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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1990-09-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1990. PAGE 5. Thoughts from the throne For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium. An English jurist by the name of Sir Edward Coke wrote that, away back in Shakespeare's time. A man’s home is his castle. It is the very foundation of British common law. It means that, while our governments may lie to us, while they may cheat us and tax us and spend our money foolishly and send our children off to fight their stupid wars, our governments cannot, by God, jerk us around in our own living rooms. Because a man’s home is his castle. And if the domestic castle is sacred ground, is there a chamber within that’s holier than that one tiny room -- perhaps the last place in the fortress where a man or a woman can be assured of a few minute's privacy? They don’t call it the Throne Room for nothing, you know. I love my bathroom for just that reason. It’s my refuge. The one place in the house Who blew up the plane and why? BY RAYMOND CANON While I was in Europe this past June celebrations were held to mark the fourth anniversary of the destruction of the Air India jet off the coast of Ireland. The jet, which had taken off from Toronto with over 300 people on board, crashed into the Atlantic with no survivors. On the same day two baggage handlers were killed at Tokyo airport while servicing a Canadian International jet and the question has been ever since that time just who is responsible for the two explosions and why. Although the Sikhs have come in for their share of attention, nobody has been charged. There has even been the thought expressed that the explosions were the work of Indian intelligence services in order to cast the blame on the Sikhs but this accusation, too, has not gone beyond the state of conjecture. Friends and relatives of the victims must well wonder if anything definite will ever be found out. Of more recent vintage is the explosion which caused a Pan Am 747 to crash on and near the town of Lockerbie in Scotland, killing 159 people in the plane and a further 11 on the ground. It is many months since this accident took place and it, too, is still without solution. We can, however, get a close look at what has transpired so far in the way of investigations. About a month after the crash, Scottish investigators expressed the belief that the bomb had been concealed in a radio-cas­ sette player and that it had probably been in a suitcase which was put on the plane in Frankfurt. The West Germans have coun­ tered with the statement that this act has never been shown to be a fact. The interesting thing is that, if you try to dig a bit deeper, you get a colossal run-around. Each office refers you to another and finally you come to the conclusion that, whatever may be known, neither the Germans, Americans nor the British are willing to give out anything more than the traditional rank, name and serial number. Since there is a dead end here, let’s look at some of the theories. One is that the bomb was carried aboard by an agent after where, for a short while at least, I can legitimately be excused from taking phone calls, feeding the dog or pretending I have a clue about my kid’s Algebra assignment. ‘Twas ever thus. 1 don’t have actual data, but I’m reasonably certain that folks down through the ages have always retired to their respective privies when the urge for solitude came upon them. Which makes me wonder where the next generation is going to go for a little peace and quiet. As a retreat, the bathroom is an endangered species. My newspaper tells me that the Trendy Folk down in California are retrofitting their bathrooms with - are you ready for this? - home computers, fax machines and cordless telephones. David Sharpio is a chap in Van Nuys, California, who makes a living remodelling other people’s bathrooms. And a very good living it is. Shapiro says that some of his clients are spending upwards of $100,000 to outfit their water closets as “social areas’’. If you’re thinking that it might be a little cramped wedging a Zerox machine in between the toilet and the bathroom weigh scales. I’m with you. But Californians (the ones with money at least) think bigger than you and I do. Any resemblance between their bathroom and the ones you and I hang out in is utterly coincidental. According to David Shapiro, his cus­ it was slipped into his baggage in Beirut. When a bag belonging to the agent arrived as lost luggage in New York, it was suggested that it had been switched for the lethal suitcase by a terrorist at Cyprus airport. Another theory blames the authorities at Heathrow airport in London for allowing aircraft belonging to Iran Air to park near those of Pan Am. It would be a very simple thing, it is argued, for an Iranian terrorist to dump an extra suitcase on the pile being loaded on the Pan Am plane. Why Iran Air? Well, don’t forget that the Americans caused a national outrage in Iran by shooting down by accident one of Iran’s plans over the Persian Gulf. The above mentioned belief of the Scottish police that the bag had been put out at Frankfurt led to a few other theories. Two young American girls came under suspicion since psychologists believe that girls in the age bracket of 18-25 are quite ready to do favours, such as take parcels on the plane. The two girls in question had made friends in Vienna with a man named Jamal who was believed to be a Jordanian. He was subsequently cleared but then suspicion switched to another Jordanian who, police believe, was a drug courier carrying a parcel considerably more lethal The views at Mabel’s Grill Continued from page 4 “That would never do now for the city that likes to see itself as the best in the world,’’ Tim said. Maybe the rickshaws would be all right if they could stick a BMW symbol on the forehead of each driver, Julia Flint suggested. Or maybe they’d be okay if the city said all the rickshaw drivers had to run fast enough that their tourist passengers couldn’t see the homeless people sleeping on the subway grates. WEDNESDAY: So much for joking about our slow old warships going to Iraq, Hank was saying. Turns out our ships are a lot faster than the politicians who sent them. Since the ships can’t go into a war zone more than 10 days before Parliament gets to date the fact, our ships had to sit around in the Mediterranian until they could get permission to sail on since Parliament isn’t sitting and of course nobody wants to cut short their summer vacation just to get a war officially under way. Tim says that 10 day rule is really tomers are punching out the walls and raising the roofbeams in their washrooms so that the new “spaces’’ can accommo­ date easy chairs, sofas - even gymnasium equipment. The idea, says Shapiro, is to make the bathroom more accessible so that “kids can come in and talk while their parents are getting ready for work or doing their exercise routines.’’ Is it just me or is this the most grotesque idea to come down the California Turnpike since Roseanne Barr? I don’t know about you, but 1 don’t wish to talk to my kids when I’m “getting ready for work’’ in my bathroom. We can debate the meaning of existence over the Wheata- bix in the kitchen. I’ll be delighted to handle any teenage queries in the living room, the basement or even the attic. But when it comes to the bathroom, one at a time, please. As for the idea of turning my bathroom into a work station with fax machines, cordless phones and a colour-co-ordinated Tandy laptop, I recall that Hugh Hefner, the Playboy Pooohbah, had a sign over the door of his Chicago pad that read: “IF YOU DON’T SWING, DON’T RING’’. I’m thinking of installing a brass plaque over my bathroom door. It will read: IF YOU RING (OR BUZZ OR HUM OR BOOT OR CLICK OR MAKE COPIES) STAY THE HELL OUT OF MY BATHROOM! than he thought. The argument further goes that, if the bomb had gone off as it was timed, it would have exploded over the Atlantic as did the Air India jet and the remains would have been difficult or impossible to recover. Additional evidence has come to light which is supposed to prove that the bomb was located in the aircraft’s left side, in a cargo bay which was loaded in Frankfurt. The Germans are a bit upset at this bit of evidence since a couple of months before the Lockerbie crash, police found a similar bomb inside a similar machine. Although 17 people were arrested as a result of this discovery, all but two have been released. One of those still in custody is reported to be a member of Palestinian terrorist group based in Syria. The Americans, for one, think that it is this group that was paid by the Iranians to do the bombing, said bombing to be an act of revenge that I mentioned above. I think that you can see by this point that tracking down the perpetrators is not easy. I have no access to secret files and nobody slipped me any evidence in a dark alley. It could well be that some day we will celebrate the fourth anniversary of the Lockerbie crash without knowing just who did the deed. reassuring. “The way they fight wars today the war might be over before Parliament even got to debate whether we should be in it or not.” THURSDAY: Billie says he can’t figure out what all the fuss is over immigration. The paper this morning says that given the curreni immigration priorities if a funeral director and a physicist were both in a line to enter Canada and both had perfect backgrounds, the funeral director would be let in and the physicist wouldn’t. “Makes sense. The way this country is going we’re going to need embalming more than another scientist.” Got an opinion? Write a letter to the editor Letter from tlie editor The frustrations continue BY KEITH ROULSTON While Ontario voters took out their frustrations on Premier David Peterson in the provincial election, not only knocking him out of power but even out of his own seat, many of the causes of the frustration won’t go away as easily as his government. Even if the new government of Bob Rae and the NDP is the greatest government in history, many of the things that are frustrating people won’t be changed. They’re beyond the realm of the provincial government. People will continue to feel helpless because so many of the irritants of life are beyond their ability to do anything about. They may be watching their family farm or business destroyed by high interest, but there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. They may hate the idea of the GST but they’ve got to live with it. The odds seemed stacked against them. Take, for instance, the brain-wave that came down from on high at Canada Post last week. Since Canada Post has multi­ millions invested in sorting equipment, somebody figured the best way to utilize it to the fullest is to truck mail from all over a region to feed the equipment, even if the mail was efficiently sorted by hand at small local post offices before. It means that in this area mail will either go to London or Kitchener to be sorted. It means that a letter bound from Blyth to Londesboro, three miles away, will now travel 60 miles to London and 57 miles back to Londes­ boro. A letter from Brussels to Bluevale will travel all the way to Kitchener and back again. Even if there is a full bag of pre-sorted mail, it will travel all the way to the sorting plant and come back again because truck drivers have been instructed not to drop off mail in between. It may take a couple of extra days but this, in the modern world, is efficiency. And just what can you do about it? Write your MP? How about the case of Dr. Gus Midges, the MP for Grey-Bruce who shows Mem­ bers of Parliament can get just as frustrated as the rest of us. He’s fighting the possible closure of the Palmerston-to- Owen Sound CN rail line. He’s run up against the National Transportation Agen­ cy (NTA) ruling that unless rail line users can prove the line will be profitable, the railway can get its wish and the line will be closed. Writing recently to the NTA he charged that CN had not tried to update its service or attract new customers. “It’s contention lines should be abandoned because of lack of use would appear to be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he wrote. The president of New Life Mills in Hanover says CN has made a point of not quoting competitive rates for the last three or four years because it wants to get out of the area. CN marketing officials told him they had been instructed to “demarket the area”. Then we’ve got John Crowe, head of the Bank of Canada who says we’ll have to live with high interest until we lick inflation when the high interest is causing inflation in the housing market and elsewhere. The government deficit is fueling inflation but the high interest is driving up the deficit. We have Free Trade to help us compete in the U.S. then have a high interest policy that costs our businesses so much they can’t compete. Even if they can solve that problem, they’ll be uncompetitive because the high interest rate makes the Canadian dollar too high. Is it any wonder then that the voters wanted to smash somebody in the face and David Peterson just happened to be the one guy they could reach? Is it any wonder that a lot of people grudgingly admire the bravery of the Mohawks to say they’re not going to take it any more? It seems to be a country gone mad, where logic isn’t logical any more. It seems to be a country where power is power. Continued on page 26