Hassan Diab: the Crown drags its feet

Readers may remember this case. It broke into public view last year when Hassan Diab, a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University was abruptly fired by the President, Roseanne Runte, after a complaint by B'nai Brith.

Diab is accused by the French government of having bombed a synagogue in Paris 30 years ago. He has effectively been found guilty by B'nai Brith's Frank Dimant, and Runte, not to mention the odd neo-McCarthyite media columnist, but his extradition hearing before a real court of law is another matter.

Briefly, the case against Diab is crumbling quickly, and the Crown has been seeking delay after delay in the actual hearing so it can get its act together.

In France, the defence is not permitted to call expert witnesses: only the prosecution may do so. In Canada, with a somewhat more balanced system of justice, the defence may indeed counter with its own witnesses. The judge presiding over the case in Ottawa has allowed expert evidence to be introduced by Diab's lawyers.

France, which has had three decades to put the case against Diab together, now wants to review the new evidence, which casts considerable doubt on the original narrative, to put it mildly.

The judge does not appear to be happy with the Crown's tactics:

Justice Robert Maranger expressed concern that the Crown's delays are "wreaking havoc" with the court's schedule. “We have a Canadian citizen under strict bail conditions waiting around to see what happens. I don't want to see that happen." The Judge asked the Crown to clarify whether France intends to submit additional evidence, but the Crown was not able to give a definite answer.

The Crown has also involved itself in questionable conduct with respect to its translation of documents from France:

The parties also spent considerable time debating the translation of the Record of the Case (ROC) from French to English. The Crown has so far produced five English versions of the ROC since February 2009. Mr. Bayne [one of Diab's lawyers] argued that the Crown violated protocols set down by the Judge for revising the English translation. He accused the Crown of attempting to "sanitize" the translation by instructing the translator to replace the word "intelligence" with "information". The Crown started doing this after the Judge ruled that the defense may call evidence showing the inherent unreliability of using intelligence as evidence. Mr. Bayne cited case law showing that neither party may take on the role of translator. The Judge ruled that the Crown must provide a list of all changes that have been made to the English translation of the ROC since the first version.

The extradition hearing itself may take place in June, if the Crown and the defence can agree on dates. Until then, Diab remains jobless and under strict bail conditions, including the wearing of a GPS device at all times. The latter costs $2500 per month--and Diab has to come up with the money himself.

This sort of crap....

...is one reason political culture in Canada remains stuck in adolescence. Shame on the Toronto Star.

Adam Giambrone is the head of the Toronto Transit Commission, and he's just thrown his hat into the ring for the mayor's race. I am no Giambrone fan--I saw him in action years ago at a CLC convention, and found him too arrogant and ambitious, a young man for whom tactics seemed more important than principle. Nothing I've seen since has changed that impression. But all of these criticisms on my part are fair ball in a political context.

It never even entered my head to fuss about whether or not he had a partner, or was getting some on the side.

Irrelevant.

But not to the prurient muckraker Linda Diebel at the Star, who broke the story. And judging from the comments she has attracted, the baying of prigs and Pecksniffian guardians of public morality has only just begun.

Political stances? Leadership qualities? Track record? Vision for Toronto?

Who cares?

Why not publish a bunch of emails from a woman scorned instead?

Why not stamp an "A" on Giambrone's forehead so the self-righteous preening moralists, not to mention his political rivals, can divert the discussion from the level playing field of politics to the steamy details of a man's personal life?

With this sick-making excursion into yellow journalism, the Star's political reporting has taken a bold step into the gutter. Somebody call me when they start talking about the issues again.

Conservative priorities

During the current rustication of Parliament by Stephen Harper, the parliamentary committee investigating Canadian complicity in torture in Afghanistan has been meeting in informal session, and the Foreign Affairs Committee, too. The meetings have been boycotted by the Conservatives.

Not so, however, with that ridiculous political sideshow called the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism. This gaggle of witch-hunters, whose funding remains mysterious despite promises of transparency, and whose conclusions, clearly established from the start, have been buttressed by a largely one-sided selection of witnesses, is chugging merrily along with its "inquiry." And today Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney will be "testifying" before it.

More from Kady O'Malley.

Torture? No big deal. But investigating a "problem" that even the far-right Jonathan Kay admits is minor in the scheme of things--the Cons can't miss that. After all, it's entirely of a piece with their de-funding of KAIROS for alleged anti-Semitism (gosh, there's Kenney again), cancelling a grant to a major Arab-Canadian group (goodness me, there's Kenney again) and taking a wrecking ball to the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development because it dared to support human rights for Palestinians in the Middle East.

During today's session, the parliamentary inquisitors will also be hearing from an assortment of policemen. Doesn't that just warm the blood?

UPDATE: Kenney and his government proved to be too much even for some members of the CPCCA. His smarmy little dance around the defunding of KAIROS was a sight to behold:

He also defended the funding cut to KAIROS, saying the group doesn't deserve government money because it advocates the boycott of the Jewish state, including disinvestment and sanctions, charges denied by the group's defenders.

Kenney added, however, the KAIROS decision had nothing to do with his take on the group's anti-Israel positions. The call was made solely by the Canadian International Development Agency on grounds it wanted to focus on food security and fighting poverty, he said. [emphasis added]

Pull the other one, Minister.

Let the best science win!

One of my favourite bloggers, Tim Lambert, is going to be debating Lord Monckton on Friday. I have a lot of respect for Tim who has done some extremely good work in regards to the issue of AGW. There is no question that he knows his stuff and while I think this type of discussion is very important, a debate format is not the best for exploring science. I have seen a couple of these debates and the problem is that the denial side is able to throw up what amount to lies which have no hope of being justified, but would take too long to expose during a debate. I am not saying that Lord Monckton will do that; however he does say things that aren’t supported by the science.

Consequently, if I can get hold of a broadcast or transcript of the debate, I will be posting the arguments made by Lord Monckton and assessing their validity in regards to the science. Stay tuned!

All in the family

Some might be surprised, perhaps, to hear this: sometimes I wish, in an alternate universe, that I had been born in Israel. (That's very alternate indeed, because I happen to be somewhat older than Israel, but no matter.) It seems to be the only place where you can have a decent discussion about the Middle East.

There is a passionate debate going on in Israel at the moment. It has to do with an organization called the New Israel Fund, which, thanks to a right-wing student group called Im Tirtzu, is now in the centre of a controversy that extends from the street to the Knesset.

Briefly, and I shall try to refrain from offering my own take on this, Im Tirtzu has sourced a number of negative references to the Israeli Defence Force found in the Goldstone Report to several NGOs that have received money from the NIF.

The fallout has been swift and amazing. A veteran columnist at the Jerusalem Post, Naomi Chazan, who is also the NIF President, has been summarily fired. An invitation to her from the Union for Progressive Judaism in Australia has been abruptly cancelled because of the controversy. And everybody's talking.

It's really worth reading a number of commentators to get the flavour. Perhaps the most noticeable thing--obviously, given the locus and the ethnicity of most of the folks in the brawl--is the absence of the a-word. No one is being silenced or distracted in that stupid and dishonest way with which we in Canada are all too familiar. It's a bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred verbal combat, not necessarily respectful or decorous, often not, in fact, but it's on topic. And, if you follow the links, you will see that there are far more than two intractable sides to the question--there are many sides, of both the tractable and intractable varieties. Everyone in Canada who has a position on Middle Eastern affairs, no matter what that position is, can find his or her counterpart in Israel.

Goldstone, unsurprisingly, comes in for his share of criticism. He has recently been subjected, unfortunately, to some of the same hyperbolic ranting that breaks out in Canada whenever the topic of the Middle East comes up. But this sort of thing seems to be the exception, and in any case the conversation has shifted now, from the contents of his report, which do not escape critique from partisans on all sides--but rather, to how those contents were compiled.

Here is a pretty good overview of the discussion, from the Washington bureau chief of JTA. Everybody is in there, from the NIF and Im Tirtzu, of course, to the far-right American pastor John Hagee and Peace Now.

And here are some of the voices raised in debate: Are the Goldstone criticisms of the IDF true? False? Does it matter? Is the use of caricature in the debate appropriate? Why has the IDF relied on some of the same sources for which NIF is now under attack? Are the NIF critics McCarthyist? Hey, NIF, you're too thin-skinned! How much criticism is too much criticism? The NIF is objectively pro-Iran! Your funding sources should be investigated! So should yours! We want dialogue! This is all very complicated!

Despite the seriousness of the issues at stake, it's a joyful noise. It makes the current Rights and Democracy talkfest here at home sound positively pallid by comparison. And it makes the Middle East debate in North America look frankly cartoonish--which it too often is, when it's allowed to happen at all.

We could learn something from the way these folks are carrying on. This is just how debate should be done: it's messy, frenetic, open-ended, meaty, with many sides digging deeply into the subject-matter. It makes me profoundly envious. A pity, isn't it, that it can't happen here?

Canadian civics: the cultural trickle-down effect

Mr. Harper, be very afraid.

[Big h/t James Bowie]

Rights and Democracy: B'Tselem strikes back

B'Tselem, the Israel-based human rights group labeled "toxic" and "Israeli in name only" by the Chair of Rights and Democracy, Aurel Braun, has issued a stiffly-worded press release calling for an end to his on-going slander of the organization.

Rather than paraphrase, I reproduce that release, dated February 4, in its entirety. It's high time that the mainstream media, which have made free with Braun's comments of late, take note of it.


4.2.10
Press Release - for immediate publication

B'Tselem demands a halt to baseless assault by Rights and Democracy chair

B'Tselem has written to demand that Board members of the Canadian organization Rights and Democracy stop maligning B'Tselem's name. In a letter by B'Tselem Executive Director Jessica Montell, to Aurel Braun, Chairman of Rights and Democracy, Montell demands that he cease his ongoing public attacks on the Israeli human rights NGO.

B'Tselem read in the Canadian press that the board of Rights and Democracy voted to "repudiate" its grant to the organization. "We were outraged to read quotes in the press in which some members of the Board cast baseless aspersions on B'Tselem and the integrity of our work", writes Montell. "These statements reveal profound, even offensive ignorance about B'Tselem's work and its role in Israeli society".

In its twenty years of activity, B'Tselem has earned a reputation both in Israel and around the world as the most reliable source for information on human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Leading journalists, policymakers and academics consistently cite B'Tselem as their primary source for reliable information about human rights and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. B'Tselem is proud of its role in generating Israeli public discussion regarding human rights, and in fostering real improvements in Israel 's human rights policies.

In addition to its documentation and advocacy activities, B'Tselem works closely with the Israeli military authorities in order to promote accountability. Israel 's Judge-Advocate General has repeatedly praised his cooperation with B'Tselem, including in a recent feature in Israel 's Haaretz newspaper: "My goal is to get at the truth, and they definitely help us do that. The cooperation with B'Tselem stands out in particular. They help us speak to witness, to examine complaints. They do their job and I do mine. The interests are not identical, but with all the criticism of these organizations of us, their goal is to seek out the truth."

B'Tselem is motivated by a deep commitment to Israeli society, as well as a commitment to universal human rights principles. It strives for a future in which Israelis and Palestinians alike will live in freedom and dignity.

Two Palestinian organizations - al-Haq and al-Mezan - were similarly attacked in the Canadian press. B'Tselem also protested these attacks, citing the reputation both organizations have earned for their courageous work against human rights violations by Israeli as well as Palestinian authorities.

For further information contact:
Sarit Michaeli, Press Officer, at +972 (0)50-5387230 or saritm@btselem.org
Mitchell Plitnick, Director of US Communications mitchell@btselem.org Phone: +1-202-783-0629


Sarit Michaeli
Press Officer
B'Tselem
+972 (0) 73-2509305 (office)
+972 (0)50 5387230 (cell)
http://www.btselem.org/

Rights and Democracy: David Matas and the Christian connection

David Matas is a recent Harper appointment to the troubled Rights and Democracy Board. In the interests of fairness and transparency, Maclean's columnist Paul Wells reproduces a new communication from Matas, whose previous defence of the agency came to the public via far-right activist Ezra Levant.

One can't fault Matas for attempting to apply varnish to wood in the last stages of dry-rot. It's his job, as a Board member, to defend the current administration, and he does. Shorter Matas: move along, nothing to see here, it's the usual institutional jockeying between a staff and a Board. Policy isn't at issue, everyone's on-side, Israel has nothing to do with it.

The day before [the late President Remy] Beauregard died, the Board passed a motion repudiating the grants. The vote was nine in favour and one abstention. None opposed. Beauregard not only voted in favour of repudiation; he spoke for the motion saying “we could have done our homework better”. All that remained in dispute was the manner in which both sides had acted in resolving this policy disagreement.

Recall that this came after several months of browbeating by pro-Israel hawks on the Board, including its Chair, Aurel Braun. A negative evaluation of Beauregard by the Braun faction, then in a minority, was obtained by Beauregard through a Freedom of Information request and distributed at a Board meeting last June, causing no end of consternation to the folks who had thought they could undermine him in secret.

At the January meeting, Beauregard reached the end of his tether. The grants had been made, the money spent long ago, and what was at issue was administrative: new rules by which the President, already in the process of cleaning up management practices, could make discretionary expenditures.

To quote the Braun faction:

The freeze decision is meant to allow the staff time to complete a redesign of decision-making processes to help the organization avoid such situations in the future.

Reading between the lines, tighter administrative processes were continuing to be implemented, and the President went along. As to the "homework" that should have been better done, we have no idea of the full context of that remark. Perhaps it was a last-ditch effort to be conciliatory.

It was quite a gathering in January. Three grants to human rights groups in the Middle East were "repudiated," an international Board member was shown the door by the Braun Board, and two other Board members resigned on the spot. The battered President left the meeting, went home and died of a heart attack.

Matas couldn't confine himself to an administrative argument, in any case. Instead, he began a tirade about "anti-Conservative polemicists" who have allegedly "concocted facts."

...Haroon Siddiqui, in an opinion piece published in the Toronto Star, January 31, 2010 under the heading “How the Harperites ambushed the rights agency” wrote that the Board “voted 7-6 to repudiate the three grants”. A vote of 7 to 6 for repudiation sustained a story line that recent Tory appointees to the Board were bringing to the Board the Tory’s pro-Israel agenda. So that was the assertion, in spite of the fact that the vote was nine to none with one abstention.

Moreover, Siddiqui when he wrote about the 7-6 vote, knew it not to be true. I had written an analysis of the controversy in Rights and Democracy where I recounted the repudiation vote. In my analysis, I pointed out that the motion had passed handily and that Beauregard had voted in favour of the repudiation motion. I sent my analysis to Siddiqui by e-mail. He responded on January 27 by thanking me and indicating he had already read my analysis on a website.

Yet, four days later he wrote an opinion piece suggesting that the Board/staff dispute over the three grants remained alive and that the change in policy was the result of a Harper “hostile takeover” of the Board. Those imaginary facts fit better into the opinion he wanted to express than the real facts. So the imaginary facts prevailed.

7-6, 9-0. Matas' colleague Aurel Braun, meantime, says the vote was 8-0. Surely there are Minutes to put this matter to rest. In the meantime, Braun and Matas themselves disagree on the facts.

(I have contacted Rights and Democracy to obtain the coordinates of the person responsible for FOI requests so that I can initiate a request for the Minutes of the fateful January 7 meeting. Given the Centre's unwillingness or inability to respond to date, I would welcome any brown-paper envelopes that people might want to send my way.)

There is no reason, in any case, to quarrel with Siddiqui's assessment. To claim that policy isn't involved in the goings-on at Rights and Democracy stretches credulity. The staff has complained bitterly, not only about office administration (and even there, it is rare for an entire shop, maybe minus one or two people, to rise up in protest in this manner about merely administrative matters), but about outright racial profiling. Matas doesn't address this question, nor, whether the policy issue is allegedly settled or not, why the top echelon of management has just been suspended.

In a similar vein, Ish Theilheimer, at the website PublicValues.ca, wrote that the letter from the staff asking three Board members to resign was directed not to the leadership of the Board, but rather to a trio he characterized as recent political appointees – myself, Michael Van Pelt, and Jacques Gauthier. Yet, Jacques Gauthier was appointed to the Board two years ago.

Michael Van Pelt and I are the new appointees. The January Board meeting was our first. The staff did not ask us to resign. The Theilheimer commentary which criticized the Harper government for using the appointments process to pursue an ultra conservative agenda both quoted and had a link to an article by Maclean’s reporter Paul Wells. That Wells article stated correctly who the three targeted Board members were.

So again here we have an imaginary fact, which the writer knew to be false, being using to buttress an opinion which the real facts could not sustain. The suggestion of a hostile political takeover is more compelling if the staff resignation demand is directed to the new members. The narrative Theilheimer wanted to build is that the staff today still support funding for the three organizations but the Government does not; so the Government appointed people to reverse the funding policy.

This is an amazing display of disingenuousness. Let's deconstruct:

First, the three people named in the staff letter were Braun, Gauthier and Elliot Tepper. It's entirely fair to point that out (and Theilheimer provided the link) but it shouldn't be conflated with the larger narrative: a minority, hawkishly pro-Israel faction had been increasing its numbers on the Board thanks to recent Harper appointments, and the arrival of Matas and Michael Van Pelt gave Aurel Braun the majority he had been looking for. The majority flexed its muscles this January: the scheduled October meeting of the Board had been cancelled by Braun, likely to allow the majority to be created.

Let's not play semantic games about Van Pelt, either. If "evangelist" is not precise, "fundamentalist Christian" would fit more exactly. And then there is Jacques Gauthier, with his PhD thesis effectively supporting the confiscation of East Jerusalem by Israel: thanks to the Braun Board, he's now the interim President of Rights and Democracy.

Agenda? What agenda? asks Matas, with wide-eyed innocence. Nobody told him what to do. Sure, he's a lawyer for B'nai Brith, but he's a Liberal. But he doesn't mention the fact that the extremist pro-Israel stance of B'nai Brith has been adopted, holus-bolus, by the Conservative government. Whether he's holding his nose or not, Matas is completely on-side. His enemy's enemy, the Harper government, is presently his friend.

And of course no official comment from the current Rights and Democracy Board majority would be complete without the obligatory smear:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Al Haq, Al Mezan and B’Tselem have gained a reputation for their method of operation – develop a theory first, in their case “Israel is to blame” and then twist or invent the facts to fit the theory. The current round of polemicist attacks on the Tories seems inspired by this method of operation. If the facts cannot sustain their theory – a Conservative party hostile takeover of Rights and Democracy to pursue a right wing ideological agenda – then the facts must be changed to fit the theory.

Whatever, David. But there's a backstory developing that may have some bearing on the situation.

Michael D. Behiels, of the Department of History at the University of Ottawa, has claimed that the government, in what looks like a wrecking operation at Rights and Democracy, is simply "pandering to B'nai Brith." He's right, but there's more to it than that. The Centre, in fact, appears to be a casualty of the alliance of B'nai Brith's Israel-can-do-no-wrongers and the fundamentalist Christian Right.

In broad strokes, the nature of that alliance is sketched out here. It goes well beyond Canadian borders, of course. It occupies a twilight space in which Jews who do not toe the line are maniacally denounced as evil traitors, while Christian evangelists seeking the proper unfolding of Biblical prophecy, and who inconveniently believe that Jews will meet their deserved end during the Rapture, are Israel's current BFFs.

Now, B'nai Brith Canada has been having its own factional dispute going on for several years, and this has just culminated in a lawsuit by nine former members of the organization this past January 20.

These nine members were expelled from the organization in 2008. They include past BB national presidents, and 93-year-old Lou Ronson, the longest-living member of B'nai Brith up to that time, who received his expulsion notice while he was mourning the recent death of his wife. They are suing for $990,000 in damages and reinstatement. As reported in the Canadian Jewish News:

The case arises out of a dispute between several longstanding senior members of the organization – who were expelled – and the organization’s leadership over a number of alleged irregularities. The former members contend that B’nai Brith directors have wrested control of the organization from its members, who are organized in lodges, and that B’nai Brith “has used tactics amounting to intimidation” to silence opposition.

--

The plaintiffs were expelled from B’nai Brith after a disciplinary committee hearing in January 2008 for "conduct unbecoming a member." The plaintiffs ...allege the disciplinary committee hearing was fraught with legal and procedural errors "such that the plaintiffs were thereby denied a fair hearing conducted in accordance with the principles of natural justice."

They say they were never informed who laid the complaint against them or what specific conduct merited expulsion. As well, they say they weren't permitted to cross-examine their accusers, they weren't allowed to present submissions on their own behalf, and that the hearing was adjourned with a request for disclosure of documents still pending.

"The plaintiffs state and the fact is that the directors of the BBC have effectively taken control of the organization from its membership, and in part by way of the taking of such control, failed to provide details of contracts involving themselves and other associated bodies of which they have direction."

--

The defence acknowledges that "many of the plaintiffs were longstanding members of BBC and BBI. However, the plaintiffs’ tenure and past accomplishments did not insulate them from subsequently engaging in conduct unbecoming a member of these organizations."

What's up? Just a common-or-garden institutional struggle, much like the one at Right and Democracy, as Matas is attempting to portray it?

Well, no. The B'nai Brith fracas, as it turns out, is about policy, too--policy that has a direct bearing upon the politics presently at play at Rights and Democracy.

Stephen Scheinberg is a former senior B'nai Brith official. He and Aurel Braun--small world--were co-authors of a book about the far right, but that was then (1997) and this is now.

Factional fighting within the upper echelons of B'nai Brith broke out in 2007. Part of it had to do with how the organization was being run, and part of it arose from the close ties its President, Frank Dimant, was attempting to build with the Conservative party.

In the Fall of that year, Scheinberg broke with the organization and published an article entitled "Partners for Imperium: B’nai Brith Canada and the Christian Right" (HTML version here).

Scheinberg contends that the struggle within B'nai Brith was not ideological, and he also tries to distance Stephen Harper from the religious fundamentalism addressed in his article, fingering Jason Kenney as the PM's point man in that respect.

But readers may wish to draw their own conclusions from the contents of his piece. Here are some excerpts, with emphases added:

Presiding over B'nai Brith’s declining fortunes since 1978 has been Executive Vice-President Frank Dimant, the son of Holocaust survivors who was born in Munich just after the war. Dimant matured within Montreal's Betar, the extreme right-wing Jewish youth group associated with the Revisionist-Zionist movement of Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin. Revisionism advocated an Israel on both sides of the Jordan (that is, including much of today’s Jordan).

Dimant took his present position thirty years ago, an extremely long tenure in such a position but testifying to his skill at wielding power. He distributes offices and awards, and even helps his loyal followers gain places in B’nai Brith International, organizes meetings with government officials, and also has ties to the Conservative Party, which could help secure a nomination for parliament. At least two of his followers, to my knowledge, have nominations for the next election.

In the 1980s, when I first came to BBC, attracted by its work for human rights, it was a pluralistic organization. Around the League for Human Rights table I found mostly liberals—a few, such as myself, with more activist backgrounds—and a sprinkling of conservatives. Most of the conservatives were part of the other side of BBC political work, the Institute for International Affairs, and since most of that group’s work was Israel advocacy, it was where Dimant’s own Betar views predominated. I think many, like myself, in the League accepted this, believing that the Institute was Frank Dimant’s small corner of B’nai Brith, but unfortunately that corner has become what today’s B’nai Brith is all about.

This state of pluralism in B’nai Brith lasted until about five years ago. It has now been totally eliminated with the expulsion of eight dissenting members. At a rump national board meeting, with a bare quorum, Dimant introduced a resolution to forge an alliance with the Christian right in Canada. Knowing something of their American counterparts, I challenged the motion, but was the only one to do so. I turned to well-known Liberal human rights lawyer David Matas of Winnipeg, but he was not similarly alarmed, perhaps because his own unabashedly pro-Israel position was consistent with such an alliance, or perhaps he did not share my fears. Dimant and others tried to assure me that the alliance was only for Israel advocacy. [emphasis added]

I soon learned that was not the case. One day I received a phone call from NDP MP Svend Robinson, inviting me as Chair of the League for Human Rights to come to Ottawa to testify in favour of his bill to include gays and lesbians among those protected from hate speech. I readily agreed, because it had always been BBC policy to support their inclusion, but I was in for a surprise. It was clear that the main group opposed to Robinson’s bill was the Christian right, and that BBC, that is Mr. Dimant, would not support the bill without protection being given to the speech of anti-gay clergy. I, though much embarrassed, had to notify Robinson that I was unable to appear at the hearings as a representative of BBC. It would have been a good time to resign, but perhaps mistakenly, I hung in.

Meanwhile, Dimant received a honourary doctorate from the Canada Christian College, but unlike most recipients of such degrees, he often uses the title "Dr." Joint tours of Israel, exchanges of speakers and of course mutual support of the Conservative Party have furthered the linkage. The anti-gay, anti-feminist, pro-censorship stance of Reverend Charles McVety of the Canada Christian College did not seem to bother Dimant, who heads a League for Human Rights.

[That name! Where have I heard it before? --ed.]

A key person in furthering the alliance was Joseph Ben-Ami, a bearded, pleasant individual and an Orthodox Jew who took on the role of BBC’s government affairs representative in Ottawa. He had worked previously for Stephen Harper and then for Stockwell Day as a policy aide, and played a leading role in Day’s leadership campaign. I believe that Ben-Ami was central to the effort to build this alliance. He would go on to work for two of the numerous front organizations established by Rev. McVety—the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies and the Institute for Canadian Values. McVety seems to believe that his multiple groups will further the belief in the power and influence of the Christian right here in Canada. According to a 2006 article in Walrus, McVety’s Institute was established as “a direct riposte to bill C-38” which legalized same-sex marriage.

In any event, McVety and some of his pastoral colleagues, especially Reverends John Tweedie and Dean Bye, became favoured speakers at BBC events. They helped create the illusion that, at long last, Canadian churches were giving their unconditional support to Israel.

That would seem to connect most of the dots. The writing is on the wall, I think, for Rights and Democracy.

UPDATE: The redoubtable Paul Wells weighs in. Chomp!

Ezra's law

My friend Ezra Levant's sins are catching up with him. About time.

This cheerful defamer, who calls torture victim Maher Arar a "liar," who refers to the respected Toronto Star columnist Haroon Siddiqui as an "anti-semite," who believes that British piracy laws should have been invoked to kill Omar Khadr and spare us all this crap about Charter rights, who engages in ugly character assassination against those who can't fight back, and mocks people for having disabilities, has run into his first roadside bomb.

A complaint against him for professional misconduct has been upheld by the Law Society of Alberta. Needless to say, this is being kept well under wraps by the Usual Suspects, who worship at the man's feet; indeed, we might not even have learned of it if, as reported in the National Post, Ezra hadn't raised the matter himself, assuring us all that it was a minor scrape, nothing more, and besides, other complaints against him were dismissed.*

My pal Warren Kinsella is digging into this. Expect much.

Meanwhile, the defamation lawsuits are flying thick and fast. The mills of the law grind slowly and exceedingly fine--but grind they do. I suspect the end product won't be pretty. Talk about flours of evil.

UPDATE: (February 9) More. Much more.

UPPERDATE: A little bird tells me that there is allegedly a difference between a finding of various violations of the LSA code of conduct, and the upholding of the complaint that gave rise to this finding. Not being a lawyer, much less a member of the Alberta bar, I have some difficulty telling the difference, but I am prepared, if this can be satisfactorily explained, to state that there is a difference.

______________
*"In what he called 'a mass dismissal of more than a dozen complaints at once,' Mr. Levant said there was a finding of a minor violation of the lawyer's code of conduct, followed by a 'mandatory conduct advisory' with a senior bencher, known as a 'fireside chat,' after which the complainants have no possibility of further appeal. Mr. Levant described the meeting, which happened late last year, as a pleasant coffee with Stephen G. Raby, QC, who made no demands that he change his behaviour, just to 'remember you are a lawyer.'"

Get well soon, Jack

Cancer can be a terrible fight. But you will win.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Ringleader

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

It's official: our new Prime Minister-elect is an onion ring. Let the darkness lift.

As I write, the Facebook group "Can this onion ring get more fans than Stephen Harper?" has attracted twice as many fans as the current non-sitting PM.

It's important to note the contrasting characteristics of the rivals. Onion rings are hot. Harper is not. Onion rings are popular. Harper is not.

Onion rings don't prorogue. They don't defy Parliament, or violate the rights of citizens. Onion rings don't interfere with/destroy independent agencies. Onion rings don't cover up torture. Onion rings don't collect portraits of themselves.

Onion rings are humble. Onion rings can get along with just about anybody. Onion rings are like us.

But, the naysayers will sneer, why THIS ring? Don't all onion rings--I hesitate to say this about our future leader--taste alike?

The answer is simple: first come, first served. This one gets my vote: let's rush it into office before it gets cold.

And have a nice O-lympics, everyone.









[Disclaimer: the obvious orange colour of The One Ring has nothing to do whatsoever with my enthusiastic support.]

[via Big City Lib]

Blatant

Good grief.



Remember when they talked about subliminal advertising?

u@50

Why I refuse to lose hope.





[H/t Galloping Beaver]

Dear Yamilee

Good day and compliments and blessings of God.

I am Edith Lucie Sassou-Nguesso, widow of Omar Bongo, late President of Gabon. I seek your indulgence to assist me.

My beloved Omar had the sum of Twenty Million USD ($20,000,000.00) specially preserved and well packed in trunk boxes. It is packed in such a way to forestall just anybody having access to it. It is this sum that I seek your assistance to remove from Gabon as soon as possible before the present government finds out about it and confiscates it.

I am now ready to transfer the fund overseas and that is where you come in. I require your assistance to expedite this transfer. The total sum will be shared as follows: 70% for me, 25% for you and 5% for local and international expenses incident to the transfer.

I implore you in Jesus name to please give consideration to my predicament and help me.

May God show you mercy as you do so.

Your faithfully,
Edith Lucie Sassou-Nguesso

PS: Will you be home for supper tonight?

Illegal in Ottawa

...to swear at police for entering private premises without a warrant.

Causing a disturbance "in or near a public place...by fighting, screaming, shouting, swearing, singing or using insulting or obscene language" is a criminal offence, with, apparently, broad application.

This blog is a public place. Just saying.

Warning: the comment thread may prove to be not safe for work.

Rights and Democracy: Aurel Braun's epic flail

Aurel Braun, the embattled Chair of the Board of Rights and Democracy, has come back swinging at his legion of critics. But so far, he hasn't landed a punch.

Criticism of his heavy-handedness and screamingly obvious political biases he calls "vicious" and "obscene." Everyone, it seems, is out to get him: former presidents of the Centre, opposition MPs, his own staff.

"I and my board have been subjected to the most vicious partisan smear campaign when all we are, in fact, are human rights activists who are trying to make sure this organization is transparent and accountable and congruent with the good conscience of the Canadian people," Braun said. "I am bewildered by these accusations and embarrassed as a Canadian."

Cry me a river. Your antics, Dr. Braun, have caused two international Board members with impeccable credentials, Sima Samar of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and Payam Akhavan, to quit in protest this past January. You ensured that a third, Guido Riveros Franck, would not be reappointed. Each of these individuals possesses credentials in the field of human rights that dwarf your own, and tower above those of party hacks like recent Harper appointee Brad Farquhar.

Your staff have risen up to protest your heavy-handed governance. You claim that their letter has no credibility because, you allege, one signature--out of 47--was found to have been added in error. Does this magically erase the profound concerns of the other 46? Pull the other one. And how do you respond? By gutting the entire top echelon of Centre management. And gagging your employees.

You continue your attacks on Middle East human rights agencies, offering no evidence whatsoever to back up your smears. Then you whine about being smeared yourself.

And speaking of smears:

Braun also said that contrary to widespread perception, the vote to repudiate the grants passed 8-0 with two abstentions at the fateful January board meeting; [Rémy] Beauregard voted with the majority.

"He became convinced in the end that these were toxic groups whose funding should be repudiated," Braun said.

Incredible. What actually happened was that the President, who had already initiated a cleanup of management practices at the Centre, agreed to the freezing of his discretionary emergency fund until new spending parameters were put in place. There is no evidence to support the contention, and indeed it is an offence to his memory, to claim that Beauregard had come to agree with your slander of respectable human rights groups.

And this is where things are at now:

[T]he centre is in such a state of dysfunction, it is unable to get expense money to staffers assisting the relief effort in Haiti.

Gazette reporter Sue Montgomery had to lend $600 to one staffer for food and water on the assurance she would be reimbursed by the centre.

When Montgomery called the centre this week regarding the reimbursement, she was told that no one on staff is authorized to sign cheques for the time being.

You're doing a hell of a job, Braunie.

First report from the CRU investigations.

While I think that most (all?) of the issues raised when someone stole e-mail from the CRU have been answered, there is still some cleaning up to do. Part of that cleanup was carried out today with the release of a report investigating Dr. Michael Mann.

Penn State, where Dr. Mann is employed, received a number of complaints based on the stolen e-mails from CRU. It struck a committee to investigate and while there were no formal allegations of wrong doing the committee distilled four allegations of inappropriate behaviour on Dr. Mann's part from the complaints.

• Allegation 1: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?
• Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
• Allegation 3: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?
• Allegation 4. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities?

The first three allegations deal with fact, the fourth essentially deals with opinion. I think it is fairly obvious to anyone who followed the issue that there is nothing of substance to the first three and this is reflected in the decision of the committee. The report uses identical phrasing for them saying:

As there is no substance to this allegation, there is no basis for further examination of this allegation in the context of an investigation in the second phase of RA-10.

In regards to allegation 4, the committee took the politically correct route and said that they are administrators and are not qualified to judge what is accepted scientific discourse. Another committee of faculty scientists has been struck to examine this issue.

While I am pleased that Dr. Mann has been completely vindicated I find it disturbing that the University launched an investigation based on groundless public comments. Dr. Mann had to undoubtedly spend a significant time dealing with an issue that should have never been raised. It seems that it was instigated by people who have a political agenda as opposed to being able to raise any legitimate scientific points. If this is the future of science then we are indeed in trouble.

Democracy

Like the weather, everybody talks about democracy, but they seem to have no clear idea what to do about it. Or even what it is.

Some regular commenters here of the libertarian persuasion argue that democracy is actually an enemy of liberty. In their view--and I'll be told if I'm not fairly summarizing--democracy is simply majority rule.

If that were the case, democracy is obviously something to be avoided at all costs. Both Hitler's Germany and arguably Stalin's Russia enjoyed majority support, at least at certain periods. Neither, however, could conceivably be called democracies.

I think it's important to go to the root of the concept. "Democracy" means "rule by the people." Not "a majority of the people." The latter is rightly called "ochlocracy"--mob rule.

So how do "the people" rule?

Majorities continually shift. On one issue you might be supported in your views by a majority of citizens; on another, you might well find yourself on the fringe. You might be in a political majority today, but tomorrow you might be in the minority. Majoritarianism might lift you up one day--and grind you under its heel the next.

Majoritarianism is tyranny. It's just a collective form of Hobbes' "warre of all against all":

[T]he state of men without civill society (which state we may properly call the state of nature) is nothing else but a meere warre of all against all; and in that warre all men have equall right unto all things; Next, that all men as soone as they arrive to understanding of this hatefull condition, doe desire (even nature it selfe compelling them) to be freed from this misery. But that this cannot be done except by compact, they all quitt that right which they have unto all things.

It's a matter of both collective interest and self-interest, it seems to me, to defend the social contract that Hobbes describes as a democratic optimum. The rule of law, and codified rights, permit everyone, whether in a minority or a majority, to enjoy equal protection and to be afforded equal opportunity to participate in the political life of their society. Consensus and dissensus are both aspects of a functioning democracy, and both should have ample scope for expression.

By democracy, however, I do not mean the empty formalism of constitutional or parliamentary democracy. I think we've seen recently in Canada how illusory such "democracy" is, how fragile. Genuine rule "by the people" does not merely consist of the election of representatives, even with improved mechanisms for making those representatives accountable. It must also include control over the immediate decisions that govern their daily lives. That entails a subsidiarist position, but I would go further, to the likely horror of libertarians: it includes democratic control of the means of production.

I'm going to leave it there. I hope we might have, in the comments, a good discussion/exploration of the concept of democracy, from all sectors of the political spectrum.

This England

Satire, RIP.

Nicole Mamo, 48, wanted to post an advert for a £5.80-an-hour domestic cleaner on her local Jobcentre Plus website.

The text of the advert ended by stating that any applicants for the post ''must be very reliable and hard-working''.

But when Ms Mamo called the Jobcentre Plus in Thetford, Norfolk, the following day she was told that her advert would not be displayed instore.

A Jobcentre Plus worker claimed that the word ''reliable'' meant they could be sued for discriminating against unreliable workers.

This has since been re-thought and corrected. Does that mean that the poor munchkin who made the original ruling may now be safely let go for unreliability?

[H/t Peter 1, b/c]

Impunity

The Harper government will not be requesting the repatriation of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr. One hardly needed a crystal ball to predict that.

The Supreme Court, in its decision last week, effectively ruled that the Charter doesn't apply to Khadr. Rights without juridical backing aren't rights at all. Khadr's Charter rights are being breached to the present day, said the Court, but it refused to order a remedy, leaving that up to a government whose interest in Canadian citizens in difficulty abroad appears to be inversely proportional to their skin colour.

This human rights lawyer has it right:

Some have argued that despite the limp language of the judgment, the Canadian government still has to "do something." Maybe. But it depends on what "do" means. The court says that it has created a "legal framework for the executive to exercise its functions."

Will the executive branch, now equipped with this salutary but minimalist legal framework, be sufficiently invigorated to offer redress to Khadr when it has steadfastly refused to budge until now? And if the executive does nothing beyond duly considering the legal framework, what then?

Good questions, to which the answers are, I think, obvious.

For those who argue that the Charter can merely restrain, not compel positive action by the government, just last year the Federal Court took the opposite view in the case of condemned murderer Ronald Smith, facing the death penalty in the US. Justice R.L. Barnes ordered the government to continue to seek clemency for Smith, after the Harper administration had decided to leave him to his own devices.

In the Khadr case, the SCC moused out and the government has performed as expected. So much for the optimists who saw in the Supreme Court's ruling a compulsion, if veiled, for the government to take action to uphold Khadr's Charter rights.

"The only thing it can’t do is to do nothing," said Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, "because the court clearly said that the rights of a Canadian citizen have been violated."

I can hear Stephen Harper replying: "Just watch me."

Personally, I blame secular humanism

Two lesbian albatrosses in New Zealand have successfully incubated, and are raising, a chick.

It appears that the two were living in a ménage à trois with a male albatross. Having performed his role, he flew off and has not been seen since.

Meanwhile, in another part of the Otago peninsula, two male yellow-eyed penguins are incubating an egg.

"Nature itself has become unnatural," fumed a Canadian evangelist, on the South Island for what he had hoped would be a stress-free vacation. "If birds can do it, how long will it be before bees do it? Colony collapse disorder bigtime," he warned. "It's a slippery slope."

The albatrosses were unavailable for comment.