Waiting for the illusionist

(photo: jorge barrera)

Chavez laying hands on a heat stroke victim during the final rally before the 2004 referendum on his presidency.


"....opening a way among the lepers and blind men and cripples who begged the salt of health from his hands...."
The Autumn of the Patriarch, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Just before he took office in 1999, Chávez traveled with Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez to Cuba. "I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I had just been traveling and chatting pleasantly with two opposing men," Márquez later wrote of the two faces of Chavez. "One to whom the caprices of fate had given an opportunity to save his country. The other, an illusionist, who could pass into the history books as just another despot." With Chávez's legacy still unfolding, we are left to choose the face we prefer to see.

A night in 23

The Saturday before the referendum vote I stayed in the 23 Enero barrio, named after the day in 1958 that dictator Perez Jimenez was overthrown. Here the most militant of Chavez' grassroots supporters live and fight and one aging revolutionary told me blood would flow if Chavez lost the vote. “I never thought we would get the revolution without a bullet,” he said. All night gunfire and fireworks burst in a darkness drenched with Salsa music. The Tupamaros were running security and their radios crackled every time an unidentified vehicle entered the barrio. Everyone was armed. The guy I was with stuffed a Glock 9 mm in his pants before we went for a walk by the wall of martyrs painted with the faces of their assassinated comrades. I slept for a couple hours that night in a 1950s era concrete slab apartment building so infested with crime my billet would not go up certain staircases fearing we could be mugged on the way to his sparsely decorated apartment with the single crucifix hanging on a bare wall in the guest room. We ate arepas at 5 a.m., unable to sleep as a result of the endless racket that rocked the night. By 7 a.m. I entered the school house where Chavez was expected to cast his ballot. Media were beginning to assemble there and I bought a coffee for one of the soldiers who said he hadn’t eaten breakfast that day. Smoking filterless Mexican cigarettes handed out by a reporter for Narco News we waited for the Man to arrive. A Colombian radio reporter told me democracy had ended in Venezuela. “He won’t leave without bloodshed,” he said.

I got a picture of him

Pandemonium met Chavez when he arrived. Penned in a small area just outside the voting booths, the hundred or so journalists and photographers crushed to the front the moment the president appeared before the microphone. A cameraman climbed on my back to get off a shot. Soldiers barred the doors as Chavez left. Outside, barrio residents had gathered in a frenzy of hero worship as the media banged on the metal gates and shouted to bet let out. When the gates opened a mad wave of television cameras and reporters gushed out, everyone straining to get close to Chavez, to ask a question, take a final photo. Our wave swirled into the mass of red-shirted, dancing Chavez supporters delirious in the presence of their savior held at bay by the armed presidential escort. As Chavez’ motorcade left and the waters subsided a Brazilian journalist tugged my arm and with a beaming face showed me a photograph in his small digital camera. “I got a picture of him,” he said.

The Man won

At 4 a.m. Monday there was a banging on my apartment door. It was my neighbour. “Chavez won, Chavez won.” Rain was falling in torrents. I called a cab that hushed through the empty mirrored streets to downtown. The cab’s radio was on and Chavez was rolling into his victory speech. I put my tape recorder over the back speakers. “The people have spoken with the voice of God.” The cab driver stopped near an alley that led to Miraflores, the presidential palace. There, aglow in television lights that turned each raindrop into a sliver needle, Chavez stood in a balcony, the Venezuelan flag draped over the railing. “The Man won, the Man won,” screamed a dancing woman into my tape recorder. It was a controlled riot of ecstasy. A fire dancer twirled a flaming baton that seemed impervious to the water that had drenched my shirt to the skin.

I thought we were going to win

At 6 a.m. I walked by a Catholic church in central Caracas. The rain had subsided and through the open door I could see several people standing, rosaries in hand, heads bowed. A man walked out. He was from Catia, a working-class neighbourhood with a thriving black market of electronics, gold and pirated DVDs. He had tears in his eyes. He voted against Chavez. “I thought we were going to win,” he said.

Psychic's proximity to PM made Christians queasy

(Spiked)

By Jorge Barrera (2006)
the cutting room floor

The presence of a psychic who claims to commune with angels and the dead in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's entourage has caused concern in some Christian circles.

While the prime minister has made light of the issue in the House of Commons, the spiritual activities of his image consultant has made those who take the unseen world seriously a bit queasy.

"The Christian Church in general would have some degree of concern with any dimension of occultic activity," said David Hazzard, assistant superintendent for the Pentecostal Assemblies Across Canada. "I do not know what she is involved in, but the Biblical world view recognizes the reality of spiritual power."

Friends of Harper's image consultant Michelle Muntean say she communicates with angels who relay messages from the dead, according to reports.

Harper's office has said they do not pay Muntean for any psychic work and that she is on as part-time staff.

Opposition parties have been clamouring for details on how much she is paid and the NDP has filed a formal request to obtain the information.

Muntean, a former television makeup artist with CBC, recently traveled with the prime minister to the Vimy Ridge ceremonies in France. She selects the prime minister's suits and adjusts his ties to ensure he projects the proper image for the cameras.

Charles McVety, president of the Family Action Coalition and head of a Christian college, said Harper should be concious of his Christian constituency.

"It is very dangerous to meddle with the occult and this goes over like a lead balloon in the Christian community," he said. "Having a psychic as an image advisor is a negative that could cost him at the polls if he doesn't do something to correct it."

If Harper does consult the spirits, he wouldn't be the first prime minister to seek other-worldly guidance. Prime Minister Mackenzie King had conversations with his dead mother and dog.

Former prime minister Jean Chretien's wife Aline consulted psychic JoJo Savard and Nancy Reagan looked to an astrologer.

The spoils of war; A Baghdad story plays out in Canadian courts

(Richard Galustian and a SkyLink employee Mike Douglas in happier days)




RAW
(The following story is from 2009. It was found on the cutting room floor. Note, Ontario court ruled against Galustian who appealed. Galustian won one appeal in US court. He contacted me recently and said he was still fighting the case.)

By Jorge Barrera (2009)

the cutting room floor

A former top U.S. official involved with the reconstruction of Iraq and the subsidiary of a Canadian firm operating in that country were the subject of a probe by the U.S. military’s major corruption fraud unit, according to allegations contained in an Ontario lawsuit launched by a British security contractor.

Richard Galustian, a security contractor who worked for the U.S. government in Iraq, launched the multi-million dollar lawsuit against SkyLink Group of Companies, senior company officers, subsidiaries of the firm, a former employee and retired Col. John Holly, the former director of logistics in Iraq for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.

Galustian alleges in an affidavit filed in support of the lawsuit that Holly and agents acting for SkyLink Group were involved in the creation and dissemination of a fake Iraqi warrant for Galustian’s arrest.

The affidavit alleges that the warrant was used to force him into dropping a demand for a 10 per cent stake in SkyLink Arabia Galustian claims he was promised. The warrant put Galustian’s life in danger in Iraq, wrecked his business reputation and drove him out of the country, the affidavit alleges.

SkyLink Arabia was a subsidiary of Toronto-based SkyLink Aviation, which was part of SkyLink Group of Companies, according to court documents filed as part of the lawsuit.

SkyLink Aviation and SkyLink Arabia provide transportation services with operational expertise in high risk regions.

SkyLink Aviation landed a $36 million contract last year to provide six Mi8 helicopters for use by the Canadian military in Afghanistan.

Galustian has also launched a defamation lawsuit in the U.S. against Lawrence Peter, the director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq (PSCAI), over the distribution of the arrest warrant to the association’s members, military officials and diplomats in Iraq.

The meeting with the FBI

Galustian, owner of ISI International, said in an interview he discussed the relationship between Holly and SkyLink Arabia for “several hours” with investigators from the F.B.I. and the military during an August 2008 encounter in London. He would not reveal details on the record, but said the investigators were interested in dealings between Holly and SkyLink Arabia.

“They asked about Holly and SkyLink,” said Galustian in an interview with the cutting room floor.

The investigators also discussed the 16-page affidavit which was filed last July with the Ontario Superior Court as part of the ongoing, multi-million dollar lawsuit seeking damages for slander, libel, breach of fiduciary duty and conspiracy among other claims, Galustian said. The affidavit said the allegations made by Galustian in his U.S. court fight drew the attention of federal and military investigators.

Galustian was contacted last summer by Scott R. Wilk, special agent in charge of the Middle East Major Fraud Field Office, who asked him to meet and discuss Holly and firms involved in the reconstruction of Iraq, the affidavit said. Wilk was “investigating the PSCAI, certain PSCAI members and (John) Holly,” Galustian states in the affidavit.

Galustian filed a paper copy of a July 6, 2008, email from Wilk with the court.

“I understand you have a ongoing lawsuit concerning PSCAI and John Holley. I’m the Special Agent in Charge of the Major Corruption Fraud Unit for the Middle East and I would like to see if I could meet you in Dubai to set up a meeting to discuss information regarding PSCAI and members of that organization as well as Holley (sic),” wrote Wilk at 1:20 p.m. from email address scott.wilk@iraq.centcom.mil. The subject line of the email read “RE: Meeting.”

Galustian said he never met with Wilk, but the London meeting stemmed from Wilk’s initial invitation.

Wilk did not respond to a request for comment.

The F.B.I. agent involved in the discussion with Galustian did not respond to requests for comment.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Holly resigned from his post on Sept. 3, 2008, said U.S. Army Corp of Engineers spokesperson Suzanne Fournier.

No statement of defence has been filed by the defendants in response to the affidavit.

“No one has admitted anything in the public record,” said Arthur Hamilton, a lawyer with Toronto firm Cassels Brock and Blackwell who is representing SkyLink Group. “There is no concession to anything that has been said so far.”

A lawyer who has acted for Holly, Phil Tunley from Toronto firm Stockwoods LLP Barristers, refused to comment.

A statement of defence filed by SkyLink Group in response to Galustian’s original 2006 lawsuit claims no deal was ever made to hand Galustian 10 per cent of SkyLink Arabia.

SkyLink Group, which said it was the “parent company” of SkyLink Arabia, also claimed it had no “assets, conducts no operational activities” and “is not involved in any business activities in the Middle East,” according to the 2006 statement of defence.

Fantastical...far-fetched

Galustian’s claims were called “fantastical... far-fetched” and “a complete fabrication,” in a memorandum filed last year by Peter as part of his defence against the U.S. lawsuit filed by Galustian with the U.S. District Court, Eastern Virginia District.

That lawsuit is currently on appeal after the federal judge ruled Iraq would be a more appropriate venue for the case.

The arrest warrant

What began as a Canadian lawsuit over an alleged broken promise for 10 per cent of SkyLink Arabia in 2006 ballooned into a two country legal battle after an Iraqi warrant for Galustian’s arrest surfaced in 2007.

Galustian claims his lawyer, George Karayannides, a Toronto partner with Heenan Blaikie, received a copy of the warrant on Jan. 30, 2007, from a SkyLink Group lawyer. While the Jan. 25 dated warrant — a copy of the original and a translation were filed in court — made no mention of a charge, Galustian alleges that the SkyLink Group lawyer informed Karayannides that Galustian was wanted on “allegations of terrorism.”

“I was incensed by this outrageous and obviously false warrant,” said Galustian, in the affidavit.

The British Foreign Office investigated the warrant and interviewed the judge whose name was affixed to the document. The judge said the signature was not his, that he was not working that day, and that “he suspected that the police were involved” in its creation because the court stamp used on the document was genuine.

Galustian alleges in the affidavit that a “sworn translator” in Baghdad by the name of Riadh Al-Hasan said that he received the original stamped warrant for translation from a SkyLink Arabia employee.

A Baghdad consultant for SkyLink Group, acting on a request from a firm employee, bribed “or coerced” an Iraqi police officer into forging the warrant, Galustian alleges in his affidavit. The warrant was then handed to Holly who passed it on to Peter on Feb. 6, 2007, for distribution, the affidavit alleges.

Holly was “aware that the warrant was a forgery,” but acted because he had been promised Galustian’s 10 per cent interest in SkyLink Arabia as part of a side deal with parent company SkyLink Group, the affidavit alleges.

In an affidavit sworn by Holly and filed with the federal court in Virginia, the former Marine said he never had “any business or ownership interest in SkyLink Arabia or any private security company.” Holly also claims he played no role in the awarding of contracts in Iraq.

Holly does admit he passed the warrant to Peter after it was reviewed by a U.S. Army Corp of Engineers lawyer “because it potentially affected the operations of private security companies in Iraq.”

When contacted by the cutting room floor, an employee with SkyLink Arabia said his firm was part of SkyLink Aviation, before denying it a short while later once he learned he was speaking with a journalist.

U.S. private equity firm Apollo Investment is currently finishing off a deal to purchase majority shares in SkyLink Aviation from SkyLink Group.

Apollo would not comment on the lawsuit or its deal for SkyLink Aviation. The deal, however, was confirmed by a spokesperson for SkyLink Group and the Department of Defence, which received a letter last November advising the department of the deal.

The impact of the Apollo deal on the lawsuit remains unclear.

The New York Times reported in February that U.S. federal authorities were investigating senior American military officers as part of a probe into graft around the $124 billion reconstruction of Iraq. The Times reported that investigators were examining the activities of two senior military officials — who were named — and reviewing information offered by an American arms dealer and contractor who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

'They tortured him, they stomped on him'

Bashir Makthal in undated photo

(Don't really know why this particular story never made it. There have been others about Bashir.)


By Jorge Barrera (2009)
the cutting room floor

The Conservative government needs to do more to free a Canadian man facing a life sentence in Ethiopia or he may end up like his older brother whose death last Friday was caused by torture suffered in prison, says a relative living in Addis Ababa.

Bashir Makhtal, 40, an ethnic Somali born in Ethiopia who emigrated to Canada as a teenager, was sentenced in August by an Ethiopian court to life in prison on terrorism charges. An appeal court hearing of his case was scheduled for Friday, the relative said. Makhtal denies all charges. The Conservative government has also pledged to work on bringing the Toronto resident home.

Makhtal’s 29-year-old niece, however, said the government should work faster to free him because his life faces increased danger the longer he remains in prison.

The woman, who only wanted the name Fadamuk used because she feared government reprisals, said her prayers for Makhtal have turned more urgent after watching her uncle — Makhtal’s older brother — die last Friday, three months after his prison release.

Hassan Ahmed Makhtal, in his late 50s, died from various complications caused by the torture he endured in prison, said the niece, who cared for her uncle in his last days.

“They tortured him, they stomped on him ... there was a big bruise on his head and it was from being hit with the butt of a gun,” she said, through an interpreter during a telephone interview with cutting room floor from her home in Addis Ababa Friday. “He was in pain ever since he came out ... he could not fold his legs without feeling pain, there were bruises all over his skin, there were green and blue bruises.”

She said Makhtal’s body was so broken when he came out of prison a doctor who examined him asked whether he had been in a car accident.

Imprisoned in 2007, Makhtal was kept in a dark, dirt-floor prison cell. Prison guards drenched the floor with water so he would be forced to drink mud to quench his thirst, she said.

“His advice was for the Makhtal family to flee this place, that they will never be safe here,” Fadamuk said. “They use to tell him that his family was all gone and dead.”

Only Fadamuk and another woman attended Makhtal’s burial. The rest of the family was either in prison, like Makhtal’s 16-year-old son and Bashir Makhtal, or had fled to Kenyan refugee camps and to other parts unknown. Fadamuk said her own children fled with their grandmother three years ago.

She now survives on a little money from a relative in Canada and keeps a low profile, not even daring to venture to the local Internet cafe to sign up for an email address.

Fadamuk said the Ethiopian government has persecuted the Makhtals because a family patriarch was the founder of the Ogaden National Liberation front, a group committed to gaining independence from Ethiopia.




Bashir Makhtal, who was born in the Ogaden region, was detained by Kenyan authorities in December 2006 when he tried to cross into the country from Somalia.

He was one of about 100 foreigners arrested at the same time, all of them accused of belonging to fundamentalist Islamic terror organizations.



Most of those detained have since been repatriated by their governments.

“Why is Bashir the only foreign national that his government has not come to him?” said Fadamuk. “Even African governments that don’t give any aid to Ethiopia and they came to have their citizens released. Why has Bashir’s not come for him?”

Makhtal was deported without due process to Ethiopia in January 2007, where he remains.




Ottawa-based human rights activist Fowsia Abdulkadir, who acted as the interpreter during the interview with Fadamuk, said it’s time for the Conservative government to get tougher with Ethiopia, which received over $85 million in aid from Canada in 2006-2007.

“Where does the aid go? Does it go to the people who need it or is the government using it to build a military machinery that oppresses people?” said Abdulkadir, who has campaigned for Makhtal’s release and is a member of the Ogaden Human Rights Committee.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government is growing increasingly more repressive, clamping down on civil liberties and snuffing dissent, according to critics at home and abroad.

“Neighbourhood-level ‘cadres’ report minor occurrences ... including residents’ whereabouts and visitors,” reported Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group in September. “Barely visible to outsiders and foreigners, this (government) party control discourages dissent and constantly reminds people who is in charge.”

Canwest (oops!) Sun Media reporter caught in Stoffer-Duffy shrapnel; Sen. Brazeau is offended

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=172525808727&ref=nf


Leftist Media

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Today at 8:11pm

On November 5, 2009, I received a call from reporter, Althia Raj of CanWest media regarding a two-part article she was doing on the Senate.

In the article published the same day entitled, "NDP: 27 new Tory senators will cost $177M". According to NDP MP, Peter Stoffer, these are the calculations he came up with.

Here are the questions the reporter asked me directly:

1) What do you make of the NDP assertion?
2) Are the calculations accurate?
3) Is there anything else you would like to add?

Here were my direct responses to the reporter:

1) First, Mr. Stoffer was walking around the Senate offices last week looking for extra Canadian flags and pins, which I gladly provided him with. Second, it's nice to see the NDP has extra time on their hands to undertake such an initiative given the fact that what really matters to Canadians is the economy and H1N1, as we speak. Third, it's no surprise to anyone the NDP would target the Senate given the fact that NDP members would likely never serve in the Senate. Fourth, the NDP should do their homework and see that one of the mandates of the Senate is to represent the interests of minority groups across Canada, including Aboriginal peoples so would abolishing the Senate reflect the needs and aspirations of Canadians who are minorities? Fifth, the NDP should ask themselves what it is costing taxpayers in Canada to have the Bloc Quebecois in our federal parliament? The NDP should be accountable and answer this question to all Canadians because they were the ones less than a year ago who were willing to support a coalition with a separatist party for their own self-serving interests at the cost of taxpayers. Lastly, if the NDP wants to focus on the cost of the Canadian Senate, lets compare the cost of the Senate vs the House of Commons.

2) The Conservative Party of Canada is the only party in Canada that supports reforming the Senate. Prime Minister Harper has attempted to introduce legislation in the past to reform the Senate only to be rejected by the Liberals. Earlier this year, the government introduced legislation to set term limits to 8 years in the Senate and all 27 newly appointed Conservative Senators, including myself are committed to working towards Senate reform to make this instituion more accountable and reflective of the needs of Canadians.

The reporter stated in her article, "But 34-year-old Sen. Patrick Brazeau, who would earn $9.4 million according to NDP calculations, promised he wouldn’t stay in the Senate that long.“(Stoffer’s) numbers are deeply skewed and are not applicable,” Brazeau said.

It's important to bring context to my quote, which the reporter failed to do. The figures of NDP MP Peter Stoffer includes all 27 new Senators serving until the age of 75 years of age. However, if we are successful in passing our legislation to limit term limits to 8 years, these fugures are absolutely not accurate and skewed. Moreover, the reporter writes, "But 34-year-old Sen. Patrick Brazeau...promised he wouldn’t stay in the Senate that long." I never promised anything to anyone but I did commit to doing what I can to help pass our government's Senate reform legislation.

What did it cost taxpayers in Canada when a busload of Liberal Senators were appointed? Did the NDP raise this then?

It's sad in this day and age when reporters ask specific questions during an interview and one takes the time to answer openly, honestly and in good faith. However, those same reporters fail to properly report the reponses given and miserably fail to bring context to what they publish. I suppose it's all about selling papers and giving themselves credibility. Luckily, most Canadians see through todays media and call it for what it's worth.

3) I had nothing else to add.

Regardless, the Conservative Party of Canada supports Senate reform. Perhaps the more interesting article should have been: why doesn't the Liberal Party? Maybe it could have been why the NDP has so much time on their hands to have an opinion on the Senate? I'll digress, as I have just answered my own questions.

They are going to shoot

Voices from cyberspace: how Burma's bloggers are bearing witness to the unfolding revolution
Published: 27 September 2007

Dawn 109,Rangoon

A lot of rumours are flying around Yangon [Ran goon]. I am getting awfully paranoid. The military has been ordered to shoot. I heard... that "they have been ordered to shoot." Even now, a co-worker is saying: "They are going to shoot." I just saw with my own eyes that more than 500 monks... have marched on Bo Gyoke Aung Sand Road. There were other people too, walking along the side, holding hands, holding Buddhist flags, singing and clapping hands. They were chanting: "To the uncountable living beings living in uncountable universes to the east, May they be free of danger, May they be free of anger, May they be free of sufferings, andMay their hearts be calm and peaceful. May there be peace on earth."

Kto Hike

All over Rangoon, thousands of people are marching on foot, some on bikes, from 26th Street to 33rd Street. Soldiers in police uniforms are using tear gas bombs, officers are shouting orders to fire just above peoples' heads. Guns are firing continuously. Students from Main University Road are now marching towards 80th Street. On 26 September, a Buddhist monk was beaten to death by plain-clothed thugs while he was praying at the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in the centre of Rangoon. The dead body was carried back to the Sadu Monastery in Kyee Myindine. My part-time duty is working on Emergency YGH... at about 2 pm, 5 patients were coming to our Emergency... for gun shot wounds... 1 patient died on spot on arriving at hospital... 4 r still bad in Diagnosis... The patient's attendant said he was not in d line of protest... they were chatting and watching d protest line and sitting on Cafe Bar near Shawe Dagon Pagoda... Government military car was crossing to d protest line and randomly shot all of them...

Sein Khaloke

Buddhist monks are chanting: "All humans be free from killing and torturing, Our compassion and love spread all over country" and "Peace on earth".

Mya, Rangoon

A monk who took part in the protests came to us and told us about his experiences. He said: "We are not afraid, we haven't committed a crime, we just say prayers and take part in the protests. We haven't accepted money from onlookers although they offered us a lot. We just accept water. People clapped, smiled and cheered us." The monk seemed very happy, excited and proud. But I'm worried for them. They care for us and we pray for them not to get harmed.

Mg Khar, Rangoon

The current situation can lead to civil war because the junta still holds the power and the opposition might use this opportunity to launch an armed struggle. We want things to change peacefully, not through a civil war. But if there's no way to avoid the armed struggle, the people will choose it and the conditions in our poor country may become worse. International pressure, including from China and Russia, is very important for the future of Burma at this moment.

Soe Soe, Mandalay

I am not sure where these protests are going to lead, but I am sure it's not at a good sign. Many people are expecting a great change soon. I am not sure if the monks will be joined by students, workers, or even soldiers. We are very insecure because we don't know what the government is planning. There is some news in the government-controlled newspapers that the monks are trying to agitate the public. This can be a big excuse for them to start attacking the monks. I hope there won't be any bloodbath this time like there was in 1988.

Kyi Kyi, Rangoon

I am really sorry for our country and our people because we are under the control of the wicked junta. We haven't got arms, we wish for peace, a better future and democracy. We are hoping that the UN Security Council will put a pressure on the junta. We are so afraid.

David, Rangoon

Now the junta is reducing the internet connection bandwidth and we have to wait for a long time to see a page. Security forces block the route of demonstrations. Yesterday, the junta told people in Rangoon and Mandalay not to leave their houses from 9pm to 5am. I think if the junta decides, they will cut off communication.

Thila, Rangoon

Riot police and soldiers are beating monks and protesters at the east gate of Shwedagon Pagoda. They are starting a crackdown by all means. Regardless of this, just after noon, about 1,000 monks from a nearby monastery started a march to Shwedagon Pagoda.

Yi, Rangoon

I saw a truck full of police with guns, which looked like AK47. The military junta has been making us miserable for nearly two decades.

Eyewitness, Rangoon

Riot police started to chase the monks and beat them up. Then about 200 were hauled off onto the trucks and driven away. About 80 monks were taken away.

the revolution

will now be frenetic

what to make of this

Much transpires in Caledonia of late.

Rainin' in paradise

Canada tried to "bribe" African countries to reject U.N. decleration on indigenous rights: CanWest

Last week, after the African countries announced their support for the revised document, a senior official with the African Indigenous Caucus accused Canada of having tried to use aid as a bribe to keep them on side.

"By approaching Africa, which had so many problems, and trying to use aid as a tool, Canada was committing a crime," said Joseph Ole Simel, caucus co-ordinator, according to UN note-takers.

Stonechild murdered over gun deal?

Stonechild killed over gun deal, hearing told

Darren Bernhardt

CanWest News Service

Thursday, September 13, 2007

SASKATOON -- The notorious freezing death of Neil Stonechild 17 years ago was a murder calculated to keep him from testifying at a trial, and had nothing to do with police, a commission hearing was told Wednesday.

A career criminal, known as X to protect his identity, told the Saskatchewan Police Commission in Saskatoon that a gun deal gone bad led to Stonechild's murder by a man against whom he was scheduled to testify.

A second man set to testify about the ill-fated deal was shot dead four months later, X added.

"I never ever heard anything about the cops. If they took him to a field and kicked the shit out of him, there'd be somebody making a fuss about it (in the prison system)," he said.

The first time he heard of possible police involvement was "on the news" when the story broke in early 2000, said X.

The 34-year-old is in a federal penitentiary and appeared Wednesday handcuffed on the stand. His former cell mate was the person against whom Stonechild, 17, and the other man were to testify, he claimed. The cell mate, known as AA, either performed the killings himself or ordered them after learning the men "ratted him out," said X.

"He (Stonechild) was taken out of town and beat up. That's what I heard. He (AA) basically said all rats should be dead and they got what they deserved," said X. "And he said Neil was lucky that's all he got."

Asked what that meant, X replied: "Freezing to death rather than a bullet to the head."

Back in the 1990s in Saskatoon, AA and his brother and their friends were feared by everyone, said X, who worked for them by delivering drugs, kicking in doors to collect on debts, "protecting hookers and holding guns to people's heads," he said.

"It was known by everyone that if you went against (AA and his brother), you paid the price," he said, adding, "I'm risking my life by sitting here now."

He learned of AA's link to Stonechild in 1996 but never went to police out of fear of retribution. His family begged him not to testify Wednesday but X said he's no longer afraid of AA.

"I've tooken (taken) my licks. I'm at the same calibre now," he said.

Climate change nothing special: 500 scientists

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.

Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.

Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."

The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.

"We have had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."

"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." "There may have been a consensus of guesses among climate model-builders," says Singer. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause." He noted that about 70 percent of the earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.

The historic evidence of the natural cycle includes the 5000-year record of Nile floods, 1st-century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and more cloudiness during the Little Ice Age. The physical evidence comes from oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, tiny sea and pollen fossils, and ancient tree rings. The evidence recovered from ice cores, sea and lake sediments, cave stalagmites and glaciers has been analyzed by electron microscopes, satellites, and computers. Temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period on California's Whitewing Mountain must have been 3.2 degrees warmer than today, says Constance Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, based on her study of seven species of relict trees that grew above today's tree line.

Singer emphasized, "Humans have known since the invention of the telescope that the earth's climate variations were linked to the sunspot cycle, but we had not understood how. Recent experiments have demonstrated that more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth create more or fewer of the low, cooling clouds that deflect solar heat back into space-amplifying small variations in the intensity of the sun.

Avery and Singer noted that there are hundreds of additional peer-reviewed studies that have found cycle evidence, and that they will publish additional researchers' names and studies. They also noted that their book was funded by Wallace O. Sellers, a Hudson board member, without any corporate contributions

one of Canada's greatest poets

SAMUEL HEARNE IN WINTERTIME

John Newlove

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I.	In this cold room I remember the smell of manure on men's heavy clothes as good, the smell of horses. It is a romantic world to readers of journeys to the Northern Ocean- especially if their houses are heated to some degree, Samuel. Hearne, your camp must have smelled like hell whenever you settled down for a few days of rest and journal-work: hell smeared with human manure, hell half-full of raw hides, hell of sweat, Indians, stale fat, meat-hell, fear-hell, hell of cold.
2.	One child is back from the doctor's while the other one wanders about in dirty pants and I think of Samuel Hearne and the land - puffy children coughing as I think, crying, sick-faced, vomit stirring in grey blankets from room to room. It is Christmastime the cold flesh shines. No praise in merely enduring.
3.	Samuel Hearne did more in the land (like all the rest full of rocks and hilly country, many very extensive tracts of land, tittimeg, pike and barble, and the islands: the islands, many of them abound as well as the main land does with dwarf woods, chiefly pine in some parts intermixed with latch and birch) than endure. The Indians killed twelve deer. It was impossible to describe the intenseness of the cold.
4.	And, Samuel Hearne, I have almost begun to talk as if you wanted to be gallant, as if you went through that land for a book - as if you were not SAM, wanting to know, to do a job.
5.	There was that Eskimo girl at Bloody Fall, at your feet, Samuel Hearne, with two spears in her, you helpless before your helpers, and she twisted about them like an eel, dying, never to know.

Omar Khadr

The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr

JEFF TIETZ / Rolling Stone 24aug2007

He was a child of jihad, a teenage soldier in bin Laden's army. Captured on the battlefield when he was only fifteen, he has been held at Guantanamo Bay for the past four years — subjected to unspeakable abuse sanctioned by the president himself Jeff Tietz

In July 2002, a Special Forces unit in southeast Afghanistan received intelligence that a group of Al Qaeda fighters was operating out of a mud-brick compound in Ab Khail, a small hill town near the Pakistani border. The Taliban regime had fallen seven months earlier, but the rough border regions had not yet been secured. When the soldiers arrived at the compound, they looked through a crack in the door and saw five men armed with assault rifles sitting inside. The soldiers called for the men to surrender. The men refused. The soldiers sent Pashto translators into the compound to negotiate. The men promptly slaughtered the translators. The American soldiers called in air support and laid siege to the compound, bombing and strafing it until it was flat and silent. They walked into the ruins. They had not gotten far when a wounded fighter, concealed behind a broken wall, threw a grenade, killing Special Forces Sgt. Christopher Speer. The soldiers immediately shot the fighter three times in the chest, and he collapsed. When the soldiers got close, they saw that he was just a boy. Fifteen years old and slightly built, he could have passed for thirteen. He was bleeding heavily from his wounds, but he was — unbelievably — alive. The soldiers stood over him.

"Kill me," he murmured, in fluent English. "Please, just kill me."

His name was Omar Khadr. Born into a fundamentalist Muslim family in Toronto, he had been prepared for jihad since he was a small boy. His parents, who were Egyptian and Palestinian, had raised him to believe that religious martyrdom was the highest achievement he could aspire to. In the Khadr family, suicide bombers were spoken of with great respect. According to U.S intelligence, Omar's father used charities as front groups to raise and launder money for Al Qaeda. Omar's formal military training — bombmaking, assault-rifle marksmanship, combat tactics — before he turned twelve. For nearly a year before the Ab Khail siege, according to the U.S. government, Omar and his father and brothers had fought with the Taliban against American and Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan. Before that, they had been living in Jalalabad, with Osama bin Laden. Omar spent much of his adolescence in Al Qaeda compounds.

(More)

Curious Fisk article

Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11
Published: 25 August 2007

Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".

His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.

Usually, I have tried to tell the "truth"; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. "We disrupted al-Qa'ida, causing them to run," Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named "Operation Lightning Hammer" in Iraq's Diyala province. "Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them." And more of the same, all of it untrue.

Within hours, al-Qa'ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush's more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.

But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.

Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.

All that is alive merely evaporates

Russia unveils its ‘vacuum bomb'

Reuters

September 11, 2007 at 5:21 PM EDT

MOSCOW — Russia has tested the world's most powerful vacuum bomb, an explosive device unleashing a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear weapon, the military said on Tuesday.

The bomb is the latest in a series of new Russian weapons and policy moves unveiled as President Vladimir Putin tries to reassert Moscow's role on the international stage.

"Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon," Alexander Rukshin, Russian deputy armed forces chief of staff, told Russia's ORT First Channel television.

"You will now see it in action, the bomb which has no match in the world is being tested at a military site," the state-controlled channel said. It showed a Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber dropping the bomb over a testing ground. A large explosion followed.

Pictures followed of what looked like a flattened multi-storeyed block of flats, surrounded by scorched soil and boulders.

"The defence ministry stresses this military invention does not contradict a single international treaty. Russia is not unleashing a new arms race," the channel said.

Such devices generally detonate in two stages. First a small blast disperses a main load of explosive material into a cloud, which then either spontaneously ignites in air or is set off by a second charge.

This explosion generates a pressure wave that reaches much further than that from a conventional explosive. The consumption of gases in the blast also generates a partial vacuum that can compound damage and injuries caused by the explosion itself.

"The main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature," the report said. "All that is alive merely evaporates."

"At the same time, I want to stress that the action of this weapon does not contaminate the environment, in contrast to a nuclear one," Mr. Rukshin said.

Poetry is...

By Poet Stephen Brockwell

I hesitate to start with definitions, but it’s fair that you understand what I mean when I talk about poems, poets, and poetics. Many take these terms for granted, but the residual math student in my brain can’t resist searching for useful, stab-in-the-dark definitions of these terms. For the sake of inclusiveness (which will be of value later), I think of a poem as a gathering of gestures that a spectator (visual) or audience (auditory) – reader, viewer, listener – experiences as “poetic.” The Greek root of the word poesis suggests making or creating, but I prefer the implied reciprocity of gathering. A poem is never simply made up, never created from nothing; it is always assembled, put together from parts. This is, of course, true at many levels – the simplest, sound and word, are the subjects of this session; the increasingly elaborate gatherings, and gatherings of gatherings, we’ll think about later: line, sentence, utterance, trope, form, poem.

But let’s return to the gestures. I’ve said that I want to be inclusive – I want to include visual poetry, dance, painting, architecture. It may seem too inclusive to use the word gesture for the raw material of poems. But I don’t believe it would be wise to draw sharp distinctions at this point. Do we want to demand, for example, that a tone poem should simply be called a symphony? Do we want to insist that the calligraphic script of traditional haiku serves only as ornament? Do we want to draw a fixed boundary between poetry and song, and thus excise medieval ballads and Shakespeare’s songs from our repertoire of poems? I don’t think we learn much by drawing such boundaries without first thinking about what might be lost if we do.

A gathering of gestures is poetic if it holds certain aesthetic properties that would be absent if the gestures were gathered differently, or if they were presented by themselves. Let me point out that this notion of a poem hearkens back to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy. In The Poetics, Aristotle defined tragedy as an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude. Some might say that a work of art is poetic if it is whole, indivisible, and integral, or that it should be open, ambiguous, and inventive. The important point is this: the pleasure in a gathering of gestures depends on the spectator or audience. Poetry is ultimately subjective – no single human can authoritatively pass unequivocal judgments on a poem or a body of work. Besides, passing judgment is not the poet’s primary function; passing judgment is a secondary function as the poem’s first reader.

Poetics is the articulation of particular arts of gathering gestures. I like the sound of that, but I think it’s insufficient. It invites the lurking difficulty in this terminological exercise. What’s art?

I think of the poet as nothing but the poem’s first listener or reader, the person who for the first time takes up the gathering, beholds it, re-gathers it and takes it up again.

Poetry begins in the body as sound. The abdomen, diaphragm and lungs propel the breath; the larynx and vocal chords vibrate; the pharynx, oral, and nasal cavities resonate; the lips, tongue and palate articulate – wind, string and percussion in a single blood-and-bone box. Our subtle and elastic vocal apparatus is capable of a greater diversity of sound than any other acoustic instrument that I can think of (if you think of an acoustic instrument that can produce a wider diversity of sounds than the mouth in full flight, tell me). We have taught, or been taught by, our bones, tendons, cartilage, muscles, nerves and neurons to distinguish between ah and eh?, bah! and be, and to make art from such distinctions and their playful variations. The private reader who rides a bus, book-in-lap, whose swinging irises signal their immersion in a text, partakes of the sound of poetry even in silence. I would leave it to a neurologist to prove the following intuition: the act of reading stimulates the same parts of the nervous system that produce and recognize speech.

The first act that fastened sound to a thing, an action or a state of mind is almost certainly lost to us, which is too bad because it was the first mighty good poem. It's easy enough to think of the obvious: a cry of pain or pleasure becomes a sign for pain or pleasure; a … The fundamentals of an interesting poem would have found expression in the first utterances (if there was a big bang of language) – stimulating, memorable, contagiously repeatable sound, a mind-grabbing trope, speech: a poem.

Visual representation of sound ... think of the pictographic quality of hieroglyphics and oriental characters.

Tangible versus intelligible: a dog finds dirt tangible because it can put it in its mouth; it cannot make dirt intelligible. Is language necessary for intelligibility?

At the atomic level of sound, a poet needs to walk with his tongue in stop-motion through the spaces between one sound and another, between vowels in a diphthong, between the consonants in “diphthong”, and between syllables in a word. See Fenolossa on time and transitive verbs. See Ormsby on "Poetry as Isotope."

A poet is the kind of person who will, in the course of an hour or two, hunt for the longest, richest single syllable for the pure pleasure of feeling the sound in the mouth in the same way that a baby squishes applesauce in its fingers: blenched, droughts, fraught, strains, stretched, straights, strengths. A poet – and a decent reader of poetry – must enjoy the sound and taste of these words. Let me clarify what I mean by the taste of a word: I mean its mouth-feel, its physical presence in the mouth, its effect on the tongue over the only apparently brief moment of its existence between other words.

Word as act; word as thing. Certain words seem to resemble what they signify. The word stretch, for example, takes a long time to say. I've heard that the Dutch word for stretch has the same properties. Plato's dialog Cratylus concerns this topic. Cratylus believes that words were once much closer to things in themselves. Hermogenes believes that words are nothing but conventional associations between sounds and things that are established by agreement. I'm of the opinion that many poets are willful cratylists - they want to believe that poems invoke directly what they refer to. Some do; I have no doubt about it. By the way, this goes well beyond simple onomatopoeia. See Genette on Valery (and Cratylus).

Even if poets must accept the conventional nature of language, I think they do so grudgingly. A good poet compresses the distance between signifier and signified to a point, a white dwarf star that shines, out of view, like the phosphorus at the bottom of the sea in A. M. Klein's “Portrait of the Poet as Landscape.”

Things to consider for the workshop:

Carefully choose a single syllable word that you find particularly beautiful, ugly, sonorous or discordant. Describe the physical properties of the word in clear and simple language. Write a brief critique of the word; explain why you find the word heavy, light, gorgeous or gaudy.

Bp Nichol's “Drum and a Wheel” depends for its effect on an asymmetrical moving frame. Pick a simple phrase and put it through a similar procedure.

Think about Rimbaud's “Voyelles”. Pick a few of your favorite consonants and write a few lines for each.

References
bp Nichol's "Cycle #22"
Peter Van Toorn's translation of Rimbaud's Voyelles
Rimbaud's Voyelles
Eric Ormsby's essay "Poetry as Isotope"
Ernest Fenolossa "The Chinese Character as a Medium for Poetry"
Gerard Genette's "Valery and the Poetics of Language"
Louis Zukofsky's "Peri Poietikes"
George Johnston's "Shadowy"

Weston on the dance of the seven veils

Lifting veil on voting
Elections Canada enforcing changes Conservatives passed
By GREG WESTON

As Canadians mark the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Stephen Harper is apparently mad as hell over Islam's veiled voters, and isn't going to take it anymore.

What got the otherwise fun-loving PM fired up was a press release from Elections Canada stating veiled Muslim women will be able to vote in the coming federal byelections in Quebec.

Naturally, driver's licences and other photo ID used by most voters to confirm their identity at the polling booth are of little value with only a pair of eyes behind a Muslim niqab.

Instead, a Muslim woman not wanting to unveil can now qualify to vote by producing a second piece of non-photo identification approved by Elections Canada.

Alternatively, she would be entitled to a ballot if both she and another registered constituent in the same riding swore out affidavits.

The same rules will apply to all future federal elections.

"I profoundly disagree with the decision," Harper reportedly said at the end of his recent meetings with Pacific Rim leaders in Australia.

"I have to say that it concerns me greatly because the role of Elections Canada is not to make its own laws, it's to put in place the laws that Parliament has passed. So I hope they'll reconsider this decision."

Otherwise, the PM warned, "Parliament will have to consider what actions it's going to take to make sure that it's intentions are put into place."

CONTROVERSY

All of which sparked much heated controversy in other political quarters (and some truly lamentable journalism).

Quebec Premier Jean Charest wholeheartedly agreed with the PM, calling the matter a "bad decision."

Lawrence Cannon, the federal transport minister from Quebec, said: "Political correctness has superceded common sense. These are the kinds of things ordinary people don't understand."

One of the reasons ordinary folk might be confused is that most of the aforementioned commentary from Harper et al is at best misinformed.

Elections Canada didn't "decide" anything new.

In response to inquiries from reporters covering the federal byelections, the agency simply reiterated the government's "statutory requirements regarding the identification of electors wearing face coverings."

Far from the federal electoral office "making its own laws," as the PM claims, it is simply enforcing changes to the Elections Act passed by Harper's own government last year.

Those changes were based on hearings and an extensive report last year by a parliamentary committee which, in turn, was reviewing the 2005 recommendations of the then-chief electoral officer.

After all that, parliamentarians decided in their collective wisdom that the best way to deal with the veiled voter issue was to find other ways for Muslim women to vote.

If the prime minister "profoundly" disagreed with that decision, as he now says, he forgot to mention it at the time his government was passing the legislation.

The other problem legislators have recognized is there really isn't much of a problem.

More than 80,000 Canadians voted in the last election by mail-in ballot, no facial recognition required.

As numerous Muslim groups have been quick to point out in the past few days of controversy, there are maybe 50 women in all of Quebec who wear the eyes-only niqab.

And all of them, we are told, are used to showing their faces at banks and other places that require official identification.

Lift the veil on this issue and the problem is entirely in the eyes of beholders.

When the revolution starts to go off the rails

September 5, 2007
Caracas Journal
A Culture of Naming That Even a Law May Not Tame
By SIMON ROMERO

CARACAS, Venezuela, Sept. 4 — Goodbye, Tutankamen del Sol.

So long, Hengelberth, Maolenin, Kerbert Krishnamerk, Githanjaly, Yornaichel, Nixon and Yurbiladyberth. The prolifically inventive world of Venezuelan baby names may be coming to an end.

If electoral officials here get their way, a bill introduced last week would prohibit Venezuelan parents from bestowing those names — and many, many others — on their children.

The measure would not be retroactive. But it would limit parents of newborns to a list of 100 names established by the government, with exemptions for Indians and foreigners, and it is already facing skepticism in the halls of the National Assembly.

“I need to know how they would define those 100 names,” said Jhonny Owee Milano Rodríguez, a congressman representing Cojedes State. “For example, why not 120? This seems arbitrary to me.”

Mr. Milano, 55, said his first name, Jhonny, spelled as such, was inspired by the international ambience of the oil town in eastern Venezuela where he was born. Owee, he said, was erroneously entered in the birth registry instead of Oved.

The bill’s ambition, according to a draft submitted to municipal offices here for review, is to “preserve the equilibrium and integral development of the child” by preventing parents from giving newborns names that expose them to ridicule or are “extravagant or hard to pronounce in the official language,” Spanish.

The bill also aims to prevent names that “generate doubts” about the bearer’s gender.

Some of Mr. Milano’s colleagues in the National Assembly, which is controlled by supporters of President Hugo Chávez, include Iroshima Jennifer Bravo Quevedo, Earle José Herrera Silva and Grace Nagarith Lucena Rosendy. Legislators need to approve the bill before it becomes law.

Whimsical names can also be found in other Latin American countries. Honduras has first names like Ronald Reagan, Transfiguración and Compañía Holandesa (Dutch Company), according to the newspaper El Heraldo. In Panama, local news media this year reported name-change efforts by an Esthewoldo, a Kairovan and a Max Donald.

But Venezuela’s naming tradition rivals or exceeds that of its neighbors, many people here say. Some first names in Venezuela include Haynhect, Olmelibey, Yan Karll and Udemixon, according to a list compiled by the novelist Roberto Echeto.

Other names here easily roll off the tongue in English, like Kennedy or John Wayne, or in Russian, like Pavel or Ilich, reflecting influences from the cold war era.

Municipal clerks’ offices, where parents register their children, have become forums for debating the possible restrictions.

“The children of my cousins are named Keiserlin, Jeiserlin, Keifel, Yurubi, Arol Kiling,” said Leidy Marrero, 29, a budget analyst. Ms. Marrero named her newborn daughter Mariángela, combining María and Ángela.

“It’s a question of taste,” she said in an interview at the clerk’s office in the San Bernardino district of Caracas, explaining her opposition to the measure. “It is a parent’s right.”

Some parents exercise that right more liberally than others.

Software searches of the voter registry find more than 60 people of voting age with the first name Hitler, including Hitler Adonys Rodríguez Crespo; eight Hochiminhs, among them Hochiminh Jesús Delgado Sierra; and six Eisenhowers, including Dwight Eisenhower Rojas Barboza.

Unusual names in Venezuela are often grist for awe or humor, but the issue is also politicized, given President Chávez’s gusto for renaming things, with critics of the bill claiming it would enhance his government’s naming authority in a realm where the fancy of parents still holds sway.

One of the president’s first moves was to change the country’s name from Republic of Venezuela to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Part of Avenida Páez here has been renamed Avenida Teheran in a nod to Iran. The currency, the bolívar, is to be called the “bolívar fuerte,” or strong bolívar, starting next year.

In an editorial, the newspaper El Nacional described the measure as “malicious.”

The authorities may yet bend to public will. Germán Yépez, an official with the National Electoral Council, said the measure originated after children were given names like Superman and Batman. Still, he said in comments broadcast on radio, he welcomed “this type of positive reaction and suggestions.”

Not everyone denounces the bill. Temutchin del Espíritu Santo Rojas Fernández, 25, a computer programmer, explained that his first name was inspired by the birth name of Genghis Khan, often spelled Temujin in English. He said he frequently had to correct the spelling of his name on official documents.

And in Venezuela, where the tax authorities require name and national identity number for every purchase needing a receipt, pronouncing and spelling out Temutchin del Espíritu Santo can get tiring, Mr. Rojas Fernández said. “With a name this complicated, you lose time,” he said.

“It also creates social problems,” he continued. “When interacting with others, not everyone can pronounce your name. I have to pronounce my name five times and spell it twice.”

José Orozco contributed reporting.

The word "Exclusive"

just doesn't mean the same thing anymore.