Today, I bring you an article by Christina Blizzard of the QMI Agency verbatim about how
Ontario gun laws make mass shootings less likely, according to the OPP commissioner.
As usual, my response is below and there is room for your comment below that but please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent.
OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis. (STAN BEHAL/Toronto Sun files)
Still, Canadian gun laws make mass shootings less likely. “Even without the long-gun registry — which I am sorry to see go — we
still have better controls on the purchasing of firearms than the
U.S.,” he said. He doesn’t buy the gun lobby argument that arming everyone will cut down on gun crimes. “There are women walking in the Walmart with baby carriages wearing .45s on their hips in the U.S.” he said. “And they wonder why their crime is so crazy.” Lewis said there are more murders in Washington, D.C., which has a
population of less than one million, than there are in Toronto. “They have ten times the murders that Toronto has even though we’ve got three million people,” he said.
While this country has had its problems with gun violence, it’s nowhere near the levels it’s at in the U.S., he said. “We’re doing something right, as is Ireland, the U.K. and other jurisdictions.” Lewis said all major police forces put in place new protocols for
dealing with gun violence in schools after the 2006 Pennsylvania Amish
school shooting. “We have better weapons, better vests and better training for
officers so they don’t stand around and wait for a SWAT team,” Lewis
said. “They can proactively go into the school and go straight to the threat and deal with it.”
The bottom line, says Lewis, is that if there’s a crazed gunman
determined to shoot-up a school, there’s precious little anyone can do
to stop them. “If there’s someone out there who’s in that mental state and has
access to a firearm, legally or illegally, it’s going to be a scary
situation, but I think we’re better prepared up here.” And while we in Canada like to be smug and superior when we look at
the U.S., the fact is, we’ve had our share of shootings and we can’t be
complacent. I’m not talking about the long-gun a farmer keeps in the barn.
Lewis points out there is no reason for anyone apart from military and cops to have assault weapons. You don’t use them to shoot bears. Fair enough, Stephen Harper soundly rejected the suggestions from Toews’ firearms advisory group. The fact they were made at all shows some people disagree. How many tragedies will it take for the message to get through:
Assault weapons have no place in attics and basements where any
disturbed nutbar can get his hands on them. The price is too high — and too many innocents have paid it already
Kids in school!
my response.....
While talk about an easing
of regulations surrounding the ban on prohibited weapons such as assault
weapons was quickly slapped down by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the American President now wants to have a
“national conversation on guns”. No problem, but unless this national
conversation will include
allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons, then it isn’t a
conversation at all, it is a lecture, according to Larry Correia in 1389 Blog. The fact remains....the single best method to respond
to a mass shooter is with an immediate,
violent response. The vast majority of the time, as soon as a mass
shooter meets serious resistance, it bursts their fantasy world bubble.
Then they kill themselves or surrender. This has happened over and over
again. But OPP Commissioner Lewis says that if a crazed gunman
is determined to shoot-up a school, there’s precious little anyone can do
to stop them. This I vehemently disagree with!!
While Police are a necessary part of the solution, any honest cop
will tell you that when seconds count, they are only minutes away. Thankfully, after
Columbine law enforcement changed their methods in dealing with active
shooters. It used to be that you took up a perimeter and waited for
overwhelming force before going in. Now, as soon as you have two
officers on scene, they can go in to confront the shooter. There are a
lot of very sound tactical reasons for going in with only two, mostly because your
success/survival rates jump dramatically when you put two cops through a
door at once. The shooter’s brain can take a moment to decide between
targets, and that moment can be fatal for the shooter! The reason the cops go in fast is because they know that every second
counts. The longer the shooter has to operate, more innocents will die. However, cops can’t be everywhere. There are at best only twenty thousand cops on duty at any given time patrolling the entire
country. Excellent response time is in the three-five minute range.
We’ve seen what bad guys can do in three minutes, but sometimes it is
far worse. So in some cases that means the
bad guys can have ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes to do horrible
things with nobody effectively fighting back.
More kids in school!
But Police can be expensive, so if we can’t have cops at school while our children are in class, what can we do? The statistics tell us that 14 is the average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when
the
shooter is stopped by law enforcement while 2.5 is the average number of
people
shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians.
The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it
started. Granted, there are a few teachers who
simply can’t comprehend themselves being mandated to carry a gun into a classroom, or
those who believe teachers are all too incompetent and can’t be
trusted. So, don’t make it mandatory. The only people who are capable with a gun are the ones who wish to take responsibility and
carry a gun. Make it voluntary.
It is rather simple. Just make it so
that local concealed weapons law trumps any Federal Gun Control law. All that means is that teachers who voluntarily decide
to get a concealed weapons permit are capable of carrying their guns at
work. Easy. Simple. Cheap. Available now. The teachers are there already. The school staff is there already.
Their reaction time is measured in seconds, not minutes. They can serve
as our immediate violent response team. Best case scenario, they engage and
stop the attacker, or it bursts his fantasy bubble and he commits
suicide. Worst case scenario, the armed staff provides a distraction,
and while he’s concentrating on killing them, he’s not killing more
of our children!!
and even more kids in school!
Liberals may whale that this is impossible, and provide all sorts of
terrible worst case scenarios about all of the horrors that will happen
with a gun in the classroom. No problem, I welcome this conversation because this has happened
before. In fact, there are some Toronto schools that allow for Police with weapons in school right now. Yes, we have for several years now but they are not in every school across our beautiful country, and that worries me!
It is no secret that 'Gun Free Zones' are hunting preserves for innocent people. Period. Think about it. Think about a violent, homicidal madman, looking to make a
statement and hoping to go from disaffected loser to the most famous person
in the world, for a brief period of time. One way to accomplish this goal is to kill a whole
bunch of innocent folks. So where’s the best place to go shoot all these people?
Obviously, it is someplace where nobody can shoot back. That No Guns Allowed sign is not a cross that wards off
vampires. It is pathetic wishful thinking. The only people who obey No Guns signs are people who obey the law. People who obey the law aren’t going on rampages. As is
always the case, people who want to commit a crime don’t care about
laws.
and even more kids in school!
I suspect
that some lone shooter will think twice about
going on the campus of a school where it is known that folks are armed.
These types of shooters are cowards. They go after the defenseless. It only stands to reason that citizens should be armed if they are known targets of gun violence. Consider this report from The Weekly Standard: “David
Gregory mocked the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre for proposing that armed guards
be at every school in America. But the NBC host seems to have no
problem with armed guards protecting his kids everyday where they attend
school in Washington, D.C.” “The Gregory children go to school with the children of President Barack Obama", according to the Washington Post. That school is the co-ed Quaker school Sidwell Friends. According
to a scan of the school’s online faculty-staff directory, Sidwell has a
security department made up of at least 11 people. Many of those are
police officers, who are presumably armed. Typical Liberal hypocrisy; protection for me but not for thee.
Folks demanding change!
Since guns laws and
places where guns can be carried have restricted law-abiding citizens
from having an effective method to bring down a criminal with a gun, multiple murders like the rampage that happened in Connecticut have increased. So, do you think turning the other cheek is an effective strategy?
Although some may think it's a little early to present my 2012 award for journalistic excellence for the best article written in any newspaper, this year my award goes to Ezra Levant of the QMI Agency for his brilliant expose about a fellow, a hero who is no longer with his young family and another fellow who now in a Canadian prison who along with his Toronto family have been at the centre of a media storm. Below, I present Ezra's article verbatim and as usual, my response is below....and there is room for your comment below that...or email me directly if you would like additional information.
In memorium...US Army Sgt. 1st Class Chris Speer
A courtroom sketch shows defendant Omar Khadr
listening to testimony during his sentencing hearing at the Guantanamo
Bay Naval Base in Cuba, in this sketch from October 26, 2010. (REUTERS/Janet Hamlin/Pool/Files)
Ezra told us on Monday, October 01, 2012 that there are five myths about Omar Khadr. The biggest of which is that you can’t do anything — oh yes, you can.
The first is that we had to take him into Canada. That’s not true. A
U.S. jury sentenced him to 40 years in prison for the cold-blooded
murder of a special forces medic name Christopher Speer. It was only due to Canada’s participation in a plea bargain that it
was cut down to eight years, and then cut down further with a transfer
to Canada’s ultra-liberal parole laws. Forty years down to perhaps two. So much for truth in sentencing.
But even if Khadr had not been convicted of murder, he had no right
to simply leave Guantanamo Bay, any more than a German soldier interned
at a Canadian prisoner of war camp in the Second World War had the right
to simply head home in 1942. Today’s wars are against transnational terrorist groups. So the U.S.
Congress and Supreme Court have approved a modified POW system. Anyone
who is a member of al-Qaida or the Taliban can be detained until the war
against them is over. No trial or charges needed.
We didn’t have trials
for every German soldier. They were just kept until the war was over.
That’s U.S. law.
Canadian law could have kept Khadr out, too. The International
Transfer of Offenders Act gives Public Safety Minister Vic Toews the
discretion to keep out Canadian citizens, who are prisoners in other
countries, if they’d pose a danger here at home. No prison transfer in
Canadian history has been as dangerous as Khadr.
The second myth is that Khadr was a child soldier. Khadr wasn’t a
soldier — the Geneva Convention says that soldiers must be part of a
chain of command, wear uniforms, carry their weapons openly and
generally follow the laws of war. Murdering a medic in cold blood isn’t
war — it’s terrorism. But was Khadr a child? He was a few weeks shy of his 16th birthday when he murdered Speer. We prosecute 15-year-old murderers in Canada. There is no
jurisdiction in the world that doesn’t. Even the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child says a child soldier is someone 14 or under.
The third myth is that Khadr is peaceful. In Guantanamo, he taunted
guards by bragging about killing Speer. He said laying landmines was the
proudest thing he’d ever done in his life. One of his guards was an
African-American woman — three things he hates. So he called her a
“bitch,” a “slave,” and a “whore.” Even his lawyer, Dennis Edney, publicly called for Khadr to be deradicalized.
The fourth myth is proven by the last three. We don’t have a lot of
reporters in Canada; what we have are a lot of anti-war, anti-Stephen
Harper, anti-American editorial writers pretending to be reporters, but
serving up soft-on-Khadr PR propaganda.
But the fifth myth is a hopeful one. The myth that we can do nothing. Take your rage — at U.S. President Barack Obama for emptying out his
prison in our streets, at Toews for letting him — and your sorrow for
the murdered medic and do something positive.
Go to www.SpeerKidsFund.com and chip in a few bucks. The money will go to Tabitha Speer, Christopher’s widow, to help raise her two fatherless kids, Taryn and Tanner. All the money will be sent to her care of her U.S. lawyers. I’ve
chipped in the first donation. Will you put in $10 or even $100 to show
that you stand for freedom and against terror?
Funeral for US Army Sgt. 1st Class Chris Speer
my response....
Medic Chris Speer was wounded on July 27, 2002 during an attack in Afghanistan and
died at a military hospital in Germany on August 7, 2002. Speer died of a
head wound suffered when his reconnaissance patrol was ambushed near
Khowst, in eastern Afghanistan. A young fellow was tried and convicted for throwing a grenade that killed Chris. Six days before he received the wounds
that killed him, Chris walked into a minefield to rescue two wounded
Afghan children. He applied a tourniquet to one child and bandaged the
other. Then he stopped a passing military truck to take the wounded
children to a U.S. Army field hospital saving their lives. Chris is remembered as a loving husband and father who had a sparkle in
his eyes whenever he talked about his family. Chris leaves behind his
wife, Tabitha, and his two children. In terms of the fellow who was apprehended at the scene, tried and convicted of murdering Chris Speer, I think James P. Brown of Ottawa says it best with his op/ed in today's Toronto Sun that follows....
Tabitha Speer
Help Speer’s children
On October 2, Ezra Levant wrote about the tragic death of Cpl
Christopher Speer at the hands of Canadian-born Omar Khadr (“Khadr
myths”). Levant mentioned Speer’s two young children, Taryn and Tanner,
who’ve been left fatherless, and that a fund had been established to
provide some money for the children’s education. By early December,
generous Canadians had donated $41,225 — about 82% of the modest target
of $50,000. I would encourage readers to give some thought to
contributing to the fund as a positive thought from the sad
circumstances — via website...
www.SpeerKidsFund.com.
A wounded Chris Speer
.....and to this, I have nothing to add, except...why doesn't Immigration Canada initiate a program to identify those who hate; like those who could commit honour killings and/or female genital mutilation before granting them status? There are too many Honour killers in our prison population right now and whether through improved screening or educational programs, some folks clearly need assistance making the transition to life in peaceful and respectful Canada! It's all about prevention! It should not come as a shock that Canada is nothing but a 'country of convenience' for too many folks who
only want a safe haven to run to and it behooves our politicians when they remember this. Should your MP initiate a program to identify those who could commit honour killings or other atrocities? You may want to ask them!
Chaplain Keith Jackson walks out of the church with Tabitha
So, if you want to show you care, you may want to think about little Taryn and Tanner,
who’ve been left fatherless!
-30-
Today, I bring you an article verbatim by Adrienne Batra of the Toronto Sun about victims rights, or should I say lack thereof that we in Ontario, indeed across Canada are suffering with as the rights of criminals once again come first, in the eyes of too many! Specifically, this story is about Jennifer Corsini who survived an attempt on her life and is still suffering. My response is below and, as usual there is room for your comments below that but please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent!
Jennifer Corsini“You made me do this to you.” Those were among the last words Jennifer Corsini remembers hearing before she woke up from a three-week week coma in 2008. But she recalls perfectly the events leading up to those fateful words, uttered by her then-estranged husband. Jennifer’s story is one on which TV crime dramas are based. But what
she miraculously survived — a brutal attack on her life — wasn’t a work
of fiction. It was Jennifer’s very real story.
It all began when she was 19, working at a KFC outlet in Dundas, Ont. That’s where Jennifer met the man who would become her husband, Bill Gowling, her manager at the time and five years her senior. The two became friends but it was only short-term. Jennifer moved on
as she had bigger aspirations than working in a fast-food restaurant. Fifteen years later, the pair ran into each other by chance in a
Hamilton mall, and, after her initial nervousness passed, it didn’t take
long for
Jennifer and Bill to become a couple and get married in 2003. She had a young son, Anthony, from a previous marriage, whom Bill
loved dearly. Despite being a travelling salesman, he always made time
for Anthony and the two forged a strong bond. Jennifer’s account of the early years of her marriage is for the most part positive. She described it as a “fun marriage” even though Bill was, as she called him, a “weekend alcoholic.” However, as the years went on, there wasn’t a lot of fun anymore.
It started with casual comments Bill would make such as, “I own you”, or “You can’t live without me.” She’s quick to explain that at that time, he had never laid a hand on her, or her son. It was simply the bizarre language he’d use, which she initially brushed off. That is, until Jennifer had an affair with another man in the fall of 2007.She acknowledges this “precipitated the attack, didn’t justify it, but (I) never saw it coming because Bill was never violent.” Around the same time, Bill lost his job, which he didn’t tell her
about. It was only after she discovered some letters from his employer,
saying they were suing him for fraud, that she realised the truth.
Unemployed and drinking more, Bill lost his driver’s licence and
began monitoring Jennifer’s movements and checking her cellphone bills. In mid-2008, they separated. Bill had hired a private investigator to prove her affair, even though she had never denied it. At that point, she just wanted him to “leave her alone.” Now living in Simcoe with her son, Jennifer explained Bill’s behaviour
had become “creepy” — showing up at her house, coming to Anthony’s
games and just “watching her.”
During an incident at her townhouse, Bill told her, “If I can’t have you, nobody’s going to have you.” Though he later apologised, it seemed his sudden remorse and
kindness were meant to dupe her (as she noted in a recent interview with
CityTV’s Avery Haines) into coming back to his house in Turkey Point,
to sign some real estate papers. When she showed up, her hell began. Bill strangled her with a belt, shoved a rag down her throat, poured
Varsol all over her and cut the back of her neck, throat, and chin. He
cut her right hand down to the bone.
Then, in an apparent suicide attempt, Bill cut his own wrists and laid across Jennifer. That’s how the paramedics found them. She’d lost five litres of blood and was barely alive. But she survived. Then came Bill’s court case, which is why Jennifer is now speaking out for victims’ rights. He was originally charged with attempted murder, but was given a plea
deal for aggravated assault and sentenced to 13 years and 10 months,
whittled down to nine years, with time served.
As a result, in June of 2013, the day after Jennifer celebrates her 48th birthday, Bill will be eligible for day parole. Now she fears for her life, telling me, “I’m a sitting duck. I know he’s going to come after me.” She’s hurting financially, too. No longer able to use her right hand
because of the injuries she sustained in the attack, she’s been unable
to work. But her insurer is hounding her to “get out there.” Jennifer noted while Bill sits in prison at taxpayers’ expense, he can get a subsidised education, if he chooses.
But in the wake of his attack on her, she can’t afford to go to school to retrain. As she puts it: “Sometimes I think I would have been better off dead.”
Toronto Police and the OPP making an arrest
my response,
As a Toronto Sun editor points out, "there seems to be so much focus on the rights of criminals, and little on the victims," when D.A. Richards of Toronto says in an op/ed, "I can’t believe how unfair our judicial system is towards the victims
of crime. Jennifer Corsini is a victim in every aspect and continues to
suffer. Clearly unable to work, she is hounded by her disability
insurer, adding unnecessary stress while the low life who injured her
lives the life in Club Fed. Where is the justice here? He should be
paying for his crime — and Jennifer has the right to feel safe. I just
don’t get it.
Having read this, i'm guessing Richards, who refers to a prison as Club Fed has never stepped
foot in one and is basing such opinion on pictures and articles. And I have a hard time believing that anyone who refers to
offenders as scumbags has never had anyone in their life that has made a
mistake. Prisons exist so that sociopaths and psychopaths
who have committed really horrific crimes are not allowed to roam the
streets.
The arrest of child killer Peter Woodcock!
After WWII, my Dad joined the North Toronto Police Force with many of
his childhood friends after they all returned from war and he was
stationed at old #12 at Yonge and Montgomery where, amongst many other
events, he was in on the arrest of Peter Woodcock, the child killer who
murdered little 4-year-old Carole Voyce, amongst others. Dad and his
partner in 1957, both in plain clothes
went to Woodcock's foster mother's home around Yonge and Lawrence and
arrested then 17 year old Woodcock to the loud wailing's of his foster
mother. This psychopath then spent the balance of his life mainly behind bars in the Mental
Health Centre in Penetanguishene. It should come as no shock that young Peter reportedly endured horrific abuse as a small child.
E Block in Kingston Penitentiary, maximum security houses the murderers of Kristen French, Lesley Mahaffy and little Victoria Stafford, amoung others for a reason...the idea is to protect our safety and not to expose the
perpetrators to a lifetime of fear and pain they would no doubt experience in general population. Locked up for 23 hours each day may seem like the only solution is to keep on abusing these people but it is necessary as some of these folks may become victims of one another in prison.
The daily grind?
Without a doubt, there are some hardened criminals inside those walls that
deserve to stay there when a study of maximum security prisons in Canada indicated that 80% were certifiable! Having said that, three hots, a cot, cable TV, high speed internet could be worse! Most of these guys in
the penitentiary live better, more stable lives inside than they ever did on the outside. Unfortunately for the other 20% who are ready to move on with their lives, and have made amends
with themselves and their victim(s); even after having made terrible
mistakes, they are forced to defend themselves in a culture beyond our wildest imagination.
So, what about the offenders who have spent years inside and after discharge, have made something of their lives! Nothing is to be gained by referring to them all as scumbags. Just because someone
hasn't been to jail doesn't automatically make them a good person
either. Sometimes it just means they have never been caught. Looking at the recidivism rates for offenders on different types of release, Corrections Canada found that offenders
on full parole did much better than those on mandatory supervision (now called statutory release). In a study released, the average
quarterly recidivism rate for offenders released on full parole was
1.9%; it was 10.8%
for those released on mandatory supervision.
Life behind bars?
In other words, there was approximately one parole
failure for every five mandatory supervision failures. Of those released on full parole, almost three quarters (72%) completed their sentence
without being returned to federal custody. In addition, 3% had been under supervision for at least
seven years without being readmitted, a period long enough to be considered successful. Of those released on mandatory supervision, 57% completed their sentence without returning to
federal custody. Almost one quarter (24%) had their release revoked for technical violations of
release conditions, and about one fifth (19%) were readmitted for a new offense.
At the risk of sounding like those who whine about "poor prisoners" and have likely never been the
victim of a traumatising crime; especially when the 'perps' were never
caught, unjust punishment of prisoners corrupts us all. Protect society at all costs but treat
prisoners with dignity, even when they are not treating themselves with dignity because the way they are treated is our
behaviour. It is what comes out of us that blesses or poisons us. We
need our prison officials to show understanding, if not kindness when faced with the very dark shadow of
questionable behaviour.
Back on the street?
The fact remains that too many criminals were abused by their parents or by other adults when they
were children. That is often where their lack of empathy came from! But, at the end of the day, we can only be held responsible for what we do! Convicted criminals are responsible for
what
they do and their reward is separation from society. This allows us to
move on with our lives instead of wallowing in anger!
I am presently collecting information to create a book on victim's experiences...and how they have moved forward with their lives after a traumatic event so if you have a personal story to tell, kindly contact me at....
http://t.co/lcslgG7J
or send it to my email address at...
write_stuff_2@hotmail.com
Today, I bring you verbatim, a bit of levity written by Damien Cox, Sports Columnist for the Toronto Star, By levity, I mean the most common response in the newspaper's op-ed pages about the NHL players strike is...who cares! Hell, even Obama wasn't interested! Once again, my response is below and, as always there is space for your comment, assuming that your comment differs from almost everybody else!
The stands are empty at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit and all
around the NHL as the lockout continues. The league insists that a deal
must be in place by mid-January to ensure a minimum 48-game season. (photo by Paul Sancya/AP)
Crunch time. Finally. After about four months of nonsense from NHL owners and NHL players,
after all the delays and pointless rhetoric and name-calling and
posturing, after pretending that Don Fehr and Gary Bettman are the
decision-makers rather than merely the messengers, we’re now down to the
nub of the matter. Do a deal in the next few weeks and have a partial season. Or don’t.
Seriously, just yes or no. We understand both sides have a deep and
abiding distrust and even dislike for one another, peculiar since owners
and players have done a pretty good job over the past seven years of
putting lots and lots of greenbacks in each other’s pocket. We all know the history, and we all know that each side believes the other side hasn’t negotiated in good faith. Now, just tell us yes or no.
We understand clearly that there will be no winners and losers out of
all this. Everyone and everything involved has suffered real and
lasting damage, and there’s no result possible that will make any
noticeable difference in the game, the fan experience, the success of
franchises in non-hockey markets or the overall status of the modern NHL
player.
Owners have been revealed one more time to be grasping and
hypocritical, with little or no abiding interest in the good of the
game. They blame the players for their screwups, then expect the union
to offer givebacks. Even the moderates have been pushed into the hawk
camp, the entire NHL approach has to be lawyer-centric and the union has
successfully portrayed those who sign the cheques as liars and cheats.
And the players? The damage done by the moronic words of Kris
Versteeg and Ian White, by the bricks of bills images put on social
media by Evander Kane, by players stealing jobs in Europe then bolting
for home, by the non-sensical legal threats and by the sour milk spilled
by Kyle Turris will have a much more lasting impact than the moderate,
clear thinking words of Sidney Crosby and Kevin Westgarth or the
charitable good done by a few exhibitions.
Once hockey players were seen to be different. Just good, honest boys happy to play for the love of the game. Poof! — gone forever. Pervasive social media has given fans and media
a window into the way NHLers think, and for the most part, it has not
been a flattering view. Basically, the biggest achievement so far by either side has been
discrediting the opponent, thus permanently injuring the profile of the
overall industry. Congrats, boys.
The game, meanwhile, already was damaged by the way in which the
Bettman administration had once again stood by and allowed the lowest
common denominator to take over. People say Bettman’s negative legacy will be all these lockouts. More
likely, it will be his regime’s chronic inability to preserve the most
entertaining elements of the sport. If the two sides do cut a deal and start playing next month, it’s
really unclear how fans will react. What is certain is that unlike the
post-lockout world of 2005, there will be no magic potion to catapult
the game back into the imagination of fans, no “new” NHL with altered
rules to help people forget all the negative business vibes.
Remember, the 2011-12 campaign was the Year of The Blocked Shot, and that’s what we’ll be going back to. Still, the NHL will be generally welcomed back in about 18-20 of its
30 markets. Places like Dallas, Columbus, Long Island, St. Louis and
Anaheim probably haven’t even noticed the season didn’t start, but all
the Canadian cities and U.S. markets like Philly, Detroit, Chicago,
Boston, Washington, New York and Pittsburgh will surely be happy to
start filling the rinks again. But all that, really, is just details. The time is nigh for a decision.
Yes or no. Play or don’t play. Decide. We, the hockey community at
large, can live with either choice, as has been proven in recent months. Sure, we’d like the NHL to play. It’s the best league in the world.
Why wouldn’t we? But all the entertainment choices available to North
Americans, sporting or otherwise, have eased the pain for all but the
most hardcore and narrow-minded of hockey fans.
The owners and players believe they are indispensable, that they can
spit in the eye of their customers because they’ve done it before and
the customers have flooded back. That’s made it even easier to turn to other options, and we’ll see if
those alternatives remain fixed when this absurd standoff ends. The good news is that we’ll know relatively soon if there will be a
season. This hostage-taking is just about over, one way or another.
Crunch time has arrived. Finally
A worried NHLPA executive director Don Fehr?
my response....
Do the NHL Players really intend to follow their Association leader down this path, come January? What we do know is that the union refused to reveal the results following six days
of voting that ended Friday at noon, and it doesn’t mean the NHLPA
will file the disclaimer right away. With more than a few dissenters, the executive board hasn’t made plans yet to meet to discuss
whether to file the disclaimer. If the Jan. 2 deadline passes, another
authorization vote could be held to approve a later filing. If the executive board files the disclaimer, the union would dissolve
and become a trade association. That could allow players to file binding
antitrust lawsuits against the NHL.
Negotiations between the NHL and the union have been at a standstill
since talks ended Dec. 6 with no bargaining scheduled, and time is
running short to save the season. Games through Jan. 14 have been
cancelled; more than half the season and a new labour agreement would need to be in place by about that time to
salvage a 48-game schedule; the minimum in commissioner Gary Bettman’s
opinion for the season to proceed.. The New Year’s Day Winter Classic
and All-Star Game are already lost.
Is Gary Bettman in the driver's seat?
The NHL is already the only North American professional sports league
to cancel a season because of a labour dispute, losing the 2004-05
campaign to a lockout and the NHLPA now appears set to follow the lead set by NFL and NBA players. Both dissolved their unions during lockouts last year. The legality of the lockout is already set to be tried in US federal
court after the NHL filed a class-action lawsuit last week against the
NHLPA. The NHL also submitted an unfair labour practice charge with the
American 'National Labor Relations Board'. The league’s Board of Governors discussed the possibility of a
‘‘disclaimer of interest’’ Dec. 5, and Bettman said the NHL didn’t see
it as a significant threat. In fact, he went further with, ‘‘We don’t
view it in the same way in terms of its impact as apparently the union
may.’’
Personally, i've been to no more than half a dozen games since Toronto sports fans saw the way Don Fehr got Major League Baseball players to strike in 1994 that gutted the Toronto Blue Jays of fan support! Having shared early year's seasons tickets and being one of the lucky 53,000+ folks swinging a 4 millionth fan t-shirt while Joe Carter rounded the bases on his 9th inning winning home run in October '91, my interest hasn't been the same since! Also, I took my boys to a football game, where the largest crowd ever assembled in the SkyDome; since overtaken on August 16, 1997 when the Green Bay Packers demolished the Buffalo Bills 35-3 with almost 55,000 squeezed in.
Sylvester Overturf of Oklaoma City makes a good point in his op-ed in the Toronto Sun when he said he was concerned that negotiations would not go very well when Donald Fehr had been hired as the NHL Players Association executive
director but never thought Don would lead the players over a cliff. Sylvester thinks Don has sold the NHL players on some unrealistic expectations and
he must succeed at all costs to protect the reputation he gained as
executive director of the MLB players’ union. NHL players need to do a
reality check and recognize that 30 financially stable franchises are
important for their job security. The first step in returning to reality
would be to fire Fehr.
Should it really surprise this bunch of NHL players that this 'negotiation' would end up in the courts? On second thought, isn't that to be expected when you get a couple of lawyers involved!? The NHL players are at a cross-roads in their confrontation with the folks who sign their cheques and if there is dissension in the ranks now, just wait for the sight of the knives pointed at Fehr's back after Christmas holidays are over!
Today, I bring you and interesting article, verbatim by Angela K. Brown
of the Associated Press in the Toronto Star which will doubtless become part of a debate about how to make schools safer for our children. If the authorities can't or won't do it, does the rationale have to be; we'll just have to do it ourselves? My response is below and there is room for your comment below that.
Angela K. Brown/AP
The Harrold Independent School District has a policy
allowing teachers and other school employees to carry concealed weapons,
a controversial rule that's now being considered in at least five other
states in the wake of last week's deadly elementary school shooting in
Newtown, Conn.
In the tiny Texas town
of Harrold, children and their parents don’t give much thought to
safety at the community’s lone school — mostly because some of the
teachers are carrying concealed weapons.
The nearest sheriff’s office is 30
minutes away, and people tend to know — and trust — one another. So the
school board voted to let teachers bring guns to school. “We don’t have money for a security
guard, but this is a better solution,” Superintendent David Thweatt
said. “A shooter could take out a guard or officer with a visible,
holstered weapon, but our teachers have master’s degrees, are older and
have had extensive training. And their guns are hidden. We can protect
our children.”
In the awful aftermath of last week's Connecticut elementary school shooting, lawmakers in a growing number of states — including Oklahoma, Missouri,
Minnesota, South Dakota and Oregon — have said they will consider laws
allowing teachers and school administrators to carry firearms at school. Texas law bans guns in schools unless
the school has given written authorization. Arizona and six other
states have similar laws with exceptions for people who have licenses to
carry concealed weapons. Harrold’s school board voted
unanimously in 2007 to allow employees to carry weapons. After obtaining
a state concealed-weapons permit, each employee who wants to carry a
weapon must be approved by the board based on his or her personality and
reaction to a crisis, Thweatt said.
Employees also must undergo training
in crisis intervention and hostage situations. And they must use bullets
that minimize the risk of ricochet, similar to those carried by air
marshals on planes. CaRae Reinisch, who lives in the
nearby community of Elliott, said she took her children out of a larger
school and enrolled them in Harrold two years ago, partly because she
felt they would be safer in a building with armed teachers. “I think it’s a great idea for trained teachers to carry weapons,” Reinish said. “But I hate that it has come to this.”
The superintendent won’t disclose how
many of the school’s 50 employees carry weapons, saying that revealing
that number might jeopardize school security.
The school has 103 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. Most of them rarely think about who is carrying a gun. “This is the first time in a long
time that I’ve thought about it,” said Matt Templeton, the principal’s
17-year-old son. “And that’s because of what happened” in Connecticut. Opponents insist that having more
people armed at a school, especially teachers or administrators who
aren’t trained to deal with crime on a daily basis, could lead to more
injuries and deaths. They point to an August shooting outside the Empire
State Building, where police killed a laid-off clothing designer after
he fatally shot his former colleague. Nine bystanders were wounded by
police gunfire, ricochets and fragments.
“You are going to put teachers,
people teaching 6-year-olds in a school, and expect them to respond to
an active-shooter situation?” said Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the
Washington, D.C.-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, who called the
idea of arming teachers “madness.” Dan Gross, president of the Brady
Campaign, said focusing on arming teachers distracts from the “real
things” that could help prevent a school shooting “and at worse it
furthers a dangerous conversation that only talks about guns as
protection without a discussion about the serious risks they present.”
As the debate continues, Harrold’s school plans to leave its policy unchanged. “Nothing is 100 per cent at all. ...
But hope makes for a terrible plan, hoping that (a tragedy) won’t
happen,” Thweatt said. “My question is: What have you done about it? How
have you planned?”
Tots at school!
my response......
Well, it would appear that an unusual but not to be unexpected reaction is underway when a Utah sixth-grader caught with a gun at school told administrators
he brought the weapon to defend himself in case of an attack similar to
the mass shooting last week at an elementary school in Connecticut. The media report said two classmates at West Kearns Elementary
School reported the gun to a teacher toward the end of the school day
yesterday. School District spokesman Ben Horsley says the teacher
“immediately apprehended the student,” and police responded shortly
after. Horsley tells KSL-TV that an unloaded gun and ammunition were
found in the 11-year-old's backpack. Authorities have not released the
child's name.
Children learning to read and write!
A Virginia man was arrested Wednesday after he ventured into an Elementary School carrying a 2-by-4 board with the words "high powered rifle" imprinted and was charged with disorderly
conduct and booked into jail after his arrest. Although his exact motives remain unknown, sheriff's office
investigators believe he was trying to communicate a message about
school security.......or lack thereof....you think??? School officials encountered this fellow after
he walked through an unlocked front door and entered the school's
central office. This fellow had no actual weapons with him, offered no resistance during his arrest and had no contact with any students. The Principal took him into her office and
closed the door until law enforcement officers arrived and classes followed their normal schedule throughout the day.
The powerful U.S. gun rights lobby went on the offensive on Friday
arguing that schools should have armed guards, on a day that Americans
remembered the victims of the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre with a
moment of silence. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a
gun," said Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle
Association, noting that banks and airports are patrolled by armed
guards, while schools typically are not. His remarks - in which he charged that the news media and violent video
games shared blame for the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S.
history - were twice interrupted by protesters who unfurled signs and
shouted "stop the killing."
Learning arithmetic?
Speaking in Washington,
LaPierre urged lawmakers to station armed police
officers in all schools by the time students return from the Christmas
break in January.
LaPierre said that his group has remained "respectively silent" since
last week's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. "out of
respect for the families" of the victims. “Out of respect for the
families and until the facts are known, the NRA
has refrained from comment," LaPierre said. "While some have tried to
exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectively
silent."
Despite attempts by a few to use the massacre in Newtown,
Connecticut to forward their anti-gun agenda, Americans feel that there
are other avenues they would rather explore to protect to innocent children,
according to a new Gallup Poll. In order of preference, the poll shows
that 53% of Americans would favor an increased police presence at
schools, 50% wanted to increase government spending on mental health
screening and treatment, 47% thought that gun violence on TV, in movies
and in video games should be decreased, and 42% thought the sale of
assault and semi-automatic guns should be banned, according to William Bigelow in Breitbart.
a typical school day!
Almost as many people (34%) thought that at least one school official
in every school should carry a gun as those who favored banning the
sale of assault and semi-automatic guns, while 27% felt that the news
media should not print or read the names of the shooter. The news
blackout of the shooter drew the highest percentage of those who thought
it would be ineffective, at 40%, but the gun ban was a close second in
the ineffectiveness rating at 36%. What also becomes clear from the poll is the public’s perception that
all of the solutions offered would be fruitless, as 53% was the highest
positive rating of any of the remedies.
Granted, while the two examples noted above may seem a little extreme, they do point out that folks, big and small have real concerns that need to be addressed...pronto! Growing up through the Toronto school system, not only was security lax in the main building, it was not uncommon to see portables in the yard to accommodate all of the boomers! Now, some schools in Toronto have metal detectors to screen folks moving in and out of the building. Sadly, it is a new world out there so the question becomes...what form of security will taxpayers demand of each school board to make students...and parents in the United States and Canada, too feel secure sending their children off to class? What say you, taxpayers?
Today I bring you an mea culpa by Craig Silverman in Poynter who has clarified and illuminated the difference between professional journalists and the ubiquitous social media scribblers who either work for free or rely on paid advertisers to fund their blogs! As usual, my response is below and there is room for your comment below that.
It started with confusion at the scene of the crime. A source told CNN the killer was named Ryan Lanza.
Soon several news organizations published images from a facebook profile belonging to a man with that name. Some of them declared he was the killer. He wasn’t. After we learned the caliber of the weapon used in the shooting,
people began circulating images of large assault weapons, saying this
was the gun used. Those early weapons were off the mark as well. As has been noted by many, the errors continued. Adam Lanza’s mother didn’t work at the school, the students who died were in first grade, not kindergarten.
“For some, this proves that social media is not an appropriate tool for journalism, particularly real-time news reporting,” writes Matthew Ingram at GigaOm. ”But
I think it shows something very different: I think this is just the way
the news works now, and we had better get used to it.” I’d suggest two things journalists can do during these situations to
help ensure they’re playing a constructive role, rather than amplifying
false information and adding to speculation. One thing that struck me on Friday was the news organizations
who didn’t spread the Facebook profile, who held back and showed
restraint on that and other points.
When information is abundant, rumours are easy to stoke and
disseminate. When others have already put speculative information out
there, showing restraint may seem difficult. But at that moment it can
be a competitive differentiator. Restraint is a value that’s rarely celebrated, rarely
highlighted. It mattered a lot on Friday, and would have helped spare a
lot of injurious speculation if it had been practiced by more
journalists and news organizations. During real-time news events, quality sources of information are sometimes characterized by what they aren’t
reporting. They are the ones holding back while others rush ahead. The
ones sticking to a verification process and not being swayed by
speculation or a desire for traffic and attention.
The value of restraint is difficult to quantify. You don’t get more
traffic for what you don’t report. It therefore seems like a losing
proposition. As is often said, people remember who got it wrong, not who
got it right. Or who held back. Not getting it wrong is one obvious value of restraint, but, again, that doesn’t help you be part of the conversation. During events such as the shooting in Newtown, one way to realize the value of restraint is to talk about what you aren’t
reporting. Carefully acknowledge the speculation (e.g., “A Facebook
profile is circulating, but we are not confident it is the shooter and
that’s why we are not sharing it”).
This seems counter-intuitive to the value of restraint, but today’s
information environment requires that restraint itself be shared, be
publicized. It must become part of the process of real-time journalism,
and part of the conversation. That way people know who is and isn’t
reporting a given piece of information, and why. It will help bring a
measure of order and explanation by reminding people that information is
not universally verified. Rather than remaining silent about what they refuse to report, or
cannot verify, news organizations should be vocal about where they
stand.
Andy Carvin, the most experienced practitioner of real-time process journalism, was in full force on Friday, using his Twitter network as an extended
newsroom to help him surface, debunk and verify claims and information. At one point I saw Carvin tweet out a meesage to help explain his level of restraint:
For those of you who think I'm posting
everything I'm finding, I'm actually sitting on about 75% of what I know
b/c contradictions abound.
I’d encourage Carvin and others pushing the boundaries of real-time
journalism to regularly offer that kind of reminder and context about
how they work. Explaining why you aren’t reporting information is one
way to do that. One key thing for journalists to realize is that this transparency is new to the public, too. Ingram writes:
In the past, this chaotic process of journalistic sausage-making was
kept mostly hidden from TV viewers and newspaper readers. Inside the
newsrooms at these outlets, reporters and editors were frantically
trying to collect information from wire services and other sources,
verifying it and checking it as best they could, and then producing a
report at some later point.
Explaining how we work can smooth the transition for the public.
On Friday, I saw at least a few of Carvn’s followers either ask him
for this kind of background, or react in ways that suggested they don’t
understand how he works. (Some people understood it and are still troubled by it.)
I agree with Wendy Kloiber: an online primer would be a great way to
help people understand this new form of journalism. I don’t doubt
Carvin’s book will be great, but it’s not the right format for providing background and context during a breaking news event. Maybe practitioners could write their own brief primers and link to them from their Twitter profiles and blogs. Carvin himself acknowledged that each new breaking news event
requires him to educate new people on how he works. Why not write a
quickie guide, make it public, and link frequently?
Rediscovering how whenever I have a spike in
Twitter followers, I have a spike in complaints from ppl not familiar
with my use of Twitter.
A backgrounder would also provide a useful retort when people encounter Carvin’s work and wonder what he's doing. If news is forever changed and the flurry of confusion and
contradictions we saw on Friday, and during Hurricane Sandy, are the new
norm, then it’s up to journalists to think about what this means for
their workflow and approach. I’d like to see restraint practiced and publicized, and to see more
journalists speak up about why a given piece of information hasn’t met
their standards. It also means we have to provide the kind of background and context
that can help the public understand the new rules and practices that
drive our work.
my response.....
I found the distinction between news reporting and speculation by social media scribes particularly disturbing in the early hours of the grade one tragedy, as it was just a
couple of weeks ago that the Toronto Sun dismissed long-time and
respected writer Lorrie Goldstein. Purported to be a cost-cutting
measure, when you start cutting out the meat before you've trimmed the
fat, clearly, there are other issues! There are few other professions as subjective as news gathering but there is always a danger when attempting to turn a science into an art form! Without sounding maudlin, it's no secret that news was turned into a commercial venture long before any of us where around but folks can still be swayed by breaking news so it is important that we get it right...before we hit the send button!
Having said that, mistakes and all, the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday that
took the lives of 20 schoolchildren, plus eight adults, helped power CNN
to a rare ratings victory that day, according to Don Irvine, Chairman of Accuracy in Media.
CNN,
which has been badly lagging both Fox News and MSNBC, saw viewers in
the key 25-54 demographic turned their attention to the CNN network as the
story unfolded, once again underscoring the public’s preference to turn
to CNN when there is a major, breaking news story. Didn't this start with on the scene coverage of the Baghdad bombing back in January 1991, with a big assist during the Simpson trial?
The victory for CNN was complete, with the network winning every hour
in the demo from 5 p.m. through midnight, and doing so convincingly,
with Anderson Cooper beating ratings champ The O”Reilly Factor by
212,000 viewers in the 8 p.m. hour and swamping Greta Van Susteren in
the 10 p.m. hour by 411,000.
While CNN beat Fox News by a fairly substantial margin, it completely
obliterated MSNBC by 600,000-700,000 viewers in primetime, giving the
liberal network its lowest ratings in more than a year.
But CNN shouldn’t get too excited by this ratings spike. Undoubtedly
it will slip back to third place as the stories related to the tragedy
start to fade, once again exposing the weak lineup that continues to
plague the network.
More kids in school! 
and even more kids in school!
and even more kids in school!
Folks demanding change!
