members of the police canine unit “making sexually suggestive comments, taunting . . . pushing & rubbing up against her,” leaving Montague, who ran away, “terrified.”

Last July, 10 months after Montague filed suit, Anitra Singh, an E Division senior communications adviser, filed a sexual harassment suit against Shields & the attorney general of Canada. Singh, a civilian member of the force, alleges in her statement of claim that over a two-year period ending in 2011, Shields exposed himself to her, told Singh he’d like to perform oral sex on her, made regular comments about her breasts &, on several occasions, requested to “meet her at home to have sex.” On one occasion, the statement of claim alleges, he confined her in a washroom & forced her to “touch him in an inappropriate manner.” (Montague says she was unaware of Singh’s lawsuit & has not spoken to her since 2011.)

In his statement of defence in the Montague lawsuit, Shields denies all allegations made against him. In it, he specifically denies that he made “sexual advances or exposed his genitals” to Montague. He says that “at one point during the trip” to the B.C. Interior, he & Montague shared “intimate personal information,” adding that “the conversation was mutual” & Montague was a “willing participant.” He further states that in the workplace, Montague “openly engaged in conversations with her colleagues about personal & sexual aspects of her life” & “participated in sexual banter & frequently made sexual remarks & jokes, including comments & jokes about her own breasts.”

In a statement of defence in the Singh lawsuit, filed this week in Vancouver, Shields denies he sexually harrassed or assaulted Singh. He says Singh “initiated & pursued” an intimate relationship with him, invited him to her residence, & repeatedly dropped into his office “with arms outstretched, commanding a hug with her body language.” Shields claims she engaged in “consensual personal conversations & physical contact” with him while he “attempted to avoid frequent personal contact with the plaintiff.” He goes on to say in the statement that the publicity surrounding the suit has harmed his career, though he does not specify how.

The attorney general of Canada & the minister of justice for B.C. echoed Sheilds’ denials & added in their responses to both suits that Montague & Singh should have used the RCMP grievance process &, given they did not, have no claim against either the provincial or federal governments.

Montague has not shared her story with media until now. “If I thought there was any other way, I would,” she says. “But there’s no safe, fair & objective way for women to complain internally & emerge unscathed. The only way to do that is through the courts.” Montague recently sold her Vancouver condo & left Canada on the advice of her lawyer & doctor. “There’s no hope for me,” she says. “I’m doing this for the next generation of women.”

A few years ago, Ainsley Brand, a young female Mountie, was invited out, believing she was meeting a group of fellow officers from her detachment; she was new, & keen to get to know them. (Because she fears for her job, Maclean’s has agreed to change her name. RCMP regulations prohibit members from publicly criticizing the force. She has provided the magazine with documentation to illustrate her claims.)

When she arrived, the only Mountie there was the supervising officer who’d invited her out. Brand says that when she announced she wanted to go home, the officer began pushing hard alcohol on her, to “celebrate” her new posting. She is a non-drinker & repeatedly told him this, she says, adding: “I couldn’t turn it down. In the RCMP,  you can’t be seen not to be a team player.” She was relatively new to the force, still in her twenties. “From the time you’re at Depot, you’re taught to treat corporals like gods.”

When Brand said she needed to leave, she says they went elsewhere & he began making sexual advances. She says she told him she needed to go home. She had never drunk this much before, she says. She claims she was incapacitated & that the sex was coerced: “I’m a police officer. This was sexual assault,” she says. “He brought me out on a pretext—to meet people that were never there. He used alcohol to lessen my resistance. And he has a history of doing this. Another woman at the detachment later warned me to steer clear of him. He’d done the same thing to her.”

Brand believes the officer was guilty of criminal behaviour, but she settled instead on filing a harassment complaint. When Brand eventually complained, the RCMP responding officer ruled that her complaints were “unsubstantiated” & that the relationship was “consensual,” noting that Brand & the officer had engaged in a relationship after the incident. Brand, who claims she was depressed & having trouble coping, says she engaged in a friendship with the officer for one month in an attempt to lessen her anxiety when seeing him at the detachment. The RCMP further concluded that no “workplace conflict” had occurred. Therefore, no formal harassment investigation was ever ordered.

Brand says she spoke out about the harassment, knowing it could tarnish her reputation & harm her professionally, because she felt this officer needed to be prevented from hurting other women. “I still love my job,” she says. “I love the adrenalin. I love the law. I like to help people. It’s the internal stuff I can’t deal with.”

The revelations—especially Galliford’s—reverberated widely outside the RCMP, as critics asked how Canada could allow such behaviour to persist in its most recognized institution. If the Mounties couldn’t protect their own, they reasoned, why trust them to protect civilian Canadians?

In November 2012, the Senate directed its standing committee on national security to tackle the problem &, 7 months later, the committee issued a searing report that called for a “cultural transformation” within the force. Among its recommendations: a zero-tolerance policy that would hold senior management to account in harassment cases; the addition of harassment to the RCMP’s code of conduct as a specific offence; & an end to the practice of simply transferring accused harassers—or, in some cases, victims—to other places in the force. “Immediate, meaningful steps must be taken to enhance the public’s trust in the force,” the report said, “& bolster members’ trust in the disciplinary systems designed to protect them.”

A report by the Office for Public Complaints against the RCMP reached similar conclusions. But by then, Paulson had produced his long-awaited “action plan,” & the Harper government was anxious to get key changes enshrined in law. In the spring of 2013, it introduced to the Commons a package of amendments called the Enhancing RCMP Accountability Act, which empowered the commissioner to establish a new harassment-complaints process & streamline dispute-resolution mechanisms. Both Conservatives & Liberals welcomed the changes &, on Dec. 1, 2014, the day they came into force, Paulson appeared at a celebratory news conference alongside Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney.

MacMillan touts new features he says make the process more transparent, fair & efficient. Complainants & accused harassers will both be granted access to the investigative report before a decision is made, he says, & invited to respond. Each case will be received by a special office at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa &, while investigations may be carried out at the divisional level, the national office will monitor the progress of each file.

The changes have left some underwhelmed. The controversial measure of transferring troublemakers remains an option for RCMP brass, critics note, while timelines within which cases must be heard remain vague. Some wonder whether a new power granted to the commissioner to fire officers for the “promotion of economy or efficiency” within the force might be used to get rid of officers who take medical leave while they fight back against harassers. “It reads to me like a get-rid-of-the-victim clause,” says Rob Creasser, spokesman for the Mounted Police Professional Association of Canada, an organization seeking to unionize the RCMP’s officers. “It enhances the power inequity that already existed in the RCMP.”

As for gaining officers’ confidence, the force’s history of reprisal & recrimination against complainants will make that hard. “When people come forward, they are re-victimized,” says Krista Carle, a former RCMP constable who sued the force in 2003 after she & 3 other women came forward, claiming they were sexually assaulted by a fellow officer. An RCMP harassment investigation in her case concluded her harassment allegations were “unfounded.” The RCMP settled the suit with the 4 women out of court. Coming forward “destroyed my life,” says Carle, who was in the same RCMP graduating class as Galliford in 1991. She says she was shunned by her colleagues for speaking out, & her marriage couldn’t withstand the strain. She moved to Alberta & changed her last name.

Then there’s the recent case of Stephanie Johnson, who began working for the RCMP as a public servant after immigrating to Canada several years ago. (Because she, too, fears for her job, Maclean’s has agreed to change her name.) Johnson says she was bullied & shunned by fellow employees in her detachment for filing a sexual harassment complaint, which was deemed unfounded by the RCMP. Relations with her co-workers deteriorated to the point that she was barred from the workplace & made to work from home. To gather her assignments, she says she had to knock on the door of her detachment every day for a year & a half: “I felt like a criminal.”

Johnson refused the RCMP’s offer of a buyout. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” she told the force. But, in so doing, she was seen as adversarial: “I just wanted to work. I wanted to contribute & be good at what I did. I was driven & ambitious despite the setbacks.” She says she was eventually allowed to return to her detachment, where her superiors began auditing her performance. Her once-exemplary performance evaluations now listed her work as “unsatisfactory” & a disciplinary process was initiated. The stress began affecting her health. She couldn’t sleep, suffered from severe migraines & was diagnosed with PTSD. An independent psychiatric evaluation has described her work environment as “profoundly toxic.”

The day Johnson was served with disciplinary paperwork for poor performance, she says she had a nervous breakdown. Last year, she was transferred. Her mental health diagnosis was divulged to her new detachment. Often, she wishes she’d never immigrated to Canada. “I dream of going home,” she says ruefully, “of escaping the RCMP.”

Would the RCMP’s new harassment regime have spared what Johnson views as obvious retaliation? Possibly. Along with the new investigation & resolution protocol, the force has introduced a policy forbidding reprisals against harassment complainants & anyone else involved in the process—with punishments up to, & including, dismissal. If an employee doesn’t trust her commanding officer to stop the recriminations, she can complain directly to the national officer for the coordination of harassment complaints.

The question is whether that’s enough to change behaviour at the detachment level, where, victims say, shunning & retribution are part of a code meant to discourage people from complaining. The force’s “protect-your-own” philosophy “makes it almost a mortal sin to speak out against fellow members,” says Jennifer Berdahl, a professor of organizational behaviour at the University of British Columbia. “And it can be very dangerous for colleagues not to distance themselves from the so-called troublemaker. They don’t want to be tarred by the same brush.”

Greg Passey, a psychiatrist with the Operational Stress Injury Clinic of British Columbia, has seen stories like Johnson’s again & again; Passey treats RCMP officers & military staff in both B.C. & Saskatchewan. “The RCMP is a totally dysfunctional organization,” says the 63-year-old, pointing to the cause of the psychological disorders afflicting the “vast majority” of his RCMP patients: harassment & abuse from fellow officers inside detachments. “It boggles the mind,” says Passey. “If you come forward, they label you a troublemaker. They do everything they can to make you go away, & the supervising officers doing the harassing get promoted. Are you kidding me? What kind of organization does that?”

Passey, who spent 22 years in the military & served in Rwanda, has never publicly criticized the RCMP before. But he’s lost his patience, saying he cannot stay quiet any longer. “I’m very frustrated. It’s like I’m walking up to my nose in s–t,” he says. “I’m trying my best to help my patients. My colleagues & I shake our heads at the things we are told, at the breaches in medical confidentiality, the delays.” Passey is from an RCMP family: Both his uncle & father-in-law were Mounties. “I used to be very proud of our force,” he says, but now, “there is no way I would ever allow my daughters to serve in the RCMP.

“These guys are supposed to enforce laws & seek justice,” Passey goes on. “They’re totally flaunting rules & regulations, at times, even laws. How do you trust an organization like this? The RCMP is accountable only to itself—& run by an old-boys’ network. Old boys don’t punish themselves; they go after the victim.”

Like Creasser, Passey is deeply suspicious of the provision in the newly amended RCMP Act allowing the commissioner to medically discharge officers for the promotion of economy & efficiency. “It’s the equivalent of giving the schoolyard bully the power to get rid of his victims.” Passey says he knows several members in the process of being discharged under the new system; most are on medical leave due to harassment. There is one reason for this amendment, he says: “So they [the victims] won’t have the financial resources to continue their legal fight.”

He speaks out at considerable risk, since the last medical professional to publicly criticize the force, police psychologist Mike Webster, was blacklisted by the RCMP for declaring the organization “sick” & needing reform. Webster, a former B.C. Mountie, now works for the Canadian military. But Passey is unafraid: “I don’t care what they do to me. It’s an organization I don’t trust at all.”

The fates of officers like Johnson & Montague are key to the RCMP’s attempts to fix its harassment problem, because they raise a basic question of fairness: Why does the force’s handling of these cases seem to destroy complainants, while hardly denting the careers of the men accused of mistreating them?

Until recently, Shields was a case in point. For 10 months after Montague filed her lawsuit, he continued to speak for the force in media interviews. By then, he’d been promoted to the rank of inspector & served as assistant of operations at the RCMP’s Burnaby detachment, where he oversaw 150 uniformed officers. In 2013—as Montague struggled with anxiety & feelings of hopelessness—Shields landed the position of regional duty officer, one of just four in B.C. Only after Singh filed her lawsuit against him last July did he disappear from public view, though he still holds his high-flying post.

Another troubling instance: Staff Sgt. Tim Korman was named commanding officer of the RCMP’s Meadow Lake detachment in Saskatchewan, even though sexual-harassment allegations against him remained unresolved. Korman received his promotion to staff sergeant on March 19, 2009, 6 weeks after the complaint, filed by an officer named Laura Lehne, was dismissed because it had taken too long to be heard. “I don’t blame anyone for not coming forward,” Lehne, who left the force in disgust, told reporters at the time, “because it only makes your life hell & nothing’s done.” Only last June, after new, unspecified allegations of “inappropriate workplace conduct” were levelled against Korman, did his bosses suspend him with pay.

At least some women in positions of influence share Lehne’s concern. B.C. Premier Christy Clark voiced dismay after the RCMP transferred an Edmonton-based officer, Sgt. Don Ray, to her province following his reprimand for having sex with subordinates, drinking at work, sexually harassing female colleagues & exposing himself. “I hope that they find a way to do something about it, because I just don’t think it contributes to public confidence,” Clark told a Vancouver radio station in May 2012. “A lot of women are watching & saying, ‘This isn’t right.’ ”

All of which may explain why so few officers have bothered to use the internal process. According to the force’s own count, published in early 2013, only 26 filed formal sexual harassment complaints between 2005 & 2012, a number dwarfed by the hundreds who have signed on to the class action suit. “If you talk to people who tried to go through whatever system was available in the past,” says Creasser, “they’ll say, ‘Why would I put myself through that again? I just felt revictimized.’ ”

As for Galliford, by her admission, it is too late for the RCMP to fix this. For the past 2 years, she’s been readying herself for her trial, which she considers her only opportunity to hold her “abusers to account.” It was slated to begin last week, on Feb. 16. But, earlier this month, it was suddenly adjourned: The witness list was deemed too long for the trial’s scheduled 6 weeks. It could take another 2 years for Galliford to get another court date. Her lawyer tells her the opposition legal team is trying to bleed her dry. Galliford says the process has cost her her life savings—“the price you pay for complaining about sexual abuse, harassment & exploitation, I guess.”

http://www.macleans.ca/society/inside-the-rcmps-biggest-crisis/

Thailand's crackdown on 'wombs for rent'

As I previously blogged that how everything of ours, tangible or intangible, is up for sale, this story fits right in. Everything of ours has been commoditized & ready to be sold. These women are not doing it for the fun of it, but these Thai, Vietnamese, & even Indian (not in this story) women are put into such a dire position, financially, that they are ready to lease out their wombs.
 
Now, women, most likely from developed countries, who can't conceive child due to health reasons, or won't conceive child due to vanity (don't want to "destroy" their figure or can't take the pain of childbirth) can outsource this function to a poor woman in a developing country. It seems nothing is sacred enough to not outsource.
 
Similar to how outsourcing of manufacturing & clerical jobs to developing countries raised multiple ethical issues in regards to working conditions in those developing countries, this "womb-for-rent" program also raised several complicated & ethical issues.
 
Can a country effectively control this process & make it better through laws & regulations or simply shut it down? I think not. The process was already sort of running underground with some people abusing this program. Now, the laws will essentially further make this go underground & more women will be abused more severely, & the abusers will most likely won't be punished.
 
Why this process can't be improved through laws? Because, these poor women are especially sought out for these tasks & since, they need money desperately, they will be willing to do anything at any cost.
 
Also, this process won't grow much love & won't grow the bond stronger between a mother & her child. Why? Because, it's simply unnatural. The love between a child & a mother starts & grows stronger during those 9 months of pregnancy. Any mother will testify to it. Heck, the women in this story had a hard time giving those kids, for whom they were merely surrogates, to their biological parents. How can a mother who didn't endure those 9 months of pregnancy hardships can ever truly love a child, who is still her own flesh & blood, like a mother who goes through the pregnancy & has a spiritual, & flesh & blood link with that little fetus in her womb?
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When a surrogate baby scandal erupted in Thailand last year, many in the country did not know what to expect next.
 
First there was the young boy, apparently abandoned by the Australian couple who had commissioned a Thai surrogate mother to carry him.
 
The boy had Down's syndrome, but the couple had taken his twin sister back to Australia with them.
 
Then there were the 12 babies found living in a single apartment with nannies, all fathered by the same, mysterious young Japanese man.
 
Many more babies had already been spirited out of Thailand.
Today the Australian boy - named Gammy - lives with the woman who was paid to give birth to him, seemingly a loved member of his adopted family.
 
"I don't regret anything about the surrogacy", Pattaramon Chanbua told me. "I don't blame anyone. To me, Gammy is a blessing."
 
Mitsutoki Shigeta, the mystery Japanese man, is still fighting to get custody of the 12 babies he sired through various Thai surrogates.
 
Now, 5 years after it was first drafted, the Thai parliament has passed a law which it hopes will shut down the "wombs-for-rent" business for good.
 
Foreigners are banned from seeking surrogates in Thailand. Thai couples can find surrogate parents, but not through agents, or on any kind of commercial basis.
 
At the heart of the business are hard-up Thai women, who see 9 months carrying someone else's child as a relatively easy way to make good money.
 
Daeng, a factory worker living outside Bangkok, is another. A single mother in her 30s, she agreed to carry twins for Mr. Shigeta.
 
When the time came to hand them over, she admitted it was hard.
 
"I carried them for 9 months, & I loved them," she said. But she went through with the contract, & "would do it again - so would anybody - because of the money".
 
Daeng says she was paid the equivalent of 10 years' salary.
 
Other women have had unhappier surrogacy experiences.
4 years ago, 15 Vietnamese women were found in a Bangkok apartment, seven of them pregnant.
 
Some of them said they had been lured there with the promise of well-paid jobs; 2 said they had been raped.
 
A Taiwanese company called Babe-101 was accused by anti-trafficking groups of being behind the operation, but the police never pressed charges, & the doctor who supervised the conceptions & the births is still practising at a well-known Bangkok hospital.
 
Like much of Thailand's medical industry, the surrogacy business is profit-driven & poorly regulated.
 
The surrogate business in Thailand has often been a shadowy, unaccountable one. Now the practice has been more or less outlawed, there are justified fears that, with so much money on offer, it will simply be driven underground.
 
"We have no law enforcement", admits Dr Somsak Lolekha of the Thai Medical Council. "Just like drinking & driving. We have the law. But they never enforce it."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31556597