Abousfian Abdelrazik held his first press conference this morning, on Parliament Hill, appropriately enough. The story he told is a chilling one, with CSIS, Foreign Affairs officials and the Conservative government front and centre.Calling CSIS "Canada's Mukhābarāt," he described what life was like for him in Montreal immediately following 9/11. CSIS agents began to hound him and his family, going so far as to pester his wife in hospital, where she was dying of cancer. They offered her "better cancer treatment in the US" if she would cooperate in their investigation of Abdelrazik. She told …
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Caught illegally marauding in a war zone, I think [Omar Khadr is] legally entitled to a summary hearing and execution on the spot -- not a real trial in Guantanamo Bay, Miami, Toronto or anywhere else. --Ezra LevantNo wonder this guy doesn't like Human Rights Commissions. [H/t CC, who gets up earlier than I do] …
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Michael Ignatieff's international reputation is taking a beating:What, then, was Ignatieff's reaction to the Abdelrazik case? Almost total silence.On 28 June, after Abdelrazik had already returned to Montreal, Ignatieff issued a joint statement with foreign affairs critic Bob Rae. "On behalf of the Liberal party of Canada we welcome Mr Abousfian Abdelrazik back to Canada. Many questions remain regarding Mr Abdulrazik's case," it read. The statement went on to list some of those questions, but the one that many Canadians might be asking when they next go to the polls was missing: Given his past …
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Last month, when respected Parliamentary veteran Diane Ablonczy was punished by Stephen Harper for the crime of providing funding to this year's Toronto Gay Pride parade, a Montreal LGBT organization leaped to the government's defence.Suzanne Girard, director of Montreal's Divers-Cité artistic festival, said that far-right so-cons were trying to embarrass the Conservatives. Since the Tories came to power, she said, her organization has had more stable support than ever before.Egg, meet face. Yesterday Divers-Cité, which applied for funding out of the same envelope as Toronto Pride and was …
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Their population is exploding--and they are bringing violence into peaceful neighbourhoods.A day will come when there won't be any secular officials in office in the entire country, they boast. A thoughtful Jewish writer worries: "In these neighbourhoods, where I was born and grew up, the battle has already been won. Zionism has been pushed out of here, as if it had never been."Violent protest is the norm. Department stores have been forced to cover up mannequins. Billboards in their areas may not show images of women. If women are not covered sufficiently, they're screamed at and called …
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Shorter Ralph Peters, Faux News military analyst: "Take no prisoners. I am directing my remarks, of course, to the Taliban."This man's view of the media, by the way, is...interesting, although the sentiment is hardly original:"Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media."Umm...been there, done that.But if you want to try to grasp the way far-right conservatives think, read the whole article. After pouring yourself a stiff drink.[H/t Unrepentant Old Hippie, Boris at The Galloping Beaver] …
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Score 3-0 for the good guys over the past few days:Toronto resident Francisco Lafreniere is behind bars, after allegedly threatening neighbours in his condo and impersonating a police officer. A search of his place revealed a stash of weapons and Holocaust-denial literature. He was found to be in possession of "a real deputy sheriff’s badge, which has been traced to a small town in Texas. Police are unsure how the badge was acquired, but said it may have been purchased online."Contrary to persistent belief in some quarters, white men do not provide the best service, a UBC study has …
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The lawyer for marooned Canadian Suaad Hagi Mohamud will be back before the Federal Court tomorrow in a last-ditch attempt to repatriate her before she faces a Kenyan court on Friday.Yesterday Raoul Boulakia filed six affidavits from friends and family attesting to her identity. He has concerns with the official handling of this case: and so do I.Why, he asks, has the Canadian High Commission in Kenya been pretending to wait for fingerprint confirmation when it now turns out that there are none to match the ones she voluntarily provided nearly two weeks ago?A good question.As reported, …
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Abousfian Abdelrazik is back in Canada. But new revelations about the government's dubious handling of his case have been unearthed by the Globe & Mail's indefatigable Paul Koring. Briefly, the Sudanese government was considering "disappearing" Abdelrazik in 2006--and Canadian diplomats in Khartoum were ordered to take no action.The Sudanese, having apprehended Abdelrazik on the say-so of Canadian intelligence, wanted closure. If Canada was not going to repatriate him, it informed Canadian officials in early 2006, it would carry out its own "permanent solution."But as Koring …
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Raoul Boulakia, a lawyer acting for exiled Canadian Suaad Hagi Mohamud, will be appearing in Federal Court this morning to force the Harper government to issue her an emergency passport. He is also seeking a declaration that the government has "acted in bad faith by arbitrarily denying the applicant's citizenship, and by delaying resolution of confirming her citizenship."Mohamud has been trapped in a Nairobi hotel room for weeks, thanks to Canadian consular officials who have claimed, against all evidence, that she is an impostor.There is considerable urgency in this matter, as Mohamud is due …
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An intriguing article in today's Globe and Mail suggests that the Crown's hasty decision not to prosecute the four RCMP officers implicated in the death of Robert Dziekanski may be reversed.There has already been slow but certain progress in this direction. Now Janusz Kochanowski, a senior Polish ombudsman, is calling for criminal charges to be laid. “New facts call for a reassessment of the previous decision,” as he puts it, referring to the appalling performance of the Four Horsemen at the Braidwood Inquiry.Of perhaps even more interest, there is a hint of further slippage in the Crown …
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UnCatholic potlucksIn spring 2008, I played at a “World Day of Prayer” event at St. Mary’s in Ottawa. They had a “pot luck” beforehand, then we went upstairs and the they had a prayer service with music, and showed a slide show of Haiti, then did a collection. I remember thinking that the crowd was not in agreement with Catholic moral teaching. They had a collection for “Haiti”. There was an Anglican Woman minister there and some United folks. Fittingly, we sung “Kumbaya.” They have it at a different Church in the Ottawa area every year.You don't have to be …
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Cadillac Fairview, wholly owned by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (now, there are some wheels within wheels for you), has fired every one of its unionized employees at the TD Centre in Toronto, after locking them out for a month, and replaced them with scab labour.Here's the relevant clause in the Ontario Labour Relations Act:Employers not to interfere with employees’ rights 72. No employer, employers’ organization or person acting on behalf of an employer or an employers’ organization, (a) shall refuse to employ or to continue to employ a person, or discriminate against a person …
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...and to your spouse.Not being much of a Facebooker, I missed mention of this blessed event a few days ago.Everyone please welcome Brendan William Penny, born Wednesday, July 8, at 1:07 am. He weighed 8 pounds, 14 ounces."Mother and child are doing very well," says Damian, "except for the lack of sleep between 11PM and 5AM. " Ditto the father.The kid may grow up to be a blogger, says Damian. But on which side of the aisle?I often think it's comical--Fal, lal, la! Fal, lal, la! How Nature always does contrive--Fal, lal, la, la! That every boy and every gal That's born into the world alive …
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Heh.[H/t Zerb] …
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I owe my readers a sincere apology. I was wrong. Kathy English, the "public editor" of the Toronto Star, really is as ploddingly earnest as she sounded a week ago.Today she's got another column up, on the "new media." She seems to know as much about that subject as I do about Feynman diagrams. She begins with a long defensive whine about the drubbing she received in the blogosphere:I learned much about "snark" and nasty blogosphere invective this week from some bloggers who disagree with my take on what Zerbisias wrote. Mean-spirited personal attack, inaccurate facts, innuendo and even …
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Good God. And not a word about this in the mainstream media.What the hell is happening in our country? Our government maroons countless Canadians in foreign lands because they have the wrong colour and the wrong religion. Racism of all kinds is alive and kicking. Aboriginals are still out in the cold.But clearly there's only one form of bigotry that really counts. Only one that merits a national inquiry. And it's been redefined to cast as wide a net as possible.Bernie Farber is one happy camper.Well, bring it on."Mr. Chairman, I am not now, and have never been, an anti-Semite."I'd better start …
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Ick.This could awaken old nightmares for the good folks of Downingtown, Pennsylvania.[H/t Dr. Prole] …
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The Toronto Star's John Goddard is turning into another Paul Koring, staying on the Suaad Hagi Mohamud case like a limpet.It's been more than a week since Mohamud's fingerprints--taken at her own insistence--have been in the possession of Canadian consular officials in Nairobi. To become a Canadian citizen, she was fingerprinted several years ago.The High Commission in Kenya is still refusing to return phonecalls. A frightened woman is confined to her hotel room, penniless and without a passport to return home. Her 12-year-old wants her back. Everyone in her neighbourhood, it seems, will vouch …
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Once again the odious "shlemazl" has called me an anti-Semite. Genug, shoyn.I would appreciate it if anyone with information as to the identity of this individual would email me. …
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In an on-going vendetta against Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias, a summer student at the Canadian Jewish Congress named Ben Singer has been more than earning his salary--he's been doing the work of at least three people.Ben's IP address is 69.77.176.174. That also happens to be the address of commenter "Karen"--and, surprisingly perhaps, commenter "Marty," who left a suggestion here that Kathy English of the Star might be the spouse of Howard English of the United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Toronto. Did he expect me to rush foolishly into print on that one?Some of my blogging pals …
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Isotope crisis. Dying cancer patients in dire need of bone scans. What a great time for profit-taking.Covidien Ltd., fresh from jacking up its prices by 50%, is set to add another 40% to its take. The Dublin-based company raked in a mere $10 billion in revenues last year.As reported:The price increases are forcing hospitals to absorb additional unforeseen costs at a time when they are under financial strain during the economic recession. The situation is unsustainable, as hospitals cannot meet their budgets when they are paying higher prices and doing fewer tests because crucial materials are …
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It's nearly a week now since our fellow-citizen Suaad Hagi Mohamud was fingerprinted at the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, in a desperate attempt to prove that she's Suaad Hagi Mohamud. Her fingerprints are already on file from her original citizenship application.She's been marooned in Kenya for eight weeks. On May 28, the High Commission voided her passport, claiming that she is an impostor. She pleaded with them at the time to fingerprint her. They got around to that last Thursday.Foreign Affairs, which seems to be taking sadistic pleasure out of stranding her, has not bothered to get …
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A new low for the Blogging Tories, now apparently in freefall. Stephen Taylor, who maintains the blogroll, has always seemed like a reasonable fellow to me--does he simply lack any notion of decency? …
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There was the murky role played by CSIS, Canada's secret police, in the case of Canadian exile Abousfian Abdelrazik. The then-head of CSIS, Jim Judd, indignantly demanded an inquiry of his agency, protesting its innocence--and promptly resigned.Since, there have been revelations that CSIS had deliberately withheld evidence in two high-profile court cases.And now the almost toothless watchdog to which CSIS is nominally accountable, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, has had enough. Referring critically to the interrogation of child soldier Omar Khadr by CSIS agents in 2003, the Chair …
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OK: we're all familiar at this point with the sickeningly prissy, obsequious, condescending tone of the now-infamous column by the Toronto Star's "public editor," Kathy English. And on both sides of the blogospheric aisle, we've blasted considerable scorn in her direction.Now I'm scratching my head. Indeed, that head-scratching began last evening over wings and beer with my co-blogger.Are there wheels within wheels here?Let's quickly sum up the events from July 1 on:There was the Canada Day column by the Zerb that started everything off. Then, six days later, manufactured outrage by Bernie …
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On Foreign Affairs Minister Jason Kenney's desk is a picture of a convicted pro-Nazi war criminal, Cardinal Aloysius Stepanic, whom he considers one of his heroes.During World War II, Stepanic collaborated with Ante Pavelic, the head of a pro-Nazi puppet state called the "Independent State of Croatia," run by a murderous gang called the Ustaša. They set up the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp, where an estimated 13,000 Jews, 48,000 Serbs--and 10-20,000 Roma--were slaughtered. [p.327]Not even the Nazis had a concentration camp exclusively for children--but Stepanic's friends did: they …
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This proves it.Honours for an autocrat whose career was marked by venality, scandal, coverup, assault and the crushing of dissent.Not the award I would have chosen for this dreadful little man. …
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This could cost me my final ethics clearance for some interviews I have to do to complete my thesis. But I can't resist.I have received conditional clearance for my project. Amongst other niggles large and small, I was rapped on the knuckles for not using my university email account when communicating with the university ethics board. I expressed a little surprise, given that I was, in effect, voluntarily surrendering my own privacy, but I tried to comply.Perhaps needless to say, my university email account subsequently crashed like a stone. So I emailed back to explain, as well as to provide …
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Remember that rape law (to be more precise, the law legalizing marital rape) that Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai tried to pass earlier this year?It's been amended. But most of the media haven't delved beyond that. The Independent, however, which broke the original story, has done so.Husbands may no longer rape their wives. Instead, they may now starve them into sexual submission.The ethicists among us will have to explain the fine distinctions here. But while we're having that discussion, may we please bring our troops home?[H/t Antonia Z.] …
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Too bad about all those dead patients.The Flying Rodent offers Gordo an alternative strategy. …
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'nuff said:Did our normally cocksure PM waffle over the wafer and put it away to think about? Did he swallow it later? And what if he didn't - or did? One senior priest said it was insulting if Harper didn't swallow, while another said it was wrong if he did - because he's not Catholic.Dusky exiles: more heat on the Harper government.BC: RCMP runs amok.The infamous Singaporan homophobe Thio Li-ann has been invited to New York University to teach a course--on human rights. Next up: Ian Paisley, on comparative religion. Ben Stein, on palaeontology. Jay Currie's comment purgatory. And he …
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