Magic Statistics

This morning's processional hymn at Christ Church Cathedral, Whitehorse. (Hymn #556 in the Anglican Church of Canada's hymn book, Common Praise.)

O for a closer walk with God,
a calm and heavenly frame,
a light to shine upon the road
that leads me to the Lamb!

Where is the blessedness I knew
when first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
of Jesus and his word?

Return, O holy Dove, return,
sweet messenger of rest;
I hate the sins that made thee mourn,
and drove thee from my breast.

The dearest idol I have known,
whate'er that idol be,
help me to tear it from thy throne,
and worship only thee.

So shall my walk be close with God,
calm and serene my frame;
so purer light shall mark the road
that leads me to the Lamb.

Words: William Cowper, 1772.
Music: Caithness, Scottish Psalter, 1635.

More about hymn-writer William Cowper here.

The collect for today, the 5th Sunday after Trinity, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by thy governance, that thy Church may joyfully serve thee in all godly quietness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St Peter 3:8-15a
The Gospel: St Luke 5:1-11

Artwork: Marco Basaiti, Call of the Sons of Zebedee, 1510. Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.

The religion of peace hits a new low.  Representatives of Iraqi Christians told a parliamentary committee in Ottawa yesterday that Islamists are crucifying children to intimidate Christian parents into leaving the country.

Since the war began in 2003, about 12 children, many as young as 10, have been kidnapped and killed, then nailed to makeshift crosses near their homes to terrify and torment their parents.

One infant was snatched, decapitated, burned and left on his mother's doorstep, the committee was told.

Filham Isaac, speaking for the Nineveh Advocacy Committee, told the human rights committee that Iraqi Christian churches were bombed, clergy murdered and unveiled Iraqi women raped or scarred with acid.

Ottawa Citizen reporter Jennifer Green, who filed the above story, has more to say at her blog:

My stomach clenched again yesterday as I heard more testimony on religious persecution.

One man told members of Parliament in passing that it's quite normal in Iraq to crucify children (who may or may not already be dead) near the homes of their Christian parents.

Some militants are cleansing the area of Christians; some are trying to raise cash for insurgency by kidnapping children and demanding ransoms, and others just want to grab the homes and businesses that the terrified families leave behind as they flee.

In Pakistan, impoverished families are lured into forced labour camps where even toddlers become indentured servants. If they try to escape, their fingers are chopped off. They can sell a kidney to buy their way. Or they can convert to Islam.

Chaldean and Assyrian Christians are descended from Mesopotamians who became followers of Christ in the first century, making them one of the oldest Christian groups in the world.  Targets of a long-running ethnic/religious cleansing campaign waged by Muslim fanatics, hundreds of thousands have been forced into exile.

Previous related posts:

• Christians crucified in Iraq: Dutch MP
• Jihadists campaign to wipe out Assyrian Christianity; West does nothing
• Iraqi Muslims persecute Assyrian Christians

Quebec Superior Court judge Suzanne Tessier has ruled invalid a father’s mundane punishment of a disobedient child.  The father grounded his 12-year-old daughter after she repeatedly violated his instructions.  Instead of throwing a temper tantrum, however, the girl sued—and won.

Welcome to the brave new world of judicial “human rights” activism.

A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl's grounding, overturning her father's punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting "inappropriate" pictures of herself online using a friend's computer.

The father's lawyer Kim Beaudoin said the disciplinary measures were for the girl's "own protection" and is appealing the ruling.

Doesn’t Quebec have any real criminal trials for Madam Justice Tessier to preside over?

h/t: Andrew Bolt

Sixteen-year-old Aqsa Parvez was strangled to death last December after she and her father Muhammed Parvez had quarreled over her refusal to wear the hijab (Muslim headscarf).  Mr Parvez was arrested the day of her death and initially charged with second-degree murder.  Her killing may have been motivated by a desire to protect family “honour”.

The charge was today upgraded to first-degree murder, indicating that police have convincing evidence that the murder was planned and premeditated.

Police upgraded charges to first-degree murder against the father of a teenaged Brampton girl who friends say was feuding with her family over her refusal to wear a hijab.
. . .
And police say they believe Aqsa Parvez’s brother also bears culpability, even if they cannot prove it.

The 16-year-old girl was killed after her brother brought her home to pick up some clothes on Dec. 10.

Waqas Parvez, 26, has been charged only with obstructing police for allegedly misleading investigators.

Police have not discussed the motive for the slaying, nor have they given a precise reason for upgrading the charge.

Muhammed Parvez has been in custody since his arrest.  Waqas Parvez is out on bail.

Previous related posts:

• Fight the culture of forced marriages and honour killings
• Honour killings come to the West

The collect for today, the 4th Sunday after Trinity, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal; Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's sake our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 8:18-23
The Gospel: St Luke 6:36-42

Artwork: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Parable of the Blind leading the Blind, 1568.  Tempera on canvas, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples.

The collect for today, the Feast Day of Saint Barnabas the Apostle, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O Lord God Almighty, who didst endue thy holy Apostle Barnabas with singular gifts of the Holy Ghost; Leave us not, we beseech thee, destitute of thy manifold gifts, nor yet of grace to use them alway to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the Epistle: Acts 11:22-30
The Gospel: St John 15:12-16

Artwork: Sir Edward Burne-Jones (designer) and William Morris (manufacturer), St Barnabas, c 1874, stained glass, Ponsonby Church, Ponsonby, Cumbria, England.

The 2008 release of the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report names Iran and Moldova as the worst in combating the vile trade.  Nations are listed in three tiers: Those making an acceptable effort to fight human trafficking are in Tier 1, while those doing a poor job are in Tier 3.

Virtually all of the nations of Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe are in Tier 2, while Russia and Tajikistan are on the so-called "watch list" of Tier-2 countries because they could slip to Tier 3. Uzbekistan is among four countries that have moved up. It used to be designated as a Tier-3 country, and now is on the Tier-2 "watch list." Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are in Tier 2, except for Turkmenistan, which is listed as a "special case" because of the lack of information from the country.

Georgia in classified as Tier 1, while Armenia and Azerbaijan are on Tier-2 "watch lists."
. . .
"Moldova fell to Tier 3 for the first time, reflecting its government's failure to tackle trafficking-related corruption, as reflected in the handling of several high-profile cases of complicity by government officials in trafficking," said Mark Lagon, the State Department's senior adviser on trafficking in persons. "This failure created a significant impediment to the government's ability to fight trafficking overall."

Mr Lagon named as the primary underlying cause of human trafficking the demand for sex workers.

Previous related posts:

• A new tactic in human trafficking schemes
• 800,000 persons trafficked across international borders every year
• Human trafficking in Eastern Europe
• US warned over human trafficking report: Don’t alienate Muslims

An expert in health law and policy told a Winnipeg conference that doctors do not have legal authority to order cessation of life-saving treatment against a patient’s wishes.

Dr. Jocelyn Downie, Canada Research chairwoman of health law and policy and professor of law and medicine at Dalhousie University, said there is no legal precedent that gives doctors the authority to remove a patient's feeding tube or ventilator against their wishes or to decide whether they meet a "minimum goal" to continue living.

She said judges in previous court cases involving do-not-resuscitate orders haven't ruled whether this power lies with doctors. The question of who decides, Downie said, is still wide open before the courts.

Downie's comments run counter to new guidelines issued by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba in February that say the final decision on whether to pull the plug on a patient rests with the doctor.

Those guidelines were also rejected by Judge Perry Schulman, who last February ordered Winnipeg’s Salvation Army Grace Hospital to continue treatment of 84-year-old Samuel Golubchuk.  Hospital doctors want to euthanise Mr Golubchuk, but his family insists that would contradict their Orthodox Jewish beliefs.

Dr Downie hits the nail on the head here:

"You are deciding as physicians what lives are worth living, and that's a moral judgment, it's not a medical judgment," Downie said. "It just goes too far, and that's dangerous."

Exactly.  Doctors lack the moral competence to decide whose life is worth living and whose isn’t.

Dr Bill Pope, the college’s registrar, disagrees with Dr Downie, claiming that Manitoba courts have accorded doctors the right to pull the plug against a patient’s wishes.  No supporting court citation is quoted, and that view flies in the face of Judge Schulman’s ruling that the hospital must maintain Mr Golubchuk’s treatment pending a full court hearing on his case.

Previous related post: Doctors ordered to keep Sam Golubchuk on life support

A Pakistan insurance company has fired one of its agents, a 30-year-old Christian who received death threats from Muslims after acting as a witness of a marriage between a Christian man and a Muslim woman.  When Islamic clerics found out that he worked for Eastern Federation Union, they rounded on the company.

[T]he clerics threatened the EFU executives saying that if the company did not punish Zahid, then they could not be held responsible for any attacks that might be carried out against the company and its staff.

On May 16, 2008, the company immediately called a staff meeting to discuss the actions that they could take against Zahid. The EFU executives included Zahid on the meeting, but ordered him to sit apart and be silent. The company decided quickly to fire Zahid and told him not to come in to work the following day.

The day after Zahid was fired, three men stopped him in the market and forced him to let them take his picture. Knowing that the men would use his picture to advertise his "un-Islamic activity," Zahid fled from his home and is now in hiding.

After Mr Zahid had escaped, a local cleric issued a fatwa, calling for him to be murdered on sight.  He now fears that he will have to live the rest of his life in hiding.

Previous related posts:

• Christian woman forced to convert to Islam, marry Muslim
• Burqa forced on Christian students in Pakistan
• Christians in Pakistan under intense pressure

A report released today by Statistics Canada shows that hate-motivated crime accounts for a tiny fraction of crimes committed in the country.  The report covered both crimes reported to police in 2006 and data gathered through a 2004 victimisation survey.

Young people aged 12-17 were disproportionately represented among those apprehended for committing hate crimes.

Hate-motivated incidents account for a relatively small proportion of both police-reported and self-reported crime. In both cases, race/ethnicity is the most common motivation for these crimes.

In 2006, police services covering 87% of Canada's population reported 892 hate-motivated crimes, of which 6 in 10 were motivated by race/ethnicity.

Another one-quarter of hate crimes were motivated by religion and 1 in 10 by sexual orientation. Hate crimes accounted for less than 1% of all criminal incidents reported by police.
. . .
Another measure of hate-motivated crime comes from the General Social Survey (GSS), which asks Canadians about their personal experiences of victimization and includes incidents not reported to police.

The most recent GSS data for 2004 showed that 3% of all self-reported incidents were believed to be motivated by hate. The GSS data also showed that race/ethnicity was the most common motivation for these crimes.

Of the 892 police-reported hate crimes, 327 were violent offences, 460 property offences, and 105 were other types of crime.

502 of the 892 were motivated by race, 220 by religion, and 80 by sexual orientation.  The rest had other or unknown motivations.

Blacks were the racial group most likely to be victimised by hate crime.

Among religious groups, 137 hate crimes against Jews were reported by police, almost three times as many as against Muslims (46).

Mohammed Elmasry, phantom complainant against Maclean’s over the Mark Steyn article, doesn’t believe the latter statistics.

Mohamed Elmasry, national president of Canadian Islamic Congress, suggested the report doesn't reflect reality, saying a lack of resources led to the community neglecting to report every single hate crime.

"The Muslim community was under great stress since 9/11," he said, adding that it exhausted its resources trying to report all the crimes.

Exhausted all resources trying to report 46 hate crimes to police during 2006?  Somehow I think Mr Elmasry and the CIC have more resources than that at their disposal.

The full Statistics Canada report can be read here (html) or here (pdf).

Just to be clear, the headline is not meant to imply that I think hate crime unimportant.  My point is that Canada has an admirable record in keeping a lid on a problem that seems to be getting out of hand elsewhere in the world. 

Source:

Statistics Canada (2008).  “Study: Hate-motivated crime”. The Daily, 9 June. Statistics Canada catalogue no. 11-001-XIE.
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080609/d080609a.htm accessed 9 June 2008.

This came up on my Dilbert desk calendar the other day.  It does not reflect the situation in my office.

In my office, the wretched, incompetent, lazy miscreant is the one who’s quitting.

The countdown continues.

Previous related post: StatGuy announces retirement.