I’m not much of a fan of the National Post as I find many of its writers a lot more right leaning (I’m trying to be kind) than I have tolerance for. However, as intolerant as I am of these writers, I do occasionally  read their drivel if for nothing else to make sure I really am still intolerant of them.

So, rather than subject myself to actually reading the National Post, I follow them on Twitter and scan the headlines they tweet for items of interest. One caught my attention today “Louise Arbour speaks out on the world’s worst country — Canada“, a piece written by Kelly McParland.

I have a lot of respect for Mme Arbour having read about her actions in Bosnia and the Hague. I admired her gutsy stands, especially in bringing the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic in the face of some of the NATO countries demonstrating their lack of will in bringing him to justice. I admired that she is not only a gutsy woman in an often man’s world but a gutsy Canadian woman.

McParland on the other hand, appears to be very good at the type of armchair journalism which can be pretty safe to engage in. You know, the kind of writing that bloggers, like me, do from the comfort of our homes. Except he gets paid and should be writing to a higher standard.

What McParland was slamming Arbour over was her candid remarks made to Olivia Ward in her piece today in the Toronto Star; “Louise Arbour can finally talk about world’s worst regimes“. During the interview Arbour shared that she can now speak her mind in her current position as President and CEO of the International Crisis Group.

What set McParland off is this:

“Is Canada punching below its weight?” she says. “Is it punching at all?”

Ottawa, Arbour argues, is “largely absent on the international scene. It’s very difficult to capture any kind of message, position or form of engagement these days.”

And she adds, “when I was prosecutor in 1996, it mattered what Canada thought. On issues of justice and ethics, it mattered what the Canadian position was. There was a sense that you would get an honest, well-thought-out approach. Not just a raw pursuit of ideological or national interest.”

I went over and read the piece myself. It didn’t take me a degree in journalism to take a reasonable guess that Olivia Ward was engaged in an interview with Louise Arbour and since she had limited space for her piece, she focused on Arbour’s remarks that were relevant to Canadians. It is after all, a Canadian newspaper and Canadian audience. You can pick up pretty easily that there were other countries discussed.

Just to make sure my impressions weren’t just assumptions on my part I shot an email off to Ward. Apparently McParland didn’t think about that simple little stop, but then it would have robbed him of his rant material. She responded in short order and yes, my assumptions were correct.

Arbour is correct in her comments. It is very difficult to know where Canada stands on much of anything and when you do figure out a stand it drips with partisan ideology. Canada at one time had a nuanced approach to the conflicts in the Middle East.

We didn’t trumpet Israel as taking a “measured response” when they bombed the Gaza. We wouldn’t have stayed silent over their use of phosphorus weapons on a civilian population, like we have recently. We wouldn’t have cut off funding to an aid group like KAIROS for having the temerity to criticise the actions of Israel.

When Canada took a stand, it meant something more than pandering to the right wing Christian Evangelical interests in the political party of government.

These days, Harper is quick to strut on the world stage and claim Canada is no longer a ‘soft power’, but with our military refitting and boots on the ground in places like Afghanistan and Haiti that we can prove ourselves as ‘hard power’ through our capabilities.

One of his most recent chest thumpings took place in Haiti in February. I’ll give him his due, Canada reacted swiftly to the devastating earthquake there on February 12th. Putting 2000 Canadian troops on the ground is swift order should have made most Canadians puff a bit with pride. Course, less noticed was that within a couple of months, those troops were just as quickly pulled out.

Having never heard of ICG organization, I looked it up and spent some time exploring their site. Too bad McParland didn’t take some time to do the same. It places Arbour’s comments in even more perspective. She isn’t speaking just from past experiences, she’s speaking from today’s experiences.

This 15 year old non-profit group is independent and non-governmental. They focus on trying to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts like Afghanistan amongst about 60 hot spots in the world. A scan down the list of their board members shows an international cast of all stars who have had up close experience in hot spots. They are not armchair quarterbacks.

The reports they have prepared and delivered on their research in these areas are available for reading on the website. I took a read down through their most recent report on Afghanistan and from their linked to another paper and was scanning down through that when I came across this:

Kabul recently surreptitiously resurrected an amnesty law that grants immunity to the warlords who currently rule the country and to the brutal extremists who seek to supplant them. The law may well apply to Baradar if he agreed to join the reconciliation process. This controversial “National Reconciliation, General Amnesty and National Stability Law” had languished in legal limbo since first appearing three years ago, until it was put on the books late last year in an apparent election-related deal with several of Karzai’s key supporters. The law grants blanket amnesty to the perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities, forcing victims to negotiate their claims through the virtually defunct Afghan justice system.

Canada, the US and other allies appear to have placed a cone of silence over this action. Thankfully the International Criminal Court, to which Afghanistan signed on to in 2005 and is thus subject to, is considering launching a formal investigation into war crimes there in the last seven years. With some of the Taliban leadership in custody in Pakistan, the ICC appears to be the mostly likely place to bring them to justice.

So, why exactly is ‘hard power’ Harper not standing up and breaking the silence on the Karzai government’s corruption and subterfuge? Why is he not pressing the other allies to step up and demand better when our country’s blood and treasure has gone into trying to bring stability to this country?

If McParland wants to have a good rant, he might want to look where Arbour is coming from and what is backing her up. He’d have enough material to keep his pay cheque coming for several months.

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Let their be peace on earth and let it begin with me.
Let their be peace on earth the peace that was meant to be.
With God as our father brothers all are we.
Let me walk with my brother in perfect harmony.

I opened The Star today and encountered an article about a young musical group called “Strings of Freedom” from the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank having travelled to a seniors centre near Tel Aviv to play for the residents. The musicians didn’t know their audience were survivors of the holocaust, many of them didn’t know the holocaust had even taken place. The audience didn’t know their musicians were young Palestinians.

The chances for peace and friendship we can have when we don’t know who we’re talking to. The event was part of Good Deeds Day which is sponsored by one of the richest women in Israel. The reaction in Jenin has resulted in the orchastra being shut down with many claiming the young people were exploited for political gain. I guess it is all about perspective.

As I read the reports on this, the lyrics above came to mind. Many years ago, when my now adult niece was in grade 4 and I was Legion President I invited her class to sing that piece at our Remembrance Day service in the local park. To me, their young voices singing this piece represented all that was right about Remembrance Day. It is not a day to celebrate war but to honour the cost of piece. A day to remember the past and pray for peace in the future.
That performance became even more symbolic for me personally. You see at the very moment that service was taking place my beloved grandmother Instance was being laid to rest. Grandma was a gentle, kind and quiet person who had been touched by war. She had lost relatives in England during the German blitz, she had seen her husband and her sons go off to war (thankfully they returned safely).

Grandma never lost her anger at the Germans. It was expressed in her ever quiet way but it was there and it was not something you could mistaken. I don’t know how many Germans she had ever known in her life but their actions in WW2 shaped her attitude towards them for her life.

Both of the groups in that centre in Israel had a rare opportunity to experience the other group in a way that was non-confrontational. In a way that allowed each group to experience the other without prejudice. More opportunities like that could find a way to peace that years, decades of negotiations can’t but they wont happen unfortunately.

David at Israelity provides an excellent report on the group. I support his final words “So, just like most attempts to draw people together here, the Jenin-Holocaust survivors summit seems to have ended on a sour note. But let’s hope the youth orchestra returns to play again, and that some day, a group of young Israeli musicians might even be able to go to Jenin and play some music there, without having to fear for their lives.” -- right on David.

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You know, I’ve watched this situation in the Gaza strip going on. I can be some what detached from it all as I don’t have any direct connection to either side of the conflict other than it being in the area of the Holy Land which is where the roots of my own faith are.

I don’t even begin to understand all that goes on there other than the emnity and hatred on both sides runs deep. I expect that just as there are those on both sides of the divide who believe the other side is absolutely the agressors there are those of goodwill who mere want to live their lives in peace.

The Palistinean group Hamas remains committed to the annihilation of Israel and ultimately the Jewish people. In many countries in the world, certainly in the west, Hamas is considered to be not a government but a terrorist group. For years they have used the Gaza strip to fire missles into Israel. They have also used Lebanon to do the same.

Eventually Israel responds by bombing and invading in an effort to shut down the supply of missles and dismantle Hamas. When they do it, the world erupts in furor at the heavy handedness and appeals to Israel the halt the ensuing deaths of civilians and the loss of their homes, businesses and infrastructure.

I tend to wince at the civilian deaths and remind myself that Israel has a right to self-defense. If nothing else halts the missles except brute force then brute force it must be. Since it is becoming abundently clear that Israel deployed the use of phosphorous weapons in this campaign that there needs to be clear and unequivacol condemnation of the use of those weapons.

Having a right to self defense doesn’t give anyone the right to use such horrific weapons. In many ways the use of phosphorus is not a very far leap from the use of nuclear weapons. Is the world going to wait until the ante gets upped and it’s too late?

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I have been watching this situation with Omar Khadr for some time now, not really sure where I land on what should happen with him. The more information that comes out about him, the more I find myself troubled on several levels with his case. If you don’t know who Omar Khadr is, he is a Canadian born Muslim captured in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002 and held at Quantamano Bay. He is the only westerner still in captivity there and the youngest, being just 15 at the time he was captured. To read more detail about Khadr, have a look here.

My short opinion on him, is that he’s a Canadian citizen and a child at the time of his capture. He should have been brought home and should still be brought home. To steadfastly refuse to do so in the face of unchallenged evidence that he’s been subject to physical and mental abuse and the process by which he is about to be tried is being weighted more by politics than any attempt at justice is to deny a Canadian his birthright.

It has not been proven that Khadr threw the grenade that killed Speers, who was trained as a medic but was engaged in the fire fight. He wasn’t with the troops as a medic at the time of his death. There has been allegations that reports filed after the battle indicated that the fighter who threw the grenade was killed and that the writer of the report was ordered to change the wording from ‘killed’ to ‘engaged’ which doesn’t define the final status of the person throwing the grenade.

There has also been suggestions that Speers was killed by an American grenade tossed into the compound during the fire fight. One witness report that the defense had to fight for stated that Khadr was found on his knees with his back to the action taking place when the witness entered the compound and that he was shot in the back.

I rather doubt the truth will be known. In the chaos and confusion of a fire fight, even those present may not know for sure what happened, including Khadr.

I have been rather ambivalent about Khadr’s plight and considering his young age, I maybe should not be so. I find the whole process through which he’s been held and the treatment of him by both his American captors and Canadian officials disturbing.

How long are we willing to sit back and observe as fellow Canadians are subjected to violations of Canadian and International law? Will we wait too long and gradually those treatments that are being visited upon people believed to be part of the “enemy” gradually ingrained into our system until Canadians of any walk of life can be subjected to this treatment merely because the government deems them to be a ‘threat’?

When we start to surrender rights and freedoms out of fear of ‘them’ we open the door to governments to infringe even further. Americans are beginning to see this as some of the horror and fear of 9/11 starts to draw back into memory and they start to take stock of how their government has changed the rules of ‘justice’ to fit what the result is they wish to attain.

This is rather evident when you review the makeup of the ‘court’ that is prosecuting Khadr. When men of conscience have questioned the process and the rightness of it, they have been replaced and/or officially silenced. When a country like the USA or Canada starts down a path like that, it sends out signals to countries less inclined to a strict rule of law and justice. Signals that are not good.

There is no clean, black and white solution to this issue. Should Khadr be brought home to face Canadian justice? As this drags on and I see the lack of justice he’s had to this point, I’m leaning more and more towards, yes he should. If he will be tried without political interference here.

The bigger issue is, this young man has been physically and mentally damaged. Raised and indoctrinated into a family, religious and ideological culture that was hostile to the west, in particular to the Americans. Since his capture, I don’t believe he has had any treatment that would induce him to forsake that upbringing. No matter where he ends up, the biggest issue is going to be can he be reached? Can he be salvaged and become a functioning member of society?

That waits to be seen. This young man and those like him are the West’s problem that must find resolution if peace is ever to have a hope.

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In a valiant effort to divert blame from himself or his cronies, Pakistan President Musharraf has come up with a theory for who to blame for the death of Benazir Bhutto…. it was her fault.

In an interview on the American TV show 60 Minutes Musharraf blamed Bhutto for her death because she choose to see and be seen amongst the people she was asking to support her run for Prime Minister.

The government has blamed a  warlord with ties to Al Qaeda for arranging her assassination. Many of Bhuttos supporters blame Musharraf and his officials for at minimum not providing sufficient security and at worse, actually conspiring to kill her.

BillW at Crooks and Liars reports on the interview with Sara Logan and provides links to either listen to or download the segment.

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Having escaped injury or death in a suicide bombing attack in October on a parade celebrating her return to Pakistan from exile Benazir Bhutto, has been assassinated. Reports from Pakistan indicate that Bhutto was shot in the chest and neck as the entered a vehicle following a rally in Rawalpindi. The attacker then blew himself up killing up to 20 others. Bhutto died a short time later at a local hospital.

Twice Prime Minister of Pakistan, she was the first female elected to lead a post-colonial Muslim state. Both of her tenures were ended by the Pakistani President of the time on charges of corruption. In 1998 she went into exile in Dubai until her return to Pakistan in October. She was running in the Pakistani elections due to be held January 8th.

Born in Karachi in 1953, Bhutto was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was the Prime Minister of Pakistan until he was dismissed on similar charges of corruption. He was later hanged by a military dictator. Bhutto completed her early education in Pakistan and went on to obtain degrees from Harvard University in the US and Oxford University in England.

She first came to power in Pakistan in 1988 at the age of 35 years old. Controversy seems to have surrounded much of her personal and political life.  Regardless of who is right or wrong, this assassination will likely spell civil unrest in Pakistan which is worrisome when our Canadian troops are fighting not that far away in the restive southern provinces of Afghanistan, not far from the Pakistani border.

We need to watch this situation very closely.

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The British service people released from Iranian captivity on Wednesday have provided their version of events at a press conference yesterday. As was speculated on during their captivity, the men confirmed that they had been subjected to coercion which resulted in their apologies on Iranian TV for straying into Iranian waters which resulted in their capture.

The service people made a deliberate decision to surrender to a more heavily armed force which had them outnumbered. Their ship was not nearby at the time as they were operating in water too shallow for the larger ship to enter to render aid. The group had moments to make their decision, knew they were outnumbered and outgunned and were aware that an aggressive response on their part could well escalate tensions in the region worse than they already are.

Once in captivity they were subjected to psychological torture in order to gain their compliance, or appearance thereof. The little bit of communication they could do between themselves, they agreed that the objective was to get out of there as quickly and as safely as possible. So, the apologized if they tresspassed and allowed the Iranians to film their ‘confession’, not that there was much choice in the matter.

Publicly the military are standing behind their troops decisions. Some British civilians are second guessing their actions. Questions like ‘where is only giving name, rank and serial number to captors gone to’ have been asked. First of all, Britain and Iran are not at war. Secondly, were they at war, near as I know, Iran is not a signatory to the Geneva Convention and as such would not be likely to respect their captives right to confine their response to name, rank and serial number.

Even the war those young men and women are engaged in that puts them in that region is hardly conventional. I can hardly blame a young officer for recognizing he was outgunned and using discretion as the better part of valour rather than becoming the trigger for an explosion just waiting to go off in that region.

Meanwhile, the never diplomatic or tactful Americans can’t seem to hold back from trying to impose their worldview on the situation. Retired Army Colonel Jack Jacobs in his commentary on MSNBC ripped into the actions of the British servicemen which proved more how much of a dinosaur he is than made a point. He quotes the US Army Code of Conduct “I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.”

Umm… Jack, lad… that is the US Code, hate to remind you ol’ boy but it is a British matter not American. As much as he might think that the US is the centre of the universe, it isn’t. Expecting those service people to fight regardless of the force arrayed against them is absolute foolishness. Fifteen dead heroes are just as dead as 15 fools. The British are mature enough to know that sometimes you swallow your lumps and live to fight another day. Those young service people did the right thing.

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