firebrand

Look who's friends with Giorgio Mammoliti

2011-08-10T00:49:00.001-04:00

Stupid Quote of the Day

2011-07-01T08:34:00.002-04:00

This gem comes from an interview with Robert Finch, Dominion Chairman of the Monarchist League of Canada in today's New York Times:

“The fact that the queen can’t change her hairstyle because she has to look like the person on her money, that’s an example of a big sacrifice,” Mr. Finch said.

JDL allies with Austrian Freedom Party

2011-01-14T21:14:00.012-05:00

"it's always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice."
-- Lone Star

On the heels of the Jewish Defence League's rally in support of the fascist English Defence League comes the news that the JDL and Meir Weinstein is cozying up with another group of extremists - none other than the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO). You may remember their founder late, longtime leader Jörg Haider who praised Waffen-SS veterans, praised the Nazis, described concentration camps as "punishment camps" and compared the wartime deportation of Austria's Jews to concentration camps to the postwar expulsion of Sudentland Germans from Czechoslovakia. The Freedom Party's entry into Austria's ruling coalition government in 2000 resulted in a widespread diplomatic boycott of the country.

Well, it seems that as much as the FPO hates Jews, they hate Muslims more and that's good enough for the JDL and Meir Weinstein who seems to be working under the rallying call "Muslim-haters of the world unite!" Of course, it's not only the JDL that is building links with fascist parties, Israel's ruling Likud Party is as well. Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara visited Austria at the invitation of the FPO late last year. All this is in spite of the fact that as recently as last April, an FPO candidate found herself in hot water for making "ambiguous statements about the Holocaust and criticism of Austria's tough 1947 anti-Nazi law." The Archbishop of Vienna weighed in to say "Someone who questions the National Socialism prohibition law and fails to make clear statements regarding the Holocaust is not an option for me personally.”
Words fail to describe the irony when a party condemned by a Catholic Archbishop for its anti-Semitism is embraced by the JDL or Likud who are quite happy to overlook a little bit of Judenhasse as long as the party in question supports Israel against the Palestinians because while they hate Jews, they hate Muslims so much more.

65 years after the end of World War II, European fascists have come to learn that campaigning on anti-Semitism is now a non-starter. The Jewish population of Europe is a fraction of what it once was due to the Nazi genocide and emigration and most of the Jews who remain are assimilated to the degree that they are indistinguishable from other Europeans. Furthermore, the right used to associate Jews with Communism and use that association to argue that Jews posed a dire threat to European civilization. The fall of the Soviet Union has removed the Communist spectre from Europe and, in any case, Jews today tend to be more conservative then previous generations, so trying to build a xenophobic wave with fear of Jews as its centrepiece does not hold the potential it would have had 80 years ago. Fear of Muslims however, that has potential to light a mass panic, and so today's fascist parties from Britain to Holland to France to Germany have put anti-Semitism on the back shelf in favour of Islamophobia and some, like the EDL, the Dutch Freedom Party and now the Austrian Freedom Party have gone as far as embracing the Israeli right and the Zionist right, is happy to return the embrace.

At long last, Farber forced to denounce JDL

2011-01-13T12:30:00.007-05:00

After years of treating the Jewish Defence League as if they were a rogueish but loveable younger brother, Canadian Jewish Congress supremo Bernie Farber has finally said something about the JDL that's stronger than "they're not my cup of tea" or that he's "disappointed" by them.

A shame he and other self-appointed leaders of the Canadian Jewish community have looked the other way or been quietly encouraging of them over the past few years as the JDL has organized and grown and been busy on campuses and even high schools recruiting youth.

The JDL is and always has been a hate group and a violent one at that and Farber et al's insistence that the Canadian JDL is somehow different than its US counterpart has only given them cover and allowed them to work unopposed within the Jewish community. Had any other group said about Jews what the JDL has long said about Muslims the CJC would have been rightly outraged and insisted that the group in question be ostracised.

Instead, Farber has always quietly defended the JDL or, at worst, issued the mildest of rebuke. This is perhaps his greatest failure as a "liberal" who has been too opportunistic and too wary of being outflanked on the right to say anything. Indeed, he has been so reticent to be critical that JDL head Meir Weinstein actually thinks of Farber as a friend and speaks glowingly of him to others.

Now that the JDL's extremism is undeniable will Farber finally do what he should have done years ago and work to ostracise the JDL within the Jewish community and try to deny them the space to organize? Somehow, I doubt it. There would be a political price to pay and Farber lacks the integrity needed to expend the political capital needed to root out the JDL. He'd much rather ostracise and marginalize Independent Jewish Voices for the crime of criticising Israel than to consistently oppose the JDL, an organization rooted in a variety of ultra-nationalism that can only be called fascism.

Still, good that he had this printed in the Toronto Sun, it's a modest step. Let's see if he issues a similar, or hopefully stronger, missive in the Canadian Jewish News. Will he actually meet with the principals of Jewish Day Schools and urge them to ban the JDL from their schools? Will he ask Jewish campus groups to refuse to work with the JDL? Will he ask the UJA to freeze them out? Or can we expect this summer, yet again, the sight of Meir Weinstein walking down the route of the annual Walk With Israel like a conquring hero or some fascist version of the King of Kensington kibbitzing and patting the back of every "community leader" he encounters, including Farber, as if Weinstein is a somebody, a Big Man on the Jewish Campus? Independent Jewish Voices and its predecessor, the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians, have warned about the JDL and urged Farber and others to denounce them. While I'm sure we're gratified that, however late in the day, Farber has finally seen the light let's see if this epiphany will last. Farber's started talking the talk. Will he and the "leadership" of the Jewish community now walk the walk?

Troubling marriage for T.O.’s Jews

The EDL is well-known throughout Europe for its anti-Muslim street protests

By Bernie Farber and Benjamin Shinewald, Guest Columnists

"As long as they kill Muslims, I don't care"

2011-01-11T10:35:00.003-05:00

BCL's post on today's JDL rally for the neo-Nazi English Defence League and Ron Banerjee's promise to bring out "security" for the rally got me rememberin'

About a year ago, I happened by a JDL rally outside Ryeson and got into an argument with Ron Banerjee, leader and likely the sole member of the "Canadian Hindu Advocacy" (sic). A far right extremist group that supports the fascist BJP/RSS party in India and is particularly fond of the BJP led government of Gujurat which is notable for its complicity in anti-Muslim pogroms and for having schools carry history textbooks that praise Hitler.

I asked Banerjee, who can often be seen at JDL events, how he can have the nerve to pretend to be pro-Jewish or even pro-Israel when he supports a party that praises Hitler.

His answer? "As long as they kill Muslims I don't care"

The JDLers by the way, didn't seem to be at all phased by having a guy whose party supported the Nazis during WWII in their midsts. One of them even said "World War II was a long time ago"

Mayor Ford's first day on the job: the first cut.

2010-10-26T09:28:00.001-04:00

The Toronto Sun is now officially a propaganda sheet.

2010-10-05T14:55:00.003-04:00

During the 1984 federal election campaign, the Globe and Mail ran a photo of Liberal leader John Turner speaking to the Empire Club or some such group. The picture was taken at such an angle, however, that the part of the backdrop that appeared behind Turner's head made it look as if the Liberal leader had devil's horns. The picture was roundly condemned even though most people who saw it probably didn't notice the offending part of the image until they'd had their attention drawn to it and despite the fact that it's quite possible the photographer and editors didn't see it until angry Liberals pointed it out. Nevertheless, the incident stained the Globe and Mail's image as an objective newspaper, at least for a short time.

Well, there's no such ambiguity or benefit of the doubt possible with the Toronto Sun's cover this morning which literally depicts mayoral candidate George Smitherman as the devil with horns, goatee and Snidely Whiplash mustache drawn on, a red background and the headline "Bedevilled" screaming above George's head. It's not that much of a surprise to find the Sun demonizing someone but do they have to do it so literally?

Now, I'm not a fan of George Smitherman and I've told him so to his face but this has to be a new low in journalism. What could the editors of the Toronto Sun possibly be thinking as they pumped out a pure, unadulterated example of propaganda the likes of which we haven't seen in Toronto since 1949 when the Toronto Daily Star attempted to smear the Tories by claiming that George Drew had secretly agreed that if he won the election, he would appoint to cabinet as his Quebec lieutenant none other than Montreal mayor Camillien Houde - whose opposition to World War II had seen him interned during the war. On the Saturday before election day 1949, the Star's campaign reached its peak with the banner front page headline:

KEEP CANADA BRITISH
DESTROY DREW'S HOUDE
GOD SAVE THE KING

(this third line was changed to "VOTE ST. LAURENT" in later editions)

If the Sun depicts its political target as the Devil incarnate three weeks before election day you have to wonder what they'll be doing on October 24th and 25th.

The Sun thinks you're stupid: Tab hypocritical in Davey Affair

2010-09-13T11:24:00.001-04:00

On the latest edition of CTV's Question Period, ex-Iggy press secretary Ian Davey responded to a question about a Sun Media report by saying the Sun "is a newspaper for people who can't read" thus betraying what most senior politicos actually think about the tabloid. The surprise is not, of course, that Davey is dismissive of the Sun but that he would be politically inastute enough to insult the paper's readership rather than its editors. While the Sun is a politically conservative newspaper and sometimes little better than a propaganda sheet I suspect that a good percentage of its readership don't share the paper's editorial line and pick it up for the sports, entertainment coverage, Sunshine Girl (or Boy) or because of its readability. Worse still, Davey's elitism reinforces the Tory narrative that Ignatieff and his circle are elitists who look down on ordinary Canadians.

Predictably, the Sun is exploiting Davey's comments, trying to stir its readers up into a state of indignation in order to both elevate their degree of identification with the paper and mobilize them against the hated Liberals (even though Davey no longer has any official capacity within the Liberal Party or Iggy's office and therefore only speaks for himself, not the party).

Here is the lede of the Sun's article on the matter - titled "Who's the dummy?" in its print edition and "Iggy's former mouthpiece takes 'cheap shot' at Sun readers" online:

Read this if you can.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's former chief of staff, Ian Davey, hit Sun Media readers below the belt Sunday, saying they're all illiterate.

That means you can't read.

Sun readers must be quite thankful that their paper is so quick to defend their intelligence, if only it didn't feel it necessary to insult their intelligence at the same time by explaining what illiterate means.

Ian Davey and the Sun evidently both think that Sun readers are stupid. Davey says it outright, the Sun demonstrates it by evidently believing they have to spoonfeed their readers politically, through crude attempts at propaganda, and intellectually, by feeling they have to explain the meaning of the word illiterate. The real difference between Davey and the Sun, though, is at least Davey is honest enough to state his views while the Sun is cravenly hypocritical and cynical by complaining loudly about Davey's "elitism" while inadvertently demonstrating that they actually agree with him.

Power struggle at the Ontario Federation of Labour

2010-08-27T23:03:00.008-04:00

There's been a showdown building at the OFL between recently elected president Sid Ryan and five of the affiliated unions that fund the labour federation and have all cut their dues payments forcing the OFL to layoff several of its staff. It also appears that there's a power struggle between Ryan and his two deputies, Marie Kelly and Terry Downey . All in all, this amounts to an attempted coup that would either force Ryan to resign or force him to all but resign by becoming President in name only and ceding all operational authority to Secretary-Treasurer Marie Kelly and the unions that are backing her. Kelly is supported by Wayne Fraser, Director of Steelworkers District 6 (ie the leader of the Canadian Steelworkers) despite an apparent conflict of interest as Fraser and Kelly are said to be in a long term romantic relationship.

The following letter detailing the crisis has been making the rounds:

What is going on at the OFL?

By now, you may have heard rumours about affiliates cutting their per capita to the OFL, and OFL staff being laid off. Unfortunately, those rumours are true! Five unions - OPSEU, ONA, SEIU, Firefighters and the Society of Energy Professionals all cut their per capita payments tot the OFL in half over the last few months.

Why? No one is saying. But a leaked e-mail from ONA President Linda Haslam-Stroud dated April 29, 2010 shows that the per capita cuts were planned and orchestrated by a handful of OFL Executive Board members, and that OFL Secretary-Treasurer Marie Kelly and Executive Vice President Terry Downey are part of the secret "OFL Group".

What motive could they possibly have for trying to financially cripple the OFL?

Flash back to spring 2009. A majority of union leaders have agreed to back Sid Ryan to run for President of the OFL at the November convention. Then some start to get nervous about whether Sid will be too outspoken or controversial. They decide they want to run Marie Kelly as President instead of Sid, but this time Sid has made it clear that he will run no matter what. Realizing the Marie can't beat Sid on the convention floor, they decide to shift tactics. They announce that they will support Sid for President after all and run Marie for Secretary-Treasurer. All three Officers are subsequently acclaimed at the November OFL convention.

Flash forward to January 2010. Sid takes over at the OFL and brings his EA from CUPE, Antoni Shelton, with him. The majority of OFL staff are enthusiastic about Sid's leadership and activist agenda for the OFL, and embrace Antoni as part of the team. But OFL Secretary-Treasurer Marie Kelly and Executive VP Terry Downey immediately object and e-mails start flying at the Executive Board. They want Antoni fired. At the very first Board meeting, less than 2 months after Sid has assumed office, Marie and Terry spend 5 hours berating Sid and airing every minor grievance they have against him. Without even looking at the budget, Marie, Terry, Marie's "close associate", Wayne Fraser, and a few of their friends on the Board argue that the OFL doesn't have the money to employ Antoni (this despite the fact that the OFL has been employing an extra Director on contract for the past two years, and he has now left to take a job elsewhere.)

The situation escalates over the next few months. The secret "OFL Group" is formed, with Marie Kelly and Terry Downey as participants, and they work to try to convince other Board members to join them. They agree on a plan to de-fund the OFL. This is in direct violation of the Officer's oath of office. The first of the five affiliates (OPSEU and ONA) cut their per capita in half. Two OFL Directors and one support staff are given lay-off notices. Two posted positions are left unfilled. The CAW announces it will re-affiliate 15,000 members to the OFL as of June 1. The other three affiliates in the secret group proceed to cut their per capita.

The situation comes to a head at the June Executive Board meeting. As Secretary-Treasurer, Marie Kelly brings in a budget that she tries to use to prove the financial crisis is the result of mismanagement by her predecessor and long-standing un-funded liabilities, in order to shift the blame away from the de-funding by the five unions. At around 7:00 pm, after half the Board members have left, the Board votes 12 to 11 to fire Antoni Shelton without cause and pass a budget that forces the lay off [of] two more Directors and one more support staff. Marie and Terry vote in favour of the firing of Antoni and the staff lay offs. Some Board members who are part of the secret group start talking about demanding concessions from the remaining staff in order to save jobs. The decision cuts the OFL staff by over half. When the lay offs are complete, only 4 of 9 department Directors will remain, along with an office manager and 4 admin/clerical staff. And 3 full-time officers!

The reality is there was no financial mis-management at the OFL. The present financial crisis has been manufactures. The intent is to undermine Sid Ryan as President, either force him out or set the stage for Marie Kelly to run against him in 2011, and to extract concessions from the OFL staff whose collective agreements are currently expired, and downsize the organization.

This does nothing to strengthen the labour movement. This does nothing to help our members in the workplace. This does nothing to help us oppose concessions from employers and the government. This will only serve to silence the voice of organized labour in this province.

What can you do to support the workers at the OFL and the duly-elected President from this attack?

Help get the word out. Distribute this [letter] to all your contacts in the labour movement. The secret "OFL Group" wants to keep all of this under wraps. They threaten anyone who tries to speak out.

Find out where your union leadership stands. Ask the president of your union how he/she (or their designate) voted at the June OFL Board meeting.

If you are a member of one of the five unions who cut their per capita, ask the members of your Executive Board if they knew and approved of their union's role in de-funding the OFL.

If you belong to one of the small affiliates, ask your leadership if they knew that the VP Representing Small Affiliates, Rod Sheppard, is part of this secret "OFL Group" that is working to destroy the OFL and voted to lay off OFL staff.

Help put pressure on the 5 unions to restore their funding. If you belong to one of the other unions, pressure your leadership to speak to the leaders of the five unions who have cut their per capita in half to stop this nonsense and work to build our labour movement, not destroy it!

This letter is from a long-time trade union activist who asked that their name not be used for fear of reprisals.

Islamophobia: The New Anti-Semitism

2010-08-25T10:59:00.000-04:00

A fascinating article by Daniel Luban in Tablet magazine. Luban argues that Islamophobia as it is developing in North American and Europe has strong parallels to traditional anti-Semitism and examines the furor over the "9-11 mosque" as the latest and most fervent example of this. Here's an excerpt:

many of the tropes of classic anti-Semitism have been revived and given new force on the American right. Once again jingoistic politicians and commentators posit a religious conspiracy breeding within Western society, pledging allegiance to an alien power, conspiring with allies at the highest levels of government to overturn the existing order. Because the propagators of these conspiracy theories are not anti-Semitic but militantly pro-Israel, and because their targets are not Jews but Muslims, the ADL and other Jewish groups have had little to say about them. But since the election of President Barack Obama, this Islamophobic discourse has rapidly intensified.

While the political operatives behind the anti-mosque campaign speak the language of nativism and American exceptionalism, their ideology is itself something of a European import. Most of the tropes of the American “anti-jihadists,” as they call themselves, are taken from European models: a “creeping” imposition of sharia, Muslim allegiance to the ummah rather than to the nation-state, the coming demographic crisis as Muslims outbreed their Judeo-Christian counterparts. In recent years the call-to-arms about the impending Islamicization of Europe has become a well-worn genre, ranging from more sophisticated treatments like Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe to cruder polemics like Mark Steyn’s America Alone and Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia.

It would be a mistake to seek too precise a correspondence between the new Islamophobia and the old anti-Semitism, which differ in some key respects. Jews have never threatened to become a numerical majority, or even a sizable minority, in any European country, so anxiety about Jewish power naturally gravitated toward the myth of the shadowy elite manipulating the majority from behind the scenes. By contrast, anti-Muslim anxiety has focused on the supposed demographic threat posed by Muslims, in which the dusky hordes overwhelm the West by sheer weight of numbers. (“The sons of Allah breed like rats,” as the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci put it.) It may be that in many ways this Islamophobia shares more of the tropes of traditional anti-Catholicism than classic anti-Semitism.

But if the tropes do not always line up, there is some notable continuity in the players involved. One of the most striking stories of recent years has been the realignment of segments of the European far right behind a form of militant support for Israel. Much of the traditional neofascist right remains both anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic, but savvier far-right leaders have realized that by dropping the anti-Semitic elements of their platforms and doubling down on Islamophobia, they can tap into a new base of support from pro-Israel hawks across the Atlantic. Both the British National Party and the Vlaams Belang in Belgium have gone this route, although it remains questionable whether the move away from anti-Semitism is more than skin-deep. (The Vlaams Belang’s predecessor party, for instance, was disbanded after a controversy concerning Holocaust-denying statements made by one of its top officials.) Equally striking has been the rise of Geert Wilders, the controversial Dutch politician whose Islamophobia, virulent enough to draw the condemnation of even the ADL, has made him a darling of “anti-jihadists” in the United States.

The entire essay is available here. The Atlantic Monthly's Jeffrey Goldberg makes a similar point in his response to Reverend Franklin Graham's claim that "president [Obama]'s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim". Goldberg retorts, "This kind of rhetoric has a strange historical antecedent in Jewish history. In the 1400s, in Spain, a movement arose that questioned the sincerity of those Jews who had previously converted to Catholicism," and adds that "Anti-Muslim sentiment in America today has many of the hallmarks of the anti-Semitism of yesteryear."

Tablet is a "daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture" and carries articles from across the political spectrum (for instance here's a piece against the one-state solution) as well as non-political pieces.It's refreshing to see that at a time when Jewish publications and the Jewish community is under increasing pressure to submit to groupthink, Tablet is willing to publish dissenting pieces. I doubt Luban's piece or anything like it would be published by the Canadian Jewish News, for instance.

Shepherd's Grandaughter - new update

2010-08-24T17:42:00.000-04:00

Back in March and again in April and June, I reported on efforts by Brian Henry, the B'nai Brith and Trustee Sheila Ward to have the Toronto District School Board ban the acclaimed children's book' The Shepherd's Granddaughter because it tells the story of a Palestinian girl who suffers at the hands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Officials of the TDSB reviewed the book and in April ruled that:

the Shepherd's Granddaughter does not cross the line into literature promoting hate or animosity towards others. On the other hand, it has the potential to engage our Grade 7 and 8 students (a critical age for the development of social consciousness about human society) in understanding the complex issues of their world. The Shepherd's Granddaughter contains several themes for creative discussions in our classrooms, such as multigenerational families and relationships, aging; experiencing loss; influences of religion and faith; gender roles, and gender stereotypes, effects of family separation through emigration, the value of education… As well, this book can certainly be used to explore issues of bias and prejudice, and that students can learn from such exploration… Having said that, we acknowledge that guidance from the teachers and teacher librarians is important in producing the desired outcomes described above.

That decision was appealed and an 11 member committee reviewed the book and advised TDSB Director Chris Spence that the book met the Board's criteria for approval.

Spence issued his decision last week and informed the complainant, Brian Henry, that after reviewing the committee's report and reading the book himself (something Trustee Ward failed to do before vowing to "move heaven and earth" to ban the book) he agrees with the committee that the book “has the potential to engage our Grade 7 and 8 students . . . in understanding the complex issues of their world.”

You'd think that would be the end of it but school trustee James Pasternak is urging Henry to appeal to trustees to overturn Spence's decision claiming that the book "has no place in our schools." Pasternak asserts that "we'll have enough votes to overturn the decision."

This should be an election issue. Contact the school trustees at the email addresses below and tell them what you think. You can find out who your trustee is here or you can write all the trustees using the email addresses below:

irene.atkinson@tdsb.on.ca, nadia.bello@tdsb.on.ca, chris@chrisbolton.ca, john.campbell@tdsb.on.ca, sheila.cary-meagher@tdsb.on.ca, shaun.chen@tdsb.on.ca, michael.coteau@tdsb.on.ca, gary.crawford@tdsb.on.ca, cathy.dandy@tdsb.on.ca, bruce.davis@tdsb.on.ca, gerri.gershon@tdsb.on.ca, howard.goodman@tdsb.on.ca, scott.harrison@tdsb.on.ca, john.hastings@tdsb.on.ca, josh@joshmatlow.ca, james.pasternak@tdsb.on.ca, stephnie.payne@tdsb.on.ca, maria.rodrigues@tdsb.on.ca, mari.rutka@tdsb.on.ca, chris.tonks@tdsb.on.ca, sheila.ward@tdsb.on.ca, soo.wong@tdsb.on.ca, gorick.ng@tdsb.on.ca, fan.wu@tdsb.on.ca, david.tomczak@tdsb.on.ca

"Bubble Girl" charges dropped

2010-08-24T17:04:00.001-04:00

You may recall the story from the G20 about Courtney Winkels (above, left) who was warned by police after blowing bubbles in Parkdale. A report by the Real News on the bubble incident and her arrest posted on YouTube went viral with over 250,000 hits. (Courtney was actually arrested after her bag was searched and the police found a first aid kit she was carrying as part of her duties as a street medic. She was arrested, charged with conspiracy to commit an indictable offence and held in the Eastern Avenue detention centre for several days before being released).

Her charges were dropped by the Crown yesterday, along with charges against approximately 100 of the 303 arrestees who appeared in court Monday. This means of the 1,090 picked up during the G20 summit, 80% have seen their charges withdrawn or "diverted". (See Krystalline Kraus' report for rabble.ca here for more on what happened for the other arrestees at the 2201 Finch court house.)

Meanwhile, Officer Bubbles has achieved his own level of infamy and is the unwilling star of a series of Flash cartoons posted on YouTube. Series available here.

Shepherd’s Granddaughter Update

2010-06-21T20:23:00.000-04:00

Book should stay, school board committee says

Final decision rests with education director

A special review committee has recommended that a controversial novel about the Mideast conflict remain available to grades 7 and 8 students in Toronto’s public schools.

The 11-member committee was struck in April after a parent made a formal complaint to the Toronto District School Board about The Shepherd’s Granddaughter, an award-winning book by Anne Laurel Carter that focuses on the life of a Palestinian farm girl.

The move came after B’nai Brith Canada had earlier asked the board to remove the book, which is not part of the curriculum but on the list for the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading program. Staff determined the book should stay.

In a June 15 memo to education director Chris Spence, the review committee said the book met the criteria for approval. However, the committee recommends teachers should explicitly teach “critical literacy skills and encourage critical thinking,” to detect bias, point of view and explore complex and controversial issues from a variety of perspectives.

The final decision rests with Spence, and trustees are being asked to send their comments this week.

James Pasternak, Ward 5 trustee, called it “political propaganda in a novel form,” but is most concerned about violent passages including a dialogue about suicide bombing.

“We cannot afford as a school board, with impressionable kids, to have a book circulate that suggests that violence is a viable option for settling disagreements.”

Chris Spence can be reached at chris.spence@tdsb.on.ca

The entire School Board, including Director Chris Spence, can be reached at the following addresses:
irene.atkinson@tdsb.on.ca, nadia.bello@tdsb.on.ca, chris@chrisbolton.ca, john.campbell@tdsb.on.ca, sheila.cary-meagher@tdsb.on.ca, shaun.chen@tdsb.on.ca, michael.coteau@tdsb.on.ca, gary.crawford@tdsb.on.ca, cathy.dandy@tdsb.on.ca, bruce.davis@tdsb.on.ca, gerri.gershon@tdsb.on.ca, howard.goodman@tdsb.on.ca, scott.harrison@tdsb.on.ca, john.hastings@tdsb.on.ca, josh@joshmatlow.ca, james.pasternak@tdsb.on.ca, stephnie.payne@tdsb.on.ca, maria.rodrigues@tdsb.on.ca, mari.rutka@tdsb.on.ca, chris.tonks@tdsb.on.ca, sheila.ward@tdsb.on.ca, soo.wong@tdsb.on.ca, gorick.ng@tdsb.on.ca, fan.wu@tdsb.on.ca, david.tomczak@tdsb.on.ca

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid debate Martin Gladstone

2010-04-21T19:52:00.001-04:00

Power & Politics: Elle Flanders vs. Martin Gladstone from Queers Against Israeli Apartheid on Vimeo.

Heaven and earth unmoved

2010-04-08T11:00:00.000-04:00

Despite Sheila Ward's promise to "move heaven and earth to have The Shepherd’s Granddaughter taken off the school library shelves" the Toronto District School Board announced yesterday that they have rejected the demand by Brian Henry and B'nai Brith that the book be withdrawn. According to TDSB official Lloyd McKell:

We believe as staff, that the Shepherd's Granddaughter does not cross the line into literature promoting hate or animosity towards others. On the other hand, it has the potential to engage our Grade 7 and 8 students (a critical age for the development of social consciousness about human society) in understanding the complex issues of their world. The Shepherd's Granddaughter contains several themes for creative discussions in our classrooms, such as multigenerational families and relationships, aging; experiencing loss; influences of religion and faith; gender roles, and gender stereotypes, effects of family separation through emigration, the value of education… As well, this book can certainly be used to explore issues of bias and prejudice, and that students can learn from such exploration… Having said that, we acknowledge that guidance from the teachers and teacher librarians is important in producing the desired outcomes described above.

The wholesale rejection of B'nai Brith's position is another nail in the coffin of the lobby group's credibility. B'nai Brith used to have a reputation as a legitimate human rights organization whose statements on discrimination were taken seriously by public officials. However, with the growing dominance of Frank Dimant, the group has increasingly become little more than a shill for hardline rejectionist Zionism. Where once, public officials would tread carefully when it came to rejecting or opposing B'nai Brith's positions, now they are seen as just another lobby group whose positions can be dismissed without any negative consequences.

Hopefully, MPPs at Queen's Park will remember this the next time B'nai Brith or its frenemy, the Canadian Jewish Congress, try to push propaganda as public policy and insist, for instance, that criticism of Israel be condemned by government as being anti-Semitic.

Trustee Sheila Ward wants to ban a book she hasn't read

2010-03-31T13:25:00.000-04:00

Toronto District School Board Trustee Sheila Ward (Toronto Centre) told the Jewish Tribune this week that she will "move heaven and earth to have The Shepherd’s Granddaughter taken off the school library shelves" in response to a demand by B'nai Brith Canada and parent Brian Henry that the book be removed from school reading lists. Upon a closer reading of her words it's evident that Ward is rushing to judgement to not only condemn a book she hasn't read but condemn also the professional organization of librarians that is promoting the book in its reading programme.

The Shepherd's Granddaughter was written by Toronto author and teacher-librarian Anne Laurel Carter According to the Toronto Star it "is currently being read by thousands of Grade 7 and 8 students across the province as part of the Ontario Library Association’s massive Forest of Reading program, meant to highlight the best examples of Canadian literature"

Peggy Thomas of the Ontario Library Association describes the book as being of "literary quality; it is written for a group of students who are at that time exploring the world around them and grappling with ideas larger than themselves." The B'nai Brith however sees it as propaganda because its narrative is from the point of view of a Palestinian who has lost her land.

Ms Ward condemns the book in no uncertain terms. However, it's evident from her own statements that she hasn't read it. Ward is quoted by the Jewish Tribune saying "This book, on the basis of what Mr. Henry has sent to me, is so blatantly biased that it is intolerable," and "Provided Mr. Henry presented it correctly, and he’s given quite a number of examples, I’m extremely concerned and upset. It is completely unacceptable to have this kind of hatemongering and enormously biased, inaccurate portrayal of Israelis."

Ward's minor disclaimer does not prevent her from trusting her informant's information enough to condemn the book sight unseen, despite the fact that the respected Ontario Library Association has endorsed the book.

Ward goes further. Instead of reserving judgement until she's read the book herself or at least talking to the Ontario Library Association and finding out why they disagree with Henry, Ward, despite not having actually read the book, condemns the OLA saying "I’d like an investigation. Until I have some really hard answers, I’d like to suspend our involvement with the OLA.”

So let's recap. Sheila Ward has not read the book. However, on the basis of a complaint by a parent, Brian Henry, and B'nai Brith Canada she is willing to "move heaven and earth" to remove the book from TDSB libraries and suspend the TDSB's involvement with the Ontario Library Association.

Ward is a public official and a former school board chair. While, as a school trustee, she may be tempted to agree with every parent who comes to her with a complaint she has an obligation and a public official to actually investigate before coming to a conclusion. Instead, Ward has rushed to judgement based on hearing only one opinion and committed herself to not only removing the book from our schools but suspending the TDSB's association with the Ontario Library Association. Worse, she does so without having even read the book at issue and is willing to cut off the OLA which, presumably, actually has read the book and as a professional association of librarians has a certain expertise in assessing the quality and educational value of chidlren's literature.

Interestingly, the lead headline in the B'nai Brith published Jewish Tribune concerning this book is: Could this book turn your child against Israel? Is B'nai Brith's real concern that this book, by presenting a narrative from the perspective of "the other" might lead to critical thinking in children? Now when I was growing up we were told that was what distinguished quality children's literature from the rest. If The Shepherd's Granddaughter truly was anti-Semitic the fear would not be that it might make Jewish children think differently about Israel. No, B'nai Brith recognizes that the book might actually do what education is supposed to do, treat children to think critically and question their assumptions. Evidently, critical thinking is discouraged when it comes to Israel and the last thing B'nai Brith wants Jewish children to do is to question the preconceptions and assumptions they might have about Israel and the Palestinians. The real issue therefore is not whether or not this book is propaganda but whether or not it interferes with the pro-Israel propaganda that have been fed to children, Jewish children in particular.

Ward is acting recklessly and engaging in shameless political pandering. Voters in her ward should remember this at the October election.

Ward can be contacted at sheila.ward@tdsb.on.ca

The entire School Board, plus director Chris Spence, can be reached at the following addresses:
irene.atkinson@tdsb.on.ca, nadia.bello@tdsb.on.ca, chris@chrisbolton.ca, john.campbell@tdsb.on.ca, sheila.cary-meagher@tdsb.on.ca, shaun.chen@tdsb.on.ca, michael.coteau@tdsb.on.ca, gary.crawford@tdsb.on.ca, cathy.dandy@tdsb.on.ca, bruce.davis@tdsb.on.ca, gerri.gershon@tdsb.on.ca, howard.goodman@tdsb.on.ca, scott.harrison@tdsb.on.ca, john.hastings@tdsb.on.ca, josh@joshmatlow.ca, james.pasternak@tdsb.on.ca, stephnie.payne@tdsb.on.ca, maria.rodrigues@tdsb.on.ca, mari.rutka@tdsb.on.ca, chris.tonks@tdsb.on.ca, sheila.ward@tdsb.on.ca, soo.wong@tdsb.on.ca, gorick.ng@tdsb.on.ca, fan.wu@tdsb.on.ca, chris.spence@tdsb.on.ca, david.tomczak@tdsb.on.ca

h/t Michelle

UPDATE: The TDSB has rejected Henry's complaint.

Tim Uppal's anti-Israeli Apartheid Week motion has been defeated!

2010-03-11T20:13:00.001-05:00

Finally, some politicians are starting to stand up to the attempts by Israel's supporters to limit discussion through intimidation.

This letter comes from MP Libby Davies:

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write and express your views about the motion proposed by a Conservative MP, about Israeli Apartheid Week. I have heard from many people on this issue.

The motion came forward on March 11th, and did not receive unanimous consent, and so was not approved by Parliament. A second motion from the Bloc Québécois also failed to receive unanimous consent.

The Conservative motion was designed to be divisive and to censure legitimate debate on the issue of Israel's policies as well as to specifically target activists who are engaged in debate and other activities on various campuses across the country.

I didn't support either motion, and whatever one thinks about the term "apartheid" in reference to Israel, I don't believe that Members of Parliament should have any role or influence in stifling open discussion and education on this issue. As someone who has visited the West Bank and Gaza twice (most recently in August of 2009), I know first-hand the impact and destruction caused by Israeli policies towards Palestinians.

Copies of the report from my trip can be found at:
http://www.libbydavies.ca/sites/default/files/Parliamentary%20Delegation%20to%20Palestine,%20August%207-14,%202009.pdf

I really appreciate that so many people have taken the time to support freedom of speech and the rights of the Palestinian people. I will continue to do the same.

Sincerely,
Libby

Ignatieff and Israel

2010-03-02T14:11:00.000-05:00

Which federal party leader said this about Israel back in 2002?

When I looked down at the West Bank, at the settlements like Crusader forts occupying the high ground, at the Israeli security cordon along the Jordan river closing off the Palestinian lands from Jordan, I knew I was not looking down at a state or the beginnings of one, but at a Bantustan, one of those pseudo-states created in the dying years of apartheid to keep the African population under control.

Could it be the same leader who now says:

On university campuses across the country this week, Israeli Apartheid Week will once again attempt to demonize and undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state. It is part of a global campaign of calls for divestment, boycotts and proclamations, and it should be condemned unequivocally and absolutely.
Apartheid is defined, in international law, as a crime against humanity. Israeli Apartheid Week is a deliberate attempt to portray the Jewish state as criminal.

Why, yes it is! Now to be fair to Iggy, a lot has happened in the intervening eight years. On the one hand, the "Crusader fort" like settlements that reminded the then public intellectual of apartheid-era Bantustans have grown in size, a wall has been built which not only surrounds the Palestinians of the West Bank but because of its fjord like route, actually cuts off many people in the West Bank from others in the West Bank and, oh yes, there was that war in Gaza. So can Iggy honestly say the situation that existed in 2002 that reminded him of apartheid no longer exists? No. What has changed is not the situation on the ground for Palestinians but the self-interest of Michael Ignatieff. As a Liberal leader Iggy feels the need to prove his pro-Israel credentials in light of his previous criticism of the regime. But don't worry, I'm sure that after Iggy has ended his adventure in electoral politics he will rediscover the plight of the Palestinians and wring his hands appropriately.

Gerry Caplan satirises the Rights & Democracy affair

2010-02-19T09:09:00.000-05:00

Gerry Caplan's column in the Globe and Mail has taken on the Harper government's patronizing attempt to pander to the Jewish community for several months now.

Stephen Harper and the Jewish question published in December examined the irony of Jewish neoconservatives cozying up to evangelical anti-Semites, the Tory 10%ers accusing opposition parties of anti-Semitism and the cancellation of Kairos' grant.

His followup, Is the Harper government playing the anti-Semitic card? hammered the point home:

Real enemies of anti-Semitism do not throw the term around recklessly.

In the United States, the leading Jewish neoconservatives made an unholy alliance with evangelical Protestants whose ultimate vision was a Jew-free world–-Hitler's demented goal finally realized. What they had in common was support for the state of Israel–at least for the moment.

Are Canadian Jews now going to be seduced by a government that uses anti-Semitism for political reasons? That maliciously accuses decent men and women of being anti-Semitic? That identifies legitimate, democratic criticism of Israeli governments with anti-Semitism?

Caplan's latest piece, What every office needs to succeed in Harper's Canada is a biting satirical look at the attack on Rights & Democracy "because it thought Palestinians should have the same rights as all other people" and the bizarre inquisition by Haperite appointee Jacques Gauthier into the religious proclivities of R&D staff.

In a confidential evaluation of the organization's late executive director, Mr. Gauthier pointedly noted the perhaps telltale absence of Jews on staff, apparently a serious dereliction of duty.

How Mr. Gauthier learned that no Jew was employed by R & D is not yet clear. Suspiciously enough, R & D does not ask the religion of its employees. Often in the past Jewishness has been established by what's discreetly called the urinal test, although this technique doesn't really apply to women while also failing to distinguish telltale characteristics among Muslims, Jews and certain African ethnic groups. Mr. Gauthier brought a private investigator into the R & D office last year, although he was introduced as "a business associate" and his function wasn't explained. Bitter R & D staff, believe the stranger was expected to lead the urinal patrol in order to determine Jewishness. Isn't that what a private eye is for?

Businesses, NGOs and other institutions that are now frantically beating the bushes for unemployed Jews have a major challenge ahead of them. The first problem is that the Jewish employment rate is notoriously high. Many complain that you can never find a Jew when you need one. Then there's the vexing question of whether one is enough, a question that has befuddled Canadians for many decades.

It is understood that the Harper government is about to set up a special Number of Jews Bureau, to be known as the NUJ. It will report to Jason Kenney, the minister responsible for smearing anyone who disagrees with his cheerleading support of the Israeli government. The new bureau will be tasked with devising a formula to determine the necessary number of Jews each group needs on staff to meet the new criteria, and will house the inspectors who will be going from organization to organization across the land counting the number of Jewish employees. It is anticipated that synagogues will be exempt from inspection.

Among the trickier issue the NUJ must quickly deal with is whether the Jewish quota applies to the government. Believe it or not, it seems that no one knows for certain how many Jews sit in the government caucus or the cabinet, and there are too few urinals to do a test.

Mr. Kenney is not only responsible for the electoral seduction of Canada's credulous Jews. He is also Mr. Harper's main weapon in the wooing of Hindus, Sikhs, Persians, Koreans, Eastern Orthodox Christians, carefully selected Muslims, and countless other minorities. Here is where the new system faces certain tricky issues. How many Jews must your average mosque or Hindu temple or church employ to meet the government's new Jewish criteria?

And what will Punjabis, Armenians, Buddhists, Chinese and certain carefully selected Muslims think if they must hire Jews but other organizations need not hire, say, Punjabis, Armenians, Buddhists, Chinese and certain carefully selected Muslims? After all, they might reasonably ask, how many Punjabis etc. etc. etc. does the B’nai Brith, for example, employ? Mr. Harper's entire ethnic strategy might be jeopardized if this sensitive issue is not handled delicately.

The obvious answer, of course, is perfectly consonant with one of Canada's great conceits – our multicultural character. Yet in truth, outside public transportation and some malls, our many communities remain substantially segregated. Here is the means to make mythology reality. Every Canadian organization would have to have at least a certain number of employees from each of our ethnic/racial/religious/cultural groups. It's a magical solution for Canada's serious unemployment problem, since a good number of the unemployed happen to be members of these groups.

One downside of this solution is that Jewish organizations are expected to complain bitterly that the government has begun listening to other interests. Mr. Harper and Mr. Kenney are expected to discuss this conundrum later this week.

Adam's fall

2010-02-09T14:34:00.000-05:00

So this is what I can piece together.

NOW magazine writes a glowing article on Giambrone and erroneously claims he's gay.

Giambrone "laughs over" the story, light-heartedly corrects the record but then goes a step further and makes public the fact that he's in a relationship with a woman named Sarah. Until this point no one had known, or particularly cared, who if anyone Giambrone was seeing.

Days later, Giambrone stages romantic dinner with Sarah at a restaurant and arranges for a Toronto Sun photographer to take their picture for the next day's paper. In doing so, he misses his date with his other girlfriend and messages her to check out the Sun the next day.

At his campaign launch Giambrone stereotypically announces his candidacy with his "life partner" Sarah at his side. Hurt and humiliated his other girlfriend eventually goes to the Star.

This is Giambrone's own fault for cynically trying to use his relationship with Sarah McQuarrie (contrived or not) for image purposes... or as he told Lucas in a *text message* on Dec 27, "You know I will be announcing I have a partner... It is someone named Sarah, who I've been involved with in the past. It is important for the campaign."

Really? Why exactly was it "important for the campaign"? Either Giambrone felt so insecure about being called gay that he needed to put the spotlight on the fact that he has a girlfriend (or pretend McQuarrie was his girlfriend, whether he was lying when he told Lucas that her relationship with McQuarrie was pretend or lying when he says it's real, I don't know and don't particularly care) or he saw some sort of political advantage in contrasting his relationship with a woman against Smitherman's relationship with a man. Either way, fairly sorry stuff. (And really, what classier way is there to announce to one girlfriend that you're going to be telling the world that you're seeing someone else than through a text message?)

And of course had Giambrone not been driven either by insecurity or cynicism to create a public image of himself as a guy in a committed relationship with a female "life partner" then his second girlfriend wouldn't have found out about his first and Giambrone's sleaziness towards women would have remained a private matter.

While I still don't really see why this is a news story I can't muster any sympathy for Giambrone. He's brought this onto himself.

ADDITION: A friend of mine thinks Giambrone decided it was important for his campaign to be seen in coupledom with Sarah McQuarrie so that people would view him as a grown-up. If that's the case his high school style relationship and breakup with a 19 year old has put to rest any lingering doubts about Giambrone's maturity level.

Hypocrisy from the Canadian Jewish Congress' Marilyn Shapiro

2010-02-03T08:19:00.001-05:00

The letters page of today's National Post includes a submission by one Marilyn Shapiro of Thornhill. She responds to a previous letter by Professor Yakov Rabkin which defends Independent Jewish Voices against attack by the Canadian Jewish Congress. After falsely describing IJV as made up of "anti-Israel Jews and non-Jews" she goes after Rabkin claiming that he failed to mention what she calls his "deep connection to IJV" and goes on at length to detail an internet search she conducted which reveals that Rabkin is a member of the group.

Hypocritically, while she herself defends the CJC and attacks Rabkin for his omission, Shapiro fails to mention her own affiliation which is easily uncoverable through a quick internet search.

Here is a picture taken from the November 2009 edition of CJC's online newsletter Congress Amcha appearing under the heading "Queen's Park reception". From left to right are Marilyn Shapiro; Wendy Lampert, CJC Director of Community Relations; Len Rudner, CJC Ontario Regional Director; Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty; Igor Ellyn, CJC Board of Directors; David Katz, Chair CJC Charities Committee. Obviously Shaprio has what she would call a "deep connection" to the Canadian Jewish Congress.

To paraphrase Ms Shapiro's letter, why did she not disclose her obvious association with this Zionist group? I guess she must be ashamed of her association. Or does she have something to hide?

Perhaps it's that, according to page 12 of the CJC's January 2009 newsletter, Shapiro was a Canadian delegate to last year's meeting of the CJC's parent body, the World Jewish Congress? A "deep connection" indeed.

The Canadian Jewish Congress and the National Post's double standard on Independent Jewish Voices

2010-01-31T20:04:00.002-05:00

Last week, the National Post published a screed yet again attacking Independent Jewish Voices and its former chair, Diana Ralph. Several years ago, prior to joining Independent Jewish Voices, Ralph wrote a chapter for a book called Hidden History of 9-11 in which her thesis was that the Bush Administration was using 9-11 as a pretext for an imperialist adventure in the Middle East and for Islamophobic measures at home. Unfortunately, Ralph also made a few statements in passing that seemed to lend credibility to 9-11 conspiracy theories. The Post and the CJC have deliberately overstated this element of her writings in order to imply that Ralph herself is a conspiracy theorist and then tar Independent Jewish Voices by association despite the fact that IJV has never issued a single statement on 9-11 and despite the fact that an IJV spokesperson clearly told the Post that “The positions of Diana Ralph stated in those articles do not represent the positions of the IJV.”

By challenging the monopoly uncritically Zionist groups such as the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith Canada have claimed over Jewish opinion in this country IJV has undermined both the myth that Canadian Jews are of one voice when it comes to Israel and challenged the slur that criticism of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism. As a result, the CJC in particular has pulled out the stops in its attempt to isolate, vilify and marginalize IJV and harass any organization, such as the United Church of Canada, that has dealings with the organization.

The National Post, accordingly, when referring to IJV makes sure to also refer to it as having been "recently chaired by 9/11 conspiracy theorist Diana Ralph." The Post also takes issue with the fact that as past-co-chair, Ralph remains on IJV's executive.

There is a searing double standard here. The co-president of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 2007 to 2009 was a man named Reuven Bulka. He remains a member of the CJC's Board of Directors as "immediate past president." Now, prior to becoming co-president of the CJC, Bulka wrote a book called One Man, One Woman, One Lifetime in which he described homosexuality as "abnormal" and called on lesbian and gay Jews to seek "the help of mental health professionals and spiritual advisors". Not only that but Bulka served for years on the "scientific advisory committee" of a group called the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality which views homosexuality as a "psychological condition" and "developmental disorder" and offers "conversion therapy" which it claims will "cure" homosexuality. Despite Bulka's clear and longstanding association with a crackpot, pseudoscientific homophobic organization the good people of the National Post never follow references to the Canadian Jewish Congress with a statement such as "recently led by homophobic pseudoscience advocate Reuven Bulka" or write anything that implies that the CJC shares Bulka's views.

Of course, the reason for the Post's inconsistent treatment of two Jewish groups has everything with ideology and nothing to do with journalistic ethics. Jonathan Kay has gone to great lengths sifting through the writings of IJV's former leader in hopes of finding something he can trump up into scandal but he's never given Rabbi Bulka's writings a second glance. If the Post had decided it's worthwhile to put so much effort into excavating the past writings of IJV's former leader why does it not expend the same effort in regards to the CJC and Reuven Bulka's controversial views?

Merry Christmas!

2010-01-21T09:50:00.002-05:00

Here's a rather delightful communist Christmas carol from the comrades at rathergood.com

David Irving "taken out" by John Safran

2010-01-03T18:19:00.001-05:00

Who will succeed Kyle Rae?

2009-12-28T15:07:00.000-05:00

Longtime Toronto City Councillor Kyle Rae announced earlier this month that he will not be running for re-election in 2010. Rae was originally elected in 1991 after beating ~~Adonica Huggins~~ Sherona Hall for the NDP nomination in what is now Toronto Centre Ward 27. Rae filled an opening created by then city councillor Jack Layton's decision to run for mayor. Rae left the NDP in ~~1993~~ 1994 to protest the Bob Rae government's decision to not whip his caucus to vote for same-sex benefits and allow a free vote instead - which failed due to several NDP MPPs voting with the Opposition. Since then, he's essentially been a Liberal in all but name supporting Liberal candidates such as George Smitherman, Bill Graham and, ironically, Bob Rae. Kyle has also been a general disappointment by supporting the closure of homeless shelters in his ward, backing policing against homeless people sleeping in parks, supporting the creation of Dundas Square as a privatized, commercial playground rather than a genuine public square and holding swank fundraising parties at College Park's exclusive Eaton Auditorium.

Despite his background as Executive Director of the 519 Community Centre in the 1980s, Rae has been, in practice, a city councillor for Rosedale and downtown condos rather than the poorer tenants of his ward.

The NDP has largely withdrawn from being an organized entity in municipal politics and will not be holding a meeting to nominate an NDP candidate in Ward 27.

So far, four individuals have emerged as likely candidates in next year's contest;

*Helen Kennedy is a former East York councillor and was subsequently Olivia Chow's longtime executive assistant when she was city councillor in Ward 20 (Trinity Spadina). When Chow moved to federal politics, Kennedy won a bitter contest against Tam Goosen for the NDP nomination to succeed Chow in the 2006 municipal election and went on to lose an equally bitter contest against Adam Vaughan. She is now executive director of Egale Canada, a national GLBT rights organization.
*El-Farouk Khaki, a lawyer, human rights activist, 2009 Grand Marshall of the Pride Parade and past NDP candidate in Toronto Centre, says his candidacy is not likely but that he's not closed the door to the possibility.
*Chris Phibbs is a senior advisor to David Miller and was executive assistant to Kyle Rae from 1992 to 2003 when she ran and lost as a candidate in Riverdale in the 2003 municipal election against NDPer Paula Fletcher. She has reportedly ruled herself out of the race.
*Enza "Supermodel" Anderson is a transgendered activist and media personality who ran for mayor in 2000 as a novelty candidate and came in third with 13,000 votes. She ran against Rae in 2003 and won 15% of the vote. She was grand marshall of the 2008 Pride Parade.
*Susan Gapka is also a transgendered activist and a representative of the Ontario NDP's LGBT caucus on the party's provincial executive. She ran against Rae in 2006 winning 4.8% of the vote.

Holocaust survivors vs B'nai Brith Canada

2009-11-13T09:28:00.001-05:00

One of the things I find most offensive is when people trivialize the Holocaust by making specious analogies to it for political purposes. It bothers me when the left does it as well as the right. Unfortunately, there is a growing trend among Zionist groups and the Israeli government to engage in this practice. Over the years, Yassir Arafat, Hamas, Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad have all been compared to Hilter and there've been warnnings that another Holocaust is around the corner if they are not stopped. Of course, Zionist politicians don't stop there, they've even compared each other to Hitler and/or the Nazis, whether it's Ben Gurion referring to right wing Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky as "Vladimir Hilter" or right wing Zionist spraypainting the words "Yitzhak Rabin = Hitler" near the slain leader's memorial.

The increasingly comical fringe group, B'nai Brith Canada, is the latest group to engage in the practice of insulting Shoa survivors by taking out a full page ad in the National Post comparing Muslims to Nazis earning them a strong rebuke from Holocaust survivors as reported in this article by the Jewish Telegraphic Association press service:

B’nai Brith ad raises survivors’ ire
November 12, 2009

TORONTO (JTA) -- A full-page newspaper ad placed by B'nai Brith Canada that equated radical Islam with Nazism has raised the ire of Holocaust survivors and a group that promotes Jewish-Muslim ties.

Headlined "The Unholy Alliance," the ad, which ran in the Nov. 9 edition of the pro-Israel National Post, noted the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the widespread pogroms in Germany on the night on Nov. 8-9, 1938. It showed a photograph of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem meeting with Adolf Hitler, and noted the "common objectives of Nazism and radical Islam: Killing Canadian men and women on the battlefield, incitement of children through schools and media, annihilation of world Jewry, and subjugation of every one else, [and] world domination."

The ad solicited tax-deductible donations to B'nai B'rith Canada.

The topic of open line radio shows and hundreds of blog postings, the ad drew an irate response from the group Canadian Jewish Holocaust Survivors. "We survivors have fought everybody that tries to trivialize the Shoah. We get very, very angry when it is done by Jewish leaders. I think that they should know better," said the organization's co-president, Sidney Zoltak.

It is "horrible for a survivor to hear that anybody is compared to the evil of the leaders of Nazism," Zoltak said, but added: "We can see clearly the danger of extremism in the Muslim world. We have to be vigilant. We know what can happen when we become indifferent. [But] to compare the situation between now and then is not healthy. I'm upset about it."

Barbara Landau, co-chair of the Canadian Association of Jews and Muslims, questioned the ad's timing two days before Remembrance Day and in advance of the second annual Weekend of Twinning of Synagogues and Mosques. "My first thought was 'why?'" she said. "It was so distressing."

B'nai B'rith Executive Vice President Frank Dimant defended the ad, saying positive reaction to it outweighed the negative by "about 80 to 20. It seems there are a lot of people out there who are waiting for this kind of strong messaging."

Dimant said the ad was "intended to wake people up." He alluded to Iran's threats against Israel as a possible "future holocaust unless we stop it. I don't think any survivor will say that these people are not speaking about the genocide of the Jewish people."

IJV's response to the National Post article

2009-09-19T09:34:00.000-04:00

Re: Church Helped Fund 'Anti-jewish' Group, Sept. 17.

Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber characterizes it as "shocking, outrageous, shameful and scandalous" that a Christian church contributed money to the founding event of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). We disagree. It is completely appropriate for churches and other organizations to collaborate with groups like ours in the pursuit of social justice.

Mr. Farber claims that IJV is "anti-Zionist" and "anti-Jewish."

We are proudly Jewish. Our members include Holocaust survivors and their children, religious as well as secular Jews, and Jews who have dedicated their lives to fighting anti-Semitism as well as all other forms of racism. We span a broad spectrum of views from strongly Zionist to strongly anti-Zionist. But we all support the principles of universal human rights, international law, and opposition to any form of racism, including anti-Semitism. We believe that both Palestinians and Israelis have the right to peaceful and secure lives. We adhere to the great Jewish tradition of dissent, debate and pursuit of universal social justice.

Independent Jewish Voices is very much in the mainstream, providing a voice for the growing number of those within the Jewish community and beyond who are critical of Israel's human rights violations. It is Mr. Farber and the Canadian Jewish Congress who find themselves increasingly on the margins.

Sid Shniad, co-chair Independent Jewish Voices, Surrey, B. C.

Censoring Israel's critics

2009-05-30T09:03:00.000-04:00

I was going to write something on B'nai Brith's attempt to have Queers Against Apartheid banned from this year's Pride Parade and tie it together with other recent attempts to censor opinion on Israel - namely the shameful blacklisting of artist Reena Katz by the Canadian Jewish Congress/United Jewish Appeal affiliated Koffler Centre, B'nai Brith's attempt to have Seven Jewish Children banned in Toronto, Peter Shurman's attempt to have the Ontario legislature censure Israel Apartheid Week, protests against York's upcoming conference on one and two state solutions to the Israel/Palestine conflict etc... and then I saw Antonia Zerbisias' brilliant post on her Broadside blog which expands and annotates her recent column on the QuAIA affair. I will try to write something of my own soon but at the moment I have little to add to what Antonia's said so take a look.

Turnout for "Walk with Israel" down again!

2009-05-24T21:41:00.001-04:00

Anyone who doubts that support for Israel among Canadian Jews is dropping need only to look at the turnout for Toronto's annual "Walk with Israel" - the Toronto United Jewish Appeal's major fundraiser for the year. The intensification of pro-Israel advocacy efforts and mounting shrillness on Israel by the Canadian Jewish Congress has not resulted in a deepening of feeling for Israel by Jews. Rather, the horrors of the Gaza conflict has caused a growing number of Jews to question Israeli policies or at least doubt them enough not to come running when self-appointed leaders of the community come calling. This year about half as many answered the UJA/CJC's call as did four years ago.

Walk with Israel (Toronto) turnout:

2006 - 20,000

2008 - 15,000

2009 - 12,000

In a related item, the Toronto Star yesterday published an excellent piece on the 90th anniversary of the Canadian Jewish Congress - highlighting the fact that the CJC is out of touch with a large segment of the Jewish community because of it's narrow pro-Israel stance:

Has Jewish group forgotten its roots? Critics say Canadian Jewish Congress has clout in top circles, but not in community

Two Jewish cultural workers, 30,000 opinions: A public statement from artist Reena Katz and curator Kim Simon

2009-05-12T06:50:00.000-04:00

The following statement has been released by Reena Katz and her curator, Mona Filip, regarding the Koffler Centre's disgraceful decision to "dissociate" themselves from Katz not because of her art but because of her political associations:

Two Jewish cultural workers, 30,000 opinions: A public statement from artist Reena Katz and curator Kim Simon

For Immediate Release: May 10, 2009

It is with absolute outrage and a deep sadness that we write this statement regarding our experience working with the Koffler Centre of the Arts. As a Jewish curator and Jewish artist, we were invited by the Koffler to develop a project in early 2008. Since April of last year we have been working closely on an off-site exhibition wholeheartedly approved by Koffler curator Mona Filip, Koffler Executive Director Lori Starr and the Koffler Arts Advisory Committee.

Slated to open on May 20th 2009, the project, entitled each hand as they are called, is an ambitious and considered series of ephemeral gestures reflective of life in Toronto's historic Kensington Market. The project consists of sonic and visual performances, brings elders from Toronto's Jewish community into conversation and play with students from Ryerson Public School, and involves a series of vivid posters designed by Cecilica Berkovic sited throughout the Kensington neighborhood. This beautiful, smart and tender project reflects a deep commitment to animating a dialogue between aspects of Toronto's diverse Jewish/Yiddish history and its fascinating contact with other cultures. Through a queer framing of social history, this dialogue draws on the current social and economic space of Kensington Market, the trans-cultural game of Mah-Jongg, and the fusion music of the North American Yiddish song.

THE FACTS: Late on Thursday, May 7th we received an email requesting our attendance at an urgent meeting with Lori Starr and Mona Filip, scheduled for Friday, May 8th at 9:00 AM. When we inquired about the agenda of the meeting, Filip refused to answer. The next morning, twelve days before the scheduled opening of a project involving over seventy participants, we attended the meeting. We were shocked to learn that the Koffler would be dissociating itself from Katz and our project solely on the basis of her political affiliations they said they had discovered on the Internet. Of particular concern was Katz's participation in Israeli Apartheid Week. Starr made a verbal offer to honor the full funding of the project while removing the Koffler's name, logo and URL from any related material.

Before leaving the meeting we requested a discussion with the Koffler Board of Directors and Starr agreed to take the request under advisement. The one -hour meeting ended with many questions unanswered, and it was agreed that we would be in contact again with the Koffler on Monday, May 12th about whether and how to continue such a difficult working relationship. In less than one hour after this meeting, the Koffler and its parent organization United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto (UJA) issued separate public statements of dissociation from Katz.

FROM KIM SIMON, CURATOR: Now distributed to an international network, the Koffler and UJA's statements are a hypocritical, inaccurate account of Katz's work for human rights in Palestine. They constitute an irresponsible, inflammatory and slanderous attempt to discredit Katz and by extension her work as an artist. After a year of dialogue with us, to be summarily dismissed by Star and Filip without opportunity for discussion is shocking to say the least.

The Koffler had full knowledge of the work Katz has done over the course of a year to develop close relationships enabling dialogue and collaboration with numerous organizations and individuals participating in her exhibition.

While verbally agreeing to continue funding for the exhibition, the Koffler's reprehensible and uniquely unprofessional conduct has in effect placed the project in jeopardy. At this time, several key collaborators in the project have withdrawn their participation due to the discomfort directly caused by the Koffler and UJA statements.

In their public dissociation from Katz's exhibition, not on the basis of the aesthetics and content of the work but rather on the presumed opinions of the artist, the Koffler has entered into a practice of cultural blocklisting reminiscent of the 1950s and McCarthyism. I cannot overstate my disappointment in this institution that claims its mission as strengthening "identity and community while fostering an appreciation of difference." The Koffler's dissociation with Katz is a complete undermining of open dialogue within the Jewish community of Toronto and a great disservice to the Toronto cultural community, and the greater community of this city. As a condition for receiving financial support, the City of Toronto requires all organizations to follow policies that clearly prohibit discrimination and harassment on the basis of political affiliation. The Koffler Centre for the Arts has unwisely chosen to follow a different course and thus effectively rendered itself an undemocratic cultural space.

Katz is a person for whom I have deep respect. It has been my honor and privilege to work with her, learn from her and debate with her. I am appalled and heartbroken over the manner in which she has been treated by the Koffler Centre for the Arts.

FROM REENA KATZ, ARTIST: I come from a family of many Holocaust Survivors. My elders' stories of resistance and survival have deeply informed my visual and sound work. In a number of Jewish contexts, I was taught to embrace tolerance and fight racism in all its forms. It is this wisdom and ethical rooting that informs my art practice as well as my activism.

My relational, sound and sculptural work have a consistent reference to oral archive, Yiddish texts, Jewish  metaphor, and culturally specific imagery.

Starting at age 16, I studied Yiddish with my great-aunts, both of whom lived at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, a participating organization in the project. I have been a student, teacher, and performer of Yiddish and Klezmer for the past 14 years. I have worked within Jewish, multi-faith, and secular forums to educate around anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, and sexism.

I bring an irreverent, creative, and queer voice to my Jewish cultural work, critiquing and transforming traditions into contemporary praxis. My projects build bridges between the diverse communities I am a part of, forming my esteemed reputation as a community-based artist. It repulses me that I have to justify my practice here, as I sit falsely accused. I am as Jewish as they come, and not the Jew the Koffler claims me to be.

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) and its organizers do not act to delegitimize Israel, but rather, "to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement." I have not stated that I advocate for the "extinction of Israel as a Jewish State" as the Koffler's statement claims. What I do state publicly is that I am an anti-Zionist Jew. This is an ideological stance, not one that determines any specific outcome for the contemporary state of Israel. I consider the Koffler's press release a blatant misrepresentation of my position as well as that of IAW.

I do not expect the Koffler or the UJA to agree with my political leanings. The issue here is the silence because of my political affiliations, and the stonewalling of internal dissent and debate within our cultural institutions. I am deeply committed to open discussion both within Jewish communities and with Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities worldwide. Dissent and discourse are crucial parts of this now global conversation; silencing and blocklisting are cowardly and toxic. At no point along the way was I asked to represent myself, my ideas, or the mandates of the groups I belong to, despite amicable, almost daily contacts with Filip for many months.

One of the first steps towards dialogue and understanding is upholding the rights of expression and free association. The arts especially, are fertile ground on which communities can come together with respect and creative vision. Cultural workers and artists must be allowed to speak honestly, stir passions, disturb - as well as kindle - justice and peace.

MOVING FORWARD: Since the release of the Koffler and UJA statements we have received overwhelming support from an international community of artists, curators, public arts organizations, educators and organizers. We greatly appreciate your attention to this matter. In further consideration we suggest you continue to question what is at stake in the Koffler's decision. We respectfully request your support in the form of continued dialogue with each other and a critical inquiry regarding all forms of support to the Koffler Center of the Arts.

Rest assured that the presentation of each hand as they are called will go on, even if this means an amendment to the original project. We look forward to inviting you to the opening.

Please visit our blog at eachhand.org and the eachhand Facebook page which will be up and running by May 12, 2009. For any questions or comments, please contact Reena Katz atmailto:radiodress@rogers.com and Kim Simon at mailto:kimshoshanasimon@gmail.com

Complain to Koffler Centre's financial backers for their blacklisting of an anti-Zionist Jewish artist

2009-05-10T12:05:00.000-04:00

According to Koffler's website the CIBC is a major financial backer of the Koffler Centre. If Koffler is going to attack, slander and blacklist Jewish artists think it's a good idea to complain to Koffler's funders for their actions (they also receive taxpayer money) as they are inconsistent with the basic rights of artists.

Date: Sun, May 10, 2009 at 11:53 AM
Subject: To CIBC Wood Gundy re your financial support of the Koffler Centre
To: client.relations@cibc.ca
Cc: ceckert@kofflerarts.org, lstarr@kofflerarts.org

Dear CIBC,

It is my understanding that you are a major financial supporter of the Koffler Centre. While it is admirable that you are trying to contribute to the cultural and artistic community I suggest you reconsider your support of this particular institution given their blacklisting of Jewish artist Reena Katz not for her art but for her personal political views and associations. This oppressive behaviour by Koffler and their attack on the right of artists to their political beliefs and their right of free association is inconsistent with basic artistic values and renders them unworthy of support.

For more information on Koffler's discreditable conduct please see this article in Sunday's Toronto Star (pasted below):
Kensington Market exhibit stirs controversy among Jews

Yours truly,

Koffler Centre persecutes Jewish artist

2009-05-10T08:08:00.000-04:00

On May 8, the Koffler Centre for the Arts issued a press release announcing that they are "disassociating themselves" from an art exhibition by Toronto artist Reena Katz which is being installed at Kensington Market later this month. They are rejecting Katz not for the content of her work but because of her personal political beliefs, namely "Reena Katz’s public support for and association with Israel Apartheid Week." This is nothing less than blacklisting and the Koffler Centre should be ashamed of itself, particularly when one considers not only the number of Jewish artists and performers who suffered due to McCarthyist blacklisting in the 1950s but also the generations of Jews, in the arts as well as in the professions and various trades, who were denied employment not because of the quality or content of their work but because of their personal beliefs.

According to the Koffler Centre's press release "As a Jewish cultural institution, an agency of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, the Koffler Centre of the Arts will not associate with an artist who publicly advocates the extinction of Israel as a Jewish state. The Koffler considers the existence and well-being of Israel as a Jewish state to be one of its core values." Katz replies in an article in today's Toronto Star saying, "I have said that I'm an anti-Zionist Jew. So they are conflating the state of Israel with Zionism. I'm speaking to an ideology when I speak about Zionism. They're speaking about a Jewish state."

Partisans of the UJA, CJC and B'nai Brith like pretend that Jewish critics of Israel are either assimilated Jews who reject their heritage and only speak out against Zionism so they can gain acceptance from the non-Jewish left or are, worse, apostates, the fact is that opposition to Zionism within the Jewish community is as old and as established as Zionism itself and that the most adamant of Zionism's Jewish opponents base their opposition on religious grounds. Others do so based on Jewish philisophical traditions of humanitarianism and universalism.

Reena Katz is one of the most Jewish people I've met. Her work is infused with Jewish sensibilities and themes. She is not only a visual and sonic artist but a musician who fronted the Klemzer band Promegranate for a number of years. She describes her upcoming exhibit as a(n) homage to my Jewish roots and the Jewish roots of Kensington Market." The Koffler Centre recognized this as well. According to their now removed write up of the event (still available online thank's to Google's cache feature):

each hand as they are called reflects on Toronto’s Kensington Market as the vibrant site of multiple public cultural histories, layered with personal stories and fragmented by the movement of time. Katz approaches the culture of the Market through the lens of her own memory and experience of Kensington, coming out as a young, politically engaged, queer woman. Taking the ephemeral nature of experience in urban space to heart, through a series of solo and collaborative performances, temporary installations, community projects and public posters, Katz works with the notion of transition and movement. each hand as they are called captures the spirit of the Market on any given day, filled with passing but memorable vignettes.

Roaming, live vocal performances insert an experimental soundtrack of assimilation, anachronism and hybridity into the urban landscape of the Market. Based on the jazz-fusion music of Yiddish speaking sister duos from the 60s, Katz’s haunting compositions are a combination of popular music, Yiddish classics and jazz, composed backwards for female duets. The resulting absurdist vocals create a hybrid language of calls and beckoning within the Market streetscape.

A community-based component of the project involves Katz working with residents from the Terraces at Baycrest and grade eight students from Ryerson Community Public School. Together, their working process will highlight Kensington as the important meeting point of Jewish and Chinese culture through the game of Mah Jongg, a game originating in East Asian communities which migrated and was popularized with North American Jewish women during the 1920s. The project culminates in a public day of inter-generational Mah Jongg in the Market’s Bellevue Park on June 7 (rain date: June 14).

In addition, Katz performs solo against the backdrop of Kensington Market’s tense relationship to urban development. At odd and unexpected hours, she will be seen working on temporary structures, building and deconstructing scaffolding in previously undisclosed locations. Katz’s scaffold performances gesture to the incredible labour history of the area, positioning the act of construction as obstruction and to memory itself as construct.

While each of Katz’s performative and social gestures are ephemeral, each hand as they are called will have a constant presence in the market through a series of interrelated street posters, designed by Katz in collaboration with award winning designer and artist Cecilia Berkovic. The posters provide additional context for the project while inserting a distinct visual presence amongst the eclectic mix of band-posters, announcements about lost pets, and other posted ephemera populating the Market.

Reena Katz isn't being blacklisted because her views on Israel somehow make her anti-Semitic (they don't), she's being blacklisted because she is too Jewish for the Koffler Centre and the United Jewish Appeal.

To complain about this outrage email the following people: lstarr@kofflerarts.org, ceckert@kofflerarts.org, thewer@kofflerarts.org, tliederman@kofflerarts.org, ishohat@kofflerarts.org, etauben@kofflerarts.org,

This is what Reena has to say on the matter:

Dear friends, family, comrades and colleagues;

Most of you know that I've been working on a site-specific commission for the Koffler Gallery in Kensington Market, set to open on May 20th. Kim Simon is an independent curator, who found me and proposed my work to the Koffler last year. She has been my main creative (and now political) ally in the process.

Today, at 9am Kim and I were informed by Lori Starr (Koffler executive director) and Mona Philip (Koffler curator) that the Koffler is disassociating from the exhibition: removing their name and URL's from any further outreach materials, exhibition posters and press.

Why?
Their Board of Directors, along with their major funder - The UJA of Greater Toronto - has decided that they "will not associate with an artist who publicly advocates the extinction of Israel as a Jewish state".

In our meeting with Lori and Mona this morning, it was made clear that their decision is based on my involvement specifically with Israeli Apartheid Week. Lori was explicit that it isn't me they object to, but the public statements I've made on behalf of specific organizations. Seeing this as a moment of potential change, I proposed a meeting with their Board, in which I would explain the true mandate of Israeli Apartheid Week, CAIA, and the Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation - now known as Women in Solidarity with Palestine.

Why now?
A year ago, Kim asked Mona directly if Koffler would have a problem showing my work considering my solidarity with Palestine. Mona was clear that since the project didn't deal with the issue, Koffler would stand behind it. Indeed, after a year of having access to my website, CV, Facebook page and any Google search results, it wasn't until this week that they chose to look at my Facebook page, and found a link to Israel Apartheid Week.

What the?
This weekend, I am working with Kim Simon, the independent curator on the project to respond to Koffler's press release (click on it to link there) with our own press release in response. It's evident they are acting out of fear. Fear of critique of Israel from within the Jewish community, fear of the repercussions of standing by an artist who is affiliated with justice for Palestinians.

Nu, so, what now?
They have offered to continue the project's $20,000 funding - without attaching to it institutionally in any way. An interesting proposal indeed. The project is quite extensive, and involves youth from Ryerson Community Public School, Seniors from Baycrest Centre, The Element Choir, solo vocalists and a number of stores, homes and cultural institutions in Kensington Market. Of course, I don't want to cancel the project but feel very uncertain at this time of how I want to proceed with it. Kim and I are putting thought to this, and plan to have a decision on Sunday. I am interested in taking this up politically, and strategizing around the best way to do that.

Until then, I would greatly appreciate your support in sending the Koffler messages. This is clearly an attempt by a mainstream Jewish institutions to stifle dissent within our community, and the art world in general. Please cc me on anything you send. Also, talk about it to anyone you know - especially arts organizations and their members. I'll be in touch soon with our press release.

With love and justice,
Reena

And here is an excellent letter from activist Henry Lowi:

To: lstarr@kofflerarts.org
Subject: Reena Katz unfairly targetted by Koffler Centre
Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 22:28:12 +0000

Lori Starr,

Executive Director, Koffler Centre of the Arts

Dear Ms Starr:

I read your announcement about the Reena Katz exhibition.[i]

I have known Reena Katz since she was a teacher in a Jewish Sunday School. I consulted her many years ago about violin lessons for my daughter. She referred us to the best violin teacher in Toronto.

I am well aware of Reena’s activism in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine. I know that Reena is motivated by an acute consciousness of the history of Jewish suffering and persecution (and culture!), and a commitment that “Never Again!”, to anyone, anywhere.

Despite the Koffler mandate, [ii] you are taking sides in a political issue. Your position is symptomatic of a kind of panic that is overtaking pro-Zionist organizations. Your panic is based on the painful awareness that you have placed yourselves on the side of injustice and oppression, an uncomfortable position for a Jew to inhabit.

The atrocity committed recently by the State of Israel against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has drawn the attention of the whole world. It is well documented. [iii] It has been compared to the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa.[iv] The whole world has seen how the Palestinians -- virtually unarmed, isolated, and poorly led -- are being systematically massacred by a well-armed military power that enjoys unlimited military, political and economic support.[v] Strong feelings of solidarity have been aroused.

You are untouched by those feelings of solidarity.

Most Jewish community organizations remained silent in the face of the atrocities and the ongoing blockade of Gaza. Unfortunately for you, all decent people, all lovers of humanity noticed the silence of the Jewish organizations. Fortunately, all also noticed that Jewish dissidents -- Righteous Jews, upholders of our traditions of struggle against injustice -- spoke out.[vi][vi(b)]

Reena Katz is one of those Jewish dissidents.

The Jewish community is split. The split will deepen. On one side, you will find those who uphold the values of solidarity, decency, culture, and human rights. On the other side will be the supporters of murder, racism, and apartheid. All will have to choose their side,

You have chosen your side.

By dissociating yourselves from Reena Katz’s artistic work, for political reasons, you are engaging in a form of cultural boycott. As you know, progressive Palestinian grassroots popular organizations have called for a boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions.[vii] Peace-seeking Israelis support the boycott.[viii][viii(b)] Solidarity-minded Canadians, like author Naomi Klein, support the boycott.[ix] Faced with the boycott, Zionist apologists howl about “singling out Israelis because they are Israelis”, “anti-Semitism”, and the like.[x] They lie.

The Zionists lie, but they are in a panic. Fewer and fewer people are impressed by Zionist lies. More and more are impressed by the inevitable parallels between Israel’s genocidal conduct and the conduct of other oppressive regimes.

Solidarity with Palestine will grow, while disdain for Zionism and its supporters will grow.

You are singling out Reena Katz because she is a decent human being who speaks out against the oppression of fellow human beings. You have done so very publicly, making it very clear where you stand, and with whom you stand.

Reena Katz’s Israeli and Palestinian comrades pay a heavy price for their activism.[xi],[xii],[xiii],[xiv] They know that justice is on their side. They will win. Palestine will be free. Arts and culture will flourish. Jews and Arabs will live together, in peace, as equals.

Regards,

Henry Lowi

And go see the show at Kensington Market beginning May 20!

Tell me why (I don't like Mondays)

2009-04-30T07:53:00.000-04:00

Or "National Post deathwatch part 23"

National Post stops Monday editions in summer

As CanWest sinks further and further into debt and tries desperately to stave off its creditors the company has announced that its flagship newspaper will not be publishing on Mondays through the summer. Think of this as the Aspers' version of "Rae Days".

Post publishers Paul Godfrey and Gordon Fisher are trying to put the best face they can on this move stating in their Note to Readers that "this change is in some respects simply a return to what used to be the norm. Financial Post, the 102-year-old heart of our newspaper, prospered for years as a Tuesday-to-Saturday publication." Somehow, I think most Post employees and readers don't see this retreat as a nod to nostalgia.

As CanWest tries to sell of non core assets and dead weight in an attempt to remain solvent the Aspers will have to, sooner rather than later, decide the ultimate fate of the National Post which has never once returned a profit in its ten year history. Chances are that by the end of the summer it won't be just Mondays on which the Post won't be publishing.

Is the Canada-Israel Committee spying on the left?

2009-04-16T12:26:00.000-04:00

It would seem so according to a CIC document obtained by Dr. Dawg which outlines a 2008 plan by the CIC to monitor and attempt to discredit Palestinian supporters. This is somewhat reminiscent of the scanadal several years ago when the US Anti-Defamation League was found to be spying on the left.

Order of Canada revoked from disgraced recipient

2009-04-09T14:19:00.000-04:00

No, convicted felon Conrad Black still has his gong.

The disgraced figure who has been stripped of his Order of Canada is T. Sher Singh, a prominent Guelph lawyer who was appointed to the order in 2001. Singh was expelled from the Law Society of Upper Canada in 2007 after he "failed to serve clients, mishandled trust funds, misappropriated $2,000 from a client and continued to practise after being suspended in November 2005." The Toronto Star reported earlier this week that Singh's Order of Canada was revoked in December 2008 "pursuant to the Law Society of Upper Canada finding Mr. Singh guilty of professional misconduct and revoking his licence to practise law."

There is no indication that Singh was either criminally charged or convicted for his misdeeds.

So here's the question, if someone can have their Order of Canada taken away as a result of being disciplined by a professional body for misconduct then why does Conrad Black still have his Order when he has been rendered a much more severe judgment by a criminal court?

If you are no longer deemed worthy of an honour for having misappropriated $2,000 and being expelled from the Law Society of Upper Canada, then certainly committing a $6.1 million fraud and being sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison is automatic cause for being de-orderized?

Conrad Black has lost every appeal and the Supreme Court of the United States appears to have passed up its option to consider Black's case a month ago. So why does Black still have the Order of Canada?

Anti-Semitism in Venezuela? Not so much. (But who will tell Irwin Cotler?)

2009-04-09T00:11:00.000-04:00

In January of this year, the anti-Chavez crowd was breathlessly claiming that the vandalisation of a synagogue in Caracas was evidence of a wave of anti-Semitism in Venezuela and despite the lack of any evidence linking the crime to the government, it was widely implied that the attack was a result of official anti-Semitism in the upper ranks of Venezuela's socialist government.

While the attempt to link the government to the attack was facile and opportunistic the simple fact that a synagogue was firebombed was a legitimately worrisome development.

The attack has reached mythic proportions here. Despite the fact that the burglars were busted in February after one of them confessed, Liberal MP Irwin Cotler rose in the House of Commons on April Fool's Day to table a petition decrying the "the escalating state-backed anti-Semitism in Venezuela" with what he called the "firebombing" of the synagogue as exhibit number 1. This despite the fact that not only was the synagogue not firebombed but, as you are about to learn, it had nothing to do with anti-Semitism, let alone "state-backed anti-Semitism".

The original act received a lot of media attention in North America (and some exaggeration with Irwin Cotler claiming the temple was firebombed). What has received far less notice is the denouement - it seems that the incident was not motivated by anti-Semitism but by greed and a personal dispute.

The robbery was in fact planned by the Rabbi's bodyguard after his employer had denied his request for a loan. The accompanying vandalism was an attempt by the robbers to cover their tracks and misdirect investigators.

Incidentally, as has been pointed out by a correspondent on Norman Finkelstein's blog, Caracas' biggest mosque was robbed last month. Curiously, neither the North American media nor Mr. Cotler have suggested that this act was a result of state-sponsored Islamophobia.

Court rules on CAF injunction

2009-04-08T17:48:00.000-04:00

Recently Jason Kenney, the Clown Prince of Cabinet, announced he was cutting of government funding to the Canadian Arab Federation because of its stance on the recent Gaza war - accusing CAF of being anti-Semitic. CAF went to court to seek an injunction to continue the funding. The court ruled today and while the emergency injunction was not granted since the ESL program CAF ran can be run by other groups the ruling does open the way for Kenney's decision to be overturned when a full hearing into the matter is held. Here is the conclusion of Justice Kellen's ruling.

CONCLUSION
[30] Does the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration have the right to cancel the contract with the Canadian Arab Federation for this ESL program for new Canadians because its president made public comments attacking the Minister’s political positions and personal character? Is it appropriate for government to cancel the contract because the Canadian Arab Federation loudly protests the Israeli invasion of Palestine, and calls a Canadian cabinet minister a name for not opposing the Israeli invasion?
[31] Being a target of public criticism is part of holding political office. If the Minister decided to cancel the English as a Second Language funding contract for the Canadian Arab community simply because he was called a name in the heat of a political protest against the Israeli attacks in Gaza, his decision should not stand. It was not unexpected that the Arab community would be repulsed by Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Naturally, the Arab community was upset that the Canadian government did not strongly protest this attack. Many reputable Canadian Jews were similarly opposed to Israel’s attack on Gaza.
[32] However, the Court recognizes that Mr. Kenney alleges that the Canadian Arab Federation is racist, anti-Semitic, and a supporter of a terrorist organization and that it was for these reasons that he cancelled the contract, and not because he was called a name.
[33] Regardless of his reasons for cancelling the funding contract, the Minister clearly owes a duty to the Canadian Arab Federation to give them notice that he intends to cancel the contract, provide the reasons for cancelling the contract, and give the Canadian Arab Federation an opportunity to respond before making his decision. The Minister may have breached the duty of fairness in this regard. For that reason the Minister’s decision may be set aside by the Court after a full hearing. This is a serious issue, an elementary principle of administrative law, and the Minister and his officials must act according to the law.
[34] In this case the Minister has made arrangements so that the CAF employees working exclusively on the LINC contract will continue to be employed and the LINC program will continue. Accordingly, the employees of the Canadian Arab Federation and the community that it serves will not suffer irreparable harm. As a result, the Court will not grant an interim injunction. At the same time, this application for judicial review of the Minister’s decision can proceed and the Canadian Arab Federation may obtain a decision declaring that the Minister’s decision was illegal. Following that, the Canadian Arab Federation may be entitled to commence an action for damages, but that is all in the future.
[35] On the other hand, at the full hearing of this application to set aside the decision of Minister Kenney, the Minister’s evidence may satisfy the Court the applicant should not be extended funding for the reasons cited by Mr. Kenney, namely anti-Semitism, hate mongering and support of terrorism. The Court will decide this question after a full hearing of the evidence on both sides.
[36] For these reasons, this motion for an interim injunction must be dismissed.

The full decision can be found here.

Israeli wine boycott - the video

2009-04-07T07:36:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday the group Not in Our Name - Jews Against Zionism (NION) staged a demonstration outside of the Summerhill LCBO in support of a boycott of Israeli wine. The NIONists urge instead the purchase of kosher wine from outside of Israel. The Jewish Defence League, Bnai Brith, and United Jewish Appeal organized a counter rally that brought out several hundred pro-Israel demonstrators to purchase Israeli wine in hopes of defeating the boycott. The real goal of the NION campaign, however, wasn't to deny Israel a few thousand dollars of wine sales at one outlet but to raise awareness. Uninvolved people, reading in the Toronto Sun about the intimidation utilized by the pro-Israel demonstraters were also informed about the boycott and some of them may now decide to read labels the next time they go to the store and give a pass to Israeli products.

How can a report with the following lede possibly be read by an objective person as being anything but an indictment of the counter-rally?

They shouted 'Shame!' and 'Jew-haters!' at the small group of Jewish protesters who yesterday called for a boycott of Israeli wines at a midtown liquor store.
Hundreds of pro-Israeli Jews descended on the Summerhill LCBO to counter a group of about 30 pro-Palestinian Jews who urged a boycott of Israeli wines ahead of this week's Passover Seder dinner.
"Jew-haters go home!" the pro-Israeli protesters shouted at the Palestinian sympathizers, who had planned to protest from 1 to 3 p.m.
But the rally was cut short at about 2:30 when police, concerned the crowd could get out of control, asked the pro-Palestinian side to end the protest, said Smadar Carmon, of Not In Our Name, a Jewish group critical of Israel's handling of the Palestinian situation.

The Zionists accomplished what the Nionists could not have done on their own - they created a situation that generated negative media coverage that revealed the aggressiveness and abuse used by Israel's supporters againist their opponents, particularly against dissenting Jews. The story also spread word of the general boycott of Israeli goods in both a Toronto Sun report (Jewish groups clash at LCBO) and the UPI pickup Toronto Jews clash over Israeli wines. During the Gaza war the media often characterized demonstrations as "Jews vs Palestinian" when, in fact, many of the participants in the pro-Gaza demos were Jews. This wasn't a problem this time as both major reports on the boycott demo, including the UPI report, highlighted the fact that the Jewish community is divided on the issue of Israel.

Even the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, a far-right anti-Muslim group linked to federal politicians such as Peter Kent and Tony Clement, got into the act. CCD front man Alastair Gordon posted pictures on his website of the rally, including shots taken by a stalker who followed the NIONists to a restaurant in order to take pictures of them while eating at a private establishment - a rather juvenile attempt at intimidation. (you'll have to scroll down within the frame to see the two pictures in question or check this page on the CCD site.)

Generally, the boycott campaign is having success:

Israeli exports hit by European boycotts after attacks on Gaza - a report in the British Guardian this week tells us " Israel Manufacturers Association reported that 21% of 90 local exporters who were questioned had felt a drop in demand due to boycotts, mostly from the UK and Scandinavian countries. Last month, a report from the Israel Export Institute reported that 10% of 400 polled exporters received order cancellation notices this year, because of Israel's assault on Gaza."

And even the Motorola campaign, which some have derided as hopeless, has borne fruit:
Motorola Sells Israel Bomb Division as National Boycott Campaign Advances

Meir Weinstein of JDL nailed by CBC Radio News World at Six

2009-04-03T18:35:00.001-04:00

CBC Radio News has a report this evening on Meir Weinstein and the Jewish Defence League. Where other media outlets have failed to dig further into Weinstein's past or that of the JDL the CBC managed to put Weinstein on the spot. Weinstein tries to wiggle away with some rather disingenuous excuses as well as outright lies but I'll provide a dissection a little later. But first, here's a rush transcript of tonight's CBC Radio News report on Meir Weinstein and l'affaire Galloway:

Bernie McNamee: There's another twist tonight in the George Galloway saga. The controversial British MP was refused entry to Canada because of his alleged support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas. now it turns out the man claiming credit for tipping off immigration officials is Meir Weinstein. Galloway's supporters say Weinstein himself was a spokesperson for a Jewish extremist group on Canada's list of banned terrorist organizations. Our security correspondent Bill Gillespie has the story.

Channel 4 News presenter: Banned from Canada and branded a threat to national security George Galloway says he'll fight a shameful decision.

Bill Gillespie: Britain's Channel 4 led their newscast this week with the Galloway affair. In fact, they brought Galloway and Meir Weinstein together to butt heads on a trans-Atlantic video link.

Meir Weinstein (on C4): We are extremely determined to uncover any proxy agents of Hamas.

Galloway (on C4): You don't have to uncover me, I'm an open book.

Bill Gillespie: Ottawa's decision to ban Galloway came four hours after Weinstein held a news conference alleging that the British MP had provided material support for Hamas, a banned terrorist organization in Canada but Galloway's supporters in the blogosphere say Weinstein himself was once a member of a Jewish terrorist group. In 1994 he was identified in a Canadian Press article as a spokesperson for the Kach Party, also known as Kahane Chai. A Kach member in Israel had just massacred more than 50 Palestinian worshippers. Weinstein refused to condemn the attack. He doesn't deny making the statement but he denies ever being a member of Kach.

Meir Weinstein: I've never been a member of Kach or Kahane Chai.

Gillespie: Canada, the US, and the European Union later put Kach and Kahane Chai on their list of banned terrorist organizations. Weinstein denies any connection between Kach and his present group, the Jewish Defence League of Canada. But left-wing bloggers who support Galloway point out that the logos of both groups - a clenched fist in an embedded Star of David - are almost identical. Weinstein says Kach stole the logo from the JDL.

Meir Weinstein: Um, that's the logo of the Jewish Defence League so they took it from the Jewish Defence League but again I don't dictate to them what they're going to do or anything like that.

Gillespie: But bloggers also discovered a link on Weinstein's Facebook page to a chat group called "Death to Arabs". Weinstein says the link was sent to him in Hebrew and he added it not knowing what it said. He has since deleted it. But despite his best efforts he didn't succeed in keeping Galloway from his speaking engagements in Canada.

Galloway (Toronto speech): You won't be able to hide behind your immigration officials who can't speak up for themselves.

Gillespie: The pro-Palestinian group in Toronto that invited Galloway beamed him into a packed church on an internet video link. Bill Gillespie, CBC News, Toronto.

1) Kach stole the JDL's logo? Come on Meir, why not give the actual explanation which is that the JDL was founded in 1968 in New York by Meir Kahane who moved to Israel in 1971 where he founded the Kach Party a few years later. They have the same logo because they are both founded and led by Kahane (who remained the JDL's mentor long after he founded Kach). Is Weinstein accusing Kahane of stealing the logo from himself? Secondly, as Bill Gillespie reported Weinstein himself was a Kach spokesperson in North America (Weinstein didn't deny this, he simply equivocated by saying he was never a Kach "member"). As for there being no connection between Kach, Kahane Chai and the JDL - that's just a bald-faced lie. Apart from having the same founder and leader in the person of Kahane, even after Kahane's death his successor as JDL leader, Irv Rubin, raised funds for Kach/Kahane Chai and promoted the terrorist group.

2) Unfortunately Bill Gillespie didn't report on the JDL's own well documented history of terrorism or the fact that JDL leader Irv Rubin and his deputy, Earl Krugel were arrested in 2001 for plotting to blow up a mosque in Los Angeles (Rubin had been in Montreal months before trying to set up a Montreal JDL chapter). Krugel was convicted - Rubin escaped justice by killing himself in prison.

3) "Weinstein says the link (to join the "Death to the Arabs" Facebook group) was sent to him in Hebrew and he added it not knowing what it said." Now I just laughed when I heard this. Weinstein has been an observant Jew, by his reckoning, since the late 1970s and even claims to have served in the Israeli military but he can't read Hebrew? I have to give him credit though, this was somewhat more believable than Weinstein's original explanation which was that the Iranians somehow planted the link on his page.

Let's hope Gillespie, and the rest of the media, follow up on this. According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terror (START) the JDL was for many years the second most active domestic terrorist group in the United States. There's no reason for the Canadian media to let them off the hook or for any of us to tolerate their attempts to influence Jason Kenney or the Canadian government.

UPDATED: The report is now up on YouTube:

Galloway sues Farber, CTV, Kenney, Velshi

2009-04-03T07:26:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, I was the first to report that British MP George Galloway was suing Bernie Farber and CTV for libel. Today, Canadian Press reports on this and adds that he will also be suing Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Alykhan Velshi for remarks they made about him.

This should get interesting. Let's home he finds cause to add the human troglodyte Meir Weinstein to the list.

George Galloway suing Bernie Farber and CTV

2009-04-01T22:55:00.000-04:00

Word out of Montreal tonight that George Galloway made public during his webcast to Concordia tonight that he has launched a devamation lawsuit against Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber and CTV for defamation uttered in an interview.

UPDATE: Galloway repeated the news in his webcast to Ottawa and the National Post has picked up the story.

Warren Kinsella and the JDL

2009-03-24T15:20:00.000-04:00

One of the ironies of the past week is that Meir Weinstein, the leader of the Jewish Defence League of Canada and former North American spokesperson for the banned Kach movement, has called for George Galloway to be banned from Canada as a terrorist apologist. Hence you have a bona fide terrorist apologist, Meir Weinstein, calling someone else a terrorist apologist. Well, I guess it takes one to know one. Kach has been listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organization since 1994 and has been banned by Canada since 2005.

How is Weinstein an apologist for terrorists? Well back in 1994 Kach and JDL member Baruch Goldstein shot and killed 30 Palestinians at Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs. Weinstein, using the pseudonym of Meir Halevi and in his capacity as Kach's North American spokesperson was asked about this by the media. Weinstein told Canadian Press ""[o]ur organization does not condemn the attack. It condemns the Israeli government for not providing adequate protection for settlers."

This leads us to our second irony of the week, Liberal aide and one time anti-racist Warren Kinsella spoke last night at a meeting organized by the JDL as a surprise guest. Kinsella hinted at this yesterday on his blog but it seems he was too embarassed to actually name the organization that called the meeting describing it only as a "Zionist group".

Now what would possess Kinsella to share a platform with a man who has been an apologist for terrorists and who, until recently, belonged to a Facebook group called מוות לערבים (mavet l'aravim) which means "Kill the Arabs" in English? Has he gone completely mad? If he was simply naive and was somehow bamboozled from Weinstein he should say so publicly and apologise. Otherwise, we're left with no other conclusion than that Kinsella has completely lost whatever political judgement he once had. Who in their right mind would associate themselves with a group that has advocated genocidal murder?

Apparently Kinsella and or apologists are now trying to tell BCL that the event was not a JDL meeting but a "public meeting at the Zionist Centre". Well that's being too cute with the truth. Yes, it was a public meeting at the Toronto Zionist Centre, but it was organized by the Jewish Defence League, featured Meir Weinstein, head of the JDL, and was billed as a JDL meeting on the JDL website.

If that's not bad enough Weinstein, in a comical appearance on Britain's Channel 4 news, showed his fascist colours by saying that if Galloway's tour organizers attempted to pursue a plan to allow Galloway to speak to planned meetings via webcast or some sort of closed circuit broadcast the JDL "will see to it that the Canadian government will be monitoring every individual and organization that will have anything to do with it” and also called for anyone associated with the Galloway tour to be investigated. Kinsella is supposed to be a liberal. Does he support the police state tactics Weinstein is advocating?

Finally, one can't forget that the JDL is a terrorist organization.
From Wikipedia:

In its report, Terrorism 2000/2001, the FBI referred to the JDL as a "violent extremist Jewish organization" and stated that the FBI was responsible for thwarting at least one of its terrorist acts. The National Consortium for the Study of Terror and Responses to Terrorism states that, during the JDL's first two decades of activity, it was an "active terrorist organization." The JDL was specifically referenced by the FBI's Executive Assistant Director Counterterrorism/Counterintelligence, John S. Pistole, in his formal report before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. While the consortium writes that the JDL does not currently engage in terrorist actions, according to The Washington Post, both active and former JDL leaders currently serve as primary fundraisers for the outlawed Israeli terrorist group Kahane Chai.Washington Report on Middle East Affairs has compiled a long list of mainstream sources it says show a thirty year history of JDL terrorism on U.S. soil, as well as its association with Kahane Chai.

And before anyone says that Canada's JDL has nothing to do with the US JDL take a look at this.

Really, if someone set up Al Qaeda Canada would anyone take seriously claims that this Al Qaeda has nothing to do with the others?

For more on Weinstein's neo-McCarthyite call against Galloway's defenders see this post on Dr. Dawg's Blawg.

Dawg has also written on Weinstein's Facebook shenanigans and his on again, off again, "facebook friendship" with Peter Kent which raises another point: if even Peter Kent knows enough to shun Weinstein how can Kinsella be so daft as to accept a speaking engagement from him?

Kenney vs Velshi

2009-03-20T18:59:00.000-04:00

Reading the New York Times' lexicological take on Canada's decision to bar British anti-war MP George Galloway from entering our fair land, I'm left wondering about the dynamics in the relationship between Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney and his aide Alykhan Velshi. It's quite clear who the brains is in the outfit. Velshi reaches back three centuries to find what he feels is the right word to describe Galloway as an "infandous street corner Cromwell." Infandous, which according to the Oxford English Dictionary hasn't been used in English since 1708, means something approximating 'unspeakable' or 'too odious to be mentioned'. Meanwhile Kenney, in an interview with Channel 4 News in Britain was somewhat less articulate telling the presenter that he isn't going to let Galloway "pee on our carpet". Kenney's language better reflects the actual thought processes of the government as the decision to bar Galloway from entry is infantile. Of course, we shouldn't assume that Velshi's seeming ability to find just the right arcane word is a result of a love of language - it may be the product of a love of death metal which, given our government's ideology, is not out of the question.

Jewish Canadians Concerned about Suppression of Criticism of Israel

2009-03-16T18:15:00.000-04:00

PLEASE POST THIS ON YOUR BLOG - FIGHT THE MYTH THAT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IS A MONOLITH

This statement was rejected by both the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail (as an op-ed). Please help this important statement get into broad circulation - pass it on to your networks (faculty, community, MPs, university presidents, unions etc.). You may also wish to write to the Star and Globe and express your dismay that they have chosen not to publish it.

Over 150 Jewish Canadians signed a statement expressing their concerns about the campaign to suppress criticism of Israel that is being carried on within Canada. The signatories include many prominent Canadians, including Ursula Franklin O.C., Anton Kuerti O.C., Naomi Klein, Dr. Gabor Mate, and professors Meyer Brownstone (recipient of Pearson Peace Medal), Natalie Zemon Davis, Michael Neumann, and Judy Rebick. *

The signatories are particularly concerned that unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism deflect attention from Israel’s accountability for what many have called war crimes in Gaza. They state that B’nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress have led campaigns to silence criticism of Israel on university campuses, in labor unions and in other groups. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff unquestioningly echo the views of these particular Jewish organizations.

They strongly state that they are against all expressions of racism. While firmly committed to resisting any form of prejudice against Jewish people, their statement explicitly states that these spurious allegations of anti-Semitism bring the anti-Communist terror of the 1950s vividly to mind.

The statement underlines the immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinian people due to the severe poverty, daily humiliations, and military invasions inflicted by the State of Israel.

James Deutsch, M.D., Ph.D.
Judith Deutsch, M.S.W., R.S.W.
Miriam Garfinkle, M.D.

Statement: Jewish Canadians Concerned about Suppression of Criticism of Israel

We are Jewish Canadians concerned about all expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and social injustice. We believe that the Holocaust legacy "Never again" means never again for all peoples. It is a tragic turn of history that the State of Israel, with its ideals of democracy and its dream of being a safe haven for Jewish people, causes immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinian people.

We are appalled by recent attempts of prominent Jewish organizations and leading Canadian politicians to silence protest against the State of Israel. We are alarmed by the escalation of fear tactics. Charges that those organizing Israel Apartheid Week or supporting an academic boycott of Israel are anti-Semites promoting hatred bring the anti-Communist terror of the 1950s vividly to mind. We believe this serves to deflect attention from Israel’s flagrant violations of international humanitarian law.

B’nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress have pressured university presidents and administrations to silence debate and discussion specifically regarding Palestine/Israel. In a full-page ad in a national newspaper, B’nai Brith urged donors to withhold funds from universities because "anti-Semitic hate fests" were being allowed on campuses. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff have echoed these arguments. While university administrators have resisted demands to shut down Israel Apartheid week, some Ontario university presidents have bowed to this disinformation campaign by suspending and fining students, confiscating posters, and infringing on free speech.

We do not believe that Israel acts in self-defense. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, receiving $3 million/day. It has the fourth strongest army in the world. Before the invasion of Gaza on 27 December 2008, Israel’s siege had already created a humanitarian catastrophe there,
with severe impoverishment, malnutrition, and destroyed infrastructure. It is crucial that forums for discussion of Israel’s accountability to the international community for what many have called war crimes be allowed to proceed unrestricted by specious claims of anti-Semitism.

We recognize that anti-Semitism is a reality in Canada as elsewhere, and we are fully committed to resisting any act of hatred against Jews. At the same time, we condemn false charges of anti-Semitism against student organizations, unions, and other groups and people exercising their
democratic right to freedom of speech and association regarding legitimate criticism of the State of Israel.

Signatories:

Abigail Bakan, Adam Balsam, Sharon Baltman, Julia Barnett, Lainie Basman, Jody Berland, Sam Blatt, Geri Blinik, Anita Block, Elizabeth Block, Sheila Block, Hannah Briemberg, Mark Brill, Stephen Brot, Meyer Brownstone, Eliza Burroughs, Smadar Carmon, Gyda Chud, Charles P. Cohen, Nathalie Cohen, David Copeland, Natalie Zemon Davis, Eliza Deutsch, James Deutsch, Judith Deutsch, Abbe Edelson, Jack Etkin, Elle Flanders, Danielle Frank, Ursula Franklin, Dan Freeman-Maloy, Miriam Garfinkle, Alisa Gayle, Jack Gegenberg, Mark Golden, Brenda Goldstein, Sue Goldstein, Cy Gonick, Marnina Gonick, Rachel Gotthilf, Amy Gottleib, Kevin A. Gould, Daina Green, Lisa Frances Greenspoon, Ricardo Grinspun, Cathy Gulkin, Rachel Gurofsky, Deboran Guterman, Yesse Gutman, Freda Guttman, Judy Haiven, Michael Hanna-Fein, Jean Hanson, Jan Heynen, Maria Heynen, Adam Hofmann, Jake Javanshir, Jeannie Kamins, Marylin Kanee, Howard S. Kaplan, Gilda Katz. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, Mira Khazzam, Bonnie Sher Klein, Mark Klein, Martin Klein, Naomi Klein, Joshua Katz-Rosene, Ryan Katz-Rosene, Judy Koch, Anton Kuerti, Jason Kunin, Aaron Lakoff, Michael Lambek, Natalie LaRoche, Richard Borshay Lee, Andy Lehrer, Gabriel Levin, Gabriel Levine, Joel Lexchin, Kim Linekin, Abby Lippman, Lee Lorch, Martin Lukacs, Audrey Macklin, Elise Maltin, Richard Marcuse, Wayne Mark, Gabor Mate, Arthur Milner, Anna Miransky, Dorit Naaman, Joanne Naiman, Neil Naiman, Michael Neumann, David-Marc Newman, David Noble, Clare O’Connor, Robin Ostow, Andre W. Payant, Jenny Peto, Simone Powell, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Fabienne Presentey, Yacov Rabkin, Diana Ralph, Naomi Rankin, Judy Rebick, Ester Reiter, Jillian Rogin, Richard Roman, Joseph Rosen, Herman Rosenfeld, Martha Roth, Marty Roth, Ruben Roth, E.Natalie Rothman, B. Sack, Ben Saifer, Miriam Sampaio, Jacob Scheir, Fred Schloessinger, Alan Sears, Shlomit Segal, Edward H. Shaffer, Noa Shaindlinger, Ray Shankman, Eva Sharell, Elliot Shek, Sid Shniad, Max Silverman, Samuel Singer, Elizabeth Solloway, Susan Starkman, Greg Starr, Jonathan Sterne, Jeremy Stolow, Rhonda Sussman, Vera Szoke, Joe Tannenbaum, Howard Tessler, Marion Traub-Werner, Ceyda Turan, Sandra Tychsen, Cheryl Wagner, Jon McPhedran Waitzer, David Wall, Naomi Binder Wall, Kathy Wazana, Karen Weisberg, Barry Weisleder, Paul Weinberg, Judith Weisman, Suzanne Weiss, Abraham Weizfeld, Ernie Yacub, B.H. Yael, Yedida Zalik, Melvin Zimmerman

Zionism is the problem

2009-03-16T12:07:00.000-04:00

Here's an excellent op-ed from Sunday's LA Times:

Zionism is the problem

The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace.

By Ben Ehrenreich
March 15, 2009

It's hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with "the concept of a racial state -- the Hitlerian concept." For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism.

Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as an impious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist Jews -- my grandparents among them -- tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.

To be Jewish, I was raised to believe, meant understanding oneself as a member of a tribe that over and over had been cast out, mistreated, slaughtered. Millenniums of oppression that preceded it did not entitle us to a homeland or a right to self-defense that superseded anyone else's. If they offered us anything exceptional, it was a perspective on oppression and an obligation born of the prophetic tradition: to act on behalf of the oppressed and to cry out at the oppressor.

For the last several decades, though, it has been all but impossible to cry out against the Israeli state without being smeared as an anti-Semite, or worse. To question not just Israel's actions, but the Zionist tenets on which the state is founded, has for too long been regarded an almost unspeakable blasphemy.

Yet it is no longer possible to believe with an honest conscience that the deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza and the West Bank come as the result of specific policies, leaders or parties on either side of the impasse. The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.

It has been argued that Zionism is an anachronism, a leftover ideology from the era of 19th century romantic nationalisms wedged uncomfortably into 21st century geopolitics. But Zionism is not merely outdated. Even before 1948, one of its basic oversights was readily apparent: the presence of Palestinians in Palestine. That led some of the most prominent Jewish thinkers of the last century, many of them Zionists, to balk at the idea of Jewish statehood. The Brit Shalom movement -- founded in 1925 and supported at various times by Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem -- argued for a secular, binational state in Palestine in which Jews and Arabs would be accorded equal status. Their concerns were both moral and pragmatic. The establishment of a Jewish state, Buber feared, would mean "premeditated national suicide."

The fate Buber foresaw is upon us: a nation that has lived in a state of war for decades, a quarter-million Arab citizens with second-class status and more than 5 million Palestinians deprived of the most basic political and human rights. If two decades ago comparisons to the South African apartheid system felt like hyperbole, they now feel charitable. The white South African regime, for all its crimes, never attacked the Bantustans with anything like the destructive power Israel visited on Gaza in December and January, when nearly1,300 Palestinians were killed, one-third of them children.

Israeli policies have rendered the once apparently inevitable two-state solution less and less feasible. Years of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have methodically diminished the viability of a Palestinian state. Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has even refused to endorse the idea of an independent Palestinian state, which suggests an immediate future of more of the same: more settlements, more punitive assaults.

All of this has led to a revival of the Brit Shalom idea of a single, secular binational state in which Jews and Arabs have equal political rights. The obstacles are, of course, enormous. They include not just a powerful Israeli attachment to the idea of an exclusively Jewish state, but its Palestinian analogue: Hamas' ideal of Islamic rule. Both sides would have to find assurance that their security was guaranteed. What precise shape such a state would take -- a strict, vote-by-vote democracy or a more complex federalist system -- would involve years of painful negotiation, wiser leaders than now exist and an uncompromising commitment from the rest of the world, particularly from the United States.

Meanwhile, the characterization of anti-Zionism as an "epidemic" more dangerous than anti-Semitism reveals only the unsustainability of the position into which Israel's apologists have been forced. Faced with international condemnation, they seek to limit the discourse, to erect walls that delineate what can and can't be said.

It's not working. Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, "turn justice into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground."

Establishing a secular, pluralist, democratic government in Israel and Palestine would of course mean the abandonment of the Zionist dream. It might also mean the only salvation for the Jewish ideals of justice that date back to Jeremiah.

Ben Ehrenreich is the author of the novel "The Suitors."

In defence of Sid Ryan

2009-03-15T05:30:00.000-04:00

Re: Front-page editorial cartoon by Gary Clement, Feb. 24.

It is beyond the pale for the National Post to equate Sid Ryan's stance on Israel with support for the Holocaust. Your vilification of Mr. Ryan is premised on the false proposition that Israel is being singled out and being treated differently because it describes itself as a "Jewish state." The fact is that the union movement has called for sanctions in the past against countries or states that violate human rights. The union movement boycotted Chile for its human rights abuses. Does this make it anti-Hispanic? Furthermore, it is normal for sanctions to be imposed on countries that violate UN resolutions.

Israel is violating a number of resolutions regarding both the occupation of the West Bank and the continued construction of settlements. If the National Post is serious in wanting Israel to be treated like every other nation, you should be applauding Sid Ryan, not calling him names.

Andy Lehrer, Toronto.

Zionism, not Judaism, is at issue

2009-03-14T12:45:00.000-04:00

Re: 'Israeli
Apartheid' talk draws 100 protesters, March 4
This headline is misleading as the article goes on to state there were only 20 protesters opposing the event and 100 supporting it. Also misleading is the portrayal of the dispute as Jewish vs non-Jewish when, in fact, a number of supporters were Jewish – possibly more than the number protesting – and a number of Jewish groups, such as Not In Our Name and Independent Jewish Voices, have spoken out to defend the organizers.
The demarcation line over the Israeli apartheid debate is not Judaism but Zionism and it's time the media stopped confusing the two. Many Jews are not Zionists and many Zionists are not Jews.
Andy Lehrer, Independent Jewish Voices, Toronto

(Note: The headline for the article said "100 protesters" in the print edition of the Star but has been revised to "20 protesters" online)

Israel Apartheid Week talks were not anti-Semitic

2009-03-13T18:09:00.000-04:00

For the past month, the National Post has subjected readers to endless claims that Israeli Apartheid Week is an anti-Semitic hatefest. It is therefore quite instructive that your journalists either did not attend, or at the very least did not report on, any of the actual panels or workshops during the week in question in order to relay what any of the speakers said, let alone whether or not any of the content was anti-Semitic. This is amazing to me. If IAW's importance is such that it merits daily attacks in your pages from third-hand sources, surely it would behoove you to actually have your reporters attend the events and relay a first-hand report either confirming or refuting the "hatefest" claims?
For the record, there have been no claims that anything said by any of the speakers at IAW constitutes anti-Semitism. This fact should finally put to rest claims to the contrary and prevent attempts at prior restraint of free speech by university officials or the National Post in 11 months time, when IAW comes upon us again.
Andy Lehrer, Independent Jewish Voices, Toronto.

NDP Convention: 3rd ballot - Horwath wins

2009-03-07T19:28:00.001-05:00

Third Ballot

Andrea Horwath 6732.34 (60.4%)

Peter Tabuns 4420.66 (39.6%)

NDP convention: second ballot

2009-03-07T18:08:00.000-05:00

Second ballot results

horwath 5259.06 votes - 43.6%

tabuns 3819.82 votes - 31.7 %

Bisson 2988.12 votes 24.8%

NDP convention: First ballot results

2009-03-07T16:53:00.000-05:00

total weighted vote and percent
Horwath 4625.29 votes, 37.1%
Tabuns 3437.93 votes, 27.6%
Bisson 2954.23 votes, 23.7%
Prue 1438.44 votes, 11.5%

Prue just went to Bisson

NDP Convention (5): Horwath

2009-03-07T14:44:00.000-05:00

Marie Kelly from Steel nominates Horwath. Andrea understands how important it is to stand up for working people and keep good jobs in Ontario. Now more than ever we need a strong leader who can protect the interests of working people and the right to join a union, who will pass anti-scab laws, cares about working people. It's time for Andrea.

Tyler Downie of SEIU seconds nomination. This will be the most important decision we make as NDPers. we must take community organizing to a new level, engage young people, communities. it takes a commitment to on the ground organizing and andrea can engage and bring people together. we don't need another politician, we need an organizer.

Chris Charlton, MP: I've known Andrea for 20 years, we've been on picket lines together, fought for housing, pensions... she has enthusiaism to get the job done. she was cochair of hamilton days of action and succeeded in bringing 50,000 workers out. succeeded in getting on city council and in the legislature. now is the time.

Kormos introduces Horwath [sorry I lost my notes of what he said due to a technical glitch]

[video]

[drum band walks Horwath in]

Horwath: thank you so much. There is no other place i would rather be than right here with you because i believe the people in this room hold the seed for ontario's future. great change started in rooms like this. people like you decided that every child deserves an education... this room is filled with real people who work in hospitals, day care centres, factories... we are students, retirees... but we all came here because we are committed to change. we may not be rich but we are powerful. we believe in building a better world. you can knock us down, ignore us, write our political obituaries but we are the people who will keep on going. knock us down and we will get up again because we are new democrats. like every ontarian we are experiencing change. a week ago the steel mills in the skyline represented work. now they represent people out of work, an economy ripped apart by neo-liberalism. an economy with a gutted industrial base. those mills represent steel no longer made but also autos no longer made in windsor, a devestated forestry sector... when we look we see all of ontario. i was a caw brat. i went to university because my father had a good job. i would not be here today if it wasn't for my father's well paid union job. this economic and social crisis will effect everyone of us. when good jobs disappear how many children lose their future? when we lose child care how many families become working poor.

look at the difference a year has made. the middle class is disappearing and the working class is largely unemployed. we could accept this and adjust, that's what the other parties say, but adjust to what, growing unemployment lines and growing food bank lines, adjust to this growing . discrepency. adjust so that those who stole our money can get more of it? We refuse to adjust!

we'll invest in ourselves, our workplaces. it's our money we will demand an equity stake. it's our money. smart investments, targeted investments in products of the future. light rail. we'll build green cars. we will produce once again and we will buy our own products. we'll buy farm products grown in ontario.

we'll put light rail systems in our cities and invest in our work by making ontario a transit hub. we'll make every job a good job. we will make sure minimum wage is a living wage. we'll get rid of scab labour. we will make sure part time, casual and migrant workers are all treated like the real workers that they are and we will bring our workforce back to health. we will stop eating away at our public system. we will expand our public system. let's make child care and post secondary education fully public.

the neo liberal experiment has exploded. the invisible hand doesn't work. it never existed and we should not trust invisible hands to take care of us.

we won't adjust to the growing misery. we will change. we will think for ourselves and won't trust a few greedy individuals to take care of us.

i'm a community organizer and i trust people but it's not a blind trust. i've seen what people can accomplish together like the days of action. when i think about our climate crisis i do so with the mind of an organizer. people want a cleaner environment and i trust people will make the changes they need to make to get that. we must help them by making environementalism affordable with loans for [environmental retrofits]

we won't check our socialism at the door when it comes to building a better future. let's do for the environment what we did for health care 50 years ago. let's make environemtalism universal.

we owe people a real choice. we have to be ready to change ourselves. we have to set internal goals for our party that seem impossible. we must double our party membership by 2011. we must reflect ontario with more women, young people, diverse communities. we must work in communities like organizing by listening and working together on issues that are relevent. let's be truly representative as a party. put regional organizers on the ground. change the financial relationship between ridings and the parties. make ridings vibrant. i will spend half my time on the road to make us vibrant. it's time for us to believe in ourselves again. we can make this province a better, fairer place where the avg working woman gets the child care she needs and McGuinty gets the pink slip he deservces and that is what we owe the people in ontario in 2011.

things aren't working at queen's park. it's time for new voices, change. it's time for the NDP, in 2011 we will bring change to queen's park and i am the woman to do it.

NDP convention (4): Tabuns

2009-03-07T14:14:00.000-05:00

Cheri DiNovo introduces Tabuns, mentioned "democratic socialism" in her review of party history. Tabuns represents the best of the NDP's traditition. he has an industrial economic vision, zeal for a prosperous province, represents new direction and our founding values, feminist, unionist, environmentalist, democratic socialist Peter Tabuns.

Ravi Joshi: I support Tabuns because he has the best grasp of the solutions we need. Passionate and hardworking. Inspiring.

Emily Watkins: Peter has passion and energy that I admiare. Connects the jobs of tomorrow with the fight against climate change, he's an infatigable candidate. he's travelled throughout Ontario for the party. Energy and ideas. I am proud to nominate Peter Tabuns.

Irene Mathysson: I want an engaging, forward looking person, ahead of the curve, someone who believes in communities and building good teams. Party needs change and Ontarians want change.

Ontario VP of CEP: Our members need a leader who understands and believes in the importance of unions and workers rights. a leader who knows how important good wages are to workers and their families. someone who understands that this province must invest in good jobs and work hard to keep them here. Peter Tabuns is a friend of workers with a long track record. I've seen the new energy economy work and we need to see more of it in Ontario. CEP members and workers from across Ontario know we need a new economic vision, one that breaks down old walls and builds new bridges. Peter has that vision and a plan to make it reality. We can save good jobs and create new ones with the new energy economy. I ask you to join me in supporting today's leader and tomorrow's premier, peter tabuns.

[video]

Tabuns: In these past few months i've visited communities across this province and spoken to many people and something links us [namechecks cities] something moves us whether it's auto workers in windsor who want green jobs or steel workers who want wind turbines. something inspires us.

I grew up in Hamilton, I watched my parents, immigrants, struggle to build new lives in this country.

We need change - Stelco closing - we can't stay with the status quo but need to change and show people that the progressive party they need is here in this room today.

we have to show that we get it, not that we talk about the need to get it but that we show that we get it. i ask for the priviledge to rebuild, reshape and renew our party.

there's a clamour to get serious about the century ahead. if we need any proof of why think about the changes in this province since the leadership campaign began. soaring energy prices, then stock market collapse and this week hamilton, windsor, sudbury hammered by layoffs. we're losing jobs across the province all with a backdrop of an environmental challenge.

ontario is staring a rust belt future in the face. if we don't rise to the challenge with a leader who is ready our future is at risk. should we talk about internal structures? That won't cut it in a province with a job crisis. or will we just claim we're ready to govern? That won't cut it in a province facing a crisis. Ontarians are ready to connect crises with solutions. they know the price of handsoff government because they live it and they know ontario is behind the global path. denmark, germany are leading in renewable energy. Michigan is helping auto plants diversify, california is builidng the world's largest solar plant. it's the new energy economy embraced by governments who see what's coming. But you can look in Ontario and you can barely find it because the new energy econony is passing us by. We need to build jobs tomorrow by acting on environment today. in the twilight years of casino capitalism government has a role to play making good change occur and regulating against dangers. it takes more than saying we want to govern. to change our party and province for the better we need to be ready to go starting tomorrow.

looking forward, not back, to the challenges of tomorrow not rhetoric of yesterday. we can't pit north vs south, environmentalists vs workers. i reject the notion that if you support workers you oppose environmental progress. the best thing for construction workers is retrofitting homes across the province. I want cities to have public transit and those transit vehicles to be built in thunder bay. i want greener cares made in oshawa, brampton, oakville and windsor with tech from waterloo and ottawa.

i want cities to use more wind energy produced in urban, rural and northern ontario using steel made in ontario.

we don't need to pit regions or intersts against each other. we need to work for equity and fairness and acknowledge that we're in here together. the days of cobbling together enough seats for official party status need to end. these ideas don't cost much, they don't end the partnerships that fought to increase the minimum wage, they build new alliances.

with the need for smart governemnt so clear we shouldn't settle for the empty words and timid actions of Dalton McGuinty who fought increasing the minimum wage and gave money to GM to move their truckline to Mexico.

Now is the time for us in this party to force mcguinty to deliver by creating more jobs, cutting emissions and helping resource sector flourish.

let's have an election on how to create new jobs while cutting emissions, on helping working families, on putting people to work building a hydro system for the 21st century. let's start that debate with a new ndp with better communications and organizations. a party that gets out of queen's park and into the communities and which invites ontarians to join with solutions they see work.

in 3o years i've seen it work by bringing construction workers into energy efficiency projects. i've seen it work at city hall where we protected health and safety by banning smoking at work places. i've seen it at greenpeace where we and the caw pushed for green cars years ago. i've seen it at queen's park with the fight to raise the minimum wage.

you are eager to put solutions into actions. i've seen you in your homes, in church basements, you're not throwing in the towel. you're filled with the same energy as me. you want a province that accepts the need to catch up with a changing world. today is the day to choose, do we move forward or do we take a bigger risk and look backward and inward. I choose to move forward and today i ask for your support as leader so we can move forward together.

NDP Convention (3): Prue

2009-03-07T13:41:00.000-05:00

Video presentation - shots of Regent Park with voiceover by Prue on growing up in a poor neighbourhood and the importance of making sure children have opportunity.

Talks about his success as mayor of East York, building community centres and daycare, paying down the debt without raising taxes.

I'm a consensus builder and have a plan involving the cities and towns of the province that will bring economic prosperity.

I've won 8 elections in a row including in places such as Leaside where New Dems haven't won before.

Have travelled the length and breadth of this province. I can represent all of the people of this great province and I will do so as Premier.

(Video ends)

Music and light show -

Prue comes to podium

Begins in French, not as loudly as Bisson.

It's taken me a lifetime to get here from Regent Park.

Tumultuous times for our province and party.

70 percent share our values but only 15 percent vote for us because they don't think we can win or manage the economy. But if we make the right choices we can matter again. If I'm leader we'll regain confidence, I will rejuvenate the party and make it into one that will win.

Separate out the rhetoric from the substance being presented.

3 qualifications needed - 1 proven leadership in governing. 2 Ability to attract support from a broad range of people. 3 Comprehensive and believable economic plan.

leader needs to know from experience what to do now. can't wait for someone to grow into the job (jab at Horwath?)

I won every poll as mayor of East York at a time when provincial NDP government deeply unpopular because a broad range of people were impressed by me. I filled vacant factories, had 5 balanced budgets, paid down the debt and never raised taxes. Built daycare and community centres.

Times demanded a leader of action with an economic plan and I did it with the rest of council, not one of whom was an NDPer.

We have that opportunity again today. I have a comprehensive economic plan.
1) direct investment that will accelerate recovery
2) Buy Ontario plan
3) Cities power region plans that will make us more competitive.

The past few days have been devestating to working families in Niagara and Windsor. I watched reaction of Steelworkers as they stared at prospect of lost jobs and crushed hopes. they are looking for answers and solutions and we can provide them.

It's essential that provincial governemnt play a role in critical industries. my plan recognizes the enormity of the task. we will provide the money but we demand shares in the companies, seats on the board of directors to protect jobs and direct recovery and significant role for unions.

Buy Ontario plan gives option to councils to award contracts to local suppliers provided the bid is within 10% of lowest tender. We must give this opportunity to Municipalities, Universities, Hospitals. Does not violate trade agreements.

We will give cities and towns tools and resources to build their own success. Eliminate OMB to restore municipal control of planning. give larger cities same powers as City of Toronto. Alternative to property tax is needed. These changes will give cities ability to build infrastructure - give Windsor option to build tunnel instead of highway. Give Toronto ability to build light transit and Thunder Bay ability to build new facilities for wood products.

Every town and city will be free to make strategic decisions to foster growth in target economic sectors.

This will generate tax base needed to do what we've dreamt with, eliminated economy, greening society, relief to students and justice for first nations.

Coming from Regent Park and being a proud trade unionist i've always dreamt of eliminating poverty. End clawback against the disabled. someone born with Down's syndrome is not given a fair shake in life, but Ontario claws back half of everything they earn. that's a disgrace. I will end that practice and allow people on ODSP to keep first $8,000 they earn so they can be above the poverty line.

Must shift to greener healthier province. I worked with Sheila Basra. We forged first anti smoking bylaw. we established the Toronto anti-smoking bylaw that was later adopted by the province. we were the first to ban pesticides. we stopped Toronto from dumping its garbage in Adams Mine. I will continue that fight as leader and as Premier i will stop construction of energy plants not being built with smart tech to reduce carbon emissions. will encourage use of biomass and create a renewable energy institute to develop new tech. i will give all municipalities the tools to go green and i will give assistance to homeowners to retrofit homes for alternative power.

to do this we need to win. Beginning tomorrow i will lead a 10 person caucus but i want our party to regain our confidence and allow us to form the next government. i have a detailed plan to revitalize party.

we must learn from Obama's 50 state strategy. we must not cede any ridings to other parties and run strong campaigns in all 107 ridings. we spent $4 million in last campaign but I want to ensure each riding has $10K so they can run strong campaigns. we can't just run in 20 0r 30 ridings and win 10, we have to run strong campaigns in every riding.

we need to change the funding formula. even in my riding we have no money in our treasury to do ordinary things like sponsor a kids baseball team or participate in local parades. if that's happening in beaches it's happening across the province and we need to change that. the current revenue formula is a disincentive to fundraising.

We need to bring in new faces. I will increase grant to ONDY and provide seed money for each campus club. we need an internship program for youth to bring the best and brightest to queen's park and party hq.

i will convince new canadians to join NDP, will reach out to their leaders.

I will bring unions like the CAW back into the NDP and unions that have never affiliated into the party.

I have experience in leading a government, managing an economy, attracting business and creating jobs. I couldn't have done that without the ability to attract votes from all places and classes.

If I could do that in east york i can do that across the province in 2011.

you have a choice - change that can bring results. i'm the only candidate with proven governmetn experience. i have run an economy during a recession without losing jobs. I am the candidate for poverty reduction and green energy. I have convinced non NDPers to vote for me in the past. I can revitalize the party and I'm the only candidate with a concrete plan to transform the party.

with your vote we can have results that we've never had before.

NDP convention 2 Bisson speech

2009-03-07T13:23:00.000-05:00

Bisson is being nominated by France Gelinas and by a spokesperson for UFCW Canada. Third nominator is an activist for an anti-homelessness group - missed her name, but she's emphasizing that Bisson has raised the most money of any of the candidates (and thus can raise money for the party) and that the's the only NDP MPP to have increased his share of the vote in 1995.

Video presentation (pretty slick) of Bisson at various demonstrations and meetings and news clippings.

Charlie Angus, MP, speaking now saying Bisson built the NDP in the north and suggesting he's largely responsible for the NDP winning 7 of 9 northern Ontario federally. Angus introduces Bisson.

Bisson: Thanks his nominators. Namechecks the Steelworkers (who are heavily represented at convention). Argues that there's nothing wrong with having a second leader from northern Ontario - mentions northern MPPs and MPs who have been elected. "What's wrong with northern Ontario? It's a question not of where the leader comes from but what he has to offer."
Talks about lessons of Rae government. Praises NDP government's accomplishments, keeping plants open that were threatened with closure - saved jobs. "We passed anti-scab legislation... we need to aim for government".

How do we get there? Must move from politics of opposition to politics of proposition. Propose what needs to be done around economy, environment and crime.

We need to make needed changes to the party. We're $4 million in debt and need to pay it off so we can have the money we need to win. We need revenue sharing with the riding associations so they can run full campaigns across the province.

We're social democrats and understand this needs to be done together. Revenue sharing should only apply to new members, not to existing funds, so as not to starve the centre.

I can put a team made up of people from all the leadership camps.

We sold more memberships than any other leadership campaign. We've raised the most amount of money of any campaign. I have the experience, the passion, the drive, the leadership ability to get the job done. We start by taking Hamilton and then we take Queen's Park.

NDP convention

2009-03-07T13:19:00.000-05:00

Liveblogging from the NDP convention.

Bisson has raised the most amount of money followed by Tabuns, Horwath and Prue. We'll see the relationship between money and votes soon.

My prediction is that Horwath will win since her significant lead in the labour vote will give her a boost overall. Steel makes up more than 2/3 of the labour vote (which is allotted 25% of the final outcome) and Horwath has the backing of the Steel leadership and of most Steel locals outside of Toronto, where Tabuns leads and a few northern locals that are going for Bisson. She also has the backing of SEIU and is the second choice of UFCW after Bisson (UFCW being 8% of the labour vote).

Kormos endorses Horwath

2009-02-06T13:02:00.000-05:00

This comes as a bit of a surprise.

See also this earlier (and now revised) post for a roundup

Peter Kent and hate guru Meir Weinstein: The money shot

2009-02-05T11:12:00.000-05:00

Just received this screenshot. Note that Kent is listed as a friend and that one of the groups Weinstein belongs to is מוות לערבים which is pronounced mavet le'aravim and means "Death to the Arabs" in Hebrew.:

Peter Kent and the JDL

2009-02-05T10:03:00.000-05:00

Dr. Dawg's Blawg has the rather disturbing story today of Junior Cabinet minister Peter Kent's association with Meir Weinstein, leader of the Canadian branch of the Jewish Defence League hate group. Weinstein, who used to use the nom de guerre of Meir Halevi, made a spectacle of himself following the Caves of the Patriarchs Massacre by his comrade, Baruch Goldstein. Goldstein and Weinstein/Halevi were both members of the JDL. Weinstein, who was also the North American spokesperson for the extremist and now banned Kach Party, said the following about Goldstein's murder of 29 Palestinians and wounding of a further 129 ""[o]ur organization does not condemn the attack. It condemns the Israeli government for not providing adequate protection for settlers."(Canadian Press, "Mosque attack threatens talks Arafat blames Rabin for massacre", February 26, 1994)

It's not surprising that Weinstein belongs to a Facebook group called מוות לערבים (pronounced Mavet le'aravim which means "Death to the Arabs").

Weinstein apparently lives in Kent's Thornhill riding. Did he and his fellow hate group members volunteer on Kent's campaign? Did any of them make a donation to his campaign? Will Kent denounce Weinstein and the JDL?

Bisson bags the north

2009-02-03T22:39:00.001-05:00

An update to my earlier look at endorsements of the NDP leadership candidates: an additional four northern Ontario MPs have endorsed Gilles Bisson meaning he has the unanimous support of the NDP's 7 federal Members of Parliament from northern Ontario.

Iggy gives $0 to Liberal Party in 2008

2009-02-03T15:04:00.001-05:00

This shouldn't be much of a surprise since it's not legal for foreigners to make donations to Canadian political parties.

Where's Warren's backup?

2009-02-02T13:14:00.000-05:00

If you're here it's because a post I actually wrote a year ago on Warren Kinsella's kitty comments has inadvertently been reposted with today's date as if it were new. It's not. Unfortunately, blogger doesn't seem to have any way for me to fix the date stamp, - at least none that I can find. If you know how to fix the date on this thing please feel free to lend your advice:)

Warren Kinsella has gotten himself in hot water for some rather dumb comments about a Chinese restaurant in Ottawa. The pathetic part of it is that Kinsella, who received a lot of prominence earlier in his career for his anti-racism would invoke really stupid, 1950s style, bigoted humour that should have died with Buddy Hackett's "Chinese waiter sketch". The "barbecue cat and rice" joke was so out of it's time I would have assumed that Kinsella was actually being deeply ironic if I thought he had the intelligence for irony or if irony hadn't died in 2001. It was the same patheticness that the writers of the Simpsons created for Krusty the Clown when they had him do Chinese restaurant gags in order to make the point that the only a fossil would think that stuff's funny.

If Kinsella were even the most rudimentary anti-racist he would have filtered those jokes out of his repetoire a long time ago. Heck, most racists don't engage in that sort of humour because they're too aware that they'll "out" themselves by doing so. The only way I can explain Kinsella's lapse is that in his arrogance he assumes that he's truly some sort of anti-racist icon and therefore is incapable of bigotry and so he is incapable of the sort of self-awareness and self-scrutiny most people use when they're tempted to blurt out something offensive.

Of course, the Tories and the right wing of the blogosphere is exploiting Kinsella's faux pas to the hilt. So much so that you would have thought he'd called for the reintroduction of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Of course, most of the Tories are being hypocritical considering the comments many of them have tolerated or even defended far worse from people like Herb Grubel, Monte Solberg, Lee Richardson, or the party's own ad team. And let's not forget that one of the founding issues of the Reform Party was opposition to Sikh RCMP officers wearing turbans. That many of the right wing blog netizens now chomping at Kinsella have no hesitation to mock and make abusive comments about Muslims only underscores the hypocricy around this issue. And, frankly, given Kinsella's eagerness to smear others based on half-truths and distortions it's hard to feel sympathy for the guy.

Kinsella should issue a real apology, ie one that expresses actual contrition and self-awareness, rather than the minimization he's been engaging in.

On a political plane, what's been interesting about this whole affair is the failure of any Liberals that I'm aware of to back Kinsella up and defend him. Perhaps the rehabilitation which seemed in the offing under Iggy will prove to be short lived?

Ontario NDP leadership endorsement watch

2009-01-30T09:26:00.000-05:00

All four candidates have published endorsement lists on their websites. Of the 10 person provincial caucus the endorsements are breaking down as follows:

Peter Tabuns (2) (himself and Cheri DiNovo, Parkdale-High Park)

Michael Prue (2) (himself and Paul Miller, Hamilton East-Stony Creek)

Gilles Bisson (2) (himself and France Gélinas, Nickle Belt)

Andrea Horwath (3) (herself, Peter Kormos, Niagara Centre; Rosario Marchese, Trinity-Spadina)

~~Three~~ One MPP is uncommitted - outgoing leader Howard Hampton is expected to remain neutral. ~~Rosario Marchese (Trinity-Spadina) and Peter Kormos (Niagara Centre) are still to declare their intentions.~~

The federal NDP's Ontario caucus is larger with 17 MPs but most of them have stayed on the sidelines. Here is the endorsement breakdown so far:

Gilles Bisson (7) Charlie Angus, Timmins James Bay; Tony Martin, Sault Ste. Marie; Carol Hughes, Algoma. Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay-Superior), John Rafferty (Thunder Bay-Rainy River), Glenn Thibeault (Sudbury) and Claude Gravelle (Nickel Belt) have now endorsed as well.**

Andrea Horwath (3) David Christopherson, Hamilton Centre; Chris Charlton, Hamilton Mountain; Malcolm Allen, Welland.***

Peter Tabuns (2) Irene Mathyssen, London—Fanshawe, Paul Dewar*, Ottawa Centre.

Michael Prue (0)

10 5 MPs are left to declare. Federal leader Jack Layton is expected to remain officially neutral - unofficially he's assumed to be backing Peter Tabuns who represents Layton's riding provincially and is a long time friend and colleague from their days as wardmates on Toronto City Council. The remaining MPs left to declare are:

Jack Layton, Toronto-Danforth (expected to remain neutral)
Olivia Chow, Trinity—Spadina
Joe Comartin, Windsor—Tecumseh
Wayne Marston, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek
Brian Masse, Windsor West

Overall the endorsement lists are notable in the following ways.

Bisson's list of endorsements is, not suprisingly, tilted heavily towards the northern Ontario (not listed yet is the Nickel Belt NDP Riding association which has also endorsed Bisson) It's easy for those of us in Toronto to take the north for granted but northern Ontario is a major base for the NDP and he could do much better than expected if he's able to consolidate the north. The Nickel Belt riding association alone, for instance, has 1,000 members or 5% of the total Ontario NDP membership. Therefore, it'll be interesting to see if the four currently uncommitted northern MPs fall in behind Bisson. Since writing this the four remaining northern MPs have endorsed Bisson.

Andrea Horwath's endorsement list, aside from being Hamilton heavy, is also very union heavy and includes Ontario Federation of Labour president Wayne Samuelson and OFL Secretary-Treasurer Irene Harris, former OPSEU president Leah Casselman as well as a number of labour council presidents and union locals from around the province as well as a number of current and former union executive members. Only 75% of the "votes" in the leadership election will be on a One Member One Vote basis. Labour delegates are responsible for the other 25% of the vote so labour can still play a very important role in determining the outcome.

Toronto city councillors are heavily represented among Michael Prue's endorsements as are several former MPPs including NDP MPP and Speaker of the Legislature David Warner, former MPP Gary Malkowski (both according to Prue's campaign literature) and former cabinet minister Marilyn Churley. Not listed is the strong support Prue enjoys from public school teachers, particular a number of OSSTF officials, due to his stance on reopening the debate on Separate School funding. Also not listed is Prue's endorsement from the NDP Socialist Caucus (which is more a function of the fact that one Socialist Caucus co-chair is a public school teacher and the other is a public school trustee rather than of any hitherto crypto-Marxist tendencies on Prue's part).

Finally, Peter Tabuns' official endorsement list shows union support from the Toronto area - such as the Toronto Area Steelworkers Council , UNITE HERE Local 75 and CUPE Local 1 as well as support from party "establishment" figures - former provincial secretaries and party presidents such as Michael Lewis, Janet Solberg, Jill Marzetti, Andre Foucault and Diane O'Reggio as well as other prominent party figures such as Hugh and Dan Mackenzie. (It's not insignificant that the prominent Lewis and Mackenzie families, often in rival leadership camps in the past, are both behind Tabuns).

So what does this mean? It is interesting that the "party establishment" and the "labour establishment" are backing different candidates. Prue, who is widely perceived to be in second place, seems to be trailing in the endorsement race - possibly because his willingness to open the Separate School issue and his emphasis on internal party democracy may have alienated his colleagues and prominent party figures. Can he make up the difference by winning the grassroots? Bisson is dominant in the north (though he hasn't gotten all his federal caucus colleagues wrapped up yet, at least not publicly) but has not made significant inroads in other regions. Still, the north is the NDP's base at present and being their favourite son could position him well.

A race that seemed to be developing as a Tabuns romp a few months ago may be a lot more competitive than expected.

*UPDATED: I'm told that MP Paul Dewar endorsed Tabuns at today's leadership debate in Ottawa.

**UPDATED: Gilles Bisson's campaign announced today that Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay-Superior), John Rafferty (Thunder Bay-Rainy River), Glenn Thibeault (Sudbury) and Claude Gravelle (Nickel Belt) have endorsed his campaign meaning all northern Ontario MPs are supporting Bisson.

***Updated: Malcolm Allen, the MP for Welland has followed Peter Kormos' lead and endorsed Horwath.

****Marchese has endorsed Horwath.

Iggy gags caucus III

2009-01-29T19:34:00.001-05:00

Earlier this month I alleged that new Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was gagging his MPs from speaking out on Gaza. My allegation was indirectly proven by the fact that a number of MPs who were usually outspoken on the issue of Palestinian rights were remaining silent during the Gaza war. The furthest any Grit MP would go, namely Rob Oliphant, Bonnie Crombie, Borys Wrezesnewskyj and Jim Karygiannis, was to attend a round table discussion with pro-Palestinian groups to hear their concerns but no Liberal MP agreed to speak at any of the numerous of Gaza solidarity rallies and events held during the war or to criticize Israel in the media.

Nevertheless, several people were either skeptical of my assertion that there was a gag order or were reserving judgment while Ignatieff's office officially denied that they would ever do such a thing.

Well, today comes confirmation that Ignatieff is muzzling his caucus and is attempting to control the access his MPs have to the media. The Globe and Mail reports that

At his first caucus meeting as leader in December, [Ignatieff] made it clear the caucus speaks with one voice and it is his.

“He laid down the law at the beginning. You could hear a pin drop,” a Liberal insider said about the way Mr. Ignatieff outlined the new one-voice strategy. He said Mr. Ignatieff possesses discipline and firmness. “You know when you leave the room who the leader is.”

In addition, Ignatieff is banning "Liberal strategists" from appearing on TV panels without approval.

So far, the designation of TV pundits has not been tested, but the other Ignatieff edict is working. Trying to get any information from this week's caucus proved extremely difficult.

“We have taken a death vow,” one Liberal MP said. “You could hold me down and tickle me. I'm totally mum on this one.”

Iggy folds

2009-01-28T12:06:00.000-05:00

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said his party is prepared to “swallow hard” and support the Conservative government, provided they agree to table regular updates outlining how they are living up to their commitments outlined in the federal budget.

Is that it? Is that seriously Iggy's only condition for passing the budget? Despite broad-based demands the budget does nothing to rectify the absurd qualification regime for EI which excludes over 60% of unemployed Ontarians from the program. An effective form of unemployment insurance is an absolute necessity as we enter this recession and yet not only has the Harper government refused to budge on this issue but the Ignatieff Liberals have balked at holding Harper's feet to the fire and insisting that the budget be amended to broaden EI eligibility as a condition for Liberal support.

Instead all Ignatieff is asking for is "regular updates" from the government? This alone will satisfy the Liberals and cause them to favour the continuation of the Harper horror show and ditch the coalition which could have taken power as soon as this Thursday.

This is leadership? This is using your political advantage to leverage concessions?

If neither the Tories nor the federal Liberals are prepared to fix the EI system perhaps the Ontario government, which has complained about the current inequity, should seriously consider this proposal to pull out of the federal EI system and create an Ontario Employment Insurance Program instead?

Israel broke the ceasefire first (CNN)

2009-01-09T21:11:00.000-05:00

Liberal MPs gagged part II: The Hounds of the Ignatieffs or the Curious Incident of the Liberal MPs who did not bark

2009-01-06T08:49:00.000-05:00

"The dog did nothing in the night-time,"Holmes said. "That was the curious incident."

According to Maclean's columnist Kady O'Malley, the office of Michael Ignatieff has said it is "absolutely untrue" that Liberal MPs have been told not to speak at Gaza solidarity rallies on the pain of having their nominations rejected in the next election. The question then is why was at least one rally organizing committee told otherwise when invitations were extended to Liberal MPs and why is it that not one Liberal MP addressed a single one of the cross-Canada rallies last weekend when NDP MPs such as Irene Mathysson and even a Liberal MPP from Dalton McGuinty's caucus did? Normally, loquacious MPs would climb over each other for the chance to speak to thousands of people and there is no shortage of MPs in the Liberal caucus who have been outspoken supporters of the Palestinians in the past.

Is Ignatieff's office telling the truth or is this a case of plausible deniability?

Liberal MPs gagged on Gaza

2009-01-05T12:29:00.000-05:00

I've just heard word from a reliable source that Liberal MPs have been instructed not to speak at Gaza solidarity rallies with the threat that if they do their nominations forms will not be signed for the next election. I wonder if Liberals have been given the same instruction in relation to pro-Israel rallies?

Click here for an update.

Jason Cherniak's anti-Semitism

2008-12-30T15:33:00.000-05:00

In the comments section of my previous post cuddly ex-blogger Jason Cherniak wrongly claims that the political cartoon I posted is anti-Semitic. His argument is premised on the blood libel, an ancient anti-Semitic canard in which local Jews would be falsely accused of the ritual murder of Christians (usually children) in order to use human blood for the baking of matzos or as part of a religious ceremony. The blood libel was patently absurd since there is an abhorrence of blood in the Jewish religion - the reason for instance why in order to make meat kosher a butcher has to use salt to purge every last drop of blood from it. Thus the suggestion that Jews would actually use blood as part of a recipe for unleavened bread and consume it is literally anathema to actual Jewish dietary laws. Worse, these false claims were often pretexts to pogroms or other violent and often murderous attacks on Jews.

Ok, so now you know what blood libel is. Below is the cartoon in question:

Jason Cherniak responds to this cartoon by saying "What a picture. Glad to know that the blood libel still lives strong in your warped mind."

The cartoon is an artist's comment on Israeli military aggression against the people of Gaza. I posted it in response to the current air bombardment which has claimed over 370 lives. This brutality is being inflicted after a year and a half long blockade of the Gaza Strip. There are no religious connotations, whatsoever, in the cartoon, not even a Star of David. The soldiers are not depicted as having any of the stereotypically Jewish features one would see in anti-Semitic cartoons. If it weren't for the words "Israeli occupiers" and "Gaza" the soldiers could be Russian, British, French, American or any other attacking army in the world. There is no suggestion of religious ritual, no Jewish religious garments be they kippot or prayer shawls or tzitzi'ot. No matzot, no menorahs, nothing, in other words, to suggest that what is being depicted is a ritualized religious murder or anything that would be the basis of a blood libel.

Depicting an army or military leader as butchers or dripping with blood is a standard image in any political cartoonists library. Change the labels and this could be a cartoon criticizing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or Czechoslovakia, the American invasion of Iraq or Cambodia, the Chinese attack on Tiananmen Square or, indeed, it could be a critical depiction of Hamas:

Cherniak and I had the following exchange by email:

Firebrand: You're kidding me. The editorial cartoon isn't even remotely anti-Semitic.

But yes, as a Jew the memory of the blood libel does live strongly in my mind - my family fled Russian pogroms and ended up in Romania which was one of the most anti-Semitic nations in Europe between the wars (before the rise of Nazi Germany) so yes Jason, I know what the blood libel is and this isn't it.

Please don't debase the concept of anti-Semitism by applying it so casually to legitimate criticism of Israel.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Jason Cherniak: Being Jewish doesn’t allow you to ignore basic facts. You posted a picture of Jewish butchers with Palestinian blood on their knives. Do you really not see how that is similar to suggesting that Jews drink the blood of children?

FB: The soldiers are not identifiably Jewish - there are no stereotypical signifiers nor any use of Jewish symbolism such as the magen david.

Implying that soldiers engaging in a massacre (such as the killing of over 370 people) are butchers is a standard device when criticising any military operation. The soldiers in the cartoon could be Russians, Americans, French.

You are suggesting that a massacre carried out by Israelis should be treated differently than one carried out by any other military. I, for one, do not think Israel should be treated differently.

By casually throwing out accusations of antisemitism you are denuding the concept and making it easier for actual anti-semites to get away with it.

I can see why the Liberals don't want you to blog on their behalf and why partisans of other parties were sorry to see you go. You're an embarrassment to whatever side you argue for and as a Jew I find you as embarrassing as Liberals must have.

Please resume your policy of being 'off politics'.

JC: It was my choice to stop blogging. Nobody asked me to, smartass.

As for the picture, did you miss the word "Israeli" on their clothing? What are you smoking?

FB: the point is there is no stereotypical or symbolic invocation of Judaism.

as you should know the blood libel was the false accusation that Jews kidnapped and killed non-Jewish children and killed them for ritualistic reasons to use their blood to make matzah or for some religious ritual.

There is no such connotation in the cartoon.

You are distorting and reducing the blood libel to argue that any reference to blood is antisemitic and completely disregarding the fact that references to blood and butchery are de riguer in artistic criticisms of military conflict. How do you suggest that an artist criticise the Gaza invasion without reference to blood, murder and death.

All you've shown is that you are unable to refute Barghouti's essay and prefer instead to avoid the subject by engaging in slander.

As for your blog - it may have been for a decision but I know for a fact that senior Liberals have thought it an embarrassment for years.

The 911 blowback that ended up in Dion being embarrassed and having to axe his own candidate was just the last straw. That "own goal" of yours will be with you for a long time

JC: Butcher's knives are used in kitchens where people make food for humans, goddmanit. Use your head.

Again, lol on the blog thing. You're a fool.

FB: again - it's standard to use that analogy when criticising military action. As for the blog - fine if I'm wrong restart it and see what... sorry phone trouble. if i'm wrong restart it and see what happens to
your 'career' in the Liberal party.

and if i'm wrong about your motives for ignoring the article to attack the cartoon then go ahead and refute Barghouti

JC: It's pretty clear I'm not going to convince you, so I'm not going to bother

FB: Considering that you have been unable to refute one argument I've made regarding what blood libel is or what war criticism is I'm not surprised. i have a cartoon somewhere of Brezhnev as butcher in regards to the soviet invasion of afghanistan. doubtless that's antisemitic too?

btw, do you mind if I publish this correspondence?

JC: Only if it is unedited.

Unfortunately, it's become more common for pro-Israel polemicists to deliberately conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism in an attempt to delegitimize said criticism and defame the critics. This tactic can only give comfort to actual anti-Semites as by overextending the concept of anti-Semitism these polemicists are effectively making the concept of anti-Semtism meaningless and making it easier for actual bigots and racists to practice their craft.

As British philosopher Brian Klug, a founding member of the group Independent Jewish Voices, wrote in his seminal essay, The Myth of the New Anti-Semitism "when anti-Semitism is everywhere, it is nowhere. And when every anti-Zionist is an anti-Semite, we no longer know how to recognize the real thing--the concept of anti-Semitism loses its significance."

In response to an essay by the American Jewish Committee accusing Jewish critics of Israel of being anti-Semitic, the New York Times interviewed British historian Tony Judt, one of the essay's targets. According to the Times: "The link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is newly created,' [Tony Judt] said, adding that he fears 'the two will have become so conflated in the minds of the world' that references to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust will come to be seen as 'just a political defense of Israeli policy.'"

It is important to be clear about what anti-Semtism is and what it is not. When the Jason Cherniaks of the world refuse to make the distinction because it is convenient to use anti-Semitism as a pretext to dismiss all and any criticism of the Israeli government then they demean the memory of those who have died or suffered under the heel of anti-Semitism over the centuries and give comfort to Jew-haters everywhere. To the extent that Israeli politicians encourage this deliberate conflation of anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel, they put themselves in opposition to the interests of the Jewish people throughout the world by sacrificing their safety and security in the interests of short term polemical gain.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Gaza has risen to 360 and Cherniak would have you believe that this can't be referred to as butchery or bloodletting.

Horror in Gaza

2008-12-30T00:38:00.001-05:00

The Israeli government's brutal air bombardment of Gaza has claimed over 300 lives at last count and caused thousands of injuries. This is the worst carnage in Gaza or the West Bank since the 1967 war and it is a completely disproportionate response to the homemade Qassam rockets fired from Gaza which have claimed 20 lives in 8 years.

Of course, even one life on either side is too many but the Israeli response is literally overkill and ignores the fact that the resent Qassam rocket attacks are themselves a response to Israel's year and a half long blockade on Gaza which was largely maintained throughout the recent 6 month ceasefire in violation of an agreement.

Israel's attack will not remove Hamas from power and is unlikely to halt the Qassam rockets; it will only strengthen Hamas' hold on Gaza- indeed Robert Fisk argues that Hamas wanted Israel to attack just for that purpose. Livni and Barak must know this. Rather, this military campaign occuring as it does in the midsts of an Israeli election campaign is a calculated attempt by the lagging Kadima-Labour coalition to boost it's standing in public opinion. The most recent polls show that if the election had been held on December 25th, Kadima and Labour would have lost 11 seats between them while Likud would have more than doubled its seat total to become the largest party in the Knesset and the best placed to form a government. While Livni and Barak are suspending their electoral campaigns due to the war they are in fact continuing to fight the election with F-16s as a game changer with the expectation that every hundred or so Palestinian lives lost will gain them a few seats in a horrific game of blood for votes.

Dr Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative and a leading activist based in the West Bank has written an incisive analysis of the current conflict:

Palestine's Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood

The Israeli campaign of 'death from above' began around 11 am, on Saturday morning, the 27th of December, and stretched straight through the night into this morning. The massacre continues Sunday as I write these words.

The bloodiest single day in Palestine since the War of 1967 is far from over following on Israel's promised that this is 'only the beginning' of their campaign of state terror. At least 290 people have been murdered thus far, but the body count continues to rise at a dramatic pace as more mutilated bodies are pulled from the rubble, previous victims succumb to their wounds and new casualties are created by the minute.

What has and is occurring is nothing short of a war crime, yet the Israeli public relations machine is in full-swing, churning out lies by the minute.

Once and for all it is time to expose the myths that they have created.

1. Israelis have claimed to have ended the occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005.

While Israel has indeed removed the settlements from the tiny coastal Strip, they have in no way ended the occupation. They remained in control of the borders, the airspace and the waterways of Gaza, and have carried out frequent raids and targeted assassinations since the disengagement.

Furthermore, since 2006 Israel has imposed a comprehensive siege on the Strip. For over two years, Gazans have lived on the edge of starvation and without the most basic necessities of human life, such as cooking or heating oil and basic medications. This siege has already caused a humanitarian catastrophe which has only been exacerbated by the dramatic increase in Israeli military aggression.

2. Israel claims that Hamas violated the cease-fire and pulled out of it unilaterally.

Hamas indeed respected their side of the ceasefire, except on those occasions early on when Israel carried out major offensives in the West Bank. In the last two months, the ceasefire broke down with Israelis killing several Palestinians and resulting in the response of Hamas. In other words, Hamas has not carried out an unprovoked attack throughout the period of the cease-fire.

Israel, however, did not live up to any of its obligations of ending the siege and allowing vital humanitarian aid to resume in Gaza. Rather than the average of 450 trucks per day being allowed across the border, on the best days, only eighty have been allowed in - with the border remaining hermetically sealed 70% of the time. Throughout the supposed 'cease-fire' Gazans have been forced to live like animals, with a total of 262 dying due to the inaccessibility of proper medical care.

Now after hundreds dead and counting, it is Israel who refuses to re-enter talks over a cease-fire. They are not intent on securing peace as they claim; it is more and more clear that they are seeking regime change - whatever the cost.

3. Israel claims to be pursuing peace with 'peaceful Palestinians'.

Before the on-going massacre in the Gaza Strip, and throughout the entirety of the Annapolis Peace Process, Israel has continued and even intensified its occupation of the West Bank. In 2008, settlement expansion increased by a factor of 38, a further 4,950 Palestinians were arrested - mostly from the West Bank, and checkpoints rose from 521 to 699.

Furthermore, since the onset of the peace talks, Israel has killed 546 Palestinians, among them 76 children. These gruesome statistics are set to rise dramatically now, but previous Israeli transgressions should not be forgotten amidst this most recent horror.

Only this morning, Israel shot and killed a young peaceful protester in the West Bank village of Nihlin, and has injured dozens more over the last few hours. It is certain that they will continue to employ deadly force at non-violent demonstrations and we expect a sizable body count in the West Bank as a result. If Israel is in fact pursuing peace with 'good Palestinians', who are they talking about?

4. Israel is acting in self-defense.

It is difficult to claim self defense in a confrontation which they themselves have sparked, but they are doing it anyway. Self-defense is reactionary, while the actions of Israel over the last two days have been clearly premeditated. Not only did the Israeli press widely report the ongoing public relations campaign being undertaken by Israel to prepare Israeli and international public opinion for the attack, but Israel has also reportedly tried to convince the Palestinians that an attack was not coming by briefly opening crossings and reporting future meetings on the topic. They did so to insure that casualties would be maximized and that the citizens of Gaza would be unprepared for their impending slaughter.

It is also misleading to claim self-defense in a conflict with such an overwhelming asymmetry of power. Israel is the largest military force in the region, and the fifth largest in the world. Furthermore, they are the fourth largest exporter of arms and have a military industrial complex rivaling that of the United States. In other words, Israel has always had a comprehensive monopoly over the use of force, and much like its super power ally, Israel uses war as an advertising showcase of its many instruments of death.

5. Israel claims to have struck military targets only.

Even while image after image of dead and mutilated women and children flash across our televisions, Israel brazenly claims that their munitions expertly struck only military installations. We know this to be false as many other civilian sites have been hit by airstrikes including a hospital and mosque.

In the most densely populated area on the planet, tons upon tons of explosives have been dropped. The first estimates of injured are in the thousands. Israel will claim that these are merely 'collateral damage' or accidental deaths. The sheer ridiculousness and inhumanity of such a claim should sicken the world community.

6. Israel claims that it is attacking Hamas and not the Palestinian people.

First and foremost, missiles do not differentiate people by their political affiliation; they simply kill everyone in their path. Israel knows this, and so do Palestinians. What Israel also knows, but is not saying public ally, is how much their recent actions will actually strengthen Hamas - whose message of resistance and revenge is being echoed by the angry and grieving.

The targets of the strike, police and not Hamas militants, give us some clue as to Israel's mistaken intention. They are hoping to create anarchy in the Strip by removing the pillar of law and order.

7. Israel claims that Palestinians are the source of violence.

Let us be clear and unequivocal. The occupation of Palestine since the War of 1967 has been and remains the root of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Violence can be ended with the occupation and the granting of Palestine's national and human rights. Hamas does not control the West Bank and yet we remain occupied, our rights violated and our children killed.

With these myths understood, let us ponder the real reasons behind these airstrikes; what we find may be even more disgusting than the act itself.

The leaders Israel are holding press conferences, dressed in black, with sleeves rolled up.

'It's time to fight', they say, 'but it won't be easy.'

To prove just how hard it is, Livni, Olmert and Barak did not even wear make-up to the press conference, and Barak has ended his [election] campaign to focus on the Gaza campaign. What heroes...what leaders...

We all know the truth: the suspension of the electioneering is exactly that - electioneering.

Like John McCain's suspension of his presidential campaign to return to Washington to 'deal with' the financial crisis, this act is little more than a publicity stunt.

The candidates have to appear 'tough enough to lead', and there is seemingly no better way of doing that than bathing in Palestinian blood.

'Look at me,' Livni says in her black suit and unkempt hair, 'I am a warrior. I am strong enough to pull the trigger. Don't you feel more confident about voting for me, now that you know I am as ruthless as Bibi Netanyahu?'

I do not know which is more disturbing, her and Barak, or the constituency they are trying to please.

In the end, this will in no way improve the security of the average Israeli; in fact it can be expected to get much worse in the coming days as the massacre could presumably provoke a new generation of suicide bombers.

It will not undermine Hamas either, and it will not result in the three fools, Barak, Livni and Olmert, looking 'tough'. Their misguided political venture will likely blow up in their faces as did the brutally similar 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

In closing, there is another reason - beyond the internal politics of Israel - why this attack has been allowed to occur: the complicity and silence of the international community.

Israel cannot and would not act against the will of its economic allies in Europe or its military allies in the US. Israel may be pulling the trigger ending hundreds, perhaps even thousands of lives this week, but it is the apathy of the world and the inhumane tolerance of Palestinian suffering which allows this to occur.

'The evil only exists because the good remain silent'

From Occupied Palestine. . .

-- Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi

Mike Duffy gets his reward

2008-12-23T15:35:00.001-05:00

CTV's coverage of the recent parliamentary crisis was unbelievably one-sided and egregiously partisan. Mike Duffy was particularly subjective - one broadcast of Mike Duffy Live I watched on December 3rd consisted of interviews with Tories who opposed the coalition and the two Grits interviewed, Stephen LeDrew and a former Toronto MP were also opposed to the coalition while Duffy himself couldn't contain his own opposition using questionable and loaded words like "coup" to describe the arrangement, referring to it as the "separatist coalition" and repeating as fact the Tory talking point that the BQ was a coalition partner. An objective broadcast would have included an equal number of pro and anti-coalition talking heads but evidently Mike couldn't find a single coalition supporter to talk to. And what sort of interviews did he conduct? Watch this chat with Premier Brad Wall in which Duffy rolls his eyes when he first refers to the "event" of the coalition. Rather than challenging Wall (which is what one would expect in an interview, even if you're just playing Devil's Advocate) Duffy agrees with him throughout and adds to his objections calling the coalition at 3:38 claiming that the NDP is agreeing to be in bed with separatists.

Personally, I'm glad Duffy was appointed not because he will add anything to Parliament but because it will get him off the air.

Questions for 9/11 Truthers

2008-12-16T00:50:00.000-05:00

One of the byproducts of the internet is the increased proliferation of conspiracy theories. If antisemitism is the socialism of fools, as Bebel said, then conspiracy theories are the dialectics of morons. Conspiricism diverts people from serious critical analysis of the structure and practice of society and away from conclusions that can lead to useful action for social change and substitutes it for a belief in mysterious figures shrouded in shadows and fog. At best, it is disempowering - at worst it re-enforces the ruling class by setting up scapegoats that can be sacrificed in their stead - Jews, for instance.

While conspiricism is a symptom of a society that distrusts its leaders and disbelieves what it is being told from on high it is a skepticism that is devoid of the rigours of logic, fact-finding and evidence testing using instead magic thinking, supposition and wild logical leaps.

The latest example of this malady is the 9/11 Truth Movement. Now, I've been a critic of the War on Terror since it began and there are a number of cogent criticisms that can be made of it - that the US and other Western governments have exploited 9/11 and Al-Qaeda in order to justify not only a war against Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 or 7/7 attacks; and that western countries, the US, UK and Canada in particular, have used the War on Terror as a pretext to vastly expand the national security state and curtail the rights of citizens and, in particular, non-citizen residents. However, that is quite different from arguing that 9/11 was an "inside job" planned by either the US or Israel (as the more antisemitic of the 9/11 troothers imply).

counterknowledge.com is a new website devoted to challenging and debunking conspiracy theorists and quackery of various stripes. Here are their 15 questions for the 9/11 truth movement:

Let’s take your thesis (that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by the Bush administration, and covered up by a coalition of US government agencies, allied powers, big business and the media) as read. The following questions point to logical and factual gaps within that thesis. It is now up to you to answer these questions and explain why your theories are still valid. For your answers to be credible, they need to be detailed and based on verifiable evidence. No suppositions, no speculation, no unsupported assertions, just the facts. Stop “asking questions”, and provide answers. These fifteen initial questions will do for starters.

(1) On 9th September 2001 Ahmed Shah Massoud, the most effective military commander of the anti-Taliban coalition (the Northern Alliance, or NA) was killed by two Arab suicide bombers posing as journalists. The assassination of Massoud had taken months to plan, and the latter had received the bogus request for an ‘interview’ in May 2001 (See Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, pp.574-576; Jason Burke, Al Qaeda, p.197; Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections, p.210. Two days before 9/11, Al Qaeda killed the Taliban’s main enemy, who had also played a pivotal role in keeping the NA factions together, and who would have been the obvious figure to liase with if the Americans had decided to effect regime change in Afghanistan. If Al Qaeda were not responsible for 9/11, then why was Ahmed Shah Massoud’s assassination so well co-ordinated with the attacks on New York and Washington?

(2) Conversely, prior to 9/11, the US government had minimal contacts with Massoud and other Northern Alliance figures, much to the latter’s frustration (See Coll, passim). If 9/11 was a “false flag” operation intended to justify a pre-determined plan to invade Afghanistan, then why didn’t the CIA and other US government agencies do more to facilitate ties with the NA?

(3) Just before 9/11, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other key Al Qaeda personnel left their quarters in Kandahar to hide in Tora Bora (Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, pp.356-358). Why did bin Laden and al-Zawahiri suddenly leave their known locations and go to ground, if they were not anticipating imminent military action by the USA?

(4) In the days following 9/11, the Bush administration asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a plan to invade Afghanistan. The JCS had to admit that they had no contingency plan for such an invasion, and in the weeks preceding Operation Enduring Freedom the CIA and the Department of Defense were obliged to improvise a plan of attack against the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies (Benjamin Lambeth, Air Power Against Terror; Bob Woodward, Bush At War). If 9/11 had been an inside job, and if there was a long-standing intention by Bush and his advisors to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, then why did they have to scrabble around for a workable plan? Why was one not prepared beforehand?

(5) We are being asked by the truthers to believe that the 19 hijackers were “patsies”, or non-existent. If that was the case, and if the intention of the real plotters in the US government was to justify military interventions to overthrow hostile regimes in the Middle East, why were 15 out of the 19 ‘bogus’ Al Qaeda terrorists given Saudi nationality? The other four hijackers consisted of an Egyptian, a Lebanese and two citizens of the UAE. We are being asked to believe that the conspirators behind 9/11 decided that they would make the hijackers citizens of allies of the USA, not enemies. Why were they not given Iraqi, Iranian or Syrian identity? Why were they not given forged links with terrorist groups (such as the Abu Nidal Organisation, the PLFP-GC or Hizbollah) with closer links to Tehran, Damascus and above all Baghdad? If we are supposed to believe that the Israelis had a hand in 9/11, then why were none of the patsies Palestinians linked to Fatah or Hamas? What kind of conspirator sets up a plot to frame an innocent party without forging the evidence to implicate the latter?

(6) Following on from this point, if the identities and the nationalities of the hijackers were faked, then why did the Saudi, Egyptian, Lebanese and UAE governments accept that citizens from their own countries were involved? What incentive did Saudi Arabia have for accepting that 15 of its own people had committed mass murder on US soil? Why would the Saudis co-operate in a plot which would blacken their country’s name, benefit Israeli interests in the Middle East, provide the pretext for the overthrow of one fundamentalist Sunni regime in Afghanistan, and contribute to the destruction of a Sunni Arab dictatorship in Iraq long seen by the Saudi royal family as a bulwark against Iran?

(7) Afghanistan is a landlocked country (truthers may need to be reminded of this fact), and any invasion is logistically impossible without the support of its neighbours. Prior to 9/11, Pakistan was a staunch ally of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan (see Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, passim). The former Soviet Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan backed the NA, but were also wary of antagonising their former imperial master, Russia. Pre-September 2001 these states would not have contemplated admitting any US or Western military presence on their soil. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin backed the USA’s invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, it took the Americans considerable effort to persuade him to permit the US and NATO forces to use bases on Uzbek and Tajik territory as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. It also took time and considerable pressure to force General Pervez Musharraf to abandon the Taliban - despite resistance from the military and ISI. Given the geo-political realities of Central Asia in mid-2001, there were no guarantees of any host nation support for any attack on Afghanistan. Assuming againt that 9/11 was an inside job, how could the US government realistically presume that the Russians and Pakistanis would actually permit the USA to effect regime change against the Taliban?

(8) Assuming that claims of Mossad complicity in 9/11 (”dancing Israelis”, etc.) are correct, can the truthers suggest a feasible motive for the Israeli government conniving in an act of mass murder on US soil? Since 1967, the mainstay of Israel’s security and survival has been its alignment with the USA, and the military assistance it has received as a result. This relationship is based on a bipartisan political consensus (both the Republican and Democratic parties are predominantly pro-Israeli) and considerable public support in the USA. Why engage in a “false flag” attack against the civilian population of an ally, when you have so little to gain and so much to lose if your responsibility is ever disclosed?

(9) Following on from this, assuming that the “five dancing Israelis” story isn’t a complete fabrication, what kind of secret service recruits undercover agents who compromise themselves by acting so ostentatiously in public? And if the five arrested Israelis were part of a conspiracy organised with the US government, then why did the FBI hold them in custody for over two months, instead of releasing them on the quiet a matter of hours and days after their apprehension?

(10) If the WTC towers in New York City were destroyed by controlled demolitions rigged by US government agencies, then why were the fake terrorist attacks used to cover up these controlled demolitions so insanely convoluted? Why concoct a scenario involving the hijacking of planes which are then crashed into tower blocks (involving complicated planning involving remote controlled flights timed with explosives detonated in the towers, which allow plenty of opportunities for gliches and technical errors)? Why not use a more simple means, such as a truck bomb?

(11) Assuming that Niaz Naik’s account of his alleged meeting with retired US officials in July 2001 is true, then where were the 17,000 Russian troops who were supposedly ready to invade Afghanistan when it came to the commencement of military operations in October 2001? And if the main motive behind the invasion was to build a natural gas pipe-line which would be under US control, then why was no attempt ever made to build one once the Taliban were overthrown?

(12) We are being asked by the conspiracy theorists to assume that NORAD was stood down on the morning of 11th September 2001 so as to enable the success of the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. NORAD is a combined command, not a purely American one - it has a binational staff drawn from the US military and the Canadian Forces (CF). We are either supposed to believe that the CF personnel assigned to NORAD were too stupid to notice anything amiss in their headquarters - and query it - or that the Canadian government and the CF were complicit in 9/11. Which of these scenarios is true?

(13) If Al Qaeda were set-up for the 11th September attacks, then why have its leaders and spokesmen repeatedly affirmed their responsibility for - and pride in - these attacks (see here, here, here and here for examples)? Why are we supposed to believe that repeated video pronouncements by bin Laden and Zawahiri are fake, while just one written statement allegedly from bin Laden denying responsibility - which was handed by courier to al-Jazeera without any confirmation of its origins - was genuine?

(14) If the hijacking and crashing of four passenger planes was engineered by the US government, then why did UA93 crash into an empty field in Pennsylvania? Why not crash it into a target which would add to the death toll on 9/11, and further inflame US public attitudes and popular demands for revenge against the supposed perpetrators?

(15) Finally, if the US government is institutionally ruthless enough to organise the massacre of thousands of its own citizens in a series of “false flag” attacks, then why is it too squeamish to arrange for the deaths of the supposed “truth-seekers” (David Griffin, Kevin Barrett, Steven Jones, Richard Gage, the Loose Change team, Alex Jones, etc.) who have exposed their complicity in one of the most heinous crimes a government can commit against its own people? Why are these people still alive and well, and in a position to publicise their “theories” on radio, television, in print and online?

The Second Death of Stephane Dion and the paradox of Canadian politics today

2008-12-08T18:15:00.000-05:00

Almost a week after delivering an address to the nation that looked like something hostage takers release to prove their victim is still alive, Stephane Dion has resigned as leader of the Liberal Party. Dion thus becomes the first party leader in living memory to resign from the same position twice in one year.

The Liberals are current wrangling over how to expedite its leadership election process so that the party will have a new chief in place by the time that Parliament resumes on January 26th. It now appears that with Dion having been unceremoniously pushed under a bus, Michael Ignatieff will be crowned Liberal leader by caucus on Wednesday with the blessing of Liberal Party riding presidents - party members will be allowed to send their post hoc congratulations sometime next year when, in the best traditions of Stalinist Russia, a party convention will be held to "affirm" the Great Man's leadership. This illigitmate process is being undertaken in order to confer onto the Liberal Party a leader who has more legitimacy than the electorally deficient Dion.

But you can't have party unanimity without a few victims - just ask Stalin's victims. In this case, the murder victim will not be Kirov but Bob Rae's political ambitions along with the "Coalition" that would have brought down Stephen Harper had it not been for the last minute deus ex machina intervention of the monarchy in the form of the Governor General who, like the professor presented with a forged sick note by a bad student desperately seeking a postponement of an exam he's otherwise doomed to fail, gave Harper an extra six weeks to cram. It remains to be seen whether in that time Harper will learn the difference between governing with a majority and governing with a minority. Ignatieff has clearly signalled that if the Tories make concessions - and this means adopted the Coalition's program (weak as it is) the Liberals will likely support the budget.

Few people noticed the election night split-screen interview CTV News did with Rae and Ignatieff. In both his victory speech and in the interview Rae anticipated the broad strokes of the current parliamentary crisis and stated that with a minority parliament Stephen Harper is not necessarily going to be able to stay in government as his Throne Speech needs to gain the consent of the Opposition in order to pass. Rae was intimating that if the Tory Throne Speech was defeated the Liberals would have the opportunity to form a government. Ignatieff haughtily dismissed this scenario as "political science fiction" - the look on Rae's face was priceless. A mere six weeks later, what Iggy had dismissed as fantasy threatened to become reality (over a Fiscal Statement rather than the Throne Speech) and Ignatieff reluctantly signed on and then went into hiding. On Sunday, Ignatieff all but declared his opposition to the coalition idea and went on CBC Sunday to paraphrase William Lyon Mackenzie King by saying "a coalition if necessary but not necessarily a coalition" and explaining that he saw the coalition as a tool to get concessions from the Tories and little else.

Bob Rae, conversely, has been selling the coalition as if it's the Second Coming. After spending an election campaign as the Stephane Dion's designated hitter against the NDP - bashing Layton and his social democratic party at every opportunity - and after years of denigrated his former party as not worthy of support, Rae now posits himself, unconvincingly, as the NDP's best friend in the Liberal Party trumpeting a Liberal-NDP coalition as good for the Liberals and good for the country (good for everyone but the NDP, it seems). How the NDP could be beneath contempt in Rae's eyes on October 13th but potential cabinet colleagues on December 1st remains unexplained. But the ironies don't end there for it is the dire threat posed to the Tories by the coalition that has made it a necessity for the Liberals to expedite their leadership election - an act which will not only sunder aside Bob Rae's leadership ambitions in order to crown Michael Ignatieff as leader. In other words, in order to be prepared for the possibility that the Coalition might bring down Harper and be asked to form a government the Liberals are pushing aside the pro-coalition candidate in favour of the candidate who sees the coalition as expendable.

And people say Canadian politics is boring.

Stephen Harper: The new Nixon?

2008-11-30T17:36:00.002-05:00

According to CTV News, a Conservative "member" somehow received the dial in number and access code for an NDP caucus meeting on Saturday. The "shocking" fact that Jack Layton talked to the BQ ahead of time is being spun to ridiculous lengths by the Tories and the Conservative Television Network (CTV). So who is this Conservative member? Did he or she inform Harper ahead of time before he or she listened in on and taped the meeting? Did Harper approve of this conduct?

Stephen Harper: The Joe Clark of our times

2008-11-29T08:27:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Stephen Harper said the following:

While we have been working on the economy the opposition has been working on a backroom deal to overturn the results of the last election without seeking the consent of voters. They want to take power, not earn it...The opposition has every right to defeat the government, but Stephane Dion does not have the right to take power without an election. Canada's government should be decided by Canadians, not backroom deals.

The Prime Minister is, of course, showing a profound ignorance of how parliamentary democracy works. The government is formed by whoever is able to obtain the confidence of a majority of democratic representatives elected to the House of Commons. At present, it appears that Harper does not have that confidence and that will be determined whenever there is a vote of confidence. If it can be determined that someone else does have the confidence of the House to form a government than the Governor General is obliged to allow that person to try to form a government and meet the House of Commons and test it.

Stephen Harper speaks as if Canadians chose him and his party as the government on October 14th. They did not. Canadians chose 308 Members of Parliament and the composition of the government is determinded by those 308 representatives (hence the term "representative democracy). It is what a majority of those 308 MPs decide that is crucial.

Harper also speaks as if the democratic will of the people is that he be in power. This is despite the fact that his party only recieved 37% of the vote while the Liberals and NDP received 44% of the vote. He has forgotten that he leads only a minority government and it is this bit of political amnesia that has created the current crisis.

Like Joe Clark he tried to govern as if he had a majority. Like Joe Clark he ignored the need to receive the support of at least some Opposition MPs. Like Joe Clark he assumed that because the leader of the Liberal Party had resigned and because that party is in the middle of a leadership contest there is no way they would vote to topple his minority government. Like Joe Clark, Stephen Harper thinks he's a brilliant political tactician and is cleverer than everyone else. Like Joe Clark, he's not.

Unlike Joe Clark, Stephen Harper is a hypocrite since, when the situation was reversed, Harper had no problem with the notition that following a defeat on a motion of confidence the Official Opposition could attempt to form a government if they obtained the support of the House:

As leaders of the opposition parties, we are well aware that, given the Liberal minority government, you could be asked by the Prime Minister to dissolve the 38th Parliament at any time should the House of Commons fail to support some part of the government’s program. We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all of your options before exercising your constitutional authority. Your attention to this matter is appreciated.

From a letter to then-Governor General Adrienne Clarkson signed by all three opposition leaders: Gilles Duceppe, Jack Layton and Stephen Harper(September 9, 2004)

They're all Keynesians now

2008-11-24T08:36:00.000-05:00

After years of proclaiming the death of Keynesianism and the triumph of Friedmanomics it's fascinating to see how the market collapse has turned the most diehard opponents of government intervention in the economy and pump-priming turn into born again disciples of old John Maynard Keynes.

This is what Stephen Harper had to say this weekend:

“Let us remember what led to the Great Depression. It was not caused by a stock market crash. That was only the beginning,” he said. Governments of the time made a number of serious mistakes, including attempting to balance the books at all costs, he said, raising taxes and cutting spending at a time when a fiscal stimulus was “absolutely essential.”

Cutting spending is bad? Balancing budgets is a mistake during an economic downturn? Who knew? John Maynard Keynes did. Meanwhile, it appears that John Kenneth Galbraith, the great but long ignored Keynesian economist, is back in fashion with his seminal 1955 book The Great Crash: 1929 leaping off the shelves as people turn away from neo-classical economics. (So too rentals of the Depression-era classic, The Grapes of Wrath).

James Galbraith, the son of JKG, points out that only a dozen of America's 15,000 economists predicted the current crisis. What does this mean for the "science" of economics? According to Galbraith: "It's an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless."

Back in 1994, when almost all economists were enthralled by Alan Greenspan along with the media and politicians, James Galbraith had the following to say of America's worship of the Federal Reserve and its chairman:

This is the Wizard of Oz theory, in which we pull away the curtain only to find an old man with a wrinkled face playing with lights and loud speakers.

As for Galbraith's prescription for the current crisis:

Milliken wins

2008-11-19T08:48:00.000-05:00

Peter Milliken was able to pull a rabbit out of his Speaker's robes and was re-elected yesterday though it took him five ballots. I was partly right, at least, since I thought that if Milliken faced a Tory on the last ballot he would win. I still think if he had faced another Opposition MP at the end he would have lost but what I overestimated was Tory craftiness since I thought enough Tory MPs would vote for Comartin for tactical reasons - reasoning that he'd be better placed to beat Milliken than one of their own. What seems to have happened though is that most of the 143 Tory MPs voted for one of their fellow Tories - so much so that Scheer and Tweed both received more votes than Comartin on the fourth ballot knocking him off and on the fifth ballot the Opposition MPs consolidated behind Milliken to keep a Tory out of the Speaker's Chair.

Speaker's chair: Can Comartin beat Milliken?

2008-11-17T15:42:00.001-05:00

The first order of business when the House of Commons meets tomorrow will be the election of a new Speaker.

Liberal MP Peter Milliken has sat in the Speaker's Chair for 7 years and is running again in hopes of breaking Lucien Lamoureaux's all time record of 8 years.

Three Tory MPs are also standing for the position as is NDP MP Joe Comartin (though more MPs may end up being on the ballot).

My prediction is that if Joe Comartin and Peter Milliken are on the final ballot then Comartin will win. This is for two reasons:

1) Milliken, though experienced, is perceived as a weak Speaker and has been blamed, in part, for the lack of decorum in the House in recent years.

2) The Tories are convinced that if Milliken is defeated he'll resign from the House of Commons before the next election opening up his Kingston seat which the Tories think they can win in a by-election.

With the opposition parties holding the majority of seats there's no desire by them to place a government MP in the Speaker's chair though Milliken himself managed to keep his position in the 2004 Liberal led minority parliament. This was largely because he was a known quantity in a then unfamiliar minority situation, was seen as suitably neutral and because with a razor's edge seat count keeping a Liberal in the Speaker's chair and thus denying him a vote in normal circumstances was seen as advantageous by the opposition parties.

The seat count in the current parliament does not lend itself to close votes so having one extra vote either way is less of an issue therefore there's no need for the opposition to tolerate a government MP as Speaker. Therefore, I don't see any of the three Tory candidates for the Speakership prevailing on the final ballot.

The only question is can Comartin make it on the final ballot or will one of the three Tory candidates outpoll him and knock him off before the final show. With three Tories in the running (at least) the Tory vote will be split making it easier for Comartin to see them off. This will particularly be the case if Comartin wins BQ support which is possible given Comartin's Franco-Ontarian roots and the fact that he is arguably more fluent in French than Milliken.

Moreover, the Tories are convinced that if Milliken loses the Speakership he'll quit Parliament and are also convinced that they can win his Kingston seat in a by-election so they are especially motivated to beat Milliken even if it means supporting an NDPer. Some of the more tactically minded Tories such as Tony Clement, John Baird and possibly Stephen Harper himself have probably already realized that Comartin has a better chance of beating Milliken then one of their fellow Tory MPs and will probably vote for Comartin from the outset and convince enough of their colleagues to do the same in order to ensure a Comartin-Milliken finale which Comartin will win and Milliken will be the first incumbent to lose a secret ballot for the Speakership since John Bosley lost the very first such election in 1986.

Rae's misstep

2008-11-16T18:23:00.000-05:00

Bob Rae's decision to boycott today's Ontario's Liberal leadership debate is a serious tactical error which will only serve to alienate Ontario riding presidents - many of whom are already uneasy about the prospects of being led by a former NDP Premier.

Rae is right, of course, that the leadership forum should be a public event, open to the media and he was right to challenge Michael Ignatieff to agree to make the debate an open event and to rake him over the coals when he refused. However, by actually walking out Rae has gone beyond simply differentiating himself from his rival and has insulted the party officials he needs to win onside if he's to prevent what looks increasingly like an inevitable Ignatieff first ballot victory.

Even worse - by openly feuding with Ignatieff just days after all the contenders promised to bury the hatchet for the sake of public unity - Rae looks like a prima donna. Liberals are still sore from the self-inflicted wounds of the Chretien-Martin rivalry that almost destroyed the party so, while it is inevitable that Rae and Ignatieff will come to blows during the leadership campaign neither can be seen as the one who threw the first punch and neither can be seen as willing to put their own ambitions above the interests of the party. By bickering with Ignatieff as well as publicly embarrassing the Ontario Liberal executive Rae has crossed not one line in the sand but two and worse, he leaves the impression of someone who is dissing his party in order to pan to the hated media.

Advantage Iggy.

How Rush Limbaugh helped elect Barack Obama

2008-11-08T13:59:00.000-05:00

Conservative radio buffoon Rush Limbaugh thinks of himself as an ace strategist and so he thought he was being extremely clever back in March when he launched "Operation Chaos" an effort to undermine frontrunner Barack Obama's chances in the fall election by prolonging the Democratic primary season and forcing Obama to deplete his resources early. Rushbo, accordingly, urged his conservative Republican listeners to take advantage of open primaries in many thats that allow non-Democrats to participate and vote for Hilary Clinton in order to drag the race out as long as possible. Brilliant eh? And how mischievous!

Unfortunately the Limbaugh his plan was too clever by half and has backfired.

DNC chair Howard Dean has talked about the importance of a "50 state strategy" for the past four years and Obama embraced the idea but it was the prolonged primary season that allowed Obama to implement it by virtue of necessity as the never ending race forced him to recruit ground organizers and campaign in red states that are usually flyover states for the Dems such as North Carolina and Indiana. When the fall campaign came around, polls showed Obama competitive in states that the Democrats had long written off as a result of his spring campaigning and allowed him to use ground organizations left over from the primary season in order to keeps those states competitive forcing McCain to campaign in states which should have been sure things for him. Moreover, Obama won North Carolina and Indiana and thereby assured himself the presidency thanks, in no small part, to Rush Limbaugh's efforts.

Liberal leadership prospects narrow

2008-11-04T13:05:00.000-05:00

John Manley announced today that he will not be a candidate for the Liberal leadership, surprising many pundits. The non-candidacies of Manley and former New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna means that the support of the powerful Business Liberal faction of the Liberal Party will coalesce behind Michael Ignatieff. This sets the scene for a showdown with Bob Rae at next year's leadership convention with Rae arguing that the Liberals should lead a "unite the left" movement and Ignatieff calling for the Liberals to move "back" to the centre. Both these arguments are deeply flawed.

Bob Rae sees himself as a Canadian Obama but he's really the Great White North's answer to Joe Lieberman. He is, with good cause, viewed by New Democrats as a traitor for obvious reasons and a fraud who squandered the miraculous opportunity given the Ontario NDP in 1990 to permanently reshape politics in that province and the country thanks to his abandonment of public auto insurance and his betrayal of labour through the social contract. Rae can no more "unite the left" under his banner than Sarah Palin can unite feminists under hers. While Rae's ego and arrogance leads him to believe that NDP and Green voters would flock to him because of the force of his personality he is, in fact, not only loathed by NDP activists who would balk at any formal co-operation between the NDP and Rae's Liberals but he is deeply mistrusted by progressives, unionists and conscientious working class voters even if they are not NDP partisans. For the Liberals "uniting the left" may make sense as a strategy (though it makes no sense for the left to put their faith in the Liberals), Rae is just about the last person who can bring that concept to fruition.

Meanwhile, Ignatieff and other Business Liberals have argued since October 14th that the reason the Liberal Party lost the election is that they have strayed too far from the "centre" (meaning the centre-right). This is a fallacious argument based on the false premise that the Liberals moved to the left under Dion. In fact, Dion's prescriptions for the country were very much in the centre-right tradition of the Chretien-Martin years. The "carbon tax" which would have shifted taxation from progressive income and corporate taxes to a regressive consumption tax is an eco-capitalist, centre-right, prescription to the environmental crisis that sees the market mechanisms as the solution to global warming and has been embraced by centre right leaders such as BC's Gordon Campbell. Carbon tax aside, Dion has argued that the Harper government has not gone far enough to implement corporate tax cuts saying “A low corporate tax rate is not a right-wing policy or a left-wing policy. It is a sound policy” and, at least before the global economic crisis, he opposed any expansion of government's role in the economy and was open to the idea of private-public partnerships and other incursions by the private sector into public services. The Dion led Liberals showed no interest in tax fairness, in combatting corporate globalization, reversing cuts to EI or any other widespread restoration of social programs to their pre-Chretien state.

The Liberal Party's electoral success has always been based on running from the left - or more accurately fooling Canadians into thinking that a Liberal government would govern from the left while privately assuring corporate interests that promises such as the Chretien era pledges to scrap the GST, scrap NAFTA, implement a national housing strategy or child care would not be implemented in the end. "Campaign from the left and govern from the right" is the formula that has allowed the Liberals to win support from working class and lower and middle income stratas as well as from a healthy section of the business community. The proposition by business Liberals that the party lost the election because they were too left wing is based not on facts but is simply an attempt to rally opposition within the party against the more progressive wing of the party.

Wondering who won the war of 1812?

2008-11-04T09:34:00.000-05:00

A new monument to the War of 1812 designed by author Douglas Coupland and unveiled in Toronto makes it quite clear who won - an d who lost - the conflict.

National Post at 10

2008-10-27T13:45:00.001-04:00

The National Post is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Ironically, the paper espouses a brutal free market philosophy yet has failed to have even a single profitable year and tuus, under the rules of the brutal free market, should have been folded years ago. However, because of its value as a propaganda vehicle its owners have allowed it to continue. Unfortunately, the market is a selfish lover and Canwest has been rewarded for its fealty with plunging stock values - Canwest is all but a penny stock at this point - so the Post's future is an open question. The Post has been an interesting combination of good writing and poor journalism.

I rarely peruse an issue without finding at least one howler. Not too long ago, one of the Post's scribes attributed the "I knew Jack Kennedy. You're no Jack Kennedy" line to "You're no, Ronald Reagan" and had Lloyd Bentsen delivering it to Bob Dole instead of Dan Quayle.

Most memorable of the Post's gaffes is fake front page story "IRAN EYES BADGES FOR JEWS" (May 19, 2006) which reported, wrongly, that Iran's parliament was debating legislation that would force Jews to wear Nazi-style yellow badges. And then there've been the front page polls - countless of them - conducted by the questionable Compass polling firm and designed to push a political agenda rather than actually report public opinion. I recall one that I actually did concerning tax credits for private schools. Unethically, the "money shot" question was preceded with numerous leading questions designed to make private schools (which the survey called "independent schools") appear in a preferable light to public schools (which the survey called "government run schools").

Ah the Post, Canada's answer to Fox News.

Some advice to Wall Street

2008-10-04T13:06:00.001-04:00

Love letter to Wall Street from the people.

Owen Lippert, Harper's plagiarist, is an intellectual property expert

2008-09-30T21:40:00.000-04:00

I wish I could take credit for finding this but considering the circumstances maybe I could pretend that I did:

Competitive strategies for the protection of intellectual property

by Owen Lippert (and others)

Copyright ©1999 by The Fraser Institute. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief passages quoted in critical articles and reviews.

The authors of this book have worked independently and opinions expressed by them are, therefore, their own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the members or the trustees of The Fraser Institute.

Printed in Canada.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Main entry under title:
Competitive Strategies for the Protection of Intellectual Property

Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-88975-200-1

1. Intellectual property (International law). 2. Intellectual
property--Economic aspects. I. Lippert, Owen. II. Fraser
Institute (Vancouver, B.C.)

K1401.C663 1999 341.7'58 C99-911278-3

Neo-nazi Paul Fromm a "Civil Liberty Advocate" says Global TV

2008-09-28T13:11:00.000-04:00

Global Ontario's Friday News Hour featured a special report on Facebook hate sites which interviewed various individuals on both sides of the issue. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. The problem is that reporter Shirlee Engel (shengel@globaltv.com) decided to interview Paul Fromm describing him only has a "Civil Liberty" (sic) advocate. When there are numerous qualified civil libertarians and civil liberties groups out there, such as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association why in the world would Global not only decide upon Fromm, a far right activist who was fired from his job as a teacher for his neo-nazi links and is widely thought to be a neo-Nazi himself? And if that's bad enough why describe him as a "civil liberty" advocate with no reference to his far right views? Fromm has links to the Ku Klux Klan, opposes immigration, human rights legislation, is a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens - a white supremacist group based in American South and made up of unreconstructed opponents of the civil rights movement in the US and proponents of segregation, he supported not only the apartheid-era white minority rule government in South Africa but the white minority rule Rhodesian Front. Calling Paul Fromm a civil rights advocate is like calling the Ronald Reagan a Communist.

Global's "Special Report" on hate on Facebook begins about 10 minutes into the newscast and Fromm's appearance is at 11:26. To see it for yourself go to http://www.globaltv.com/globaltv/ontario/video/index.html click "News Hour" and then click September 26.

Cherniak and 9/11 "truthers"

2008-09-25T21:58:00.000-04:00

Jason Cherniak and his hangers-on have played fast and loose with the facts in order to insinuate that there are prominent NDPers who advocate wing-nut 9/11 conspiracy theories. How unfortunate that it turns out the first major party to boast a bona fide 9/11 "truther" is none other than the Liberal Party thanks to Liberal candidate Lesley Hughes who claims that Israel is behind the attacks.

German Intelligence (BND) claims to have warned the U.S. last June, the Israeli Mossad and Russian Intelligence in August. Israeli businesses, which had offices in the Towers, vacated the premises a week before the attacks, breaking their lease to do it. About 3000 Americans working there were not so lucky.

Thanks to Dawg's Blawg for doing what Cherniak only dreamed of doing - finding a major party candidate who is also a 911 truther.

Update: The Liberals have dropped Hughes as a candidate. Congratulations to Jason Cherniak for scoring on his own net. Had it not been for his logically tenuous accusations against the NDP various bloggers would not have been motivated to dig in Jason's backyard.

Theo's hope: Chris Reid

2008-09-22T10:17:00.000-04:00

Financial manager Theo Caldwell, who moonlights as a conservative columnist for both the National Post and the Toronto Sun, recently talked up Chris Reid, the Tory candidate who had to resign this past weekend when his wingnut views became public.

Theo's point was that even though Tory candidates in Toronto had no hope of winning they can still play an effective role because

...it can be liberating for these locals to know that they can speak their minds without endangering their Commons seat. Such candidates can be the most effective in exposing key members of the Opposition.

He went on to say:

Consider former NDP Ontario premier Bob Rae, now the Liberal MP for Toronto-Centre. There are myriad reasons why Rae deserves a public talking-to from a Conservative opponent, but Sir John A. Macdonald himself could not unseat this once and future socialist.
If Rae is soundly defeated in debates or pushed into making intemperate remarks that gain national attention, however, that could prevent him from becoming prime minister and doing the same damage to Canada that he did to this province.
If Conservative candidate Chris Reid can accomplish this, even in defeat, he will have served his country well.

Hm. So how did that work out I wonder? Reid certainly did feel liberated enough to speak his mind on gays, women, guns and bus decapitation but "exposing key members of the Opposition" or tricking Bob Rae into making "intemperate remarks"? Um, not so much. But perhaps that's what Reid was up to - making remarks that were so outrageous and beyond the pale in an attempt to provoke Bob Rae into saying something even more intermperate? Probably not but I'd hate to think Theo's trust in Chris Reid was so badly misplaced.

Jason Cherniak gets it wrong

2008-09-20T21:17:00.001-04:00

Jason Cherniak is a well known Liberal blogger cum pitbull. In a blogosphere of partisans Cherniak is a sectarian extraordinaire who never fails to rush to judgement in the absence of facts if he can score a few partisan posts. Recently, he has smeared a political activist named Stacy Douglas who was a provincial NDP candidate in Scarborough Agincourt in the 2003 provincial election and planned to be a federal candidate when it looked like there would be an election in 2007.

On Friday, Cherniak made a post on his blog titled NDP fired candidate who was anti-Israel which claimed in no uncertain terms that Ms Douglas was "fired" by the NDP for comments she made in support of Palestinian rights. He repeats the claim, using the phrase "getting rid of Dougls" instead of "fired" in a subsequent post. Cherniak's evidence? Well, she was the candidate at one point and is no longer and she wrote a letter to Jack Layton in March complaining about the party's decision not to back the Durban II conference on racism. In the absence of any actual factual evidence (such as a statement or news item) stating why Douglas no longer is the candidate, Cherniak assumed, in the absence of any facts, that Douglas must have been dropped as a result of the letter. After all, correlation must mean causation ergo a letter written in March and someone not being a candidate six months latter means the two events must be connected. So concludes the steel trap mind of Jason Cherniak and hey, if his finely tuned legal intellect makes a supposition it's not just an ordinary suppostion it's as good as a fact; hence Jason's assertion that his blind speculation must be true.

The problem is it isn't.

My grade 6 teacher used to say that when you assume you make an ass of u and me. In this case, Cherniak has only made an ass of himself. The fact is that Ms Douglas is not a candidate because she is in England this year pursuing her academic studies. Had there been an election in 2007 or early 2008 she would have been a candidate. Had there been an election, as scheduled, in the fall of 2009 after her year abroad was over, she also may have been a candidate but as the Prime Minister decided to break the spirit of his own law and call a snap election Ms Douglas cannot be a candidate because she is not in the country.

So here is the upshot of this. Because of Cherniak's combination of intellectual arrogance (if I thinks it it must be so) lack of due diligence (if I thinks it's a fact there's no need to verify it) and general sloppiness he's now defamed a once and possibly future poltical candidate with the claim that she was fired by her party for her criticisms of Israel, a claim which in this day and age also implies the existence of anti-Semitism.

It's one thing to criticize other political parties based on their actual deeds or misdeeds or on their policies but to engage in this sort of smear because of intellectual laziness is not acceptable. I say intellectual laziness because Cherniak is a law school graduate and should have at least a passing familiarity with the methods of critical thinking and debate. If this is an example of Cherniak's analytical mind at work then I think he's going to have a very serious problem practicing law, particularly when it comes to arguing cases in court. If he was deliberately disregarding logic and due diligence in order to score cheap points than shame on him but moreover shame on anyone who takes his blog seriously. The reason the BBC was a force to be reckoned with during World War II's propaganda wars was because they had a reputation for being factual and credible. Once you become known to invent facts for propaganda reasons you're finished and if Cherniak does not take responsibility for his mistake and apologize then I think he's finished as a serious commentator.

An exchange with Bob Rae's campaign manager

2008-09-15T23:34:00.000-04:00

Shortly after I made my earlier blogpost on Bob Rae's shunning of St. James Town, the Liberal MP's campaign manager posted a public message to me below one of Bob Rae's Facebook notes where I had posted a link to this very blog. Here are his comments and my response.

Blake Webb writes:

I am Bob's campaign manager, and am happy to discuss your concerns.

Bob did attend an all candidates debate in St. James Town less then 6 months ago during the by-election, one of eight in total.

With a compressed campaign period - it is impossible for us to commit to another 8 debates. We have been in touch many community organizations who have agreed to work together to host joint debates throughout the riding (the St. James Town Safety Committee being one of them).

Feel free to contact me at our campaign office - 416-922-0401. Would be happy to talk to you further about it.

Regards

Blake Webb

My response:

Hi Blake,

You should probably talk to the St. James Town people rather than me. However, let me ask you this; if you are expecting all candidates meetings to be consolidated does this mean you are expecting either the Rosedale neighbourhood association to pack up their meeting and head down to St. James Town or the Cabbagetown people to pack up and do the same? No. My understanding is that you want St. James Town voters to go to someone else's neighbourhood despite the fact that St. James Town is by far the most populous neighbourhood of the three. Toronto Centre has 84,000 voters. Over 20,000 people live in St. James Town. The math is compelling.

Now ask yourself, why is the Bob Rae campaign prioritizing wealthier but less populous neighbourhoods over St. James Town? I think you'll find the answer in my blog post. That's probably also a pretty good reason why folks in SJT shouldn't be voting for Bob Rae. If they are also rans behind more prosperous neighbourhoods in Bob's book then they should give him the same lack of consideration.

As for you claim that it is impossible for Bob to commit to 8 debates because of a "compressed campaign period" I think the problem is more that Bob is spending much of the time campaigning in other ridings. That's his choice but I don't think it gives him a licence to complain or to favour wealthy neighbourhoods in his riding over poor ones.

Bob Rae shunning the poor?

2008-09-15T16:19:00.000-04:00

I've heard from several different sources today that Liberal MP Bob Rae is trying to give the brush off to an all-candidates meeting planned for St. Jamestown on October 8th. Rae says his schedule is too busy and his people are trying to get the St. Jamestown planning committee to go to all candidates meetings planned in upper middle class Cabbagetown or upper class Rosedale instead!

I guess I can see Bob's point. After all, the issues facing the poor and working poor living in substandard bedbug and cockroach infested housing in St. Jamestown are so much like those of the superrich in Rosedale or the white collar professionals of Cabbagetown.

St. Jamestown, with over 20,000 residents, is the most densely populated neighbourhood in Canada yet Rae obviously thinks better off neighbourhoods are more important. If signs in past elections are any indication, there is a stronger Liberal vote in St. Jamestown than in either of its neighbouring communities but they just aren't Bob's preferred class of voter.

Perhaps Rae doesn't want to explain why the Liberals never got around to implementing the housing strategy they promised in the Red Book in 1993? Perhaps he has nothing to offer working poor people in the way of fixing the EI system that Paul Martin broke, or restoring the federal transfers to provincial social programs that the Liberals cut? Rae certainly can't talk about childcare now that the Dion Liberals have abandoned the child care plan that was offered last election in favour of expanding Stephen Harper's child care rebate - which they mocked last time - and which will do nothing to actually provide quality, inexpensive, public and non-profit care.

In his recent screed against the NDP Bob complains that the NDP campaign in this past spring's by-election consisted of "class warfare and character assassination. Corporations bad, wealth creation bad, rich guys vs poor guys, "working families" vs what? Lazy families?"

The real problem is not that the NDP is preaching "class warfare" (if only) but that Bob Rae doesn't want to talk about class issues and would rather pretend they don't exist. Let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Let Canada languish with an unacceptable rate of child poverty. Let our affordable housing stock decay and public housing shrink. Sure, Rae's riding of Toronto Centre may have one of the largest populations of urban poor in Canada - but don't expect him to talk to them.

Rae doesn't have a class analysis now and he didn't have one when he claimed to be a New Democrat. Now he's showing that he has no class either.

Election 2008

2008-09-14T14:10:00.000-04:00

We're a week into the campaign and so far the Liberals are running an anemic effort despite the fact that Stephane Dion pledged that the party would be election ready more than a year ago. Some polls suggest the Liberals and NDP could be in a fight for second place, though this is more because of Liberal weakness than anything else as the NDP has not broken through the 20% popular vote barrier - something the party only managed to do once in federal electoral history - in 1988 when the Broadbent led party won 43 seats with 20.38% of the vote.

So far though the NDP has run a stronger campaign than the Liberals and the media is starting to take notice. The NDP ads are crisp, visually interesting and take direct aim at the Tories and are designed to position the party as the real alternative to the Tories.

The NDP are bucking a decade or so of Ontario and federal party conventional wisdom which dictated that the party should focus its efforts on the Liberals. This attempt at "triangulation" was too clever by half and actually had the effect of alienating left leaning Liberal voters. The NDP's fear has been that if they attack the Tories they will only drive their own voters to the Liberals and encourage strategic voting. However, progressive voters are first and foremost anti-Conservative and it has been pure folly for a party to try to win the progressive vote by ignoring the real enemy.

407 expansion: more public money to private profit?

2007-03-07T11:01:00.000-05:00

The Harper government yesterday announced $1.5 billion in spending to improve transit in the GTA. An unspecified amount of that package will be to extend the Highway 407 tollroad 67 kilometres eastward into finance minister Jim Flaherty's riding. Judging by the cost of the 404 extension, also announced yesterday, the toll road will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to extend.

Now hold on a second. The 407 ETR (Electronic Toll Road) is operated and, for all intents and purposes, owned via a 99-year lease by a private consortium comprised of Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte (major shareholder) from Spain, Macquarie Infrastructure Group, and SNC-Lavalin that generated revenues of $118 million in 2006. 407 ETR, which charges its users the highest toll in North America (17.6 cents/km for a small vehicle in peak hours)

Now I thought the logic behind so-called "Public-Private Partnerships" was that the private sector would take on the cost and risk of a public project. Of course, the reality is quite different - the public ends up paying more and getting less so that private shareholders can profit from the public purse.

If the 407 is to be expanded shouldn't the private consortium be footing the bill, particularly if they're going to profit from the longer road for the remaining 91 years of the lease? If not, then shouldn't the new 67 kilometres being built at public expense be entirely toll-free? Why should we be paying hundreds of millions of dollars to enhance a private asset?