Say It By Its Proper Name: Genocide

Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by means such as "the disintegration of [its] political and social institutions, of [its] culture, language, national feelings, religion, and [its] economic existence".

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I wasn't planning to write a blog entry today, but I came across a story that so egregiously outrageous that for the sake of my own health, I had to put it down in words.

If you have read some of my recent posts, you will see I am always quick to hold to account the atmosphere of fear and censorship that is becoming increasingly common in the U.S., especially with regard to students demonstrating support for Palestinians. Today's post, however, hits closer to home. To understand the obscene nature of what has happened, here is a bit of context about Tareq Hadhad. a Syrian refugee who settled in Nova Scotia and became a Canadian success story as well as a Canadian citizen in 2020.

Hadhad’s family had made chocolates in Syria for more than 20 years, but their factory was destroyed in a bombing that forced them to leave the country in 2012.

Peace by Chocolate opened for business in 2016 and now ships its confections around the world. The company employs locals in Antigonish and newcomers to Canada.

Hadhad said Canadians are respected around the world for “values that stand for peace, for love, for kindness, for inclusion, for welcome, for friendliness, for social justice.

In addition to employing a significant number of people, Hadhad donates a percentage of the profits to peace initiatives.

Upon becoming a citizen, he said,

“I feel that I’m Canadian. I feel that I’m free. I feel that I belong. And I feel that I am so proud to be part of this big family of 37 million Canadians from coast to coast to coast.”

Hadhad may have to revisit that assessment, given the contempt a Canadian legal association has shown him.

The Advocates’ Society informed its members in an email last week that it would be uninviting Tareq Hadhad, a Syrian refugee turned Canadian entrepreneur, as the keynote speaker at the prominent legal group’s annual “End of Term Dinner,” at the Metro Convention Centre in June.

The decision comes after some members expressed concern about Hadhad’s public social media posts touching on the Middle East, the email explained. “While it was never our intention for Mr. Hadhad to speak about the conflict, with regret, we concluded that this is not the right time or event for Mr. Hadhad to address our members,” it read, adding: “We also recognize that many of our members will be harmed and feel unwelcome because of our decision not to proceed with Mr. Hadhad.”

Exactly what was the 'offence' that prompted this anti-Arab racism? Well, it seems that certain members of the society poured through Hadhad's social media posts, and, spoiler alert, Toronto lawyer Jonathan Lisus found nothing.

He said he saw an absence of commentary on the [October 7 2023] kidnappings, murder and other atrocities committed [against Israelis] by Hamas; nor, he said, could he find Hadhad calling on Hamas to release hostages or renounce its call for the destruction of Israel.

Also, Lisus found that Hadhad had used the G word: 

In May 2024, Hadhad wrote: “Just looking at this and thinking of all the children that we failed everywhere and continue to fail in Rafah and all of Gaza. This genocide must be stopped. Children should wake up to the sounds of birds not the sounds of bombs.”

“Sadly, Mr. Hadhad’s record of public statements makes a strong case that while expressing understandable concern for civilian deaths in Gaza he is unsympathetic, and certainly indifferent, to the harm and suffering of Jewish people and the Jewish state,” Lisus wrote in his email to the Advocates’ Society.

Compounding this cowardly injustice, Hadhad made it clear that his was to be a non-political address:

“My intended remarks focused solely on the values that unite,” the statement said. “There is a lot of division already in our world — I don’t want to contribute to it further. My role is to bring people together, not further divide them, and I remain proud of my story and the message I share across Canada and internationally.”

Night after night the news shows us the dire injury, death and devastation Israel is inflicting on Gaza. Yet somehow our sympathies are supposed to be reside solely with the Jewish state. Somewhere, George Orwell must be nodding ruefully and knowingly. 

 

Their Loss, Our Gain

 

Canada had a well-earned reputation as a safe haven for those fleeing the U.S. during the Vietnam War. It now appears that reputation is enjoying a resurgence, but for slightly different reasons.

I wrote previously about the chill that has descended over American universities for hosting protests that offend some. Expulsions, recindments of degrees and censorship of thought and speech are becoming commonplace at institutions that were formerly bastions of free thought and expression. That is more than some can take.

Three Yale professors – all of them vocal critics of President Donald Trump – have recently taken up roles at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Earlier this week, philosophy professor Jason Stanley, who has written about fascism and propaganda, announced that he would leave Yale for U of T.

He joins professors Marci Shore and Timothy Snyder, who specialize in Eastern European history. The two academics are married and arrived in Canada last August, on a sabbatical from Yale. Mr. Trump’s re-election in November factored heavily into the decision to stay in Canada, according to Prof. Shore.

“There’s a state of dazed horror following the election. After we calmed down and started to think it through, I clearly didn’t want to go back,” said Prof. Shore, who expressed guilt about leaving the United States, but decided she didn’t want to take their children back there.

Prof. Snyder has written extensively on tyranny. In January, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance tweeted that he was an “embarrassment” to Yale after the professor criticized the nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense.

Professor Shore, Snyder's wife, knows of what she speaks.

 “As a historian of the 1930s, of totalitarianism … of this unhinging from empirical reality that happened in Russia, I was able to see certain things sooner in my own country than I would have otherwise been able to see,” she said.

“With Trump on the rise, you could feel the potential for civil war, for more mass scale violence, for the brutal deportations you’re seeing now, the idea that there’s an enemies list. I’m a historian of totalitarianism. I know where an enemies list could go.”

That increasingly oppressive, McCarthy-era-like atmosphere has also prompted a noted Canadian heart surgeon, who was planning to leave, to stay right here.

Renowned Ottawa heart surgeon Marc Ruel was planning a move to the United States last year, with the University of California, San Francisco "thrilled to announce" that he would be leading a heart division in their surgery department.

But Donald Trump's threats toward Canada were such that Ruel has now decided to remain in Canada. 

"Canada is under duress right now," he told CBC. "I felt my role and duty at this point was to directly serve my country from within."

Ruel says he considers his skills a product of Canada, abilities that he was ready to share globally when he accepted the position at UCSF last year. 

But Trump's imposition of tariffs and threats to annex the country that's historically been its closest ally has made geopolitics an unavoidable issue.

And those issues could, in fact, lead to a reverse brain drain.

Concerns over the political climate in the U.S. has opened a "floodgate" of inquiries about moving to Canada, according to recruiter Michelle Flynn. 

To deal with the influx of inquiries from American physicians wanting to come to Canada, Flynn said she is now conducting interviews five days a week, up from three days a week previously. 

"We're getting 60-plus physicians coming to and registering on our website a month," she said. 

Ontario's College of Physicians and Surgeons has also noted increases in American interest.

After introducing [a] new licensing pathway, the CPSO registered 351 U.S. physicians between 2023 and the end of 2024, a spokesperson said. 

So far this year, CPSO has received registration applications from 240 physicians who are U.S. educated. Most of them are currently practicing in the U.S., the spokesperson said. 

No one likes the economic uncertainty and fear that are consequences of crazed American policy. Nonetheless, if one is looking for bright spots in all of the gloom, this retention and acquisition of intellectual capital is surely one of them. 

A Headlong Rush To A Dark Past

It seems more than passing strange that here we are, in the 21st century, but all signs are that Amerika is nostalgic for earlier times, when faith in God's intervention (see Paula White) was strong, and science was regarded with deep suspicion. 

With measles cases burgeoning and vaccine rates plunging, perhaps that benighted country is expecting some sort of divine intervention to keep them healthy. Consider the latest developments at the FDA, which is under the aegis of Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Heath and Human Services and a notorious vaccine skeptic:

Especially chilling was the dismissive and Orwellian tone of HHS about Marks's departure:

“If Peter Marks does not want to get behind restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency, then he has no place at FDA under the strong leadership of Secretary Kennedy,” a spokesperson at HHS said.

Undoubtedly, as it embraces theocracy, the Benighted States of America believes it has a secret weapon in God. Consider Paula White, the head of Trump's White House Faith Office. In a recent 'sermon' at a Florida megachurch, White offered 

that Trump has been anointed by God, to help Christians shape American culture and change the world.

“Thank you for being there for the president,” she says.

“You have nations to reach. You have territory to take.”

“Here is where the fight begins.”

This 'religion' amplifies a malignancy that is bred in the American bone: U.S. exceptionalism:  

This ministry’s followers are some of the 30 per cent of Americans who are said to sympathize with Christian nationalism, an ideology that’s rooted in the belief that the United States enjoys special favour by God, and that seeks to bring religion into every aspect of civil life. Podcaster Bradley Onishi, a noted critic, says the movement favours a specific brand of Christianity worshipping what he calls a “straight white American Jesus.”

Critics say that Christian nationalism is a fervent and dangerous movement that twists the religion to promote authoritarianism. “It’s all about hatred ... a front for racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, misogynist feelings,” Rev. Laurie Hafner, a leader of Mosaic Miami, an interfaith community that advocates for social justice, told the Star.

For non-Americans, this is a particularly threatening mindset.

 John Faragher, an emeritus professor of history and American Studies at Yale University .... said the idea that “the Lord Almighty is on our side” is a theme that goes back to the beginning of the idea of America.

For Canada and other countries in the region, the long-standing idea that it is America’s right and “Manifest Destiny” to expand across all of North America is particularly troubling, Faragher said.

Nineteenth-century leaders used Manifest Destiny as a rationale to expand westward, adding Oregon and Texas in 1846 and purchasing Alaska in 1867. U.S. politicians and citizens also used it to call for America to claim control of Canada. Manifest Destiny is an ideology taught uncritically to Florida’s seventh-grade civics students as part of history, in a new textbook issued by Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, and reviewed by the Star.

Politics and religion have always been a dangerous combination, and it is the theme of this entire post. For RFK, it is the religious fervour with which he embraces opposition to vaccines and other medical developments that have saved countless millions. For White, it is a potent weapon to wield against all those who oppose groupthink, collective conformity, and American imperialism.

None of this can end well for anyone. 

 

UPDATED: The Enemy Within

Especially given the Trump-led attacks on our sovereignty, I find my heart is open to almost all of my fellow Canadians. Across the nation, people are banding together with a renewed sense of purpose and unity as we confront our greatest political threat of the 21st century. It is all to the good.

Unfortunately, that sense of unity, for me,  does not include Alberta, given that the good citizens there elected a government apparently quite happy to collaborate with the enemy. For a good examination of Danielle Smith's perfidy (which she frames as defending her province), check out David Climenhaga's newest post.

But there is yet more Albertan mischief afoot. A former Medicine Hat MP wants to explore closer ties with the U.S.

LaVar Payne is listed among the attendees of a press conference set for [March 27] in Calgary to launch the “Delegation to Washington” project. It hopes to determine the level support in Washington, D.C. toward an economic union or statehood for an independent Alberta, according to a release.

It states that a list of nine issues recently outlined by Premier Danielle Smith following a meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney last week “has all but guaranteed an independence referendum to be held in Alberta this calendar year.”

Albertans are outliers in their reaction to Trump's stated intention of annexing Canada. While only nine per cent of Canadians hold with such talk, an enthusiatic fifteen per cent of Albertans would happily be absorbed. And there is an organization called the Alberta Prosperity Project, which is unhappy with Alberta's current status within Confederation. One of its founding members is lawyer Jeffrey Rath.

Rath made news after appearing on U.S.-based Fox News on March 6, stating he would push for direct talks with the U.S. officials about Canadian support for becoming part of the U.S.

“(It is) a steering committee of people looking to come to Washington on an exploratory basis and meet with a representative appointed by President Trump to explore the benefits of either Alberta becoming an independent sovereign nation with economic union with the United States, becoming a U.S. territory or pursuing full statehood,” he told the interviewer. “Those are our goals.”

And Danielle Smith seems to be right on board with those goals. 

Smith said after her meeting with Carney on March 20 that a “specific list of demands” needed to be addressed by the next prime minister within six months to avoid an “unprecedented national unity crisis.”

They include guaranteeing pipeline access, repealing the federal emissions cap, clean electricity plan, electric vehicle and single-use plastic targets, and pipeline legislation, along with leaving industrial carbon prices to provinces.

“I made it clear that Albertans will no longer tolerate the way we’ve been treated by the federal Liberals over the past 10 years,” she wrote on social media at the time. 

“I encourage all Albertans to get involved in what is likely one of the most pivotal and important elections in our nation’s history, and to support the party and candidates that have consistently advocated for freeing Alberta from federal overreach and the repeated economic attacks.”

I, and I am sure, most other Canadians, are disgusted by Alberta's selfishness. During a time when the rest of us seem united and resolved to resist American attacks on our country, that province is acting like the fifth columnist of Confederation, happily treading the path of absorption by that noxious 'neighbour' to the south. 

UPDATE: If you still have any doubts about where Danielle Smith's loyalties lie, I would invite you to judge her by the company she keeps.

 

UPDATED: Nothing To See Here, Eh?

The Trump administration insists nothing was classified. Others beg to differ.

UPDATE: To put into proper perspective something the right-wing is collectively dismissing as a tempest in a teapot, there is the Daily Show's take:

UPDATED: Plain For All To See

Even if you have a less than fanatical devotion to news and politics, it probably hasn't escaped your attention that the United States has quickly slipped into autocracy. Some might even call it fascism. A reader of this blog sent me a substack article by Emmett Macfarlane that readily attests to this, and I shall not attempt to summarize it here. It is best if you read it yourself.

That theme has been very much on my mind of late, brought into strict relief almost daily. Judges are impugned; judicial orders are ignored; security clearances are being revoked. Increasingly, the long arm of Don Trump's vengeance is being felt. 

So what happens when it is essentially made a crime to speak out against this rot from within? That answer is not yet fully known, but recent developments suggest it is nothing good. Take, for example, the length universities are now taking to curry favour with the Trump regime. After the regime pulled $400 million in funding from Columbia University, allegedly for not sufficiently protecting Jewish students from pro-Palesinian protest, the university has supinely submitted to its demands in the hopes of getting that funding restored.

Columbia’s concessions followed a letter from interim President Katrina Armstrong detailing changes the school would implement:

• Security upgrade: 36 peace officers will soon be authorized to make arrests.
• Academic oversight: A senior vice provost will now monitor Columbia’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department—an area targeted by conservatives.
• Speech limitations: New restrictions on protests and disciplinary changes are being rolled out.
• Redefining antisemitism: Columbia pledged to formally adopt a new definition aligned with Trump administration expectations 

But critics from across academia blasted the move.

• Rutgers professor Todd Wolfson called it “arguably the greatest incursion into academic freedom…since the McCarthy era.
• ”Columbia student leader Mohammad Hemeida said the university “gave in to government pressure instead of standing firm on the commitments to students and to academic freedom.

Columbia has been in the news lately involving the totally unjustified regime efforts to deport Mahmoud Khalil over his pro-Palestinian activities. 

His case has become a test of President Donald Trump's pledge to combat antisemitism and deport noncitizen college activists who the Department of Homeland Security said “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”

Khalil, 30, who holds a green card granting him permanent residency in the U.S., is being held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, more than 1,000 miles from his home in New York City. His legal team is trying to get him released.                                                                                                                             

Perhaps one of the worst example of academic cowardice from Columbia is that it has revoked degrees. 

On Thursday, the university announced it was expelling, suspending and revoking the degrees of 22 students following last year’s Hamilton Hall protest, fulfilling one of the nine demands issued in a letter from the Trump administration to Columbia.

But Columbia is hardly the only university being targeted.  Over at Cornell, this has happened:

The Department of Justice on Friday asked a Cornell University student who is suing the Trump administration after helping lead campus protests last year to surrender to immigration authorities, according to a new court filing.

Lawyers for Momodou Taal, a Ph.D. student who is a U.S. visa holder and a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Gambia, said in court documents that he received an email from a Department of Justice lawyer with a notice to appear — which initiates the deportation process — and an invitation to surrender to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

It should be clear to all but the MAGA cultists that any resistance to Washington's efforts to remake Amerika into something only a fascism enthusiast could love will be punished by deportation, funding cuts, or worse. The ultimate fates of Khalil and Taal are still 'works in progress.' However, given that the universities now seem to be falling into line in order to save themselves, something Chris Hedges discussed at length in Death of The Liberal Class, no one can be even remotely hopeful about their fates.

UPDATE:

In response to something else, my friend John sent the following, which seems especially appropriate for America:

I am reading Mark Twain and he writes of his interview with Satan.  They are discussing Twain’s efficient wood stove that provides comfortable heat while he stays in a house in Europe.  Satan asks if they use this wood stove in America.  Twain  is surprised and says roughly, “ surely Satan is familiar with America.”  Satan replies, “Well, no I have not been there.  I am not needed there.”

He Has Trump's Number

I don't especially feel like writing today, so I hope this pithy analysis of Don Trump resonates, at least with those who are not part of the cult. Thanks to my friend Gary for sending it along.