Two solitudes

Courtesy of the Associated Press: I have left some paragraphs out and moved others around, but the story--a double-sided, morally lopsided narrative--needs no further elaboration. I've added occasional emphases.

Shiloh was the first settlement in the Qariout area, founded in 1979. Since then two other settlements have sprung up nearby, along with six smaller wildcat outposts, which are illegal under Israeli law but get electricity, water and protection from the government.

Together, they surround the village on three sides and deny it access to about two-thirds of its land, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli rights groups that tracks settlements.

Dror Etkes, of Yesh Din, said the Israeli government has officially allocated 28 percent of the village's original 840 hectares (2,100 acres) to nearby settlements.

Another 35 to 40 percent of the village's land has been taken unofficially by settlers or the Israeli army, he said.

Sometimes, settlers fence off or cultivate plots, chasing off Palestinians who try to reach them, he said.

Other times, Israeli authorities seize plots to build army posts or roads between settlements. Once a road is built, villagers can rarely reach the land beyond it, Etkes said.

At the same time, Israel refuses to let the village pave the two-kilometer-long (1.2 mile) road to the highway and regularly bulldozes it shut, calling it "illegal" and forcing villagers to make a 22-kilometer (13-mile) detour.

Mohammed Muqbil, a farmer born in Qariout in 1939, said he has lost two of his three plots to settlements. The army confiscated one in 1982 and settlers now grow grapes on it. Settlers chased him from another in 2003, then planted olive trees, he said.

His remaining plot, near the Shvut Rachel settlement, has been a battleground since 2000. Settlers have plowed up his wheat, harvested his olives, prevented him from working and even beat him up, he said. In 2007, a settler uprooted his 300 trees with a bulldozer, he said.

Back in Qariout, Bedawi says true peace would require settlers to leave.

"How can you make a state when there are settlements all over the West Bank?" he said.

**************

From a grassy hilltop in one of those settlements, Shiloh, Batya Medad sees a different story in the settlers' red-roofed houses: She calls it the return of the Jewish people to land God promised them in the Old Testament.

In Shiloh, a town of 2,200 people, billboards advertise new homes, and foundations have been laid for about 10 new buildings that remain exempt from the 10-month construction freeze. The community has two schools, a seminary, three synagogues and a swimming pool, said Medad.

The Bible gives Jews the right to live in Shiloh, she said.

"In most of the Western world, when you swear on the Bible, you are swearing that Shiloh is Jewish," she said.

Medad and her husband immigrated from Great Neck, New York, to Israel in 1970. She said when they came to Shiloh the hills were covered with wildflowers because "nobody had ever walked here, nobody had cultivated it, nobody owned it."

She is 60 and vows no peace deal can make her leave.

Medad denied her Arab neighbors had history in the area and said she rarely thinks about them. "If they want to live in peace with us, they can stay," she said. "If they don't want peace, then they should go."

Devastating

Richard Colvin strikes back. Every lie the government has told has now been refuted in detail.

No wonder the Harper administration is illegally defying Parliament, and shutting down a parliamentary inquiry into the bargain.

Liars, and quite likely war criminals. Most Canadians don't believe a word they're saying.

Time for the International Criminal Court to step in, methinks.

[H/t Scott Tribe and Chrystal Ocean.]

CanWest: still SLAPPing people around

I first posted about this classic persecution of the little guy (and gal) by a corporate bully more than a year and a half ago. I did so in the context of a discussion of Canadian trademark and copyright law, beefed up by some reading suggested by lawyer Bob Tarantino, and then let the matter drop.

I wish I hadn't, because CanWest is still at it. The issue is this: back in June 2007, some Vancouver pro-Palestinian activists published a parody edition of the Vancouver Sun, making a few choice points about CanWest's pro-Israel bias. CanWest immediately filed suit: against Mordecai Briemberg (who had merely distributed a few copies of the send-up), Gordon Murray and Carel Moiseiwitsch.

Under Canada's antiquated laws, parody or satire do not constitute "fair use" of intellectual property. This dubious state of affairs was set in stone by the Federal Court Trial Division in its 1996 decision, Michelin & Cie. v. CAW-Canada, in which the learned judges decided that a spoof of the Michelin Man by union organizers was an illegal use of that well-known trademark.

CanWest finally abandoned the suit against Briemberg, but is aggressively pursuing its action against the two others. In fact, it has since SLAPPed the two again for publishing a satire in 2002 that sent up the Vancouver Sun's coverage of the slash-and-burn policies of BC Liberal premier Gordon Campbell. (Are the time limits for filing suit really that lengthy?)

The intrepid duo is fighting back with humour:



But obviously there is a serious side to this relentless persecution: real people are under the iron heel of a major corporation, simply for publishing satire. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the corporate media, including the CBC, have been wary of reporting on this case.

In fact the "media chill" has been extraordinary: there has been a virtual blackout, although coverage of the Yes Men's spoof of the New York Times on November 12 received its share of media attention here.

Corporate solidarity? Or fear of being SLAPPed themselves? Either way, the press, TV and radio have fallen down badly on the job. A better example of collective media irresponsibility in Canada would be hard to find.

And meanwhile--I can't resist making this point once again--Canada's Speech Warriors™ have no difficulty with any of this. Human Rights Commissions interfering with speech--even hateful speech--is a fundamental assault on freedom of expression, they claim: but there's no problem, it seems, when the assault is privatized.

Octopodic quibble

It appears that veined octopuses have the capacity to assemble coconut shells as a kind of home, or at least hiding-place. That is remarkable, and quite deserves the attention currently being lavished upon it.

But are the shells "tools," strictly speaking, as scientists are now claiming? A tool mediates between the user and the physical environment, allowing the deliberate transformation of the latter by the former. But in this case a portion of the physical environment is being directly used, that is, without mediation. If I am lost in the woods (soft lob, there), and pull down some branches to cover myself at night, are those branches tools? Is a bird's nest a tool?

The discovery, documented by YouTube, is amazing enough in its own right. But to call the veined octopus a tool-making animal is, it seems to me, a bit of scientific overreach. Comments?

Open letter to Professor Gil Troy

Dear Professor Troy:

You have by now written two articles naming me personally, and have appeared before the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism to sing the same tune (with reference to me, at least by name, mercifully absent): the "new anti-Semitism," as opposed to the more recognizable Jew-hatred, is directed towards the state of Israel and its policies.

Rather than having the "courage of [your] convictions," you have defined me, a critic of the CPCCA, as an anti-Semite through innuendo and juxtaposition. (Or is that "a new anti-Semite?") You then have the chutzpah to wonder aloud why it is that critics of Israel such as I are concerned about a parliamentary "inquiry" that has all the earmarks of a witch-hunt.

Your articles and submission make my point. After pushing my way through the mountains of straw out of which you have constructed your arguments, I see three themes emerging.

1) Criticism of Israel must not be "disproportionate." I cannot help but recall Prime Minister Stephen Harper's description of Israel's destruction of Lebanon in 2006 as "a measured response" to a border skirmish. If the displacement of one-quarter of the Lebanese people, the deaths of 1,000 civilians and the wholesale destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure is "measured," I assure you that I shall try to be even more measured in my response to you.

Setting aside the question of who decides what is, or is not, "disproportionate," let me note that the oppressive policies of the other countries you mention--Iran, for example, or Sudan--are not a matter of controversy in Canada. We all see those policies, and the actions that flow from them, exactly as they are. We neither excuse them nor pretend that they aren't there, nor do we minimize the effects on their victims.

But this is not the case with Israel. We do not have a consensus, pro or con, about the slow annexation of the West Bank by settlement and by wall, the often brutal behaviour of both the settlers and the Israeli armed forces who protect them, the human toll and the physical devastation of Gaza and Lebanon, the use of weapons prohibited by international law, collective punishment that is likewise prohibited, and so on. Our own government excuses each and every such move by the state of Israel. When these things are reported, as they are very frequently, heated debates inevitably follow.

It isn't that we are "obsessed" with Israel, or give it "disproportionate" attention. We discuss Israel because the very actions and policies that would be almost unanimously denounced if perpetrated by any other nation are inevitably denied, excused, rationalized and/or defended by government, by strong and effective extra-parliamentary actors, and by various media commentators.

It is unfair, I believe, to denounce participants in what amounts to an on-going debate for even being engaged in it.

2) "Legitimate" criticism of Israel should be permitted.

This is, by now, a commonplace rhetorical gesture that seeks to make a distinction that is very hard, on closer examination, to pin down. Let me give a personal example.

A senior B'nai Brith figure comments from time to time on my blog. When I expressed implicit agreement with the findings of the recent Goldstone Report, which indicates that war crimes were committed by the Israel Defence Forces during the Gaza incursion last year, and noted further that the IDF has treated the occupied territory of the West Bank with considerable brutality (a matter of record documented by Israeli human rights groups like B'Tselem), I was called an "anti-Semitic a**hole" by the gentleman in question.

The proposed distinction is blurred by such excesses. But let me go further: I don't believe that there such a thing as "illegitimate" criticism of any nation-state, in the sense of requiring legislation to suppress it. A state and its policies do not constitute a culture, a race or a people.

Casual comments about nuking "Iran," for example, are hateful and wrong-headed, because the people of Iran who would suffer are not the state of Iran, but we hear this kind of comment rather more often than we might like, and no one dreams of constituting a parliamentary inquiry into it. It is generally understood that it is the Iranian government, not the Iranian people, that has displeased us.

By the same token, no one imagines that the sometimes over-the-top criticism of "America" of which even I might occasionally have been guilty, is an attack on Americans as a people. Ditto "Russia," "China," and so on: everyone seems to be on the same page here, even if we might strongly disagree in our evaluations. But for some reason Israel is once again an exception: any trenchant critique of this nation-state predictably brings forth cries of "anti-Semitism."

What, may I ask, has become of that "higher standard" to which, it is alleged, we hold Israel? What about settling for the same standard by which we make our various judgments of any other nation-state?

Making things even worse, you declare certain areas of debate off-limits: "comparing Israel to [apartheid] South Africa," for example. And yet several of the practices of Israel, the nation-state, might legitimately be held to be, at the very least, apartheid-like in character. (Rather than reopening that debate here, I draw your attention to some earlier reflections of mine on the issue.)

I might also point out that, despite those who claim that such comparisons "delegitimize" Israel's existence, I do not recall that those of us in the anti-apartheid struggle, while demanding regime change, ever questioned the right of South Africa to exist.

Finally, our own Prime Minister has stated, unequivocally, that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. He doesn't bother with the distinction you and others have half-heartedly attempted to make. And his government will, at some point, be seized of the report that will be forthcoming from the Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism.

The line that you are encouraging the Coalition to draw--between "honest" criticism on the one hand and "demonization, delegitimization and obsession" on the other--is bound to be subjective. And given the CPCCA's ludicrous bias, one that it makes no attempt whatsoever to hide, and our Prime Minister's straightforward comments, we have every right to feel concerned.

3) Critics of Israel pretend to care about the Palestinians, but it's just a mask.

Like any other would-be Grand Inquisitor, you reverse the onus. The default position is that we are "anti-Semites" until somehow we can demonstrate otherwise. In your words,

[T]he hearings should also help us understand the historical pathology of anti-Semitism by highlighting the similarities between today’s targeting of the Jewish state and the traditional targeting of the Jew. Yet we must learn from the modern mutation, too. The way the new anti-Semitism manifests itself, sometimes obscured by its “we’re pro-Palestinian and we’re just criticizing Israel” rhetoric, hides a despicable anti-democratic agenda. This upside-down agenda rationalizes terrorism, romanticizes violence, justifies extremism and perverts justice while purporting to defend it.

We are left, of course, in the impossible position of trying to prove a negative.

In another article, you lead off with unquestionable instances of anti-Semitism in the Arab world, including elements of the text of the Hamas Charter (you omitted, however, the references to Henry Ford's The International Jew and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). You raise the equally clear example of the fire-bombing of a Jewish school in Montreal. But that's just to set up for this:

Israel’s critics could distance themselves from these vile expressions but rarely do. And we have learned from the civil rights movement, feminism, and gay liberation, that the moral onus is not on the victim to parse who is criticizing legitimately and who is perpetuating prejudice. If more critics of Israel denounced the anti-Semitism poisoning so much of the Palestinian movement, fueling so much criticism of Israel, there would be no need for Parliamentary inquiries.

I see two obvious problems here. First, as we've seen, the word "anti-Semitism" has become remarkably fluid recently, a floating signifier. A critique of Hamas is one thing--and I think I, for one, have been personally straightforward about it--but if one agrees with Stephen Harper that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic per se, then there is really very little left for us to say.

The second issue is that activism tends to focus and polarize. If there is a demonstration against, say, the Israeli incursion into Gaza, one will quickly discover that the demonstrators carry signs with slogans to that effect, rather than statements dissociating themselves from the present Gaza government. Does that of necessity make them supportive of a theocratic, anti-Semitic regime? Do opponents of the Afghanistan mission support the Taliban? Some attempt to make such arguments on "objective" grounds, but I get the uneasy feeling, Professor Troy, that you suspect the pro-Palestinian left of being outright anti-Semites in pectore.

Oddly, many of the the recommendations that you append to your CPCCA submission make more sense. You urge the adoption of the EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism, for example--which turns out to be a far cry from the wide net you and other have advocated:

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals, and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."

Who could quarrel with that? The drafters go on to mention Israel, but in such a circumspect manner that it would be hard to find fault. They do, it is true, open a few doors for those who are wont to accuse us, without any basis, of holding Israel to a higher standard, re-phrasing the Blood Libel, and so on. "However," they add, "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic."

Amen. An occupying power is an occupying power. State-sanctioned brutality is state-sanctioned brutality. Civilian deaths are civilian deaths. Annexation is annexation. War crimes are war crimes.

Other recommendations--community policing and so on--are reasonable as well. But you stray into very dangerous territory indeed when you attempt to make yet another distinction--this time between "academic freedom" and what you call "educational malpractice." Can you not see, as an academic yourself, the dangerous and slippery character of such a vague formulation? Who would decide these questions? Does this not return us to the era of speech codes and other campus straitjackets?

Let me end, in any case, on what I hope is a more conciliatory note. I've always liked this analogy:

A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person’s legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and console the other sufferer; and the latter might have realized that he was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control. But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man’s revenge, insults him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the whole existence of both men and to poison their minds.

You will, I am sure, recognize yourselves (I said to my Israeli audience), the remnants of European Jewry in Israel, in the man who jumped from the blazing house. The other character represents, of course, the Palestine Arabs, more than a million of them, who have lost their lands and their homes. They are resentful; they gaze from across the frontiers on their old native places; they raid you stealthily and swear revenge. You punch and kick them mercilessly; you have shown that you know how to do it. But what is the sense of it? And what is the prospect? --Isaac Deutscher

What indeed is the prospect, Professor Troy, when you and others, appearing before a trumped-up "inquiry" into alleged "new anti-Semitism," insist on demonizing and delegitimizing the critics of Israel while simultaneously demanding that Israel be neither demonized nor delegitimized?

Perhaps we should be trying to figure out how the descendants of both the man in the burning house and the innocent passer-by upon whom he lands might come to some lasting accommodation. In the meantime, the descendants of the man who jumped are even now burning--or bulldozing--the houses of the passer-by's descendants; and some of the latter, exiled, poor, and looking for meaning in their fate, embrace religious fundamentalism and even grasp at the vile myths that led to the original arson.

There can be no solution if those are the only two sides that we are permitted to recognize, locked in their Manichaean embrace. I would suggest, with respect, that there are other sides to this question, sides that are legitimate, honest and constructive. Even setting aside the wider question of freedom of expression in Canada, it would be a tragedy if the weight of the law and of government policy were used to stifle the many critical voices that need to be heard if Canada is someday going to play a useful international role in contributing to a lasting peace in the Middle East.

Sincerely,

John Baglow

Torturegate: the bottomless pit

Redacted and unredacted versions of the same Torturegate documents indicate that the only "security" worrying the Harper government has been its own, and undermine its current desperate defiance of Parliament.

Readers may recall that NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar was able to brandish both a redacted and an unredacted copy of the same memo--which Richard Colvin would have signed off on--nearly two weeks ago, in which the word "torture" was one of the redacted words:

"What we've seen from this government is a whole lot of redaction, in other words blacked out documents," charged Paul Dewar, NDP foreign affairs critic. "It's like reading tea leaves."

Dewar produced his own document, obtained through an access to information request, showing that the government had blacked out a reference to torture in a 2006 report from its own Foreign Affairs bureaucrats on the state of human rights in Afghanistan.

The original, unedited, document, which was leaked to the media in 2007, concluded that "extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial are all too common."

Now we have today's revelation that Canadian authorities provided cover for a corrupt governor of Khandahar province, Asadullah Khalid, a charmer who, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, kept his own private dungeon where he could torture detainees in peace. Thanks to Canadian intervention, he remained in his post:

The revelation about Asadullah Khalid, who stayed on as governor two years after concerns about his notorious reputation were raised, opens up another embarrassing avenue of inquiry over Afghan prisoner abuse.

The new allegation is contained in a two-year-old end-of-mission report by Richard Colvin, the whistleblower foreign service officer.

Colvin's disgust that Canada would support a "known human-rights abuser" was palpable and formed the most incendiary paragraphs of the report. References to Khalid were entirely blacked out in the version of the report publicly released to the Military Police Complaints Commission.

But an uncensored version of the report was shown for the first time to The Canadian Press on a confidential basis.

"As far as I know, Canada has never suggested to (President Hamid) Karzai that Asadullah be replaced," says the memo, dated Oct. 24, 2007.

"In the one meeting where the subject was discussed, in July 2006, it was the president who raised the issue; Canada defended the governor, thereby ensuring his continued tenure." [emphasis added]

The war apologists' strongest point so far has been that much of what had been reported happened prior to a tightening up of the detainee protocols in 2007, so that we've really been arguing about ancient history. All fixed now.

Not so.

Khalid remained governor of Khandahar until 2008, with Canadian support. And today, the Globe & Mail's Paul Koring has uncovered the inconvenient truth that the much-ballyhooed new detainee transfer protocols put in place in 2007 aren't working:

An unknown number of Taliban insurgents captured by Canadians and turned over to Afghanistan's secret police are unaccounted for – a serious violation of the Harper government's “improved” detainee-transfer agreement and one that may endanger Canadian soldiers.

The latest detainee-transfer problem to emerge also threatens to undermine Prime Minister Stephen Harper's assertion that “two, three, four years ago” his government fixed the problems that put Canada at risk of violating the Geneva Conventions by transferring detainees into torture.

“This issue has long since been dealt with,” Mr. Harper said last week.

Another lie. And add to that the testimony of one of Los Tres Generales, Maj.-Gen. David Fraser, who claimed before the parliamentary committee investigating detainee transfers that he'd been unaware of allegations of abuse on the part of Khalid. He was ground commander of Canadian Forces in 2006--and evidently spent his time in a sensory-deprivation tank.

More revelations are sure to come, a cleansing flood of leaks that threatens to engulf both the government and senior Canadian Forces figures. And judging by what's been revealed so far, it can't come soon enough.

UPDATE: Reader and blogger JimBobby was onto the mad governor story nearly two years ago. And, as he noted in March, 2008, the Afghan authorities have apparently had a catch-and-release scam going on for some time.

Final Bump - Dawg's Blawg Climate Prediction Contest

Well, this is not a great way to start a contest, but I am going to bend the rules already. I doubt that GISS will post their numbers until mid week so I will extend the deadline to enter the contest to midnight on the 14th. If it turns out that the GISS does post tomorrow, I will be forced to cut off the contest at that time so hurry up and enter your guesses.

OK, here it is - what you have all been waiting for. Your chance to show the professional climatologists that you can do what they do. The Dawg's Blawg Climate Prediction Contest is your chance to predict how warm (or cool) the current year is going to be. Here are the rules (and yes, I am making them up as I go along).

1. The data set to use is the GISS data set (since we all know the CRU data set is unreliable).
2. Since we are all aspiring climatologists, we use the climatological year which runs from December to November inclusive (the D-N) column in the GISS data set.
3. You must provide two predictions. The first is your prediction for the global temperature anomaly for the year December 2008 to November 2009. The second is a prediction for the month of November 2009.
4. The winner shall be the person who is closest to the global anomaly. In the case of a tie in the prediction of the anomaly for the year (and I expect a number of correct predictions this late in the year) the one closest to the November anomaly will win. In the event of a tie for both the global and November anomalies, the winner shall be the one who posted their prediction first on the blog here.
5. Predictions are to be given in the format that the GISS uses (i.e. 66 for 66/100ths of a degree C).
6. Any method of figuring out the temperatures is permitted: hacked CRU e-mails, bat entrails, dressing up like computer technicians and trying to gain access to data files (to be clear Dawg's Blawg does not condone such behaviour - but I won't disqualify an entry because of it) and you can even use math if you really must.

To the winner goes eternal glory as well as bragging rights for a year. However to make this really special, the winner will also receive the Pirates vs Warming Mug shipped to them (provided you live somewhere where shipping won't cost me a fortune).

However, I expect the November and Global anomalies to be posted by the GISS about mid December so the contest closes at the end of December 13. I will not post a prediction myself since I am acting as adjudicator, but all others (including other members of this Blog) are allowed. In the event of someone coming up with cute ways to circumvent the rules I have put forward (or in fact do anything I don't like) I reserve the right to judge certain responses eligible, and others not. I may make up other rules if I think they are necessary or if I get bored!

That is it! Go to the GISS website (linked above) and familiarize yourself with the data and how they present it. Feel free to ask questions in the comments. I expect that the 2010 Climate Prediction Contest will begin in or around April, so you can consider this one practice. Good luck!

That @!*&% yodeling commercial

This one. Please do NOT play it in my presence. My TV is intact, but barely--a brass bookend is just out of reach. These days my finger is never far from the "mute" button.

Yodeling: "primitive scat singing," it says here--with emphasis, I presume, on "scat." All you need to complete the hideous aural landscape is an accordion.

Want lots more pain? Here ya go.

HUAC North and its backers

The other day I posted a brief update about the goings-on of a bizarre all-party grouping known as the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism. Maybe it's time to dig into the operations and background of this outfit in a little more depth.

The CPCCA is supposed to be conducting an "inquiry" into anti-Semitism in Canada. But as I noted in an earlier post, the chair, Liberal MP Mario Silva, let slip a telling comment this past week: those denying the threat of "anti-Semitism" on Canadian university campuses, he said, are "downplaying" it; those hyping this alleged threat and sounding the appropriate sirens are being "frank."

Among the less-than-frank, in Silva's estimation, would be people like Fred Lowy, former president of Concordia:

By and large, Canadian campuses are safe and are not hotbeds of antisemitism of any kind.

And Patrick Monahan, Provost of York University:

The difficulty is that there is a narrative (of antisemitism) that gets picked up by others who never set foot on the campus here, but purport to be experts on the atmosphere on our campuses. It is unfair to the students, because it sows fear, it sows division. It fans flames of more conflict. We hope that your report and work of your committee will not in anyway contribute further to that.

This is definitely not what Silva wanted to hear. He has been parti pris on the issue from day one. Hence his implicit smear of the witnesses: that they were being dishonest.

The hearings, with hand-picked guests, have been ludicrously one-sided. One organization that did not receive an invitation, the Seriously Free Speech Committee*, has protested:

We have been in contact with more than a dozen organisations and individual academics that submitted briefs expressing concern over the process and mandate of the Coalition and it’s potential impact on freedom of expression in Canada. None had received an invitation to testify nor notification about the hearings.

Also troubling is that the Coalition has not revealed its funding sources despite a promise that it “will voluntarily disclose all sources of funding.” As the Coalition is not an official parliamentary body, it would be unethical for individual MPs to use their constituency or party resources to support its “inquiry”.

It appears that the Coalition is trying to have it both ways, implying that it is an official parliamentary committee by referring to itself as a “committee” (as quoted above) and using parliamentary facilities but avoiding the transparency and openness required of an actual parliamentary body.

The Coalition’s actions force us to conclude that its process is closed to anyone who questions its preordained recommendation of expanding the definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of the State of Israel, such as calls for a boycott or political discussions of Israeli apartheid, thus moving toward criminalising dissent in this country. In addition, The Seriously Free Speech Committee infers that the Coalition is not genuinely concerned with determining the state of antisemitism, racism and human rights in Canada. Clearly, the operation of the Coalition is designed to shield Israel from criticism and to silence Canadians who are critical of Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and Israel’s recent war crimes in Gaza, as documented by the Goldstone Report to the UN.

Independent Jewish Voices of Canada, another group excluded from the hearings, has mounted a petition against the process.

There has never been a parliamentary group quite like this one, in fact, self-selected and conducting a farcical "inquiry" with the evident intent of chilling debate about Israel on Canadian university campuses and elsewhere. Now, to take up the Seriously Free Speech Committee's question: how is it being funded?

I have said before, in response to those who mutter darkly about alleged conspiratorial thinking, that everything about CPCCA is out in the open. Not entirely, as it turns out. Here is what they have to say about financing:

The CPCCA is not affiliated with the Government of Canada, any NGO, or any advocacy group. It is associated with the Inter-parliamentary Coalition toCombat Antisemitism, the international steering committee which organized the conference in London in 2009.

Who is paying for/supporting the Inquiry?

. The CPCCA is independent of the Government of Canada, and NGOs or Jewish Community Organizations.

. Funding will only be accepted for the inquiry and conference if it will not compromise the terms of reference and the mandate of the CPCCA.

. We will voluntarily disclose all sources of funding.

That ain't necessarily so. I am reliably informed that a number of people have written to the CPCCA to ask where its funding is coming from. I have written myself, although very recently. Replies are still awaited.

Never mind: follow me.

Let's begin with Monica Kugelmass, the CPCCA's Director and an assistant to Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, who is an "ex officio" member of the CPCCA.

From her bio: "Monica is the first Canadian Legacy Heritage Fellow, and is working as a Middle East policy advisor at the office of the Honorable Irwin Cotler MP, official opposition critic for Human Rights."

What is the Legacy Heritage Fund, of which she is a Fellow? Well, it's an organization that promotes "Israel awareness" with generous grants. And that connection with Israel is not without its politics:

JobKatif, a grassroots organization developed by Rev Yosef Tzvi Rimon of Gush Etzion, West Bank, is dedicated to rebuilding the lives and restoring normalcy and a sense of dignity to displaced settlers.

--

Funding for JobKatif’s projects comes mainly from American Jews. But there has been an outpouring of support from all over the world, including gifts from Israel, Europe and Australia, notes Gur.

Recently, the Susan Wexner Fund of the Legacy Heritage Fund offered $600,000 to JobKatif if it could get matching donations from individuals or foundations.

What is the Susan Wexner Fund? Better still, who is Susan Wexner?

You don't have to dig very deeply to discover the hard-right Middle East politics lying not far beneath the surface here:

StandWithUs - an "organization that ensures that Israel's side of the story is told" - has become increasingly aggressive in challenging the "pro-Israel" credentials of moderate Jewish-American groups, going so far as to suggest that receiving money from Arab donors and supporters of Human Rights Watch undermines a group's commitment to Israel and peace.

J Street - the "Pro-Israel and Pro-Peace" advocacy group - faced criticism last week for accepting contributions from donors who have been critical of Israeli government actions.

But an IPS investigation into the tax records of the donors to StandWithUs, which professes to be ideologically neutral, found a web of funders who support organisations that have been accused of anti-Muslim propaganda and encouraging a militant Israeli and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

Some of these organisations have tied the origins of Palestinian nationalism to Nazi ideology, and suggested that a vast Muslim conspiracy - in a similar vein to the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion - is mobilising to undermine the U.S. constitution and impose Sharia law.

The biggest donors to StandWithUs since 2005, according to a search of publicly available tax returns, were foundations controlled by Susan Wexner, who has contributed over 850,000 dollars to the group. [emphasis added]

Is it impertinent to ask if CPCCA is being funded from this source? To suggest such a thing is sheer speculation, of course, at this point. I'm hoping that CPCCA will clear things up by delivering on its promise to "disclose all sources of funding," and I shall share with my readers any correspondence I receive from it.

UPDATE: (December 15) As I suspected, the CPCCA prefers to keep its funding sources secret after all. A written inquiry by reader and commenter Antonia to an MP she knew was referred back to CPCCA. Today she received this response from CPCCA functionary Sarah LaFreniere:

''Thank you for your inquiry. The website describes our funding restrictions and regulations, disclosure of funding will occur with the publication of the report.''

So much for voluntary disclosure of funding sources.

Why should this information be withheld until the final report is published? What does CPCCA have to hide? Inquiring minds want to know.

_____________________
*"The SFSC was formed in February, 2008 to defend individuals being sued by Canwest, in a classic Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP), for producing a parody about the pro-Israel bias of the Vancouver Sun."

Of nervous excuses and rogue government

"But that was in another country. And besides, the wench is dead."

Damian Brooks of The Torch is wearying of Torturegate. So is the unrepentant and discredited Christie Blatchford. And throw in--why not?--a couple of former ambassadors (against the 111 who have at this point protested the government's demonization of Richard Colvin).

I don't blame them for their evident Angst. The hawkish side of the Afghanistan debate has been taking heavy shelling over the past few days. The possible implication of our military and civilian leaders in war crimes is serious business.

Move along, they say, with evident discomfort. Little to see here. No big deal. Can't we please talk about something else? Like winning the damn war? As for Colvin, well, maybe the government used overly-large brush-strokes, but he's not above criticism. Is he?

Back to these commentators and their arguments in a moment.

The media have buried the lede this morning in their coverage of yesterday's House of Commons motion to compel the government to hand over unredacted documents relating to Torturegate. They have noted that Harper's regime is defying Parliament, but they aren't really putting it that way, and their concerns are muted.

This, for example, is the very last graf in the National Post story:

The government's refusal to comply with the uncensored documents motion, approved by all three opposition parties in a 145-143 vote Thursday, was condemned as "an affront to our system of government" by Liberal MP Bryon Wilfert, vice-chairman of the special Commons committee on the Canadian mission in Afghanistan.

The Toronto Star gets it, but only sort of:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has put itself on a collision course with the will of Parliament, refusing an order to produce all documents related to Afghan detainees and Canadian knowledge about their potential torture.

The refusal sets the stage for a potential parliamentary crisis, not unlike the one that gripped the country one year ago, with Harper's minority government in a standoff with the three opposition parties.

And so does the Canadian Press, again sort of:

It all leaves the country potentially in the grips of another constitutional melee over which body should reign supreme: Parliament or the government.

One NDP source said the Commons might be forced to rule the government in contempt of Parliament, which would eventually entail a confidence vote.

A Liberal official dismissed that possibility, but suggested Defence Minister Peter MacKay could be called to the "bar" in Parliament to answer questions, and be removed of his seat if deemed in contempt.

But the coverage is almost diffident. "Parliamentary crisis?" Certainly. But what of the implications? And "which body should reign supreme: Parliament or the government" presents the matter as a simple political contest of wills, sidestepping the fact that no such contest should even be taking place.

Any Civics 101 student can answer the Canadian Press' implicit question: Parliament is supreme, both constitutionally and by the conventions that shape the Westminster system of government, and in particular the very Canadian concept of "responsible government." It is not absolutely so, because it is reined in by the Canadian Charter of Rights and freedoms, and by the realities of a federal system with provincial legislatures; but the executive branch is accountable to the legislative branch, and is constitutionally bound to bow to its will. That's what "responsible government" means.

Don't take my word for it. The Law Clerk of Parliament is very clear indeed on the matter:

In keeping with the principles of responsible government, no part of the Government’s responsibilities can by law be categorically excluded or removed from its constitutional accountability to the House and its committees, otherwise it would soon become only partial accountability and perhaps after some years no accountability at all.

In other words, Harper's continued defiance of Parliament strikes at the very heart of our democracy. The House of Commons should not fall back on a vote on non-confidence. It should use its powers, which in this area are considerable, to force Harper and his ministers to the bar, and, if they remain in contempt, to impose the appropriate penalties.

And here is Section 18 of the Constitution Act:

The privileges, immunities, and powers to be held, enjoyed, and exercised by the Senate and by the House of Commons, and by the members thereof respectively, shall be such as are from time to time defined by Act of the Parliament of Canada, but so that any Act of the Parliament of Canada defining such privileges, immunities, and powers shall not confer any privileges, immunities, or powers exceeding those at the passing of such Act held, enjoyed, and exercised by the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and by the members thereof.

Effectively, at least in the short term, the government has exceeded its authority. Put more bluntly, it has unlawfully wrested power from Parliament, and it must be quickly brought to account.

This is, in fact, an escalation of a trend that began with the erratic behaviour of ministers like Lawrence Cannon (who argued that his decision to keep Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik out of Canada could not be reviewed by a court), and Gary Goodyear and Jason Kenney (who, contrary to well-established principles of administrative law*, interfered with independent granting authorities, in the one case threatening the SSHRC and in the other, cancelling a grant out of personal spite).

There is a slippery slope here, down which the government would happily toboggan further if permitted.

But back to the issue over which this increasingly rogue government is willing to violate the Constitution, as well as to Keen the independent chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission Paul Tinsley (who, like RCMP watchdog Paul Kennedy, is not going down without a parting shot or two).

After Gen. Walter Natyncyk's revelation that he had been badly briefed (while his predecessor, who left him holding the bag, has moused out), there is indeed consternation in the ranks. But the excuses are by now so worn-out that one senses that the alibiers are a little embarrassed, apart from Blatchford, apparently overcome by a fog of military pheromones.

Damian Brooks doesn't rationalize the government's blundering and heavy-handed actions, and he concedes that there is substance in the critics' claims--he's no simple-minded Conservative propagandist. But he takes a swipe or two at Colvin almost reflexively before he moves on. The gunshot residue test that is supposed to separate the civilian wheat from the Taliban chaff tended to ensure that the detainees were the latter, he says (but it doesn't), and he dismisses out of hand the large number of detainees released by Afghan authorities, in a less than convincing manner, not even mentioning that they actually complained to the Canadians about it.

His bottom line:

But the brutal and unfair truth is that the more we focus on detainees, the less we focus on something else. What else should drop off the table to accomodate our fixation on detainees? Because, like it or not, there's an opportunity cost to everything we do over there.

His heart is in The Mission, and he would like all this torture stuff just to go away so we can keep our eyes on the prize. I feel his pain.

Then there's that Globe and Mail columnist, at it again today. Shorter Christie Blatchford: well, sure, the government isn't above criticism, but the critics have just produced one detainee, and he wasn't very tortured. Besides, what can you expect from a "culture is demonstrably punitive, physical and primitive," to whom the Liberals decided we would hand over our detainees way back when?

Finally, the former ambassadors, swimming determinedly upstream, one of whom simply parrots Conservative government talking-points (with the now-obligatory mild criticism of its handling of the affair), and the other, on the basis of no apparent evidence whatsoever, accuses Colvin of having a personal agenda.

All rearguard action at this point, and I use the metaphor advisedly.

Two near-inextricable stories, one increasingly complex narrative:

When all is said and done, we can observe an increasingly fragile "yes, but" approach from the embattled war-boosters at the moment: it hasn't been a good few days for them. They're now finding it necessary, in fact, to distance themselves, if only in a nuanced fashion, from the blundering, bull-in-a-china-shop approach of the Harper government--which is a hopeful sign.**

But meanwhile, that government is becoming ever more dangerous. The Afghan detainee question, in this respect, is almost irrelevant: it just happens to be the particular ditch the government is willing to die in. But when the Conservatives are demonstrably willing to act in defiance of Parliament and the Constitution, no matter what issue is at hand, it's about time the alarms were sounded. And so far, those sounds are worryingly faint.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike.

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*Both Goodyear and Kenney need to remind themselves of the principles laid out in Roncarelli:

In public regulation of this sort there is no such thing as absolute and untrammelled "discretion", that is that action can be taken on any ground or for any reason that can be suggested to the mind of the administrator; no legislative Act can, without express language, be taken to contemplate an unlimited arbitrary power exercisable for any purpose, however capricious or irrelevant, regardless of the nature or purpose of the statute. ..."Discretion" necessarily implies good faith in discharging public duty; there is always a perspective within which a statute is intended to operate; and any clear departure from its lines or objects is just as objectionable as fraud or corruption. Could an applicant be refused a permit because he had been born in another province, or because of the colour of his hair? The ordinary language of the legislature cannot be so distorted.

**Damian Brooks reminds me that he has been consistent on the government's handling of the detainee issue since 2007.

American fascism

Brutalizing a Canadian science fiction writer heading across the border into Canada is all in a day's work for Homeland Security thugs.

Full story here. PayPal donations for what promises to be an expensive defence against a bogus charge of assault here.

[H/t CC.]

UPDATE: Peter Watts, in his own words:

If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

But that is not this universe.

Stay tuned.

And brute stupidity, unfortunately, doesn't stop at the Canadian border:

Watts sounds like a typical liberal who expects elite treatment. He behaved in a way to set off alarm bells at customs and fully deserved the treatment he received. Beat the hell out of him if only to deter other liberal elitist snobs.

Stephen Harper's red meat base, I presume.

Taser-happy Mounties zapped again

From the "Duh!" department:

A report says a Mountie was wrong to use a Taser on a 15-year-old girl as she lay face down on the floor of Inuvik's young offenders centre with her hands cuffed behind her back under the control of three guards.

A report, one might hope, that wrote itself. Lucky she wasn't armed with a stapler.

What fresh hell is this?

And is it "art"?

Leaving aside the fact that Dorothy Parker was not addressing the issue of torture in the 21st century, the installation conceived and crafted by Ottawa artist Jenn Farr and builder Erik Windfeld should perhaps not be viewed by the faint of heart. Or by those who have first-hand knowledge of the particular hell it represents. The Canadian Press:

Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin attended the unveiling of a grim, grey cell modelled on the squalid chambers in the Syrian prison where they were whipped and beaten. El Maati, a former truck driver, spent two-and-a-half months in a similar grave-like box in the Palestine Branch of the Damascus detention centre.

He warily peered inside the sculpture, fitted with a brown blanket, plastic bottles and small plastic food dishes, and shook his head Wednesday. "It was very tough coming here," said El Maati, who brought his mother from Toronto to see the life-size rendering of the filthy, tiny place in which he lived before being sent to Egypt.

In May of 2008, a United Church minister organized the "Stop Canadian Complicity in Torture" caravan which traveled from Toronto to Ottawa. This was the only account I was able to find. El Maati accompanied the group and spoke in schools, church halls and other local venues along the way that groups such The Raging Grannies organized to educate Canadian citizens about the harm done in the name of 'national security'.

The piece was commissioned by human rights activist and author Kerry Pither, who helped fund it with prize money from an Ottawa Book Award for Dark Days about the mens' experiences.

The federal government denies responsibility for the imprisonment and torture of the men despite a commission of inquiry report that partly blamed CSIS and the RCMP. The inquiry led by former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci found last year that Canadian officials contributed to the brutalization of the men by sharing information - including unfounded accounts of extremist links - with foreign agencies.

None of the men, all of whom deny involvement in terrorism, has ever been criminally charged.

The photograph is from Metronews - that free tabloid found/handed out at public transit hubs in major Canadian cities and one of 3 news-gathering organizations who covered the public opening of this exhibit located in the former National Press Club in Ottawa. More from CTV.

Fat's in the fire

Parliament has now exerted its constitutional supremacy, and ordered the Harper government to produce the Torturegate memos: all of them, unredacted. Harper's only recourse now is to defy the order, putting his government in contempt of Parliament.

A fascinating series of exchanges between Robert Walsh, the Parliamentary Law Clerk, and Harper's Department of Justice is well worth the read. It sets out the framework of a legal battle that might well end up in court, intertwining the three separate branches of government in an unparalleled manner.

Via Kady O'Malley:

• First shot across the bows: the House Law Clerk advises Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh on October 23 that the government must provide the special parliamentary committee examining the Afghan detainee issue with the documents it has requested. (The letter does not appear to be on-line.)
  
  
• Second warning shot: the Clerk buttresses his legal reasoning in a second note to Dosanjh, taking account of subsequent government moves to suppress the documents in question.
  
  It would appear that providing the documents sought by the Committee without redaction presents concerns for the Government in relation to national security measures. While the Committee might try in some manner to address these concerns, at the end of the day the Government is obliged to supply to the Committee whatever information it requests in the performance of its mandate from the House.
  
  The Special Committee and all House Committees act in support of the constitutional function of the House of Commons of holding the Government to account. In keeping with the principles of responsible government, no part of the Government’s responsibilities can by law be categorically excluded or removed from its constitutional accountability to the House and its committees, otherwise it would soon become only partial accountability and perhaps after some years no accountability at all.
  
  
• Return fire: the Department of Justice reads the Clerk a Civics 101 lecture on the separation of powers, and proceeds to make its case, while possibly undermining one yet to come:
  
  A parliamentary committee is certainly not a court; nor is it a "body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information". Faced with an apparent refusal to provide information, the appropriate recourse for a parliamentary committee is to report the matter to the House for its consideration.
  
  
• The Law Clerk responds with a fresh salvo, noting that the DoJ is addressing "peripheral issues," while avoiding the main question of the supremacy of Parliament. In the Clerk's view, this supremacy is exercised, inter alia, through parliamentary committees.

But this is now moot, because the House has spoken. And the Department of Justice appears, as I suggested, to have painted itself into a corner. If, as it indicates, only the House and not a House committee can exercise parliamentary supremacy, the House has now done so; and it's difficult to see how the DoJ could craft a compelling new argument to the effect that not even the House has the power to order the production of these documents.

To reiterate and emphasize an earlier point made by Walsh, because it needs reiterating:

In keeping with the principles of responsible government, no part of the Government’s responsibilities can by law be categorically excluded or removed from its constitutional accountability to the House and its committees, otherwise it would soon become only partial accountability and perhaps after some years no accountability at all.

A few weeks ago there was a minor flap about the Governor-General: it appeared that she was arrogating to herself the office of Head of State. What we may soon be witnessing, in effect, is an attempt on Harper's part, through his Ministers and their departments, to claim that role for himself. "L'État, c'est moi" politics, however, does not jibe with the notion of responsible government. We may be headed for the mother of all constitutional crises if he tries to tough this one out.
















[H/t Impolitical]

UPDATE: Tough it out he will. And by so doing, he has essentially usurped power over Parliament. If anyone had doubts about Harper's overweening, narcissistic, sovereign ambitions before, this should dispel them forever.

The "neutrality" of HUAC North

...captured in one telling statement about alleged anti-Semitism on campus. Here's Liberal Mario Silva, who chairs the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA):

"[C]ertainly some universities downplayed it while others certainly were quite frank about what’s taking place on the ground."

How long will this farce continue--a parliamentary "investigation" committee whose conclusions were obviously written before their hearings ever began, whose handpicked witness list has been almost exclusively one-sided, and whose chair now states that universities that have found little to complain about as far as anti-Semitism is concerned must be "downplaying" it, while others are being "frank?"

Is that how this bunch weighs evidence?

More installments to come--as you and I continue to finance this miserable parliamentary sideshow.

Another brown exile returns

Our fellow-citizen Abdihakim Mohamed is finally home, after a three-year exile imposed by the Department of Foreign Affairs. He's not the first victim of what appears to be a selective return policy, and he's not likely to be the last.

After a six-year ordeal, Abousfian Abdelrazik was permitted to return to his country earlier this year, after a federal court slammed the Harper government for its high-handed treatment of the man. He is still not legally permitted to work in his own country.

Then there was Suaad Hagi Mohamud, allegedly an impostor, who was finally allowed to return to Toronto from Kenya after a public outcry and a conclusive DNA test. Despite selective leakage from the government, it has never been fully explained how both the real Mohamud and a supposed "impostor" were allegedly able to frequent the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi during the long homeward struggle--with no one noticing the difference.

A pity they couldn't all have been named "Bob Smith" or "Brenda Martin," and flown home in jets at the taxpayers' expense. No such luck for Mohamed's mother, who has worked two jobs as a cleaner to finance her legal battle. And these struggles seemingly have no end: she has now been advised by Passport Canada that if she applies for a new passport for the autistic Abdihakim, she might be prosecuted for assisting an impostor to enter the country!

Each one of these exiled Canadians managed to acquire media attention that unarguably went a long way in rescuing them. In the case of Abdelrazik, it was the Globe and Mail's Paul Koring, who simply never let go. Hagi Mohamud attracted the attention of the Toronto Star's John Goddard. And the Ottawa Citizen's Kate Heartfield broke the Mohamed story last February, staying on it until today. CBC's The Current picked it up in June, and CBC News reported on the case in August.

But this raises a fundamental question: why should certain Canadians require what amounts to media advocacy for them to be able to exercise the same rights as their fellow-citizens? How has two-tier citizenship come into existence under this government, despite the Charter of Rights and all that guff therein about equality before the law?

15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

And there's that guaranteed right to return which most of us take for granted--and the right to gain a livelihood as well:

6. (1) Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.

Rights to move and gain livelihood

(2) Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right

(a) to move to and take up residence in any province; and

(b) to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province.

Tell that to Abdelrazik, after six years, tortured by the Sudanese with Canadian complicity, and then effectively kept in a cupboard in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum, where they refused to concede that he even existed, returning letters and parcels sent to him there. As noted, he is still not legally permitted to work; nor may he receive assistance. Every time someone provides him with groceries, he or she effectively breaking the federal United Nations Act--because, in a situation described by a federal court as Kafkaesque, he remains on the UN no-fly list. And there is simply no practical means of getting him off it without official Canadian intervention. Under this government, good luck with that.

Meanwhile Omar Khadr languishes in Guantanamo. The Harper administration, which fought tooth and nail against repatriating Abdelrazik, which unconscionably dragged its heels for three years in the case of Abdihakim Mohamed, and which separated Suaad Hagi Mohamud from her son for months despite her insistence on a DNA test, has dug in for the long haul in his case too.

It would be fitting to end on a positive note: the news about our latest returned exile comes to us on Human Rights Day. In Canada we should be able to celebrate that day all year round. But not, it seems, if you're the wrong kind of citizen. And so, while we welcome back Abdihakim, we are left wondering: how many more of the latter are waiting to be discovered by inquisitive journalists?