Part 2- "They Didn't Get Back To Me"

Yesterday I wrote about the plight of Salma Abuelaish, the eight-year-old girl whose family moved to Canada from Gaza and became Canadian citizens five years ago. Having accompanied her father, a physician, back to Gaza this summer so he could render medical assistance and she could visit with her cousins and grandparents, she became trapped there after the latest outbreak of hostilities with Israel. The Canadian government has thus far ignored a plea for some slight assistance from Salma's mother, who resides in Brantford. This reaction seems wholly consistent with its apparent aversion to those of Arabic descent, and uncritical acceptance of all actions that Israel undertakes, whether or not they violate international law or ethical standards.

I refuse to believe that the Harper regime represents the values of most Canadians, and part of that refusal is rooted in our traditions of compassion and acceptance. More immediately, it is informed by my regular go-to people whenever I need a morale boost, Toronto Star letter-writers, and, in this case, surprisingly, the Ontario government.

On July 31, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish wrote an impassioned plea for Canada to take in for treatment 100 of the Gaza children most seriously wounded from the fighting:

In coming to Canada I found my faith and belief strengthened in a nation historically known as a peacemaker and peacekeeper, a country whose values are not just rhetorical, but are embodied in our actions. By accepting these children, by caring for the young of another, even for a short time, we will demonstrate to the world our hospitality and generosity, and teach an important lesson: that people can peacefully share land, resources and love. That bound by our shared humanity, we can together find solutions to our challenges and give dignity to all people.

Abuelaish speaks with great moral authority, as a post from almost four years ago makes clear. He is a Palestinian physician and the author of I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey, a memoir about the loss of his three daughters, Bessan, Mayar and Aya, and their cousin Noor to Israeli shelling in 2009.

The Ontario government has responded positively to his plea. Yesterday Eric Hoskins, the Health Minister, made this announcement:

“We received a formal request from Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish to make the necessary resources available to allow our hospitals to support kids who need medical attention due (to) the conflict”

Nobody is waiting to get on a plane here just yet, Hoskins said in an interview. “Part of my reason for my coming out today … is to sort of lend our moral support to the initiative and to encourage other partners who will be needed to realize this initiative, to get them to participate,” he said.

So he has, at least, started the ball rolling, one that could be impeded, of course, by the brick wall of Harper regime intransigence.

Now to The Star letters that respond to Dr. Abuelaish's plea and offer a stark contrast to the indifference, even malice, that I pointed out in yesterday's post:

In 2009, when Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish moved here, vestiges of the Canada he praises could still be found. Our reputation as a humanitarian peacekeeping nation was not yet in tatters. After only 38 months of Conservative rule, that country no longer exists.

Like most Canadians, I applaud Dr. Abuelaish’s compassionate initiative to bring 100 Palestinian children here for medical aid. However, I fear that he will wait in vain for our federal government to allow even one child to come, no matter how much support hospitals and provincial governments offer.

First, the children are Palestinian and, therefore, of no consequence to the Harperites.

Second, this government has made it clear that it opposes providing medical treatment to any refugees – to the point of appealing a federal court ruling that called the federal health-care policy “cruel and unusual treatment.”

In 2006, Stephen Harper famously said, “You won’t recognize Canada when I’m through with it.”

We already don’t recognize it, and he’s not done yet. He has another 14 months to destroy what little could still be salvaged of this once respectable country.

Patricia Wilmot, Toronto

I totally support Dr. Abuelaish’s proposal to invite 100 Gazan children to Canada for medical treatment. For me, the distance of the conflict is close at hand, having read his powerful book I Shall Not Hate, relating the agonizing oppression of daily life in Gaza.

Yes, Canadians can “mount a purely humanitarian effort” to help the physical and emotional healing of these young souls and their families. Ultimately, we all succeed with hope in our lives knowing that others care.

Shari Baker, Toronto

Finally, we can do something to help the people of Gaza. This is something all Canadians can get behind.

The most immediate challenge will be whether Stephen Harper and John Baird will take their extremist support for Israel so far as to deny visas to seriously injured Palestinian children.

Eileen Watson, Toronto

Thank you to Dr. Abuelaish’s letter appealing to Canadians to help Gaza’s wounded children. I echo his appeal and hope Toronto’s hospitals take this on.

It would be a great humanitarian gesture if the Mount Sinai Hospital led the charge. And for Jewish leaders to call on the prime minister to open the doors to Canada for this children. He will listen to you.

Alberto Sarthou, Toronto

Did They Get Yours?

A Russian criminal gang is said to have stolen internet credentials including 1.2-billion username and password combinations plus half a billion e-mail addresses. Milwaukee-based, Hold Security, says the data was hacked from some 420,000 web sites. The company says confidentiality agreements prevent it from disclosing the names of web sites that were hacked but allowed The New York Times to have its own experts verify the data.

MoS, the Disaffected Lib

Don' Worry, Be Happy - It's Only the Arctic So Who Cares?

You know when you've eaten something dodgy and you get that rumbling in your guts that tells you this is no time to go too far from the throne? Well, that's sort of what may be going on in the Arctic right now. There's a definite rumbling across the far North that portends potentially explosive outcomes in the near future. From Scientific American


It's not just craters purportedly dug by aliens in Russia, it's also megaslumps, ice that burns and drunken trees. The ongoing meltdown of the permanently frozen ground that covers nearly a quarter of land in the Northern Hemisphere has caused a host of surprising arctic phenomena.


...The most likely explanation for the newly discovered craters in Russia is an accumulation of methane over centuries or more that then burst out of the thawing ground sometime in the last few years. "High pressure built up and [the ground] literally popped open," explains biogeochemist Kevin Schaefer of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. "If it is indeed caused by melting methane ice, we should expect to see more."

These craters will then become lakes, which further thaw the permafrost around and beneath them as the water traps yet more heat from the sun. Similar new lakes are forming in depressions in the newly thawing lumpy landscape across the Arctic known as thermokarst. Such thermokarst lakes and surrounding marshes create the muddy conditions favoring microbes that break dead plant material down into methane. That methane then bubbles out of the lakes and ground and, where concentrated, can even be lit on fire, leading to cases of flames dancing above the ice.


Even more widespread than blast craters or burning ice are drunken trees. When permafrost thaws, soil that was once as solid as concrete becomes mud, due to the fact that ice makes up as much as 80 percent of the ground in some parts of the Arctic. And because ice takes up more space than water, the ground subsides, causing trees that grew upright to lean as the ground liquefies beneath them. Whole forests have listed like an army of drunkards as a result. This is also bad news for modern infrastructure in the Arctic as well: Roads, pipelines and building foundations sink into mud and crack or entire landscapes subside. "Long term, there are huge economic and social impacts to permafrost degrading," Schaefer notes.


Where the ground slopes, even worse can occur: slumps, which are like slow-moving mudslides that can undermine areas of 40 hectares or more and stretch more than a kilometer across. The largest megaslumps can eat into the landscape at rates of a kilometer per decade and seem to show no signs of stopping. One slump in Russia that has mystified scientists extends more than 70 meters deep into the permafrost and is still growing after starting in the 1970s.


Perhaps the biggest concern of thawing permafrost is a massive and sudden release of methane from the Arctic Ocean and/or permafrost. Methane traps at least eight times more heat than carbon dioxide over decades, driving global warming even faster. The bad news on the belch front are noticeable upticks in the amount of methane produced in the Arctic—an increase of roughly 8 percent over 30 years at the Canada’s Alert Station in the Northwest Territories. And ocean expeditions have observed methane bubbling out of methane ice at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.


By mid-century, computer simulations predict that as much as a third of the permafrost area in Alaska could thaw, at least at the surface, with similar amounts in Canada and Siberia. Once the melt has kicked in—and the frozen dead plants that make up the top three meters or so of the permafrost become food for microbes that release CO2—the process is irreversible. "You can't refreeze it," Schaefer says. "Once the decay turns on you can't turn it off, and it persists for centuries."

The permafrost already holds vast stores of carbon, as much as 1.7 trillion metric tons according to estimates—or more than twice as much as is currently in the atmosphere today. Not all of that will thaw in the near future—some areas of permafrost extend 700 meters deep—but as much as 120 billion metric tons could be released by 2100. That's enough to raise global average temperatures by nearly a third of a degree Celsius. "These are big numbers," Schaefer notes. But "they are in fact small when compared to those projected from burning coal and oil and natural gas. Those emissions are just immense."


MoS, the Disaffected Lib

He's So Much More Than Just a Prime Minister. He's a Real Bastard

"This government — which swaggers around in fatigues, pretending to be a friend of the Canadian Forces — has a lot to answer for..." - Colin Kenny

Stephen Harper is a well-rounded bastard. If bastardy was an Olympic sport, he'd be a decathlete. He's a lying bastard. He's a manipulative bastard. He's a sneaky bastard. He's a mean old bastard. He's a rotten bastard, rotten to the core. He's a stubborn bastard. He's a selfish bastard. He's an incompetent bastard. He's an arrogant bastard. He's a thoroughly nasty bastard. Did I mention he's a bully and a blowhard?

Liberal senator Colin Kenny shows how Harper fits the bill on bastardy in his outrageous and hypocritical treatment of the Canadian Armed Forces and Canada’s “muscular” foreign policy.

Canada’s defence budget as a percentage of GDP peaked at two per cent under the Trudeau government. It went into steady decline under the Chrétien Liberals, looked like it would expand long-term when the Harper government came to power, then plummeted.

According the World Bank, it dropped from 1.4 per cent in 2009 to one per cent in 2013. Based on indications that the government is going to continue to tighten military spending, that downward spiral is likely to continue.

Canadians don’t expect their governments to spend as much on their armed forces as countries such as Russia (4.2 per cent of GDP) or the U.S. (3.8 per cent). But when non-combative countries such as Norway (1.4 per cent), Denmark (1.4 per cent) and Sweden (1.2 per cent) are spending more, you know you have a government that’s putting the squeeze on our military.

...Canadians already have a small military — and it just keeps shrinking. Not in numbers, because the government knows the optics of reducing personnel, juxtaposed with repeated failures to replace essential equipment, would confirm that the government isn’t much interested in the military at all.

But when you maintain personnel numbers while ordering cuts of 20 per cent in operations and maintenance expenditures, you’re creating a dysfunctional organization that can’t do what it is supposed to do.

Never has a government talked such big talk about investing in its military while allowing it to erode so dramatically.

Canada’s navy, for instance, is going to be without a lot of essential ships after this government has left the scene.

The same applies to key aircraft for the air force.

It’s nice to hear strong words condemning Putin’s perfidy in Ukraine. But they ring a bit hollow when they mask not-so-nice weakness in this country’s capacity to back them up.

Sideshow Steve Harper is a goddamned liar. Everybody knows it, none better than those closest to him. Back before his fall from grace, back when he was one of Steve’s BFFs, Harper mentor Tom Flanagan told a gathering of Saltspring Islanders that it was standard operating procedure for this prime minister to say whatever he figures people want to hear, assure them his government is doing or will do this or that, and then do nothing or sometimes do just the opposite. That’s a lying bastard the likes of which we’ve never seen reigning over Parliament Hill.

MoS, the Disaffected Lib

The Obscenity Called Gaza

The New York Times' columnist, Richard Cohen, offers some brilliant insights into the Gaza conundrum, a place he calls, "an open-air prison for 1.8-million people."

"...more than 300 children are dead, killed in a month-long Israeli bombardment. Each of those children has a name, a family. Several were killed in a recent shelling of a United Nations school, an act that the United States called 'disgraceful.' The many civilian casualties in Gaza cannot be waived away as 'human shields' of Hamas. They were not human shields. They were human beings."

Cohen doesn't spare Hamas of its responsibility either. He condemns Hamas for manipulating and subjugating the Palestinians it governs as it goads Israel into attacking through its endless, if ineffective, rocket campaign all in pursuit of a fantasy of wiping Israel from the face of the Earth.

Cohen also offers a scathing rebuke for the global community for failing to enact UN resolution 181 that calls for the creation of two nations in the Holy Land, one Jewish, the other Arab. Since 1947 just one of those nations has been created. The other has been ignored. The job stands unfinished.

"Without two states, Israel will lurch from one self-inflicted wound to the next, growing ever angrier with its neighbors and a restive world from which it feels alienated."

In other words, Israel's legitimacy is inexorably tied to the creation of the Palestinian state envisioned by the UN in 1947 when it created Israel. The state of Israel is a creature of the United Nations, not some supposed deity, something it has for too long ignored.

The international community has failed the Palestinians by failing to create their state, the companion of Israel. We know where that state was intended to exist. We know the borders that were established in creating Israel. Unpopular as it would be with the Knesset, it's time the community of nations went back in to complete their obligations under UN resolution 181.

“Netanyahu has fought Palestinian statehood all his life. But it is the only way out of his labyrinth. In the end his sound bites yield to reality. That reality is bitter indeed.”

We need to go back into the Palestinian homeland. We need to clean up the mess and restore the borders between Israel and the Palestinian state envisioned by Resolution 181. That will probably take muscle, plenty of it, not only to restore the borders but to establish and occupy a suitable buffer zone for a substantial period (40-years perhaps) to enable the creation of a viable, democratic and peaceful Palestine capable of engaging its neighbour, Israel, in normal relations.

MoS, the Disaffected Lib

"They Didn't Get Back To Me"

For those who follow such things, I think it is well-known that when a Canadian runs into problems while abroad, the statement "Canada is providing consular support" is often a euphemism for "We really aren't doing much of anything."

Problems seem to multiply if one holds dual-citizenship. The case of Mohamed Fahmy, the Egyptian-Canadian journalist imprisoned in Egypt for seven years on bogus charges of terrorism amply attests to this, and reputable news gatherers have openly pondered this issue:

Al Jazeera, the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and other media supporters ... question whether Fahmy's dual citizenship is working against him.

"The government's position at this point on this case has been shameful," Tony Burman, a journalism professor and former managing director for Al Jazeera English, said in a news conference Thursday.

"The issue of dual citizenship, the issue of perhaps Al Jazeera, any mention at all in the trumped-up charges by the Egyptian military of the Muslim Brotherhood -- these are all things that... could intimidate and inhibit government officials in this country from moving," he said.

Is it possible that those of foreign, especially Arabic origin, face not only indifference but malice from the Canadian government? There is, of course, the infamous case of Maher Arar who, with Canadian complicity, was sent to Syria to be imprisoned and tortured for non-existent crimes.

The case of Omar Khadr is in a category all of its own, but one that once again demonstrates the selectivity with which the government protects Canadians' rights, as is that of Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik, who was smeared by our government as a terrorist and imprisoned in the Sudan and then abandoned by our government for many years; it is another case that should make all Canadians ashamed.

The most recent case of government indifference/malice, and one that is ongoing, is that of eight-year-old Salma Abuzaiter. It is especially disturbing, in that it deals with threats to the life of a child. Salma and her parents have been Canadian citizens for five years, and this summer the little girl accompanied her father, an emergency room doctor specializing in pediatrics, to Gaza, a chance for the young girl to spend time with her cousins and grandparents. Unfortunately, a few weeks after their arrival the present bloodshed in Gaza began, and now the girl is trapped there.

Salma's mother, Wesam Abuzaiter, has been told by authorities the only way her daughter can leave Gaza is to travel by bus, alone, for five hours, crossing the border into Israel and Jordan. Wesam says that is impossible for such a young child. Instead, she has asked the Canadian government to make arrangements allowing a relative to escort Salma to Egypt where she would board a plane to Canada: “I just asked them to communicate with the Egyptian side and let them know about that not more than that. I didn’t ask for more than that.

The Canadian government's reaction to that request:

"They didn’t get back to me."

How Not To Answer A Question

Texas Governor Rick Perry provides an expert technique lesson in the following video: