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The Citizen, 1992-02-12, Page 5iH Arthur Black THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12,1992. PAGE 5. The Canadian law enters twilight zone Stop the presses! Bulletin! Bulletin! Tell Mansbridge to slick down what's left of his forelock and get ready for a brand new lead story! A Calgary court decision has slam- shifted Canadian criminal law right out of the twentieth century at warp speed and straight into the Twilight Zone. Here's the deal: A Calgary lawyer, charged with defrauding the province of Alberta to the tune of $900,000, was convicted and sentenced to jail. (Two years, suspended — the man was a lawyer, after all. Only little people actually go to jail.) But the lawyer even avoided the suspended sentence by pleading — are you ready? — Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. His defence was that a viral infection attacked his mind and forced him to steal the money. “This illness was the cause of this crime” argued his attorney. “This kind of crime gave him a thrill ... a temporary relief from the ravages of the disease.” Oh, I get it. The man's not a thief — he was just... overtired. But here's the beautiful part of the whole story (from a lawyer or a crook's point of view). Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is SI International Scene You want to do what? BY RAYMOND CANON I know events in the world, especially in some parts of it, are moving very quickly, but surely one of the most sudden, not to mention surprising announcements was from Moscow where the Commonwealth of Independent States, formerly known as the Soviet Union, stated that it wanted to join NATO. After officials of that organization had picked themselves up off the floor, the carefully worded reaction was that some time in the future, such a thing might be possible, but not right now. For those of you whose history may be a little rusty, NATO or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was set up in the very late 1940's to counter the perceived threat of the Stalinist Soviet Union. Canada was a founding member; indeed it played a leading roll in getting NATO off the ground. It is made up of most of the nations of Western Europe with Switzerland and Sweden being the main exceptions as well as Iceland, the United States and Canada. Iceland is something of an anomaly; it has no army and its contribution is limited to the use by NATO forces of the large airbase at Kleflavik. Until we started to get extremely parsimonious with regards to the equipping of our armed forces, Canada played a leading role in NATO. We not only had 12 medically undetectable. There is no known diagnostic test or cure for it. That makes it even better than the Twinkie Defense. Remember that? Back in 1979, a homophobic whacko by the name of Dan White murdered the mayor and the supervisor of the city of San Francisco. At White's trial, his lawyer argued that White was not responsible for his actions because he had overindulged in junk foods -- specifically Twinkies — before the shooting. In other words, he'd committed the murders while out of control on a Sugar High. A couple of years ago there was a court case in Florida where a lawyer argued that his client -- an adolescent who'd dusted his parents with the family .357 — was not a cold-blooded killer. He was just an innocent victim of too much TV violence. Endless viewing of programs such as Miami Vice and Starsky and Hutch, claimed the lawyer, had convinced the gormless tadpole that the best way to deal with pressing problems was to squint down a gun barrel and blow them away. Ah, the Boob Tube solution, the Twinkie Defense, the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome — I can see unlimited possibilities for criminal jur isprudence here. And not just with cases of misunderstood rapists, underprivileged psychopaths and misfortune-bedogged serial killers currently languishing within the system. No, clearly the time has come to revise the history books and expunge the unjust blots beside the names of the By Raymond Canon squadrons of the most modem jets in Europe but we trained thousands of air crews for the European members of the alliance. At that time the threat of a Russian invasion of Western Europe was very real and few will deny that it was only the preparedness of NATO which kept the Russians in check. At times when I was travelling through West Germany, it seemed like the country was one big armed camp. The Americans had bases everywhere, the British were to be found in the north of the country and even the French were still located in what had been the French zone of occupation after World War II. The air above the country was extremely congested as military jets vied for space with the large number of commercial jets on their scheduled routes. You cannot blame the German population for wondering if they were going to see a replay of World War II, this time with nuclear weapons. Whatever world opinion might be of Mikhail Gorbachev, it was he who played the key role in reducing the threat to NATO. It had become obvious to him that the Russian economy was falling behind the West; it was, as a matter of fact, increasingly unable to support the military machine that had been built up over the years as an instrument of Soviet foreign policy. In short, it became clear to Gorbachev, and probably to his generals as well, that the Russian economy and not NATO was going to do them in. The crowning touch, or the coup de grace, as the French like to call it, came with the Gulf War. Don't forget that the Iraqis had been heavily armed by the Russians both on land and in the air and, in addition, had what passed for a very sophisticated defense system with the latest in Russian radar etc. In spite of all that, the American Stealth jets, Historically Misunderstood. I look forward with relish to a treatise called the Capone Conundrum, in which a psychologist explains the Valentine's Day massacre was merely Al's way of “acting out” his frustration at not receiving a single Valentine card that year. No doubt some academic is toiling away at this very moment over a manuscript which examines Jessie James' unfortunate Freudian fixation on rains. “Phallocentrism In Late 19th Century Rural Kansas” it might be called. What other innovative defense stratagems can we expect? The Hitler Hangup perhaps, in which it is made clear that Adolf was no despot -- merely the victim of tight underwear. The Genghis Gambit, whereby historians discover that the Great Khan never meant to hurt a fly. His conquests were merely the attention-getting device of an inveterate bed- wetter. As for me, I'm rather bored. Think I'll stroll down to the Canadian Tire, put my boot through the glass counter of the gun display, grab a Winchester pump, then amble over to the CIBC and stick 'em up. Maybe I'll do a spot of rape and pillage over at the milk store too. Am I worried about getting caught? Hell, I expect to. Already got my defense strategy worked out. I'm gonna tell the judge the Devil made me do it. the F-117, bombed Bagdad at will. Not one of them was shot down by the Iraqis; in fact the only way the anti-aircraft gunners knew the Americans were overhead was when the bombs started falling. Added to that were the extremely accurate missiles fired from American warships and the Russians, standing as mere spectators, had a front-row seat of what NATO could do. The rest, as they say, is history. But getting back to the question of the Russians joining NATO, the main reason why the member nations are going to make haste very slowly indeed on this matter is that (1) they have a general rule of not taking any more members, even such countries as Sweden, Switzerland or Austria (2) the former members of the Warsaw Pact, especially Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, have also expressed an interest in joining and frankly they are in a much better position strategically to do so. Finally (3) the Russians are far from getting their own mess sorted out. The new Commonwealth is not the Soviet Union; all decisions are not made in the Kremlin in Moscow and who knows what the final arrangement is going to look like when all the member nations get down to the fme print. The Commonwealth may be reality; the initial agreement was made in haste to present the world with a fait accompli; the differences, and there are still many, were papered over to be discussed at a later date. By the middle of the decade most of Canada's current forces in Europe will be back home, leaving only a symbolic handful. While we and the other members are cutting back on their forces, a decision has to be made as to what the revised version stands for. For the time being it will certainly do without any Russians. Short of it By Bonnie Gropp Men and women just see things differently The other day, for reasons I will explain later, I was reminded of an amusing occurrence which happened some years back. My husband, who is in construction, was doing some shut-down work in a Stratford plant. One day, as he was leaving the building, he was verbally accosted by a group of female employees out enjoying some sunshine, and apparently the view. Their remarks were lewd enough and crude enough to redden the cheeks of any modern-day neanderthal. It was an interesting bit of role reversal and one that altered my husband's perception. "I had no idea how degrading it is. Now, I understand what women get so upset about." What made me remember this story was when I heard a guest speaker from a shelter for abused women the other evening. She told a story about a conversation she had with her father one time, regarding how offended she had been by a group of men, who whistled and catcalled as she passed them. Her father shrugged it off, saying she takes these things too seriously. "Fifty percent of that is compliment, 50 percent is insult," he told his daughter. Her retort was immediate and impassioned. In her career, she sees the dark side of male-female relationships daily and her view is that this is 100 percent abuse. Personally I don't see it as being that easy. I can't believe the majority of men who are guilty of this social faux pas are aware of the reaction they cause. Insulting they may be, but abusive? I've got to assume that in true caveman style these guys just don't understand why we don't see this as the ultimate flattery. It's all in the way you look at things. There may be exceptions, but generally I think the male and female mind simply perceive things differently. I'm sure that even the best matched couples have felt many, MANY times, that while the road they are travelling may be the same, they're not always in the same car. "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" is a familiar male lament. I heard it most recently while reading a magazine article. It's point was to illustrate the concept behind a new study, that led to some intriguing possibilities that may help answer that very question. Research has been done and theories derived suggesting small differences in the make-up of men and women's brains that may actually cause information to be processed differently. If these theories are true, the report said, it could explain why men generally do better than women in tests of spatial ability, such as picturing shapes, positions and proportions. Also, boys often do better in mathematics, involving abstract concepts of space, relationships and theory. Females, on the other hand, usually say their first words and speak sentences earlier than boys. Some studies have shown that women use longer, more complex sentences when speaking. Of course, to explain the exceptions, it seems there are individuals whose brains are compatible to the other gender, which perhaps explains the actions of the cavewomen at the beginning of this column. Either way, I prefer to think that those guilty of this battle of the sexes war crime are ignorantly unaware of its effect on the victim. Like the guy in the bar who thinks the words "your place or mine" are ones for which you've waited all your life, there are others who think suggestive references about our anatomical parts, should make us ecstatic. And in all fairness, let's not forget there ARE women who DO like it. By defining this as abuse, doesn't it trivialize the more serious offenses?