The Braidwood Chronicles: "tissues, water and moral support"

The Braidwood Inquiry continues this week, not quite on schedule but close enough.

Someone has evidently had a little chat with BC attorney general Wally Oppal, who had earlier opened the door to the possibility that the Four Horsemen might be charged. Today he issued a clarification:

Oppal told The Canadian Press he was merely "talking theory," and cautioned that he hasn't seen anything so far that he believes could change the decision on charges.

"All I said is that if new evidence emerges, there's always a possibility to lay charges, but I didn't specifically say in this case it would happen," said Oppal, who has made similar comments in the past.

Oppal said he's "not prepared to buy in" that there was a significant change in evidence and there were false statements made.

RCMP lawyer Jan Brongers claimed yesterday that there was a "perfectly innocent explanation" for the collective hallucination the officers apparently suffered at the airport--four accounts, later recanted, that contained identical "errors." He didn't provide that explanation, however.

A second RCMP mouthpiece, Helen Roberts, lost no time attempting to keep RCMP PR flacks Cpl. Dale Carr and Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre off the stand this week, but Justice Braidwood ruled that they will indeed appear. Sgt. Lemaitre, readers may remember, was the RCMP spokesperson who, immediately after the Dziekanski killing but before the existence of the video became known, announced that only three officers were involved, that a Taser had been used only twice, and that the Vancouver Airport was crowded at the time. I look forward to his examination.

Meanwhile, today we heard from RCMP Cpl. Nycki Basra, who, as a volunteer for the Employee Assistance Program, organized the debriefing session for the Four Horsemen that took place shortly after Dziekanski's death. Previously Constable William Bentley testified that the four of them talked about the killing at that meeting, although Constable Kwesi Millington couldn't remember the subject coming up at the meeting or, for that matter, at any other time, although the four of them worked together for several weeks afterwards.

Trained to listen, Cpl. Basra told the Inquiry that she couldn't remember a thing. "My focus is really on their emotions, their speed of speech and physiological symptoms. Having said that, I don't recall the exact specifics of what was said," she claimed.

Her job, she said, was "to monitor the officers' emotions, provide tissues, water and moral support."

Dziekanski's mother, Zofia Cisowski, was not there to hear any of this. She was at the Vancouver Airport today, laying flowers to mark what would have been her son's 42nd birthday.

Appearances

With a big h/t to Red Tory, this stunning performance on the Britain's Got Talent competition is not to be missed--embedding is disabled, so head over to YouTube.

Listen for yourself. Be enraptured, as Red and I and by now literally millions of others have been.

I freely admit that I had tears in my eyes at the end of this visual and aural narrative: the dowdy church lady who seized the cynical and amused crowd with her first three bars, and lifted us all to the heights.

"I'm forty-seven," she said to the infamous Simon Cowell. "And that's just one side of me," she continued, seeing his facial response--and did a little shimmy!

Then pure, liquid gold.

Beyond the "appearances can be deceiving" commonplace, we need to step back, perhaps, and look at appearance itself, and its influence over us. Why shouldn't a person have such colossal gifts without looking like Beyoncé Knowles? What does youth and sexiness have to do with the ability to do math, or write poetry--or sing? What is it in our cultural matrix that directs us to bundle attributes in this manner? Is it evolutionary mating-ritual essentialism or a social construction that accomplishes the same, or similar, ends?

Obviously this issue is salient when it comes to performance talents. We don't expect poets of either sex to be beautiful, let alone mathematicians or construction workers. I would be tempted to call our reaction a gendered one, except that male performers are expected to have a certain look as well: if you sing like Mick Jagger and play guitar like Eric Clapton, you won't get far if you look like Oliver Hardy or Stan Laurel.

But even here, this is not always the case: people go to the opera to listen and enjoy the spectacle: we don't judge the physical appearance of the tenor or the contralto, but the sounds of their voices. So we might say that only certain types of performance--rock, for example, or American Idol and Britain's Got Talent contests--are indeed bound up in the complex interplay that constitutes sexual capital.

But even this is far from the whole story. The devastating effects of lookism, the next site of struggle for equality, are not confined to mating displays, nor are they peculiar to the West. We saw recently how "Communist" China treated a little girl whose looks did not, in the functionaries' opinion, match her voice. A literature is currently developing, although the discussion is in fact an ancient one.

Here's an interesting account that brings us up to date: "Today, the debate is still between essentialists and constructionists, but the essentialists have become evolutionary and the constructionists have become social." As you'd imagine from anything published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, however, the arguments and conclusion will disappoint progressives.

But let us step back further: must stage-genres remain immutable, bounded wholes, or are they subject to transformation? Are new genres--on stage or in art in general--possible? With respect to the latter, one need only plunge into Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire, or his Book of Embraces, where fiction, fable, documentary, history and poetry are combined into something moving and entirely new. And regarding the former, it may be brave souls like Susan Boyle, with her obvious self-protective armament on display as she exchanges banter with the three judges, who shatter the boundaries by their sheer will and their enormous gifts.

Who knows what prodigious talents have been and are buried by appearance--skin-deep, perhaps, but nevertheless for most an impenetrable barrier, whether socially constructed or an evolutionary mating-ritual imperative. Susan Boyle reminds us that any time is a good time to examine our assumptions. Comments, as always, are welcome.

Futility in Afghanistan

When the anti-Islamist writer Irshad Manji finally concludes what many of us have been saying all along--that the war in Afghanistan has no discernible point--it's time to face reality. That's a rough and rocky place, one in which things can't always get fixed, and truth, beauty and justice don't always prevail. Especially at gunpoint.

Our Taliban versus the other Taliban. And without NATO troops in there to "prop up" the Hamid Karzai regime--as junior hawk Raphael Alexander puts it--the fundamentalist mind-meld would swiftly be complete.

But Mark Collins, over at The Torch, hasn't received the memo. Go on over and have a look: he always sees light at the end of that-there tunnel. Or is it a will-o'-the-wisp?

(One point of clarification: I did not mean to suggest, in the piece of mine to which Collins refers, that he and others are "puppets" of anyone--rather that, like puppetmasters, they have been dangling good and evil caricatures before us in their current version of an ancient tradition--the morality play. A more realistic performance would not, alas, end with salvation.)

Dziekanski killing: criminal charges?

The BC government shifts comfortably in its seat:

November 2007:

The e-mail written by [RCMP deputy commissioner for the Pacific region Gary] Bass on Nov. 24 indicates that [BC Premier Gordon] Campbell was "highly complimentary" of the police force despite the fact Dziekanski's death was still under investigation.

The e-mail was addressed to Elliott and Bill Sweeney, an RCMP deputy commissioner and special adviser to the commissioner.

"I just ran into our premier at the airport and we had a great 20-minute discussion on this issue generally.… He was highly complimentary of the force, disappointed over the degree of criticism and wants to support the members involved somehow," Bass wrote.

"He [Campbell] asked me to think about what he could do in this regard.… He supports the continued use of Taser and any other tools which support and protect our members.

December 2008:

B.C.’s attorney general has claimed that four RCMP members who used a taser on Robert Dziekanski can still be held accountable, even though they won’t be charged with criminal wrongdoing.

The four Richmond RCMP officers who appear in this video will not be charged in the October 17, 2007 death of Robert Dziekanski.

Wally Oppal said in a phone interview with the Straight that the officers will now be able to testify before the Braidwood Commission of Inquiry, which has a mandate to provide the public with a complete record of events surrounding Dziekanski’s death.

“I know it’s difficult to understand all of this because I know people think, ‘Geez, we saw that on the video and surely somebody must be held accountable’,” Oppal said, “but accountability can be achieved outside a criminal courtroom and in the process of the inquiry.”

April 13, 2009:

British Columbia's attorney general suggested Monday that criminal charges could be laid against the four Mounties involved in the Taser-related death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski.

Last December, Crown prosecutors decided that RCMP Cpl. Benjamin Monty Robinson, Const. Kwesi Millington, Const. Bill Bentley and Const. Gerry Rundel wouldn't face criminal charges, although the final report from the Braidwood inquiry looking into Dziekanski's death could include findings of misconduct.

But in an interview, Wally Oppal told the CBC's Terry Milewski, "Well, nothing is final, Terry, particularly where we're getting more and more evidence being elicited on a daily basis. So it may well be, at the end of the day, the people in the Criminal Justice Branch could re-examine this."

Oppal made the comments before the inquiry has concluded.

Abdelrazik: The NDP stands up

Reader "Navvy" recently conveyed his concern to the leader of the NDP about the Conservative government's abominable treatment of Abousfian Abdelrazik . He received this response from Jack Layton:

Thank you for writing in support of Mr. Abdelrazik and his return to Canada I share your concern to have this matter successfully resolved—immediately.

A new development to this situation is underway. On April 2nd, New Democrat Foreign Affairs Critic Paul Dewar was successful in having his motion passed at the Foreign Affairs and International Development Committee that summons Abousfian Abdelrazik to appear as a Committee witness. Now, we want the Harper government to do the right thing and bring Mr. Abdelrazik home.

We have consistently called upon the Harper government to live up to its international obligations and immediately repatriate Abousfian Abdelrazik. "It’s time to end six years of misery for this Canadian citizen and bring him home," said Mr. Dewar. “The only obstacle standing between Mr. Abdelrazik and his flight home to Canada is this Conservative government.”

For more information on our position, please visit: http://www.ndp.ca/press/new-democrats-demand-repatriation-canadian-citizen-abdelrazik.

Again, I appreciate knowing of your interest to help Mr. Abdelrazik. I invite you to visit our website at www.ndp.ca to learn more about the work being done by our team of New Democrats. All the best.

Sincerely,

Jack Layton, MP (Toronto-Danforth)
Leader, Canada’s New Democrats

Meanwhile, blogger Darryl Raymaker reminds us that Abdelrazik is not the only victim of the government's brutal assault on his Charter rights.

Abdelrazik's exile: geography to blame, says government

The Conservative government late yesterday presented its factum in court defending its decision to keep Abousfian Abdelrazik in perpetual exile in Khartoum. Le Devoir reporter Hélène Buzzetti can barely contain herself, and no wonder, regarding what she describes as the "twisted geographical logic" employed by Justice Department lawyers.

Briefly, it's their argument that the exemption in the UN "no-fly" list that permits anyone on it to return to his or her country of citizenship applies only at the border of that country. It does not permit such a person to enter any other country. And that includes, the Justice Department claims, the airspace of those countries too. Hence, because the world is divided up into countries (as Buzzetti puts it), he is prevented by UN regulations from flying back home because he'd be overflying some of them!

Buzzetti notes that this logic was contradicted just last week, when the UN granted an exemption to a Somalian on the list who had been stranded in the UK, permitting him to return to Somalia.

The government also sought to cast doubt on Abdelrazik's claims of being tortured. As we all know, the Omar al-Bashir regime in Sudan are gentle folk who would never do any such thing.

Earlier in the day, Lawrence Cannon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, reacted with annoyance when Buzzetti asked if Abdelrazik was being punished simply for worshipping at the same Montreal mosque as convicted terrorist Ahmed Ressam (in whose case he had appeared as a prosecution witness in 2005). "Above all I believe the United Nations," he said. He claimed to have a "reasonable suspicion" that Abdelrazik poses a danger to national security, even though neither the RCMP nor CSIS have a file on him. And he refused to say if he would help Abdelrazik get off the list.

"The Trial", as Chris Selley calls this Kafkaesque saga, continues. The parties are due in court on May 7 as Abdelrazik's lawsuit begins. And with every word our government utters, the more wretched and shameful its on-going behaviour appears.

The only good Indian...

We'll let Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl complete that apothegm in the time-honoured way.

Fellow blogger Cameron Holstrom has been chewing away at the Attawapiskat school scandal for some time now. A while ago I joined a blogburst about the Conservative government's refusal to build a new school for this impoverished First Nation, whose children have been having to make do with portables in all weathers since 2000, after diesel fumes made their local school uninhabitable.

Minister Strahl's attitude towards aboriginal people has always been negative. Some quotations give the flavour of the man's antipathy:

On gravel excavation by the Cheam Indian band: "I do not even think the land they scalped the gravel from is theirs." (The Canadian Index, May 17, 1999, Volume: Vol. 10, No. 14)

On aboriginal fisheries: "In a recent Chilliwack Progress article, Strahl compared Cheam band members to 'children.'" (Canada News-Wire, September 13, 1993)

On concerns that aboriginal programs for substance abuse, anger management and family violence were not being offered at a prison: "Strahl said he has little empathy for [this] position. Strahl said there is plenty of attempts to be sensitive to aboriginal culture in prison to the point at which other inmates, who are not aboriginal, are bitter about it. "If I got a letter like that, I wouldn't put it on my high-speed to do list." (Chilliwack Times, November 22, 2002)

On aboriginal fishing rights: "The government has an obligation to all of its citizens, not just to select groups," said B.C. Reform MP Chuck Strahl. "It cannot allow the courts to draw racial boundaries through Canada's national resources." (Windsor Star, October 16, 1999)

On the Nisga'a agreement: "Let us look at this Nisga'a treaty one more time. First of all it creates a state within a state, an idea which I think the Bloc Quebecois would find fairly palatable. This is sovereignty association in the heart of British Columbia." (Chuck Strahl, Hansard, May 4, 1999)

But Strahl is more a symptom than the disease itself, which is the traditional Conservative (and to be fair, Liberal) disregard for Native people. The case of the Lubicon, for example, continues to stand as a living testimonial to decades of racism and neglect by successive Liberal and Conservative administrations.

In any case, last month the government began to tear down the abandoned school. That released enough diesel fumes, containing benzene (a known carcinogen), to permeate the portable classrooms and make the children sick.

Plans are now underway to evacuate the kids, who stand to lose their school year. And this will be on the Attawapiskat First Nation's nickel, according to the capable Grand Chief Stan Louttit of the Mushkegowuk Council, which represents seven First Nations including Attawapiskat. The federal and provincial governments are simply refusing to help.

Meanwhile Susan Bertrand, spokesperson for Indian and Northern Affairs, tells us there is no immediate threat to the community. What are a few headaches, nosebleeds and cases of nausea, after all? They're just...Indians. Let 'em all live on floodplains and die of TB and have their kids pass out in school portables from diesel fumes. Strahl himself is quite willing in this instance, it seems, to sacrifice a few Indian kids just to save face. But let's be optimistic: maybe some time in the future some Prime Minister or other will offer up another empty apology.

The Ontario government, at present, is waiting for Ottawa to take the lead. That could be a long wait indeed under the current Minister.

Tunnelling in Afghanistan

After increasing U.S. combat troops in Vietnam in July of 1965, Johnson expressed doubts that he had done the right thing. "Light at the end of the tunnel?" he told his press secretary, Bill Moyers. "We don't even have a tunnel; we don't even know where the tunnel is."--Robert Dalleck

Hopes for the "Afghanification" of the struggle against the Taliban insurgency are dimming, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times. Rampant corruption from top to bottom in the Western-backed Karzai government is strengthening the Taliban's moral authority. Every time a shingle is added to the gimcrack, ramshackle governance structure that we're propping up, another door falls off its hinges.

Many soldiers question whether anything will ever change. “The corruption here is a bigger threat to a stable government than the Taliban,” said First Sgt. John Strain, the senior noncommissioned officer on the American unit training the Ghazni police.

“If we stay here another year, or another 50 years, I think it’ll probably only take two to three years after we are gone until it reverts to the way it was right before we got here,” he added. “To have to admit that when you look at these kids,” he said, referring to Afghanistan’s children, “it really breaks your heart, to think that what you are doing is probably not going to turn out to be a hill of beans.”

Besides the inevitable support for the cause from milbloggers who have a stake in the mission, an ever-decreasing number of gung-ho civilian apologists for the doomed cause, like Terry Glavin and the vulgar puppet show known as the "Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee," are grasping at fewer and fewer straws.

A full year ago, the signs of the Talibanification of the Karzai regime were already becoming apparent. In fact, when it comes to the judiciary, the rot set in well before that. Then, more recently, came a law that apparently applies to only one section of the population, but puts women in their mediaeval place.

At this point Glavin and others went into full-bore denial. First, is there really such a law? Secondly, if there is one, it's contrary to the Afghan Constitution and will never stand. And then: Hamid Karzai, if he really got behind this law, has signed his electoral death-warrant, because he (Glavin) has talked to folks in Kabul, and they're angry. Or maybe, as another hawk suggests, he didn't read what he was signing.

Yeah, I know, I know. I'll give everyone a moment to recover.

*******

The Constitution, upon which Glavin and others so desperately pin their hopes, establishes "the beliefs and provisions of Islam" as paramount. I'm no Afghan constitutional lawyer, but I think it's fair to suspect that the provision that calls for the equality of women, in the hands of an Islamist judiciary, will be trumped by the former. And secondly, Karzai is facing election: far from signing his death-warrant, he's trolling for votes.

In any case, for what they're worth, my predictions (unless NATO squeezes Karzai into renunciation of the law, not merely a delayed "review" of it): 1) the text of the law, whose existence, amazingly, is doubted in some quarters, will come to light; 2) it'll pass, and the Supreme Court will uphold it, the Constitution be damned; and 3) Karzai will win his election later this year, which was, pace Glavin, the whole point all along.

Nope, makes no difference, say the hawks. Push on, knee-deep in the Big Muddy though we are. We'll turn the corner, we'll find that light at the end of the tunnel, slow and steady wins the race.

"We," of course, including soldiers who will die fighting for our Taliban versus the other Taliban. Unless we call a halt to this madness, and support our troops by bringing them home.

Damn

For the reasons he gives here, Damian Penny is giving up his blog, Daimnation. That's a considerable loss for anyone who values humane conversation and the civil testing of ideas in debate.

Our politics do not jibe. But I developed a considerable respect for him over the years: he was genuinely interested in exploring the issues of the day. Rather than merely trying to score points, Damian invited response and discussion. We all get polemical from time to time, some of us more than others, but Damian was ever the gentleman: even-tempered, assertive without being offensive, never descending to namecalling. He possesses an obvious sense of decency that sometimes put him at odds with the crankier elements of his constituency. And from time to time he'd wander over to this place to keep me honest.

Good grief. It sounds like I'm writing his obituary. I'll stop now.

Damian, my best to you and your family. That's what matters, and I wish you all well. If you're ever in this neck of the woods, supper and quite a few drinks are on me.

Solidarity tomorrow

Talk about feeling torn.

An Ontario court has struck down a section of the RCMP Act that forbade the Mounties to form a union. Gulp.

Unionization, as far as I'm concerned, is a right that one doesn't normally tamper with. Police officers, after all, are workers too. But there's a problem here, and I think most people can see it. Police, whether federal, provincial or municipal (and the RCMP actually plays all three roles in various jurisdictions), are generally unaccountable to the public whom they are supposed to serve and protect, watched over by toothless and/or complaisant oversight groups and literally able, as we have seen recently, to get away with homicide.

In the current conjuncture of forces, a police union only exacerbates the culture of impunity that envelops police forces in this country. Even if the upper echelon is motivated to try to keep the shop clean, a police union operates in the opposite direction: its job, of course, is to defend its members, no matter how discreditable their conduct, and police associations have done a spectacular job of it.

Take Craig Bromell's reign as President of the Toronto Police Association. The TPA became openly political under Bromell: its "Operation True Blue" initiative a few years ago, for example, which offered drivers windshield decals in return for financial contributions to back police-friendly municipal candidates, was rightly seen by many as a matter of serious concern.

On CBC's Fifth Estate, Bromell said, "I think if you found somebody who is an enemy of the police, we don't want him around. So you try and get him kicked out of office. Pretty simple... All the other loudmouths, they're going to keep their mouths shut... (We're) going to target our enemies."

"You can call me a bully," Bromell said. Asked if the campaign was intimidation, he replied, "You can call it that."

The police chief at the time, David Boothby, ordered the TPA to stop. Responded Bromell: "He doesn't have any power over us."

The TPA doesn't like opposition much. It sued Liberal MP Judy Sgro for critical comments she made about the campaign--while a member of the Police Services Board. A police raid in 2000 on a lesbian bathhouse was found by the courts to be an unconstitutional violation of civil rights, but Toronto City Councillor Kyle Rae, who dared criticize the officers who took part in it, was successfully sued for libel.

The Ottawa Police Association, meanwhile, threatened to sue the victim of a police beating caught on videotape, for speaking out about his treatment. (Some possibly surprising commentary about that incident can be found here.)

Yes, police are workers: but they do not occupy the same social space as other workers. They are a paramilitary force, an arm of the state with power over others, with few controls in place. I think it's fair to argue that they should just stay out of politics, as our armed forces are enjoined to do. Moreover, without public accountability and effective civilian scrutiny of the police, a union merely strengthens the hand of rogue police officers.

Under current circumstances, a police union offers just that much more resistance to oversight, and even more defence of the indefensible. It is yet another force arrayed against the citizen, who has little enough power as it is. We can complain to police about the police, of course, and in the rare instances in which our complaints are upheld we can expect that the officers will be given wrist-slaps and broad winks. But it's an unequal contest. (In fairness, the new civilian review system in Ontario, just being implemented, has not had any time to run--we shall see.)

With a proper system of accountability, however--by which I mean no-nonsense third-party civilian review with teeth, and appropriate penalties for misconduct--a police union would be defending its members within a new and far less threatening context. There would be legally and practically enforceable rules of police conduct and procedure, and a concomitant change in police culture within which it would operate. And then I'd be all for it.

We have some way to travel, however, before police unions cease to be yet another threat to ordinary people. And as the Braidwood Inquiry chugs along, while incident after incident of Taser-happy, brutal, unaccountable RCMP officers hits the media, the notion of an RCMP union frankly makes my blood run cold. The officers are already empowered enough, it seems to me: indeed, as the Ian Bush affair indicated, some of them appear to be endowed with superhuman traits. Solidarity, then, but...not just now, thanks.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

David Frum and David Horowitz have both warned against it, the latter by name. But it's spreading like a summer cold through the murkier parts of the right-wing blogosphere.

The Manchurian Candidate/Muslim/Communist/Anti-Christ riffs are old hat by now, and besides, the world didn't suddenly go dark on January 20. No one's buying that hysteria any more, so at this point the bloodshot gaze of the wingnuts has become focused on matters of somewhat less than apocalyptic import.

Obama's Wife Touched The Queen! (Too informal.) Obama Bowed To The Saudi King! (Too formal.) He should have shaken hands. (See the first sentence in this paragraph). Bush bowed too, but what the heck, he was just receiving a medal. Obama Thinks Austrian Is A Language!* He Gives Bad Gift!

Well, no, I take back my comment about "apocalyptic import." It's just that it can now be discerned in minor matters that most people would miss:

Jamie Glazov, the author of "United in Hate," said Obama's act actually was to be expected.

"And people don't know what's going on here? Are we kidding?" he said. "This is simply the continuation of fellow traveling. It's to be totally expected. Leftists have prostrated themselves before despots throughout history – during the whole Cold War and now vis-à-vis jihadists in the terror war. 'United in Hate' crystallizes with precision how and why this dark process occurs."

He cited the Obamas' less formal interaction with the queen earlier.

"Obviously, the queen does not wield totalitarian power and does not mete out sadistic punishment – with which a believer yearns to identify. The Saudi king, meanwhile, is a tyrannical entity to which Obama can subjugate his individuality – and through which he can vicariously experience a feeling of power and purpose. This is the process of negative identification that every leftist must practice and that 'United in Hate' documents is at the heart of every leftist's main driving force," he said.

Satire is dead.

Meanwhile Barack Obama is taking on the economy, North Korea, and the myriad of problems, big and small, that cross his desk every hour. I'm no apologist for the politics of the new President, as readers will know, but this ceaseless gutter-level kvetching, this din of spittle-flecked shriekage, tells me two things: 1) Obama's doing maddeningly well in his third month in the presidency; and 2) the wingnuts' fascination with the trivial and the superficial has morphed into a kind of borderline insanity. They're feeding off each other in an ever-expanding folie à plusieurs.

Get a grip, people.

As for me, I promise never to talk about Stephen Harper's hair again. Mea bloody culpa.

___________________
*Austrian is a variant of High German. Whatever the pretentious Mark Steyn thinks, it is not the same German spoken in Germany or in Switzerland, and I'm not even referring here to the many dialects spoken in all three countries. There are vocabulary, pronunciation and grammatical differences. Austrian German, in fact, is recognized as a separate variety of German under international law.

Coming a little closer to earth, it's not inconceivable that someone from south of the border might ask, in an informal manner, "What is a 'soda' in Canadian?" Hardly worth columns of hot air, is it, even if the President is the one asking the question?

Our shameful, dangerous government

The Conservative government has refused Abousfian Abdelrazik the travel documents that he requires to come home to his family after being exiled for six years.

Abdelrazik is a Canadian citizen, and a victim of Canada's program of extraordinary rendition that landed him in a Sudanese jail in 2003 while he was visiting his ailing mother. He was tortured, although Foreign Affairs apparatchiks tried to claim that his scars were self-inflicted. But he was eventually released by Sudanese officials, who stated that he had done nothing wrong.

CSIS, which appears to have gotten him into trouble in the first place, is now loudly protesting that it did nothing of the kind, and has given him a clean bill of health. Ditto the RCMP.

He is presently living in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum. He was told last year that he would be issued travel documents if he could find an airline to fly him home. He did. The government then demanded a fully-paid-up ticket from the destitute Abdelrazik. Anyone who helped him pay for it, however, would face up to ten years in jail. We bought him his ticket anyway.

Then our Minister of Foreign Affairs, the "Honourable" Lawrence Cannon, announced a few days ago that Abdelrazik would have to get himself off a UN "no-fly" list upon which some unaccountable, paranoid American official had requested that he be placed. Asking this of a destitute man in Khartoum was an act of pure sadism. It is legally unnecessary for him to be removed from the list anyway, since UN regulations explicitly permit a person on it to return to his country of origin.

The rule of law in Canada is now officially dead. If any citizen--and I don't give a damn whether his name is Abousfian Abdelrazik or Bob Smith--can be summarily deprived of his rights by the fiat of a government minister, we're all in serious trouble.

Abdelrazik, supposedly innocent until proven guilty, has never faced charges, let alone been tried for anything. But the Harper government has sentenced him to exile, a penalty that doesn't even exist in Canadian law. This government is flagrantly in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees any citizen the right to enter and move freely within Canada.

"Canada's New Government" doesn't care. It considers itself above the law and beyond the law, as it breaks the law. It is counting, I believe, on the acquiescence of Canadians in its on-going illegal vendetta against our fellow-citizen. After all, Abdelrazik is the wrong colour, and he worships the wrong God. And his name...well, it just doesn't sound "Canadian," does it?

But make no mistake. If the government can bypass due process to deprive Abousfian Abdelrazik of his civil rights today, it can go after Bob Smith tomorrow. And unless we nip this in the bud right now, there will be nobody left to stand up for him. Or you. Or me.

Let Stephen Harper, Lawrence Cannon and your own MP know how you feel. And get involved. Because they only do what we let them do.

Killing for profit: our asbestos scandal

Asbestos is a deadly product that we export to Third World countries while making its use illegal here.

I wrote about this last Fall, and have no wish to repeat myself at length. But nothing has changed. The Harper government is still sitting on a report that condemns the use of asbestos, after lying about its contents to the point that the scientists involved publicly protested. We have engaged in disgraceful shenanigans to keep asbestos off the list of proscribed substances under the Rotterdam Convention.

And Third World workers continue to die agonizing deaths.

All this to save 700 part-time jobs in Quebec.

Enter Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. Here's the latest Iggy two-step:

Last weekend: "I'm probably walking right off the cliff into some unexpected public policy bog of which I'm unaware, but if asbestos is bad for Parliamentarians in the Parliament of Canada, it just has to be bad for everybody else," he said. "Our export of this dangerous product overseas has to stop."

Wednesday: "We have had 60 years of experience with this product. What I said in answer to a question is that we have an obligation to international agreements to the countries that we export to, to make them aware of the risks. That is all I said."

In Quebec, Canada's last asbestos mine is busy churning out death to brown people in other lands, and to its own citizens, too. But for former human rights advocate Michael Ignatieff, if it means a few more votes for his party--their deaths are worth it.

[H/t Accidental Deliberations]

Abousfian Abdelrazik reads Raphael Alexander

Abousfian Abdelrazik has broken his silence:

Abdelrazik further questioned whether the delay in dealing with his case has more to do with racial prejudice than a concern about terrorism.

"I understand Mr. Obhrai and the prime minister refuse to discuss my case and many other cases of Canadian Muslims in trouble now," he said.

"Do they think we are not 'real Canadians?'... The prime minister has blue eyes and white skin and the Governor General is a black lady. Is one of them more 'Canadian' than the other?"

But Raphael of Unambiguously Ambidextrous, and of late an occasional writer for the National Post, has already answered his question:

Amazing how much energies are spent on these “Canadians”. Why, “Abdellah” is as Canadian as Maple Syrup, of course. Vaira, Omar, Bashir, Abdihakim, and Abousfian are also very important Canadians. Dr.Dawg can explain why.

Raphael's got a point. To his beloved Harper regime, people with dark skins who worship the wrong God aren't real Canadians at all. And it's worth breaking the law, which guarantees all Canadians the right to enter Canada, to keep them marooned in other countries--after we gave them up to be tortured.

Yet they have the nerve to complain about it! Who the hell do those people think they are--Brenda Martin?

UPDATE: Abousfian's message to his fellow Canadians.

The Braidwood Chronicles: the Chairman puts his foot down

Only one witness testified today: Robert Dylski, who drove Robert Dziekanski to the airport to take his ill-fated trip to Canada. The other witness, scheduled to testify today, was called away because her father had had a stroke. The Inquiry is now effectively adjourned until April 14: there will, however, be a brief meeting at 2:30pm BC time today to consider a motion from Kwesi Millington's lawyer, Ravi Hira, to get access to more records pertaining to Dziekanski's past.

The Globe and Mail summed up this entire distasteful exercise this morning: it's hard to improve on the editorialist's words. But up to now the Chairman of the inquiry, Thomas Braidwood, has been content to let this travesty continue.

Today, he obviously had had enough.

Dylski testified that Dziekanski was nervous about leaving the land of his birth for a new life in Canada. At a gathering before he was driven to the airport, he might even have thrown up--he also clutched a radiator for maybe 20 minutes before standing up and moving away. Dziekanski, who had canceled a previous trip to Canada, telephoned his mother, and had to be persuaded to take what all of us, at least those of us with empathy, can recognize as a major turning-point in his life, a leap of faith.

Once in the car to the airport, said the witness, Dziekanski was restored to calm. At the airport he even had a soft drink. RCMP lawyers hammered away, but the witness remained composed.

Was he a smoker? Well, averred Dylski, he didn't have a lot of money, so he smoked when he could afford to. What about alcohol? Why, yes: Dylski had witnessed him drinking vodka--four times over a period of eight years. He couldn't say what Dziekanski's drinking habits were when he was out of his sight.

The lawyer for Constable William Bentley pounded away. Was Dziekanski afraid of moving to another country? Yes. Has he cancelled an earlier trip? Yes, but the witness didn't know why. (At this point, the lawyer didn't even have the grace to pronounce the dead man's name correctly.) Was Dziekanski "hysterical" before he departed?

He wasn't getting anywhere, and asked the witness if it wasn't true that he didn't actually know Dziekanski all that well. Yes. Had he ever seen Dziekanski act in the manner that the video showed him acting at the Vancouver Airport? No.

Then it was Ravi Hira's turn: he acts for Constable Kwesi Millington. He started banging away again at the alcohol issue. Then he decided to ask about alleged police visits to Dziekanski's home in Poland.

But that was too much for Thomas Braidwood. He called Hira sharply to order, and told him the question wasn't relevant. Hira insisted on reading into the record previous dialogue with the witness. In Poland, he had been questioned by a Polish prosecutor, in the presence of RCMP officials. His testimony on this subject proved to be classic hearsay.

We may learn later today of Braidwood's response to Hira's motion to access certain records pertaining to Dziekanski's past. I'll provide an update if and when it becomes available.

In the meantime, let me observe once more that it would be salutary if we could get similar access to the records and past behaviour of the four RCMP officers who killed him. As it is, only the victim has been on trial this week.

UPDATE: (April 5) Justice Braidwood denied Ravi Hira's motion, without even hearing counter-arguments.

Transcripts of the hearings from January to March 26 are now available.

The Inquiry resumes in a few days, with the following schedule:

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Peter Dore (YVR) Greg Sambrook (YVR) Cpl. Nycki Basra (RCMP) Wednesday, April 15, 2009 Cst. Hoivik (RCMP) Sgt. Christianssen (RCMP) Officer Lemaitre (RCMP) Thursday, April 16, 2009 Officer Carr (RCMP) Adam Chapin (Canadian Border Services Agency (recall)) Craig Baltzer (Delta Police Department)

Too bad there's no video

The culture of impunity continues.

It's official...

Canada now effectively supports the continued annexation of the West Bank by Israel--a direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, according to which this is a war crime. Ethnic cleansing of Palestinian territory continues, and we have no problem with that.

We stood alone at the UN last week against opposition to this action. This is what Harper's mouthpiece there had to say:

TERRY CORMIER (Canada), speaking in an explanation of the vote before the vote, said that maintenance and expansion of settlements on territories confiscated by Israel since 1967 was a violation of international law. Canada was concerned about the draft resolution as it was not balanced and did not refer to the Palestinian obligation, which did not contribute to a peaceful and fair solution to the conflict. For those reasons Canada called for a vote and would vote against the draft resolution.

Even for dip-doublespeak, this should take some kind of prize. The resolution dealt with Israel's on-going annexation of Palestinian territory. What "obligation" does Palestine have in this affair--except to fight back?

Text:

In a resolution (A/HRC/10/L.5) on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan , adopted by a vote of 46 in favour, one against, and no abstentions, as orally revised, the Council deplores the recent Israeli announcements of the construction of new housing units for Israeli settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as they undermine the peace process and the creation of a contiguous, sovereign and independent Palestinian State; expresses grave concern at, inter alia, the continuing Israeli settlement and related activities; the increasing number of newly built structures amounting in 2008 to 1,257; the implications for the final status negotiations of Israel's announcement that it will retain the major settlement blocks in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; the expansion of Israeli settlements and the construction of new ones on the Occupied Palestinian Territory rendered inaccessible behind the wall, which create a fait accompli on the ground that could be tantamount to de facto annexation; the continued closures of and within the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the repeated closures of the crossing points of the Occupied Gaza Strip; the continued construction, contrary to international law, of the wall inside the Occupied Palestinian Territory; and the latest Israeli plan to demolish more than 88 houses in Al-Bustan neighbourhood at Silwan which will be resulting in displacing more than 1,500 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. The Council urges Israel, the occupying Power, to reverse the settlement policy in the occupied territories as a first step towards their dismantlement, to stop immediately the expansion of the existing settlements, including "natural growth" and related activities; urges the full implementation of the Access and Movement Agreement of 15 November 2005, particularly the urgent reopening of the Rafah and Karni crossings; calls upon Israel to take and implement serious measures, including confiscation of arms and enforcement of criminal sanctions, with the aim of preventing acts of violence by Israeli settlers; and urges the parties to give renewed impetus to the peace process in line with the Annapolis Peace Conference and the Paris International Donors' Conference for the Palestinian State and to implement fully the road map endorsed by the Security Council in its resolution 1515 (2003).


The result of the vote were as follows:

In favour (46): Angola, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh,
Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile,
China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, India,
Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius,
Mexico, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar,
Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovakia,
Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay
and Zambia.

Against (1): Canada.

Abstentions (0):

Kind of makes you proud to be a Canadian, eh?


[H/t "forgottobuytinfoil"]

When puppets misbehave

Hamid Karzai, our man in Afghanistan, is embarrassing us again. What should we do about it?

Junior pundit Raphael Alexander is finding the White Man's burden a trifle heavy at the moment, but he's manfully slinging it onto his back once more. In fact he lays bare the imperial thinking that subtler commentators couch in the language of diplomacy:

Any sensible person will immediately condemn Hamid Karzai for even considering such a grotesque piece of legislation, and NATO should essentially force this issue to bed by insinuating non-compliance will lead to withdrawal [which would only be a threat, since we've invested far too much to lose it all on some fourth century legislation] or, more likely, demand his removal. After all, should the Karzai government begin behaving like the Taliban on top of the endemic corruption, they should be removed just like the Taliban.

But unlike the inevitable calls for withdrawal from the morally bankrupt proponents of the left, we should focus on how little political power the government will have to enact this law once the NATO democracies that prop up the government have voiced their opinions. Outrage is correct. It is good, it is moral, and it is imperative. But we achieve nothing by surrendering to the agenda of the gender apartheidists. Freedom and equality has never been won in history without a struggle. Equality between the sexes and races in North America was never won by constitutional enshrinement only. [Emphases added]

It's touching, first of all, to see all this concern for equality from a blogger who believes that certain people can never be Canadians. They're "Canadians", not hyphenated but shudder-quoted:

Amazing how much energies are spent on these “Canadians”. Why, “Abdellah” is as Canadian as Maple Syrup, of course. Vaira, Omar, Bashir, Abdihakim, and Abousfian are also very important Canadians.

But such attitudes do go hand-in-hand with support for our divine mission of civilizing the darkies in other lands. Alexander, in fact, is doing a creditable job channeling Rudyard Kipling:

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

But things do not always go well:

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Which of course raises, once again, the subject of Hamid Karzai.

A British cabinet minister puts matters somewhat more delicately than Alexander:

"We are caught in the Catch-22 that the Afghans obviously have the right to write their own laws," Lord Malloch Brown, the foreign secretary for Africa and Asia, told the Guardian newspaper yesterday. "But there is dismay. The rights of women was one of the reasons the U.K. and many in the West threw ourselves into the struggle in Afghanistan. It matters greatly to us and our public opinion."

Some people come to believe their own propaganda, and Lord Malloch Brown is one. "Women's rights" had nothing whatsoever to do with Western intervention in Afghanistan. Were such an issue paramount in our foreign adventures, we might see at least a lessening of US support for its staunch ally in the Arab Peninsula, Saudi Arabia. But somehow we're not throwing ourselves into the struggle, even rhetorically. Women are denied driver's licences, are not permitted to vote or to go out of doors by themselves, are stoned and lashed with a will, and girls are burned alive by religious police, but this sort of thing just never comes up. King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, of course, is nobody's puppet; and he's sitting on an ocean of oil.

So, how are we progressing with the Afghan people and our project to, in Kipling's phrase, "humour [them]...toward the light?" A Canadian diplomat is blunt: "Things are going worse for us than they have during the past four or five years - the Taliban controls more of our territory than before, and we have made no progress at all on corruption." [Emphasis added]

Note the "our territory" slip. That goes with propping up toy governments and slapping them around when they don't rise to our expectations.

All this time, of course, we've been assured by the hawks that we're "making progress" in Afghanistan. Surveys have proven that the Afghans are embracing Western democratic ideals and values (never mind the deference effect). Yet Karzai believes he must bring in mediaeval legislation that legalizes rape--in order to win the next election! Something is obviously not adding up.

Well-meaning attempts to force other people to be good tend to backfire, as is happening now in Afghanistan. The tragedy is that any hope for a made-in-Afghanistan solution to archaic fundamentalism and brutality has been squelched by heavy-handed military intervention, with its thousands of civilian deaths, and political machinations that leave Karzai without sufficient credibility to stay in power unless he enacts Taliban-like measures--a classic bit of counter-reformation, but in reverse.

Meanwhile, our troops are dying. And the question of why grows more unanswerable by the day.

UPDATE: (April 2) An eerily similar column by Margaret Wente today.

The Braidwood Chronicles: the sleaze continues

Lawyers for RCMP officers Kwesi Millington and William Bentley were at it again today, trying to smear the character of their victim, Robert Dziekanski.

I caught a bit of it on video: two of his friends in Poland convincingly refuted all of their slurs. At least this time the lawyers disclosed just whom they were representing: someone might have explained to them since yesterday that keeping this from the witnesses looked a little sneaky--as indeed it was.

No, said Magda Czelwinska, Dziekanski was not a man of superhuman strength, and she had never smelled alcohol on his breath. She had never seen him agitated as he appeared to be in Vancouver. But as she put it, "[H]e was lost at the airport, he didn’t have cigarettes or water and he had quit smoking to surprise his mother."

Ryszard Krasinski, a former teacher, remembered his friend as one with whom he gardened, barbecued and played chess. They got together often for family occasions. Dziekanski had a deep knowledge of geography, he testified. During celebrations, as is the custom, they drank vodka, he said, but otherwise he had never seen Dziekanski drink often, or excessively.

Meanwhile the slightly creepy lawyer for Millington, Ravi Hira (and if you have seen the live feed, you will know just what I mean), is on a fishing expedition--he apparently wants access to Dziekanski's juvenile records, if you can believe it.

I must say I'm a little disheartened that inquiry chairman Thomas Braidwood is allowing so much latitude to the RCMP officers' lawyers to slime the man they killed. There seems a certain lack of even-handedness here. He was not nearly so generous last week, when he warned government lawyer Helen Roberts against raising a matter in Constable Millington's own past.

Sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander, and if Dziekanski's life is to be made an open book, then everything about the Four Horsemen ought to be made public as well: their medical records, annual performance reviews, any possible history of alcoholism or drug abuse, relations with their neighbours and spouses, and so on. Surely their own characters are just as relevant as that of their victim--or even more so. But somehow only Dziekanski's past is considered to be of importance, as though what he might or might not have done when he was 17, or whether or not he ever visited Germany, had anything whatsoever to do with his death.

More tomorrow.

UPDATE: (April 1) Hearings were cancelled today. Tomorrow we shall hear from witnesses Robert Dylski and Aneta Czernel, by videolink from Poland.

Opposition parties unite on Abdelrazik

A press release today:

“Bring Abdelrazik Home”

Opposition Parties call for Government to End Kafkaesque Spiral for Canadian Stranded in Sudan: “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms Compels It”

Ottawa, March 31, 2009 – Representatives from the three opposition parties joined together to call for the Canadian government to bring home its citizen, Abousfian Abdelrazik.

Mr. Cotler said: “Mr. Abdelrazik has spent nearly six years in Sudan and suffered torture while being wrongfully imprisoned on two occasions by Sudanese officials. Evidence has now come to light that Canada may even have played a role in his illegal detention.

“Both CSIS and the RCMP have cleared Mr. Abdelrazik. The government has disclosed no reason to suspect he constitutes a security threat. In these circumstances, international law expressly allows for Mr. Abdelrazik’s return to Canada, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms compels it. The government needs to bring Mr. Abdelrazik home.”

Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Sudanese Canadian who has not been permitted to leave Sudan since visiting his ailing mother in 2003. He was twice detained and released by Sudanese officials without being charged. He has spent the last 11 months living in the lobby of the Canadian embassy, as the government has denied him a passport to return to home.

The Canadian government recently promised Mr. Abdelrazik his necessary travel documents if he could secure a ticket home. Through the generosity of Canadians, a ticket for Mr. Abdelrazik was indeed bought for April 3. But with his travel date just days away, the government continues to deny Mr. Abdelrazik his passport.

Cotler added: “There is nothing in fact or in law to justify the denial of this citizen’s re-entry into Canada. Mr. Abdelrazik is caught in a Kafkaesque spiral in which the government offers no legitimate reason to deny him a passport, yet continues to do so. Like any Canadian, Mr. Abdelrazik has the right to come back home.”

But are the parties serious? Talk is cheap. I would be amazed if former human rights advocate Michael Ignatieff--who has avoided, you will notice, all comment on the topic--is willing to take the Parliamentary measures required to repatriate Abdelrazik.

April 3--Abdelrazik's departure date--is three days away. He still doesn't have his travel documents. Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, deliberately flouting the law, has made it effectively impossible for him to return to Canada.

Put up or shut up, Liberals. Are you willing to force the government's hand in the House of Commons with the appropriate motion? Or is this just more hot air?