Choices and Consequences

It's tragic that young people feel themselves invulnerable to harm, and entitled to exercise less caution than they should in the exuberance and celebration of their youth. Young men in particular - but not exclusively, between the ages of 16 and 24 appear to be particularly susceptible to the delusion that nothing will occur of an untoward nature as a result of any reckless behaviour they engage in. Life is an ongoing adventure, after all.

But not for everyone. Some people die in the pursuit of that adventure. And that's what happened to a privileged son of a former Canadian premier; he became the instrument of death for a close friend. This was an accident, there was nothing intentional about it, other than the intent to have fun. Having fun for so many is synonymous with alcohol consumption; it loosens up the social inhibitions and makes decision-making just so much easier.

Jack Tobin, son of Brian Tobin, really has no excuse for his behaviour that took the life of Alex Zolpis. They were having a Christmas Eve blast at Byward Market, isn't that what young guys do? Engage in exhibitionism, frighten the life out of more sober people around them, challenge others to join them in having fun.

Jack Tobin's act was a commission of stupidity; his attitude prevailed even before alcohol was consumed. If he believed while sober, before the night on the town with his buddies, that drinking and driving was a bad combination he would not have done just that while intoxicated. His privileged background and his obvious sense of intelligence and honesty, if anything, should have imposed an obligation of caution upon him.

He cannot be excused for the inexcusable. The tragedy that his stupid behaviour caused, with two friends caught under the vehicle he was wheeling about on the roof of a parking garage caused a death. One man dead, another man's life impaired. There is no doubt he has suffered the agony of self-blame. But he will also doubtless suffer the shame and blame that an act of free will however intellectually impaired causing death, deserves.

There was another trial that took place recently of a woman, Dominika Duris, found guilty of driving while impaired by alcohol, in the death of her 20-year-old friend who was a passenger in her vehicle. She had been acquitted in an earlier trial, and second time around she was found guilty and sentenced to a two-year conditional sentence, including house arrest.

Both she and Jack Tobin are guilty of vehicular homicide. They both chose to drive while under the influence of alcohol and both caused the death of friends. Conditional sentences, house arrest, speaking to school groups as part of their punishment, week-end jail terms are all alternate sentencing potentials for young people.

There is no punishment quite as sobering as, at the very least, a minimum incarceration as society attempts to teach shallow young minds that their choices have consequences.

Practising To Deceive

What is it that motivates high-powered alpha males who consider themselves to be so entitled that they cannot maintain their most intimate personal relationships intact? They claim and possibly believe that their love for their mates are absolute, yet they are unable to forego the piquancy of the pursuit. Sexual conquest and gratification seems to overcome all other needs, urging to be fulfilled.

It is a human enough trait to succumb to inner urges, but the adult in us also cautions against excess and the destruction of vital relationships.

There is a choice; to maintain what is of emotional stability and deep value, or to knowingly, through the compulsion of emotional adventure and satisfactions derived from the thrill of achieving illicit relationships, to charge their atmosphere with the potential of destruction of a marriage. The urge seems irresistible to men who consider themselves to be elevated above the concerns that instruct most men although it is certainly not commonly unknown among the general population.

And, of course, women are as susceptible as are their male counterparts to forging relationships outside the confines of their marriages that will, in the end, destroy their marriages. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes because of a course of events that can no longer be restrained. The scenarios and the events themselves are as varied in circumstance and reason as the reflection of human dynamism and individual emotions and needs fulfillment.

Men and women search for intimate companionship, love and sexual gratification in monogamous relationships, then tire of the monotony and predictability and look elsewhere for additional uplifts. It seems to be men, largely, whose predator's instincts draw them toward destroying their intimate partnerships and with them, often enough, their public careers. Since it is high-profile public figures that draw the attention of the curious.

From politicians to socialites, sport figures to entertainment celebrities, aristocrats to the fellow living around the block, peoples' fallibility in maintaining constancy and the obligations of protecting and valuing special relationships seem to fall casually by the wayside of impetuous desires fulfilled. Women can find it in them to overlook casual errors in judgement, often enough.

But when it is revealed that their trust has been betrayed over a prolonged period of time, the sting of betrayal, that what they represent in the deepest possible emotional terms has not been sufficient to satisfy the cravings and the satisfaction of their partner represents a rejection of their value as partners. To discover that one's husband has maintained a long-standing affair under the radar of discovery represents a monumental blow to elemental self-esteem.

It represents a hard blow to the belief that a deep love and trust and understanding has been equally shared. It is destructive of not only the relationship but the psychical sense of self-worth. What woman would view with equanimity the revelation that her husband of a quarter-century fathered a child with another woman at the very same time that he impregnated her with their youngest child?

It is an unforgivable affront to the dignity of the relationship, a betrayal at the deepest level of the trust and love inherent in such a relationship. The deep and lasting harm that people do to one another through these secret alliances cannot be ameliorated by any kind of remorse after the fact. The deed is done and the pain is lasting.

"Another guy gov admits 2 cheating on his wife. Maybe we need more women governors. Guys: Keep ur pants zipped, for Pete's sake." Jennifer Granholm.

It is only the public figures, the politicians and the socialites,the entertainers and the high-paid sport figures that cause a scandal when salacious reports of details are revealed through the media. But these scenarios with various squalid and disappointing details occur all too often within the lives of the general public, disrupting family life and leaving children to cope with deleterious emotional upheavals.

"This is a painful and heart-breaking time. As a mother, my concern is for the children. I ask for compassion, respect and privacy as my children and I try to rebuild our lives and heal." Maria Shriver

It is not possible to confine the damage to one's inner sphere. Gossip on a grand scale, as in regularly updated media reports as details emerge occurs and the public is agog with disbelief at the status of those involved in the fall from public grace - revealing as in the case of those like John Kennedy, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger that the emperor lost his dignity in a series of tawdry affairs.

"After leaving the governor's office, I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago. I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family. there are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused. I have apologize to Maria, my children and my family. I am truly sorry." Arnold Schwarzenegger

And on the micro-level, young children are bewildered as their parents no longer resemble the adults they know and have depended upon for emotional security and stability. They see their modest homes with for-sale signs and strangers trampling through for inspection, as the neighbours talk quietly among themselves expressing society's collective sadness at yet another human failure.

With Dignity and Regret

Neighbours, so near yet so far. Great Britain, historically dominating its neighbours, just as it dominated, through its imperialist colonial past, less advanced countries of the world to ransack them of their natural resources and to impose the British system of governance upon them, as chattel dependents.

Ireland, seen as backward as Africa, suffered the same indignity as India. With British landlords, and endemic poverty and neglect and violation of its peoples' needs. Above all, the need to be a free people. The resentment of the British occupation of its neighbours resulted in fear, anger and violence.

What is now left internationally of the British imperial past among the Commonwealth nations is largely a tradition of sound governance, a fair and just system of justice, and a second language of international communication. And, without doubt, residual resentment at the heritage of the dominated by the dominant.

The 'troubles' of a troubled land that suffered great privation because of its poverty and the struggles of its people to survive against brutal odds that included a disease blight that struck its major food crop were exacerbated by the disinterest of Britain to help provide Ireland's people with food to keep them from starving.

Neighbours who take unfair advantage of their less advantaged neighbours and then make no effort to assist them when they fall into dire existential straits are hardly neighbours; they are social predators. That was then, this is now. Now Britain is immensely sensitive to the past. And political correctness is the order of the day.

Now, Queen Elizabeth has undertaken a historic century-visit to Ireland in a long-awaited overture of caring friendship. She spoke of "forbearance and conciliation", of the need "to bow to the past, but not be bound by it". Ireland extended its warm hospitality to the monarch, that very institution that once violated its human rights.

Although there are and will always remain many Irish who will continue to resent Great Britain for its malfeasance toward its neighbour, who express through violent means the violence of their emotions against Britain, times have changed. The mutual brutality and expressions of anguished intolerance have been muted by time.

"It is a sad and regrettable reality that through history our islands have experienced more than their fair share of heartache, turbulence and loss. These events have touched us all, many of us personally, and are a painful legacy. We can never forget those who have died or been injured, and their families."

Conciliatory, heartfelt sentiments from a head of state whose obligation to the future has been made abundantly clear.

Till Irritation Do Us Part

Cool, polished, civil and civilized. To agree between a married couple that although they still like one another and perhaps even respect one another, it is time to part. For the elemental reason that their interests do not converge, perhaps never did. They are too unlike in their values and priorities to continue living together in harmony. And if the investment has been only three years, why then, parting is not all that difficult.

Couples make that kind of decision all the time. To part, that is. But rarely is the parting agreeable in nature. More often each blames the other for not living up to a psychological agreement that each would make an effort to respect one another's differences and appreciate what they have in common. The effort sometimes becomes too onerous and either one or both decide the experiment was a failure.

Sometimes it's an inattentive partner, or a philandering one that causes the anger to mount. Sometimes it's an attitude of incurable arrogance that causes one to feel he/she is superior to the other, and the alpha runs the show. Then there's the possibility that the physical attraction has evaporated. Or one of the tandem isn't wholly invested in matching the bacon the other brings home.

Whatever the reasons, what usually results is rancour and vituperation. One of the brace may be thunderstruck by the announcement of the other that it's time to call an end to the duo. One may still love the one who now denies there ever was love to begin with. The longer the irritation of living together continues before the final break, the more urgent the passion of disharmony becomes.

Unlike the oyster, irritated by the tiny grain of sand that he keeps oozing nacre over to eventually produce a pearl, the couple headed toward divorce seldom produce a pearl of acceptable behaviour toward one another. Separation and divorce are heralded by angry and ugly denunciations.

That's how most marriages end, in blame and anger, whatever the cause. But then, if someone has limitless wealth and a more blase attitude toward life, augmented by a balanced personality and a large social following, things can be done differently. A three-year marriage between a young, attractive woman and an older, moneyed man can result in invitations to celebrate a divorce.

As has been done by Charles and Bonnie Bronfman, who have invited their circle of friends to a night of cocktails and party chatter in New York City. Their invitation signs off with "fondly, Bonnie and Charles"; with the explanation that they look forward "to continuing these relationships with everyone."

Just not quite so intimately with one another.

Self Restraint?

Is that all it is, an inability to reign in one's inner beast? As though it is of no great moment. The occasional lapse in judgement. The surrender to one's instantaneous, baser instincts. A moment of madness. Lust that must be appeased. Sexual gratification at all costs. It has been said that powerful men who reach the heights of public acclaim for their prowess in many areas of accomplishment have a greater sexual appetite than other, more modestly endowed men.

Call it arrogance, a sense of entitlement that society owes them the kind of gratitude that will excuse moral lapses because of their reputations as great thinkers, military men, writers, poets, politicians, philanthropists - and economists. There is that about males who hail from countries where the Romance languages are common; they think of themselves as great lovers. They consider women as blatant objects of desire.

And they practise a societally-approved pursuit of women and girls. They are not considered lechers or predators, but rather celebrated as successful at seducing women. Frenchwomen have always been seen by other women elsewhere in the world as worldly, sophisticated, in control, mistresses of their own culture, inclusive of the boudoir. And the aristocratic, polished Frenchmen the very vision of courtesy.

These cosmopolitan, smoothly distinguished individuals, from the highest echelon of public affairs to the social elite are frank and free about sex. Unlike the prudish North Americans, for example. And what IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was able to get away with in France he could not do in the United States. Both countries are egalitarian in nature presumably, but where sexual violence is accepted in one, it is not in the other.

Position, fame and celebrity equal respect. And this Mr. Strauss-Kahn had in abundance. His prowess with women was well known and celebrated as well. Women who had been abused of their innocence in his presence did not pursue their grievance but were encouraged to put their experience with his passion-entitlements in the past and give him wide berth in the future. In France the man was able to behave as disgracefully as he wished; all was forgiven.

In North America violent sexual assault is not so readily overlooked. No one is entitled, irrespective of his other admirable qualities, to abuse and violate women at will because he will make no effort to discipline himself as a civil human being.

Captivity and Forgiveness

When the news media were full of the kidnapping details in 2005 in Iraq of four men representing a Christian peace group, it seemed a lunatic enterprise on the part of those held hostage to enter the country for the purpose of attempting to turn Iraqis toward peace and away from violence. The Iraqis themselves were fully invested in their tribal and sectarian hatred toward one another. Their focus was on the capture, torture and murder of Shia or Sunni by Sunni or Shia.

But the Christian Peacemaker Team sent a delegation of four committed members to preach sweetness and light, courtesy fundamentalist Christians who believe in forgiveness and redemption to fundamentalist Muslims who practise violent jihad and martyrdom. One of the abductees who had been held for 118 days as hostages before a joint commando raid freed them, has written a memoir of the experience.

Long before James Loney wrote his memoir he had issued a public expression of forgiveness toward his captors. Recalling his statements at that time he seemed like a delusional and fearfully stupid man, determined to support his faith by declarations of unflagging hope in the decency and goodness of humankind. Failing to make a distinction between social environments and hereditary antipathies.

"I know I'm speaking out of school here, but I'm going to say it anyway. You have no idea how many people were involved, how many people risked their lives to get you out. I want you to tell your people that. Just tell them to think about that before they decide to send someone else here. I'm not saying anything else. Just tell them. Tell them to think about all the people that risked their lives to get you out."

This was spoken to James Loney in an icily chiding lecture by one of the soldiers who had been tasked to rescue him and the three other abductees. It was a joint British-U.S. task force, whose formation had the purpose of hunting for al-Qaeda operatives and rescuing foreign hostages. Everything comes at a price. The men who rescued Loney and the two others risked their lives.

The fourth man was beyond rescue. An American, Tom Fox, had earlier been removed from the squalid site where he had been kept along with James Loney, Norman Kember and Harmeet Singh. He was murdered, his body found on a street in Baghdad. And the following is what illuminates the peculiar mind-set of a man like James Loney.

Determined to forgive, he will not permit himself to feel any kind of rancour or blame against his abductors. He lived for all the time he was in captivity in the fear of their discovering that he is gay knowing that they would make an attempt to cure his homosexuality; the cure for which in many Muslim societies is death.

Like the jihadis that captured him and his three colleagues determined to turn the face of peace toward their captors, he believes in self-discipline and self-sacrifice; where they believe in the sacrifice of martyrdom with its great reward of attentive virgins in Paradise, he believes in the martyrdom of self to a greater ideal of Godly virtue.

Neither he nor the two others who were rescued from their miserable captivity and possible even future torture and death, would agree to testify against their captors in the prosecution of the death of the American Tom Fox, by trial in Iraq by its Central Criminal Court. "They took Tom away from us, but they did not take away our ability to forgive.

"We did not lose ourselves. We were not infected with the poison of hate. They may have changed our lives, but they did not change us." This is how James Loney celebrates his victory over the events that occurred to him as a tormented prisoner of the Swords of Righteousness Brigade who held them for ransom.

In pledging forgiveness and refusing to testify against their captors they effectively denied justice to the man whom their captors murdered. This kind of moralistic hubris does not reflect a humble mind but a sadly delusional one. Obtusely, deliberately delusional.

The Civility of Islam, Religion of Peace

It is a religion based on a collection of writing. Held to be sacred. As the direct word of God, given to a human interlocutor.

Perhaps some of the utterances and proclamations of that virtuous and perfect spirit were misinterpreted when they were transcribed. Perhaps it was the inclination of a man steeped in the Bedouin way of life where tribal animosities and constant warfare and assassinations being the order of the culture and the heritage of the desert, to tinge the words of ineffable wisdom with the stirring battle cries of a warring people.

The out
cry to defend Islam from humiliation and insult and the spurning of its primacy as the pinnacle of religious righteousness and paramount positioning in a world where other communities of peoples have their own spiritual head-of-mission reigning in the wide blue heavens, remains of primary and paramount importance. Jihad is urged on the faithful, and martyrdom to the cause represents the highest order of human endeavour in the honouring of Islam.

It is a militant creed within a religion based on utter and total surrender of the inner and outer self. The sacred writings betray an unequivocal belligerence toward those who would oppose the first-place status of Islam. As for those who would be foolish enough to question the rights, priorities and values held within Islam, and the pedigree and purpose of its founder, the Prophet, woe betide them for they are destined to perish.

The final words they will hear in their fearful ears informing them they are doomed to death is Allahu Akbar! This frequent and deadly attention is purveyed not only toward infidels but also toward Muslims considered to be insufficiently dedicated to their religion's fundamentalist principles. It can be said of a certainty that the countries of the Middle East where Islam surfaced in the wake of Judaism and Christianity, remain broadly dysfunctional.

As the religion is one of a tyrannical spiritual ruler, so too are the theocratic and titular and totalitarian heads of state and governance of Muslim countries. As long as these remained somewhat closed societies with scant interaction with other, non-Muslim countries of the world on a population-to-population basis, the Muslim ummah seemed content to eke out their lives as their rulers saw fit for them.

With the advent of instant technological communication things appear to have gone awry; the people have become alert to the fact that other countries, particularly those of the West, given to democratic governance, do not subjugate their people. There is law and order and there is respect for peoples' rights and there are values that are fundamental to decent human behaviour and there are opportunities to be had elsewhere.

Why not where they live? So young, unemployed and educated Egyptians protested. As did Tunisians. Bahrainians. Yemenites. Syrians, Libyans, Iranians. In Egypt there is a transition government toward civil rule, and Egyptian Muslims mount attacks against Egyptian Copts. In Iran, the people no longer dare protest and remain simmeringly quiescent. In Yemen military forces fire at protesters.

In Libya, the dictator sends out his military forces to bomb and strafe residents of cities that have been taken by rebels, some of whom are Islamists, looking to profit through their fanatical al-Qaeda connections. In Pakistan, as in Afghanistan, Islamist fundamentalists calling themselves the scholars, are Talib who make a common pact with other Islamists and slaughter those Muslims who are insufficiently pious.

Afghan police and the Afghan national military practise sexual abuse and exploitation of young boys, because this is an age-old accepted practise, little spoken of but endemic in society, somewhat like the overwhelming incidence of base corruption and rapacious tribal war-lordism.
While in Syria its president is intent on putting down a popular insurrection much as his father before him did.

The uprising having begun with fifteen young Syrian boys writing graffiti on their school walls demanding the end of police rule - causing their arrest and incarceration, the first in a long line of some eight thousand arrested protesters some of whom have undergone torture and rape. And in Syria as well the military has been charged to fire with live ammunition upon the people.

Who is prepared to stand forward and make sense of this conundrum of a professed religion of peace inspiring so much 'misunderstanding' of what peace represents?

Disappearing Holocaust Survivors

Generation of Holocaust Survivors Disappearing
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Holocaust survivors, who are first-person testimony to the Nazi death machine, are disappearing. On the eve of Holocaust Memorial and Remembrance Day, statistics show that their death rate in Israel is 35 a day – 13,000 a year.

The Welfare of Holocaust Survivors Foundation reported that 208,000 Holocaust survivors remain in Israel, a decline of 26,000 from 2009. The decline of the number of living survivors coincides with increasing anti-Semitic campaigns that deny, belittle and even mock the Holocaust. The Palestinian Authority teaches the Holocaust denial doctoral dissertation of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas throughout its educational curriculum.

Only three percent of Holocaust survivors in Israel are under the age of 70, while half of them are over the age of 80. Projected figures indicate that only 145,000 survivors will still be alive in 2015.

Their most common health problems are hypertension, heart disease, chronic neck and back pain and arthritis. A study has shown that 92 percent of Holocaust survivors live in their home community, while the others are in institutional housing.

The Holocaust Welfare fund assists approximately 60,000 survivors, nearly three times the number of those who required financial help in 2005.

Chairman of the Foundation for Holocaust Victims Elazar Stern said, "Our data show that in the coming years due to aging, the needs of needy Holocaust survivors still will continue to grow…. The younger generation will not forgive us if we do not deal respectfully with the older generation."

As published online at ArutzSheva, 1 May 2011

Meant To Benefit Canadians

Let's hear that again? Canada a potential destination for medical-tourism? That's a stretch, isn't it? Universal medicare and hospitalization within Canada is already stretched to its outer limits. And Canada is not in the business, like countries whose economies are struggling, in the business of making a reputation, let alone money, off the avails of surgical-medical expertise, therapies and state-of-the-art, precision equipment.

Canada has long waiting lists for certain surgical procedures. There is a shortage of medical experts in some quite particular disciplines. There exists, relative to other wealthy and developed countries of the world, a relative paucity of expensive diagnostic and surgical equipment. All complicated by the inexorability of a steadily aging population, requiring more hospital admissions and critical care.

But then, there are some that present the situation and the possibility that Canada might indeed open up to a different kind of medical-surgical treatment offered to foreigners suffering from unfortunate medical conditions. Apart from the occasional temporary visas issued to young children urgently requiring life-saving surgery or organ transplants from undeveloped countries through pure charity.

There are those who contend that simply because Canada is so relatively well endowed with the expertise of surgeons who have mastered new life-saving techniques in organ transplantation and surgical advances, that there is an obligation to share with others less fortunate than Canadians who may take advantage of such opportunities.

It's an argument that fails somewhat to convince, since in all instances, save for charity being extended to poor sufferers from abroad, non-Canadians seeking advanced medical-surgical treatment in Canada must pay their own way, and that way tends to be exceedingly expensive. Medical tourists going to countries like India and China experience a good level of satisfaction with their outcomes.

But costs associated with travelling there and other countries offering superior medical treatment in facilities not normally offered to their own populations, are relatively cost-effective to the medical tourist. It has become an industry, one that the travel and tourism industry itself has become lucratively associated with.

There are currently up to fifty countries of the world involved in offering medical tourism, where people may with relative ease, as long as they can pay the freight, receive joint replacement, cardiac surgery, dental and cosmetic surgeries, and surgeries that haven't been approved in their own countries like the MS 'liberation' procedure.

People willing to travel outside their own countries at a special rate tied up with surgical procedures must consider that the regulations and professional medical-school training may not equal the standards demanded in their countries of origin. That follow-up treatment and the drug protocol may prove to be problematical on their return home.

In Toronto the University Health Network representing multi-organ transplants appears to feel that since the medical professions' ultimate role is life-saving, it hardly matters whose lives are being saved, and the option to seek life-saving treatment should transcend borders. Doctors and patients from diverse places on the Globe make contact with the Toronto General for transplants, with patients bringing with them living donors.

But Canada's hospitals, its doctors, its medical-teaching universities are taxpayer-subsidized. There is a universal insurance plan for all Canadians paid out of general tax funds transferred to the provinces by the federal government, and individual provinces exact additional fees from families by way of an added tax in support of universal medicare.

Institutions and the benefits that flow from them are meant for the well-being of Canadians, acknowledging the odd exception for humanitarian purposes.

Even if a foreign patient is prepared to pay the entire cost of travel, the medical-surgical procedure and the follow up requirements, expert time and attention is taken away from Canadians, and operating rooms and hospital beds - already in short supply - are used for foreign, non-tax-paying individuals.

In the end, were this to be ome common practise in Canada, there is nothing particularly humanitarian about offering services to people from abroad. In essence, the services would be offered only to those who have the financial wherewithal.

It might benefit the health professionals by giving them more experience and enabling procedures to be streamlined, but this would occur under normal circumstances as procedures become more widely available.

Canada has, like most other countries, a problem acquiring enough donor organs to service the long waiting list of Canadians awaiting life-saving transplant operations. It makes little practical sense to complicate the issue even further by extending to non-Canadians the opportunity to travel on a visitor's visa for the purpose of acquiring surgery.

The issue is, if not a rare commodity, then at least one that is sufficiently difficult to obtain that its acquisition should be available to a narrow spectrum of beneficiaries; those who are citizens of the country, and who have paid their taxes in support of a universal education and medical care system meant to benefit Canadians.

Africa's Rainbow Nation

Nobility of spirit is a rare commodity so that when it modestly exhibits its presence it takes people aback, they sit up, they take notice, they applaud. The team of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu transformed the spirit of South Africa. Of course they had a little help from their friends, countries like Canada which undertook to exert diplomatic and trade embargo pressure on the Apartheid government.

And South Africa was also indebted to its neighbours, like Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Angolans who kindly gave shelter to black South Africans fleeing the violence of their country during the paroxysms that finally led to the surrender of the country by the ruling white Afrikaans back to the rightful owners, black South Africans. At which juncture Mr. Mandela was finally freed from prison and governed his country offering equal rights to all.

And Bishop Tutu presided at the spectacle that became a healing circle called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where victims gave witness to the unspeakable and the suffering, and violators confessed their sins and all was forgiven. And the country settled in to become other than what it had been, with an honoured place for all and promises of housing and jobs.

A noble dream to be sure. What happened next was a slow, agonized climb in the resolute determination to become a fair and free society, but it was fairer and freer for some, not all, and endemic poverty was scarcely relieved, and decent living conditions still eluded in the slums. And tribal antipathies proved as resistant to enlightened thought as the moneyed-class system.

Where wealth could be achieved, but it had to be lived behind barbed wire and stone walls, sheltered from the crass thievery of the mobs who would take advantage if they could, of the riches known to reside there, protected by armed marksmen. So it is not they who are targeted, but the easier prey, the poor, murdered, their scant belongings looted, children violated.

One of the most crime-ridden, violent societies on Earth now; most unfortunate. And what is particularly notable is the resurrection of ancient primitive tribal and clan hunts. Where South Africans armed with chains, spears, whips, axes, cudgels, shovels, metal sticks; just about anything serviceable to the purpose, set out to hunt down defenceless refugees.

People who have fled the dangers in their own countries, from Mozambique, Angola, Nigeria, Somalia, Malawi and Zimbabwe. There are said to be over three million Zimbabweans seeking haven in South Africa. Robert Mugabe's people amidst their home-grown tribal 'misunderstandings', prefer to flee to where they might stand a chance of survival.

Even though they are hunted mercilessly by South Africans for whom an evening of blood games, of looting, beating, killing, raping, provides entertainment and a purpose in life.

From the time of Apartheid's Soweto killings and Winnie Mandela's sporty bodyguards under her direction abducting Stompie Moeketsi, a 13-year-old boy to torture and "necklace" him to the present where the very nationals who had once offered protection to South African asylum seekers are now set on fire for the entertainment of the mobs.

Even the retired Desmund Tutu who entreats South Africans to "Please, please stop! These are our sisters and brothers. We can't repay them (for their past support of desperate South Africans fleeing violence before the end of apartheid) by killing their children", exercises his conscience in vain, for no one hears, and none are interested.

"They set you alight ... and laugh at you while you are burning. It's so shameful right now to be a South African, seeing all these things happening here, while claiming to be a rainbow nation, after all the struggles that our parents have gone through."

The Message is the Medium

Spiritual leader of well over a billion faithful of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI sought to appeal to humanitarian compassion in his Easter "Urbi et Orbi" blessing and speech. The time for lamentation and rejoicing as good a time as any to remind the faithful and the world at large that human beings have a practical and moral obligation to one another.

Pope Benedict must think in terms of human goodness as he gives his benediction to the waiting crowds. He must not submit to the reality that human goodness and compassion eludes too many in this world of warped entitlements and values. He remains for the faithful the embodiment of God's promise to humankind; that the faithful will be redeemed.

In his elevated station as the interceder between the Almighty and the people, it remains his obligation to instill hope and the need for kindness and consideration; to elevate the souls of his followers. He speaks of diplomacy and dialogue triumphing over conflict, that kind words are a worthy replacement for violence and arms.

This is the world that he lives within, but not the one that humanity struggles to endure. "In the countries of northern Africa and the Middle East, may all citizens, especially young people, work to promote the common good." A noble sentiment, without one shred of doubt. But the countries of northern Africa and the Middle East, particularly the young people, are extremely busy slaughtering one another.

Tribal antipathies, regional disputes; territorial boundaries; acquisition of natural resources; religious and sectarian, ethnic and clan hatreds thrive, helped by the greed of their totalitarian rulers, and the endemic poverty left as the lot of the people whose human rights have been violated. But the crucible of hatred and violence does not need the impetus of poverty to set it alight; hatred of the other will do very well.

Pope Benedict has little option, as the spokesperson for good in the world, relaying God's wishes for humankind, but to call for peace: "That the light of peace and of human dignity may overcome the darkness of division, hate and violence" in the Middle East. The 'inviolable right' to dignity and basic human rights is violated because it cannot be guaranteed.

Visceral distrust, hatred and violence sadly express humankind's ultimate degradation, one all too quickly resorted to with particular fervour in the Middle East, a brimming cauldron of resentment and paranoia.

Solve that and God will indeed have descended to Earth.

Malicious Credibility

The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress have led a sanctimonious protest in public, airing their grievance that the Holdomor is not receiving equal, if not superior place of pride front-and-centre at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. They claim that the Holocaust, a historical and precisely-documented event representing the atrocity of institutionalized genocide should be treated as just one of many such events.

They take great umbrage that the museum was originally planned, and continues to be planned, to primarily showcase the Holocaust as representative of the unspeakable tragedy that can befall a specifically-focused-upon ethnic/religious group through systematically de-humanizing them with an organized agenda of slander to justify all human rights denied them, isolating them from the rest of humanity and embarking on a mission of total annihilation.

It does not assuage their grievance to be informed that the Holdomor, and indeed all events of man's inhumanity to man will be present, documented and clearly mourned in the museum. Their resentment and anger is directed at the plans to 'elevate' one nation's tragedy over that of another. Reasoning with them that the Holocaust represents a singular event in the scope and detail of its prosecution makes no inroads with them.

They have taken to inflating the dreadful and deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainians (1932-33) by the Soviet Union in an effort to 'prove' that it represented a horror whose effect far transcended that of the Holocaust. Their loss was greater than that of European Jewry. Their numbers of dead far outstripped that of the Jews. The assault and trauma left them was more awful and must be acknowledged.

Academics and scholars representing studies in history, sociology, social anthropology, languages, literature, linguistics, communications, education, remembrance and research, history and classics, legal and political philosophy, holocaust studies, comparative politics, contemporary theory, humanities, sociology and social research, study of contemporary antisemitism, European studies, culture studies and academies of sciences, Slavic languages and literatures, from the United States, Britain, Spain, Canada, Israel, France, Ukraine, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Poland, and Russia have become involved to admonish this movement to de-legitimize the purpose of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

They correct the figures related to the Ukrainian famine to represent the true numbers, not the inflated numbers put forward by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. They point out that some of the hallowed nationalist groups that these two associations defend were Fascists, allied with the Nazis and were themselves responsible for many civilian deaths.

And they conclude their statement of support for the function, purpose and focus of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights by this summation:

"We therefore assert that since the UCCLA and UCC have not understood that confronting the historical record openly and honestly is preferable to manipulative falsehood, have engaged in a competition of suffering, and have failed to acknowledge both the vices and the virtues of the nationalist movement, they ought to stay out of a debate about the Canadian Museum of Human Rights."

Influence, Respect, Humility

There is something endearing about even a programmed, obviously staged event where the most prestigious, respected religious authority figure in the world appears to be humbly presenting himself in a modest setting, to respond to the confusion in the hearts of his adoring public.

As the single most impressive and important representative of God on Earth Pope Benedict XVI made his august presence available for enquiry. At the televised question-and-answer session that took place on Good Friday, Pope Benedict responded to a question by a Japanese child by his admission that he does not have "the answers" to human suffering.

No one is too grand or too important to hold themselves above and apart from ordinary people. Particularly those people whose lives have been touched by God and who acknowledge their need to worship their Saviour during this time of his resurrection celebrated in a yearly ritual of mourning and joyfulness.

And Pope Benedict holds himself responsible for his vast flock, as must a pope do.

It is to his great credit that he has not shied away from the need to speak forcibly and without diplomatic guile to the modern-day forces of brutal violence expressed through the resentment of another, competing religion, against the followers of the Roman Catholic Church. He has pleaded repeatedly for Muslim countries to respect the human rights of Christians.

He has responded to the outrage of his own parishioners - for all those who worship at the altar of the Roman Catholic Church are his parishioners - against the depredations of parish priests and their superiors in violating the trust and the faith of children by sexually abusing them for decades. His response has been one of anguish - and of guilt.

"I am saddened", he said "that I can do so little". Referring without doubt, to the proclivities of human beings whose spirit and courage has not been equal to the demands placed upon them in the service of God. He is saddened, that though he reproves and protests against humankind's continual surrender to tribal, clan and religious destruction, passions are unabated.

He often enough - because, as the major representative as he would have it, of God upon this planet, he is infallible, and his decision is to be respected - infuriates both the faithful and those for whom his faith is not theirs. He seeks to be a unifying force for goodness yet he is often seen as a divisive force through his decisions.

Given his due, his is an impossible task. And even when tasks are possible there is the reality that no one can possibly ever satisfy all people all the time. He likely comes as close to that impossible goal as anyone may.

But then ... on the other hand ...

Atrocious Love

A child is so wholly dependent on parents for emotional stability and support, for guidance and for caring love, that with all or a portion of those absolute requirements withdrawn from that child the world must certainly appear as a dark void of misery. It is not actually possible for most people to visualize a child so utterly abandoned, left hopelessly adrift by a parent's disinterest, or in certain circumstances, left to psychotic episodes of child abuse and exploitation.

Most people feel an instinctive, subconscious need to to cherish a child, support and love a child. It is a deep-rooted imperative inscribed in our collective genes, tied securely to our most basic instinct of survival. Love and compassion flow from strangers toward an abandoned child. People become emotionally moved to do whatever it is in their power, to help a child overcome feelings of being lost and abandoned.

Yet the dreadful fate of some children is to be violated; by extreme physical neglect, by psychological torment arising from lack of care, and by sexual predation. In Ottawa, a trial presided by Ontario Court Justice Lise Maisonneuve has just concluded, with a 57-year-old man being sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment as penalty for having molested and abused his step-daughter from the age of six to age fifteen.

The child was very well aware that her mother was involved in her abuse simply because her mother witnessed it and encouraged it, to keep her husband in a good frame of mind. And the step-father testified that this was an ongoing life-lesson for his step-daughter, to teach her that everything comes at a price. The gifts and money he gave her were in exchange for 'favours', of a sexual nature.

The birthday gift the girl implored her mother to grant her for her fifteenth birthday was to have her mother finally put a stop to the sexual abuse. The young child lived a life of horror, and when her pleas to her mother went unanswered she finally revealed to a friend and the friend's mother what had been occurring to her.

The girl testified against her step-father, but no charges were laid against her compliant and willing mother, because the girl refused to press charges against her mother. The mother admitted to police she was aware of what was occurring, she witnessed her husband touching her daughter's breasts, and knew that from age six the girl was forced to masturbate the man.

The mother gave no explanation for her having assisted her husband in abusing her daughter. And she has no intention of leaving the man. A court-appointed psychiatrist testified that the man claimed the girl enjoyed his sexual attention. The young girl testified in a victim impact statement her empty feelings, lack of self regard, and thoughts of suicide.

And there is, in Montreal, another ongoing trial, that of a doctor, a father of two young children, whose wife, he discovered was having an affair. That knowledge devastated the husband. In the absence of his wife he murdered his five-year-old son and his three-year-old daughter in their beds, using his surgeon's skills to eviscerate them.

The morning he was discovered in his bedroom, having taken a drug overdose, with h is dead children lying bloodied and cold in their beds, police rushed him to hospital. He asked paramedics looking after him en route to hospital to "Tell my wife I love her". And he also said "I did it this morning".

His parents, who lived an hour's drive away had an anxious premonition when they had spoken with him the night before; his mental condition seemed highly abnormal. They had discussed between them whether to drive over that winter's night to ascertain whether all was well, and decided in the end, to wait until morning.

And in Manitoba, a Winnipeg woman was sentenced to 12 years in prison for smothering her two-year-old daughter to death while at a Child and Family Services-approved shelter. She was under the supervision of Child and Family Services while living at a women's shelter where the little girl had been returned to her care. The 29-year-old mother insisted she hadn't meant to kill her child, just stop her crying.

An autopsy of the child revealed she had over thirty separate injuries to "nearly every portion of the body", in the days leading up to her death. Injuries that included bite marks to her legs.

Terror Honeypot

To the world of the West it is a romantic love story, a marriage of royalty, starring a successor to the British throne. Everyone is enthralled by the forthcoming marriage of Britain's Prince William as a charming knight, and Kate Middleton, as his future consort. Two handsome young people representing tradition and royal heritage.

The event of this century and the century is yet so young...

Westminster Abbey is prepared to host the grand event, celebratory bunting has been hung along the processional route, and excitement is in the air. Foreign heads of state, kings and queens, aristocrats and celebrities have been invited and all are a-twitter with the good feelings and excitement of the event.

Well, there are of course, some anti-monarchist republican-types who are less than thrilled and stating their objections to the celebration of nonentities tying the knot and making legal what they've long dipped into, no longer scandalous but representing the order of the day. Let's bypass them, for their time may yet come.

It is this other Britain, this Britain of immigrants from another world entirely, who live in ardent resentment of everything that Britain represents, yet take graspingly of social benefits they become entitled to like free council flats and generous financial state hand-outs rather than tediously scout out work opportunities.

But because they become citizens and are thus entitled to voice themselves and express their disgust with the country they have planned their own celebrations. To that end, Muslims Against Crusades plan a demonstration on that very day:

"We find that one of the biggest advocates of British imperialism, Flight Lieutenant Prince William, wishes to enjoy an extravagant wedding ceremony, ironically at the expense of the taxpayer", their website advises.

"In light of this, sincere Muslims have decided to organize a forceful demonstration, to once again highlight that as long as Britain continues in its quest to occupy Muslim land and wage war against the religion of God (Allah) that we too shall continue in our efforts to undermine their regime and condemn all of their representatives, military or otherwise.

"We strongly advise Prince William and his Nazi sympathizer, to withdraw from the crusader British military and give up all affiliation to the tyrannical British Empire. We promise that should they refuse, then the day which the nation has been dreaming of for so long will become a nightmare."

A corresponding demonstration has been planned by the English Defence League, an anti-Islamist group. Who dedicate themselves to upholding and supporting British tradition, and strenuously oppose the Islamists who during Armistice Day burned poppies and shouted "British soldiers burn in hell".

This is all rather complicated, made even more so by the fact that British security informs police that there is a high threat level of "severe", represented by the potential of terrorist attacks during this most auspicious celebratory time for Britain's royal watchers. And demonstrations by anarchists are also in the picture.

This event portends an exciting time indeed, to be had by all.

The Last Word

There's a lamentable paucity of women in Canadian politics. Politics is, admittedly, a rough-and-tumble game of one-upsmanship, of agitating and finagling, demonstrating and cajoling, advantage-seeking and provocations. It has always been a man's game, evoking a spirit of competitive action, akin to participatory team sport and intellectual warfare. Women have got to be tough to compete, to be treated like 'one of the boys'.

And tough women don't weep and wail and defend themselves by invoking pity and compassion as a wronged and helpless woman, one who has in her arms a gurgling new baby, isn't he cute? So none of this is fair, this characterization as politics as primarily a man's occupation and not a woman's. Too much hinges on participation by both genders to truly represent the interests of an entire society.

Just as men have to tough it out when the game gets rough, so too do women. It is hugely unfortunate that the Prime Minister chose not to courteously set time aside in his busy schedule to permit a brief interview with Helena Guergis either before or after he decided to remove her from her portfolio and from the Conservative caucus. One might suppose decency and civility required at least that on behalf of a former colleague.

On the other hand, it could also be assumed that Ms. Guergis, when she was still being defended for her many gaffes by Stephen Harper, had enjoyed previous little chats where it may have been established that her deportment and attention to her job might be improved, be less exasperatingly irritating to her political coevals and Cabinet colleagues.

Patience is not extended forever, not on anyone's behalf. When questionable new irregularities arose, compounded by unsubstantiated allegations, it may have become evident to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet that patience sometimes runs thin when the rewards are not forthcoming, and there comes a time to pull the plug. Ms. Guergis went down with the bathwater.

Tales told out of class may be rumours, but the rumours that attached themselves to her through her husband's finagling and misuse of his former position with the Conservatives and her current insider position of trust and entitlement within that same party simply ran afoul of expectations and adherence to rules and regulations.

She had her opportunity to exact a bit of revenge, but the simple facts of inattentiveness to party discipline and expectations due from a Cabinet minister however modest in nature, and her unfortunate pairing with an unprincipled, entitled former politician led the way to her dismissal. She still had her elected position, and she is now re-contesting it.

Her constituents will have the last word.

Three Years Later

Good grief, where is the common sense, the decency, the moral fortitude and intelligence when it comes to releasing from custody the most disgusting murderers whose crimes are unfathomable and beyond the pale. A man whose mental instability is well known. Who planned the murder of his three young children.

That he was responsible for murdering them is a known, but he is excused because he has a mental disorder.

Does that mental disorder make him less responsible for having planned to murder them in the expected and temporary absence of their mother? Does releasing this man from custody in a psychiatric ward back into the community equate with the dreadful crime he committed?

Does the community, let alone the country and its system of justice gain something of value knowing that this man who stabbed, strangled and suffocated his 10 year old daughter and 8 and 5 year old sons has been excused from full responsibility because of a mental disorder?

Allen Schoenborn, father of three, killer of those same three, not to be found responsible for his heinous act because of mental impairment. To release him from custody, theorizing that he represents no further threat to anyone in the community sounds rather cavalier. For one thing, it trivializes the dreadful act he committed.

There are three bright, beautiful children whose lives were viciously stolen. Their mother left bereft of their living presence, free to grieve their absence for the rest of her life. And the rest of her life may be briefer than imagined, since her husband, the father of their children, murdered those children to exercise his power over his wife.

Darcie Clarke, the children's mother was living in Coquitlam, British Columbia when the B.C. Review Board made their determination to have her former husband released. Into the local municipality. Her sorrow is still raw, her children dead three years. The man is as he was, and now he is free to live out his life as he will.

And that may very well include murdering his wife now as well. And then he can be found not criminally responsible for that act, due to mental incapacitation.

Upon which the board members who had him released should volunteer to invite this man to live with their own families on a rotating basis, as a generous act of compassion.

Vanguard Leadership Group

US Black Students Demand Arabs Stop Calling Israel Apartheid
by Maayana Miskin

The African-American student organization Vanguard Leadership Group is standing with Israel when it comes to use of the term “apartheid.” The term is “false and deeply offensive” when applied to Israel, the group said in advertisements published on Thursday.

The Vanguard Leadership Group spoke out in response to “apartheid” claims from the group Students for Justice in Palestine. Under an ad titled, “Words matter,” the group said, “We request that you immediately stop referring to Israel as an apartheid society and to acknowledge that the Arab minority in Israel enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in the government.”

“It is highly objectionable to those who know the truth about the Israelis' record on human rights and how it so clearly contrasts with South Africa's,” the group said.

Students for Justice in Palestine “has chosen to manipulate rather than inform with this illegitimate analogy,” Vanguard Leadership said. “Decency, justice, and the hope of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East compel us to demand an immediate cessation to the deliberate mischaracterizations of Israel.”

Ceasing use of the term “apartheid” when discussing Israel would be a “first step toward raising the level of discourse,” the letter concluded.

Anti-Israel groups have long accused Israel of being an “apartheid state,” borrowing the term from South Africa, where for many decades a small white minority ruled the black majority by force. Racial discrimination was enforced by law, and black residents were denied citizenship, given inferior public services, barred from using white theaters, pools, churches, and other facilities, and judged under different laws.

In Israel, Arabs and other non-Jewish minorities are full citizens, with the same rights and obligations as any other Israeli. One exception is the fact that Arab citizens are not required to serve in the IDF, although they are allowed to do so, and a handful choose to enlist.

Palestinian Authority Arabs are not granted rights as citizens because they do not wish to become citizens, but rather, hope to create a new Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Similarly, Israelis have no rights under PA law, and in fact, are forbidden to own land or even to enter PA-controlled areas.

As published online at ArutzSheva, 11 April 2011

Another Martyr

But this time the cause was somewhat different. A Palestinian Arab whose dedication it was, through the influence of his Israeli-Jewish mother, to teach Palestinian children to reject the societal-taught views of considering Israelis and Jews as enemies to be violently crushed. In honour of his mother who herself dedicated to her life to that very issue, Juliano Mer Khamis continued her work at the theatre co-founded by himself and his mother, Arna Mer.

At that theatre Palestinian children were exposed to theatre arts. They were also exposed to the concept of rejecting murder and terrorism. That if they had a grievance with an authority that they felt violated their rights, that they regard the alternative to violent response: non-violent activism. While Mr. Khamis worked hand-in-glove with his mother, it was as a Palestinian Arab, like his father, with no acknowledgement of his Jewish blood.

In perfect accord with his mother's decision to devote herself to the cause of the Palestinians. Although he was recognized through his professional acting in Israel as an accomplished actor, there could be little doubt that he was a Palestinian Arab through his personal decision-making that saw him accept that mantle and reject the other half of his genetic inheritance. Which did not stop Hamas from loathingly naming him a "Zionist Jew whose hands should be cut off."

For in dedicating himself to encouraging young Palestinians to think of active resistance to an occupying force by rejecting violence, he was deliberately undermining the teaching of Hamas which encourages 'martyrdom' through the odious atrocities of suicide bombings. Mr. Khamis seemed to have little interest in complicating matters by explaining to the young Palestinians he sought to influence that the one-sided view of an 'occupier' nation and a 'victim' population did not reflect reality.

He was a Palestinian of his time and his place, himself tainted by the zeitgeist of Middle East politics, as an Arab who viewed the State of Israel as an affliction upon the victimized Palestinians. The complexities of a state attempting to protect itself and its people against constant physical attacks necessitating that the state use armed methods to meet armed militias seemed of little interest to him.

He accepted the prevailing Palestinian propaganda, that Arabs suffer and Israel oppresses. But the work he was engaged in also highlighted the violence, the aggression, the anger and determination to surmount their inferior state of an occupied people by lashing out and committing mass atrocities that young Palestinians grew up with. Taught that Israelis and Jews are evil, they feared and hated them.

And high-lighted the fact that peace is constantly beyond reach because the Palestinians have learned to cherish their victimhood, preferring it to a peace settlement because viewing themselves as victims allows them to appeal to the outside world to support them against the monstrous state mechanism that grinds them into miserable poverty. An imaginary situation but one supremely satisfying to the angst-ridden Palestinians.

The myth of martyrdom for the cause, the urgent need to 'resist', a camouflage term for mayhem and murder, to avenge themselves against a tormentor that exists only in their delusional minds, mired in tribal antipathies and traditional absorption with their victim status, remains the crown jewel in the Palestinians' heritage game of blame and hatred, slander and violence.

While Hamas detested the man, he was admired and loved within Jenin where the theatre was located. The young Palestinians that he went to such great pains to imbue with a more balanced view of choices open to them, must surely have learned something of value from him. Despite which it would appear that many of the children he taught eventually assumed their destinies as armed fighters and suicide-bombing terrorists.

His arguments not to resort to violence, to think that killing your enemy is the only solution open to intelligent human beings might not have been lost on all the young people he taught, however. His interference with the carefully scripted program of Hamas and the other terror groups who invested in training future generations to take up the cudgel with their foe, was intolerable to the terrorists.

They have no intention of putting a halt to the killing, for this is what motivates and satisfies their aspirations to succeed in destroying their target. And Mr. Khamis simply became one of those targets. A martyr to his own cause.

Oh, Elizabeth!

Snubbed again. Life can be so unfair! You deserve better, we know you do, because you insist that you do. Never yourself elected to a seat in Parliament, nor even one of your Green Party candidates, but you're a credible candidate for inclusion in a leaders' debate to be televised to the great Canadian electorate.

There are many who believe that your eventual inclusion the last time around served only to muddy the waters, confuse issues, values, priorities. Along with the other three main party leaders you took part in the pre-election debate, but, according to the pundits, added nothing of any substance. Just the occasional environmental chirp.

Chirping is out. Tweeting is in. And you tweeted your disgust at the lack of justice. How could they do this to you? Not only the broadcasting executives, those stupid twerps, but that unconscionable federal court judge who disinterestedly refused to issue an emergency ruling? I mean - twerp!

Green Party leader Elizabeth May in Vancouver, B.C., on Wednesday March 30, 2011. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck.

Poll

And then, of course, there's those other parties, those losers, the Marijuana Party, the Pirate party, the Communist party, the Libertarian Party, the Rhinoceros Party; give us a break! Do they really think the Green Party belongs in the same none-entity category they inhabit? The "Other parties Discussion" may garner them a few mentions in local media, but we're talking national coverage with the Leaders' Debate!

Bloody well of course there's no way Elizabeth May will lower herself and the Green Party to appear at the Other Parties Discussion. What's to be gained by it, associating herself and her party with those also-rans-but-didn't-rate!

Really, life can be such a bitch!