Ulli Diemer

Radical Digressions

• Home
• Articles
• The Attic
• Browse
• Quotes
• Links
• Contact

What I’ve Been Reading

• Six Men. Alistair Cooke.
• On the Road. Jack Kerouac.
• Catch 22. Joseph Heller.
• Dialogues of the Dead. Reginald Hill.
• One Step Behind. Henning Mankell.
• The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World. Joel Kovel.
• Lincoln Reconsidered. David Herbert Donald.
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Charles C. Mann.
• The World Without Us. Alan Weisman.
• Lincoln. Gore Vidal.
• Intellectual Self-Defense: Find Your Inner Chomsky. Normand Baillargeon.
• Wobblies & Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical Theory. Staughton Lynd & Andrej Grubacic.
• I Have Lived Here Since the World Began. Arthur J. Ray
• Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate. Kenan Malik.
• Hell & High Water: Canada and the Italian Campaign. Lance Goddard.
• The Joy of Revolution. Ken Knabb.
• Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History. Stephen Jay Gould.
• A Century of Noir. Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins.
• The History of Costa Rica. Ivan Molina & Steven Palmer.
• We CAN Change the World: The Real Meaning of Everyday Life. David G. Stratman.
• The Library at Night. Alberto Manguel.
• Pierre Berton: A Biography. A.B. McKillop.
• Beyond a Boundary. C.L.R. James.
• A People’s History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium. Chris Harman.
• The Scramble for Africa: White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. Thomas Pakenham.
• The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870. Hugh Thomas.
• All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity. Marshall Berman.
• The Iambics of Newfoundland: Notes from an Unknown Shore. Robert Finch.
• Amish Life. John A. Hostetler.
• Darwin and the Beagle. Alan Moorehead.
• Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. Noam Chomsky.
• Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography. William Lee Miller.
• The Ax. By Donald Westlake.
• On the Natural History of Destruction. W.G. Sebald.
• The God Delusion. Richard Dawkins.
• Don Quixote. Miguel de Cervantes.
• More Reading...

What I’ve Been Watching

• Limbo. 1999.
• Sunshine State. 2002.
• Invictus. 2009.
• The Thin Red Line. 1998.
• The Secret in Their Eyes. 2009.
• Ballast. 2008.
• Amal. 2007.
• Divided We Fall. 2000.
• Lemon Tree. 2008.
• Slumdog Millionaire. 2008.
• 1900.
• Monty Python’s Life of Brian. 1979.
• Padre padrone. 1977.
• The Death of a Cyclist. 1955.
• The Education of a Fairy. 2007.
• La Vie En Rose. Olivier Dahan. 2007.
• Honeydripper.John Sayles. 2007.
• Beshkempir (The Adopted Son). Aktan Abdykalykov. 1998.
• Occupation 101. Sufyan Omeish and Abdallah Omeish. 2007.
• Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others). Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. 2007. Ulrich Mühe.
• Roads to Koktebel. Directed by Boris Khlebnikov and Aleksei Popogrebsky. 2003. Gleb Puskepalis, Igor Csernyevics.
• Offside. Jafar Panahi. 2006.
• More Films...

Radical Digressions
Ulli Diemer’s Notebook

Are the police doing their job?

July 6, 2010 - #

It was good to see Naomi Klein tearing into the Toronto police for their violence and abuse of power at the recent G20 summit in Toronto. However, I can’t agree with her at all when she tells the police to “do your goddamned job”.

Fact is, the police ARE doing their job.

Their job is to protect the wealth and power of the ruling elite against any challenge. That involves – among other things – intimidating and suppressing anyone who is not respectful and subservient.

Upholding law and order in a society whose ‘order’ and legal system are based on inequality and oppression depends, first, on an ideological system that tries to make people believe capitalism is good or at least inevitable, and second, on using violence or the threat of violence to deter challenges to the power of the powerful.

The police are the enforcers of the capitalist system. No need to tell them to do their jobs – they’re already doing them, and they’ll keep on doing them as long as capitalism survives.

Labels: Police, The State.

Tactics of desperation: Using false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’
as a weapon to silence criticism of Israel’s behaviour

December 27, 2009 - #

For more than 60 years, Israel has engaged in a unceasing campaign to dispossess Palestinians of their land and their rights. Its ability to do this has depended on three factors in particular:

* overwhelming military superiority;
* keeping public opinion, especially in North America and Europe, on its side;
* making ordinary working-class Israeli Jews believe that it is in their interest to support Israel’s Zionist elite rather than making common cause with ordinary Palestinians.

Israel’s military dominance is unchallenged, thanks to unconditional support and limitless supplies of advanced military technology and equipment provided by the United States and its allies (including Canada). However, military dominance has not been able to achieve Israel’s ultimate goal: forcing Palestinians to stop resisting and to acquiesce in their dispossession and oppression. Israel’s relentless onslaught has been met by equally determined Palestinian resistance which, despite the odds, steadfastly refuses to accept the injustice of occupation.

This Palestinian resistance has called into being an ever-growing international network of support and solidarity. In dozens of countries and hundreds of communities around the world, organizations and movements have emerged to demand that Israel be made to adhere to international law and to basic principles of justice.

Israel and its supporters see these international campaigns as a huge threat. Israel has escaped the sanctions that have been applied to other states which commit human rights abuses and violate international law only because the United States automatically vetoes all attempts to hold Israel accountable. Israel is also crucially dependent on huge annual inflows of foreign aid, to the point where it is conceivable that the state would collapse if the flows of outside cash which prop it up were to be withdrawn.

Anything that undermines public support in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, therefore, threatens the external backing on which the Israeli state depends for its very existence. It is true that the governments which turn a blind eye to Israel’s violations of international law mostly ignore popular opinion in their own countries as well, but this could change if support for Israel were to become a serious political liability. In this regard, what is particularly worrisome from Israel’s point of view is the fact that support for Israel among Jews in the United States and Canada, especially among younger Jews, has declined dramatically. If Jews stop supporting Israel, then all foreign support is in jeopardy.

Threats to Israel’s international legitimacy bring with them an even greater internal danger: the danger that Israeli Jews will themselves start seeing the Zionist formula – in essence, a militarized apartheid state holding down the Palestinian population by force – as a dead end.

If working-class Israeli Jews were to see their interests as being different from those of the ruling elite – if they come round to the view that their long-term interests will be better served if they join Palestinians in working for a democratic secular state with equal rights for Palestinians and Jews – Israel’s ruling class would find itself in the same untenable position that the white elite in apartheid South Africa faced in the early 1990s. Already, Israel’s rulers are debating what to do about the ‘demographic threat’ they are facing: Israeli Jews are leaving the country in increasing numbers to move to other countries, while the Palestinian population continues to increase.

The Palestinian resistance, and the growing international support which it has attracted, have had a substantial effect in changing the way Israel is perceived. Increasingly, international public opinion is no longer willing to turn a blind eye to ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, systematic humiliations, imprisonment, torture, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians, children as well as adults.

Faced with the erosion of its credibility and support, the Israeli state has lashed out by using ever-increasing repression against the non-violent Palestinian resistance. One of the centres of this resistance is the village of Bil’in, which has been fighting the expansion of an illegal Israeli settlement on its land with weekly non-violent protests for more than five years now, protests which have turned Bil’in into an international symbol of non-violent resistance. The Israeli state has been using ever more extreme tactics of harassment and brutality to attempt to crush the village and put an end to the protests, which it correctly believes are causing substantial harm to Israel’s international image. Similar tactics of harassment and imprisonment are being used against other Palestinians who resist, as well as against Jewish Israelis and international solidarity activists who support the Palestinian cause.

At the same time as it attempts to crush internal resistance, the Israeli state, aided by its supporters in the United States and Canada, has launched extremely aggressive and well-financed propaganda campaigns abroad whose goal is to counteract the decline in support for Israel.

A telling characteristic of these campaigns is that they by and large do not focus on attempting to justify Israel’s behaviour. One has to assume that the architects of the propaganda efforts realize that it is no longer possible to explain war crimes and human rights abuses in a way that the international public will accept.

Instead, the focus has shifted to attempting to shut down criticism of Israel by targetting the most outspoken critics with crude smear tactics and outright censorship.

On a growing number of campuses, for example, this has involved harassment and firing of outspoken professors (e.g. Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel), as well as attempts to ban events such as ‘Israeli apartheid week’.

In Canada, we are now seeing an attempt to silence criticism of Israel by labelling all such criticism as ‘anti-Semitism’ and therefore as hate speech. This tactic has a triple purpose: to suppress public awareness of what Israel is doing; to discredit critics by smearing them as ‘anti-Semitic’, and to keep Jews onside by frightening them with the spectre of anti-Semitism.

In Canada, the Harper government, fanatically pro-Israel, is fully involved in this effort. It has cut funding to groups which have supported Palestinians in their quest for justice, and it has set up a Parliamentary body charged with coming up with the legal rationale for making it illegal to criticize Israel.

If the Harper government is successful in getting its way, statements such as the following, all of them expressions of generally accepted principles of human rights and international law, will henceforth be classified as anti-Semitic hate speech in Canada:

‘A state must be the state of all its citizens.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it implies that the Israeli state has a duty to serve and represent all of its citizens equally, Palestinians as well as Jews.

‘Everyone born in a state, and everyone who has been a permanent resident for a specified and reasonable period of time, is entitled to citizenship.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it would mean that Palestinians under the rule of the Israeli state have the right to be citizens of Israel.

‘All citizens of a state must be equal under the law, equally entitled to the rights, privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. A state may not favour, or discriminate against, citizens, on the grounds of religion, ethnicity, or race.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it implies that Israel has to dismantle its discriminatory, apartheid-style system of laws.

‘Every state must accept its internationally recognized borders and must renounce all claims on territory outside of its borders.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it would mean that Israel would have to stop seizing land beyond its borders.

‘All states must abide by international law, including the Geneva conventions, laws against collective punishment, laws against torture, etc.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it implies that Israel has to stop engaging in ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and other violations of international law.

‘Refugees have a right to return to the lands from which they were expelled by an invading army or occupying power.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it means that the Palestinian refugees expelled from their homeland by Israel must be allowed to exercise their right of return as guaranteed by international law.

‘Sanctions should be applied to those who violate international law.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it implies that Israel should face sanctions for engaging in collective punishment and ethnic cleansing, for practicing torture, for committing war crimes, for defying UN resolutions and World Court rulings, and for other illegal acts.

The attempt to outlaw criticism as Israel by labelling it as ‘anti-Semitism’ is a serious threat which needs to be exposed and challenged. At the same time, it should also be recognized as a tactic of desperation, a tactic that has become necessary because of the ever-growing opposition to the crimes of the Israeli state.

The resort to increasingly blatant open repression is a symptom of loss of control. In the past such tactics would not have been necessary because any criticism of Israel was confined to the outer fringes of public debate. Now it has become mainstream, and those who support an ethnically defined, apartheid-style Israeli state are feeling increasingly threatened. Those of us who support a democratic secular state should feel encouraged, even though the struggle is far from won.

Ulli Diemer
December 27, 2009

This article is also available in French, Arabic and Polish.

Related:
Amira Hass: Danger: Popular struggle
Britain’s Jews in crisis over national loyalty, identity and Israel
Jonathan Cook: Israel Seeks Ways to Silence Human Rights Groups
Art Young: Pro-Israel Lobby Alarmed by Growth of Boycott, Divestment Movement
Free Speech and Acceptable Truths
Murray Dobbin: Criticizing Israel isn’t anti-semitism
Paul Craig Roberts: Criminalizing Criticism of Israel
Jewish Canadians Concerned About Suppression of Criticism of Israel
Israel/Palestine: Resources for peace, justice, and human rights
Neve Gordon: On Palestinian Civil Disobedience
Michael Warschawski: Free Abdallah Abu Rahmah, Now!
Ali Abunimah: Why Israel Won’t Survive
Henry Lowi: Why Israeli Anti-Zionists do NOT “recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.”
Ulli Diemer: The single state solution
Ulli Diemer: Small countries, big crimes
Michael Neumann: What is Anti-Semitism?

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israeli Apartheid, Palestinians.

‘Free speech’ – as long as it doesn’t offend anyone

January 2009 - #

Last April Fool’s Day, I added my two cents’ worth to the ongoing debate about ‘Israeli apartheid’ by writing and distributing a statement purporting to come from an organization called ‘Alumni for Responsible Speech’.

As part of my work with Connexions (www.connexions.org) I maintain an online compilation of resources on Israel and Palestine, so I have become quite aware of the extent to which the tactics of the pro-Israel lobby are now aimed at shutting down criticism of Israel, rather than attempting to rebut it.

I have tended to see this as an indication that they know they are losing the debate. Faced with declining support for Israel’s behaviour even among Jews, and finding it increasingly difficult to come up with plausible arguments to defend Israel’s human rights abuses and violations of international law, they are resorting to straightforward attempts at intimidation and censorship – including the old stand-by of labelling any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.

The ‘Alumni for Responsible Speech’ satire took particular aim at recent developments at several Canadian universities, where administrators and faculty who like to pose as valiant defenders of academic freedom and free speech were showing themselves to be proponents of prohibition and censorship when it comes to ideas which they – or the university’s funders – find unpalatable.

At the University of Toronto, for example, pro-Israel faculty took out a full-page ad in the National Post urging the university administration to ban ‘Israeli apartheid week’ events from the campus. The U of T administration tried to get the Toronto police to do their dirty work for them by soliciting a ruling on whether it is ‘hate speech’ to accuse Israel of practicing apartheid. This craven eagerness to abandon the university’s responsibility to defend freedom of expression backfired when the cops proved to be more liberal than the university’s bureaucrats, telling the university that they saw no problem.

At McMaster University, the administration tried to ban the very use of the term “Israeli apartheid” on campus. This led to vigorous protests, including one from the student union at York University (which was also hosting Israeli Apartheid Week events) calling for the ban to be rescinded “in accordance with a basic commitment to freedom of expression and organization in the democratic context of the public university.” They went on to state that “This strange and unprecedented ban is a blatant violation of democratic freedoms of speech and dissent, and an attack on students’ right to organize. It is the position of the YFS and GSA that universities are sites where discussions and debates about difficult geopolitical questions should be promoted, not stifled. International controversy about use of the phrase ‘Israeli Apartheid‘ cannot be resolved through repression, but through ongoing intellectual exchange.”

My Alumni for Responsible Speech “statement,” on the other hand, mischievously took the position that universities should “tolerate free speech” only “as long as it doesn’t upset anyone.” It called on university administrations to “protect students and faculty from being confused by exposure to incorrect or harmful ideas” and suggested a number of pro-active measures (largely inspired by George Orwell’s 1984) including a University ‘Department of Acceptable Truths’ “to ensure that only safe ideas are taught”, as well as strong measures against “thought crimes”.

“The Alumni for Responsible Speech” satire made the rounds on the Internet, circulated on number of campuses, and received praise from people who enjoyed the way it skewered people who ‘support freedom of speech’ only for views they agree with.

In our times, however, satire has little chance of competing with reality. The battle over ‘Israeli apartheid week’ on campus had barely subsided when the York student union quoted above (“universities are sites where discussions and debates about difficult geopolitical questions should be promoted, not stifled”) waded back into the free speech fray. This time round, the same people who had fulminated about the “democratic freedoms of speech and dissent” and condemned those who would infringe “students’ right to organize” were deciding, by a unanimous vote, to prevent anti-abortion groups or individuals affiliated with them from organizing, leafleting, speaking, holding meetings, or engaging in other anti-choice activities.

Read the rest of the article here.

The shining beacon of democracy

January 13, 2009 - #

Busy though it is slaughtering Palestinians, the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ is still finding time to make its democratic structures even more perfect. The Israeli Central Elections Committee has voted to ban the two main Arab parties, the Balad Party and the United Arab List-Ta’al. The ban also prevents most of the current handful of Arab members of the Knesset from running for re-election in next month’s national election.

The two parties are being portrayed as traitors because they publicly oppose Israel’s ongoing attack on Gaza. However, the main reason for the ban is that Balad’s stated goal is to “transform the state of Israel into a democracy for all its citizens, irrespective of national or ethnic identity.” In Israel, where non-Jews are second-class citizens by law, advocating equal rights for all citizens is seen as “denying Israel’s right to exist” as a Jewish state, and is therefore illegal.

The Israeli state is based on a system of legal apartheid, so this decision merely brings the electoral law into line with the rest. For example, 93% of the land in Israel is designated as state land, restricted to settlement, cultivation, and use by Jews only. Israel spends four times as much on the education of a secular Jewish child as on a Palestinian child, and twelve times as much on a religious Jewish child. Non-Jews (except Druze and a few others who are considered ‘loyal’) are not allowed to join the armed forces so they are automatically excluded from the benefits that are available only to people who have served in the military.

Note: The ban was subsequently overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

Related link: Israel/Palestine: Resources for peace, justice, and human rights

Labels: Apartheid, Arab-Israeli Issues, Israel, Israeli Apartheid, Palestinians.

Small countries, big crimes

January 10, 2009 - #

As I write this, the “world’s most humane army” is once again demonstrating its humanity, this time by slaughtering half-starved refugees in the Gaza ghetto, the open-air prison in which Israel has kept one-and-a-half million people interned for more than 40 years.

The killing frenzy is being matched by equally frenzied efforts by Israel’s propaganda apparatus – which includes most of the North American media – to portray Israel’s crimes against humanity as necessary acts of self-defense.

One of the stock phrases Israel’s apologists repeat, parrot-like, is that Israel is “a small country”. The idea is to make us feel sympathy for Israel, the plucky little country standing up to dangerous foes. But what does it actually mean to say that Israel is “a small country?”

Does it mean it’s hard to find parking spots for the thousands of tanks, armoured vehicles, self-propelled artillery, and other equipment that comprise Israel’s massive armed forces? Is that why Israel keeps sending them into its neighbours’ territories?

Or does it mean that the pilots in Israel’s ultra-modern air force have to be careful not to bump into each other when they return from bombing schools and hospitals and houses in the Gaza Strip or Lebanon? Or is it that Israel’s size makes it difficult to find enough suitable locations to deploy the hundreds of nuclear weapons in its arsenal?

More likely, it’s a psychological defense mechanism Israelis use to persuade themselves that they have the right to keep seizing and occupying other people’s land and to use extreme violence against anyone who resists.

The “small country” ploy becomes much less plausible when one remembers that some of the most brutal colonialist powers of modern times have been small countries with small populations.

Portugal’s population was around one million when Portugal subjugated and largely destroyed the indigenous people of Brazil, who numbered at least five million when the Portuguese conquest began. Superior military technology combined with utter ruthlessness enabled the Portuguese to prevail there, and in its other colonies in Africa, India, and the Pacific.

Tiny Holland, with fewer than two million people but with a large and powerful navy and modern weapons, was able to take over and rule the territories that became the Dutch East Indies and the Dutch West Indies.

Belgium, another little country with modern military technology, ruled over the vastly more populous Belgian Congo, crushing resistance with methods that resulted in the death of half the native population within 25 years.

With its reliance on modern military technology to crush indigenous opposition, Israel follows the model of these earlier colonial-settler states in many ways. But it has one additional advantage that none of them had: the patronage of the ultimate imperial power: the United States. Given the role of the United States in funding Israel’s economy (Israel is the largest aid recipient in the world) and in sustaining the superiority of the Israeli military, it becomes meaningless to call Israel “a small country” – one might as accurately call it a huge military base.

One has to hope that enough Israelis come to understand, sooner rather than later, that there is no future in living in an armed camp that is always preparing for the next war. We for our part have to make sure that they understand that the world will not accept an apartheid state ruling over the Palestinian people by force.

Ulli Diemer
January 10, 2009

Related links:
Jonathan Cook: Outcry Over Israel’s War Crimes
Adri Nieuwhof and Daniel Machover: Abettors of war crimes will be held accountable
Uri Avnery: Israel Is Losing This War
Tony Karon: The War Isn’t Over, But Israel Has Lost
Justin Podur: Turn off the Canadian Media, Please
Rick Salutin: Olive oil, opposition and Gaza
The single state solution
Israel/Palestine: Resources for peace, justice, and human rights
Books on Palestine: Explaining the Israel-Palestine conflict

Labels: Colonialism, Gaza Strip, Israel, Palestine.

Sole offender?

December 17, 2008 - #

“The journalist who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush is being hailed as a hero by some Iraqis, but he is a disgrace to his profession and should be fired by his employer.”
– Globe & Mail Editorial, December 16, 2008

Let’s see now. When an Iraqi journalist throws his shoe at the commander-in-chief of the forces that invaded and continue to occupy his country, the Globe huffily calls the reporter a disgrace to his profession and says he should be fired.

Yet when journalists and editors all across North America uncritically disseminated the lies about weapons of mass destruction which that same commander-in-chief used to justify his illegal invasion of Iraq, the Globe didn’t call for anyone to be fired.

If the Globe were serious about journalistic ethics, shouldn’t it be calling for several hundred credulous journalists and editors across North America, including several employed by the Globe & Mail, to lose their jobs for their culpability in acting as cheerleaders for an invasion which caused the deaths of more than one million Iraqis?

Ulli Diemer
December 17, 2008

Related:
The Iraq Crisis in Context

Labels: Double Standards, Iraq Media Coverage, Journalism Ethics, Media Bias, Shoes, Footwear.

Why make a fuss about the murder of a brown-skinned Muslim girl?

December 16, 2008 - #

The November issue of Toronto Life carries an article by Mary Rogan, “Girl, Interrupted: The Brief Life of Aqsa Parvez”, which tells the story of a sixteen-year-old Toronto girl who left her parents’ home after disagreements with her father, was lured back home, and was then killed. Her father and brother have been charged with her murder.

The Toronto Life story, which characterized the murder as an “honour killing” because of the circumstances, involving clashes over the girl’s lifestyle choices – has predictably come under attack from the usual self-appointed gatekeepers of acceptable public discourse. The blinkered zealots of multiculturalism claim that the article is anti-Muslim because – wait for it – it draws attention to violence against Muslim girls.

Ironically, the dogmatists who seek to sweep this issue under the rug describe themselves as ‘feminist’, but theirs is a peculiar form of feminism, a version which condemns violence against women in principle, but seeks to silence those who speak out about violence against Muslim women.

The double standard is sad, but perhaps it is not surprising. History gives us numerous examples of social movements which come, over time, to adopt positions directly opposed to the principles on which they were founded. It appears this has happened with those feminists who argue that we shouldn't make a fuss about the ‘honour killing’ of a brown-skinned Muslim girl. However, the fact that those who take this position cloak themselves in progressive rhetoric doesn’t make their attitude any less racist or any less misogynist.

What is particularly distressing is the way the hard-core multiculturalists betray the very people they claim to be defending. Progressive groups and individuals within Muslim communities are struggling hard against fundamentalism and for women’s rights – and meanwhile the multiculturalists are busily allying themselves with the most reactionary leaders and change-resistant institutions in those communities. Leaders of a movement which used to stand with the oppressed and powerless against patriarchal power structures are now on the other side, providing cover for those power structures. They have become part of the problem.

Ulli Diemer
December 16, 2008

También disponible en español: ¿Por qué protestar por el asesinato de una chica musulmana de piel oscura?
Also available in Arabic.
Also available in Chinese.
Also available in Portuguese.

Related links:
Women Living Under Muslim Laws
The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women

Labels: Feminism, Double Standards, Multiculturalism, Muslim Communities, Violence Against Women and Children, Women and Islam, Women’s Rights.

If you liked Mike Harris you’ll love Stephen Harper with a majority

October 7, 2008 - #

“What Canadians are worried about right now is not the job situation, not losing their home like in the U.S. What they're worried about is they see the stock-market problems. We see big drops in the stock market in the energy sector, in the commodities sector.”
– Stephen Harper, October 2, 2008

“I think there’s probably a lot of great buying opportunities emerging in the stock market as a consequence of all this panic.”
– Stephen Harper, October 7, 2008

“In terms of the unemployed... don’t feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don’t feel bad about it themselves, as long as they’re receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.”
– Stephen Harper, June 1997

“We will oppose ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and its targets. We will work with the provinces and others to discourage the implementation of those targets. And we will rescind the targets when we have the opportunity to do so.”
– Stephen Harper, November 22, 2002

“Monopolies in the public sector are just as objectionable as monopolies in the private sector. It should not matter who delivers health care, whether it is private, for profit, not for profit or public institutions.”
– Stephen Harper, Oct. 1, 2002

“You’ve got to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from eastern Canada: people who live in ghettoes and who are not integrated into western Canadian society.”
– Stephen Harper, January 22, 2001

“I don’t need Newfoundland and Labrador to win an election.”
– Stephen Harper, November, 2007

“Atlantic Canada’s culture of defeat will be hard to overcome.”
– Stephen Harper, May 29, 2002

“If you’re going to make a new business investment in Canada, and you’re concerned about taxes, the last place you will go is the province of Ontario.”
– Jim Flaherty, Finance Minister in the Harper government, February 29, 2008

“Westerners, but Albertans in particular, need to think hard about their future in this country. After sober reflection, Albertans should decide that it is time to seek a new relationship with Canada.... Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status, led by a second-world strongman appropriately suited for the task.... Having hit a wall, the next logical step is not to bang our heads against it. It is to take the bricks and begin building another home – a stronger and much more autonomous Alberta.”
– Stephen Harper, December 8, 2000

“Whether Canada ends up as one national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion.... And whether Canada ends up with one national government or two governments or ten governments, the Canadian people will require less government no matter what the constitutional status or arrangement of any future country may be.”
– Stephen Harper, Speech to the Colin Brown Memorial Dinner, National Citizens Coalition, 1994

“I don’t know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans.”
– Stephen Harper, March 25 2002

“This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of public opinion... In my judgment Canada will eventually join with the allied coalition if war on Iraq comes to pass.”
– Stephen Harper, January 29, 2003

“We should have been there shoulder to shoulder with our allies.”
– Stephen Harper on the invasion of Iraq, April 11, 2003

“These proposals included cries for billions of new money for social assistance in the name of “child poverty” and for more business subsidies in the name of “cultural identity”. In both cases I was sought out as a rare public figure to oppose such projects.”
– Stephen Harper, The Bulldog, National Citizens Coalition, February 1997

“Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it.”
– Stephen Harper, speech to the Council for National Policy, June 1997

“The Liberals may blather about protecting cultural minorities, but the fact is that undermining the traditional definition of marriage is an assault on multiculturalism and the practices in those communities.”
– Stephen Harper, Hansard, February 18, 2005

Labels: Canadian politics, Neo-conservatism.

Creatures of habit and adventurous spirits

September 29, 2008 - #

The scene: deep underground, on the westbound platform of Bathurst Station on Toronto’s subway system. Most of us have made our way down here by entering through the station doors, walking across the station, taking a long staircase down to the subterranean concourse, trudging to the other end of the concourse, and finally taking another long set of stairs down to the platform. There we stand, a patient flock, commuters following our fixed routines, waiting for the next train to come along and take us to accustomed destinations.

One individual on the platform, however, stands out from the tame bunch gazing quietly into space. He – or she, it’s hard to tell – has an agenda. Walking this way and that, alert and energetic, he is exploring, picking out details and opportunities the rest of us are oblivious to.

Once I spot him, I watch him for a while, full of admiration for his pluck, his spirit of adventure, and his skill at finding treasures in the unlikeliest places. Then the train arrives, and everyone except him troops on board. I look back and see him continuing his exploration of the platform, comfortable and at home, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a pigeon to make his living fifty feet underground.

Ulli Diemer
September 29, 2008

Have you heard the one about the negligent official and the obtuse columnist?

September 21, 2008 - #

The newspaper columnist Christie Blatchford, who can reliably be counted on the miss the point whenever ethical issues arise, has come rushing to the defense of Gerry Ritz, the beleaguered Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. Mr. Ritz has been amusing himself by cracking jokes about the recent listeria outbreak, which has killed 19 people to date.

According to Ms Blatchford, black humour is a perfectly normal response to grim situations, so we should lay off Mr. Ritz.

Well, yes, Christie, it is normal, and normally such jokes, told in private, wouldn’t be a big deal. But here’s the difference: Gerry Ritz and his cabinet colleagues were responsible for ensuring the safety of Canada’s food production system, and they failed to do so. On the contrary, they pushed through changes which compromised the safety of the system, over the objections of their own experts.

When people die as a consequence of your failures, joking about it just isn’t on. A pilot who makes a fatal mistake and crashes the plane doesn’t stand in front of the cameras and crack jokes while behind him the corpses of his passengers are being dragged off the tarmac. And a blundering cabinet minister whose government presided over a disaster it was responsible for preventing shouldn’t be telling jokes about the resulting deaths while the bodies of the victims are being buried.

Ulli Diemer
September 21, 2008

Labels: Food safety, Deregulation, Humour, Public Safety.

Contaminated Meat, Contaminated Water: From Walkerton to Listeria

August 29, 2008 - #

On the long weekend in May 2000 I was in Walkerton, Ontario, unaware, as was everyone else, that the town’s water supply had been contaminated in the aftermath of the recent flooding. When people started falling sick with e.coli, I was shocked – and selfishly grateful that the water I had been drinking came from a spring in nearby Mildmay, not from Walkerton’s municipal supply.

Afterwards, I wrote an article: Contamination: The Poisonous Legacy of Ontario’s Environmental Cutbacks, which looked at how Ontario’s neo-conservative Harris government had systemically undermined the province’s water safety system in the name of eliminating “red tape.” I also wrote another article, Abandoning the Public Interest, which looked at a number of instances where the neoliberal drive to deregulate and privatize had cost lives internationally.

The current listeria outbreak, leading to at least nine confirmed deaths so far, has the feel, as Yogi Berra put it, of “deja vu all over again”. Once again, we are hearing about companies and industry associations lobbying for fewer inspections and less ‘interference’, and about a compliant right-wing government only too eager to give them what they want. Even some of the names are the same: three of the ministers responsible for the disasters perpetrated by the Harris government are now members of Stephen Harper’s cabinet: Tony Clement as Minister of Health, John Baird as Minister of the Environment, and Jim Flaherty as Minister of Finance.

It’s a safe bet that the outbreak will eventually be blamed on “human error” on someone’s part, rather than on the laxer inspection standards that the federal government has instituted at the behest of the industry. In the same way, responsibility for the Walkerton disaster was pinned in part on the unqualified alcoholic who had been put in charge of running the system, with little questioning of how such a person could be hired in the first place, and then left to run the system without being monitored by the province’s water safety authorities. It’s like being told that a plane crash happened because the pilot was a drunk who didn’t have a valid pilot's license, and not asking who hired the pilot and allowed him to fly the plane.

I’ve said these things before, so in the spirit of deja vu all over again, here are the two articles, again:

Contamination: The Poisonous Legacy of Ontario’s Environmental Cutbacks

This is a story about fanaticism and death.

The dead are buried in fresh graves in the cemeteries of Walkerton, Ontario. The fanatics are very much alive, going about their daily business in the Premier’s office and the cabinet room in Queen’s Park, the seat of Ontario’s government.

Investigators are still working to determine exactly how deadly E. coli 0157 bacteria found their way into Walkerton’s water in May, causing at least seven and perhaps 11 deaths, and leaving hundreds seriously ill. The story of the Walkerton tragedy is not, however, primarily a story about Walkerton at all. This was no unforeseen accident. It was the predictable – and predicted – result of deliberate policy decisions which gravely compromised the safety of Ontario’s drinking water.

The broader story of Walkerton is the story of repeated warnings, from many different experts, officials, and agencies, that the Harris government’s environmental cutbacks were putting public health in jeopardy. And it is the story of how those warnings were dismissed or ignored.

Step by step, a disaster was being prepared. The only question was where, and when, it would happen. Unluckily for Walkerton’s citizens, it was in their town that the system broke down, with fatal results.

To understand how a government could utterly ignore, over a period of five years, the warnings of its own environmental experts, it is necessary to know the mentality of the Harris government, a highly centralized administration where all important decisions are made by Premier Mike Harris and a small group of militantly ideological advisors, and where all outside input is scorned.

This is a government which prides itself on “making unpopular decisions,” on never compromising, on never changing course. The man in charge, Mike Harris, is as determined as the captain of the Titanic, disdainfully brushing off ridiculous warnings of icebergs and giving orders to push on, full steam ahead....

Read the rest of the story here.

Abandoning the Public Interest

The date: Saturday, May 13, 2000. The weather: warm, sunny with cloudy periods.

The time: 3:15 pm in the Central European Time Zone, 9:15 am in North America's Eastern Time Zone.

Time to play outside if you’re a child. Time to relax if you’re an adult, do some housework, have a cup of coffee or a nice cold glass of water.

Time, if you live in the small Canadian town of Walkerton, Ontario, to walk down Durham Street to join your neighbours and look at the surging Saugeen River, which has flooded its banks after unusually heavy rains the previous day and night. The local park, a couple of adjacent streets, and several unlucky cars, are underwater, but, since everyone is safe, the property damage doesn’t seem too tragic.

Time, if you live on the Tollensstraat in the Dutch town of Enschede, to stop what you’re doing and watch the fire engines race by, headed for the paper factory down the street where, it seems, a fire has broken out.

Time, just enough time, to grab the children and run back into the house when two explosions at the burning factory rattle windows and send debris hurtling skyward.

Five short minutes later, time runs out....

Read the rest of the story here.

Labels: Food safety, Deregulation, Public Safety, Walkerton.

Inclusion or exclusion?

August 10, 2008 - #

I always enjoy reading Spacing, the magazine devoted to Toronto’s urban landscape. The articles are varied and usually well-written, the photos and illustrations excellent, the politics progressive, and the overall sensibility is pro-bicycle, pro-pedestrian, and against corporate domination of public space.

These are values and interests I share, yet I found myself troubled by the Spring issue’s “Placemakers” feature, headlined “Creating a Sense of Belonging”, which profiled an advocate and community organizer who was recently awarded a social justice fellowship by a Toronto foundation. I don’t want to single out this individual, who by all accounts is a sincere person working hard to do what she believes will make her community a better place. At any rate, the ideas she expresses are common currency, and what disturbs me about them is precisely that they have been so uncritically accepted by so many people.

The article’s stated theme is that we need to make it possible for Canada’s diverse “communities” to feel that they “belong”, and that “Social inclusion isn’t rearranging chairs on the Titanic. It’s building a new vessel.”

To illustrate what she means, the organizer talks about a community meeting at which a Punjabi-speaking man mentioned to her that he and his friends were limited in their use of the local park on summer evenings because the only public washroom, in the nearby library, closed at 5:00 pm. She suggested they tell the local city councillor, who was present at the meeting, about this concern. With the advocate acting as interpreter, they submitted the problem to the politician, who duly promised to see if she could do something about it.

According to the organizer, this was an empowering moment for the man who raised the problem because it showed him that, even though he doesn’t speak English, “what you say and do can make a difference.” The broader conclusion she draws is that this exchange “shows the problem of diversity and pluralism... The problem is not that people are not engaged, the problem is we are not where the engagement is taking place.” She says that the places immigrant communities talk about politics are their mosques, community centres, parks, and private homes. The organizer says that the politician who was present at this particular meeting “is a very nice person, but what difference does it make if she can’t understand her constituents?” “What I suggest,” she says, “is that rather than creating structures where you expect people to participate, that you actually do the hard work and find out where the communities are at, and listen to what they’re saying in the language they are saying it. I know it’s tough and I know it’s difficult, but hell, that’s the messiness of plurality.” Only in this way, she says, can we build a society in which “me, my kids, other immigrants and refugees, and other marginalized people and people of colour” can have a “sense of belonging”.

One hesitates to say anything negative about the feel-good moment this advocate describes. After all, many of us have experienced occasions where finding a washroom has been an exceedingly urgent priority, and most of us would agree that having more access to more public washrooms is all for the good.

But is this what empowerment is about? Telling a politician about a locked washroom, and receiving a promise that they will see what they can do about it?

And what kind of a model of “pluralism” is it that this community advocate, and so many others like her, are seeking to foster? Toronto’s three million residents speak more than 100 languages: the city’s official website provides information in 140 different languages. Do we seriously think that it is either possible or desirable for Toronto’s small cohort of elected officials to make the rounds of thousands of mosques, churches, temples, and synagogues, not to mention community centres, parks, and private homes, and listen to what people are saying “in the language they are saying it?”

The idea is so absurd that I doubt that even those who espouse it believe in it. The scenario they really have in mind, one suspects, is the one that actually unfolds in the above story: a community leader, someone who speaks English fluently, is selected, or selects him- or herself, as a spokesperson, and then tells the politicians what they think the people in their community need and want. The empowerment that is really taking place might more accurately be described as the empowerment of a layer of activists who go on to positions as official representatives of “their” communities, or to paid jobs at publicly funded community agencies.

I don’t denigrate the valuable services provided by many of these agencies, nor do I question the dedication and hard work of the people who work for them. But I certainly question this model of “empowerment.” How can people be empowered if they don’t speak the working language of the society they live in? Here, in English Canada, the language of power in all its forms is English – the language of government, of politics, of business and work, of the major media, of higher education. How can one speak of empowerment and inclusion and creating a sense of belonging, while simultaneously advocating a social model that assumes that citizens won’t, and shouldn’t need to, acquire a working knowledge of English? This is a model that fosters division, exclusion and powerlessness, not inclusion and empowerment.

To be clear: I think it is good and desirable that we make it possible for people who don’t speak English to access essential services in their own language. I’m glad that the city’s website has information in 140 different languages. I’m glad we have interpreters for people who need help accessing health care or the legal system. I enjoy living in a city where people from around the world mix together.

But I believe that leaders who advocate a vision of distinct “communities” that speak different languages, keep apart from each other, and communicate with the structures of the larger society only through interpreters, are doing more harm than good. What they are advocating is not diversity but entrenched division.

While they may have the best of intentions, they are actually disempowering people by encouraging and perpetuating a situation in which people relate politically and socially only to other members of their own ethnic or religious community. And one can’t help noticing that the people who advocate this model don’t adhere to it themselves: they have learned English, and they don’t wait for the politicians to come and listen to them in their own communities: they go to where the action is and push for what they want, in English.

The truth is, the concept of a society consisting of “communities” identified by their ethnicity, language, or religion is the very antithesis of real empowerment. It is a model that presupposes that “making a difference” is about nothing more than lobbying for more services for your own ethnic group. When you think about it, that is really a narrow, conservative, and even demeaning vision of what it means to be a citizen.

Real change, real empowerment, can only happen when people work together on the basis of common goals regardless of their ethnic or religious background. For example, something that unites many immigrants – and many working people born in Canada – is a common experience of low pay and poor working conditions. The labour movement, the organized expression of the struggle to improve the lives of working people, has been successful to the extent that unions have been able to create solidarity among workers regardless of their background. Employers, on the other hand, have always sought to divide and rule by pitting workers against each other according to their race, language, or religion. Who does a worker have more in common with: an exploitative employer who belongs to the same ethnic group or religion, or other workers who come from totally different backgrounds but who face the same exploitation in the workplace?

Consider other issues. The Harper government is busy sabotaging action on global warming, pushing privatization of government services, signing up for each and every measure designed to promote corporate globalization, and providing unquestioning support to the Bush administration in international affairs.

When this is happening, do we want to sign on to a vision that seems to assume that ethnic “communities” have no interest in these issues, and no role in the struggles that are being waged around them? Are these issues that can be addressed by a model that assumes that politicians will come to community meetings, listen to the concerns expressed, and then ‘see what they can do’?

Let’s be serious: when have the people who hold power – corporate executives and politicians – ever “listened” to anything that contradicts their interests or their ideologies? When have people with power ever yielded to anything except the opposing power of mass movements mobilized to challenge them in a direct and forceful way?

As an immigrant myself, and as a person whose first language is not English, I frankly find it insulting when people suggest that immigrants are only interested in narrow parochial concerns that affect their own “community”. As an atheist and a secularist, I am disturbed when I hear people suggesting that in a secular society like Canada, it is desirable for political activity to be centered around churches, mosques, and temples. As a socialist who believes in working to get rid of capitalism, I am not impressed with anyone who thinks that empowerment is what happens when a politician promises to see what she can do about keeping a washroom open an hour longer.

I think we need a vision that looks to bringing people together to fight for real change, not a vision of keeping people isolated in their communities. That is my idea of what it means to forget about rearranging the chairs on the Titanic and instead work together to “build a new vessel”.

Ulli Diemer
August 10, 2008

This article is also available in Chinese French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Related link:
Kenan Malik: Against Multiculturalism.

Labels: Communities, Diversity, Identity Politics, Language and Immigration, Multiculturalism, Political Participation.

Free speech for me – you shut up

August 3, 2008 - #

Apologists for censorship invariably profess noble motives. They tell us that of course they are in favour of freedom of speech ‘in principle’ – then they go on to explain that ‘the greater good’ requires denying freedom of speech to people whose views they dislike.

Donald Gutstein, writing in This Magazine (Franken-Steyn’s monster, July-August 2008) is no exception. Gutstein doesn’t like what Mark Steyn has to say, so he supports the McCarthyite human rights commissions who are ‘investigating’ Steyn’s opinions. Gutstein apparently finds it perfectly normal and acceptable – in fact desirable – for the state to appoint bureaucrats to decide what views Canadians should be permitted to read or hear.

Gutstein makes the point that some people – columnists employed by the corporate media, for example – are more able to make their views heard than ordinary citizens. True enough, though it’s also true that the four Muslim students who complained about Steyn’s article in Maclean’s got massive media coverage for their opinions, arguably far more than Steyn’s own views received.

What is perverse, however, is Gutstein’s assumption that the cure for our free speech deficit is to have even more limitations on freedom of speech. The corporate media suppress views they don’t like? Then let’s get the state into the censorship business too! The more censors, the better!

This of course is the classic position of wannabe totalitarians everywhere: the public can’t be trusted, so we, the superior ones, the ones who always know best, have to suppress anything that we consider to be offensive or dangerous.

This is reactionary crap. As George Orwell said, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” This applies to Mark Steyn as much as to anyone else. Personally, I think that Mark Steyn and Donald Gutstein are both purveyors of dangerous nonsense – and I think it is vital that they be able to express their opinions without fear of state censorship.

Indeed, the right to express offensive views is at the very heart of the principle of freedom of speech. Every conceivable opinion about every important subject will be always offensive to some people. Evolution, feminism, gay rights, criticism of Israel, anti-capitalism – these are all extremely offensive to many people. Do we want to encourage those who find them offensive to appeal to the human rights commissions to suppress those ideas? Is that the precedent we want to set?

I say no. The way to deal with offensive ideas is to argue against them and attempt to refute them, not to ban them.

It’s a pity that conservative columnists are taking a more principled position on this fundamental issue than people who like to portray themselves as progressives.

Ulli Diemer
August 3, 2008

Related:
Opposing Censorship
Free Speech and Acceptable Truths
Canadian Civil Liberties Association
PEN Canada
Index on Censorship

Labels: Censorship, Corporate Media, Double Standards, Free Speech, Freedom of Expression, Media Coverage of Minorities, Religion and Society.

Lady Martha’s story

June 12, 2008 - #

Normally, I delete the spam that gets past the filter into my mailbox as quickly as anyone. Tempting though it might be to realize my innermost fantasies of losing weight and getting a degree in any field I choose while having my breasts augmented and my penis enlarged, it never quite seems like the right moment to go for it.

But I do have a sneaking fondness for those occasional carefully crafted letters that tell a complete and compelling story. Some of these are almost works of literature, little Chekovian gems in their own way. If Alice Munro fell on hard times and had to support herself writing spam, these are the stories she would tell to get her hands on our banking information.

I recently received one from a certain Lady Martha. She plunges directly into her story:

“Here writes Lady Martha Stirling, suffering from cancerous ailment. I am married to Engineer Dennis Stirling an Englishman who is dead.” You can read her whole story here.

Lady Martha is a woman I feel an instant bond with. Burdened though she is with her own woes – she has had a stroke, her doctor has told her she has “limited days to live due to the cancerous problems”, and of course there is the unfortunate circumstance of the husband who is an Englishman who is dead – she nevertheless has made the time to do something very special for me.

I think what I like about Lady Martha is that she is interested in the good in me, not the bad. Whereas most spam is designed to prey on my weaknesses – my greedy desire to make a quick killing on the stock market, my insecurities about my penis, breasts, weight, and lack of education – Lady Martha has singled me out because she knows I am a good person. She has chosen me because she knows she can trust me to use the “10 Million Great Britain Pounds Sterling” she is prepared to deposit in my bank account not for my own selfish purposes, but “to fund the upkeep of widows, widowers, orphans, destitute, the down-trodden, physically challenged children, barren-women and persons who prove to be genuinely handicapped financially.”

I almost think that it’s this blog that has finally made people far and wide realize what a kind and trustworthy soul I am. How else to explain the fact that five days after Lady Martha’s letter arrived, I received, out of the blue, a very similar letter from one Lady Karen, who is also “married to an English man who is dead”. Her story is if anything even more tragic: her husband “died in a train bomb blast in Spain when he was going for his medical check up”, and sadly she too is suffering from “cancerous problems”. You can read her whole story here.

Lady Karen will be depositing 6 million Great British Pounds in my bank account. She says that her goal is “to put a smile on the face of the less privileged.”

And you know, she is doing just that.

Ulli Diemer
June 12, 2008

Proof that leprechauns exist

June 11, 2008 - #

One David Berlinski, of whose existence I was blissfully unaware until a few days ago, has written a book attacking atheism and science. It appears he doesn't think it's very nice that atheists dismiss religious beliefs as illogical and unsupported by evidence.

In his book, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, Berlinski deploys what he considers to be a devastating rebuttal against atheism. The gist of his argument is this:

(1) There have been atheists, such as Stalin, who did bad things.
(2) Therefore God exists.

One might be tempted to ask: Why doesn't religion get a substantial share of the blame for Stalin, given that Stalin spent his formative years in a religious seminary?

But leave that aside. This is an old argument, but the logic of it is seductive for all that, and promises to lead us down many an attractive garden path. For example:

(1) Bad things have been done by people who don't believe in leprechauns.
(2) Therefore leprechauns exist.

Then again, one could as easily make the point that bad things have been done by people who believe in various gods. Is that an argument for the existence of those gods, or an argument against? I'm not sure - I personally think it's probably an argument for the existence of leprechauns. My kind of leprechauns, that is. Not those other kinds of leprechauns those heretics believe in.

And don't even get me started on those a-leprechaunists and their scientific pretensions.

Still... I wonder how much Berlinski is making from his book...?

Labels: Atheism, Logic, Religion.

From the people who rescued the victims of Hurricane Katrina...

June 2, 2008 - #

The United States – so the media report – has accused the Burmese government of “criminal neglect” in its response to the recent cyclone. The accusation is undoubtedly true, and the U.S. government is certainly splendidly qualified when it comes to recognizing criminal neglect. Still, the chutzpah is enough to turn one’s stomach.

And is there anything left to say about the blank-faced servility with which the media report the U.S. government’s statement without so much as whispering the words “Hurricane Katrina”?

The single-state solution

May 16, 2008 - #

Globe and Mail columnist Marcus Gee dismisses the growing movement for a single democratic secular state encompassing Israel and Palestine with the claim that “Jews could never feel safe in a country where they were a minority. Many will simply leave.”

Has it escaped his notice that most Jews choose to live in countries where they are a minority? Any Jew anywhere in the world is free to fly to Tel Aviv and instantly claim Israeli citizenship. Yet despite Israel’s strenuous efforts to encourage Jewish immigration, very few Jews make this choice. Most of the world’s Jews clearly prefer to be citizens of secular states like Canada, the United States, Britain, France, and Argentina, even though they are a minority in those countries.

In fact, some 700,000 Israeli Jews, around 13% of the Jewish population, have left Israel – to move to countries where they are in the minority. More than 100,000 Jews who came to Israel from the former Soviet Union have chosen to return to Russia or the Ukraine.

Indeed, the times have changed so dramatically that each year thousands of Israelis, many of them the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, are moving to Germany and taking out German citizenship. Who would ever have predicted this? Who would have thought sixty years ago that Europe, with its history of war and hatred, would one day be transformed into a single community in which long-time enemies would live together in peace? Yet it happened in Europe – and it can happen in the Middle East.

Bringing about a single secular state in which Jews and Palestinians have equal rights will not be easy, but ultimately it is the only solution to the conflict. A state based on respect for the human rights of all its citizens is a better safeguard against anti-Semitism and racism than one based on ethnic nationalism and inequality.

Ulli Diemer
May 16, 2008

Labels: Democracy, Democratization, Equality, Israel, Jews, Palestine, Rogue States.

Comparing evils

May 14, 2008 - #

Senator Romeo Dallaire told a Parliamentary committee yesterday that, “The minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties, in order to say that you're doing it to protect yourself and you are going against those rights and conventions, you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all.”

Predictably, Conservative MP Jason Kenney professed shock at the idea that anyone could compare the methods used by the U.S. in the name of "combatting terrorism" with the methods used by "the terrorists". According to Mr. Kenney, you can’t compare U.S. actions in the "war against terrorism" with al-Qaeda using “a 14-year-old girl with Down's syndrome” as a suicide bomber.

On one level, he is correct to say you can’t compare them, though not in the way he thinks. The “Down’s syndrome” claim was exposed as a fabrication within days, and quickly dropped by U.S. authorities. The bloody excesses of the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq, on the other hand, such as the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl by U.S. soldiers, are well documented facts. You can’t compare fabrications with facts.

On a broader level, Mr. Kenney is wrong in saying that you can’t compare U.S. behaviour with the behaviour of “people who blow up children”. On the contrary, it is an indisputable fact that U.S. bombs have blown up far more Iraqi children than al-Qaeda’s bombs. Al-Qaeda is willing to kill large numbers of innocent people, including children, in pursuit of its goals, and the U.S. is willing to kill large numbers of innocent people, including children, in pursuit of its goals. By what standard of morality are they not morally equivalent?

Labels: Al Qaeda, Human Rights Abuses, Imperialism, Terrorism, State Terrorism.

Free Speech and Acceptable Truths

April 1, 2008 - #

We have come into possession of the following document concerning
the debate about Israel Apartheid Week on university campuses.
We believe it will be of interest to our readers.

 

University of Toronto

Department of Acceptable Truths

 

April 1, 2008

To the Members of the University Community:

The University’s Department of Acceptable Truths has been asked to consider changes to university policies governing permitted free speech in the light of concerns that have been raised by faculty members, alumni, and wealthy funders.

Some of these concerns were expressed in a recent advertisement in the National Post signed by a number of professors, who have noted that they “take offence” at the use of the word ‘apartheid’ and have called on the University to ban events at which ‘Israeli apartheid’ is discussed.

The University has also been approached by an alumni organization, Alumni for Responsible Speech, who have expressed similar concerns and have suggested a number of policy changes to address them. The Alumni for Responsible Speech statement is attached below.

We invite your comments about how the University should respond to these concerns.

Please address your comments to:

Department of Acceptable Truths
University of Toronto
27 King's College Circle
Toronto ON M5S 1A1 Canada

 

 

The University of Toronto — Well-Disciplined Minds for a Well-Disciplined Future

 

---

Statement of the Alumni for Responsible Speech

For Immediate Release — April 1, 2008

We, the Alumni for Responsible Speech, stand committed to the principles of freedom of speech and academic freedom.

At the same time, we believe that we all have a responsibility to ensure that these freedoms are used responsibly. We oppose irresponsible free speech, and the misuse of academic freedom.

Alumni for Responsible Speech believe that universities should tolerate free speech as long as it doesn’t upset anyone, but we also believe that universities, as public institutions, have a duty to ensure a safe learning environment for students and faculty, and to take corrective action when free speech or academic freedom are misused in an irresponsible way.

Accordingly,

•  We support the University of Toronto faculty members who have called on the university to ban events criticizing Israeli apartheid.(1)

•  We applaud the administrators at McMaster University who acted to ban the use of the term “Israeli apartheid” on their campus.(2)

•  We commend the University of Toronto for asking permission from the Toronto Police Department before making meeting rooms available to groups expressing controversial opinions about Israel.(3) We deeply regret that the Toronto Police told the University that they saw no grounds for laying charges at this time against individuals who criticize Israel.

Alumni for Responsible Speech strongly support banning the use of the term “Israeli Apartheid”, as well as the banning of any events which criticize Israel. Such action would be positive first steps for the University to take.

However, Alumni for Responsible Speech believe that further measures are needed to stamp out the threat of divisive or unconstructive free speech which jeopardizes a safe learning environment through the promotion of harmful ideas.

We believe that most reasonable people would agree that free speech is irresponsible and should be prohibited:

1) If it offends one or more faculty members, administrators, or university funders, or if in the view of the university authorities there is a real and present danger that an event might be used to express opinions that might offend a funder or a member of the university community.

2) If it is used to make negative or disparaging statements about any of the university’s corporate partners, funders or sponsors, or about their labour practices, environmental records, or illegal actions.

3) If it is used to state facts which are unpleasant and which might, if stated publicly, make some members of the university community uncomfortable.

4) If it is used to criticize Israel’s human rights record or Israel’s violations of international law.

We therefore support the banning of words and phrases such as “Israeli apartheid” whose use clearly violates the principles of responsible free speech.

Additionally, we call on the University to ban other harmful or offensive language (see list below) and to prohibit all campus events at which these banned words and phrases might be used.

The university has a duty to provide students and faculty with a safe learning environment. It is therefore incumbent on the university administration to take pro-active measures to protect students and faculty from being confused or offended by exposure to incorrect or harmful ideas, and to ensure that only safe ideas are taught. Alumni for Responsible Speech believe that the following measures should be implemented immediately in order to safeguard the integrity of the campus environment:

• Initiate disciplinary action against any student organization, student newspaper, campus radio station, faculty member, or individual student, who engages in or facilitates criticism of Israel, or any other form of irresponsible speech, in a newspaper article, poster, leaflet, radio broadcast, website, Facebook group, scholarly journal, text message, public meeting, lecture, tutorial, or any conversation taking place on university property.

• Amend the University’s Code of Ethics to make it the duty of every member of the university community to report any instance of the use of banned phrases such as “Israeli apartheid” to the proper authorities. The use of these terms should be clearly identified as thought crimes and should be dealt in the same way as hate speech.

• Cleanse the university’s libraries of books which misuse academic freedom to document unpleasant facts about Israel.

• Reconfigure the University's computer networks to block access to Internet sites critical of Israel, since such sites by definition violate the principles of responsible free speech.
  

• Prohibit guest lectures by visiting professors who are known to abuse academic freedom by criticizing Israel.

• Mandate the University's Department of Acceptable Truths to establish a permanent Un-Israeli Activities Committee to ensure the responsible use of academic freedom on topics related to Israel. The committee would have the power to investigate anti-Israel statements or thoughts, compel testimony, administer loyalty oaths, and where necessary recommend the banning of books, websites, and individuals found to be in violation of university standards.
  

 

Appendix I - Terms to be Banned

Israel’s failure to comply with UN resolutions
— inconvenient truth, therefore referring to it is anti-Israel propaganda.

Israel’s failure to comply with Geneva convention governing the treatment of civilians in occupied territories
— referring to the fact that collective punishment is immoral, as well as illegal under international law, is a particularly pernicious form of anti-Israel propaganda.

Israel’s political prisoners
— any mention of the 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails is unacceptable.

Israel’s systematic use of torture
— some people are offended by this, so mentioning it, or the fact that Israel has been condemned for this by Amnesty International and other respected human rights groups, is contrary to the obligation to maintain a safe learning environment.

Israel’s nuclear weapons
— any mention of Israel’s nuclear arsenal or Israel’s overwhelming military superiority is anti-Israel because it contradicts the picture of Israel as a small threatened country.

State terrorism
— unacceptable because it suggests that using airplanes and tanks to kill Palestinian men, women, and children in the Occupied Territories is somehow wrong.

Occupation or Occupied Territories
— referring to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory is anti-Israel because it implies that Israel should have to abide by international law and totally withdraw from the territories it has occupied.

Gaza ghetto
— anti-Israel because it implies that there is something wrong with imprisoning people in a ghetto, shutting off their access to the outside world, and choking off their supplies of water, electricity, medicines, and other vital supplies.

Israel’s Borders
— this phrase is anti-Israel because it implies that Israel should accept defined international borders and stop building settlements outside its borders.

Mutual recognition
— anti-Israel because it implies that if Israel wants Palestinians to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a state, then Israel is equally obligated to recognize Palestine’s right to exist as a state.

Two-state solution
— anti-Israel because it implies that Israel should withdraw from Palestinian territory and permit the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

One-state solution
— anti-Israel because it implies that Jews and Palestinians should live together in a single democratic secular state.

The movement against apartheid in South Africa
— should not be mentioned because so many leaders of the movement, including Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and leading Jewish anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, claim that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is as bad as, or worse than, South African apartheid.

Rachel Corrie
— anti-Israel because of the implication that there is something wrong with using bulldozers to kill peace activists.

 

Appendix II - Books to be Banned: A Partial List

As stated, it will be necessary to cleanse the university’s libraries of inappropriate books. Alumni for Responsible Speech have identified the following books as a few of those that need to be cleansed immediately in order to guarantee a safe learning environment. No doubt the Un-Israeli Activities Committee, ably assisted by university librarians, will find it necessary to add many others to the list. In keeping with the University’s strong commitment to environmental responsibility, which we share, and in order to avoid contributing to global warming, we believe that these inappropriate books should not be disposed of in the traditional heat-producing way. Instead, they should be converted into biofuels to be used in Israeli bulldozers so that the Israel Defense Forces can flatten Palestinians homes and international peace activists in an environmentally friendly way.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. By Ilan Pappe, Oneworld, 2007
This book by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describes the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians from Israel during the war of 1948. It is a prime example of a book that needs to be banned for documenting unpleasant facts.

Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. By Joel Kovel. Pluto Press, 2007
Joel Kovel argues that the inner contradictions of Zionism have led Israel to a 'state-sponsored racism’ fully as incorrigible as that of aparth**d South Africa and deserving of the same resolution and that only a path toward a single-state secular democracy can provide the justice essential to healing the wounds of the Middle East. Unacceptable ideas throughout: should be banned.

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. By Jimmy Carter. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006
Former U.S. President Carter calls Israel’s treatment of Palestinians "aparth**d" and identifies continuing Israeli control of the occupied territories as the primary obstacle to peace. Uses the banned word aparth**d, therefore should be banned.

Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. By Norman Finkelstein. University of California Press, 2005
Finkelstein's books on Jewish history and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians are especially dangerous because his rigorous scholarship has been praised by leading scholars of Jewish history such as Raul Hilberg and Avi Schlaim and because the facts he reveals are irrefutable. There is no place for this book in a safe learning environment.

The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide. By Susan Nathan. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, New York, 2005.
Explores the unequal treatment of Palestinians living in Israel as second-class citizens in a theocratic state that discriminates against Israel’s Palestinian citizens in many ways. Offensive because it undermines Israel’s claims to be a western-style democracy; should therefore be banned.

Sharon and my Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries. By Suad Amiry. Granta, 2003.
A diary of everyday life under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, depicting the Kafkaesque absurdities and injustices Palestinians are forced to live with. Should be banned because it depicts Palestinians as human beings suffering under the Israeli occupation.

Appendix III - Websites to be Blocked: A Partial List

In order to prevent students from being exposed to forbidden words and harmful ideas about Israel on the Internet, the University will need to block the following websites on all the University's servers. We recommend the use of software developed in China to ensure safe Internet use. This software can also be used to monitor E-mail, IRC, and Facebook, and can be used in conjunction with search engine software to detect searches for banned words and ideas.

Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions —   www.icahd.org
An Israeli direct-action group working to oppose and resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories, also engaged in resistance activities in other areas - land expropriation, settlement expansion, by-pass road construction, the wholesale uprooting of fruit and olive trees and more. Could expose students to unpleasant facts and harmful ideas.

Physicians for Human Rights - Israel — www.phr.org.il/phr
An Israeli organization that condemns Israel’s human rights violations. Accessing their site could expose students to very unpleasant facts.

Gush Shalom — http://gush-shalom.org
An Israeli organization working to influence Israeli public opinion and lead it towards peace and conciliation with the Palestinian people. Could expose students to unpleasant facts and harmful ideas.

B’Tselem — www.btselem.org
The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Could expose students to unpleasant facts.

Refuser Solidarity Network — www.refusersolidarity.net
Supports Israelis who refuse to serve in the Occupation. Could expose students to dangerous ideas.

Electronic Intifada — http://electronicintifada.net/
Palestinian portal for information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its depiction in the media. News, commentary, analysis, and reference materials about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unsuitable for a safe learning environment because it exposes students to a Palestinian perspective.

Jewish Voice for Peace — www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org
Jewish organization founded to “support the aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians for security and self-determination”. Could expose students to the dangerous idea that Jews and Palestinians have a common future sharing the same land in peace and equality.

Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid — http://caiaweb.org
Uses the banned term “Israeli Aparth**d” in its name, and supports Israel Aparth**d Week.

Connexions — www.connexions.org
This website is a chronic violator of the principles of responsible free speech. It maintains an extensive selection of so-called “Resources for peace, justice, and human rights” including articles, books, videos, organizations, and websites, and claims that “a solution to the conflict is possible only on the basis of justice, mutual recognition, equality, and an end of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.” The content of this site is incompatible with a safe learning environment. Furthermore, Connexions has also been guilty of publishing and disseminating offensive satires.

 

Contact:
Ulli Diemer
Founding President
Alumni for Responsible Speech
E-mail:
www.connexions.org

 

Footnotes

1) National Post, March 22, 2008.
2) Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid website: www.caiaweb.org. “Campus Repression at McMaster”.
3) Canadian Jewish News, April 3, 2008. “U of T faculty ad calls for Israeli Apartheid Week ban”. Robert Steiner, a U of T spokesperson, is quoted as saying: “A couple of year ago, we sent the words ‘Israeli Apartheid’ to the Toronto police, to the hate crimes unit, for their assessment and investigation because we were ready to do whatever we needed to do if they assessed that it crossed the line [into hate speech], and they came back and said they had no basis on which to see this as hate speech.”

Labels: Academic Freedom, Apartheid, Censorship, Double Standards, Free Speech, Freedom of Expression, Israel, Israeli Apartheid, State Terrorism.

Margaret Somerville’s yucky logic

January 27, 2008 - #

Margaret Somerville is the founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and the Law at McGill University in Montreal. Someone, you might expect, who would bring sophisticated reasoning and careful logic to the analysis of morally complex issues.

Not so, it seems, when it comes to the issues on which Dr. Somerville has a strong personal bias. She threw herself into the battle against gay marriage, arguing that same-sex marriages are ‘unnatural’ because couples of the same sex can’t produce children ‘naturally’. Numerous critics have made the same obvious point: by this criterion, straight couples who are infertile or past childbearing age are also ‘unnatural’. And by what logic are children produced by artificial insemination ‘natural’ in a heterosexual marriage, but ‘unnatural’ in a lesbian relationship? Dr. Somerville has no reply, but keeps on repeating the same ‘unnatural’ argument at every opportunity nonetheless.

This past week, on the twentieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Morgentaler decision invalidating the existing abortion law, Dr. Somerville has offered up her thoughts on abortion, which she also opposes. Dr. Somerville claims that the ‘yuck reaction’ some people feel when contemplating abortion is evidence that abortion violates our innate “moral instinct”.

Now personally, I find that my ‘yuck reaction’ is triggered when I picture almost any medical-surgical procedure, be it brain surgery, an eye operation, or amputating a gangrenous toe. I interpret this not as a message from my deepest moral instincts, but as evidence of my personal squeamishness about blood and sharp objects. I wouldn’t consider my reaction to the ‘yuckiness’ of a medically appropriate procedure as an argument for banning it.

This is not to say that abortion is a trivial matter. Deciding whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy is no doubt a difficult decision for many women. It is one that they should be able to make on the basis of what is right for them, not on the basis of whether Margaret Somerville thinks it’s yucky.

Ulli Diemer
January 27, 2008

Labels: Abortion, Ethics, Logic.

Bad news: Unemployment is down and wages are up

November 3, 2007 - #

Normally, the corporate media are violently allergic to any suggestion that class conflict exists at all, let alone that it is fundamental to our capitalist economic system. However, in the business news one is more likely to encounter plain speaking.

A case in point is the Globe and Mail’s report on the fears and upset that October's economic data have sparked among economic forecasters and currency traders. The reasons for their worries? A fall in the unemployment rate, an increase in real wages, and a climb in the value of the Canadian dollar.

The data show that, during the month of October 2006, “the Canadian economy churned out 63,000 jobs, roughly five times the number that had been expected. The jobless rate in Canada fell to a 33-year low of 5.8 per cent, from 5.9 per cent in September, and the employment rate for adult women hit record levels.”

According to the Globe, currency traders had been hoping for action by the Bank of Canada to counteract these trends. “Instead, we get another blowout, and the jobless rate at a 33-year-low, and the average wage of a permanent employee is up 4.2 per cent and accelerating,” said David Watt, senior currency strategist at RBC Capital Markets. “You're sitting in the market looking at this, and you're like, there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop this.”

That’s right: they're upset because unemployment is down slightly and wages are up a little, and nothing is being done to stop it. If working people are better off, even only slightly, it’s bad news.

Labels: Class Conflict, Corporate Media, Media Bias, Unemployment, Wages.

Nothing personal, just business

November 2, 2007 - #

“A street entrepreneur or a life-destroying psychopath?” asks a review of the film American Gangster, which portrays the life of drug kingpin Frank Lucas.

How is that an either-or choice?

The Corporation, the film by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, demonstrates that the capitalist corporation “fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a ‘psychopath.’” As they put it, “the operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social ‘personality’: it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.”

Or, as Howard Scott so nicely put it, “a criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.” In a society whose dominant value system says that the only thing that matters is to get as much for yourself as possible, crime is an alternative form of entrepreneurship.

Labels: Capitalism, Corporations, Crime, Psychopathy.

Were Marx’s principles only skin deep?

October 31, 2007 - #

A British dermatologist has managed to get himself worldwide publicity with an article suggesting that Karl Marx’s painful skin condition may have caused him to say all those mean things about capitalism. “Skin disease causes tremendous upset,” said Prof. Sam Shuster. “He [Marx] was writing his big works like Das Kapital at a time when the disease was particularly bad and it was pretty clear that he was not in the best of moods when he was writing it.” According to Prof. Shuster, the disease, hidradenitis (known as ‘carbuncles’ in Marx’s time), “greatly reduced his self-esteem. This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing.”

That must have been quite the nasty skin condition, to have kept Marx in an uncompromisingly revolutionary frame of mind from the time of his 1844 manuscripts right up to his death in 1883.

Imagine how differently everything could have turned out if Prof. Shuster had been able to hop on a time machine and travel back in time to cure Marx of his skin ailment. Cured, too, of his hatred of oppression and injustice, Marx would then have felt no need to proclaim “workers of all lands, unite,” and or to imagine a future society governed by the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Instead, Marx and his life-long collaborator Friedrich Engels could have poured their energy into penning upbeat musicals extolling the lives of the wealthy – imagine such hits as Les Comfortables or Adam Smith, Superstar, or The Sound of Money – and made a fortune.

Pity.

Ulli Diemer
October 31, 2007

Labels: Karl Marx, Skin Conditions.

Syria's suspicious behaviour

October 26, 2007 - #

Today’s New York Times features a breathless exposé, widely picked up by other media, about Syria's “suspicious” cleanup of the Syrian site bombed by Israel on September 6. Before-and-after satellite photos show a square building standing on the site before the bombing, whereas the post-bombing image shows an empty lot where the building had been.

The NYT article features all the elements that distinguished the Times’ credulous reporting on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction in the build-up to the U.S. invasion, including unclear satellite photos and comments from unnamed U.S. government sources.

An anonymous “senior intelligence official” in the administration is quoted as saying that it's “incredible” that Syria would have cleared away the rubble left by the Israeli attack.

The Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, which analyzed the satellite photos on which the Times article is based, excitedly reports that “tractors or bulldozers could be seen” in the aerial photo, as well as “scrape marks on the ground.” The Institute's president, David Albright, said that clearing away the rubble after the attack was “inherently suspicious”. “It looks like Syria is trying to hide something,” he said.

Other anonymous “federal and private analysts” – one might be suspicious that they are the same people who provided the 'evidence' for the existence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction – speculate that the removal of the remains of the building “could be interpreted as a tacit admission of guilt.”

The article speculates about what action might be taken against Syria by the United Nations Security Council if evidence were to emerge that Syria is in violation of international agreements. Naturally, the Times does not speculate about what action ought to be taken against Israel for its undisputed attack on Syria, a act of aggression that the UN charter defines as a war crime. That’s what ideological filters are for – to keep questions like that from even being asked.

We are left to speculate what the media coverage would be if Syria were somehow able to launch a successful attack on the sites in Israel where Israel’s nuclear weapons are located. It’s probably safe to say, though, that it wouldn’t be concerned with the suspicious activities of bulldozers clearing away rubble.

Labels: Bombing, Corporate Media, Double Standards, Israel, Media Bias, Media Coverage/Middle East, Syria, War Crimes.

Condoleezza Rice admits mistakes in Arar case

October 25, 2007 - #

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made headlines by admitting yesterday that the U.S. government had made mistakes in the Maher Arar case. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was kidnapped by the U.S on the basis of false evidence that he was involved with a terrorist group, and sent to Syria to be imprisoned and tortured. He was eventually returned to Canada, exonerated by a Canadian government inquiry, and awarded damges for his ordeal.

While not apologizing for her government’s use of kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, and torture, Secretary of State Rice did acknowledge that “our communication with the Canadian government about this was by no means perfect. In fact, it was quite imperfect. We have told the Canadian government that we did not think this was handled particularly well in terms of our own relationship, and that we will try to do better in the future.”

As a Canadian, I’m much relieved. At last, we have assurances from a top American official that in the future, when they kidnap a Canadian citizen and ship him off to be tortured, they let our government know that they have done so. I’m sure we all appreciate the courtesy.

Labels: Human Rights Abuses, Political Prisoners, Torture.

Skeptic no more

October 21, 2007 - #

I used to be a hard-boiled cynic when it came to those alleged miraculous apparations of religious or pop culture figures whose images are always being spotted in various and sundry mundane objects. Jesus in a tortilla, the Virgin Mary in a watermelon, Elvis in a peanut butter sandwich – I scoffed. Where others saw Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun, or a pretzel in the shape of Mary holding the baby Jesus, I saw credulous believers with over-active imaginations.

Until this week, when something quite extraordinary happened.

My cat, the peerless Button, had been sitting on top of a book of Peanuts cartoons (Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz). After a long period of seeming inactivity, she suddenly got up and jumped into my lap. When I stroked her, I noticed she had a mat in her fur. I worked it loose.

When I looked at what I had pulled out of her fur, I was stunned.

The hairmat was in the exact shape of Woodstock, Snoopy's klutzy bird-buddy in the Peanuts cartoons. You don't have to take my word for it: here is an actual photograph of the hairmat. It was a miracle. There is simply no other word to describe it. I'd like to know what Joe Nickell or Richard Dawkins have to say about this!

Ulli Diemer
October 21, 2007

Labels: Miracles.

I blog therefore I am.

           

© 2009 Ulli Diemer. The content of Radical Digressions and the Diemer.ca website is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution - Non-commercial - No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.