Bienvenidos! This is an attempt to get into writing more and hopefully promote my agenda of world peace and happiness. Or at least share some funny photos and interesting links.
Biking is great for the mind, body, traffic, and the environment, but today I am feeling a little worried. Michael Bryant's car and Darcy Allan Sheppard a bike courier had a terrible encounter on the evening of August 31 that left Sheppard dead and Bryant's future tarnished. Whoever was responsible for this specific incident (Toronto Star), the frightening thing to me is that there are a lot more drivers out there that have less incentive to avoid hitting bikes than Michael Bryant. Michael Bryant has already resigned his position as CEO of Invest Toronto and will face serious political costs in addition to the potential criminal penalties that all drivers would face for driving dangerously. An example of someone with lots of rage, this off-duty police officer Darius Tierman:
I wonder about the road rage that we carry around with us when we are behind the wheel of a car. Inside the steel car cage we get aggressive, always in a hurry or trying to beat the guy in front of us.
Even if a driver would not actually run down a cyclist in cold-blood, the driver`s reaction times might be delayed because of a perceived slight by a cyclist.
Torture is something that we are uncomfortable with. Collective ickiness or, perhaps, compassion prevents us from torturing sans emotion. But, when faced with terror, or in The Globe and Mail's (editorial board) case, cost, we look for ways to pinch our noses and send the bad people away from Canada.
This is wrong. Deportation to torture is wrong.
Torture has practical drawbacks (lies, distracting clues, encouraging enemies and retaliation against our own forces), but these fall outside the discussion of deportation to torture. We are not going to actually torture "them". We just want to get rid of inconvenient people that the we are told are dangerous. The government believes they are dangerous, but cannot prove or convict of a crime, even a crime of planning to commit a terrorist act.
But maybe the government and we, as citizens, can invoke our sense of self-preservation and send the bad guys to countries where they may face torture. Perhaps, deportation will allow us to avoid this dilemna:
...When suspected foreign terrorists are identified, they are taken before a court and, if found a danger to the nation's security, are ordered deported. But if they can make a credible case that they will be tortured in their home country, it's almost impossible to deport them. The result is they may be held in jail without criminal charge for several years. This is repugnant, but releasing those deemed a danger to national security seems untenable.
The Globe and Mail picks up on the judgment of the United Kingdom's Law Lords that said that deportation is OK as long as the government receives assurances from the state known to torture. They quote favourably:
“Very considerable efforts have been made at the highest political levels on both sides to strengthen these ties,” said an immigration tribunal's ruling, cited approvingly by the Law Lords. “It is barely conceivable, let alone likely, that the Algerian government would put them at risk by reneging on solemn assurances. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the British government would turn a blind eye if they did.”
Of course, the fact that assurances are sought makes clear that the country is likely to torture. Moreover, once a bad person is out of the Canadian court system he or she is out of mind and it is unlikely that the Canadian government would be willing to do much to protect them, given that it has failed to protect a juvenile Canadian citizen (Omar Khadr) suspected of "terrorist" like behaviour from torture and other breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law by the United States.
A "good faith assurance," based on "sound objective evidence," plus a method of verification makes the pill of complicity in torture easier to swallow. We are also told that deportation is a good approach because it avoids indefinite detention without trial. It also saves $600,000 per suspect (security certificate holder).
The easy thing, the cheap thing, the politically feasible thing is to deport the "baddies." But, deportation to torture is wrong because it makes all of us complicit. It undermines our civil society, the rule of law and Canada's vision of a constitutional democracy. Torture leaves scars on the victims, but torture scars those of us who awake to realize that we just passively let torture happen, those of us who expect to be protected by a reponsible government, by those of us who have to explain to our children how torture returned in the 2000s after the hard work of our veterans, volunteers, politicians and every day citizens of the 1900s.
One last disturbing point arose in the article where the Globe accused the Courts of "los[ing] their will" to hold individuals on indefinitely on security certificates. This statement is understandable coming from a victim upset about a criminal getting out of jail after serving their time. But, the Globe is a bit off base to claim suggest that Courts have an obligation to hold individuals on insufficient evidence forever. The men out on limited release under strict parol conditions have not been convicted, tried, or even presented with the evidence of any wrong doing.
Canada should follow Britain's example and seek to deport foreign terror suspects, even to states that use torture, but only after officials at the highest levels – the foreign minister or prime minister – extract assurances of humane treatment from their counterparts in the other countries...
King Abdullah of Jordan gave his assurance to former prime minister Tony Blair in the case of Abu Qatada, an incendiary preacher, and the British Law Lords said that assurance passed legal muster. Mr. Qatada is appealing the ruling to the European Court of Human Rights. (The Law Lords' ruling also permits the deportation of two other terror suspects to Algeria.) ...
Here is the box: When suspected foreign terrorists are identified, they are taken before a court and, if found a danger to the nation's security, are ordered deported. But if they can make a credible case that they will be tortured in their home country, it's almost impossible to deport them. The result is they may be held in jail without criminal charge for several years. This is repugnant, but releasing those deemed a danger to national security seems untenable.
Canada appears to prefer the untenable to the repugnant. Its courts have lost their will to hold these suspected terrorists in jail. A half-dozen suspected al-Qaeda members have been released in the past few years by the Federal Court of Canada. The civilian spy agency CSIS spends nearly $600,000 to keep a round-the-clock eye on a single one.
The Law Lords' ruling challenges the conventional wisdom of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that if you have to ask for an assurance, it won't be worth the paper it's written on. Some Canadians may share the agencies' concerns; after all, the United States has said it asked Syria for a promise that Maher Arar would not be tortured. (An independent report by Stephen Toope, now president of the University of British Columbia, found that he was.) But the Law Lords stress that the assurance needs to be made in good faith. Further, there must be a sound, objective basis for believing the assurance; and there must be an agreement on how to verify whether the assurance was kept.
The Law Lords noted that Algeria wants international acceptance as a normal civil society, and that close and growing business and security ties exist between it and Britain. “Very considerable efforts have been made at the highest political levels on both sides to strengthen these ties,” said an immigration tribunal's ruling, cited approvingly by the Law Lords. “It is barely conceivable, let alone likely, that the Algerian government would put them at risk by reneging on solemn assurances. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the British government would turn a blind eye if they did.”
The purpose of Canada's security-certificate system is to deny a place in this country to those who put its security at risk. Britain's example shows that it is possible to do so within democratic norms.
The Bush administration is ending. If Bush & Co. didn’t entirely wreck the place, it was for no lack of trying. George himself achieved astonishing depths of failure. His most notable achievements were all unintentional, and he still doesn’t know what they were.
Oh yeah, and the headlines are from The Onion (America's Finest News Source)...
Numbers can overwhelm our capacity for empathy. The naming of victims can make us think about painful issues, long numb. The December 6th Vigil for women victims of violence this Saturday made me go somewhere sad and cold and angry. What have I (not) done about violence against women in the last five years? Why have men done the shit they have done to so many women in my town, country, community? What do I mean by community? Probably, schools that I have attended, Toronto, Ottawa and places I have lived. What kind of violence? The abuse ranges from strange men attacking in dark alleys to, the much more common, parter abuse.
What brought out the pain? Not numbers. But rather, some songs, some spoken word pieces and lots of names and stories of women killed. And the names of the perpetrators of violence, all too often husbands and boy"friends"...The other thing that brought out the pain was the lack of talk about women and equity in the federal election and in media. Feminism as a term and movement has fallen to the side in our efforts to mainstream environmental and social change. Maybe the particular struggles of women for self-ness and safety can ground wider struggles for environmental and social equity/sustainability/justice. Just a few thoughts that brought out tears and hope this past weekend.
Wow, liberals and conservatives (in the USA sense) have something in common. Each aspect of the political spectrum has something to share, something to contribute so that humans can coexist and cooperate.
“If you think half of America votes badly because they are stupid or religious, you are trapped in a matrix ... Take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside the moral matrix.” - Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis
“If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between 'for' and 'against' is the mind’s worst disease.” - Jonathan Haidt, quoting Sent-ts’an, from 700CE China
Haidt begins with the premise that a child is not born "a blank slate" but with a built in system draft or a pattern of organization that is revised by experience:
Five foundations of morality:
Harm/care, that makes really bond with ohers, care for others
Fairness/reciprocity
Ingroup/loyalty, only among humans very large groups can join together and collaborate
Authority/respect
Purity/sanctity, more than sex (ie organic food for lefties)
Based on a study asking people about "your morals"
Liberals Reject Authority, Groups, and concern for purity But, society and civilization exists because of the ability to organize humans into groups:
Fairness and cooperation improves with some sort of punishment for free-riding
"Today, Stephen Harper announced he is quitting as Prime Minister. And so, today I’m applying for his job. Unlike Stephen Harper, I’ll be a Prime Minister who puts you and your family first. Unlike Stephen Harper, I’ll act on the priorities of the kitchen table, not just the boardroom table." -Jack Layton, Leader of Canada's NDP
Equality, justice, prosperity, jobs...who could ask for anything more?
I grew up listening to the Beatles as pop phenomena rather than political idea. Since then I have learned a bit more about their influence outside of music. Here is a poignant description of the value of keeping the "rooms and machinery" when engaged in revolution, instead of "smashing" it all down. Here is a brilliant animated short film of a 1969 interview: I met the walrus...
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message.
"We are all violent inside...We are all Hitler inside...We are all Christ inside" - John Lennon
So he outlasted Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, most of Bush II. The ultimate survivor resigns. AP's take on the resignation:
The United States was the first country to recognize Castro's government, but the countries soon clashed as Mr. Castro seized American property and invited Soviet aid.
On April 16, 1961, Mr. Castro declared his revolution to be socialist. A day later, he defeated the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion. The United States squeezed Cuba's economy and the CIA plotted to kill Mr. Castro. Hostility reached its peak with the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Fabulous understatement from Castro:
“It was an uncomfortable situation for me vis-a-vis an adversary that had done everything possible to get rid of me, and I felt reluctant to comply,” he said in a reference to the United States.
Perhaps, I have a warped perspective on Cuba from the 2 weeks I spent there on a development philosophy course back in 2001. Somehow, Cuba, and the revolution, were more of an inspiration than a threat. Much could be made of their medical school and athletic training programs for citizens of developing countries. But I will just share a personal story.
On a lovely day at the beach, I cut my foot on a piece of glass. The cut was pretty bad (hypochondriac remembering) but not life threatening. I hung in for a couple of hours waiting for the bus to come to take us back to Havana. On arrival, I took a cab with our guides to the hospital. Not the fancy tourist hospital, this was the empty, metal and brick, local hospital. The cab pulled me up to the front and I was immediately placed in a wheel chair, guided into a room and received stitches and anaesthetic. Although quite out of it, I was worried about the lack of medicine and conditions. I was delirious (at least delirious in a hypochondriac sort of way), but I was reassured by my friend who spoke a bit more Spanish. I didn't just have one doctor but I ended up having a team of doctors working to communicate and provide what care they could. Stitches and smiles later I went back to my hotel to enjoy VH1's behind the music
After returning to Toronto, Nurse Mom said that I probably wouldn't have even gotten stitches in Canada...I wouldn't have been able to see a doctor for a couple of hours as well.
The care that I got in the midst of an economic and medical supply embargo by the US was nothing short of incredible (good thing I wasn't a blue baby...no non-American source for those drugs). But the care wasn't just for me. As I left a family drove up with a sick woman and the scary looking police man carried her in his arms from the taxi into the hospital.
There was something about the people: struggling, surviving, dancing, eating rice beans and gnarly meat. The human side of the revolution is lost in the news, the stats and the politics. This was what Castro et al should be remembered for. Whether there will be a new relationship between Cuba and the USa, whether "Cuban exiles" will be able to reclaim their massive plantations and oil resources, whether package vacations get cheaper or not...Cuba will stand as an incredible memory and inspiration for me.
Blog Action Day is all about reaching the big wide world out there and raising consciousness about the environment. Being the green hipster that I am I thought I would catch the tail end of the green wave. I hope that the wave continues and sweeps beyond the blog world. 1. Turn off computer ...
There is a man statue-like holding a badminton racket and bent over as if about to step. You have seen him in la marche by in Ottawa, but perhaps skirted around the stubbly face. His racket spins if you give him a tip. His white gloves will wave thanks as well. Yesterday, he spoke. To paraphrase, the master is dead Marcel Marceau is dead.
A connection, a soul, an unexpected utterance, yes.
PARIS — Marcel Marceau, who revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died, his former assistant said Sunday. He was 84.
Marceau died Saturday in Paris, French media reported. Former assistant Emmanuel Vacca announced the death on France-Info radio, but gave no details about the cause.
Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau, notably through his famed persona Bip, played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50 years, never uttering a word. Offstage, however, he was famously chatty. “Never get a mime talking. He won't stop,” he once said.
A French Jew, Marceau survived the Holocaust and also worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children...
The greatest music I have ever heard. Can't say enough about these bands. Jack White is a genius on the guitars and rocked the blues this Sunday in Ottawa at Bluesfest. I also got down to the celtic music of Leahy. The political messages of peace, love and understanding were clear and received well by the crowd. It was fun to feel a sense of hope and community as we cheered on activists and artists: Manu Chao, Spearhead and Sarah Harmer. Keep on rocking in the free world!
ISLAMABAD — The head of a radical Pakistani mosque at the centre of a bloody stand-off with security forces was arrested on Wednesday while trying to escape clad in a woman's burka, officials said.
It turns out I was not the only person to enjoy Paul Potts' take on opera. A video of his is at the top of youtube at this moment and he seems poised to go ahead to the finals!
Remember when you had to ask for permission to go to the washroom? Remember when you had to go to school and sit still no matter what they were talking about?
Well, 9 years later, and seven years spent earning 6 letters after my name, I find myself back in highschool redux. A term I use to describe the re turn combined with reflux, that lovely stuff that they show in pepto bismol commercials.
Have to remember to wake up for those 1:00 classes, where we review common sense / the lessons we knew in kindergarten but have had drilled out of our heads. Namely,
don't hit your friend, don't steal from your friend, be nice and the whole world will smile
I don't like opera, except Paul Potts. The only times I have gone to it I have been bored despite the directors best efforts (Salome - Atom Egoyan) or just bored (efforts (Die Valkarie - Toronto, Ring Cycle 2005).
But the way Paul Potts sings in this brief clip was inspirational. The way he expresses a feeling through singing opera absolutely blew me away! I will try to follow along with his development, and career, but he is appearing on "Britain has talent" at the moment and I do not have a TV.
Nessun dorma!... Tu pure, o Principessa, Nella tua fredda stanza Guardi le stelle Che tremano d'amore e di speranza. Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me, Il nome mio nessun saprà! Solo quando la luce splenderà, Sulla tua bocca lo dirò fremente!... Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio Che ti fa mia!...
Voci di donne
Il nome suo nessun saprà... E noi dovremo, ahimè, morir!...
Il principe ignoto Dilegua, o notte!... Tramontate, stelle!... All'alba vincerò!...
Score text[2]
Il principe ignoto
Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma! Tu pure, o Principessa, nella tua fredda stanza guardi le stelle che tremano d'amore e di speranza... Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me, il nome mio nessun saprà! No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dirò, quando la luce splenderà! Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio che ti fa mia.
Voci di donne Il nome suo nessun saprà... E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir!
The Prince Let no one sleep!... Let no one sleep! Even you, o Princess, in your cold room, watch the stars, that tremble with love and with hope. But my secret is hidden within me, my name no one shall know... No!...No!... On your mouth I will tell it when the light shines. And my kiss will dissolve the silence that makes you mine!...
The Chorus of women No one will know his name and we must, alas, die.
The Prince Vanish, o night! Set, stars! At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!
Apparently Pavarotti sang it with the three tenors...a bit over the top in my opinion
A lovely message to all. We are all born here. On a planet. We worry about how to get over racism, religious strife, sexism, class, good vs bad hair...but we are all from here...
I am "striving and driving" (Buck 65) towards meaning and a raison d'etre. Will I be able to make a difference through human rights advocacy on the court or through my writing? For now I just hope to share some thoughts and work on my writing and advocacy skills.
