Of graves and bigots

A couple of far-right bloggers, whose negative attitudes towards Native people are a matter of public record, have airily dismissed recent claims by a former United Church minister, Kevin Annett, that large numbers of Indian children, victims of the residential school system, lie buried in 28 unmarked mass graves.

Here are what we might call preliminary "position statements" by the pair:

Too bad those 'smallpox blankets' were a hoax.

and

Build new residental schools, if that's what it takes and tell the detractors to go to hell.

and

I changed my mind. We don't need residential schools for those little 4 year olds running the streets of Saskatoon late at night. We need institutions to lock up the Indian activists and apologists, so that there's an outside chance that the concept of "personal responsibility" will take hold in First Nations communities.

These are surely not the kind of people to be taken seriously when Native issues are the subject of discussion. As one might expect, they simply reject Annett's claims out of hand. To entertain even the possibility that there is something here worth investigating leads to glib comparisons with 9/11 Trutherism--the claims are too fantastic, we are told, and besides, the ex-minister has "issues."

I don't think that's good enough. The "butterbox babies" scandal was a strange and creepy tale, too, not to mention the saga of the "Duplessis orphans." In each of those cases, investigations finally uncovered enough evidence to demonstrate that the whispered stories were true. Babies at the Nova Scotia Ideal Maternity Home were collected and sold for adoption, and between 100-400 babies deemed unadoptable were neglected to the point of starvation. An estimated 20,000 illegitimate children in Quebec under the harsh reign of Maurice Duplessis were falsely deemed mentally deficient in order to obtain federal subsidies. They were confined to church run orphanages reconstituted as insane asylums, physically and sexually abused, and allegedly subjected to medical experiments.

None of this, of course, means that one should simply assume the truth of Annett's claims. But he's not alone in making them, first of all, and secondly he has pinpointed the alleged locations of the mass burial sites. So why not investigate two or three of them with a suitable team of forensic anthropologists and archaeologists, and either debunk Annett once and for all or, possibly, bear him out?

The odd thing about the incredulous reaction to all this is that there is not an impossibly large gap between these claims and what is already accepted as historical fact. Sadistic abuse was prevalent in many of the Indian residential schools. From one-quarter to one-half of the children died. Children sick with TB were not separated from healthy children.

But the point of difference is this. Terry Glavin and the more scholarly commentator John Milloy do not think there was anything purposeful in the deaths: the horrendous toll was simply the result of a combination of epidemics and too little government funding. This is despite the testimony of Peter Bryce, Indian Affairs chief medical officer in the early part of the twentieth century, who believed that the policy of housing sick and healthy children together was deliberate. (Bryce's protests were not well taken: he was sent off to another department, and the post of chief medical officer was abolished. And after he left the scene, mortality statistics in the residential schools were no longer kept.)

Certainly some of Annett's claims are sensational, and invite healthy scepticism. But the continuing lack of interest by the media, and the focus on Annett's own personality, should invite scepticism as well. We don't like to imagine even the possibility that the deliberate killing of children could take place in Canada: it's the "it can't happen here" syndrome. But without an investigation, we'll never know--just as we would never have known about the butterbox babies and the Duplessis orphans if people had just shrugged the dark tales off, and dismissed it all as fantasy and paranoia.

Annett is not the issue; nor should any heed be paid to the jeering of bigots. Let's have that investigation, and find out once and for all whether we're dealing here with megalomania or with history.

UPDATE: (May 6) In what I can only consider a breathtaking display of intellectual dishonesty, Jay Currie joins the yahoo chorus by effectively accusing me of being in Annett's camp. The ad hominem attacks on Annett have reached parodic extremes--now we learn that he was a "dangerous loon" in high school. I wonder if he keeps a dog?

Religion in the new millennium

In Texas, George W. Bush's home state, a senior science educator is turfed from her job at the Texas Education Agency for alerting colleagues about an upcoming lecture on evolution.
(H/t)

In Saudi Arabia, they're about to execute a woman for witchcraft. Sign the petition here.
(H/t, alas)

Perhaps Richard Dawkins could tell us how willful blindness evolved. Or is it, like the real thing, a gift from God?

West Bank apartheid: 2008

Maclean's magazine has just published a lengthy account of life on the West Bank, putting before its readers the proposition: Israel "can be Jewish or democratic--but not both." It will be interesting to observe the reaction of pro-Israel cheerleaders to this starkly-posed choice.

This paragraph in particular stood out for me:

Israeli settlements and Palestinian villages are already so enmeshed throughout the West Bank that keeping the two peoples apart is virtually impossible. There are roads for settlers and roads for Palestinians — easily distinguishable by quality — but often the highways are shared. Different-coloured licence plates allow soldiers manning checkpoints to tell who is who. In the fields surrounding some Arab villages, hundreds of olive tree stumps stick out of the ground. The groves have been cut down by Israeli settlers....

The word "apartheid" means, literally, "apart-ness." The pro-Israel crowd doesn't like to hear the word, because of the baggage it carries. But what else can we possibly call the enforced separation of two peoples in the West Bank (and the continued brutal oppression of the majority by the minority)? From a "Jews-only" policy in the Hebron enclave surrounding the sacred site of the Cave of the Patriarchs, to the relentless guzzling of 80% of the water in the West Bank by settlers (some of it used for swimming pools while Palestinian farmers watch their livestock die of thirst),* "apartheid" is the only accurate and fair description of what's going on. (Separate licence plates? Why not yellow armbands with the stars replaced by crescents?)

Of course, keeping the two populations entirely isolated and apart proved impossible in South Africa as well. There was a good deal of "enmeshing" there, too, as the majority Black population served as an endless supply of cheap labour for the white elite, and was too populous in any case to be banished holus-bolus to the bantustans.

Settlers are calling for the outright annexation of the West Bank, and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population, whose comparative demographic promises to make them outnumber Israeli Jews in the next few decades. On the other side of the divide, at least one Palestinian, possibly a supporter of the extremist Islamist formation Hizb-ut-Tahir, wants an Islamic state, with the Jews as dhimmis.

"You want to know why I think this?" he asks. "I sit on my chair right there at the front of the shop, my neighbour beside me. Every day, the settlers walk in front of me and draw their fingers across their throats."

The famous border wall has added considerable Palestinian land to Israel proper. It appears, in fact, to be more about further annexation than security:

Mohamed doesn't think the wall has much to do with security because, he says, he's able to cross it at will. Doubtful, I ask him to show me where. We soon pass a ladder that has been thrown up against the wall. Palestinians will use it to jump the fence when it gets dark. A little farther on, a large drainpipe, about five feet in diameter, runs beneath the wall. Within the space of two or three minutes, a woman emerges from the Israeli side, and an old man and boy cross in the opposite direction.

Sensible people on both sides--I suspect they are in the majority--want a two-state solution: guaranteed secure pre-1967 borders for Israel, and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. But in the meantime the state of Israel has swallowed more than it can digest: and it's continuing to eat.

________________
*Paul Koring, Globe and Mail (Saturday, May 18, 2002) p. A15 [no longer on-line]

Conservative high spirits

On Boris Johnson's mayoral triumph in London, yesterday:

"This is like the March on Rome in 1922," one shadow minister said as Johnson inched towards victory. Johnson will not march into London's City Hall surrounded by blackshirts in the manner of Benito Mussolini's supporters when they staged their coup d'état in 1920s Italy. But the lighthearted reference to 1922 gave a taste of the high Tory spirits.

(H/t Matttbastard)

With Mattt, I'm simply transfixed by that adjective "lighthearted." What's next? Lighthearted references to the fall of Madrid?

Well, why not? The conservatives have been trying to rehabilitate Franco for years:

General Franco is an authentic national hero. It is generally conceded that he above others had the combination of talents, the perseverance, and the sense of righteousness of his cause, that were required to wrest Spain from the hands of the visionaries, ideologues, Marxists and nihilists that were imposing on her, in the thirties, a regime so grotesque as to do violence to the Spanish soul, to deny, even Spain's historical identity.

Franco brought Spain back to the realm of the normal by executing 200,000 Spaniards in celebration. ¡Viva la muerte!

More ideological seepage: lighthearted Republicans on the speaker's circuit. Lighthearted alliances against the Muslim Threat.

And, right here at home, the lightheartedness continues.

Revisionist history, part deux

The unemployed former poet Kathy Shaidle is getting a mite screechy these days (relatively speaking, I mean). I can appreciate the stress that being on the losing end of a lawsuit must bring, so I should probably be charitable. But I don't feel like it.

Readers will remember that some time ago I posted a picture I found at the Nizkor anti-revisionist site that was supposedly of speech-warrior poster child Marc Lemire. Mark Steyn published the picture too. Turns out it wasn't Lemire. I apologized. Steyn apologized two days later. Case closed, one might think. But somehow Steyn's apology has been interpreted in some dimmer quarters as a scolding of yours truly. I dealt with that here.

Not only has Shaidle vainly and ineptly attempted to exhume that fabrication (the photo was not "faked," and Zundel in the foreground was not the issue): she also has a go at a more recent post of mine concerning allegations by activist Kevin Annett of mass graves of Indian kids near former residential schools. I called for a blogburst on it, because of continuing media silence, and for people to join the Facebook group calling for an investigation of these claims. I was only one of many voices, of course, but a hundred or so bloggers posted on this, and the Facebook group now boasts 2,345 members. If this is what Shaidle calls a "failure," then I hope we soon have many more of them.

Shaidle being Shaidle, of course, she couldn't resist a little flick of racism. In response to my commonsense statement that First Nations people should be centrally involved in any investigation (many of the alleged burials are on Indian land, after all) she says, "Yeah, and we should have handed over the Pickton investigation to Davie Street hookers." Whew.

Do try to get some sleep, Kathy. You need to be nice and fresh for your upcoming libel trial. In the meantime, this on-going crankiness of yours really doesn't become you.

UPDATE: (May 4) One of Kathy's co-defendants weighs in. Having a few sleepless nights, Kate? (Geeze, lawsuits make people wrangy.)

Obama's dog: the Steyn interview

[Having dispatched Barack Obama's wife in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, our indefatigable Mark Steyn here discusses the family dog owned by "the candidate of the insane left."]

DD: Thanks to you, Mark Steyn, we now know more about Michelle Obama, in fact a lot more than anyone wants to know. In your words, "You’re listening to Michelle Obama talking about her problems. You would think this woman is nuts." I wonder if we might now turn our attention to Obama's housepet, by which I mean, of course, his black Labrador retriever.

MS: Well, with that choice of dog, we can see why Obama's numbers are weakening. The man is race-obsessed. No white or spotted dog for him. The influence of Jeremiah Wright remains for everyone to see, despite all those desperate political denials.

DD: I wonder if you see any significance in the name the Obamas decided to call him by: T-Bone.

MS: This is rather typical of the latte-sipping, elitist Left, isn't it? The name just reeks of blue-state, Eastern privilege. If he had a cat he'd probably call it Champignon. (laughing)

DD: And there goes the vegetarian vote.

MS: Yes, indeed. (laughing)

DD: Let's discuss the personality of this dog for a moment. Let me run a short clip here:

T-Bone: Bow-wow! Arf!

MS: You know, I've rarely heard such a bitter, envious, even angry bark. And there's an obvious sense of entitlement there, too.

DD: Well, in fairness, that last is true of all dogs.

MS: But all dogs don't belong to a person who's running for president. This is really a character issue, isn't it? The American people aren't about to sit up on command. Americans don't beg, and they don't want free food and regular walkies at the end of a state leash, despite what the limousine liberals think. Just who does this man think he is? Voters will see through all that in a flash. They aren't about to roll over and play dead.

DD: So they won't give Obama a nice warm tongue bath ?

MS: Certainly not. There's nothing fluffy, fluffy, fluffy about the American people. If Obama still manages to take the nomination, he'll find that out when the time comes.

DD: As you probably know, Obama has supported nearly every animal protection bill that was ever presented in Congress.

MS: That doesn't surprise me. There's an obvious conflict of interest here, and your readers should take note of it.

DD: Mark Steyn, a pleasure. I believe you will be discussing Obama's two daughters, Malia Ann and Natasha, in our next interview.

MS: That's right. Those kids are fair game, and I'm looking forward to it.

(H/t)

Creationists and denialists: liars and charlatans

A doffing of my prized Panama to Canadian Cynic for links to two extraordinary stories today that somehow seem almost erotically intertwined.

The first is John Derbyshire's bone-crushing smackdown of the egregious dishonesty of creationists and "Intelligent Design" propagandists. The second is an equally impressive DeSmogBlog expose of the global warming deniers over at the Heartland Institute, caught with their pants down in a barefaced fraud (and that is not a mixed metaphor).

These two accounts sum up the malignant anti-rationalism of conservatives who play politics with cards up their sleeves. Do not be misled: Derbyshire is a cranky far-right-winger himself, and a bit of a racist. But lunatic attacks on science are simply too much for him. Ignore his silly comments about Apaches*, and settle back for an entertaining read.

DeSmogBlog, hearing of a Heartland Institute list of alleged climate-change denialists with scientific credentials, took it upon himself to contact the scientists on the list. The result? Outrage from forty-five of them so far, and the numbers are growing. A typical comment:

I have NO doubts ..the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I insist that you immediately remove my name from this list since I did not give you permission to put it there. --Dr. Gregory Cutter, Professor, Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Old Dominion University

(Shades of the Oregon Petition.)

As for the cartoonish creationist movie Expelled, and the devious, unethical bunch of fraudsters who cobbled it together, there's an exhaustive account here.

When proponents of a point of view find themselves having to lie, consistently and shamelessly, to defend their position, we know that intellectual bankruptcy proceedings are not far off. From the "scientific" racism of Cyril Burt and his devoted followers today, to creationism and global warming denial, we see mountebanks and snakeoil salesmen of every description attempting to harness science to their broken-down wagons.

Historically, the Left has the Lysenkoist cross to bear, of course, but that was more than half a century ago. Today, however, what is sketchy and marginal and fraudulent for us seems to be mainstream for the Right. The question therefore is, John Derbyshire aside: Why is this sort of dishonesty virtually a hallmark of conservative politics today? I don't mean that as a rhetorical question: I'm genuinely curious. Comments are welcome.

_____________________
*Not to mention his bizarre claims that the Chinese have no scientific tradition. Has the man never heard of Joseph Needham?

May Day: revolutionary nostalgia

Greetings, friends and comrades! and a happy May Day to you all.

The title of this post is deliberately ambiguous, and seemingly self-contradictory, too, like similar phrases in our Left tradition: "revolutionary defeatism," "revolutionary suicide." It poses, in fact, a dialectical opposition: nostalgia is a neurotic dwelling on and in the past, revolution promises a transformation of human society, indeed a rupture with that past. But past and future are both human constructs. The past, actually several pasts, may contain the seeds of several futures, including the ones that we seek--alternatives to the dreary "end of history," both Fukuyama's and Orwell's, that endless stamping of the corporate boot on the human face forever.

Revolution, however, is not Soviet power plus electrification. Vanguardism is dead: no small body of human beings can possibly contain the vast future histories of humanity. That way madness, corruption and terror lie: power is seized, and the precious scrolls of the future are jealously guarded, on behalf, of course, of "the people": but like the Latin Bible of old, their contents are mediated through a priestly class. Its hieratic messages are doled out in speeches, mandates and orders, enforced by secret police: and the workers come to inhabit, not a space of transformation, but a zone of exception. The sovereign, armed with technology and design, emerges once again from his own ashes.

Karl Marx knew the dangers:

The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language....the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.

How, then, do we forget our native tongue in periods of crisis, and at once invent, learn and speak a new one? How do we avoid that anxious conjuration of the spirits of the past-- rejecting the transformative, falling back on old patterns of thought and behaviour--at the very moment of our potential triumph? We don't know. And so our demand for alternatives, for an authentic future that people construct with their own hands and minds, can sound too often (let's admit it) like sentimental moralizing.

Perhaps, then, we should talk much less, and learn to inhabit our crazy visions in a different way. Perhaps we should be guided by our imaginings, letting them inform and help us re-create our actions and our organizing strategies. But to do this we need to be deeply open to them, and to each other. And so today, rather than discussing the revolutionary necessity of shop-floor democracy, accountability, capacity-building and alliances--what, in other words, is to be done (although Lenin himself was rather obscure on that point)--let's listen instead, to our dreams and to the dreams of our comrades, refracted through the music of our living tradition. There's plenty of time tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, for us to put our shoulders to the wheel once again--with a smile, knowing that boundless possibilities are ours.




























[Internationale; Hasta siempre; ¡No Pasarán!; Bread and Roses; Einheitsfrontlied; El Quiento Regimento; A las barricadas; El pueblo unido jamás será vencido; Avanti Popolo; Te recuerdo Amanda (Victor Jara); Gracias a la vida (Violeta Parra); The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Gil Scott Heron); The Fifth Internationale (Allen Ginsberg)]

The Linda Keening of Elections Canada

I won't repeat what other commentators have said, at great length and with justice and principle on their side, about Harper's latest Panzer assault on democracy. But Scott Tribe has injected a new phrase into our political vocabulary, thanks to an anonymous commenter at CalgaryGrit*, and I like it. Linda Keen was unjustly fired for doing her job; John Kerry, victim of the Republican-backed "swiftboaters," was grossly slandered, and lost an election in no small part because of it. The malign anti-democratic political machinations of the conservatives of both countries prevailed. "Linda Keening": that's a keeper, all right. I expect we'll have quite a bit of use for it in the future.

Stephen Harper hates democracy. Let me repeat: Stephen Harper hates democracy. He doesn't like arms-length regulatory bodies, an essential of democratic governance. He doesn't like a free press. He doesn't like artistic freedom. He shows all the signs of a totalitarian personality, and he has an army of trained seals behind him.

One of the principles I learned in the labour movement, from a wonderful poem by Maurice Ogden, is "I did no more than you let me do." It's a less Godwin-exposed version of Pastor Niemoller's famous comment: "First they came...". Stéphane Dion and his own band of cowardly trained seals has been acquiescing in every vile move that Harper has made over the past few months--anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-education, you name it. They've been letting him do just about anything that he pleases. There seems to be no line in the sand that this gang of gutless Liberal wonders is willing to draw. And Harper, getting his free ride, is busy implementing his so-called "hidden" agenda, without let or hindrance. He'll make Dion a Senator or an ambassador some day--mark my words.

Meanwhile we sit here, our noses pressed to the glass, watching, waiting, unable to do a damned thing to bring Dion back from the dead, and hoping against hope that our lying eyes are deceiving us. There is no Official Opposition, just a complaisant bunch of Harper yes-persons. They may as well be Conservative backbenchers for all the influence they have, or are willing to exert. And democracy is being chopped away by the day.

Yesterday it was the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Today Elections Canada is the target. Tomorrow--who knows? When so-called "arms-length" agencies don't bend to our Maximum Leader's will, they and their officials can expect heavy retaliation: firings, and ceaseless vilification by attack poodles like Gary Lunn and Pierre Poilievre.

With the Harper vote against Elections Canada, yet another spike has been driven into the coffin of democratic governance in Canada, and the opposition has yet to materialize. How much longer will the Hangman have his way with us?

UPDATE: (May 1) "Tomorrow--who knows?" I asked. Impolitical answered my question.
_______________
*It seems, in fact, that credit for the phrase (at least in part) should go to CalgaryGrit himself.

Canada 419

CONFIDENTIAL

Dear Sir,

Good day and compliments and blessings of God. This letter will definitely come to you as a huge surprise, but I implore you to take the time to go through it carefully as the decision you make will go off a long way to determine the future and continued existence of five Canadians.

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Miss Kathy Shaidle, would-be paramour of the commander-in-chief of the speech warriors of the Dominion of Canada, General Mark Steyn, who fled the country some time ago.

My ordeal started immediately after I said some things about our current leader, Commander Richard Warman, and his subsequent takeover of our government. The present government is determined to portray all the good work of General Steyn in a bad light and have gone as far as confiscating assets of our friends. As I am writing this letter to you, my brother Marc Lemire is undergoing questioning with the government. All these measures taken by past/present government is just to gain international recognition.

I and four other Canadians have been held incommunicado since the flight of General Steyn, hence I seek your indulgence to assist us in securing these funds. We are not allowed to see or discuss with anybody. Few occasions I have tried traveling abroad though alternative means all failed.

It is in view of this I have mandated Dr. E. Levant, one of our number, who has been assisting us to run around on so many issues to act on our behalf concerning the substance of this letter. He has the full power of attorney to execute this transaction with you.

My beloved Mark Steyn had Eighty Million USD ($80,000,000.00) specially preserved and well packed in trunk boxes to defend us against charges by Commander Warman. It is packed in such a way to forestall just anybody having access to it. It is this sum that I seek your assistance to get out of Canada as soon as possible before the present government finds out about it and confiscates most of it through high taxes just like they have done to all our assets.

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

I implore you in Jesus name to please give consideration to my predicament and help a poor Canadian in need.

May God show you mercy as you do so?

Your faithfully,

Miss Kathy Shaidle

N/B: Please contact Dr. E. Levant on this e-mail address for further briefing and modalities.

Of tinfoil and shaving cream

The assault on the Canadian Human Rights Commission has taken a downright bizarre turn recently. Nelly Hechme, the innocent citizen whose wi-fi was allegedly borrowed by CHRC staff to log in to the neo-Nazi Stormfront site, has revealed that her Internet access was through a secured network. To get into it, hacking would be required. That brought the speech-warriors' paranoia to the full bubble and boil in jig time.

I ventured over to So-Con or Bust, John Pacheco's site, where, according to Ezra Levant, some masterful detective work had been done. This I wanted to see for myself. Pacheco claims that the "jadewarr" login during which Hechme's account was used took place within 64 minutes of a CHRC employee, Dean Steacy, logging in to Stormfront to download a post for Richard Warman. Warman himself was standing by, with CHRC lawyer Giacomo Vigna and goodness knows how many other people. The allegation is that this was precisely when the illegal hacking occurred.

Not being a techie, to put it mildly, I'm interested in two salient issues: first, how would CHRC staff have managed the feat of hacking into Hechme's wi-fi, and secondly, why would they do it?

I made the mistake of putting these questions to Pacheco. His level of intellectual honesty quickly revealed itself: he deleted my posts, but kept his responses to all but the last of them. This is fairly typical behaviour, I'm afraid, for conspiracy theorists: they don't like to have their delusions threatened. But for what it's worth, here are the detailed questions I raised, with his replies.

1) The distance as the crow flies from Nelly Hechme's residence to the Canadian Human Rights Commission offices is app. 370 metres--nearly a quarter of a mile. The intervening space is not occupied merely by an open field, as Marc Lemire claims in a complaint to the RCMP, but by a phalanx of office buildings.

Query: is it possible to access wi-fi at that range and with those obstacles in the way?

Yes, responded Pacheco: his brother-in-law, an electrical engineer, told him that long range wi-fi is easily available. You just need a cheap computer card and an antenna. When I asked him to clarify with his brother-in-law how the signal can penetrate a wall of office towers, all my posts disappeared, as if by magic.

2) I asked why the CHRC would go to the trouble and risk of hacking a private citizen's account when all a staffer had to do was log on to Stormfront and use CloakMe or other similar on-line services to hide the point of origin. In fact, as I had to remind Pacheco, CHRC officer Hanna Rizk testified at the March 25 Tribunal hearing that Warman had actually taught her how to use CloakMe. (That particular anonymizing service no longer seems to be available, but there are many others.)

Pacheco danced like Nureyev on this one. He claimed that the CHRC probably wanted to avoid having the CloakMe logs subpoenaed. But that is much easier said than done: CloakMe originated in the US, and is quite probably immune to a subpoena from Canada. Compared to that uphill task, in fact, getting hold of the Bell Canada logs, as Mark Lemire did, was a cakewalk. Why didn't the CHRC worry about that far more likely possibility?

In any case, this is how the speech-warrior story runs now: a Canadian federal agency would rather risk criminal prosecution for theft of communications than simply log on to a hate site and use a cloaking service to cover its investigative tracks. This agency allegedly accessed wi-fi at long range, through several office building walls, not merely stealing unsecured wi-fi, which can be obtained throughout downtown Ottawa where its offices are, but going that extra (quarter-) mile and hacking a secured site some distance away. In front of a bunch of witnesses. On an office computer, with a long-range wi-fi antenna there for everyone to see. And all this simply to download a copy of a posting from Stormfront.

At this point, folks, we're deep into Truther territory. If I want to go see my next-door neighbour, why would I walk right around the block to get there? This, by analogy, is the claim about the CHRC. To do a relatively trouble-free task, they allegedly gave themselves more trouble and risk than you can shake a stick at.

There are times that I feel like wielding Occam's Razor like a broadsword, as I said over at Levant's place. The claim that the CHRC hacked into Hechme's site depends upon an accelerating number of suspect assumptions. A bucket of shaving cream seems urgently required at this point. And something else some of these conspirazoids need to know: contrary to popular superstition, tinfoil actually attracts and focuses the rays.

I would invite tech-savvy readers to comment particularly on the wi-fi issue. Is such access theoretically possible? Speculation as to the motives of the Commission for allegedly taking such a long and winding road are also welcome: given the lack of any real evidence, just let your imaginations roam. Maybe Commission employees, like Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, just like to live dangerously.

Freedom of speech at UWO [Updated]

Ezra...are you listening? Hello?

The University Students' Council of the University of Western Ontario has shut down a pro-Palestinian student group, without a clear explanation, and confiscated its assets.

This isn't the first time that the good burghers of UWO have tried this sort of thing on. The university has a bit of a history of anti-Arab racism, in fact: it has lost three cases in front of the Ontario Human Rights Commission since 1987, and the UWO Students' Council lost one earlier, in 1985 [see UPDATE, below--DD]. But it seems that this is a beast that will not die.Will the OHRC have to put a stake through its heart?

Could this decision, even though it was ostensibly made by the Clubs Policy Committee of the Students' Council, be tied to the sympathies of its current president, Dr. Paul Davenport, who recently accepted an award from the Jewish National Fund--an organization that the Israeli Supreme Court itself has found to be racist?

Let's stand up for free speech on Canadian campuses. Somebody's got to do it: the speech warriors appear to be too busy at the moment.

Please send politely-worded e-notes to the University Students' Council President Tom Stevenson: usc.president@uwo.ca, and/or the USC Vice-President of Student Events officer Sabrina Sdao: uscvpse@uwo.ca.

(H/t. *Sigh*)

UPDATE: (April 26) One of the four successful human rights complaints was against the University Students' Council as far back as 1982 for refusing to ratify the student club Canadians for Peace in the Middle East (later Citizens Concerned for the Middle East). The Ontario Human Rights Commission had to be prodded into action, but eventually mediated the situation. The USC apologized, and the club was ratified--in 1985! An account may be found here: scroll down to p.87. (h/t)

As recently as 2006 the UWO Students' Council de-ratified yet another pro-Palestinian student club, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR). The USC had been harassing the club since 2004, and, as readers will see here, due process is not the way this students' council goes about things. Speech suppression rules at UWO, in fact, unless it's joking about raping a student activist.

UPDATE: (April 28) The University Students Council has officially responded. Herewith their unredacted email sent to me this morning. There are commenters here who might be in a position to reply: in fact, one offered a two-part rebuttal earlier. In any case, the floor's open.

Thank you for your concern regarding the UWO Public Interest Research Group.

Associated with the privileges of being a USC club, club presidents and executives are expected to fulfill their responsibilities to their membership and ultimately, the USC in accordance with the Clubs Policy. This expectation is expressed annually to club presidents at the mandatory Club Executive Training Session. The UWO PIRG was found to be in violation of two aspects of the Clubs Policy, which ultimately led to the decision to de-ratify the club.

Financially, USC policies require all clubs to deposit monies taken in by its members and community members at-large. They are required to deposit money in their USC bank accounts to ensure accountability to their members. As overseers of the system, it is of prime importance to the USC to ensure clubs are accountable to their members, who are the students we represent. On three separate occasions, between September and March, the UWO PIRG did not deposit event admission fee monies into their USC bank account after the approved events were held. To this day, this money cannot be officially accounted for, and despite the notice of potential de-ratification and notice of de-ratification, this student money has yet to be deposited into its USC bank account.

Further, the UWO PIRG was found in violation of the Event & Risk Management guidelines as stated in the Clubs Policy. Several events in an anti-War/Peace Week were endorsed by the UWO PIRG on an online website and on paper flyers. However, no event proposals were submitted to the USC regarding their association with the program, with the exception of one approved event - Marching Orders: A Speaker's Panel. The USC requires event proposals to be submitted in order to ensure the programming occurring is safe and to be able to assist with any event execution necessary. As such, no risk associated with any of the programming could have been proactively mitigated on behalf of the USC, despite the fact that UWO PIRG's club name was used in the promotion of the event, and could have been implicated with responsibility of hosting the event.

As expressed above, the issues surrounding the de-ratification of the UWO PIRG are solely associated with policy infractions and are not associated with the nature of the club itself.

Be assured that the UWO PIRG had significant time to formulate a response to the Clubs Policy Committee (CPC), and that their response was taken into consideration when the final decision was made to de-ratify the club. The UWO PIRG may appeal the CPC's decision, should it chose to exercise that right.

Despite the de-ratification of the UWO PIRG, please note that this group can still operate as a group of students on campus, but they simply are not privy to the privileges of being a USC club.

Thanks again for your concern and please let us know if you have any additional comments or questions.

Regards,

Tom Stevenson
USC President

Sabrina Sdao
Vice President Student Events

Ezra Levant's "facts"

Ezra Levant has now joined Mark Steyn in stating as a fact that employees of the Canadian Human Rights Commission have committed criminal acts. (At least he was more cautious than his colleague, who named CHRC investigator Dean Steacy as the alleged criminal.)

It seems that both gentlemen like to live dangerously. Unsubstantiated accusations of this nature are clearly defamatory. Truth is a defence in a libel action, however, so I will be interested in the evidence that they bring forward to back up these publicly-stated charges. Otherwise, I suspect that serious paper will fly in their general direction when the dust of the current actions has had a chance to settle. And, if I might be permitted a little Schadenfreude with my popcorn, I look forward to that day with some anticipation.

(H/t Mordechai)

The Lucy Exoneration

The title sounds like a Robert Ludlum novel, and the plot of this tale is just as tangled and complex. But Buckets has kept on beavering away, and he's finally put that "Lucy Warman" nonsense into its well-deserved grave. A round of applause for this tireless worker for truth and justice, please.

TTC strike: you go, ATU!

Casting a quick, acerbic glance at ProgBlog this afternoon, I thought I'd blundered into the Blogging Tories site by mistake. Poster after poster is dumping all over the union: words like "douchebag" are being applied; it's those dumb workers at fault, it seems, never the management of TTC. Yes, there are a few decent voices crying in the wilderness, but they are being drowned out. On a progressive blogroll! I hate to think what they're saying over at BT at the moment.

Maybe a clue: the TTC Chair is none other than veteran NDP hack stalwart Adam Giambrone. Ouch! Painful choice, eh? And May Day a mere five days away!

To be honest, I'm having a bit of a time tracking down the outstanding issues that got two-thirds of the union membership to reject the tentative deal. But why should I bother to pick up the phone and call my ATU buddies? Few others seem interested in the issues--they just want to do a bit of good old-fashioned union bashing. So, on this sunny Saturday afternoon, I'm content to do a little good old-fashioned union defending. When someone actually wants to discuss the strike issues, let me know.

ATU leader Bob Kinnear is under fire for saying that he hadn't given the usual 48 hours notice for the strike because "We will not expose our members to the dangers of assaults from angry and irrational members of the public." But the rest of his statement is invariably left out:

The reports from our members of increases in threats and abuse from passengers last weekend, after we gave our original 48-hours' notice, has left us no choice but to withdraw our services immediately. We have a legal responsibility to protect the safety of our members and so does the TTC.

This isn't idle talk. Even when a strike isn't in the works, an increasing number of front-line transit workers are being beaten, spat on, threatened and verbally abused by members of that public we mustn't offend. Their rate of post-traumatic stress is above that of Ontario police officers. Just think about that.

In the meantime, if this is all the anti-ATU folks can come up with, I'm in no mood to do further research. You go, ATU! Solidarity forever.

And it's one, two, three...

...what are we fighting for?

Meet Sayed Pervez Kambaksh. He's a young Afghan student journalist on death row in Mazar-i-Sharif for downloading and distributing a report from the Internet that was critical of the treatment of women in some Islamic societies. His trial lasted four minutes. Blasphemy, says the regime that our troops are dying to defend. Even before the judicial process was exhausted, the Afghan Senate endorsed the death penalty for the young man (since retracted).

And this isn't an anomaly. A draft law now before the Afghan Parliament will restore many of the old Tali-bans--no long hair for men, no makeup for women, no pigeon-flying, no men and women talking together in public, no loudspeakers, no "anti-Islamic" programming (in anticipation, two popular soap operas from India have already been banned by the government). Prime Minister Hamid Karzai appointed a religious fundamentalist to head Afghanistan's Supreme Court, and another one as Minister of Information and Culture--the one who just banned the soap operas, a charming fellow who thinks that journalists are more dangerous than the Taliban.

Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss. Only this time, Canadian soldiers are part of the palace guard. Too bad their duties aren't merely ceremonial.

Policing public space

A Concordia University student in Montreal learned the hard way that sitting down in a public park can cost you, bigtime. $628, to be exact.

Brendan Jones was sitting, along with others, on some low granite ledges in Émilie Gamelin Park, taking in some sunshine. He was also interested in something else--police treatment of people drinking alcohol in the park. He whipped out his camera and started to take pictures.

A police officer approached him and indicated that she would like to have his camera. Jones refused. She was soon joined by two other officers. A ticket was issued for "using urban equipment for uses other than those intended."

Police bad faith here is glaringly obvious. Jones was told repeatedly, according to a police spokesperson, that people who wished to sit were obliged to use park benches. Despite the fact that many other people that day were sitting on the granite surfaces in the park, Jones was the only one charged with anything.

An urban space architect, Gavin Affleck, later noted that the whole point of these granite surfaces is for people to sit on them.

"A successful public space develops conviviality, use, social interaction, and obviously sitting around is basic," he said. "Trying to eliminate that from a public space is completely opposite to its whole intention."

So, then, whose "intent" will prevail? That of cops who love surveillance unless they're the subjects of it, or that of the designers of public parks, who want them to be places of relaxed social interaction? If Jones sets up a defence fund, I'll post particulars.

More generally, however, this incident raises a number of interesting questions. What precisely is public space? How do we defend it, and what form should that defence take?

I am a member of the Ottawa Witness Group, which, after a series of police assaults on demonstrators in Ottawa shortly after 9/11, came into being the following summer to monitor police behaviour at major political demonstrations in the Ottawa area. Our view is that the notion of public space embraces freedom of assembly and expression: public space is an agora, in other words, not merely physical space.

We take this idea of a peopled "public space" as a given. But two different authors add rigour to the concept, while displacing easy assumptions about it, and they force us to think about what it is that we are defending.

Canadian philosopher Mark Kingwell, in a provocative essay in the Literary Review of Canada this month ("The Prison of 'Public Space'"), begins his reflections with a quotation from the "Toronto Public Space Committee," which opposes surveillance cameras in public areas:

The proposed police cameras will be surveying public spaces throughout the city. We feel that it is reasonable to assume that law-abiding citizens should be free to walk the streets and enjoy the public spaces without being monitored by the police. The very act of continuous monitoring reduces the freedoms we all value within our public spaces. It puts into jeopardy our rights to privacy, and anonymity, on the streets of our city.

Kingwell is troubled by this. Philosphers rather too easily see public space as including "the right to gather and discuss, to interact with and debate one's fellow citizens." Public space is not merely what you find between private spaces. It goes well beyond: "Public space enables a political conversation that favours the unforced force of the better argument, the basis of just social order."

But, as he explains at length, this idealized notion of public space is contradicted by its very underpinnings: so-called "public spaces" are merely the sites of myriad extensions of private space. A shopping arcade, for example, is an "unpublic public space," a place where

private individuals enter into the so-called public space as floating bubbles of private space, suspicious of intrusion by strangers and jealous of their interests. On this model, "public" space is not public at all; it is merely an open marketplace of potential transactions, monetary or otherwise, between isolated individuals.

So long as that space is occupied by people engaged in individualistic pursuits, he argues, it isn't truly "public" at all. If he is right, then I fell into the trap myself, by using the word "agora" (marketplace) earlier. Kingwell calls for a "more radical reorientation," away from the property model of a space "available for everyone's selfish use." Our present conception of public space, he suggests, is of "leftover space," which forms the margins of private holdings and commercial enterprises. And omnipresent surveillance simply goes to remind us that these interstitial spaces are not ours, but the state's:

Contemporary western societies remain an uneasy hybrid of associational and authoritarian social forms: democracy is a confusion of claims for individual liberty made among state-controlled structures of order and security that may, at any moment, revert to violence.

"There can be no useful recourse to public space," he says, "unless and until we reverse the polarity of our conception of publicness itself." Indeed, he concludes, all space is public space:

We cannot enter the public because we have never left the public; it pervades everything, and our identities are never fixed or prefigured because they are themselves achievements of the public dimension in human life.

Where I part company with Kingwell is on the notion of surveillance. And I do so uneasily. Certainly the idea of police surveillance of "public space" has Orwellian overtones. Surveillance ("the gaze") is an essential aspect of Michel Foucault's notion of discipline. It is an exercise of institutional power--in clinics, prisons and mental hospitals, for example. We begin to "watch ourselves," in both senses of the phrase. We fall into line.

But one thing the Ottawa Witness Group noted early on is that this cuts both ways. The police didn't like being under surveillance themselves. Indeed, a senior officer at a meeting I attended claimed that our mere presence, taking notes on the scene and recording events with our cameras, "interfered" with the conduct of officers' duties. We can also remember the many amateur videos, from the Rodney King beating to the recent killing of Robert Dziekanski, in which police accounts have been instantly falsified or put seriously into question by quick-thinking citizens.

It is precisely this point that David Brin (The Transparent Society) is advancing when he argues against the very notion of privacy, from quite a different standpoint than Kingwell, but not necessarily a contradictory one. Here is an interesting interview with him on a talk show, on the very question of video surveillance. We worry about Big Brother, he says, but the most chilling thing about the dystopia of 1984, in which the state is always peering at us, is that we can't look back. He argues that trying to stop surveillance is akin to King Canute trying to stop the tides (yet another misstatement of Canute's real mission, but let it pass), so that citizens with cameras in our increasingly transparent society can enforce accountability. And here's Glenn Reynolds, making the same argument.

So even though one of my fellow Witnesses pursued individual complaints against police for videotaping demonstrators, I am less offended by this--so long as we can videotape them right back. Cops who sadistically use Tasers are popping up on YouTube all the time. Here at home surveillance cameras in a Tim Hortons caught two cops whaling away on a harmless drunk. If surveillance in a public park is a disciplinary gaze, so too is the increasingly common surveillance of police--a democratic response to police abuse of power, and probably more effective than citizen complaint mechanisms.

Back, then, to Émilie Gamelin Park, where all of these issues came together in an odd conjuncture. Here is a "public space," that isn't really public at all. It is heavily policed. Members of the public aren't even allowed to sit anywhere other than in designated spots (benches) set aside for the purpose. The park is actually a confined space of regimentation and control. The police, who were there to enforce the rules in this "public" place where Brendan Jones sat down, tried to obtain his camera, and then issued a punitively high-priced ticket for daring to sit in the wrong spot (but really for daring to put them under surveillance).

Brendan Jones is being punished for trying to make police accountable in our not-yet-transparent society. And the officers' retaliation exposes, in a single act of indisputable malice, the flimsy, indeed illusory, nature of "public space."

Free speech for MPs!

The pages of the Ottawa Citizen are plastered today with attacks on the notion of parliamentary privilege, with special reference to the recent censure of RCMP Deputy Commissioner Barbara George. The House of Commons unanimously found her in contempt of Parliament on April 10 for misleading the House public accounts committee in February 2007. In doing so, they upheld the committee's naming of George for contempt of Parliament at the time.

During an investigation of the scandal-plagued RCMP's mishandling of their employee pension plan, George had allegedly been involved in the removal of a gung-ho investigator, Staff-Sgt. Mike Frizzell, from the case. She twice claimed before the House committee that she had not, despite evidence to the contrary.

RCMP behaviour around this issue met the low-quality standard that we have come, unfortunately, to expect of this out-of-control national police force. But that's not the issue that I want to address. Rather, it's the quaint notion that Parliamentarians should not be able to express themselves in their own chamber--that they should be denied their right to freedom of speech.

Kathryn May, the writer of the article, trundles out "experts" who thunder against the naming of George for contempt. A visiting professor at the University of Ottawa attacked the public accounts committee for doing so this past February. She called the Committee a "schoolyard bully" and claimed that it was "over the top" in making its ruling.

May goes on to refer to "archaic privileges...threatening the rights of Canadians." Former MP Serge Joyal is cited: he refers to a case of discrimination brought against the Speaker of the House at the time, where the Speaker claimed parliamentary privilege. But the Supreme Court ruled that the Speaker was not shielded, and that the human rights case against him could proceed. In other words, the system worked. Nevertheless, Joyal insists that parliamentary privilege, once a shield against the Crown, has been "transformed into a sword."

Conservative MP John Williams sees the matter a little differently. "How much more due process did she want?" he asked:

We wrote to her about our concerns; we gave her a couple of weeks to prepare and the floor to speak as long as she needed to explain and she reaffirmed that she gave a truthful statement....This wasn't done in a cavalier way. We handled this soberly, deliberately and thoughtfully to ensure her rights were protected and she was given every opportunity to explain herself. You can't abuse committees and not expect them to react.

And I think he puts the matter very well. What "rights" are being infringed, what "sword" is being wielded, when a parliamentary committee, and then the House in session, express an opinion? Because that is the sum total of what they did. They were displeased with what they not unreasonably considered to be obfuscations and prevarications before the committee by the RCMP Deputy Commissioner, and they said so. That's what being held in contempt is. That's what a motion of censure is. Both are expressions of opinion.

George was not fined, deprived of her liberty or stripped of her rights. She was told off. Twice. Since when should our elected officials be denied the right to do just that?

I'm speechless

(H/t Damian.)

Brenda Martin and Mexican justice

OK, all, let's take a deep breath.

Once upon a time, I used to winter in a tiny paradise called Bequia, an island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Once in a while, to avoid the long walks and the dollar buses, I'd take a water taxi--a motor-boat whose operator would take you down the coast to your vacation abode.

One of these boats was called the "Jolly Joseph." The operator, Jerome Joseph (I believe I knew him slightly) , was murdered: he was found floating in the harbour with a .22 bullet through the heart. His accused murderers were a pair of dissolute, rich Americans, James and Penella Fletcher. They had been in possession of just such a gun, but it conveniently disappeared.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines has a justice system modeled on the British system--the judges and lawyers even wear wigs. It's a democratic country. But this didn't stop hysterical American commentators from using the old "whites in the grip of savage Blacks" meme. The then-Prime Minister, James "Son" Mitchell, toured the US to try to explain that the Fletchers would get a fair trial.

The US media commentariat, in the person of Ted Koppel, swung into action. Mitchell was ambushed on CNN. President Clinton (the man who left Leonard Peltier to rot in jail) "sought assurances" from the Prime Minister that the Fletchers would indeed get that fair trial.

As it happens, I know "Son" Mitchell. He has a degree in agronomy from UBC. He's a reserved, dignified, highly civilized human being, even if I found his politics a little conservative for my taste. He was nice enough, one sunny day, to take my ex and me over to Mustique on his 32-foot sailboat for a day trip, before he won the election with his National Democratic Party (NDP)--he was a great fan of David Lewis, as it turned out, and the acronym was no accident.

In any case, the jury found the pair not guilty. There was too little evidence, with the missing gun and all. I wish I could believe that this was a fair, impartial verdict, but the pressure from the US was so immense that I cannot fully trust it. The magistrate, I was told, was really rough on Joseph's brother on the stand, calling him "stupid." There was something that didn't feel right. Nevertheless, the couple walked, and that's that.

Let us turn now to Mexico. I felt, I admit it, what many people felt--this was a Canadian woman who, through no fault of her own, ended up in the toils of a corrupt justice system that runs on bribes and favours. Obviously it took far too long to bring her to trial. And there are many questions one can reasonably ask. How did the judge reach his "guilty" verdict when all the evidence was circumstantial? And yet--didn't she get quite the whack of severance pay for an 10-month stint at work? $25,000? As a cook? A federal public employee in Canada pulling in $52K a year would walk away with that amount only after 25 years.

So I then must ask myself: is my visceral reaction against today's finding of guilt, the five-year sentence and the fine based on my intimate knowledge of the Mexican judicial system? Nope. It doesn't seem to be up there with St.Vincent's, for sure. But when we make these snap judgements about the outcome of trials of Our People in foreign lands, are we not reacting with just a mite of prejudice...even racism?

I put the question to readers; but in any case I am not satisfied with my own initial reaction to the guilty verdict. I need to know more, and maybe feel a little less.