Big Brother is Watching You

You remember 1984, George Orwell’s epic novel about the future? It was the future of Winston Smith, a nondescript man who lived by himself in a world of Thought Police, and such government ministries as the Ministry of Love, Ministry of Truth, and Ministry of Peace. It was a world of propaganda and slogans. Fiction is truth. War is peace. And, of course, Big Brother is watching you.

While no one would argue that Canada is like the world of Winston Smith, it may be a bit naive to think that this country is above the pettiness and, dare I say corruption, which we know has taken place south of the border.

My first book was published in 1984. Victims: The Orphans of Justice was about a man whose daughter had been murdered by a perfect stranger, an offender just released from federal penitentiary on mandatory supervision. Today it’s called statutory release, and it means that just about anyone – lifers side – who are doing federal time get out after 2/3 of their sentence, whether they had qualified for parole or not.

While Victims was about the disgusting manner in which victims of violent crimes were treated by our justice system, it was also an indictment against the automatic early-release system. It even cited the federal government’s own study – the Solicitor General’s Study of Conditional Release – about crimes committed by offenders out on early release. This study said: “Penitentiaries have a strong interest in seeing as many full releases as possible occur in order to save costs.”

How? Back in 1984, it cost $25,000 a year to incarcerate an offender in penitentiary, but only $2,000 a year to supervise that offender in the community under conditional release. So this meant an annual saving of $23,000 a year for every offender let out. Today, of course, those figures are much higher. The average cost of incarcerating a male offender in maximum security is over $110,000 a year, and about $20,000 a year to supervise the offender on statutory release, which works out to a ‘saving’ of $90,000 a year.

Needless to say, Victims poked a few holes into the government’s highly touted notion of rehabilitation as I discovered the ease with which violent criminals – murderers, rapists, child molesters – were released onto the streets of Canada every day, and the litany of crimes they committed.

The first time I told the father of the murdered girl that I wanted to write a book, he said: “What if someone paid you $25,000 NOT to write this book?” I had no idea what he was talking about. Well, I forged ahead and wrote it. It was published in paperback with a retail price of $4.50.

At the time, Pierre Trudeau and his Liberals had a majority government. An earlier Trudeau government had publicly endorsed the new approach to corrections. In 1971, Solicitor General Jean-Pierre Goyer said: “We have decided from now on to stress the rehabilitation of individuals rather than the protection of society.” Those guys weren’t kidding. Rehabilitation became the mantra of corrections in Canada, and we were told time and again about the high success rates of offenders on parole and automatic release.

After Victims was published, I started receiving cheques for $4.50 from people who couldn’t find copies of it in bookstores. We started tracking where these people were from, and it appeared that anyone living in federal government ridings held by Liberal Cabinet Ministers couldn’t find a copy of it in their ridings. Huh? Come again.

Cheques were arriving from the federal government riding of Cape Breton Highlands-Canso, which was held by the then Secretary of State for External Affairs. And from Windsor-Walkerville, which was held by the then Minister of Justice. And so on right down the list. You couldn’t find a copy of Victims in those ridings if your life depended on it.

I couldn’t believe this was happening, and organized some friends to check it out. They did, and it was. In fact, one day before I left to do media interviews in B.C. and Alberta, the book was actually pulled from the shelves of bookstores in the federal riding of Winnipeg-Assiniboine, which just happened to be held by the furthest west Liberal MP you could find.

Of course, the Tories were very helpful in furnishing me with information about all the crimes committed by offenders on release – when they were in Opposition – but once they took office later in 1984 with their Conservative majority, they disappeared into the woodwork.

I have seen several elections since then, and now yet another one is on our doorstep. I advise my fellow Canadians to listen intently to what your candidates have to say, but don’t forget about Winston Smith. Those hoodwinkers, they’re everywhere.

Read More of Jerry’s articles and book excerpts at http://www.authorjerryamernic.com.

The Olympics and the Saudis

Imagine that you are a woman who can run 100 meters in a shade over 12.5 seconds just like Michaela Kargbo of Sierra Leone does. Or that you’re a middle-distance specialist who can do 800 meters in two minutes flat like Tetiana Petliuk of Ukraine. Or a long-distance runner who can match the sub-33-minute performance of Dulce Maria Rodrigues of Mexico in the 10,000 meters. The only problem is that you are a woman from Saudi Arabia and so, are not allowed to compete.

While I certainly got caught up in the brilliance of such athletes as swimmer Michael Phelps and sprinter Hussein Bolt at the Beijing Olympics, for me the biggest story of the games (that didn’t seem to get a whole lot of attention) concerned the Olympic team from Saudi Arabia. But I suppose that’s because this exposes the blatant hypocrisy of the entire Olympics movement.

In 1964 the Olympics were held in Tokyo. Leading up to those games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that South Africa would be barred from the games because of its apartheid policies. The IOC said this decision would be overturned only if South Africa renounced racial discrimination in sport and ended its policy of not allowing competition between black and white athletes. South Africa then said it would include seven non-whites on its Olympic team, but that wasn’t good enough for the IOC. South Africa was out. The IOC, after all, was an organization steeped in principle and fair play.

For almost three decades following South Africa’s ouster from the Olympics, that country was a touchy subject as far as the Olympics were concerned. At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, more than two dozen countries boycotted the games because New Zealand’s cricket team had been touring South Africa. Some of the countries that took this stance included such leading bastions of human rights as Libya, Iraq, and Iran.

In 1991, South Africa finally repealed its apartheid laws, and the next year at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, it officially returned to the Olympics fold with great aplomb. Nevertheless, for many years the IOC stood its ground on this issue about discrimination in sports and insisted on taking the high road. And why not? It was merely upholding its own constitution.

The Olympic Charter is unequivocal in what it says about discrimination in sport. The section called Fundamental Principles of Olympism states the following: “The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.”

It also states this: “Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.”

Well, Saudi Arabia clearly violates the Olympic Movement. So what was a country like Saudi Arabia doing in Beijing?

Of course, the issue of Saudi Arabia goes far beyond excluding women from its Olympic team. In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to vote, buy property or travel. They are not to be seen. The country is the very antithesis of a liberal democracy since no one is even allowed to practice any religion except Islam. It’s against the law.

While it may be naive for Western leaders to preach democracy and human rights to countries and cultures where such things are alien, there is no mistaking the Olympics credo. It’s written in stone. So where is the IOC on Saudi Arabia? What happened to all those noble principles that the organization embodied during almost three decades on the South Africa file? I’ll tell you what happened. Oil.

Saudi Arabia is home to one-quarter of the world’s known oil reserves. What’s more, while all that oil is flowing out of Saudi Arabia, a lot of American and Western money is flowing in.

Surely no one in their right mind would call China a leading purveyor of human rights, and it isn’t. While the country has certainly accomplished a great deal in recent years, what was the Tiananmen Square massacre all about? It has been expunged from the history books, not only in China where it never got into the history books, but even here in the West. It is forgotten.

Some voices in the Arab world are courageous enough to speak the truth about Saudi Arabia, although though they are few and far between. One of them is that of Saudi journalist and scholar Ali al-Ahmad who last May wrote these words about the Olympics in the International Herald Tribune: “Bar countries that bar women athletes.” Indeed.

Never mind dreaming that Saudi Arabian women will compete on the track. How about the diving board? Or, God forbid, beach volleyball? Hell, these women can’t even drive a car in their own country, which is a long way from parading around in a bikini.

In the U.S., especially since 9/11, it is said that security will always trump economics. I don’t know if security will always trump economics in the Olympics, but we may very well find out in 2012 when the next summer games are held in London. That will be a security program like the world has never seen before. But one thing is for damn sure. In the Olympics, economics will trump principle every time.