Ottawa Police: the beat goes on

To Serve and Protect

Watch this video (red icon two paragraphs down).

The boy and girl in blue depicted here have just been cleared of any wrongdoing by an "internal investigation" by the Ottawa Police, and Chief Vincent Bevan says they did no wrong. Meanwhile the police union is planning to sue the beating victim, and his lawyer, for speaking out.

Has our town gone mad?

Take a close look at the video. Pay special attention to the body language of the victim. He has just been wakened by the police officer on the left, after dozing off at his table. He proceeds to clean his table, and take a swig of his coffee, and then walks over to the counter and gets into a conversation with the officer. His shoulders are down and he appears relaxed. At no time has he staggered or shown any signs of impairment.

This doesn't even change when a beefy second officer shows up, looking menacing and blocking his path when he tries to leave. The two officers then put on their gloves, and you just know what's about to happen. The beefy one puts him in a headlock, taking him to the floor, and begins to beat him. Even through all of that, the man's legs stay extended--there is no hint of him fighting back or struggling in any way.

Meet Danny Gauthier, single father of two, a sales representative from Montreal. His hotel was just across the street from a Tim Horton's where the beating took place. He tried to leave to go there more than once, but he spent the night in jail instead. The next day, photographs show a bruised face and swollen eyes. Having been denied medical attention while being held, he received treatment at the Montfort Hospital the next day.

Meet Constable Tricia Nesbitt, and Constable Shane Henderson, serving and protecting.

Even the Ottawa Citizen, which has been intolerant in the past of police critics, found this too much--and their editorial was clearly written before news of the latest whitewash internal investigation made its own front page. "It is impossible to view the video of Mr. Gauthier’s arrest, captured by a surveillance camera," the editorial reads, "without feeling queasy." No kidding.

Public Accountability

Let's be blunt: with Chief Vincent Bevan ("they followed procedure") in charge of the Ottawa Police, that queasy feeling is going to continue. There have been too many other incidents in the recent past--assaults on protesters during the G-20 protests in November 2001, the small army of police deployed to remove a few scared kids from an abandoned house (not a single charge was upheld in court, but tens of thousands of taxpayers' dollars fed this little adventure), bizarre raids on a Somalian and a West Indian restaurant, the savaging of a Lebanese family at a reunion, the Tasering of a peaceful protester, Paul Smith, who had been wrongly arrested in the first place, and now a beating, captured on videotape. In no case are Ottawa cops ever in the wrong, as far as Vince is concerned.

The restaurants are out of business now. An internal investigation of the attack on the family continues. Paul Smith went to the provincial oversight body, OCCOPS, after another one of those nod, nod, wink, wink "internal investigations" found that his attackers had followed procedure. OCCOPS determined that excessive force had indeed been used: the adjudicator, Robert Fitches, said that an independently-shot videotape was "instrumental" in his findings, and contradicted police testimony at the inquiry. And now a video of what the victim calls in his lawsuit a "vicious, sadistic and unprovoked assault" is simply tossed aside by the Chief. It may as well have happened in broad daylight in Confederation Square for all he apparently cares: his people follow procedure, nothing can ever be dicey about Ottawa Police behaviour, here in the nation's capital the cops walk on water, and that's that.

There is a clear question of public accountability here that goes far beyond any one of these miserable incidents. Who’s in charge? The citizens of Ottawa (or any other town or city in Canada)? Or the police, too often acting as a law unto themselves (or, more accurately, above or to one side of the law), lying under oath, arrogantly dismissing any and all criticisms and complaints? What are ordinary constables in Ottawa to make of the police administration and its internal procedures that exonerate their brother and sister officers even in the face of a video like the one that the public can now view for themselves? Will this encourage them to be respectful and professional in carrying out their duties?

The answers to these questions are self-evident. What we need to do is take a hard look at structures of accountability. And the place to start, in Ontario, is with the civilian complaints system.

Civilian Review

Justice Patrick LeSage, after many months of receiving submissions on this matter, recently tabled a report, including a number of recommendations, now with the Attorney-General of Ontario, Michael Bryant, who is presently receiving submissions of his own. His key recommendation is for an independent body that would oversee the civilian complaints process, do its own investigations, and try to restore public confidence.

While I believe in Justice LeSage's good intentions--I appeared in front of him twice to assist in delivering submissions on the issue, and his questions were on point and intelligent--I do not believe that, even if implemented, this approach will improve matters significantly. An independent investigative agency will simply run full-tilt-boogie into the blue wall. Unless it is formidably resourced, not likely in the current climate, what we will have, in reality, is a harassed inspectorship scurrying to keep up, and meeting silence and a closing of police ranks at every turn. And even if something does turn up, how will it be handled? Without serious disciplinary measures in place for cops who kick over the traces, an investigation will not really address the continuing problems.

A better model was proposed by the Ottawa Witness Group (declaration of interest: I'm a member). We proposed a two-step complaints process, modeled upon a workplace grievance procedure: first, an internal hearing where the complainant and the police are represented, make argument and give evidence; and, if the complainant isn't satisfied with the outcome, an external review, at the municipal level, by an independent body, the Civilian Oversight Authority (COA). The important point to grasp here is that, while the police would continue to do their own investigations, the creation of an independent external body would change the dynamics considerably. Police management, knowing that their work could be open to challenge, will be encouraged to take a sterner view of police misbehaviour.

This system would be enhanced by a number of other measures. First, the independent COA would have powers to summon witnesses, compel testimony, and subpoena documents. Secondly, some types of complaints, such as those involving allegations of improper police violence, would proceed directly to the COA level. Thirdly, third-party complaints would be permitted (this recommendation was taken up by Justice LeSage, but in the context of his investigative model). Finally, an Office of the Citizen Advisor would be created to advise and assist civilian complainants, modeled on the Office of the Worker Advisor that helps workers with their WSIB claims.

Only this or a similar type of accountability mechanism will bring our police to heel. In the meantime, we all remain vulnerable to police excesses. And the police organization itself--paramilitary, secretive, well-armed--will continue to attract the wrong kind of people, from constable to chief.

Postscript: the OPS budget and the Men in Black

While all this has been going on, the Ottawa Police Service has submitted a budget to the City, demanding a $10.7 million increase over last year. Crime rates are dropping, with the exception of traffic offences, but somehow we need more police officers, more equipment, more fancy toys like those nifty Tasers.

Under antiquated provincial legislation, a police budget may either be accepted or rejected by City Council, but cannot be altered by our elected representatives. In the case of a rejection, OCCOPS can reinstate the budget--so much for democratic accountability in the twenty-first century.

If Ottawa-area residents are tired of watching and re-watching the Tim Horton's video, tonight and tomorrow night Ottawa CTV is showing where a significant amount of police money is going--no, they are not highlighting the OPS' fixed-wing aircraft, but their tactical squad, the "men in black." Stay tuned for this two-segment feature, part of the 6:00 p.m. news program, and check out all the neat weapons and testosterone-fuelled training sessions.

Ottawa Police on the beat

It was a bad day for Ottawa's finest. Paul Smith, a protester who had been Tasered, twice, by a police officer as he lay on the ground, in handcuffs, fully subdued after being mistakenly arrested, was vindicated--finally--more than two years afterwards. A hearing of the Ontario Civilian Commission on Police Services (OCCOPS) found Acting Sgt. Paulo Batista guilty of "unnecessary use of authority" (read: "brutality") during the incident. A police videocam somehow failed to capture the vital few seconds in which the assault took place, but a bystander was taking his own footage at the time and caught the whole affair on tape. I blogged about that incident here.

Hearings of this nature are rare at OCCOPS, a body not known for being unfriendly to police. Mr. Smith had previously complained to the Ottawa Police Service, who investigated themselves and found, surprise, surprise, that nothing was wrong. Their "Professional" Standards Branch responded to the complaint with a lengthy, self-serving letter in which they stated that "pain compliance" (read: "torture") was justified, because passive resistance is a form of active resistance. Perhaps--but don’t hold your breath--the OPS will now develop publicly-available guidelines for Taser use. Perhaps--but keep breathing--the McGuinty government in Ontario will act on the recommendations of the LeSage Commission that reviewed public complaints procedures in the province and urged the establishment of an independent system.

Hard on the heels of this setback, the OPS now finds itself defending a lawsuit by a Montreal salesman, who was viciously assaulted by police in a Montreal Road Tim Horton's last year. Don't take my word for it: watch the video for yourself. The two cops involved are now under investigation (on full pay, of course) thanks to a diligent Deputy Crown Attorney who, after seeing the video, withdrew the routine "resisting arrest" charge and three charges of "creating a disturbance" too, and asked the police to investigate the goings-on. The "Professional" Standards Branch will be doing the investigating once more, but maybe the video will make a difference, although it didn’t seem to do very much for Julie Cayer.

What is key here, in fact bone-chilling, is the fact that these cops are in trouble only because of increasingly-ubiquitous video cameras. Those of us who have fussed publicly about videocams and privacy rights may have to do a little re-thinking. Imagine the number of shady incidents taking place every day with no cameras around; imagine the number of innocents beaten up and then convicted on bogus charges of "resisting arrest" or "assault on police".

Video-tech is now drilling holes in the blue wall, but it's not enough. We need an independent review system for complaints against police, and we need a substantial change in police culture, something not likely to happen in Ottawa with Chief Vincent Bevan in charge. We need enough public education (community groups like the Ottawa Witness Group are doing a good job of this, but it shouldn't be left entirely to hard-pressed volunteers) to encourage people with complaints to come forward. We need a system, perhaps an Office of the Citizen Advisor, where such individuals can be guided through the process. Finally, when cops are found guilty of abuse, in Ottawa or elsewhere, they need to get more than a wrist-slap and a wink from a complaisant judicial system.

Public accountability is the issue; but the Ottawa police appear to be accountable to no one but themselves. No doubt this is duplicated in many other cities and towns across Ontario, and indeed across Canada. While Canadians are rightly demanding, in the wake of the Gomery inquiry, that politicians and public employees be made accountable, exceptions still get made for that group of public servants known as police. This has to stop.

Miss Vicky has some good commentary over at her place.

Poppycock!

The Royal Canadian Legion has managed to combine astounding pettiness with an utter lack of political savvy by demanding that Bourque Newswatch remove the image of a poppy from that site--it's apparently viewed as a trademark infringement. Steven Clark, Secretary, Poppy and Remembrance Committee of the Royal Canadian Legion, wagged his finger and insisted that this could not be done without permission. Otherwise, said Bob Butt, Legion Director of Communications at Dominion Command, "it would be all over the place." Bourque is now displaying an image of the British poppy instead, which the Royal British Legion encourages all and sundry to download.

The right half of the blogosphere--the Legion's natural constituency, one might have thought--has erupted. When alleged property rights bang up against respect for fallen war veterans, the latter win hands down. But they aren't alone. I'm frankly gobsmacked by the pettifogging, incompetent, bureaucratic reaction of the RCL to having the poppy displayed on a blogsite without their permission. If it were being used for fundraising, or in a disrespectful manner, I could understand the reaction. But, come on, Steven Clark and Bob Butt, a little judgement is called for here, n'est-ce pas? Isn't the whole point respect? Shouldn't the poppy indeed be "all over the place" right about now?

Where am I coming from? My old man fought in World War Two, and that was a war that our side simply had to win. The Nazis damned near won it instead. I respect the people who died fighting the real Axis, not David Frum's fatuous rhetorical construction. (I wish the government would recognize the Spanish Civil War vets from the Mac-Paps as war vets too--there can't be more than half-a-dozen of them left, and every one of them was a hero. Let's hear it for "premature anti-fascism." But that's another thread.)

We live in a world where even the very stuff of life itself, DNA, is being grabbed up by multinationals. And we aren't talking just plants and animals here: there are human beings walking around today whose DNA has been patented. Nearly everything in the universe, it seems, is now subject to private ownership and commodification. When it comes to symbols, though, we are still to a large extent in the realm of the commons: even the Roman Catholic Church hasn't summoned up the chutzpah to try trademarking the cross.

The poppy is an ancient symbol, brought to fresh and lasting life in the popular mind by John McCrae's famous rondeau, In Flanders Fields. It doesn't, or shouldn't, belong to anyone, but to all of us. No organization allegedly promoting respect and remembrance should be embarking on this mean-spirited little piggy-trip.

We simply can't allow the Royal Canadian Legion to take such narrow proprietorship of what should be a common image that brings us all together, once a year, for a short period of solidarity between the dead and the living. Let's remember our veterans: indeed, let's remember the tens of millions, soldiers and civilians, who died at fascist hands. And let's stand up for them by displaying the poppy "all over the place." Lest we forget.

_________
Note: I would be remiss if I did not offer a (belated) tail-wag to Bob Tarantino, who pointed out the distinction between "trademark" and "copyright" in his article on the poppy imbroglio here. I emended my article in consequence, but have been a little late in my acknowledgement.

Political organisms

Angry is pursuing a metaphor like a hound of heaven over at his site: Jack Layton and the NDP as virus in a dying Liberal host. This caused my brain to snap into full wakefulness. The man does have an active imagination at times--"the NDP platform started to inject itself into government policy, like a retrovirus rewriting Liberal DNA"--combined with the obligatory conservative insistence on sly sexual innuendo (why "retrovirus?" Oh, right, AIDS, the NDP's position on same-sex marriage, conjuring up images such as this in the conservative hive-mind). But I have to hand it to him: the metaphor is resonant, and has taken possession of my soul.

If the body politic is indeed feeling poorly these days, might I suggest a different etiology and a fundamentally different diagnosis? Indeed, a symbiotic (not parasitic) political relationship did occur under the current Liberal mandate. A symbiote, like a timely dose of L-dopamine, allowed a nearly lifeless brain to think again, without heroic measures being required--this was medical nanotechnology at its best. In return, the symbiote is slowly beginning to acquire the nutrients needed for it to live someday on its own.

But there is a danger here. The "host" that Angry speaks of in fact has parasitical inclinations. We have seen this before, in the Trudeau-Lewis social accord of the early 1970s, when the symbiote disappeared entirely after a short period of usefulness, being absorbed into the very tissues of the host, not by the sneaky means of reverse transcriptase, but more through a process of simple digestion. (Just ask David Orchard what that's like.)

And we mustn't forget the other organic processes taking place--a more holistic view is required, Dr. Angry. Part of the body has been in danger of sloughing off entirely, although improved circulation appears to be containing this threat. But that doesn't appear to be working on the right-hand side, which is still presenting with tremors and occasional ischemic episodes, and is currently suffering from a severe loss of metabolites.

Being an optimist, I believe that the prognosis is good, if the symbiote mentioned earlier can survive a two-fold threat: the inherently perilous nature of the larger organism, and the danger of parasitism from another organism, a green bacterium that requires very little light to thrive. It has the ability to mimic certain beneficial qualities of the symbiote, with the potential of fooling the body into accepting it instead, and, in true parasitical fashion, threatens both the symbiote and itself by its political behaviour.

The symbiote, then, must develop the ability to be recognized by the body as a healthy, life-giving force, and therefore must be permitted to thrive if full health--in fact, a state of well-being that the body has never before achieved--is to be realized. This requires some mutation on its part, however, because, in its present form, it is fragile and overly susceptible both to absorption and excretion.

In conclusion, I am impressed that Angry has ventured into the deep waters of political biology. I would have thought that a model of demonic possession might have been more compatible with his world-view: the image of a staggering, nearly zombie-like body given hellish life by a loa under the direction, perhaps, of a bokor called the See-el-see rather appeals to me. But I don’t want to give him ideas.

Err Canada

Who says the customer is always right? Who seriously believes any more that the consumer drives the market, the way good old laissez-faire capitalism is supposed to function? That the latter is the ultimate form of democracy, where consumer choice amounts to exercising the franchise on a regular basis?

Not Air Canada. They're taking in healthy profits at the moment, $270 million in the last quarter, and they're here to tell us how capitalism really works. Those of us with the temerity to critique the current economic system and its useful idiots in the blogosphere have in Air Canada, if not an ally, at least a helpful case-study.

Consumers, for the most part, are not free individuals exercising their right to choose. We are people who need to eat, stay warm and clothed, and, from time to time, travel. We usually don't have a choice in the matter. And it is precisely that lack of choice that holds us in thrall to the system.

Now, the essential thing about a system is that it works as an organic whole. All of its parts are interconnected. So, for example, "competition," while having a surface reality--Dodge vs. Pontiac, Grey Poupon vs. Maille, Frosty-Os vs. FrootLoops--does not, and cannot, threaten the system itself, which is based upon maximizing profit. The consumer does not, despite the theory, necessarily get a better and better car, mustard or cereal out of all this. Certainly that can be a result of the system, but it's epiphenomenal. What motivates corporations is not a single-minded drive to produce something better, but simply to sell something, in fact, more and more something. To this end, they use massive amounts of advertising, fancy packaging, and creative techniques to grab up market share, the Coke "Classic" campaign being a sterling example of the latter. But they also use, where they can, the very dependency of the consumer against us.

Some instances of this are the fast-food industry, taking advantage of the speed-up and fragmented day of late modern capitalism, and doing its share to supersize the population, with all of its attendant health problems; the windfall profits of the oil industry due to Hurricane Katrina; expensive bottled water, acquiring its market because of legitimate concerns over the safety of tap water; the unconscionable fees that banks levy on everything but admission to their branches (and I hope I’m not giving them ideas); the skyrocketing prices of hydro, oil and gas for a population living in a cold country; and so on.

Back, then, to Air Canada, a player in what is routinely described as a "fiercely competitive" industry (gosh, how many "competitors" are there domestically?), which has now survived higher fuel prices by raising the price of tickets, charging for pillows and blankets, and now abolishing hot meals on long-haul flights, selling you cold inedibles instead at inflated prices.

Part of what Air Canada does to the consumer is a product of simple mismanagement, but they can get away with it because travel for most is a necessity, not a luxury. I used to wonder why they did penny-wise-pound-foolish things like eliminating cheese from the meals, charging for hospitality service drinks, and now charging for pillows, blankets and lousy sandwiches. And eliminating the compassionate discount, because anyone can buy cheap tickets over the web anyhow--those who have computers, that is. The answer? Like the canine who, er, cleans itself, it’s because they can.

Think about it. Tickets cost a fortune: deregulation, which was supposed to bring prices down, eliminated small players and drove ticket prices through the roof, as well as making remote Canadian locations even more remote. It costs more for me to do Ottawa-Toronto return than to get over to Europe. If cheese or pillows were really a problem, why not add two or three bucks to a ticket price? Or ten or twenty bucks to keep the hot meals? Who'd notice?

Indeed, if consumers really mattered in the process, the last place to hit us would be the meals. That's the only high point of a long flight, after sitting for hours on the aerial equivalent of a three-legged stool, breathing everyone else's air and watching some boring general-release movie. We've run the security gauntlet, been sniffed by guards and sometimes even by dogs, ushered down corridors so long sometimes that we’re halfway to our destination, and strapped into place. So what do they do, perhaps out of consistency? Why, mess with the meals. Tired after that? We'll sell you a pillow.

So, you apologists for capitalism, tell me again about choice. What choice? Where's all this choice we're supposed to have? Where do I turn if I want a hot meal on an Ottawa-Vancouver flight? Where are the fierce competitors, lining up to grab my custom? Why aren't the prices dropping like a plane out of fuel?

Capitalism works like a hot-damn, all right. Just not for us. Have a nice flight.

100^th post: hasty reflections on bloglife

Your site is interesting though. Utterly incomprehensible, and a schizophrenic mishmash of racism, pathological hatred of just about everything and half-digested opinions from a contradictory range of ideologies and sources. You call yourself progressive yet hate communism and almost everything left-wing, as well as anything right-wing. You call me racist yet piss on the grave of Rosa Parks.

At nearly 100, I seem to have attracted fans.*

I have come to love the mad terra incognita of the blogosphere. You can get anything you want, and plenty you don't. It's the Mirkwood of media, the Emerald City of bizarre worldviews, the El Dorado of freakish unedited opining. How fitting that I write this on Halloween, the eve of Samhain. The little ghouls and ghostlings at the door are evenly matched, I'd say, by many who haunt the eerie pseudo-space of bloggerdom. Believe me. I've met a whack of 'em. They like me, too. They rise from the La Brea tarpits and seek me out.

Somehow, though, this occasion calls for more than a ritual flick of contempt for the empathetically challenged denizens of the Right. I shall try, this once, for a wider, more inclusive view. Indeed, all sides of the political multi-spectrum flicker and coruscate here. The blogosphere is a universe of elementary particles, bloginos, right and left and top and bottom quarks, mesons, morons, bosons, you name it. They leave fascinating trails in our mental cloud chambers.

But there are no neutrons there.

The blogosphere is, let's face it, a Fight Club for geeks. Every activist has its equal and opposite reactivist, but no blood is drawn. This is where I work out when I'm bored with writing for a living, or studying anthropology. Actually, I guess this is a very good place to study anthropology, come to think of it. And a place for intelligent debate, although you have to go looking for it. Here are foemen (and women) worthy of anyone's steel, and then...there are...others.

This is, however, no mistake, a quantum leap from Usenet, that seething mass of undifferentiated squeaking and howling, although the latter seeps into the comments section of most blogs from time to time. There is a discipline here, if its contours are a little blurry. Those who put up sites have passed through a filter, even if it's torn in places. And those who comment probably know that the site-owners can do what we want with their offerings, and indeed (in a virtual sense) with them. Drunk with power, we are, and with words--those of us who actually write, of course, rather than post links and excerpts.

As I have said probably too many times, the blogosphere is rarely a source of hard news. It's at best a series of editorials, analyses, and odd juxtapositions that can, on rare occasions, reveal something fresh and new, even startling. But writing's the thing. There's good, bad, and downright ugly, and all of it's worth celebrating. And, best of all, we’re our own editors. Or is that "worst of all?"

I'll close on that note, with a little story. I've written my share of articles and op-ed pieces, but these days can barely crank out, no pun intended, the odd (Freud, go back to sleep!) letter to the editor. Recently I heard that the Dalai Lama was going to address a group of neuroscientists in the US on the subject of neuroplasticity, which, in this case, refers to the effects of meditation on the physical structure of the brain. Some people with dubious political motives (and let me note that I'm not sure where I stand on the Tibet question) circulated a petition, pooh-poohing the research on which his talk is to be based, but note the Han names in evidence. That irked me, and I wrote to the Ottawa Citizen, citing the article in a refereed journal, and suggesting that it was based upon sound science.

The editor called me, and spoke with me for nearly an hour. We went over the basic text of the letter, cleared up a misconception or two, whittled away at the text for a while...and he ran it. I wish he hadn't. The header contained the word "Medidation" [sic]. The title of the scientific article that I had cited was printed as though it was my own last sentence. The thing was an abomination after he got through with it. Tattered and torn to rat-shit. And it had my name on it.

I don't have to go through any of that nonsense here, although I do argue with myself a lot. And, by the way, I'm not all that anonymous. Even Dick Evans and the Anonalogue entity figured it out, so it doesn't take intelligence. I like my nom-de-plume, though, and I'm going to stick with it for now. We'll see where we are at post 200.

In the meantime, left-wing, right-wing, upwing or downwing, keep those posts coming. Trick or treat, shit or shinola, it's all rock and roll to me. Did I say I liked it here?

____________________

* This one is a self-loathing, mentally colonized Native person who has adopted the name of the villain in Crime and Punishment. Go fetch! Life is a scavenger hunt.

Torture? In Syria? Who knew?

[Tail-wag to Miss Vicky]

The shock on his visage was almost palpable. Pierre Pettigrew, faced with a report from independent investigator Stephen Toope that Canadian citizen Maher Arar, and three other Canadians, had actually been tortured--yes, tortured--in a Syrian jail, couldn't believe his eyes. Our ashen-faced Foreign Affairs Minister immediately called in the Syrian Ambassador for a chit-chat, and demanded that the Syrian government arrest and prosecute itself.

The Ambassador, Jamil Sakr, wasn't having any of that. "Hey, you first," he responded. "You were blaming the Americans all this time, but you kept giving us leads for more questioning, and now you're blaming us? I demand that your government resign."

"That's not going to happen," sneered Pettigrew. "We didn't do anything wrong. CSIS told us everything was on the up-and-up. So did the RCMP. So did our Ambassador."

"What a friend you have in CSIS," Sakr sneered back. "And that Pillarella guy couldn't find his ass with both hands. So we got a little rough. So what? Your RCMP offered us all kinds of help. You never talked to Michel Cabana?"

"Need to know," said Pettigrew sadly, burying his face in his hands. "Anyway, Bill Graham was Minister then, and he never said a word."

Tempers had cooled, and soon the two were shooting the breeze like old beer buddies.

"So you actually torture people?" Pettigrew asked, shaking his curls with amazement.

"Torture, schmorture," Sakr snorted. "Jail's not so bad back home. Inmates even get cable."

Pettigrew laughed in spite of himself. "But this could give you a black eye in the international community," he said.

Sakr groaned. This guy was so dumb you could torture him for a thousand and one nights and be lucky if he got his telephone number right. "We already seem to have a couple of shiners," he said. "The Americans think we're a terrorist threat, maybe even stored those WMDs at our place, but they keep sending us terror suspects anyway. Go figure."

Pettigrew rose to his feet to leave. "On your way so soon?" asked his new friend.

"Duty calls, I'm afraid," said Pettigrew. "We just found out that conditions are bad on Indian reserves, and there's a cabinet meeting. We're all in shock. It's just one damn thing after another."

"Good talking with you," Sakr said. "If you ever see him, give my regards to Jean Chrétien." He laughed. " 'Pepper on my plate.' That guy always cracked me up."

Rosa Parks, entitlement queen

Moonbats are weeping crocodile tears over the death of Rosa Parks, a flagrant lawbreaker whose illegal action on December 1, 1955 sparked the communist-backed "civil rights movement" and the eventual Civil Rights Act, denounced by prominent, decent US citizens like Robert Bork and David Duke.

Parks was a classic case: her sense of entitlement (to a seat on a bus, when the law clearly dictated otherwise) was seized upon by organizations with an axe to grind: the NAACP, for example, for whom she worked, was only too happy to have her volunteer to break the law. They stood, and continue to stand, for the repulsive, leftist concept of “racial equality” (thank God The Bell Curve has put the boots to that communist-inspired nonsense), and it is obvious that confronting the enlightened separate but equal policies of the state of Alabama, amusingly called Jim Crow, called for unwitting pawns who were unaware of the NAACP’s true agenda--racial equality.

Here are the ugly facts about the communist-supported Rosa Parks:

Parks' personal history has been lost in the retelling. Prior to her arrest, Mrs. Parks had a firm and quiet strength to change things that were unjust. She served as secretary of the NAACP and later Adviser to the NAACP Youth Council, and tried to register to vote on several occasions when it was still nearly impossible to do so. She had run-ins with bus drivers and was evicted from buses. Parks recalls the humiliation: "I didn't want to pay my fare and then go around the back door, because many times, even if you did that, you might not get on the bus at all. They'd probably shut the door, drive off, and leave you standing there."

Anyone can see through this. It was obvious that Parks had decided to work for the NAACP just for the money, or maybe even as a communist infiltrator, and that their Kremlin paymasters enlisted her to be the poster girl for Negro Black “integration” that later, inevitably, led to affirmative action, the erosion of the US Constitution, and the widespread entitlement mentality that caused the levees to break in New Orleans.

I am pleased that even Canadian commentators like Richard Evans have seen through the propaganda and cut, in record time, to the truth: this uppity lady wasn’t uppity after all--she was put up to her defiance of the law by even more sinister* folks for whom uppitiness was their only credo and constant goal.

Like Tommy Douglas, Rosa Parks isn’t dead enough.

__________

*It is reassuring to note that the educational standards at Ole Miss have been maintained even after the James Meredith debacle. Note the spelling of the URL.

Ottawa's finest celebrate Eids

A family celebrating the close of Ramadan was joined by some Ottawa police officers Tuesday night, determined to party in their own way. By the time the cops finished their cavorting, a two-month-old infant, a one-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl had been pepper-sprayed, a grandmother had her leg broken in three places, and the four of them had been taken to hospital. Meanwhile, a nineteen-year old girl and her 23-year old sister were carted off to spend the night in jail.

A large family gathering of the Ozier family had been taking place at their Herongate home. At about 11:30 p.m., a loud altercation took place within the house, which the family says was a "tense debate" between a brother and sister, Iman Ozier and her brother Ali. Two cops on patrol got interested, and demanded entry into the house. When Malak Ozier, 19 (who had gone outside to get a break from the argument) refused to let them enter, she says she was grabbed, shoved to the ground, handcuffed, and put in their police cruiser.

That got the family's attention, and about twenty to twenty-five of them came outside to see what was going on. The cops called for back-up, 20 more cops showed up, and they laid on with a will, dousing the family with pepper-spray, smashing them with batons, and generally showing them who was boss.

Mercifully, the two-month-old infant was not charged with assault upon a police officer, the standard dodge (as we saw recently in Toronto) when cops run amok and need to cover their tracks. Four other family members were, however, and one was charged with an additional offence that should raise an eyebrow or two: "disarming a police officer."

The police claim that the family argument had become physical--the two officers on the scene claim that they'd looked through a window and seen punches thrown. But Malak Ozier asks: "How come the only bruises anyone has on their faces are from mace or batons and not from punches?" One of the other people charged, her sister Iman, did, however, attribute the marks on her face to being shoved into a brick wall. She spent the night in jail, shivering with cold and, she says, being taunted by police when she requested a blanket ("What do you think this is, the Holiday Inn?").

Another one of those charged, Ali, was chased into the house by police: he was taken to Montfort hospital with bruises on his feet, legs and face. The grandmother, who has since expressed the desire to return to Lebanon, fell down some stairs after being blinded with pepper-spray.

Police Superintendent Charles Bordeleau, whose job it is to put a happy face on such incidents, claimed that the family had set upon the police, but added that Police Services is "conducting a review" of the incident. The family, meanwhile, is seeking legal advice, and may go through the empty exercise of making a civilian complaint against police, which will be duly investigated by the police themselves.

Ottawa Police are basking in an unearned victory at the moment, with the arrest of a suspect in the Ardeth Wood murder (it was actually an alert North Bay detective who cracked the case), and the reflected glow may prevent an outbreak of public indignation. But such incidents are becoming disturbingly common in the nation's capital, and they highlight the crying need for an independent complaints system. In the meantime, the circumstances of this encounter are suspicious, to say the least. A clash of civilizations, perhaps?

UPDATE: (October 22) First, two corrections that cause me no little embarrassment: the month of Ramadan continues. The festival of Eid Al-Fitr is still some way off (November 4). The Ozier family (not "Ozeir" as misspelled in a couple of media reports) were in fact having a family reunion, and were breaking their daily fast with a celebratory meal. On top of that, the festival that marks the end of Ramadan is abbreviated to "Eid," not "Eids." It's bad enough getting this sort of thing wrong in the text of an article, but even worse in the header. My apologies to all and sundry.

The family has now filed a formal complaint, and is reported to be hiring a lawyer. I suspect they will do far better with the latter than with the former. I hope the media stay on this story, and clear up some initial confusion: for example,was the infant who was pepper-sprayed by the police two months old (Ottawa Sun) or four months old (Ottawa Citizen)?

The vise closes on Pinochet

Augusto Pinochet, the Right's most-loved sadistic dictator since Saddam Hussein fell out of favour, is going to have his day in court, it seems, whether he wants it or not. Chile's Supreme Court has just stripped the doddering old fascist of his legal immunity--so that he can face charges of tax evasion.

Well, it worked for Al Capone. They couldn't nail him for all the killings, including his well-known celebration of St. Valentine’s Day, so they got him on the tax thing and sent him up.

So far, Pinochet's defence lawyers have held off justice in several human rights cases by arguing that the Butcher of Santiago is too ill for a criminal trial. They're expected to pull the same ruse this time. But the complex tax-avoidance schemes in which Pinochet was involved, according to human rights lawyer Carmen Hertz, could only have been carried out by someone of completely sound mind.

Even conservative Chileans, who had long rationalized Pinochet's bloody reign as not corrupt, at least, are upset over revelations that Pinochet and his family hid millions of dollars in more than a hundred foreign bank accounts. His wife and youngest son actually did a little time for this, after a trial this past August. Some of the money, prosecutors charge, came from kickbacks from European weapons manufacturers.

Don't worry, though, Augusto-- if you're really as gaga as your mouthpieces claim, you won't even know you're in jail. And your good friend Maggie Thatcher might bring you flowers on visitors' day, no doubt accompanied by her not-so-strange bedfellow Jack Straw. Nice to have steadfast friends in all the Right places.

MÁ-henny. Got it.

The polished-to-a-bright-shine Liberal candidate in Ottawa-Centre has encountered a little choppy water, it seems, in his quest to win a seat in Parliament. Lawyer Richard Mahoney--and you'd better get the pronunciation right, or some Liberal hack will accuse you of being anti-Irish--has been caught lobbying for a big corporate client, Canadian Satellite Radio, without registering with the Lobbyist Registration Branch of Industry Canada, as he was required to do by law.

His damage-control machine was quickly revved up to full throttle: he tried to register, he says, he really did, but administrative mix-ups got in the way. And, anyway, he wasn’t lobbying for CSR, but he thought he ought to register anyway "out of an abundance of caution" as he bumped elbows in September with other well-heeled Liberals, including CSR supporters, at a cosy little get-together at Paul Martin’s house. And he doesn’t remember even discussing satellite radio at the time, or indeed with any government official at any time. And he registered last week. And he terminated his registration with CSR this week. The man gives whole new life to that wonderful cliché, "galloping off in all directions."

CSR and Sirius Canada, both affiliated with US satellite broadcasters, had obtained licenses from CRTC, which had obligingly relaxed the Canadian content regulations for them. This decision was appealed to Cabinet by CHUM Ltd., Astral Media and others. Sometime after the cocktail party, the appeal to Cabinet was rejected. The sound of scratching fingers on itchy backs must have been enough to wake the dead.

One can just feel Mahoney's sweat beginning to bead. This comes at a most awkward time, as word of the contents of the Gomery report is filtering into the media, allegations have surfaced that David Dingwall was doing his share of unregistered lobbying too, and an election is looming. There is a taint that is continuing to spread like a stain across the Liberal party at the moment, and Martin insider Mahoney--a nice guy, from all accounts, although he doesn't have a lot to say--is facing strong opposition from a popular NDP candidate.

Ed Broadbent's hopeful successor, in fact, is a grassroots community activist and schoolteacher, Paul Dewar, the son of legendary former Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar. He has built strong links to neighbourhood associations, students, working people and the many ethnic communities to be found in Ottawa-Centre. He is well-known and well-liked throughout the riding, and he has the common touch.

On the other hand one gets the distinct impression, watching Richard Mahoney in action, as I did at numerous all-candidates' meetings last election, that he is most at home in the back-rooms, strategizing and plotting. He's got a fair grasp of some of the issues, puts the requisite Liberal gloss on them, and knows when to duck (as he did, repeatedly, on the issue of electoral reform). My gut feeling is that ordinary people and their boring little problems are somewhat less important to sleek Liberal operators than their love of "the game."

That doesn't prevent such people being elected, of course. But Ottawa-Centre is full of voters who are smart, sophisticated and, as Ed Broadbent's thumping victory last time indicated, tired of Liberal shenanigans. Whether Mahoney's "administrative mix-up" story turns out to have substance or not, he's got a problem. Will his vigorous little dance get him into a safer part of the auditorium in time for E-Day? Stay tuned.

Notes on racism

The words "racist" and "racism" get chucked around a lot, but they're not without meaning, despite the Herculean efforts of those on the Right to shrug off/dismiss/mock/render inoperable their use. More recently, as an instance of the latter, they have taken to accusing their opponents on the Left, not to mention racialized minorities, as "racist." But this is part of what can only be seen as a virtual program of obfuscation.

What follows are some notes that I hope will provoke some debate. They arise out of frustration, and have two proximate causes: a letter from my perennial sparring partner Mark Collins to the Globe & Mail, posted as a comment here, and a couple of quick-and-dirty email exchanges between Steve Sailer and myself.

Racism is not an abstract category. Racism arose as an ideological infliction (with dire practical consequences) upon subject populations during the colonial Age of Exploration. It was a means of defining those populations of Others as inferior, but not in a simple way: colonization generated conflicting discourses of exploitation and protection, the (childlike) Noble Savage versus bodies built for toil, Nature versus Culture. But all such discourses rationalized the colonial enterprise. One cannot colonize equals.

Indeed, unequal power relations are inscribed in the practice of racism. They fix social relations as timeless, in two ways. First, the subject populations are themselves "out of time": time begins only with European contact. Naïve discourses about "culture" reveal the flawed notion of an unchanged cultural essence, from which colonized peoples are separated. Hence they lack something fundamental that the European colonizers possess. Secondly, the on-going deprived condition of the subject population is rationalized ahistorically: they are condemned to their status by virtue of God’s will, or innate flaws of character, or, more recently in history, their genes.

In other words, racism is inextricably linked to the colonial enterprise and its aftermath. One might object that there are stunning exceptions: the attempted genocide of the Jews and the Roma by the Third Reich, for example. But even a superficial look at the Nazi project indicates that it was fundamentally an expansionist and radically colonialist enterprise (for example, the Nazi plans for Eastern Europe involved wholesale changes of flora and fauna, and extravagant plans for constructing German settler communities supported by slave labour). The frightening thing to many--the aspect of Nazism that transformed it in many minds into a metaphysical evil rather than a historical phenomenenon--was that it was being done to light-skinned folks right there in Europe. They were the new inferiors, the Untermenschen, a view allegedly validated by "racial science." That was downright--unnatural.

Since To Kill a Mockingbird is in the news these days, here is an illustrative excerpt:

An inquiring soul in the middle of the room said, "Why don't they like the Jews, you reckon, Miss Gates?"

"I don't know, Henry. They contribute to every society they live in, and most of all, they are a deeply religious people. Hitler's trying to do away with religion, so maybe he doesn't like them for that reason."

Cecil spoke up. "Well I don't know for certain," he said, "they're supposed to change money or somethin', but that ain't no cause to persecute 'em. They're white, ain’t they?"

Reaction to racism by racialized minorities is not racism. This is where things get tricky, especially for liberal universalizers who like to wrench their categories out of time and history, and redefine them as moral injunctions, and for conservatives who want to explode the categories by deliberately misusing them (e.g., "political correctness," one of their more astoundingly successful appropriations/re-definitions, and, of course, "anti-Semitism," redefined as "opposition to Israeli foreign policy.")

When a white person calls a Black person a "nigger," the term is used to mark the inferiority of the latter: its use has an obvious social meaning. When a Black person calls a white person a "honky," that does not bear the same meaning at all: it's not racism, it's a defiant expression of opposition to racializing oppression, mimicking and reversing a discursive practice that originated with the oppressor. Its use hardly threatens to reverse the status quo of unequal power relations, although it does (in a minor way) destabilize it by ironically drawing attention to it.

The calls for African-centred learning, parallel justice systems for Blacks and Aboriginals and so on, are pounced upon by conservatives who mimic liberal language to condemn these as racist. The latter's agenda is, in fact, to make minorities disappear: to make them "like us" in every respect--just listen to conservatives on the subject of multiculturalism and this becomes fairly obvious. Liberals don't much like this sort of thing either: to them, it's the flipside of a bad history, a new segregation. What both fail to do is to factor power into their analyses. What is being demanded, within the current system of unequal power relations and the racializing of groups of people, is a counter-current, the development of loci of power in the education and legal systems. In other words, these demands are motivated by a recognition of the question of power.

Race is a social construct. Reams of junk science purport to show that "race" is an empirically valid category, and that some "races" are more intelligent than others. This line of thought originated with Conte Arthur de Gobineau in the mid-nineteenth century, reached its dismal apotheosis in the "racial science" of the Third Reich, and has degenerated since into the clownishness of our own Phillippe Rushton, running around measuring students skulls with string and the like, not to mention the Bell Curve nonsense. In the background--but not very far--are organizations like the neo-Nazi Pioneer Fund. This sort of thing should make even conservatives blink, but, in line with their notion that the status quo is always optimized, that is, that people rightly belong wherever they are in a stratified society, there is an obvious seductiveness about it.

As I have noted in previous articles, the Hurricane Katrina disaster allowed many conservatives to invoke obvious racial stereotyping, encoded in conservative notions of "character" and the like. Having "science" as an alleged ally once again uproots racism from history and time and makes "racial differences" immutable. Yet there is an odd contradiction at the heart of this. Conservatives who invoke "character" (through denunciations of the "entitlement mentality" and so on) suggest at least the possibility that the moral deficiencies of, say, the residents of New Orleans, can be overcome. The scientific racialists, however, argue to the contrary that nothing much can be done. Steve Sailer manages to wed the two seemingly opposed notions by arguing that the innate deficiencies of Blacks can be at least partially remedied by "stricter moral guidance." (Sailer has his fans in more mainstream conservative circles--Michelle Malkin, for example, and, quelle surprise, Kathy Shaidle.).

Where does the new racism lead? Sailer tells me (personal communication) that he's not a racist because he doesn't wish other races ill, but it's important to ask what the social consequences of racializing minorities and attributing a genetic destiny to them must be. Can anyone seriously argue that the future is bright for those who are racialized and branded by pseudo-science? We've seen how public policy from the Right follows: Nixon cut back the Head Start program, for example, after Arthur Jensen’s spurious racial science reared its ugly head in the early seventies. Why have affirmative action programs, after all, why spend money on the disadvantaged, why try to lift people out of poverty with intelligent social programs, if genetics makes it all a waste of time and resources?

There is something disingenuous, in fact, in the conservative mantra about individual efforts and values. I, for one, read a double message in such pronouncements: first, that bad (liberal) values are responsible for poverty and other social ills, not racism, heavens no; and second, that if some do better than others in society, that's simply the way of the world. We can't enforce equality of outcomes, conservatives cry, and if there is inequality there, it doesn't prove discrimination. Perhaps it's conscious choice. Perhaps it's--ability.

How far beneath the surface does racism lurk in the alleged "colour-blindness" advocated by the "moderate" Right, which is really based upon the pretense that power and unequal social relations have nothing to do with social stratification? I would argue that not all adherents of right-wing politics are consciously racist, but that an inevitable consequence of their politics, in broad terms, is the retention of a racist status quo. And we have seen that racism can indeed erupt into the writings of even relatively humane conservatives. In one way or another, then, I believe the argument can be made that racism remains a potent, malign, energizing force at the heart of present-day conservatism.

Locutions I hate

OK, this one's a gripe-session. I don't have time for much more due to pressures of business and exams. But I'm starting to wince every time I see any of these:

1) "Stuck on stupid." I can understand the Right using clichés. But inventing them and holding on to them for dear life? What are they trying to prove? That they all think alike? That they don't think at all?

It appears that this phrase originated with a certain Lt. General Russell Honore, who thereby deflected some tough questions from the media, or attempted to. This was his reasoned response, in fact, to an enquiry about where evacuees would be taken if Hurricane Rita caused a Katrina-like catastrophe. His little game delighted the Right: one in the eye for the "MSM." It has, after all, limitless possibilities: "Mr. President, where are the WMDs?" "Don't get stuck on stupid." It's more reader-friendly than "F*ck you, I'm in charge," I guess.

2) "über-" anything at all. Who came up with this pretentious nonsense anyway? Sticking a German prefix onto English words as an intensifier gives the user some kind of cachet, is that it? Über-bloggers, über-brands, now übersexuals. Good grief. Is this nostalgia for the good old days of Übermenschen and such? It would certainly be in keeping with the temper of the times (tail-wag here to Mark Collins for the reference).

3) This. Kind. Of. Stupid. Writing. What on earth do people think they're doing with this tiresome device? What is such a thing meant to convey? That long sentences are evil? More likely, that the speaker is more important than what's being said. It's pure Grade Ten drama queen, is what it is, and it Simply. Has. To. Stop. Right. Now.

4) "MSM." I know, I've been on about this before, but it doesn't seem to be having any effect. (Insert your smiley here.) The implicit assumption--that blogging is somehow more informative, true, honest, and politically reliable than what the corporate media puts out--is twaddle. It's simply more editorialized. Bloggers aren't reporters--we're columnists, at best, at least those of us who actually write articles instead of bolding a few words from someone else's writing and posting a link.

5) "Librano$." OK, OK, enough, already. We get it. Jeez! Note to Kate over at SDA: Don't be over-broad in your use of this by-now mouldy term. I've never voted Liberal in my life.

6) "Moonbats." Well, this will delight the rightist bloginos who dart through the blogosphere with velocity but no mass, but some of us grown-ups who like to have debates actually get a little tired of the name-calling. Sure, we all do it--on occasion. I've just done it here. But--news flash--we don't rely on such devices to win arguments. Reasoned rebuttals are cool, though. Just not as common as they ought to be.

All right, enough for now. But readers are invited to post their least favourite locutions here. I think we need to assemble a collection for an appendix to Blogging for Dummies.

Pigs and piglets

In spite of myself, I've been thinking rather too much about the current jihad taking place on the right half of the blogosphere: the "free Piglet" nonsense. Cerberus has pretty well nailed it, and if he left anything out, Chris Selley has provided his own eloquent analysis of l'affaire porcelet. Consider this a long footnote.

Religious intolerance, like racism, lies deep at the core of right-wing politics, and this latest joyful outbreak, coming not so coincidentally at about the same time as the beginning of Ramadan, has unsurprisingly spread like wildfire. Fuelled in part by yet another florid column by Mark Steyn, it's now taken the shape of a full-fledged campaign, led by that well-known (in parts of the blogosphere at least) paragon of loving kindness, Kathy Shaidle.

Now, selectivity and distortion never hurt a campaign, and we've seen quite a bit of it here. Take, for example, that poor lady in Leicester, Nancy Bennett, hassled by the, er, police for having some porcelain pigs in a window of her home. Well, there was more here than initially met the eye. It turns out that the pigs, placed in a window facing a street frequented by large numbers of Muslims attending a local mosque, were accompanied by a hand-lettered passage from the Qur'an. The display was meant to be observed, and it was meant to be insulting, in a Fred Phelps kind of way.

But the crowning incident, of course, was the Piglet coffee-mug in an office, a whiny complaint, and cackhanded official action. That sort of rank stupidity simply catalyzes the Right, just as, on the opposite side of the coin, a crucifix in a jar of urine led to legal restrictions on the type of artistic endeavour that could be supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (which hadn’t even funded the piece). The latter, I would argue, is a far more serious affront to liberty, but that was a different fight, and the Right were on the wrong side of it.

Never mind. Appeals to tolerance, even from those with suspect motives, strike a resonant chord in me. Banning Piglet mugs is right up there with the Surrey School Board's banning of a student production of The Laramie Project. It smells of the same unreason as was shown by the creators of a calendar over at the CLC one year, which indicated by name every multicultural festival you could think of but called December 25 "Christian holiday" instead of "Christmas." In other words, it's at the fringes of what is in essence a project of inclusion, derisively called "political correctness" (more on that some other time). And the fringes are always rich with examples to discredit the core of any movement, ideology or world-view. There is no idea, no matter how good, that doesn't have nuttiness at the edges of it, waiting to be used as a fulcrum by those who detest the idea itself.

And so the decent impulse to be sensitive to cultural difference has inevitably produced examples of condescension (inherent in the very word "tolerance") and pure silliness, as we have seen; just as the struggle of women for equality has seen its share of the same, and the fight against racism, too. But the conclusions to be drawn from this surely must not be that we go on being culturally insensitive, sexist and racist.

Obviously I object to this latest example of disingenuous synecdoche from the Right. It's not Piglet that is at issue here; it's Islam itself. In a coffee-mug incident we are urged to see the true face of that religion and its followers, caricatured as a teeming mass of intolerant fanatics. Just look at Steyn's raving paranoia: from a handful of instances of official blunderment in Blighty, he sees nothing less than a "descent into dhimmitude." That has to rank as one of the most breathtakingly stupid statements of this new century. It's worthy, in fact, of a Guinness entry.

But it reveals much about the current campaign, being waged--let us not mince words here--by a crowd of hateful bigots. "Show us your pigs," is their battlecry, and I am tempted to observe that we are seeing quite a few of them.

But let me conclude on a slightly different note. Could the fuss about gentle Piglet reveal more than the common-or-garden intolerance presently being secreted by the usual suspects? Could Piglet himself be a site of projection of their fear of the Other, Muslims as Heffalumps? I'll let the reader decide:

By and by Piglet woke up. As soon as he woke he said to himself, "Oh!" Then he said bravely, "Yes," and then, still more bravely, "Quite so." But he didn't feel very brave, for the word which was really jiggeting about in his brain was "Heffalumps." What was a Heffalump like? Was it Fierce? Did it come when you whistled? And how did it come? Was it Fond of Pigs at all? If it was Fond of Pigs, did it make any difference what sort of Pig? Supposing it was Fierce with Pigs, would it make any difference if the Pig had a grandfather called TRESPASSERS WILLIAM? He didn't know the answer to any of these questions...and he was going to see his first Heffalump in about an hour from now!

Adoption follies update

Some time ago I posted an article about impending Ontario legislation that would, in its current form, permit adoptees to track down their birth parents—even if the latter do not wish contact.

There is now a petition on-line for those who want the legislation to include a "disclosure veto": that is, the right of either an adoptee or a birth parent to place a legally enforceable note on the record stating that they do not wish to be contacted. I would urge all those who believe that the promise of privacy given to adoptees and birth parents (usually mothers) should continue to be kept, to sign this petition: www.disclosureveto.ca

UPDATE: (October 6) Readers may judge for themselves, simply by reading the comments here, whether I was right in my earlier article, at least on an anecdotal basis, with respect to the state of mind of those on the other side of this debate. But there is one matter that does require correction. I was remiss in suggesting, above, that a disclosure veto simply amounts to a request not to be contacted.

A contact veto, per se, is indeed available under the proposed Bill. A disclosure veto, however, allows birth parents or adoptees to keep details of their identity confidential, to prevent the possibility of contact. The difference is really one of added security, given that obsessive individuals might not be deterred by a contact veto. (A look at the dismal failure rate of temporary restraining orders should give one pause for thought in this connection.) Unwilling birth parents or adoptees should be spared the fear of unwanted contact, and nothing less than a disclosure veto will provide assurance in that respect.

The "MSM" suckers the Right

The right half of the blogosphere is in trouble now. News is that those reports out of New Orleans during the disaster—you know the ones, rapes of children, indiscriminate killings, the "brutish" populace, the omnipresent "savagery," Blacks, in short, reverting to type—are bogus. I posted one sober second thought here. Now the Right, by and large no longer able to withstand the obvious (although a handful are in denial), are spinning this thing backwards to a fair-thee-well.

The shrieks of betrayal are simply amazing to hear: for haven't these people been telling us for years that the "MSM" (God, how I loathe that smug little acronym), in the grip of "liberal elites," or "the lib-left," or whatnot, lie to us constantly, filter the news, write it their way, etc., etc., ad nauseam? But guess what? When the "MSM" start to throw big greasy chunks of racism in their direction, feeding what festers at the core of their politics, the Right gobbles it all up, regurgitates it, cluck-clucks about it, uses code-words like "entitlement," and, over and under all of their braying, we can hear, at a deafening pitch, the background noise: "We told you so."

The T.V. footage and photographs carried by the MSM has established in the mind of observers world-wide the fact that the relapse into savagery in New Orleans was an African-American phenomenon. --VDare

I'll say it again: If the city of Detroit or Chicago were flooded, there would be the type of looting, raping, violence and savagery we are currently witnessing in New Orleans. If the city of La Jolla or Burlington were flooded, there would not. --Logical Meme

It is solely blacks, not whites, who are engaged in the savage behavior in New Orleans. Second, the fact remains that the non-criminal part of the black population is incapable of getting control of black savagery and incapable of running a civilized society. --View from the Right

I can't watch the footage any longer. I've seen one poor woman who just arrived at the Astrodome look into the camera and say, "God bless you all for helping us." Everyone else looks like a selfish savage with delusions of entitlement. --Relapsed Catholic

And when taking isn't enough (it never is), they devolve into predation and anarchy, abandon the weak, turn upon the innocent and each other - and all in a matter of days. --Small Dead Animals

[T]he criminal freaks in New Orleans… should be eaten by alligators. --Least Loved Bedtime Stories

[New Orleans] entrust[ed] its most vulnerable citizens to the gang-infested faecal hell of the Superdome....Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness. --Mark Steyn [Note: "shiftless, lazy Black" meme meets "jungle savage" meme]

But, my goodness, it all proved to be... "overblown." No rapes, no unfettered violence in the Superdome. And the bodies? Where are the bodies? All those raped children with their throats slit? You mean…there was no descent to the jungle norm? No utter abandonment of civilized principles of conduct? As people like myself were arguing all along, with examples?

So now the story simply has to change, and who better to write it than that arch-prig Mark Steyn? "Nobody," he now acknowledges, "got killed by a hooligan in the Superdome. The problem wasn't rape and murder, but the rather more prosaic lack of bathroom facilities." A re-writing, you will quickly note, of his earlier "gang-infested, faecal hell of the Superdome," emphasis now solely on the latter adjective.

Are we in for a bout of principled self-criticism? Not bloody likely. That sort of thing simply doesn't happen in right-wing circles. Too Maoist, perhaps. Instead, why not blame—you guessed it—the media? And not, I'll say, without reason: for the latter picked up every rumour, every little bit of hearsay, every wisp or phrase that validated their preconceived notions about race. Credulous? I’ll say. Incompetent? Ditto. But where's the "left-liberal cabal" theory of the "MSM" now? In fricken tatters, that's where.

Let's take a hard and sober look at the "MSM." Notice, first of all, that the phrase is plural. Secondly, that thousands of people toil in this domain. Thirdly, that news now flies in from all over at the speed of light, in unprecedented volume. Not much time for conspiracy, and far too many people to crowd a boardroom. Is there , however, a kind of group-think, a shared set of assumptions, a reflection of certain interests in evidence in the corporate media? Of course. But to argue that these interests are left-wing is simply fatuous, as the endless racial discourses from New Orleans reveal all too well.

What, then, if anything, has the Right learned from this? Apparently very little, as Steyn's self-serving piece, linked to a whack of right-wing blogs (tail-wag here to Celestial Junk), illustrates. Blame the media. For what? Why—for sucking us in and making us look like, well, racist fools. They were credulous—but so were we. And we're mad as hell about it. That's the real message here.

Meanwhile, life goes on, and virulent racism bubbles away on the Right as usual. Over at Angry's we are treated to an outraged series of comments about four Black youths in Florida who groped schoolgirls and were punished appropriately for it. He treats us to a lusty recrudescence of the "wild Black man attacks white women" meme. "Animals parading as humans," he shrieks, using this anecdote to promote the school voucher system (i.e., segregation). Meanwhile, an eerily similar incident took place right here in Ottawa at about the same time. The boys were sent off to group homes for their crimes. Not a peep out of Angry about this case, although it was right on his doorstep. No "animals" comments. No racial angle to exploit. He had to go all the way to Florida to find that.

Just as the Right and the media went hand-in-hand to New Orleans and found exactly what they were looking for.