"No dogs or Gypsies allowed"

My friend and frequent sparring partner Kateland draws our attention to the latest Harper government salvo against the Roma people.

I blogged earlier on the plight of the Roma in the Czech Republic, where they face discrimination (such as restaurant signs bearing the title of this post), violence and death. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, a man with questionable associations, slapped a visa requirement on Czech nationals to prevent Roma from fleeing to Canada.

But the Czech Republic is not the only Eastern European country where Roma face intensifying everyday persecution countenanced by the state. In Hungary, the situation has become dire, as documented by Amnesty International. Needless to say, Roma are fleeing for their lives, and would appear to meet the UN definition of "refugee":

A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

Kenney's department has its cold and beady eye on Hungary at the moment, precisely because some Roma are arriving here. But you'd never know that, reading some of the corporate media, as Kateland points out. The Ottawa Citizen, for example, makes no mention of Roma at all:

A sudden wave of refugee claimants has helped make Hungary Canada's top source of asylum-seekers, prompting the federal government to call on Budapest to take action -- possibly against organized crime elements, Canwest News Service has learned.

The government hasn't yet moved to impose visa restrictions on Hungary, as it did over the summer to deal with a flood of questionable claimants from Mexico and the Czech Republic.

But the federal government also hasn't ruled out that option after the number of asylum-seekers skyrocketed during the April-to-June period, making Hungary the third-highest source of claimants after Mexico and the Czech Republic in that period.

---

[Kenney spokesperson Alykhan Velshi] said the Canadian government, which has provoked anger and threats of retaliation by Prague and the EU as a result of the Czech visa decision, is looking for alternatives in the case of Hungary.

"We're working with (senior government officials) to see if there are others ways to resolve this issue -- whether crackdowns on organized crime networks encouraging unfounded asylum claims, or addressing the issue of unregistered immigration consultants misleading people into coming to Canada and making asylum claims."

So who, asks Kateland, are these Hungarians?

It turns out that the Citizen story omitted a salient fact, akin to reporting a family fleeing from a house while failing to note that the house was on fire. The Hungarians in question are Roma:

Andras Pap, who has written on inadequate Hungarian hate crime laws at the Central European University, expressed sympathy with Canada's concern about the credibility of the claims.

"Under current international law standards Hungarian Roma should not qualify as political refugees, even though Hungary should be much more stringent in providing protection to its minorities," he said in an e-mail Wednesday. "Such claims can legitimately be dismissed by Canadian authorities." But he said the re-imposition of a visa requirement would be both "unfriendly" and would do nothing to get Budapest to meet its domestic and international legal obligations to protect the Roma from discrimination and far-right violence, which is on the upswing.

International law is indeed clear on the matter. There is documented persecution of Roma in Hungary, with the state turning a blind eye. The International Declaration of Human Rights is plain:

Article 7.
· All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.
· Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

The Declaration does not merely enjoin states from violating human rights, but places upon them the obligation to ensure that rights are not violated within its jurisdiction. For example, with respect to the right to food, General Comment 12, adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1999,

provided a typology for monitoring the different levels of state obligations under the ICESCR. The typology -- to respect, to protect and to fulfil -- is now generally applied to all economic, social and cultural rights. The obligation to respect refers to the state’s commitment not to undermine enjoyment of human rights either through action or failure to act; the obligation to protect requires the state to ensure that persons living within its jurisdiction do not suffer human rights violations at the hands of non-state actors; the obligation to fulfil requires the state to provide an institutional framework to ensure that rights can be effectively enjoyed in practice (to facilitate, and in cases of natural disaster or emergency to provide). [emphasis added]

Pap seems to be employing a bit of weasel-wording in his commentary, above. No doubt the Roma, chased out of their country by far-right thugs under the benign gaze of the Hungarian state, do not qualify as "political" refugees. But that was never the issue. They aren't being persecuted because of their politics, but because of their ethnicity.

Unfortunately, their ethnicity is what matters here as well. Once again the Harper government is behaving just as an earlier Canadian government did with Jews anxiously seeking asylum from the Holocaust: slamming the door in their desperate faces.

Those aren't fireworks...

...they're exploding wingnut heads.

Bravo, Mr. President.

[h/t reader Yoyo]

UPDATE: True to form and right on cue, the National Post's Jonathan Kay suggests more worthy recipients, including a genocidal South American President, a South-East Asian President presently running a chain of concentration camps, a former Israeli statesman who presided over the Sabra and Shatila slaughter, and an American general who wants to toss more troops into the Afghanisnam quagmire.

I'm not starry-eyed about Obama's foreign policy, but compared to Kay's bloodstained heroes the man virtually walks on water with an olive branch in his mouth.

Authorers

As noted in my last post, Authorers are gaining traction, right up there with Birthers and Truthers, after Bill Ayers' put-on about ghostwriting Barack Obama's Dreams for my Father was taken as gospel by a colony of right-wing gulls.

The Orly Taitz of Authorerism is World Net Daily's Jack Cashill. Here's his case for the affirmative, in which a wealth of nonsense is amassed to "prove" the contention, if not conclusively (Cashill is a master of the "I'm not saying X for sure, but there's a lot of evidence pointing that way" school of hedging).

I slugged my way through this, and was going to let the whole thing drown in the helpless laughter of non-gulls everywhere, but I'm a blogger, dammit, and I just couldn't let it go so easily. Herewith, then, my comments about Cahill's assertions and methodology.

In 1995, Barack Obama produced a lyrical masterwork that Time magazine has called "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician." Yet all the Obama samples we have unearthed before 1995 are pedestrian and uninspired. There is no precedent for this kind of literary transformation.

Apparently Cashill has never heard of Walt Whitman. In fact, quite a few writers of stature penned embarrassingly bad juvenilia.

Consider the two following "nature" passages in Obama's and Ayers' respective memoirs, the first from "Fugitive Days":

"I picture the street coming alive, awakening from the fury of winter, stirred from the chilly spring night by cold glimmers of sunlight angling through the city."

The second from "Dreams":

"Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds."

These two sentences are alike in more than their poetic sense, their length and their gracefully layered structure. They tabulate nearly identically on the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES), something of a standard in the field.

The "Fugitive Days" excerpt scores a 54 on reading ease and a 12th-grade reading level. The "Dreams'" excerpt scores a 54.8 on reading ease and a 12th-grade reading level. Scores can range from 0 to 121, so hitting a nearly exact score matters.

Perhaps readers can fill me in, but as someone with a few qualifications of my own in the field of literary criticism, I'm at a loss to see any connection between the two passages quoted, other than the mention of weather in their urban environment and a descriptive high seriousness. And using Flesch on single sentences is like taking a poll sample of ten Canadian electors. Nonsense.

Another significant variable is sentence length. In comparing 30-sentence sequences from "Dreams" and "Fugitive Days," each of which relates the author's entry into the world of "community organizing," "Fugitive Days" averaged 23.13 words a sentence. "Dreams" averaged 23.36 words a sentence. By way of control, sentences in the memoir section of Cashill's book "Sucker Punch" average 15 words in length and scored considerably higher on the Flesch test.

In a random test of verb repetition, of the first 60 distinctive verbs in "Fugitive Days," an incredible 55 appear in "Dreams" and only 37 in "Sucker Punch" [Cashill's own memoir] despite the fact that Ayers is closer in age and education to Cashill than to Obama.

Impressed yet? Not I. We don't know which 30-sentence sequences have been chosen for comparison, or on what basis they were chosen. What Cashill describes in the second paragraph is hardly a "random test," but in any case, using his own memoir as a control is simply bizarre methodology. What were these verbs? What happens when you extend the sample to, say, a hundred verbs? Or restrict the sample to the first thirty?

I shall spare readers any more fisking, because it will make this post too lengthy. Instead, here's a summary.









Apparently Ayers and Obama shared similar observations of training versus education, and the tendency of schools to strip minorities of their own cultures. They both knew that the Hudson River in New York can flow in both directions because of tides. And both of them made reference to minority students turning on each other to curry favour with whites.

"These are three [parallel stories] that we have found. We suspect there are more," says Cashill. He's entirely serious, or so it seems, about two commonplaces well-lodged within progressive discourse at the time, and a bit of knowledge that is hardly arcane.

Cashill then moves on to "parallel metaphors." This is where all of the nautical imagery comes in that I noted in my previous post. Here's a taste of the arguments:

Both books use "storms" and "horizons" both as metaphor and as reality. Ayers writes poetically of an "unbounded horizon," and Obama writes of "boundless prairie storms" and poetic horizons – "violet horizon," "eastern horizon," "western horizon."

The metaphorical use of the word "tangled" might also derive from one's nautical adventures. Ayers writes of his "tangled love affairs" and Obama of his "tangled arguments."

I've never been a merchant seaman, but my own creative work uses quite a bit of ocean imagery as well, including two poems that I blogged here in the past. Maybe Ayers wrote them. I'll never tell.

Then there are parallel "postmodern themes." Like this one:

Ayers:

"Narrative inquiry can be a useful corrective to all this."

Obama:

"Truth is usually the best corrective."

Wow! They both use the word "corrective!" But there's no common "postmodern theme" to be found--indeed, Obama's use of the word "truth" is the opposite of postmodern. "In true postmodernist fashion," says Cashill, "Ayers rejects the possibility of an objective, universal truth." But not Obama, it appears, as Cashill holes his argument at the waterline. [Stop that! --ed.]

Moving on to "60s consciousness," Cashill is struck by the fact that each author used the phrase "behind enemy lines," and believes that Obama would never have heard of the "Mekong Delta." But they both referred to it! And in his own memoir, Cashill didn't!

It gets worse. Citing another idiot, Cashill tells us that the Preface to Dreams, added when it was republished in 2004, doesn't actually say that Obama wrote the book! Therefore we must conclude...

As for computer-assisted "stylometrics," Cashill was assured by an expert that such methods are prone to error, so that he should just carry on with, well, the stuff referred to in this post. But to add weight to his analysis, Cashill tells us that no fewer than five teams of researchers have been doing the stylometric thing, with four already reporting in.

Here's a sample:

"Using the chi-square statistic," observes one professor, "Obama's and Ayers's books were indistinguishable, while Obama's book was easily distinguishable from books by other authors."

Hoo, boy. Another says Ayers might simply have edited Obama's book. Others think Obama's book had two authors. The fact that these various findings are contradictory doesn't bother Cashill in the least.

We don't know who any of these researchers are, incidentally, nor what their methodologies were. It's for their protection, claims Cashill. Look what happened to "Joe the Plumber," he says, but as I recall those wounds were largely self-inflicted.

In any event, do the cadences here sound familiar? They should. If you plough through the Truthers' stuff, and I have, they amass a "case" out of dozens of cherry-picked little tidbits as well, some of which are simply made up.

But we can, and should, go back even further, to the fons et origo of this sort of thing: the coterie of literary wingnuts who have insisted that Shakespeare was simply too oafish, ill-educated and country-bred to write the plays attributed to him.

Precisely the same kinds of "analyses" can be found in their books. The only difference is that at least some of these are considerably more convincing than anything Cashill has produced to date.

This odd bookwormy occupation continues, in fact, to the present day. In what one might call a synchronic wingnut collision, far-right American commentator Joseph Sobran turns out to be a Shakespeare authorer. And here is an excerpt from a commonsense takedown that just might have wider application:

Sobran seems to be unaware that lists of parallels such as he provides have long been looked at very skeptically in attribution studies, since writers in any era consciously or unconsciously influence each other and draw on common sources. This is especially true of Elizabethan poetry, where writers freely borrowed from each other and drew upon a large stock of common themes and images; and among Elizabethan poets, it is particularly easy to find parallels in Shakespeare, simply because his canon is so enormous and varied. Sobran acknowledges that one can find parallels between any two authors, but wildly underestimates the number, and he has apparently made no effort to compare any other writers with Shakespeare. Instead, he arbitrarily decides (on the basis of no evidence) that we could expect to find "a dozen or so" parallels between Oxford and Shakespeare, with an upper limit of "three dozen," and when he finds more than this arbitrary limit plucked out of thin air, he considers it "evidence," even "proof." But the huge majority of the parallels Sobran lists are Elizabethan commonplaces, and given his generous standards as to what constitutes a "parallel," a similar list could be compiled for any Elizabethan poet with a canon the size of Oxford's.

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

Obama's literary Ayers and graces

Kate McMillan discovers that "gullible" isn't in the dictionary.

Her readers should check for themselves while Kate is getting some obviously well-needed sleep.

Here's a more amusing read on the subject, by conspiracy theorist Jack Cashill. Supposedly Bill Ayers uses nautical imagery in Fugitive Days because he was once a merchant seaman. How is it, then, that Obama uses it in Dreams from my Father? Aha! The author, without a trace of reflection, notes that he never once used sea-imagery in his own memoir, Sucker Punch, "yet I have spent a good chunk of every summer of my life at the ocean." So if Barack Obama, a Chicago landlubber, uses it, someone else must definitely have ghosted his autobiography. The leaps in logic here would do a premier danseur proud.

Keep it up, folks. I have a lot more popcorn here.

[H/t]

UPDATE: Reader Kevin notes that Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs is less than impressed. But apparently he's lost right-wing street cred.

UPPERDATE: Heh. Kate's got company.

And please extend a hearty welcome

...to John Cross, our newest co-blogger, a man whose legendary politesse and scientific erudition adds considerable lustre to this blog. If I may say so, he's quite a catch.

John's "beat" is anthropogenic global warming (AGW), although he is entirely free to write about any subject that interests him.

In his own words:

John Cross is a scientist at heart but an engineer by trade. He knows very little about politics but actively follows a number of political blogs from all sides of the spectrum. He plans to post mostly about global warming but he may post on other topics on occasion.

Full disclosure: he is in no way related to the climate industry and is not affiliated with any political party. Opinions expressed by him are not necessarily that of Dr. Dawg or Marie Ève and in fact are probably not opinions at all.

Parlour's open, as always, to deniers and sceptics.

Afghanistan torture and the price of integrity

"I encourage you to … start your career planning as soon as possible."

That's Tory Defence Minister Peter MacKay, showing Peter Tinsley the door. Tinsley is presently the head of the Military Police Complaints Commission, which is attempting to get hearings underway about Canadian Forces complicity in torture in Afghanistan.

The Harper government has been throwing up a series of obstacles to prevent subpoenaed witnesses from testifying at the inquiry. I blogged about this a few days ago, but new revelations indicate that federal officials have actually threatened and intimidated witnesses, and forced them to withhold vital documents from the inquiry.

When independent inquiries start getting too close to wrongdoing by top military brass, mysterious things can and do happen. The current Tory cover-up revives uncomfortable memories of the abrupt cancellation of the Somalia inquiry by the Liberal prime minister at the time, Jean Chrétien. That inquiry was looking into the torture-murder of a Somalian boy and other gross abuses of civilians by Canadian Forces personnel. The entire fetid story of the Liberal cover-up may be found here.

Not necessarily by coincidence, there have been direct links between the Somalian and Afghanistan situations, although it should be emphasized that in the latter case the issue is complicity--the actual torture was carried out by our Afghan allies, not by the Canadian Forces.

The inability to get to the bottom of things--or the top--when military malfeasance is at issue is an instance of the "culture of impunity." We normally like to associate the phrase with other countries, but even in democratic Canada, there are people and institutions that operate outside the law, and those operations are off-limits to public scrutiny or the pains and penalties normally applied when warranted by law.

It took a man of some considerable strength of character--Peter Tinsley--to press ahead with an inquiry against all the odds. And he is paying the price for his integrity. On December 11, his term as Commissioner will come to an end. It will not be renewed. Watch for his replacement by a complaisant government puppet, and a speedy and unsatisfactory end to the MPCC's foredoomed investigation.

UPDATE: Yet more Canadian complicity in torture--of one of our own citizens. The Harper government's attempt to minimize the role played by Canadian officials in the Abdullah Almalki case has rightly been labelled "absurd" by Amnesty International. More piano-playing to come?

On neo-Nazis and Speech Warriors™

Conservative Speech Warriors™ are sensitive about the claim (one that I have never made) that they are effectively neo-Nazis in disguise. For those who are simply principled libertarian defenders of free speech, I can well understand their concern. But there are others in their own ranks who should be causing them concern as well.

I have, from time to time, posted articles and links that indicate a certain mush-headedness among conservatives about the company they keep. In fact, I'll go further: in the European context, there have been a number of open linkages between neo-Nazi parties like Vlaams Belang and conservatives whose main hobby-horse is Islamism.

When Charles Johnson, previously unassailable as a vocal, right-wing opponent of Islamism through his blog Little Green Footballs, twigged to this, he became alarmed and started to document it. For his pains he has been roundly excoriated by former admirers. (You know who you are: I shan't embarrass you further.)

But let's bring this home. Rehabilitation is the new tactic: if you don't want to be tarred with the neo-Nazi brush by association, why not adopt the "Nazi-schmazi" shtick? Hence someone like Paul Fromm (who himself has no apparent difficulty with the label) has now been reborn as a "free speech activist."

And then we have Marc Lemire.

His chief defenders these days are Mark and Connie Fournier of Free Dominion. That assiduous pair of midwives has been assisting for some time in Lemire's difficult rebirth as a mere defender of free speech set upon by the rabid Canadian Human Rights Commission. Why, he's no neo-Nazi, never has been--or so they claim.

Needless to say, Lemire too denies the charge with unconvincing indignation:

Is Marc Lemire a “white supremacist” / “Neo-Nazi”? Of course the answer is no, but the best response I can ever give is that after being under the microscope of the CHRC (and even the police thanks to Richard Warman) for at least 6 years, they have YET TO FIND A SINGLE WORD I HAVE WRITTEN THAT IS “HATE”. All they can claim is me posting articles from newspapers, House of Commons Hansard and even the human rights act itself as “Prima Facie” evidence that I somehow promote hate.

This stuff is duly parroted by the Fourniers. And yet, here's Lemire in the bad old days of Usenet:

NOW OVER 50 MEGS OF REVISIONIST PICTURES AND TEXT FILES!!! including picture files of ERNST ZUNDEL'S house which was lit on fire by the Jewish Armed Resistance.

---

I hold the Jewish press in Canada partly to blame because they have truned Mr. Zundel into the devil. They have defamed his character forquite along time. Which after time brings these type of actions.

---

Lest your mind automatically reject the words of Hitler out of some political reflexive habit, remember that he witnessed the decline and fall of another multi-cultural state, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so he knows what he's taking about...

Hmmm. Has a thing about Jews, and he sure knows how to cite a good source to back up his concerns about multiculturalism.

What about Holocaust-denial? Well, like some folks I know on the other side of the aisle, he's cautious about expressing such extreme views directly. He has preferred to cite, at seemingly endless length, the words, links and coordinates of other Holocaust-deniers and neo-Nazis (with some of his text helpfully translated into German), rather than venture his own opinions on the matter--much like a ventriloquist with a rather large collection of dummies. But now and then he lets the mask slip a little:

[In WWII] 50 million + people lost their lives. A large majority of them White. Who could ever say that the second world war was a good thing? I believe that there is quite alot of lies and falsehoods surrounding the Holocaust.

Take Dachau for example.The lies and hog-wash surrounding that camp sickens me.

A little moral equivalency here:

There were atrocities committed [in Dachau], but even after the Americans liberated it there were thousands of people dying. The Americans committed atrocities when the "liberated" the camp. They butchered EVERY GUARD. That is also an atrocity.

Lemire goes on and on and on at this extensive link about the killing of Nazi guard dogs. The inmates themselves don't merit nearly so much of his time.

He tells us he's no historical revisionist, but:

I do not think that Six million Jews were killed. I do know that alot of Jews were but I must serously question the six million number.

And he's critical of the Nazis having concentration camps--because they made them look bad:

I also wish that the nazi's did NOT have such camps. In the end it only worked against them. And it a huge source for Anti-German Propaganda today.

Now, here's a little dialogue on Usenet, with the final part being Lemire's contribution:

>>White supremists should be locked away in jail.
>
>>I thot there were hate laws to stop these people?
>
>Why would you want to stop them? They are uniformly inept at
>expressing themselves, uniformly bereft of language skills, and
>consistent at exposing themselves as bigoted, lying idiots. They
>are, in fact, their own worst enemies.
>
>The internet has provided the world, finally, with a clear view of
>what these people are, and what they stand for - no longer can they
>hide their lies and deceptions under their sheets.

Under our sheets???

What the hell are you talking about kenny-boy? [Ken McVay, creator of the Nizkor Holocaust website--ed.]

The Internet has provided us with a huge place where we get more and more support by the day. [emphasis added]

Who's "us," exactly? Whoops!

Holocaust denier? Who, moi?

Revisionist such as Ernst Zundel, Mark Weber, Robert Faurison and others have brought some very good evidence to the fore. And they should not be swept under the table.

And then we have these gems:

Like a wise man said once.
DEFEAT NEVER.... VICTORY FOREVER.

You can check the etiology of that slogan on Google.

What, racist? Moi?

[Lemire's BBS back in 1995 --ed.] NOW WITH OVER 600 USERS!
AND DAILY NEWS FEED FROM THE ARYAN NEWS SERVICE
--
I represent a growing underclass of White Canadians sick of what the government is doing to them.

But even back in the mid-nineties, he had turned disingenuousness into something of an art-form:

Nowadays Neo-Nazi means racist, hatemonger, anti-semite, white supremisist all wraped up into one.

Since I an none of the above I therefore cannot be a Nazi or a Neo-Nazi.

So Lemire has lots of duck friends, broadcasts their quacks for them, expresses ducky beliefs of his own--but he's no duck. No sirree.

There's lots more here, if you have the stomach to wade through it.

Now, Anti-Racism Canada has been doing a magnificent takedown of the "nazi-shmazi" claim at their place, and rather than my repeating their work here, just go there and read the last few posts.(More are on the way.) Suffice it for me to suggest that this attempted rehabilitation is surely doing the Speech Warrior™ cause more harm than good.

One last thing: I have taken Connie Fournier's threat against me, guarded as it was, far more seriously than I might have indicated at the time. Just a word to the wise, as they say, and I'd be grateful if she passed it on.

[Big tip o' the hat to Nizkor]

UPDATE: Harry Abrams, a B'nai Brith activist who has posted here, has just been banned from Free Dominion by Mark Fournier. He has been accused of falsifying a document, namely an article singing the praises of the now-defunct Heritage Front, by attributing it to Marc Lemire.

I can see why Harry did what he did: the article was posted, without comment, by Marc Lemire at Stormfront. That doesn't prove he wrote it. But I would observe that folks don't normally reprint articles without comment in such venues unless they happen to be in general agreement with the contents. It's just another example, I think, of Lemire's well-worn "ventriloquist" tactic.

AGW scepticism: no end in sight? [guest blogpost]

My wife is from a small fishing community in Newfoundland. We were visiting there a couple of years ago and I was having a chat with one of the "old-timers" who (talking about something that Danny Williams did) said, "Well - the arse is out of 'er now". I am reminded of that expression by the crowd who don't "believe" in the theory of anthropogenic global warming. A couple of times a year something happens that causes them to shout "Well - the arse is out of her now, me b'y."

That time has come again. Last week the industrious Steve McIntyre got hold of some paleoclimate data that has been used when trying to reconstruct the earth's temperature history. After he performed his statistical magic, the rallying cry of "the arse is out of her" was sounded far and wide. I don't want to talk about that particular event (and in fact there seems to be some pretty intense back-peddling going on, for example in the Spectator link, the comment by Stephen McIntyre on Oct. 3rd at 3:26pm) but I wanted to review the past few times this has come about.

A couple of months ago, there was a similar cry and hullabaloo about a new book written by the geologist Ian Plimer. Of course Dr. Plimer's book has been pretty thoroughly reviewed by now and it has not stood up well (in fact I would venture that it is currently comatose on the floor from a case of blackdamp!).

Of course before that there was the censored EPA document. If anyone is interested, Deep Climate and RealClimate have looked at this one.

My point is that, while interesting things about the climate will keep popping up, in the age of blogs and instant communications it is worthwhile to keep the good old ideas of science in mind. While blogs can be interesting and useful, don't count your science until it has been reviewed. The next time you see someone saying that the "arse is out of 'er" you may want to wait for a week or two then check back and see how the arse is doing.

--John Cross

Fernando Manuel Alves rape case: closed courts, secret justice

I have blogged about this case before--and been finger-wagged to death by defence lawyer/commenters who stated that the reasons for judgement and the submissions of the Crown and defence counsel should be read before anyone rushes to judgment.

OK, fair enough, although not a single day in jail for an admitted rapist just seems wrong, somehow.

Accordingly, I took up the challenge, and attempted to obtain transcripts of the documents. I was quickly informed that the judge had placed a ban on publication, under Section 486.4 of the Criminal Code.

This Section permits the usual ban to be put in place to protect the identity of the complainant and wirnesses in such cases. It reads in part: "(1) [T]he presiding judge or justice may make an order directing that any information that could identify the complainant or a witness shall not be published in any document or broadcast or transmitted in any way."

So I addressed the following self-explanatory letter to the judge who decided this case, the Honourable Judge Gregory Rideout:

Judge Gregory Rideout
222 Main Street
Judges Chambers
Vancouver, BC.

Dear Judge Rideout:

I am a blogger who is interested in a recent case over which you presided, in which a Mr. Fernando Manuel Alves was given a conditional sentence for sexual assault.

I have applied to the local transcription services for the reasons for sentence, as well as the submissions of opposing counsel. I have just been informed by that agency (please see attached) that you placed a ban on release of these materials under Section 486.4 (4) of the Criminal Code.

As I understand it, this ban is usually imposed to protect the identity of complainants in such cases. I have no interest in obtaining the identity of this person, and would be entirely satisfied with a transcript that redacted her name.

Hence I am formally requesting that you modify the ban to permit the release of the documents with the complainant’s name removed.

I look forward to your positive response.

Sincerely,

Readers will note that I left out the possibility of redacting the names of witnesses, and identifying information, but my intent was nevertheless clear.

In the mail on September 24th, I received the following:

Dear Sir:

I received correspondence via facsimile on September 15, 2009, seeking release of the Reasons for Judgement in R. v. Fernando Manuel Alves. At this point subject to a bona fide reason why you are looking to obtain submissions and reasons for sentence, the Honourable Judge G. Rideout would not be inclined to alter the ban on publication.

Yours truly,

That actually seemed reasonable to me--why not explain myself?

So I faxed back the following, same day:

Dear Judge Rideout:

I am in receipt of a communication from your office dated September 15 with respect to my request for the release of the Reasons for Judgement in R. v. Fernando Manuel Alves.

It is suggested that I state a "bona fide" reason for my request. In case I was too allusive in my first communication, I am concerned about the public perception of the extremely light, non-custodial sentence handed down in this case. That sentence does not, given the facts that are already public, appear to be commensurate with the brutal assault to which the defendant pleaded guilty. Public confidence in the administration of justice can be eroded by such perceptions.

Accordingly, I would like to write an article that provides the other side, if you will. As indicated earlier, I would be satisfied with a transcript that redacted names and identifying information of the complainant and any witnesses.

I regret having not been clearer in my first letter, and look forward to your positive response to this one.

Sincerely,

This morning I received this:

Dear Sirs [sic]:

RE: R. v. Fernando Manuel Alves

Thank you for your correspondence of recent date. I have been advised by the Honourable Judge G. Rideout that a transcript of Reasons for Sentence for your stated reason do not meet appropriate criteria to release the transcript even with deletions of names.

Yours truly,

So there we must leave it. Obviously I was attempting to accommodate myself to the requirements of the Criminal Code provision by expressing my willingness to accept a redacted transcript. No dice.

Instead, with the lordly presumption that too many unelected judges assume once they are elevated to the bench, I was told, second-hand, to get lost. Public confidence in the ability of the legal system to deliver justice does not appear to be a "bona fide" reason to release what should be on the public record anyway.

Or could it be that the good judge is simply being timorous about allowing the reasons to be known for his "boys will be boys" wrist-slap? Your guess is as good as mine.

UPDATE: (October 6) Reader and lawyer "truewest" suggests that I press on. Accordingly, I have this morning written back to Judge Rideout to ask what the "appropriate criteria" are for access to his Reasons for Sentence. Stay tuned.

Mad Hatters Tea Party

Big City Lib brings his formidable research and analysis skills to bear upon the fizzle that was Canada's first copycat Teabagger protest. 100 people in the pouring rain? You decide.



By the way, I think I've figured out where all that rain came from:

Damn

Looks like I was wrong--really, really wrong. Stephen Harper wowed the spectrum last night, and it's all over the 'sphere by now.

It was classic over-analysis on my part. I took the long way to cross the street from east to west. I headed east, talking to myself in a grumbling kind of way the whole time. My commenters, even the friendly ones, are sounding a little wary at the moment. Bad sign.

My buddies on the Left aren't unanimous, but there's a majority, I think, giving Stephen Harper his due. And the conservatives, a hard bunch to please when it comes to galas in the fleshpots of Ottawa, are handing the man full marks. I can't help observing, though, in the second link above, that there's a sense of relief along with the pride. "He really is one of us," says one commenter. No more "cold fish," says another.

A few on my side of the fence did see things more or less my way, minus all the theory. Some Liberal partisans were cutting, as usual, but they came off kind of petty; others were not and did not. Michael Ignatieff, in my opinion, lowered himself with this:

Ignatieff also mocked the prime minister's appearance at the National Arts Centre Gala in Ottawa Saturday, where he treated the audience to a rendition of The Beatles': 'With A Little Help From My Friends.'

"He's been out of tune for four years," Ignatieff quipped.

Nothing wrong with good snark, but that was just too easy: a cheap shot.

So I'm trying to figure out how I got this so munged.

I'll defend the political framing argument in general, but it was misplaced in this instance. Harper's debut didn't weaken the conservative frame in the least. In fact, judging from all the Internet chatter, it may have strengthened it by humanizing it. In the meantime, we can pelt that frame ineffectually with facts--quoting his comments last year about galas, for instance, or reminding people of his spending cuts in the arts--but as my quotation from Jeffrey MacLeod and Nick Webb in my last post indicates, that sort of thing just reinforces a frame.

There was no lack of artifice in the event--what we saw was carefully scripted--but that doesn't matter, as I pointed out in that post. Imaging and narrative matter. The engagement of members of the public in developing the frame is crucial. Do they see themselves in the narrative? Is it a continuing story in which they are not only caught up, but get to add their own threads?

Clearly, at least judging from the commentary I've read, Harper's performance did resonate. Far from being "creeped out," most observers put themselves in his place, imagining that he had made deliberately made himself vulnerable at the same time as he was having a bit of fun. The event was convivial and entertaining, and startling at the same time, because "convivial" and "entertaining" are not normally adjectives that one would apply to the man.

There's no point reiterating that the man is a politician, and hence a performer anyway, one who takes much greater risks in that role than merely singing a Beatles song. Or pointing out that this was almost certainly rehearsed, reducing any risk considerably. Or that, unlike the image of Stanfield's fumbled football--a photo taken by the same photojournalist who captured Trudeau's pirouette--no career-ending graphic image arises from a false note or two.

Those are just more unframed facts. But this was all about storytelling. The surprising twist last night makes the Harper story that much more compelling. His chief antagonist is hobbled by a charmless professorial aloofness, a depressing counterweight to Harper's robotic coldness. But the latter, at least to some small degree, has been dispelled. The former, not so much.

Nobody was fooled in the least by Harper's awkward sweater-vest and kitten moments last year, which were so evidently fake that they worked against him. But the NAC debut was a different thing entirely. It was Harper with a human face, and I didn't see it. My prediction was wildly off-base, my assessment faulty, my analysis plain wrong. The people have spoken. Mea culpa.

This bird is some tough. Can anyone recommend a good wine?

The pianist

There is one art,
no more, no less:
to do all things
with artlessness.
--Piet Hein

What was Stephen Harper setting out to do when he performed with Yo-Yo Ma at the National Arts Centre last night?

John Ivison gushes:

It is a considerable way to row back from [Stephen Harper's] comments of last year, when he said "a bunch of people at a rich gala" didn't resonate with ordinary people (this was in response to a number of Quebec TV stars, who had protested about government funding cuts to the arts at a glitzy black tie ball). But the lack of artifice and blatant political spin is likely to be greeted with acclaim by "ordinary people". This is not a man who puts himself "out there" and it must have taken considerable guts to have stepped onto a stage with one of the greatest musicians of our time.

Mr. Ignatieff and his advisors must have watched the coverage, head in hands, through gaps in their fingers, and wondered what else can possibly go wrong for them.

Ivison couldn't be more mistaken. Harper has taken his mentor Tom Flanagan's advice: "A good political leader is like an outstanding athlete or entertainer" ( Harper’s Team, p. 5). But Harper is not an outstanding entertainer. This stuff rings patently false, like the "man and kitten" image, blue sweater-vest and all (note the expression on his face), or his no doubt unintentional parody of Trudeau's gunslinger look (and again).

The last thing we expect of political leaders these days, of course, is spontaneity: there is seldom an unscripted move, a breath taken that has not been pre-approved, an untested gesture, a chance remark. Images go to war with other images in the world of hyperreality: even the self-consciously "real" is nothing of the kind.

Pierre Trudeau's famous pirouette behind the back of Queen Elizabeth had, as it turns out, been rehearsed. So what? "The picture expresses his maverick anti-conformism, his democratic disdain for aristocratic pomp,” said photographer Doug Ball. Not precisely, but close enough. Trudeau, the "reason over passion" politician, exploited passion at every opportunity, creating a set of political images--a frame--that resonated deeply within the electorate.

Jeffrey MacLeod and Nick Webb provide a short course on political framing and image-making here. Citing a favourite authority of mine, George Lakoff, the two political scientists note that "voters do not base their decision on issues or interests. Rather, they vote based on values that attach to frames already established." And they go on to make an essential point:

Lakoff declares his bias in support of the Progressive frame. He argues persuasively that you cannot win against the Conservative frame by evoking its terms. Progressives are hampered by old Enlightenment assumptions that simply presenting "facts" related to our interests will persuade Conservatives to the cause. Unframed facts simply bounce off the hostile frame and do more to reinforce it than change it. We also must consider that frames are supported by reason and passion (i.e. feeling) The strengthening of a frame is accomplished through narrative, imaging, and changing the terms of the debate to support the alternative frame.

But what we're seeing now, from Michael Ignatieff lost in the woods to the fifth Beatle, is something profoundly interesting: the attempted destruction of political frames.

Briefly on Ignatieff: he has tried frame-building (True Patriot Love), but he just can't pull it off. Nobody knows him to this day. There is no coherent set of images to which he is attached, no resonating sense of values, and as he blunders about, the confusion in the public mind grows ever deeper. Unity in place of division is his message, but in his hands that's just a concept. I hate quoting this guy, but he's simply nailed it on this occasion, and so, in a single sentence that he quotes, did Rex Murphy: "Mr. Trudeau's braininess was sexy, Mr. Ignatieff's you merely gather from the résumé."

But Harper, too, is in the wrong hands. He is who and what he is because his frame is conservative: his base hungers for his continual re-expression of their values, and his public self is constructed as such by the frame. Yet from time to time he batters his head against it, and he did once again last night.

I know I have conservative readers, so I invite you to comment. Were you impressed by this? Did it resonate with you? Or did it look and feel soft and centrist, the antics of a person desperate to prove that he can be all things to all people, appearing and performing at the very sort of function that he once publicly held in contempt?

Was there passion there, or a grim attempt at it? Did he change a single vote at this gathering of the despised elites? Did he fool anyone? What do you think he was trying to achieve? What did he achieve?

Ivison's observed "lack of artifice" on Harper's part was the very opposite. It was yet another contrived attempt to extend his voter appeal. But there was no red meat here for his base as he pandered so obviously to effete gala attendees, and almost certainly no rush to embrace him by the latter, even if they doubtless enjoyed his little surprise. It was, after all, good fun--but hardly a "political masterstroke," as Ivison would have it.

On the contrary, while such moves may have have their immediate appeal, it's hard to see what political advantage can be gleaned from them. If bouncing facts ineffectually off political frames reflects outdated Enlightenment thinking, surely it is even more counter-productive to erode them from within.

Far from creating an image conveying the values for which conservatives hunger, and at the same time somehow appealing to those outside the fold, Harper's debut on the grand stage can only have induced a kind of queasiness across the political spectrum. Now that the moment is past and the laughter and applause have died away, I suspect that a good many of us, whatever our public allegiances, are feeling more creeped out than appreciative.

The case of the ransom-note lawyer

Dentist, real estate agent, sometime attorney and fulltime nutjob Orly Taitz, doyenne of the Birther movement, is continuing to plummet into her self-dug pit of madness. Those of us who like a little Schadenfreude with our morning coffee know that she's Really Going To Get It. It's just a matter of time, and the hour grows deliciously nigh.

Readers may remember that yet another of her bizarre lawsuits--to enjoin the deployment of a soldier to Iraq on the grounds that the Commander-in-Chief is a Kenyan--was recently thrown out of court in a no-minced-words judicial smackdown.

The judge, one Clay Land, told her to just stop it, or he'd fine her butt. She didn't stop. She publicly denounced him as a traitor, filed a nuisance motion, was ordered before him to show cause why she shouldn't have to hand over $10K to the court, and has now filed another motion--to have him recused.

The best part is that the motion was self-plagiarized (the link is to an excellent site, by the way), the sort of cut-and-paste they no doubt teach you on the first day of class at Happy Joe's Law, Real Estate and Dentistry Emporium.

As I said--I can't wait.

[H/t Chet Scoville]

More on Saleapaga

A kind soul has opened a Paypal donation site to help the Legalo family, owners of the FaoFao Beach Fales in Saleapaga.

That was where my partner and I stayed in 2003, during the visit that I mentioned in my earlier post on the recent Samoan catastrophe--the photo above was taken from there. The mini-resort was entirely wiped out by the tsunami, and the struggling owners were not insured.

Regular updates on the tsunami aftermath, some that make grim reading, may be found here.

Friday bits 'n' bites

Ouch! Block that metaphor!

Right-wing civility, cont'd.: what gays should do if they want to donate blood.

Five feet of reading incomprehension: divide or consensus?

Conservative visual incomprehension. (Can you see a difference?) Wouldn't want the new crest to be used as a marketing tool, now.

Finally--don't take my word for it--what no self-respecting Tory would possess: "a streak of social justice."

The NDP does the right thing

...abstain. I blogged about this option earlier. It was the only thing to do.

I can't add much to the arguments I posed the other day. Perhaps the NDP is making too much out of the EI issue, although the reform proposals will provide Christmas relief to many. They will be supported by the Liberals, too, last I heard, so no high-horsing from that quarter, please. But the fact is, this battle between the Red and Blue wings of the Librocon Party is just not our fight.

Would Ignatieff have taken this oh-so-brave tack had he thought that both of the other opposition parties would vote with him? If the NDP had begun to rise for the Aye vote, he and his caucus would have passed out in fright and shock on the spot--and the Tories, with the distinct possibility of a majority in their sights, would have burst into song. It was all meaningless, macho posturing. And Canadians, jaded as we are by now with what passes for politics on the Hill, can see through that sort of thing with our eyes wide shut.

The pliant Libloggers, though, have already been handed their talking points. Abstention is always wrong under every conceivable circumstance, they seem to be saying, but that blade, as they should know, cuts both ways, and it just doesn't have the same keenness, in any case, as voting with the Conservatives 79 times.

Here are the latest poll results, boys and girls, as if you needed reminding. There's still no defining election issue, no sense of who Ignatieff is or what he really stands for, and now you've got that nasty civil war in Quebec as well. No surprise, then, that the cheerleaders are reduced to praising his speech in the House--wow, he rawks--although it was only a compendium of the Harper government's faults that the majority of Canadians can already recite from memory. And most of them were Liberal faults when they were in power.

Thank us, Liberals. Send flowers. Because the NDP saved your sorry hides today, and we didn't have to stand up with the government to do it. A third position? No: a second. Abstention was the only way to go for a party that wants to set itself apart from the cynical theatrics of Librocon infighting. And the NDP achieved just that today.

I may be going out on a limb here

...but my money's on the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

In any case, the Hadjis decision on Warman v. Lemire is about to get the thorough airing it deserves.

[H/t BCL]

Suaad Hagi Mohamud: QOTW

"Not being able to recall the name of Lake Ontario doesn’t make you a criminal. Let’s be fair, a few years ago, the Minister of International Trade couldn’t even tell you which way the Niagara River flowed." --Dan McTeague, Liberal consular affairs critic

UPDATE: The Conservative government continues its campaign of vilification against Mohamud, releasing tantalizing little bits of selected information, like manna from heaven for people like this. (The Canadian Border Security Agency's report that concluded she was impersonating herself is apparently being withheld.)

Meanwhile, Radio-Canada has obtained documents that tell a sordid tale, one in which manipulating the media became the government's main priority in the case, while High Commission officials were hoping all along that the Kenyans would take care of their problem for them. Here's Babelfish, for those who need it.

[H/t deBeauxOs]

"Public consultation," Ottawa City Hall style

The City of Ottawa is currently engaged in "public consultation meetings" to push its vision of Lansdowne Park renewal--a big box, mega-mall developer's dream that will shatter local businesses and destroy what could be a living public space for Ottawa residents.

Reminding me for all the world of wooden-faced commissars delivering set speeches to "the masses," who from time to time were expected to break out in "prolonged, stormy applause," city officials tried to ensure from the start that no real dialogue would take place. The "consultation" began in an "open house" format, which means that you get to wander around in a daze looking at slick displays to sell the product, and then listen to the boosters.

Alternative opinion? Debate? Obviously not what the City had in mind, so citizens took matters into their own hands. At the first meeting, fed up with the "public consultation" farce, Glebe resident Louis Helbig leapt up on a chair with a megaphone in hand, shared it with other frustrated members of the audience, and offered it to supporters of the Lansdowne Live plan. One actually took him up on it.

Discussion? Divergent views? Just ask John Martin.

No slouch, this spirited public citizen decided to talk back as well, at a meeting in Kanata.

The travelling public relations campaign to sell Ottawa taxpayers on the Lansdowne Live project hit a couple of tense moments Tuesday when disgruntled city officials attempted to block two interlopers from showing alternate designs.

"Why are you trying to stop me talking?" asked an indignant John Martin, rebuffing city communications chief Denis Abbott’s claims that he was disrupting efforts by the Lansdowne Live experts to get their message across.

Under the glare of TV lights and cameras, a hasty compromise was reached as a story of confrontation threatened to overtake the relatively sedate second night of city-sponsored public consultations. [emphases added]

--

Martin, a computer specialist, wants the process sent back to the drawing board to "attract the best minds in finance and design." He favours redeveloping the Bayview site at Scott Street in concert with making Lansdowne into a state-of-the-art, environmentally-friendly facility.

"We are the nation’s capital," he said. "Why are we limiting ourselves?"

Martin, selling his ideas alongside retired architect Lester Johnson and his own alternate designs, attracted a significant amount of media and public attention — and ultimately the attention of Abbott. The tension was defused by Johnson and Martin lowering their plans from a ledge at eye level to the floor.

"They are trying to suppress a citizen from talking freely," protested Martin. "It shows a certain depth of paranoia."

Glebe resident Louis Helbig, who produced the megaphone that altered the course of Monday's meeting, said the presence of news media at the Kanata venue had prevented alternate opinion from being suppressed and had produced meaningful discussion.

"Yesterday, we saw a lot of people fixed in their views," he said. "Tonight we are seeing people who are here to learn, and that's good. Thanks to the cameras, we have people of opposing views who are engaging in an open exchange of opinion. It's the kind of open process we should have had from the start."

The nerve! City Hall wasn't going to have any more of those forced compromises. Under protest, it changed course after the first two of these nonsensical "consultation" exercises, deciding to permit questions from the public. But when Martin showed up at City Hall for the third meeting, he was served with a trespass notice before he even got in the door, and chased away.

And our comic-opera Mayor, who hadn't attended either of the first two meetings, was in perfect Larry O'Brien form. He accused opponents of the plan of being "fanatics," setting out "to create chaos," and followed that with, "I want to hear what people have to say." Which people?

Certainly not anyone opposed to Lansdowne Live, its display at the travelling road show nicely embossed with the City of Ottawa logo--not that it's a done deal or anything. Critics will get their chance to speak at a couple of committee meetings, said Councillor Rick Chiarelli, before the decision to allow public questions was made. For now, he said, they should just "turn down the heat"--i.e., shut the hell up and eat what's put in front of them.

China is presently celebrating the 60th anniversary of its Revolution, and has taken considerable precautions to ensure that the people don't mess it up. The celebratory parade went off flawlessly, by all accounts; even the weather bowed to the uninvited masses. It seems that here in Ottawa the city planners have been listening, even if they don't have quite the muscle of the Chinese state:

O’Brien, a supporter of Lansdowne Live, hinted that the process had not run as smoothly as he hoped.

"If we were all perfect," he said, "it would have been perfect from Day 1."

Ah, perfection. If only the people could be perfected, what a brave new Ottawa it would be.

UPDATE: Two unadorned versions of "public consultation" for your delectation:

"I'm a citizen and this a consultation," [the manhandled Martin] protested.

"No, no, this is to inform the people," the guard responded.

Anyway, Martin is pushing right back.