In February, Bernie Farber, CEO of the CJC, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, and 10 other Lib and Con MPs attended the London Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced in Question Period Friday that the government will comply with, rather than appeal, the Federal Court decision ordering it to repatriate Abousfian Abdelrazik, stranded in Sudan since 2003.

Good.

As Chris Selley writes: “It’s all over but the thousands of unanswered questions”

Here’s one.

How much did this July 2006 US Embassy memo figure in extending Abdelrazik’s exile?

“US Embassy DCM John Dickson made a demarche this afternoon re Abdelrazik . . . . He had been asked to deliver a message from the White House, specifically from senior levels of the Homeland Security Council. [US] Ambassador Wilkins might be calling Ministers Toves [sic] and Day tomorrow. Frances Townsend might also be calling.

“Dickson’s main message was that the US would like Canada’s assistance in putting together a criminal case against Abdelrazik so that he could be charged in the US. The US had information on Abdelrazik but at this point, it was not enough to charge him; the same might be true for Canada. If Canadian police or security agencies shared what they had, it might prove to be enough for the US to proceed, as the threshold for prosecution there was lower than here.”

Days later the US added Abdelrazik to the UN Security Council terrorist blacklist, despite not having sufficient evidence to charge him under their “lower threshold.”

And just so we’re clear here — the threshold for action was spectacularly lower. Recall that Maher Arar was renditioned to Syria the day after a wounded 14 year old Omar Khadr in Bagram prison was shown photos of Arar and coached into saying that “he looked familiar,” and the US evidence against Abdelrazik appears to be the unfortunate spinoff derived from waterboarding a schizophrenic halfwit 83 times in 2002 in order to elicit a false confession linking Sadaam and al-Qaeda that could be used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

Here’s a question:

We don’t know what correspondence transpired after the memo above, written three years after Arar returned to Canada and during the time we were hearing advance notice of the O’Connor report which would clear him of all terrorism allegations two months later. Was Abdelrazik kept in exile at the Canadian Embassy in Sudan to avoid a similar debacle by someone who decided he was safer left there than he would be back in Canada?

Haaretz, May 25, 2009 :

A “new anti-Semitism” that emanates from an alliance of Western leftists and Islamic extremists is more dangerous than the “old European” form of Jew-hatred, Canada’s minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism said as he wound up a four-day trip to Israel Sunday.

“The existential threat faced by Israel on a daily basis is ultimately a threat to the broader Western civilization,” said Jason Kenney, explaining the staunchly pro-Israel positions of his government, led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

“It’s a threat that comes from profoundly undemocratic forces that don’t have the same conception of human dignity or freedom, and which abuse Israel as a kind of representative of the broader West and Western liberal-democratic values,” said Kenney. “I also very acutely understand the nature of the new anti-Semitism, and I think it’s even more dangerous than the old European anti-Semitism.”

What a load of toadying opportunistic crap.

What’s dangerous, Jason, is your government’s new rebranding of anti-Semitism — one that seeks to conflate criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews, thus making a mockery of all genuine struggles against anti-Semitism.

Israel is not criticized for being a Jewish state; Israel is criticized for war crimes.

See also:

Jewish Canadians Concerned about Suppression of Criticism of Israel.

Big hullaballoo following CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O’Brian’s testimony before the public safety committee, in which he said that Canadian intelligence agencies would make use of information obtained by torture from foreign agencies in the “one-in-a-million” eventuality that “lives were at stake.” In fact, said O’Brian, who has been with CSIS since its inception in 1984, “we would be bound to do so.”

Under further questioning from aghast committee members, he admitted that agencies often “have no idea under what conditions info received from foreign agencies is obtained” and “just because a country has a questionable or even abysmal human rights record does not mean info received from them is necessarily extracted by torture.”

That would be the old don’t-ask-don’t-tell-Syria defence. CSIS Director Jim Judd used it back in November 2006 to defend using Syrian intel on Maher Arar. So are we still trading info with Syria and Egypt? Yes we are, but now “with caveats.”

The committee members pressed on: “What Canadians want to hear is that we do not condone the use of information derived from torture.”

O’Brian: “I would love to give you a simple answer. The simple answer is that we will never use info from torture. I cannot say that because recipients of info do not know how that info was obtained. I can say we do not knowingly” — and he stressed this again — “knowingly use info extracted by torture.”

Huge stink in the Star, G&M;, and CBC.

On Thursday, CSIS Director Jim Judd and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan appeared before the public safety committee. Judd:

“I think it’s unfortunate that Mr. O’Brian may have been confused in his testimony. He will be clarifying that via a letter to this committee. I know of no instance where such information has been made use of by our service.”

and

“He [O'Brian] ventured into the hypothetical. In the past we used information obtained by torture. Such information is not to be relied upon. We’ve changed our policies. Our policy now is under no circumstances do we condone the use of torture for any reason.”

He went on to explain that the intelligence agencies are directed in this by the federal government.

Okay, that seems pretty straightforward, right?

Next up — Minister Van Loan, from whence intelligence agencies are directed, responding to MP Mourani (italics mine):

“We do not condone the use of torture in intelligence gathering and our clear directive to our law enforcement agencies and intelligence services is that they are not to condone the use of torture, practice torture, or knowingly use any information obtained by torture.”

Uh-oh. There’s that “knowingly” again.

And here’s the relevant quote from O’Brian’s “clarification” letter (again, italics mine):

“I wish to clarify for the committee that CSIS certainly does not condone torture and that it is the policy of CSIS to not knowingly rely upon information that may have been obtained through torture.”

So we’re pretty well back to O’Brian’s previous “knowingly”, aren’t we? Namely, that because we can claim to have no clue how the info we get is obtained, we’re free to go ahead and use it.

O’Brian caught shit for losing control of the spin for a moment, and that’s all that happened here.

I’d also like to point out that the RCMP got a completely free ride in the media coverage.

In his opening statement to the committee on Tuesday, RCMP spokesman Gilles Michaud rejected the use of information obtained by torture as unreliable, but explained in regards to the RCMP’s use of intelligence obtained from foreign agencies:

“I want to be clear here — there is no absolute ban on the use of any information by the RCMP.”

Uh-huh.

It is General Rick Hillier’s duty to report the state of Canada’s armed forces, even if he uses inflammatory language like “decade of darkness” to describe the cuts that started under the Liberals in 1994. Perhaps moderate language did not get the attention of Liberals in the past. And perhaps the odd bit of hyperbole is called for considering what Armed Forces families have been putting up with for the past long years.

As he told the CBC, General Hillier is “the chief of defence staff. I describe things as accurately, as clearly, as bluntly as I possibly can.”

Even though Hillier did not name the Liberals specifically, Coderre mounted his high horse. Calling the General “a prop to the Conservative party,” he added, “I’m offended today.”

Yeah, well I’m offended too. I’m offended because this Liberal thinks he can get political mileage out of criticizing a guy for doing his job. Is this the kind of politician who is left after the Liberals cleaned house? Egads. We are in trouble.

In other news, the U.S. Congress says it will not support Bush in Iraq. That’s a start. Let’s see if next Congress will refuse to support Israel in Palestine. That might be the start of a solution. While nothing about extremist politics is simple or easy, one thing is clear: the engine of Islamist extremism is the western world’s oppression of Palestine.

Obviously, while Bush hasn’t spewed nonsense about the “axis of evil” lately, he cannot seem to utter words of reconciliation and peace to anybody. So he will have to ask his allies, particularly Europe, to do some of his talking for him.

And this will be difficult because the people who must be at the table include not only the factions in Iraq but also Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and . . . Israel. Analyzing the relationships, we know that Iran is largely Persian and a bit snooty about Arabia. Saudi Arabia is Sunni, has a lot of money, has used it to support civil unrest in Lebanon, and almost certainly funds a lot of the insurgency in Iraq. Everybody in the Middle East is extremely opposed to the existence of Israel. Israel knows this perfectly well and likely has a plan to obliterate any nation that makes an overt move against it. America is impotent at holding Israel to heel.

So the European Union is going to try, through the United Nations, to convince Israel to cooperate in the creation of peace. Looking back about 60 years, we can remember that Israel was created as a haven for Jews who had suffered at the hands of Europe for millennia, culminating with the murder of six million of them. Who will be president of the European Union, taking over from Finland? Germany.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha . . .

But there is a way through and it is simllar to the way that Canadians have always dealt with contentious, possibly lethal, issues. We seek 10 minute solutions. It reminds me of my kids. I ask them to do the dishes and they agree immediately, and swear they will do them in exactly 10 minutes. I have noticed, though, that they can put off doing the dishes for, well, days and even weeks. Conceivably, forever. All in 10 minute increments.

And so I wonder if we cannot get these contentious folks to the table, promise that they can resume their butchery almost immediately. But just put it off for, say, 10 minutes. Postpone hostilities for a day or two while we play videogames and eat pizza. It is a powerful and very effective tactic, even when used against monstrous forces (like mothers).

More seriously, I think that it is important for all of us to realize that democracy cannot be installed like a new porch or cable TV. Democracy requires that the majority of citizens put their own best interests aside long enough to consider the welfare of their fellow citizens. However, in countries where people are beheaded before football games, victims of rape are executed for shaming their families, women are burned for having a less than optimal dowry, war lords can order the assassination of entire families on the basis of any perceived offence, the majority of officials are corrupt, and so on . . . the average person cannot afford to consider what is fair or equitable. Life is so entirely perilous that people must survive by cunning and perseverance, by aligning strategically with the power that can offer the most protection, the most food for your family, and that is least likely to betray you. You are concerned entirely with interpreting gossip and making strategic plans — not rule of law.

In other words, before there is democracy, there must be peace. Before there is peace, there must be security. Before there can be security, there must be a common commitment from everybody to keep the trigger finger still. Long lasting peace is too much to ask for, given history and current power relations. But negotiators might be able to prevent war in small increments.