"The great unanswered questions" about Barack Obama's relationship with William Ayers.

Please see the October 9, 2008 update, which is at the end of this post.
***********************************************
Today's post follows on yesterday's, which I titled The William Ayers plan to turn America's schoolchildren into Maoists and how Barack Obama helped him.

In the post, I posed a question for Professor Stephen Diamond, whose research and writing at Global Labor blog uncovered the real relationship between Obama and Ayers. My question was about Diamond's use of the term "authoritarian Leftist." I hoped he would clarify the term, which he did. He also raised deeply troubling questions.

"Pundita,
Thank you for your continuing interest in my writing on the Ayers-Obama connection.

Regarding your question about the nature of authoritarian leftists: well, in fact, these people are not, in my view, leftists at all but they pose as leftists. Instead they have a view of society which says that the only way to respond to inequality and other social problems is to impose, from above, radical restructuring that allows them to take the reins of social and political power. Probably the best essay on this issue ever written is The Two Souls of Socialism by Hal Draper. A copy can be read here.

Examples of “socialism from above” today are found in Cuba, China, North Korea, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. These are bureaucratic regimes that face deep-set problems of economic development but respond to them with authoritarian “solutions” that end up limiting the ability of those countries to advance economically or politically.

When capitalism enters into a crisis, which is more frequently than is widely accepted, then these authoritarian approaches tend to become more attractive. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the rise of authoritarian politics in Nicaragua during the period of Sandinista domination in the 1980s. A copy can be read here.

Of course, there are many examples of right-wing authoritarianism as well – the dictatorships throughout Latin America in the 60s and 70s, for example.

One of the tragic dynamics that emerges in these countries is a kind of symbiotic relationship between “left” and “right” wing authoritarians – they feed each other in ways that can lead to near genocidal results as in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s.

In my view, a genuine left would embrace democratic efforts to respond to social and economic problems. Thus, I support independent trade unions and human rights as a precondition for solving the problems of economic development in such countries.

Here in the United States I was genuinely shocked to learn of the dominance of variations of the FSLN [Sandinista National Liberation Front], Chavez or Maoist approach to politics inside our graduate schools of education.

During a recent academic conference on labor issues, I attended a panel on “social justice” education and heard firsthand from professors, a high school teacher and graduate students how this authoritarian model is (mis)used in the classroom.

It was an eye-opener. Just as Sol Stern has written, they still really do rely on the work of Paolo Freire (who developed an educational program to teach illiterate Brazilian peasants to read) as a model for 21st century Hispanic [U.S.] inner-city advanced-placement high school students headed to some of our best colleges and universities.

These students – a group of whom attended the conference session in question – come from working-class backgrounds and only a handful had parents who attended college. They attended an allegedly poorly performing inner-city Los Angeles high school and were apparently examples of “the oppressed,” to use Freire’s term and the one used by several of the panelists.

Yet in a generation the parents of these "oppressed" students had left destitute lives in Mexico and Central America and found a way for their children to enter the University of California system – despite the 'malicious' role of standardized tests. As I joked in one of my blogs, I could have skipped the (dangerous) fieldwork I undertook during a civil war in Nicaragua if I had known that I could have studied neo-stalinism right here at home!

Of course the joke is on us because these people have an undue influence over research and policy initiatives in education. For example, the President elect of AERA [American Educational Research Assn.] – of which Ayers is to be a Vice President in charge of Curriculum Studies – is Carol Lee, whose work has influenced the racialist rants of Jeremiah Wright.

The great unanswered questions are: what is the education policy of Senator Obama and what role is Bill Ayers playing today in shaping it?

My contribution to the debate has been to point out that there is a long and close relationship between Obama and Ayers precisely on the question of education policy – as evidenced by the Annenberg Challenge. I believe the campaign of Obama owes the American electorate an answer to that question.

I hope this is helpful. Please feel free to post my reply.

Sincerely,
Stephen Diamond"

It is very helpful, Professor Diamond. Thank you.

I also want to thank RezkoWatch and Larry Johnson's No Quarter for republishing yesterday's Pundita post. It's vital to alert the American public to Barack Obama's true relationship with William Ayers, yet the mainstream media have avoided the issue like the plague.

Interestingly, the two blogs mentioned above are known as a 'must read' for media people and politicos closely following the Democratic primary campaigns. It's interesting because despite the influence of these two blogs, news they've carried about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Obama and Ayer's connection to the project has not made it into the mainstream media. To my knowledge the news has not even gotten outside the blogosphere.

In any event, readers who want to stay on top of news about the Democratic primary campaigns are well advised to check in at least once a day at RezkoWatch and No Quarter, which boast excellent sources.

Also, I'm checking in daily with Steve Diamond's Global Labor blog, which I hope might provide a few more pieces of the Obama-Ayers relationship. And the blog features reports that relate to the issue of the authoritarian Left and its negative impact on the U.S. education system.
******************************************************
October 9, 2008; 9:30 AM Eastern Time UPDATE
I'm updating this post because of intense media/public attention to the William Ayers-Barack Obama relationship.

Much more has come to light about the relationship since I posted the above report. One of the people who has been driving this story is Steve Diamond.

If you already have some familiarity with the story, you might want to proceed to Diamond's October 6, 2008 post, Ayers/Obama Update: The David Blaine Award Goes to The New York Times Magic Act. The post, published at Diamond's Global Labor blog, has the best summary he's provided so far of Ayers' educational theories and how Obama has served to promote them.

The catch is that the summary is presented as part of Diamond's ongoing discussion of how The New York Times has continued to suppress and distort his investigation -- even though three reporters from the paper have recently interviewed him several times.

(I note with sarcasm that Diamond watchers know that this state of affairs represents an improvement since May, when the Times ignored his letter to them about his research on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the work that Ayers and Obama did for it.)

The negligence of the U.S. press in reporting on Ayers' theories and Obama's relationship with him is a story unto itself; it's perhaps the strongest indictment to date of the present state of American journalism. But if you want to go straight to the summary, scroll down to the 14th paragraph of the October 6 report:

So what is the evidence of the influence of Ayers' world view on Obama and his presidential candidacy?

And read from there.

If you want to delve further into the story, you can start with Diamond's April 22, 2008 post, Who "Sent" Obama? and read forward from there. Not all his posts since that time are about the Ayers-Obama relationship and related matters, but the majority are.

If you get stuck at the discussion in the summary about reparations on account of refusing to believe your eyes, Diamond's May 24, 2008 post Apparently Obama does, indeed, support reparations will assure you that you read right the first time.

The posts at Global Labor are the very best background on all the issues touching upon the Ayers-Obama relationship. As far as I know only one other person, Sol Stern, is both knowledgeable enough to discuss Ayers' ideas in authoritative fashion and willing to speak up very frankly in public about them. (See my May 20 post, The William Ayers plan to turn America's schoolchildren into Maoists and how Barack Obama helped him, for more on Stern and links to his writings on Ayers' education ideas.)

Stanley Kurtz, the Conservative commentator who has studied Diamond's research and undertaken his own research on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Obama-Ayers relationship, has provided a helpful introduction in a September 23, 2008 report for the Wall Street Journal.

Yet Kurtz (who holds a PhD from Harvard in social anthropology) started his journey of discovery from outside the teaching profession and without a thorough background in the education ideas promoted by Ayer's and his colleagues.

One glance through Diamond's summary tells that Kurtz is still on a learning curve. He is not alone. The news media are so far behind Diamond that at this rate it will be 2015 before they catch up.

Barack Obama has banked on this great Cloud of Unknowing. And yet a reading of Diamond's summary reveals that this is not rocket science he's talking about; it's just that for years the mainstream media have avoided examining the education topics that Diamond and Stern discuss.

Those who have read Dr Diamond's October 6 summary might ask whether I have considered changing "Maoist" to "neo-Stalinist" in the title of the May 20 post as I have progressed on my own learning curve. The answer is no.

I will let political scientists such as Diamond parse the differences between neo-Stalinism and Maoism. In the end what does it matter if you refer to a death camp by a number, or name it the 'Bluebird School of Reeducation?' Stalinists, Maoists, Fidelistas, etc. -- they all boil down to a military-backed gang of thugs.

And my view is that William Ayers and Barack Obama are not ideologues of any stripe; I see them as totalitarians behind their word screens. They want unquestioning obedience to their commands; they want everyone to think and act in unison, and they know this can only be achieved through indoctrinating children.

Any doubts I had that Obama is a totalitarian were resolved a few days ago when I studied the “Positive Behavior for Effective Schools Act,” otherwise known as education bill S.2111, which was introduced by Obama.

The bill has not passed, as yet, but the wording is a clear indication that Obama's idea of child education is using the public school system to effect massive state intervention in every area of a child's life.

As to what exactly Obama means by "positive behavior" -- the bill does not spell it out. But study Steve Diamond's writings, and Sol Stern's, if you want to see behind Obama's screen of words about making American public school graduates better candidates for higher education and leveling the playing field for the nation's poorest children.

Finally, Obama's relationship with William Ayers is just one of many he developed with the far left/authoritarian stream of American politics. If you are just coming to a study of Obama's involvement with such Americans, the best place for orientation is the blog The Real Barack Obama (RBO), formerly RezkoWatch. (No Quarter is also a good source.)

The blog has amassed a thick dossier on Obama's web of political alliances, including those branching from his involvement with the convicted criminal Tony Rezko.

There are few puff pieces at RBO, and those few are to leaven the grim revelations. Many of the posts are original reports, which are meticulously researched and cross-referenced. The blog also acts as a relay station for daily media reports and opinion pieces on Obama's relationships.

I warn that once you start digging through RBO's archives you will be stunned at how much information the mainstream media has left unreported about Obama's relationships. Yet RBO is closely followed by mainstream news outlets working on Obama stories, so there is no question that the information has been ignored.

The Real Barack Obama, and Steve Diamond's Global Labor blog, are examples of citizen journalism at its finest.

The question, however, is how much longer American democracy can survive if its citizens cannot depend on professional journalists for accurate news on vital issues.

********

The William Ayers plan to turn America's schoolchildren into Maoists and how Barack Obama helped him

Also see the October 9 update, which is at the end of this post.
*********************************************

Characterizing the Weatherman as "an American Red Army," Ayers summed up the organization's ideology as follows: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents." (1)

"[In 2006] He continued to rail against his exclusion from the conference in an interview with the house organ of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, an interview printed right alongside some of the memorable sayings of the party’s Chairman for Life, Bob Avakian. Ayers complained to the RCP interviewer that the conference organizers were “taking the teeth out of the [progressive education] critique” and trying instead to “present progressive education as something nice and familiar.” (2)

In April 2008 Sol Stern, one of those tiresome ex-Leftists who do penance by ratting out former fellow travelers, dropped a bombshell on New York City's intellectual establishment:

[William] Ayers’s politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America’s future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.(3)

It gets even more interesting but here I pause to recount the intellectual establishment's immediate reaction, which to quote Mark Steyn in a somewhat different context was sprayed coffee, steaming pants and scalded crotches.

Yes, all over Manhattan's Upper West Side cheerful Starbucks assistants ran around mopping latte sprays from laptop screens and handing out wads of paper napkins to customers howling in pain.

It's not as if the intelligentsia didn't already know that William Ayers was bent on
transforming American schoolchildren into Manchurian Candidates. That was old news because in 2006 Sol Stern had publicized Ayers's education work.(4) The stunner was that Stern was not going to keep his mouth shut about Ayers during Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Now we'll return to Sol hurling thunderbolts:

Indeed, the education department at the University of Illinois is a hotbed for the radical education professoriate. As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K–12 teachers need to “be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation.”

Here I pause to clarify a smoggy term. Just what is "social justice?"

For the tourists, social justice means finding ways to make society more just for all. For William Ayers and other American pedagogical versions of the Weather Underground, social justice 'education' means using every subject taught in public school, including math and science, as a means to teach children that capitalism is evil and that anyone who supports the American way of life is going straight to hell.

Yet as Steve Diamond points out, Ayers and his fellow "authoritarian" Leftists in the teaching profession hide behind the generally understood concept of social justice. "... a meaningless [term] because the minute you challenge advocates of this approach they sound like Mom and Apple Pie liberals."(5)

What exactly is an "authoritarian" Leftist? I plan to write Professor Diamond to ask him that very question. But as near as I can figure, it seems to be his polite term for communists working toward the day when the last capitalist will be strangled to death with the guts of the last lily-livered socialist.

For those of us who've paid no attention to what American education experts have been up to in recent years:

Ayers’s texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation’s ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayers’s major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.

Here I'll pause Sol's narrative, so readers who have seen Barack Obama's most ardent followers can wipe coffee spray from their computer screen.

Yes, it's entirely possible that some of the youngest Obamatons were stuffed full of social justice teachings based on textbooks written by an unrepentant Maoist terrorist.

Better set your coffee away from the computer because we're about to follow Sol Stern into the Twilight Zone:

Unfortunately, neither Obama nor his critics in the media seem to have a clue about Ayers’s current work and his widespread influence in the education schools. In his last debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama referred to Ayers as a “professor of English,” an error that the media then repeated. Would that Ayers were just another radical English professor. In that case, his poisonous anti-American teaching would be limited to a few hundred college students in the liberal arts. But through his indoctrination of future K–12 teachers, Ayers has been able to influence what happens in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of classrooms.

Here, readers who recall my May 6 The truth about Barack Obama's association with William Ayers ... may wonder whether Sol is being coy with regard to what Barack Obama knows about William Ayers.

I wish I could say yes because the alternative explanation -- that Sol did not know the truth about the relationship at the time of the April writing -- is unsettling to the point of eerie.

Yet given Sol Stern's concern about William Ayers's education theories, and also that there is nothing in his 2006 writings about Ayers to suggest Sol knew about the Annenberg Challenge, I think we have to settle for the eerie explanation.

Sol's piece was published on April 23 by the City Journal, a quarterly magazine of the Manhattan Institute. Only the day before Steve Diamond had blown the lid off the Obama-Ayers relationship with Who "sent" Obama?

[...] in late 1994 or early 1995, Obama made what I think was probably the key move in his early career. He was named Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a $50 million grant program to funnel money into reform efforts at Chicago schools. It turns out that the architect of the Annenberg Challenge was Bill Ayers, who designed the grant proposal and shepherded it to success.

In two sentences, Diamond makes a mockery of the claim that Obama and Ayers had only a casual relationship. But again, City Journal is a quarterly publication; Stern's article was surely submitted days or even weeks before the Spring 2008 volume was published online.

My guess is that prior to Diamond's investigative report, Obama's work for the Annenberg Challenge and Ayers's connection to the grant program were not well known outside a small circle of grant-making organizations/corporations and Chicago public education professionals -- although I think one would have to be naive to assume it wasn't known to the Democratic National Committee by the time Obama was promoted as a candidate for the presidency.

In any case Obama knew Ayers so well, was so familiar with Ayers's professional work, that terming him an "English" teacher was not a mistake; it was an attempt to suggest to the public that his relationship with Ayers was casual.

Diamond's report makes it clear that the relationship was close and work-related over a period of years. And it's clear from Obama's willingness to work for Ayers's pet project that he was in general agreement with Ayers's political philosophy and approach to public education.

To send you on your way with a spring in your step I'll quote a few more passages from Stern's April 2008 article, although I hope you'll go to City Journal and read the whole thing:

Ayers’s influence on what is taught in the nation’s public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation’s largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for.

In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.

Recently on Fox News, Democratic strategist Bob Beckel tried to brush off concerns about Obama's relationship with a "terrorist" by retorting, "Ayers is a couple years away from an assisted living facility."

Either Beckel didn't know or didn't care that it's not Ayers's past but his present that should be of immediate urgent concern when asking about Obama's political views. America's parents need to know about Ayers's education ideas and true relationship with a man in sight of the White House. Ditto for American captains of industry and capitalist financiers who are throwing money at Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

1) A Guide to the Political Left

2) The Ghosts of Bill Ayers; Sol Stern, FrontPageMagazine, October 17, 2006

3) Obama's Real Bill Ayers Problem; Sol Stern, City Journal, April 23, 2008

4) "Social Justice" and Other High School Indoctrinations; Sol Stern, FrontPageMagazine, April 13, 2006

The Ed Schools’ Latest -- and Worst -- Humbug; Sol Stern, City Journal, Summer 2006 edition

See also #2 above.

5) Eduwonkette: Sol Stern and Bill Ayers Debate on "Social Justice" Teaching; Dr. Stephen F. Diamond, Global Labor blog, April 22, 2008

Diamond's discussion is a portal to a world that for all its grave importance to Americans exists outside the general public's eye. The post links to Sol Stern's piece for City Journal, Ayers's reply, and a discussion of social justice by people in the education sphere.
***************************************
Cross-posted at RezkoWatch and No Quarter
***************************************
WEDNESDAY UPDATE:
Dr Diamond replied to my question about the authoritarian Left, which I have published today under the title, "The great unanswered questions" about Barack Obama's relationship with William Ayers. Note that Diamond provides more information on the web of connections relating to the Ayers-Obama relationship. See Carol Lee-Rev. Jeremiah Wright mention.

I am also providing the link to RezkoWatch's publication of today's post because they added pictures (I really like the one with Mao and Stalin together) and added data on the Lee-Wright-Dohrn connection that my post does not contain. Yes, that would be the same Dohrn who is married to Ayers. What a collection of characters.

FRIDAY UPDATE
Thanks to the reader who submitted this post to the Watcher of Weasels Council, and thanks to WoW readers and the Council! I am proud to report that this post has come in second place in this week's vote for a non-Council entry! Thanks also to Council Member Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye for his comments.
********************************************
October 9, 2008; 9:30 AM Eastern Time UPDATE
I'm updating this post because of intense media/public attention to the William Ayers-Barack Obama relationship.

Much has come to light recently about the relationship. One of the people who have been driving this story is Steve Diamond. He is an American law professor, political scientist, union activist, and a leftist -- and, it is important to note, someone who was born and raised in Chicago.

Mr Obama has gotten past the press, but no one from the Chicago political machine gets past Steve Diamond.

You might want to proceed to Diamond's October 6, 2008 post, Ayers/Obama Update: The David Blaine Award Goes to The New York Times Magic Act. The post, published at Diamond's Global Labor blog, has the best summary he's provided so far of Ayers' educational theories and how Obama has served to promote them.

The catch is that the summary is presented as part of Diamond's ongoing discussion of how The New York Times has continued to suppress and distort his investigation -- even though three reporters from the paper have recently interviewed him several times.

(I note with sarcasm that Diamond watchers know that this state of affairs represents an improvement since May, when the Times ignored his letter to them about his research on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the work that Ayers and Obama did for it.)

The negligence of the U.S. press in reporting on Ayers' theories and Obama's relationship with him is a story unto itself; it's perhaps the strongest indictment to date of the present state of American journalism. But if you want to go straight to the summary, scroll down to the 14th paragraph of the October 6 report:

So what is the evidence of the influence of Ayers' world view on Obama and his presidential candidacy?

And read from there.

If you want to delve further into the story, you can start with Diamond's April 22, 2008 post, Who "Sent" Obama? which I also linked to above, and read forward from there. Not all his posts since that time are about the Ayers-Obama relationship and related matters, but the majority are.

If you get stuck at the discussion in the summary about reparations on account of refusing to believe your eyes, Diamond's May 24, 2008 post Apparently Obama does, indeed, support reparations will assure you that you read right the first time.

The posts at Global Labor are the very best background on all the issues touching upon the Ayers-Obama relationship. As far as I know only one other person, Sol Stern, is both knowledgeable enough to discuss Ayers' ideas in authoritative fashion and willing to speak up very frankly in public about them.

Stanley Kurtz, the Conservative commentator who has studied Diamond's research and undertaken his own research on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Obama-Ayers relationship, has provided a helpful introduction in a September 23, 2008 report for the Wall Street Journal.

Yet Kurtz (who holds a PhD from Harvard in social anthropology) started his journey of discovery from outside the teaching profession and without a thorough background in the education ideas promoted by Ayer's and his colleagues.

One glance through Diamond's summary tells that Kurtz is still on a learning curve. He is not alone. The news media are so far behind Diamond that at this rate it will be 2015 before they catch up.

Barack Obama has banked on this great Cloud of Unknowing. And yet a reading of Diamond's summary reveals that this is not rocket science he's talking about; it's just that for years the mainstream media have avoided examining the education topics that Diamond and Stern discuss.

Given Dr Diamond's October 6 summary, readers might ask whether I have considered changing "Maoist" to "neo-Stalinist" in the title, now that I've gone further on my own learning curve. The answer is no.

I will let political scientists such as Diamond parse the differences between neo-Stalinism and Maoism. In the end what does it matter if you refer to a death camp by a number, or name it the 'Bluebird School of Reeducation?' Stalinists, Maoists, Fidelistas, etc. -- they all boil down to a military-backed gang of thugs.

And my view is that William Ayers and Barack Obama are not ideologues of any stripe; I see them as totalitarians behind their word screens. They want unquestioning obedience to their commands; they want everyone to think and act in unison, and they know this can only be achieved through indoctrinating children.

Any doubts I had that Obama is a totalitarian were resolved a few days ago when I studied the “Positive Behavior for Effective Schools Act,” otherwise known as education bill S.2111, which was introduced by Obama.

The bill has not passed, as yet, but the wording is a clear indication that Obama's idea of child education is using the public school system to effect massive state intervention in every area of a child's life.

As to what exactly Obama means by "positive behavior" -- the bill does not spell it out. But study Steve Diamond's writings, and Sol Stern's, if you want to see behind Obama's screen of words about making American public school graduates better candidates for higher education and leveling the playing field for the nation's poorest children.

Finally, Obama's relationship with William Ayers is just one of many he developed with the far left/authoritarian stream of American politics. If you are just coming to a study of Obama's involvement with such Americans, the best place for an orientation is the blog The Real Barack Obama (RBO), formerly RezkoWatch.

The blog has amassed a thick dossier on Obama's web of political alliances, including those branching from his involvement with the convicted criminal Tony Rezko.

There are few puff pieces at RBO, and those are to leaven the grim revelations. Many of the posts are original reports, which are meticulously researched and cross-referenced. The blog also acts as a relay station for daily media reports/opinion pieces on Obama's relationships.

I warn that once you start digging through RBO's archives you will be stunned at how much information the mainstream media has left unreported about Obama's relationships. Yet RBO is closely followed by mainstream news outlets working on Obama stories, so there is no question that the information has been ignored.

The Real Barack Obama, and Steve Diamond's Global Labor blog, are examples of citizen journalism at its finest.

The question, however, is how much longer the American democracy can survive if its citizens cannot depend on professional journalists for accurate news on vital issues.

"What does that make the United States, to go along in a deal with the devil?"

Here are my notes on what Oliver Guitta told John Batchelor last night. For background to Hezbollah's takeover of Lebanon, see Guitta's March 12 Expected and undisturbed Hezbollah coup for the Middle East Times.

Hezbollah has taken over Lebanon but not overtly because they don't want to face sanctions, international pressure.

Hezbollah capturing Beirut is just one way to comply with what Damascus and Tehran want. But Hezbollah is now turning their sights on Israel. Since 2006 Hezbollah has gotten access to rockets that can target Tel Aviv. Israel will have to face the fire of 40,000 rockets.

Lebanon has been sold out by Western powers to Syria and Iran. Allowing Lebanon to return to Tehran's sphere will give the US 3-4 years of good weather in Iraq. Iran will slow down help to Mahdi Army and there will be less kills in Iraq.

The US cynically traded the democracy in Lebanon for a few years of peace in Iraq.

"What does that make the United States, to go along in a deal with the devil?" - John Batchelor's summary of the situation.
*******************************************
I don't want to hear from any of the 70% of Americans who have been demanding that the US sharply reduce troop levels in Iraq and leave the country fast that you didn't mean it to work out like this.

I can understand pacifists -- those who would prefer to be slaughtered rather than take up arms. I don't agree but I understand. What I can't understand is people who decide war is something they can leave without horrific consequences.

Mau-mauing the Democratic Party flak-catchers. Nation of Islam goes into overdrive to defend Barack Obama

But where O where was the Nation of Islam when Maryland Democrats were labeling Republican Michael Steele an Oreo cookie?

RezkoWatch has given me permission to cross-post their Farrakhan's Final Call on the victimization of Sen. Obama. Here it is:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), frequently mentioned if not featured in Final Call—the Nation of Islam weekly newspaper published by Minister Louis Farrakhan—has increasingly been portrayed as the victim of voters who oppose him "simply because he is Black, and Democratic Party officials who will not support him because they do not think a Black man can win a general election," according to Askia Muhammad in the May 6, 2008, article No end to demonization of Obama?

In support of his contention, Muhammad wrote:

The campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, desperately behind in pledged convention delegates, popular votes, and the numbers of state primary victories, has successfully pinned a "Black militant" image on Sen. Obama, who ironically came to prominence in this campaign when he decisively won early campaign contests in the overwhelmingly White states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Problem? It was Sen. Clinton who won in New Hampshire, not Sen. Obama. Including the primary states of Florida and Michigan, which Sen. Clinton won handily, and which must be counted in a 50-state election, it is Sen. Clinton who leads in the popular vote. RezkoWatch dares anyone to show one piece of evidence that Sen. Clinton or anyone associated with her campaign has "pinned" Sen. Obama with a "'Black militant' image."

A month earlier, Dr. Ron Walters, the Distinguished Leadership Scholar and Director of the African American Leadership Center and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park, wrote April 1, 2008, about Sen. Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, in "Blackening Obama":

This is a less than transparent attempt to do what race sensitive Whites always do to a high-flying Black figure in a White majority country who is about to gain some real national authority, they put him in a Black box.

On March 26, 2008, political science professor Robert T. Starks of Northeastern Illinois University was quoted as attributing Sen. Obama's lag in support from the Hispanic vote on the community's willingness to disassociate from Black people.

[Starks] said the overwhelming support for Sen. Clinton with Hispanics is because they were not as familiar with Sen. Obama. He also said that many Hispanics see themselves as "just another White immigrant group in America" like the Irish, Germans or other Europeans and they are "adapting their political behavior based on the American tradition," which is to stay away from any association or alignment socially or politically with Black people.

More than six weeks prior, on Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008, Ashahed M. Muhammad wrote:

The overwhelming support from Black voters in South Carolina demonstrated a rejection of the high profile push by former president Bill Clinton to inject race into the campaign as well as a parallel strategy aimed at winning support from Black voters who traditionally supported him and his administration.

Professor Starks also attributed Sen. Obama's "wave of support" in South Carolina on the "actions" of President Clinton and Sen. Clinton:

"The Clintons' themselves might have driven many Black people into the camp of Mr. Obama by the comments that they made," said Prof. Starks adding that he believes that this signals the rejection of the Clinton's influence and perhaps an end to the loyalty the political family has enjoyed from Blacks spanning two decades.

"Black people are going to take another look at the Clintons' at this point, especially if Mr. Clinton cannot contain himself. I'm convinced that his action, his talk, his craziness is going to drive more people into the Obama camp," he added.

Within only a few weeks Final Call readers, including countless members of the Nation of Islam, were told that Sen. Obama had been victimized by (1) both President and Sen. Clinton, (2) the hispanic community, (3) "race sensitive Whites", and (4) Sen. Clinton herself, who has allegedly "pinned a 'Black militant' image" on him.

Sadly, this message is no different than that fervently delivered by Sen. Obama's pastor, Rev. Wright in more than 20 years' worth of black liberation theology sermons. More sadly still, it is believed.

What would you call William Ayers and Hamas? "Puddytats?"

"George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists."
-- Barack Obama

Okay; so you only support a church that supports engagement with Hamas. You only went to work for a man who is proud of his terrorist background. You only had an advisor who was engaged in negotiating with Hamas, and who left your inner circle only after he was spotted dealing with Hamas. And you only support a mass murderer, your cousin Raila Odinga.

Put a sock in it, willya?

Anuj Desai's reading list

Blogger Blazing Catfur wrote Anuj Desai after finding his arguments against Alexander Tsesis's rationale for draconian hate speech laws. Desai responded with a helpful list of reading material, which BC has published here.

Visit Blazing Catfur for additional posts disputing Tsesis's thesis, including this one.

Blazing Catfur is -- well, blazing, firing off a letter last week to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson requesting an investigation of the CHRC and copying it to every member of Parliament -- and publishing the email addresses of the Members, in case other Canadians want to follow suit.

Bad news for Marc Lemire and for freedom around the globe

Marc's FreedomSite blog has posted a May 13 motion to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal from Paul Fromm's CAFE (Canadian Association for Free Expression), which has 'interested party' status in Marc's Section 13 hearing before the tribunal. According to CAFE:

[5] On May 12, 2008, the Tribunal ordered that the closing arguments on the constitutional question should be delivered on June 9, 2008 and that the submissions of the interested parties be delivered by June 25, 2008.

[6] Given the extremely late disclosure by the Commission of over 400 pages, this is a completely impractical and a clear violation of Natural Justice, to which this Tribunal is bound. [1] Natural Justice is not at the whim of this Tribunal, but rather IS THE law to which this Tribunal is must adhere.

[7] Because the Commission chose to disclose these very important documents at this late stage, because more disclosure is promised and because many of the documents disclosed have arbitrarily been redacted, no date for final submissions should even be considered until the current outstanding issues are dealt with. [...]

This seems to indicate that the May 5 motion filed by Marc's attorney Barbara Kulaszka requesting an extension (on the basis of additional documentation provided by the CHRC) and CAFE's May 8 motion, which echoes Kulaszka's, have been rejected.(2)

CAFE's May 13 motion raises a very disturbing question about the man presiding over the tribunal hearing Marc's case:

"[23] Recently, due to Internet searches, it has come to the attention of CAFÉ that member Hadjis has on numerous occasions worked with the Canadian Jewish Congress, who have received Interested Party Status in these proceedings over the vigorous objections of the Respondent.

[24] On November 26, 1997, Athanasios Hadjis issued a joint press release with the Canadian Jewish Congress denouncing Jacques Parizeau, claiming that Mr. Parizeau “blame[s] particular communities around the result of a democratic process” Mr. Hadjis went on to say that "such an attitude is irresponsible as it contributes to the exacerbation of tensions within our society.". The Canadian Jewish Congress states in its press release that the CJC and Mr. Hadjis’s Hellenic Congress of Quebec are a “coalition”

[25] The Canadian Jewish Congress has received interested party status in this case, granted by Member Hadjis.

[26] The fact that Member Hadjis has worked closely with one of the Interested Parties in this case is of great concern to CAFÉ, and this fact should have been revealed when the Canadian Jewish Congress was seeking interested party status. In fact it was Member Hadjis’s duty to inform all parties of this potential conflict of interest and accept submissions on this matter.

[27] How impartial can Member Hadjis be, when his former “coalition” partner is an interested party on a case he is sitting on? [...]

1) See Ezra Levant on natural justice.

2) See FreedomSite for the March 5 and 8 motions.

Have a banana, Justice Minister Nicholson

For readers who saw yesterday's Warning to Americans about Section 13 early on, at 9:00 PM I added this update to the post:

"The blogger Blazing Catfur has just sent the following link with the comment that Anuj C. Desai does a good job of refuting [Alexander] Tsesis's thesis.

It turns out Tsesis published a book in 2002 that is obviously the inspiration for the thinking behind Sen. Kennedy's hate legislation and the argument posed by Canada's Justice Ministry against striking Section 13.

The book is titled, Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paves the Way for Harmful Social Movements, which from Google seems to be only available now in Japan but which has made the rounds at many American university law departments.

In his overview of the book Desai writes:

Alexander Tsesis sets forth a thesis about the relationship between what he refers to as “hate speech” and action that follows from it. His broad claim about the relationship is simple and straightforward: When systematically developed over long periods of time, “hate speech” lays the foundation for harmful social movements that ultimately result in the oppression and persecution of “outgroups.”

From this premise he argues that United States courts should abandon the rule that advocacy or incitement must be likely to result in imminent harm before it can be constitutionally proscribed,7 and that legislatures should criminalize “hate speech.” He then concludes the book with a proposed statute to do just that. [...]

Here is the PDF of Desai's discussion, which is titled, Attacking Brandenburg with History: Does the Long-Term Harm of Biased Speech Justify a Criminal Statute Suppressing It?"

As I highlighted in yesterday's post Ezra Levant took a stab at exposing the flaws in Tsesis's arguments and also termed Tsesis a nut.

I think that last is somewhat unkind because Mr Tsesis is not insane. This is obviously his first incarnation outside an isolated tribe. So it all makes perfect sense from Mr Tsesis's point of view: if we don't utter Taboo words we'll never anger the Goddess of Floods and Famine.

The real issue, which I have spent years on this blog explaining, is that the way is forward, not back. This means that if you've spent, say, 500,000 years clawing your way out of the trees and into modern life, the idea is not to return to the trees.

Again and again, I've had to explain this point to British readers who still don't understand that if they don't walk into those no-go zones, if they don't engage and debate with immigrants practicing ancient tribal beliefs, the British themselves will end up much farther back than the immigrants; they'll end up where their own ancestors started, which was painting themselves blue and wearing feathers.

This is such a simple, obvious point that a failure to grasp it explains my occasional flashes of temper.

Humans are not born stupid but they can be made stupid if no one ever challenges them, if not no one ever troubles to point out flaws in reasoning and never insists that they think things through for themselves. If the British don't do these things, it's not just a matter of losing their civilization; it's a matter of returning to a diet of bananas.

Yet to ensure we don't return to the trees, freedom of speech is a prerequisite.

Anuj Desai is striving to help Mr Tsesis orient his brain to a more forgiving universe, but here we come to a snag. The biggest problem is not Mr Tsesis and his primitive understanding of the role of language, nor is it even Canada's Justice Ministry or Senator Edward Kennedy. The problem is clearly evident in this passage from Desai's paper:

To American lawyers steeped in the modern First Amendment, Tsesis’s thesis is bold, indeed radical. It is, however, little more than an importation of the theoretical underpinnings of an approach to regulating racist ideologies that much of the rest of the world -- Europe, in particular -- has relied upon and one that Americans will increasingly have to grapple with as changes in communication technologies impose pressure to harmonize laws regulating information and expression.

With that, finally we arrive at bedrock. What we find there is not the Muslim Brotherhood or Canadian Jewish Congress but an accounting team working for a globalized corporation.

In the days of European Colonial rule the standard operating principle was, "Don't rile the natives." The new principle is, "Don't rile the consumer."

Because the consumer resides in vastly different cultures around the globe, transnational corporations don't want to run into the kind of nightmare that Coca-cola faced several weeks ago:

Chinese university students in Germany became enraged when a picture was posted on the internet of a German store that had a Coca-cola poster in the window. The poster showed happy Tibetan monks on a roller coaster -- which the students darkly interpreted to mean "freedom." The students used the internet to call for a boycott of Coca-cola.

The terror was that the call for boycott might spread to China's consumers. So you may trust the poster was quickly removed and that Coca-cola brass apologized all over themselves for anyone assuming they were making a political statement.

So this is not simply a matter of restricting hateful speech; this is a demand from the engines of global commerce to restrict any kind of speech that any consumer in any culture might possibly find offensive.

Where will this lead? To great difficulty conducting business through the exchange of bananas and uttering, "Uga uga."

True, no one's speech will possibly offend when things reach that stage, which means we'll return to how we settled things before the George Bernard Shaw's of the world arose: by bashing out each other's brains to elucidate the point.
*******************************
Blazing Catfur has also weighed in on Desai's analysis of Tsesis's thesis.

The lights are going out

Found at FreeDominion website:

"The Australian Government has announced that they will be joining China as one of the few countries globally that broadly censor the internet."

Read the rest at Tech Crunch.

Warning to Americans about Canada's Section 13

Think it can't happen here? Last week VDare published a report by Canadian FreeSpeecher Kathy Shaidle titled First they came for ... Canadian "Hate Speech" Totalitarianism.

Kathy's piece is a great summary of the Section 13 issue and provides important background on spectacular earlier cases related to Section 13, including Paul Fromm's.

At the end of the report VDare inserts a note about Senator Edward Kennedy's most recent attempt to pass U.S. federal "hate" legislation that is a blatant attempt to link freedom of speech with crime at the federal enforcement level. See this 2007 World Net Daily article on the issue.

Kennedy relies on a man named Alexander Tsesis for the rationale underpinning the hate crime legislation.

The name Tsesis will ring a bell for readers who looked through the list of expert witnesses called in Marc Lemire's Section 13 hearing. The Attorney General of Canada called Tsesis to bring his opinion to bear against Lemire's constitutional challenge to Section 13.

Mr Tsesis's opinion also plays a role in the arguments that Canada's Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has deployed in defense of Section 13.

Nicholson filed a brief on behalf of the Justice Ministry to further contest Lemire's challenge to Section 13. Today, Ezra Levant dissected some of the "junk history" that Nicholson invokes and adds this observation:

So who is this nut the government keeps quoting?

His name is Alexander Tsesis, a professor at a middling U.S. law school. Tsesis has two political clients: the Canadian Justice Department, and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachussets, tied with Barack Obama as the most left-wing senator in America. Tsesis is a left wing kook -- but the Canadian government hangs on his every word.

Why should Tsesis's views be supported by Canada's Conservative government? Ezra explains:

... the decision by the Justice Department to intervene was made before Rob Nicholson was the minister -- even before the Conservatives were the government. It was made when Irwin Cotler, the Liberal, was minister, if I'm not mistaken. Ever since then, federal lawyers have been beavering away in support of section 13, along with other tax-paid lawyers from the CHRC (and the gaggle of Jewish censors from the Canadian Jewish Congress, B'nai Brith and the Simon Wiesenthal Center).

Putting aside politics, if a previous Justice Minister instructed his lawyers to intervene in support of censorship, it's those lawyers' duty to do so until their instructions change. And, since the Conservatives have not yet changed course on section 13 -- or any other aspect of the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- it should not be surprising that Justice Department lawyers are still serving up the kind of junk history and psychobabble that is evident in this memorandum.

Now read the psychobabble and junk history, and realize it's only a matter of time, which will approach fast if Obama takes the White House, before an American version of Section 13 goes into effect.
*************************************************
9:00 PM Update:
The blogger Blazing Catfur has just sent me the following link with the comment that Anuj C. Desai does a good job of refuting Tsesis's thesis.

It turns out that Tsesis published a book in 2002 that is obviously the inspiration for the thinking behind Sen. Kennedy's hate legislation and the argument posed by Canada's Justice Ministry against striking Section 13.

The 2002 book is titled, Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paves the Way for Harmful Social Movements.

In his overview of the book Desai writes:

Alexander Tsesis sets forth a thesis about the relationship between what he refers to as “hate speech” and
action that follows from it. His broad claim about the relationship is simple and straightforward: When systematically developed over long periods of time, “hate speech” lays the foundation for harmful social movements that ultimately result in the oppression and persecution of “outgroups.”

From this premise he argues that United States courts should abandon the rule that advocacy or incitement must be likely to result in imminent harm before it can be constitutionally proscribed,7 and that legislatures should criminalize “hate speech.” He then concludes the book with a proposed statute to do just that. [...]

Here is the PDF of Desai's discussion, which is titled, Attacking Brandenburg with History: Does the Long-Term Harm of Biased Speech Justify a Criminal Statute Suppressing It?

Marc Lemire thanks those who have written in defense of free speech in Canada. Pundita proudly squeezes into the group photo.

"Pundita:
Thanks very much for your latest write up on my Section 13 case.

Unlike the enemies of free speech who want to shut down all dialogue, you have shown to be open minded, fair and honest.

Many thanks. You are part of the fight against thought control in Canada.

We will win in the end. Believe me.

And we will win because we struck at the root, not the branches. To borrow the famous quote.

My attorney and a true expert witness brought forward testimony to discredit the Cohen Committee findings. That got the censors' attention big time.

Prior to that they laughed at us and gave me no chance. A year later, every major newspaper have written against Section 13. Now that's not due to me only. I just provided factual background on my case.

The writers and thinkers of Canada and the United States took on the fight.

I am a horrible writer, and public speaker. I was forced into doing it since for a while no one else did. But times have changed. And believe me for the better.

I'm more at home fixing the IOS of a Cisco Catalyst switch. Than putting my thoughts down on paper.

That's why I thank you. I thank Barbara Kulaszka. I thank Paul Fromm. I thank Douglas Christie. I also thank Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, FreeDominion, the blogosphere and all others who care about freedom of speech.
Marc Lemire
FreedomSite "

There the CHRC goes again, making fascist totalitarian rat bastards look like champions of liberty

Blazing Catfur has caught the CHRC trying to portray Americans as a bunch of cross-burners because we don't have Section 13 in the USA. (H/T Free Mark Steyn!) So, the CHRC wants to fiddle around with weasel words, do they? Two can play that game.

CHRC violates "the ancient principle of natural justice"

Ezra Levant (an attorney) writes with passion and clarity about the latest revelation of injustice done to citizen Marc Lemire by Canada's federal human rights commission.

Roses for CNN and Christiane Amanpour's North Korea film

Tonight at 8:00 PM CNN will be airing Christiane Amanpour's report on the New York Philharmonic's history-making performance in North Korea in February and her experiences in the country. She had been trying for a decade to get into the country so she jumped at the chance to be part of the press corps that accompanied the Philharmonic's visit to Pyongyang.

She was the only member of the visiting press invited to interview North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, about the status of Korea's nuclear program. Click here for the text of the interview.

The film was also aired last night. I caught 40 minutes of it, and on Friday saw a clip from the film that CNN aired. Christiane said that although her visit was very controlled at every step, she thought that any view of North Korea was better than none. I agree.

The clip showed an exchange she had with one of her NK Minders. The guy told her that she could only walk in front of what looked like a giant sculpture or low freestanding wall, but not behind it.(See Sunday update for my correction.)

When she coaxingly asked why she couldn't walk behind the wall, the Minder was absolutely stumped. The body language, and the look on their faces as the Minder realized there was probably no earthly reason why she couldn't step behind the structure, are priceless.

The exchange convinced me to watch the film. Christiane has a way about her that is impossible to fake; it's not exactly childlike but it conveys someone who has never forgotten what it was like to be a child. So she is often able to get away with asking the kind of questions that the more determinedly grownup among the journalism profession can't.

I am very glad I saw the film, and I can't wait to see the rest of it tonight. There are moments that are so overwhelming I can't speak about them because there is no way I can do justice to them with words.

Even if you have seen footage of the symphony performance, you will see it through new eyes when you see Christiane's film. This doesn't mean that she looked at the situation through gauze; quite the opposite, which is what makes the film so powerful.

Was the symphony performance a breakthrough in US-North Korean relations? I think it was a profound breakthrough. Will it move off the dime? We wait now, and watch for the answer.

Was it a PR stunt by the North Korean government? When you understand how carefully the government controls music in North Korea, which you will learn by watching the film, it's wrong to dismiss it as a mere stunt. It was a gesture that took courage.

Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, told Christiane that when the Philharmonic left, the widespread hunger, power shortages and political abuses would continue in North Korea. Of course he is absolutely right. And the film ends with grim news about a round of harsh language between North and South Korea, and concern about another round of food shortages in North Korea.

Yet when one measures the symphony performance against 60 years of cold war, when one considers the extreme nationalism of the North Korean people, when one sees them standing in a gesture of respect while the Star-Bangled Banner is played, one can only -- I have no words.

Don't short yourself; please make an effort to see Christiane Amanpour's film; you will never forget it.

Bravo, Christiane, bravo! And bravo to your crew!

I suppose I should mind my manners and also thank CNN, North Korea's government, the New York Philharmonic, and -- awk -- and -- awk -- c'mon, you can do this -- and, and thank you Christopher Hill.

********************************************
Sunday Update
I did to get to see most of what I missed and the clip I mentioned above was included, although it seems CNN edited out a few seconds of Christiane's exchange with the Minder. But it was a sculpture -- a huge one -- and the instruction was not that she couldn't walk behind it but that she couldn't photograph it from behind, which prompted her ask why not.

Brickbats for CNN and John Roberts's Rev. Wright-Free Zone

John Roberts might want to read what Stanley Kurtz has to say about Barack Obama's involvement with Jeremiah Wright's church and the "black theology" that Wright teaches before he declares another CNN interview with Obama to be a "Rev. Wright-Free Zone."

After reading Kurtz's analysis, one would have to be willfully blind to insist that Barack Obama was telling the truth when he said he was only recently aware of Wright's racism and virulent anti-Americanism.

RezkoWatch has an overview of Kurtz's analysis and links to his report for National Review and the companion piece at The Weekly Standard.

Really, really, really bad news from Mexico and a few words about McMafia, Chinese Snakeheads, Canada as crime capital of the world

Thanks to ZenPundit Mark Safranski for picking up this important story and pointing out the military implications, which apply to both sides of the US southern border:

[ ...] the drug cartels of Mexico are hobbled neither by antiquated Marxist ideology nor old-time, rustic, crime family traditions. They are adaptive, professional, transnational in outlook and far better equipped than state police forces on either side of the border.[...]

Read the rest here.

Readers who do war-gaming for a living, and those who are simply good at doing addition fast in their head (which applies to most Pundita readers), will not need to be told why I'm tying Mark's post to Misha Glenny's McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld.

If you weren't lucky enough to catch John Batchelor's interview with Glenny, this New York Times book review conveys the importance of Glenny's report.

(Aside to Mark Steyn readers: note Glenny's comment, "The European Union has a labor shortage and an aging population that is not being replenished because of low birthrates." So what was once criticized as 'Steyn fiction' is now accepted as self-evident fact.)
****************************
7:15 PM ET Update
Also, I think the Glenny interview was aired on KFI 640-AM on 4/20. Here is the link to the archive podcast; I am pretty sure the interview started 1:40 minutes into broadcast. When you hear the interview, you'll realize the NYT reviewer took Glenny's remarks about Snakeheads somewhat out of context. From my hastily typed notes during the broadcast:

"Snakehead chinese gang leaders who organize transfer of chinese workers.
whole villages form a club pay to get one person into brooklyn or LA
we're getting illegal migrations in the millions this way.

villagers go 10s of thousands of debt for person, if their person killed their families still have to pay off debt. meanwhile chinese illegal working in indentured servitude to pay off debt.

yet villagers in china the snakeheads are heros, because it is so bad in villages."

So while the snakeheads are seen by the villagers as performing a useful function, the system is an indictment of conditions in China's rural areas.

Also, while I'm on the subject of Batchelor's interview, here are my scribbles about Glenny's mention of Canada:
"North America
Human trafficking
and whole of western canada british columbia home to largest numbger of criminal syndicates in world. vietnamese produce cannabis large amount comes south. they make about 80K yr frm transshipment into US."

So it's not just a southern border security situation the US must deal with 'yesterday.' What's wrong with smoking a little pot? The problem is that it's not a little; the millions in hard currency that Vietnamese crooks send home or direct to additional criminal enterprises help prop up crooks and worse in Vietnam and in places such as Burma. That's so for the entire global network of McMafia enterprises; it leaps borders and is more efficient than the governments fighting it.

So drink a beer instead.

And no -- legalizing pot won't help; in fact it will make the situation much worse because it will just increase the amount of remittances that those Vietnamese pot growers send home and increase the protection rackets.

All this does is the same thing it's done in Mexico: allow the elite that controls government spending to keep putting off critically needed programs.

Not to mention setting up millions of the poorest for starvation when a sharp economic downtown in the rich country cancels the gardener, the cook, and the pot parties, which means remittances dry up.

I warned about this in 2005 but only a couple bloggers picked up on my point and nobody in Washington's development community wanted to listen.

Yet the vast majority of Mexicans who have become dependent on remittances are using the money to buy the most basic necessities, such as food. What the hell happens, then, when the remittances abruptly stop?

Yes, the worst is already happening in Mexico, although to my knowledge only one news report has surfaced about it. The Mexican and US governments -- not to mention the World Bank and the British and China governments, which pushed institutionalizing remittances at the government level -- don't want to talk about this little glitch.

Drink beer, okay? Or grow the stuff yourself.

As for the NYT reviewer's statement that, "... restrictive immigration policies remain in force. The result? An open invitation to far-reaching criminal enterprises."

I have not yet read McMafia, and Batchelor's interview with Glenny focused on the history of the globalized crime phenomenon and a region-by-region rundown, rather than Glenny's conclusions. So I don't know what Glenny has concluded from his investigations, and I am unwilling to take the word of a NYT reviewer.

But if Glenny is indeed pitching unrestricted immigration, there is the little problem of assimilation to deal with, if rich countries don't want to be a magnet for Fifth Columns overseen by gangsters who prey on the poorest immigrants.

Or should I say, they don't want to be any more of a magnet than they are today.

Marc Lemire discusses the Cohen Commission

For readers who have already seen Friday's Mad Kingdom post, around 2:00 PM ET today I added an update to it, which I have copied here. (For readers who haven't yet the read the MK post, Marc's laughter in the following letter is to acknowledge my irritation with his habit of belatedly sending me important information and prefacing it with, "By the way...")

"Pundita:
Thanks for your Mad Kingdom post. An interesting read. BY THE WAY (LOL), did you know I called an expert witness to directly challenge the claims you quote from the Cohen Commission?

The Cohen Commission gave the justification for "hate laws" in Canada based on the 'findings' of Harry Kaufmann, who was an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. After he presented his crazy findings, he left Canada and set up shop in New York.

In response I called one of the top neuroscientists in Canada, Dr. Michael Persinger. The enemies of free speech sat in silence while he demolished Kaufman's garbage All the 'interested parties' refused to cross-examine Dr. Persinger; there was nothing they could say.

Let me send you the stuff. It will blow your mind and make you question the very basis of "hate laws, and the absurd claim that speech can cause mental issues in people.
Marc"

Marc:
For once I'm not taken by surprise. Remember? Back in February, when you first wrote me, it was to dispute some points I made in my Jurassic Park post, which mentioned the Cohen Commission. You told me about Persinger. When I published our discussion, I linked to your file on expert witnesses, which contains a link to his report.

To refresh your memory the post is titled Marc Lemire gives Pundita a tour of the Section 13 maze, and that was followed by more of our discussion on Section 13 issues.

You really must try to escape from the Mad Kingdom for a few hours, to give yourself a break. But I'm glad you brought up Persinger again. This would be a good place to link directly to his report, which is titled The Anachronism of Policies and Laws for Hate Speech in Modern Canada: The Current Negative Cultural Impact of Legal Punishment upon Extreme Verbal Behaviour. And here again is the link to the expert witnesses.

Hang in there, Marc; the calvary is on the way. The CHRC Department 13 has been abusing their power for so long they forgot where the line was. Now they've been caught red-handed in an incident external to a Section 13 hearing. For readers who are not aware of what happened, last night Ezra Levant blew the lid off. He has detailed the incident and publicly accused the CHRC of corruption.

Deborah Gyapong called for a Royal Commission in February and she's so appalled by Ezra's revelations that she's calling for it again. This time, I think people will heed her call.

Inside the Mad Kingdom of the Canadian Human Rights Commission's Section 13 department

(Note: Please see Saturday Update, which is posted after the footnotes.)

On April 2 I asked Marc Lemire to tell me when he removed the postings that Richard Warman cited in his 2003 Section 13 complaint against Marc's website, Freedomsite.

Marc's reply was that he shut down the website's message board on January 1, 2004 and added "I received the complaint in I think April or May, 2004. So everything was removed PRIOR to me even receiving or knowing about the complaint."

Marc was aware that my question had not been posed idly. He knew I was trying to help him make a public appeal to Canadians to support his appeal on behalf of his constitutional challenge to the Section 13 complaint against him

He also had to know that he was making the appeal to a public that was prejudiced against him as a person even though there was sympathy among 'FreeSpeechers' for his fight.

So it would be difficult to argue to the general public that he had shut down the message board without prodding from the Section 13 complaint -- particularly because he was asking people to believe that he didn't receive the complaint until about five months after it had been filed with CHRC.

Nonetheless I would not omit his reply when I published our email exchanges, which would form my appeal to the public on Marc's behalf. Readers who have seen my appeal know how I handled the time sequence. I did the best I could to address head-on a questionable point.

I published my appeal on Sunday at 6:20 AM, ET and immediately sent Marc notification. At 10:00 PM on Sunday I received an email from Marc, in which he corrected how my post had handled the question about the time sequence and supplied precise dates for when the CHRC had initially contacted him.(1)

The dates Marc provided showed that the CHRC had indeed waited months to notify him of the complaint -- and suggest that the CHRC had not sent him a copy of the actual complaint until 16 days after the date they had earlier told him he must respond to their questions about the complaint!

Marc's correction highlighted the irresponsible way the CHRC processes Section 13 complaints and mooted the question of his veracity with regard to the time-sequence issue. His reply also invalidated the argument I'd published with regard to the question of Marc's veracity; in other words, Marc's correction made me look like a fool in front of my readers.

I did not know, and wasn't sure I wanted to know, why Marc's memory of precise dates hadn't been jogged earlier. Perhaps I was the first person to have challenged him on the question of when he'd received notice from the CHRC, and maybe it had taken him all day to track down all the dates relating to the question after he read my post.

Yet given the importance of his appeal to the public, I found it disturbing that he hadn't troubled himself to give a precise answer to my question when I first posed it.

I controlled my irritation and replied to Marc that I would immediately update the post by publishing his correction, which I did. That would still leave the problem of alerting readers who had seen the post prior to the correction, which I told Marc I would deal with in a subsequent post.

An hour later, ping! another email from Lemire:

"Pundita: By the way, I thought you'd be interested in seeing a chronology of events prior to Richard Warman's complaint against me ...
Marc"

The chronology suggests that all of Marc Lemire's troubles with the Canadian Human Rights Commission were set in motion on November 11, 2003. That was the same day that a man named Paul Fromm lodged a formal complaint with CHRC to demand an investigation of the activities of a CHRC employee named Richard Warman.

As to how Marc Lemire was involved with Paul Fromm's complaint, thereby hangs a tale.(2) But right now I want to continue talking about me in a bad mood.

The second "By the Way" email further irritated me. I had been in contact with Marc since February, and with his agreement I'd published most of those email exchanges. Yet it had never once occurred to him to recount the chronology he'd just sent me, which was vital information.

When a family member asked why I was fuming I replied, "It's just someone who would have been a disaster as a forward observer. 'No general, I see no enemy activity outside the front gates. By the way, an hour ago I did notice siege machines being wheeled toward the back gates.'"

With that off my chest I replied to Marc's email: "HOLY COW MARC I WISH YOU WOULDN'T DRIBBLE ALL THIS STUFF OUT BIT BY BIT"

A few minutes later:

"Pundita:
It's funny that strikes a cord with you. By the way, the CHRC has done that with so many people now, it's just their standard MO. In FreeDominion's case, they received the letter and had one day to meet the imposed reply date by the CHRC.
Marc"

"Funny?" In all his exchanges with me Marc had seemed lucid but now I was beginning to wonder if there wasn't something a little strange about him. While pondering this I idly clicked on the link that accompanied the chronology he sent.

The link opened to Marc Lemire's "statement of particulars" in his defense to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. The statement contained not only the chronology he'd sent but also a numbered list of all the details of how his case had come about.

The statement had been on his website for years, although somewhat lost in the thicket of posts about his Section 13 case that had grown up over the years. Nothing was dribbled out in the statement of particulars; it was all there, methodically and lucidly set down.

The particulars reveal situations that would test the sanity of anyone who had to spend even a short time dealing with the CHRC Section 13 department. Marc had been forced to deal with the department for more than four years.

Suddenly the light dawned. The wording of Section 13 of Canada's Human Rights Act is insane -- a point I underscored in Canada's version of the Minority Report: precrime and presumption of guilt ... Yet when people first read the wording of the section they tend to assume it can't mean what it says because a literal interpretation would be insane. But Section 13 is interpreted literally under Canadian law.

This places those who administer the code, and those who are charged with a violation of it, roughly in the position of people who live in a kingdom ruled by an insane person. Such subjects find ways to adjust to the mad edicts of a mad king.

To an outsider, the adjustments might seem incomprehensible but they're just the way sane people learn to live with the whims of madness. The worst part is that after a time the sane get used to insanity.

It struck me that there was indeed something strange about Marc Lemire: he had been at the mercy of the CHRC's Section 13 department for so long that he'd adjusted to situations an outsider would find remarkable.

That could explain why it hadn't occurred to him on his own to provide me with exact dates regarding CHRC notices. Probably he'd assumed that everyone knew it could take the CHRC months to forward necessary data. It could also explain why he hadn't thought before to send me his statement of particulars.

Marc would agree that Section 13 was insane. But did he realize he'd gotten so used to the way it was administered that he no longer saw the extent of the madness?

I didn't know whether I should be the one to put the question but I didn't want any more "By the Way" emails. He needed to wrack his brain and tell me if there was anything else terribly strange about the way his Section 13 case was being handled, aside from all he'd posted at his website.

Moments after I delicately put the question came the reply:

"Pundita
Funny you mention that. I had a conversation with someone about 6 months ago, and they said the same thing. I am so used to dealing with this nutty situation, I don’t see anything as overtly odd about it.

Wait till you see what I am writing about now. How Section 13 is supposedly absolutely needed for the “psychological” well-being of Canadian Jews.

Welcome to the asylum.
Marc"

I knew enough about arguments in the Taylor Supreme Court case to realize that he wasn't joking about the psychological well-being angle.(3) But it wasn't until an hour later, when Marc sent me what he'd written, that the full import of the situation was revealed:

In April a member of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie Farber, had gone on the public record to call for changes to Section 13. What the public did not know was that the CJC applied for "interested party" status in Marc's constitutional challenge to Section 13 -- and was arguing that the present version of Section 13 be upheld partly on the basis of an argument about psychological well-being.

I left the computer, threw on a sweater and stepped into the night. I looked at the dark sky and whispered, "There were human rights commissions in Nazi Germany."

Surely, every Jew involved with Canada's human rights commissions knows about those infamous Nazi commissions. And surely they know that all those commissions accomplished was to engender even greater prejudice in Germany against the country's Jews.

Marc Lemire spoke to the central issue in his constitutional challenge to Section 13:

Hate laws are the end of dialogue, a repudiation of communication, the exchange of ideas and the responsibility to try to understand the other, which is the basis of democracy. Such laws only instill fear, anger and hatred through their coercive measures. Hate is totally subjective as it is an emotion. It cannot be controlled through law.

When I returned to the computer I saw that another email had arrived from Lemire. It forwarded a copy of a May 5 motion by his phlegmatic attorney, Barbara Kulaszka, in which she patiently explained to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that it really wasn't very nice for the CHRC to pile her with 400 pages plus 2 CDs and additional faxed information of critically important documents that should have been turned over two years before, and which contained so many blacked-out and whited-out passages that the documents were unreadable in many cases.

Given that the tribunal expected Ms Kulaszka to make closing written arguments this May one can see her point. Especially because the tardy delivery of documents meant, among other things, that she had been unable to properly question CHRC employee Dean Steacy about his use of the "Jadewarr" screen name.

At that point I said, "I can't take anymore," and went to bed. Lucky me; I can walk away from CHRC Department 13; Marc Lemire can't.
************************
This morning Marc Lemire forwarded news of the latest doings in the mad kingdom regarding his case, and also some good news.
************************

1) Marc Lemire's correction:

"The CRHC not forwarding the complaint to me for months is a typical thing they do. They did a similar thing to Freedominion. Here are the dates:

November 24, 2003
Initial Complaint laid by Warman against Marc Lemire and “The Freedomsite”

February 13, 2004
CHRC (from Suzanne Best) sends a letter to me informing me of complaint against Marc Lemire and “The Freedomsite”. Assigned Hannya Rizk as the investigator. Gives me until March 9, 2004 to respond.

March 24, 2004
I receive the registered letter from CHRC.

March 26, 2004
Call the CHRC and get an extension to April 26, 2004 to retain a lawyer to respond to their letter."

1) Chronology of Events prior to Richard Warman filing Section 13 complaint against Marc Lemire, from Marc Lemire's Statement of Particulars in his defense before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. (The "A" and "@" symbols enclosing certain words show up throughout the entire statement, and are clearly meant to be quotation marks.)

53. In September of 2003, several messages were posted on freedomsite.org written by Paul Fromm, Director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression, which set out the activities of Mr. Warman in laying a complaint against a London man named T. Winnicki and Bell Canada and his libel action against a group called Northern Alliance. These messages and the others detailed in the paragraphs following also were sent out on the Freedomsite mailing list, of which Mr. Warman was a subscriber.

54. In October of 2003, a message was posted on freedomsite.org announcing a protest which was being organized by the Canadian Association of Free Expression against the government funding of ACensorship Advocates@, in Victoria, British Columbia. A second message was posted on October 28, 2003 giving an account of the protest where Mr. Warman and Mr. Adler of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre spoke about the Internet.

55. On October 29, 2003, a message was posted on freedomsite.org which announced that CAFÉ would be holding a protest of the actions of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, including one of its employees, Richard Warman, in “suppressing free speech on the Internet.”

56. On October 31, 2003, a message was posted on freedomsite.org which provided a summary of a press conference given in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa by Paul Fromm regarding the what it termed the Aextensive campaign of harassment against dissident websites by the Canadian Human Rights Commission and by one of its lawyers, Richard Warman...@ Two men, Tom Kennedy and Jason Oewendyk, appeared with Mr. Fromm at the press conference and were described in the summary as Avictims of Richard Warman.@ The message outlined various activities of Mr. Warman in attempting to shut down meetings and websites.

57. On Nov. 2, 2003, a message was posted on freedomsite.org entitled AWarman on the Warpath - Threatens CAFÉ@ which stated that Richard Warman had served Paul Fromm and CAFÉ with a Notice under the Libel and Slander Act of Ontario alleging that words defamatory of Mr. Warman had been posted on the freedomsite.org. The notice demanded that a retraction be published on the freedomsite.org and on the freedomsite email announcement list.

58. On Nov. 2, 2003, a message was posted on the freedomsite.org which was the text of the CAFÉ press conference in Ottawa in the Parliamentary Press Gallery on Internet censorship.

59. On Nov. 12, 2003, a message was posted on freedomsite.org entitled ACAFÉ complaint against CHRC lawyer Richard Warman.@ The message set out a letter which Paul Fromm, director of CAFÉ, had sent to Chief Commissioner Mary Gusella by fax on Nov. 11, 2003 in which Mr. Fromm lodged a formal complaint against Mr. Warman who worked as a lawyer for the Commission. The complaint alleged that Mr. Warman was abusing his position at the Commission to carry on an ideological vendetta against people whose views he disagrees with...@ Mr. Fromm listed Mr. Warman=s recent activities and demanded an investigation of his behaviour which he stated harmed the integrity of the Commission.

60. On Nov. 11, 2003, the same day Mr. Fromm faxed his letter of complaint to the Commission, Mr. Warman visited the Freedomsite website message board, looking for and finding messages which he would include in the present complaint. He returned to the site on November 15 and 23, 2003 to find further matters to include in the complaint. He filed the [...] complaint on November 24, 2003.

3) From the Taylor Supreme Court Case regarding psychological well-being:

Parliament's concern that the dissemination of hate propaganda is antithetical to the general aim of the Canadian Human Rights Act is not misplaced. The serious harm caused by messages of hatred was identified by the Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada, commonly known as the Cohen Committee, in 1966.

The Cohen Committee noted that individuals subjected to racial or religious hatred may suffer substantial psychological distress, the damaging consequences including a loss of self-esteem, feelings of anger and outrage and strong pressure to renounce cultural differences that mark them as distinct.

This intensely painful reaction undoubtedly detracts from an individual's ability to, in the words of s. 2 of the Act, "make for himself or herself the life that he or she is able and wishes to have."

******************************************************
SATURDAY UPDATE
"Pundita:
Thanks for your Mad Kingdom post. An interesting read. BY THE WAY (LOL), did you know I called an expert witness to directly challenge the claims you quote from the Cohen Commission?

The Cohen Commission gave the justification for "hate laws" in Canada based on the 'findings' of Harry Kaufmann, who was an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. After he presented his crazy findings, he left Canada and set up shop in New York.

In response I called one of the top neuroscientists in Canada, Dr. Michael Persinger. The enemies of free speech sat in silence while he demolished Kaufman's garbage All the 'interested parties' refused to cross-examine Dr. Persinger; there was nothing they could say.

Let me send you the stuff. It will blow your mind and make you question the very basis of "hate laws, and the absurd claim that speech can cause mental issues in people.
Marc"

Marc:
For once I'm not taken by surprise. Remember? Back in February, when you first wrote me, it was to dispute some points I made in my Jurassic Park post, which mentioned the Cohen Commission. You told me about Persinger. When I published our discussion, I linked to your file on expert witnesses, which contains a link to his report.

To refresh your memory, the post is titled Marc Lemire gives Pundita a tour of the Section 13 maze, and that was followed by more of our discussion on Section 13 issues.

You really must try to escape from the Mad Kingdom for a few hours, to give yourself a break. But I'm glad you brought up Persinger again. This would be a good place to link directly to his report, which is titled The Anachronism of Policies and Laws for Hate Speech in Modern Canada: The Current Negative Cultural Impact of Legal Punishment upon Extreme Verbal Behaviour. And here again is the link to the expert witnesses.

Hang in there, Marc; the calvary is on the way. The CHRC Department 13 has been abusing their power for so long they forgot where the line was. Now they've been caught red-handed in an incident external to a Section 13 hearing. For readers who are not aware of what happened, last night Ezra Levant blew the lid off. He has detailed the incident and publicly accused the CHRC of corruption.

Deborah Gyapong called for a Royal Commission in February and she's so appalled by Ezra's revelations that she's calling for it again. This time, I think people will heed her call.