G8/G20 SUMMIT REDUX

This should not be an either/or question. Liberty can only flourish when there is security of person and property. I think the militant protesters failed in the their main goal: they did not manage to provoke the police to lose control of the situation. Far from it; the police force showed commendable restraints in face of provocations, such as burning their cars.

The media frenzy probably added fuel to the fire; many of these so called “protesters” were hoodlums and criminals that had very little reason to protest and mostly got their jollies from causing uproar and bedlam. Summits for them is like turds for flies; a magnet for mayhem.

I watched one “protester” being interviewed on TV. When asked what he was protesting, he seemed confounded by the question and launched into an ineloquent tirade of nonsensical tripe. The stupidity of the man was only matched by his fellow rioters lobbing missiles at police cars and shouting obscenities –though the interviewer aided and abetted the nonsense by giving him a public forum for his drivel.

Rex Murphy said it best: “these nuts are Harpers best friend”; justifying the huge expense incurred by having the summit in Toronto. Mayor David Miller’s suggestion of the Exhibition place as a venue was a better and more sensible choice –if I may use “sensible” and “Miller” in the same sentence. His comments about the Toronto police force were also very positive and appropriate.

The more moderate protesters, who had legitimate concerns, also chose the wrong venue; thereby helping the thugs to hide amongst them and making the police work more difficult and problematic. There are better ways of promoting ones agendas and democratic rights than swimming amongst anarchist sharks.

Now we shall, doubtless, be regaled by the professional critics and Monday morning quarterbacks. And there will be critics of the police too. They were either “too slow” in reacting, or “too quick” to react. The fact is that the police did an admirable job in a difficult situation; one of which they and we can be proud; and which will surely be seen as such in world public opinion. They didn’t ask for the summit; but when asked to do the job, they did it superbly.

There has been an incredible amount of negative press regarding the summit and the cost involved. While I am not qualified to comment on the various expenditures; it does seem to me that we could do without an artificial lake, considering the many real ones in our country.

And yet, there are some valid expenditure and many benefits accruing to Toronto and Muskoka – even areas like North Bay, who got major improvements for their airport. Many Toronto businesses will benefit, both immediately and afterwards. If we pull off a successful summit; the positive international press and concomitant Canadian reputation will continue to provide benefits such as tourism, far into the future; especially for Toronto and Muskoka.

There is, however, one area which has not been highlighted by the press: The complex and extensive security –though costly –will give our police and all security personnel invaluable training in public protection should a disaster strike. God forbid we should have our own 9/11, or some kind of insurrection; but should we be tested by a similar calamity, we will be better prepared for any eventuality. We might even be asked to assist other countries with our knowledge of security preparedness and disaster prevention.

The honour killing question: A family loses control

"Multiculturalism is not an excuse, or a moral or legal justification, for such barbaric practices (honour killings). MULTICULTURALISM DOES NOT EQUAL CULTURAL RELATIVISM" -- Jason Kennedy, Minister for Citizenship and Immigration.

There is a deeper story here, and that is the story of how this violent, controlling, misogynous man gained access to this country in the first place:

Muhammad Parvez came here with his eldest son from Pakistan in 1999 and immediately claimed refugee status; which was granted, on what spurious grounds I don’t know. Then he brought his wife and seven (7) children here in 2001. His other daughters quit school and the father arranged marriages for them with cousins in the small village in Pakistan from where they had came. This is not uncommon among Asians, and might properly describe as the “multiplier effect”; where their kin expands exponentially by importing brides or grooms from their native community. Thus, one ersatz “refugee” becomes a family of newcomers, thanks to the family reunification program.

The complex social norms that create such a strain on immigrant families are not limited to one particular group or nationality; the more traditional, paternalistic societies have always faced dichotomy between the mores and practices of the “old country” and the new. As a one-time immigrant, I can understand the conflicts it begets. When these conflicts get out of hand, the state must step in. However, a better solution is to vet the potential immigrants properly, and insist of at least a rudimentary understanding of our languages, laws and social practices; ensuring that they are prepared to make the necessary adjustment which will ensure their success in their host country. This is, of course, is an even greater problem when uneducated economic migrants like Mr. Parvez, hoodwink the immigration authorities into believing that he is a legitimate refugee. Last I heard, Pakistan was not on the list of nations justifying refugee status for their citizens, and the Pakistanis I have met all had to wait years for their immigration papers.

To paraphrase Shakespeare; there is something rotten in Denmark.

"Multiculturalism is not an excuse, or a moral or legal justification, for such barbaric practices (honour killings). MULTICULTURALISM DOES NOT EQUAL CULTURAL RELATIVISM" -- Jason Kennedy, Minister for Citizenship and Immigration.

Well, Mr. Steyn sure covers a lot of ground in two pages. (For anyone interested in a deeper understanding of the Israeli/Palestinian problem and a balanced history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, I highly recommend Righteous Victims by Benny Morris).

Steyn’s comparison of Zionism to the creation of Pakistan out of colonial India is not quite fair; though in both cases there was a lot of shuffling around of people a lot of killing on both sides. In both cases, there were major mistakes made by Britain, trying to extricate itself from its colonial past.

Anti-Semitism is older than both Christianity and Islam; but really came to the fore within Christianity. Kidnapping and forcible conversion of young Jewish children; the Spanish inquisitors; the murders of Marranos or 'secret Jews'(Sephardic Jews, living in the Iberian Peninsula, forced to convert to Catholicism-Christianity or be killed); expulsion from Spain; and even Martin Luther suggesting the Jews be liquidated. Islam was actually late-comers to Jew-hating, showing tolerance as long as they were servile and paid their taxes. Israel has, no doubt, been the lightening rod in initiating this new Middle-Eastern “pogrom.” Prior to WWll, anti-Semitism was rather common both in Europe and North-America, and the comment "none is too many" In early 1945, by an immigration agent when asked how many Jews would be allowed in Canada after the war, is probably not atypical. Only after the full impact on the Holocaust became known, was this anti-Semitic attitude suppressed. Suppressed, but never fully buried.

The Islamists are now the new inquisitors; and Israel’s success and relative strength vs. their Arab neighbours, has made it permissible to hate Jews again. In a risible twist of words, the terms “apartheid” and “terrorists” are now used against the Jews by their persecutors.

Jews were faulted during the last war for letting the Nazis lead them like cattle to slaughter. Now, when they are able to defend themselves, they are called terrorists and worse.

The people who we invite into our country should be, first of all, people we need. The discrimination, if one wants to use that term, should be on the basis of the value the newcomer can bring to this country. We have enough welfare recipients without importing them from abroad. Yes, in days of yore we did accept the poor and the uneducated; but it was a different age; where a strong back and a positive attitude to hard work was enough to achieve personal and economic success. Today, the gap between the skilled and the unskilled is more stark, and unlikely to be bridged in one generation, or even more.

Before the Immigration Act was amended in the late sixties, there was discrimination based on country of origin; and there was a quota established for each country. Europeans, like me, had preference. This was similar to the American regulations. The present system is fairer, but does –and should –make deliberate choices of immigrants based on our economic and social requirements; not ethnicity or family needs.

The family reunification or family sponsored program has been abused and misused for political reasons. I applaud the Conservative government for attempting to fix this problem and not pander to pressure from politically adept ethnic groups. Hopefully, Bill C-50 will help them rectify this.

One just has to go to almost any medical clinic in Metropolitan Toronto to see the result of the family reunification program. Clinics are overwhelmed by parents and grandparents of immigrants who are seeking our free medical attention. In one instance of which I have personal knowledge, the wealthy parents removed all assets from their old mother so she could get government subsidized seniors accommodation. I am sure there are untold other similar situations. The “marriage” trade is another area of abuse; spurious and sham marriages; women “importing” spouses who leave as soon as they have their Canadian landed immigrant status or Citizenship, and the commercial marriage market where the potential immigrant’s family will pay someone to marry their daughter, with the hope of themselves getting sponsored in turn; often with the bride being abandoned by her spouse as soon as he has the money. This too, I have seen first-hand. Of course, this is not just a Caribbean or West-Indian problem; many of these ersatz marriages are conducted by Asian and South-East Asian immigrants.

As to who make the better immigrants, even on a proportionate basis; it begs the question:  how many highly skilled and educated people do we receive from the West Indies versus East India or China? Who provides a cohesive family unit and encourage, nay ensure, that their children to get an education? Whose children are more likely to grow up in a one-parent home, become juvenile gang members and end up in trouble with the law?

The “Social Outcomes of Second Generation Youths” government memo referred to is right on the money: “Chinese and South Asians are the most likely to have university degrees or higher, or be employed in high-skilled occupations.”

Yes, the immigration law should be colour- blind; but it need not be stupid.

I don’t read much fiction anymore –Canadian or otherwise, but I do buy books; one or two a month. I found Andre Alexis’ essay on criticism quite enlightening. He is correct in his complaint about the Toronto Star’s book reviews; they have never been any good; and the Globe and Mail’s is also faltering. Yet, The Globe is the only Canadian newspaper or magazine with anything worthwhile to say about books, and there are numerous books on my shelves that got there because of their recommendations.

I tried to various publications such as The New York review, The Times Literary Supplement and the Literary Review of Canada. I found I spent almost more time reading their reviews that I would reading the whole book; and as Mr. Alexis intimates; much of it was opinionated self-aggrandizing verbosity by the critic, appearing to write a book rather than about a book. Then again, perhaps I am literary challenged.

Maclean’s Magazine announced they would have a book review section, but horrors! It was a few desultory paragraphs describing several books in one foul swoop.Alas! I am back to reading the Globe and Mail reviews and depending on the succinct but fair reviews in The Economist.

As to the Walrus, I am only into my second issue of your erudite publication and have not formed an opinion on your book reviewing; other than that it appears focused on fiction and might be too avant-garde for my atrophied brain.

Your paean to Canadian skills and abilities in diverse economic areas are on the mark; but you leave the question about why we do not make truly “domestic” cars largely unanswered. I believe that our proximity to the American market would be the main reason; and our population, a mere 10 percent of the US, would make it uneconomic; unless we had erected huge tariff barriers that would end up costing the Canadian consumer plenty. As it was; Canadians paid more than their American cousins for American cars made in Windsor, just across the river from Detroit, and later Oakville, and of course, Oshawa. The 1966 Auto Trade Agreement of course ameliorated some of the difference not caused by the currency differential, but put paid to any idea we might have of producing a truly “Canadian” car; and good riddance, or we might have had an automobile version of the Avro Arrow.

 Your comparison to Sweden is not quite fair (and by the way, Sweden is only a quarter of Canada’s population at about 10 million now). Sweden has always been a more industrialized and secondary manufacturing country than the other Scandinavian countries, Finland included. Thus, Norway, Denmark and Finland “imported” Swedish cars, and no real effort was made in either Scandinavian country to manufacture automobiles. In Norway, there has been some talk of manufacturing their own automobiles, and a hybrid/electric car is on the drawing board; but generally, after the windfall of oil in the Norwegian North Sea, they have concentrated in other technological areas, most notably in offshore drilling equipment and technology. Denmark, flat like Holland, is now pioneering windmill technology. Norway used to build ships, and still do to some extent, but the much lower cost Korean and Japanese shipyards have overtaken most of their shipbuilding. Finland, with a lower labour cost base is now building ships for Norway, including some of the largest cruise liners for the Norwegian Cruise Lines. Israel, of course, is another story with another set of circumstances borne out of the need to survive in a hostile environment, and backed by liberal access to American financing. It should also be noted that Israel had a huge influx of European highly skilled and educated immigrants after the war, and the Jews have always been in the forefront of intelligence and intellectual achievements. Einstein was not the only Jew with a brain.

Canada was, for a long time, economically “heavers of wood and drawers of water”. That is changing, and while we are still highly dependent on our recourse industries –which happen to be in high demand and will be for a long while –we have also improved much in technology and sciences, and in value added manufacturing. Our advances in the arts; writing and music in particular, owe much to government support and promotion, which made it economical to write and perform in Canada rather than the US. Margaret Atwood was right! It brought us from also-rans to equal partners with American artists. One hundred years ago a great Canadian, Sir Wilfred Laurier, predicted that the twentieth century would belong to Canada. He was a little early. In the twenty-first, we are coming into our own.

June 5, 2010

By Rex Murphy

I don’t suppose the world needs to remember Rwanda to note how sluggish in the face of imminent horror the United Nations is and can be. If that is not a sufficient cue, we could bring in other examples of areas of great threat or immiseration or both: Darfur, Tibet, Chechnya, North Korea, Zimbabwe, the Congo or Iran. On these the UN has the patience of a stone but only some of its energy.

But torpid as is its nature, and comatose as are its eternal deliberations, on one subject, and toward one state, the United Nations acquires a strange and uniquely transformative power. Bring Israel under its gaze and the diplomatic sloths at UN headquarters morph into the swiftest of gazelles. From lotus-eaters to adrenalin junkies in the twinkling of an eye. Quite amazing, really.

So naturally when the debacle over the so-called “freedom flotilla” — news media should be wary of letting activists choose the names of things — roared into the headlines, the UN reacted at the diplomatic equivalent of the speed of light. The Security Council issued its “condemnation,” and in a wonderful reversal of cause and effect also called for an investigation into what it had “condemned.” And the cruellest joke on the planet, what the UN with unbounded irony refers to as its Human Rights Council, issued, as unfailingly in every previous international incident involving Israel it has, a condemnation as well.

If the flotilla’s real purpose was to bring aid, then merely by complying with Israel’s request to dock at Ashdod — as five of the ships did, with no blood shed and no international headlines — the supplies on the sixth ship would now be in Gaza. In reality, it was exercise in early 21st century propaganda on the battlefield of world opinion. Its only purpose was to challenge and delegitimize Israel’s blockade of ships travelling to Gaza — a blockade, as too many news reports fail to emphasize, which up until this “incident” was also being maintained by Egypt. That the Egyptian government, until a few days ago, mirrored in its actions Israel’s concerns about what might get shipped into Hamas is the only real obstruction in the otherwise perfectly concentrated anti-Israel narrative.

As to the “peace activists” on that sixth ship, the ones who received the Israeli soldiers boarding the ship with bats, pipes, knives and chains — well, the video footage of the moments preceding the boarding and the boarding itself will make most rational people review their understanding of peace and activism and some of the organizations that fly the flags of these conveniently fungible designations.

Any real investigation of the flotilla will not confine itself to the boarding, but include an equally scrupulous inquiry into the origins of some of its actors, its unstated as well as it stated aims, and the facility and speed with which it revved up the engine of international protest against Israel. It seemed like half the world took to the streets in less than half a day.

This was but one installment in the long and continuous campaign to isolate Israel, and to turn that state in the eyes of international opinion into a pariah, to erode its legitimacy and to break its will. You’ve seen the branding. Apartheid Israel. Israel is the worst thing to happens to Jews since the Holocaust. Racist Israel. Imperialist Israel.

The campaign has been remarkably successful, which is much to Israel’s woe and may be to the world’s woe as well. There are far larger, more egregious causes for the world’s attention than the episode off Gaza last Sunday, greater threats and deeper anxieties. But it is truly worth remarking that when Israel is in the dock, protest rage goes epidemic. To use that vile term so often recently turned upon Israel when it acts in its self-defence, the response is extravagantly “disproportionate.”

I truly do not know why this is so. Israel is a sanctuary state established after one almost successful attempt just two generations ago to rid all the world of Jews. And Israel is now in the shadow of a fundamentalist, ferociously anti-Israel theocracy which is about to equip itself with nuclear weapons. Perhaps, alas, under the threat of a second attempt.

Yet somehow Israel is the rogue, the barbarian nation, the only state on earth that can energize the professionally lethargic diplomats in the great tower of hypocrisy on the East River. Strange and dangerous times.

Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on Canada's leading TV and radio stations.

Much has been said and written lately about the HST and taxes in general; and the spending scandals that have plagued the Ontario Liberals. I am about to put in my own "two cents":

I agree that waste and improper spending of public funds by such disparate entities as the Lottery Corp., e-Healt and Ontario Hydro is a large problem that needs fixing. The hogs at the public through should all be shot and made into bacon. Dishonesty and entitlements are endemic in politics; be it provincial or federal, and even in the US. We cannot eradicate it, but we can restrict it if we just holler enough and VOTE. Perhaps we can shame them; and if not, scare them.

Now, as to taxes, they are like death: inevitable and bad. However, as a senior, while awaiting the inevitable; I must say I do enjoy some of the benefits of the taxes; most of which now others pay on my behalf. Just a few examples of what I enjoy, in no particular order:

1. I enjoy healthcare and the free drugs and eye exams I now need and get; free flu vaccinations, and the nice looking nurses who look after me when I am in the hospital.

2. I enjoy clean, drinkable water, and water for other needs, including the occasional bath.

3. I enjoy paved roads, garbage pickup, police and fire services.

4. I enjoy public transportation ( occasionally).

5. I enjoy our parks, green spaces, clean air; birds in the sky, the sun up above..

.... I could go on ad infinitum; but I think you get my drift. We could be living in an African hellhole or in any of untold number of terrible societies; where taxes are as low as life !

I am blessed to live in this wonderful country of ours and I'll be damn if I am going to live out my life as an curmudgeon looking at a glass half empty, complaining about my taxes.