Editor’s Notebook © by John Arkelian
The best of writing, photography, art, and argument – on everything from film to foreign policy.
“Ever dreamed of subscribing to a cultural magazine that doesn’t seem to be eating out of the hand of half a dozen media magnates? Something pluricultural and unassuming but nonetheless covering everything worth seeing, reading, doing or listening to for a season? Well, it exists, and in Canada to boot!”
“There is no on-line version or web site, which either makes John a dinosaur or a man of character. (I opt for the second, since the editorial team occasionally has a kind word for me.)”
John Howe — Canadian artist and co-conceptual designer on all three “The Lord of the Rings” motion pictures.
* Editor’s Note: The age of the dinosaurs has at last come to an end — with the arrival of this website!
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On December 23, 2018
© By John Arkelian
© Illustration by Linda Arkelian
We recently came across an op-ed piece about Canada titled “The
 Canada on the world stage – illustration © 2018 by Linda Arkelian Country the World Forgot – Again.” It’s a paean to a nation that has long punched way above its weight by the Irish journalist and author Kevin Myers. And it makes a good point. Consider Canada’s remarkable contributions – in war (making a hugely over-sized contribution to the Allied cause in both World Wars, in Korea, and in Afghanistan); in nation-building and compromise (somehow reconciling its two founding, and originally antagonistic, linguistic groups, and, belatedly, its aboriginal peoples); in international affairs (Canada practically invented peacekeeping and long was its dominant player); in tolerance (welcoming escaping slaves, and, almost a century later, draft resisters from our kin to the south, as well as refugees and immigrants from every corner of the world); in progressive causes (actively opposing such diverse evils as human trafficking, apartheid, gender inequality, and land-mines); in arts and entertainment (with a long litany of prominent novelists, actors, musicians, artists, filmmakers, and comedians); and in science, technology, and medicine (the polio vaccine, the remote manipulator arms used on U.S. space shuttles and on the international space station, the use of communication satellites, nuclear fission reactors, effective resource extraction and processing, agricultural innovation, and, less commendably, our role in developing the atomic bomb). More than that, Canada has been a loyal friend and steadfast ally to its closest partners, the United States and the United Kingdom. It is a founding member of two of the most successful and enduring defensive alliances ever conceived: NATO and NORAD. It proudly shares the world’s longest undefended border with its staunch friend, the United States (whom, coincidentally, it fought to a draw in the war of 1812).
For all its achievements and its mostly noble national character (there have been glaring past exceptions, like its ill-treatment of native-Canadians and its once closed doors to Jews and others), this ‘brave and modest’ nation is generally unknown, overlooked, and taken for granted. Myers’ essay appeared in the British newspaper, “The Telegraph” in April 2002, on the occasion of more deaths of Canadian soldiers who were engaged in protracted war-fighting in Afghanistan. Nearly 17 years later, his point is as valid and timely as ever. And it’s not just that Canada is obscure and overlooked on the world stage, it also continues to be ill-used by state and corporate actors alike, as our following two editorials – about Chinese bullying and about the latest corporate betrayal (this time, by General Motors) – address. Myers put it this way:
“It seems that Canada‘s historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor blithely neglecting her yet again…. [Canada] seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.”
Canada has languished too long as a wallflower. It’s time to stride the world stage with greater authority, self-confidence, and readiness to push back forcefully against those who threaten and abuse our goodwill and our core values. Canada needs to be a little less self-effacing and a lot less ready to quietly take punches without fighting back. In June 2016, President Barack Obama said, “The world needs more Canada.” More to the point, it needs a more assertive Canada.
John Arkelian is a lawyer and journalist; he represented Canada abroad as a diplomat.
Linda Arkelian is a dancer, choreographic, filmmaker, and artist.
Copyright © 2018 by John Arkelian
Illustration © 2018 by Linda Arkelian
On December 23, 2018
© By John Arkelian
In December 2018, Canadian law enforcement officers arrested a prominent
 Copyright © 2022 by Michael de Adder Chinese business executive, Ms. Meng Wanzhou, pursuant to a lawful request from the U.S. Department of Justice, which is seeking her extradition from Canada on fraud-related charges (involving, we believe, the fraudulent evasion of sanctions against Iran). Meng is a senior executive with the Chinese telecom giant Huawei. The legal process unfolding in Vancouver (Meng was granted bail pending her extradition hearing and is living in one her family’s multi-million dollar houses in Vancouver) is just that – a legal process in a country governed by the rule of law. Canada did not arrest Meng, nor did the United States request that we do so, at the behest of our respective political leaders. Indeed, the matter lies wholly outside the purview or influence of the Canadian or American governments, notwithstanding the perversely unhelpful, improper, and erroneous assertion by Donald Trump that he could use the charges against Meng as a bargaining chip in America’s current trade conflict with China.
Trouble is: The autocratic regime in China cannot (or chooses not to) understand the fundamental differences between the one-party dictatorship (and police state) over which they preside, and a free and democratic nation in which everyone, regardless of rank, wealth, office, or political connections, is equal before the law. In free nations, the justice system is completely independent of the political administration of the day. Clearly, those core principles are alien to the undemocratic regime in China, a regime that holds the rule of law, let alone inalienable human rights, in open contempt. There are no inalienable human rights in China; there is no democracy, no freedom, and no separation between the state and either its courts or its corporations. That begs the question: why are we in the West so hell-bent on increased trade with (and investment by) China’s tyrannical regime?
In the days after Meng Wanzhou’s arrest, we had the spectacle of Chinese media representatives close to that government insulting Canada, denigrating us as “a dog” that does its U.S. master’s bidding and threatening severe retaliation. Our ‘punishment’ started almost immediately with the “arrest” in China of first one, then another, and then a third Canadian. At least two of the three are clearly unlawful acts of hostage-taking by a lawless regime. The first such hostage, Michael Kovrig, is an experienced Canadian diplomat, currently seconded to a human rights NGO’s branch in China. The second hostage, Michael Spavor, is a Canadian businessman. The third detainee is Sarah McIvor, a teacher working in China. Initially, these unlawful detainees simply vanished. There was no information from the Chinese government as to their whereabouts or status and initially no consular access, contrary to binding international law. Then came word of inhumane treatment, like protracted interrogation and sleep deprivation. But those things are de rigueur in tyrannies.
Days past before the Canadian government started publicly demanding the immediate release of China’s unlawful hostages. It took just as long for our close allies to speak out on our behalf. Why? Our collective response was too little, too late. At least two of the three hostages were unlawfully abducted at the behest of the Chinese regime in wrongful retaliation for the fair and transparent legal proceeding taking place here. Their lawless actions demand a strong response:
(1) Canada should immediately issue an urgent travel advisory (and urge its allies to do the same) urging its citizens not to travel to China for any reason – on the grounds that Westerners traveling there may be subject to arbitrary, unlawful detention and to the flagrant denial of their human rights. (Once unlawfully detained, there’s precious little we can do for our citizens – it’s far better that they avoid the reckless risk.)
(2) Canada should reduce the size of its diplomatic and consular staff in China and require China to do the same.
(3) Canada should indefinitely suspend issuing visitors’ visas to Chinese citizens (except dissidents who are demonstrably opposed to its one-party regime).
(4) Canada should revoke existing visitors’ visas for Chinese citizens (except dissidents), including Meng Wanzhou. In the event that the courts rule against extraditing her to the United States, she should be obliged to depart from Canada forthwith and not return.
(5) Canada should terminate its efforts to enter into a free trade arrangement with China until such time, if any, that China manages to throw off its tyrannical system of government and fully embraces democratic norms and verifiable respect for human rights.
(6) Pending the release of the abducted Canadians, no federal or provincial officials should travel to China for any reason, save securing the release of the hostages. All other modalities of cooperation – be they economic, trade-related, scientific, educational, or cultural – should be suspended.
And there are broader, long overdue measures which Canada and its allies ought to take, quite apart from the current conflict over hostage-taking by China.
(7) Canada, acting jointly with the provinces, should enact laws to bar all foreign nationals who are not permanent residents in Canada from owning real property here.
(8) Canada should join its allies by prohibiting the involvement of Huawei in building new telecom infrastructure here. That firm is closely tied to a regime that is hostile to our core values and which poses a clear and present danger to our national security.
(9) For precisely the same reason, Canada should prohibit all Chinese firms, be they officially state-owned or not, from investing (or otherwise operating) in strategically critical sectors of our economy, like resources, telecommunications, agriculture, high technology, and what’s left of our manufacturing sector.
(10) Canada and its allies have been far too quiescent about heavy-handed mass detentions (reportedly involving millions of people) in the restive western parts of China, areas in which China’s control depends on armed force – areas predominantly inhabited by other ethnic, linguistic, and/or religious groups, that is, people other than ethnic Chinese. The West should be tirelessly decrying the mass detentions and egregious attacks on human rights.
(11) Canada should vigorously work with its allies to counter military and industrial espionage by China as well as its programs of cyber-aggression.
China has made no secret of its ambition to achieve military, economic, and political dominance in the world. Among other things: they persist in the proposition that the nation of Taiwan rightfully belongs to them; they aid and abet the dangerous rogue regime in North Korea; they’ve got an undemocratic ‘president for life;’ and they are unlawfully constructing artificial islands in the western Pacific to bolster their bogus claims to waters that are either international waters or the rightful territorial waters of other nations in east Asia. The goal of becoming the world’s dominant power, financed by the industries the West perversely transferred there in the quest for lower labor costs, coupled with the regime’s open hostility to the basic precepts of liberty, democracy, government accountability, rule of law, and inalienable human rights, makes China our enemy. We should stop deluding ourselves that they are either benign or our friend. The autocrats in Beijing are fond of complaining that the West wants to “keep China down” and to thwart its “rise,” yet they daily provide us with ample reasons to do just that.
John Arkelian is a lawyer and journalist; he represented Canada abroad as a diplomat.
Copyright © 2018 by John Arkelian.
Visit Michael de Adder at: https://www.deadder.net/ And see our portrait of the artist at: https://artsforum.ca/art-2
On December 23, 2018
© By John Arkelian
Perfidy: The word means treachery, duplicity, disloyalty, untrustworthiness, and unfaithfulness. And that’s precisely what multinational corporations have shown to Canada – and to the rest of the Western industrialized world. Most of our once thriving industrial sector has been transferred to the Third World, especially China, where wages are low and regulations governing workplace safety, labor standards, and environmental protection are weak. The rush by big business to de-industrialize the West happened with the connivance of our political leaders. The result of their mutual perfidy has been ruinous for the West.
In November 2018, General Motors of Canada announced that it will be shutting down its automotive assembly lines in Oshawa, Ontario by the end of 2019, in order to relocate south of the Rio Grande, where labor is cheaper. Never mind that the Oshawa plant is praised as one of the most productive in the world. Never mind the fact that Canadian workers (and Canadian consumers) have been loyal to GM for decades. The only thing that counts is maximizing profits – loyalty be damned. It’s hardly the first time that this sort of thing has happened – in the auto sector (the Oshawa plant once employed 30,000 people, now it’s down to about 2,700) or in other areas of manufacturing – but it’s high time that we responded in kind.
In 2009, the taxpayers of Ontario and Canada bailed out General Motors of Canada to the enormous tune of $10.8 billion. Was that mountain of money a loan or a gift? If it was the former, has it been paid back? If it is an outstanding loan, we should demand its immediate repayment in full. Whether the bailout was by gift or by loan, an insistent question is why our feckless leaders failed to extract an ironclad guarantee from the undeserving corporate beneficiary of our largesse to maintain a specified number of jobs in this country for a specified span of time (say 50 years or more)? Their perverse apparent failure to make a bailout contingent upon such a binding guarantee qualifies our leaders for the ‘Fools of the Year’ award.
Now, less than ten years after Canadian taxpayers saved an imploding corporation, it is blithely pulling up stakes at its biggest facility here as though it owed us nothing. One of their vice-presidents acknowledged recently that, “We owe our existence to the government here;” but, that’s not stopping them from telling us good riddance. The only thing more appalling than their perfidy is our leaders’ milquetoast response. We suggest another course, one that is aimed at making General Motors rue the day they ever heard the name Canada. If any of the senior managers at GM Canada are here from abroad under work visas, those visas should be cancelled forthwith. The Canada Revenue Agency should initiate close tax audits of the company, its senior managers, and its directors. The federal government should order commercials for television, radio, and print media exhorting Canadians to vote with their wallets and boycott the products of companies, like GM, that treat us with such brazen contempt. We should also urge the Oshawa Generals hockey team to change its name in the face of the perfidy of their one-time sponsor. And, last, but not least, Canada should steer an urgent course back to the principles of the now recklessly defunct Auto Pact, which sensibly stipulated that a manufacturer wanting to sell its product here without tariffs has to make a certain percentage of that product here.
We’ve allowed multinationals to walk all over us. They worship at the altar of corporate greed, with nary a thought to loyalty, good stewardship, or the welfare of the societies in which they operate. If we are pushed, we should be push back. If we are thrown aside as inconsequential, we should exact a high cost. Writing for “The Toronto Star” on November 27, 2018, columnist David Olive proposed nationalizing General Motors of Canada and thereby “creating the country’s first Canadian-owned automaker.” While the prospect of governments running businesses (aside from publicly-run, not-for-profit utilities and transportation systems, of course) generally isn’t an enticing one, Olive makes a compelling argument that we have the expertise, skilled labor, and infrastructure to have a successful automaker of our own – making cars for consumers here and abroad. One thing is certain: Canadians have been ill-used by General Motors (and by the corporate sector generally) and their enablers in government. It’s high time that we fight back.
John Arkelian is a lawyer and journalist; he represented Canada abroad as a diplomat.
Copyright © 2018 by John Arkelian.
On November 3, 2018
© By John Arkelian
“Sometimes another world, like a secret garden, lies close at hand
 Copyright © 2018 by Ian Coristine (1000IslandsPhotoArt.com) but utterly unsuspected. So it is with our continent’s Great Inland Archipelago. A mere two-and-a-half hours drive from the eastern marches of the Greater Toronto Area, it may as well be worlds away. For this is a world all its own, where water and land meet in infinite combinations amidst a freshwater river, the mighty St. Lawrence, that’s more akin to a broad inlet of the sea than it is to a conventional river….”
Our travel essay on Gananoque & the Thousand Islands, “The Great Inland Archipelago,” accompanied by the breathtakingly beautiful photography of Ian Coristine, can be found at: https://artsforum.ca/travel/other-wanderers
On October 24, 2018
© By John Arkelian
When savagery collides with civilization, the civilized man must react with steely resolve. The autocratic regime of Saudi Arabia has shocked the world with an act that can only be called savage. On October 2nd, Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey by prior appointment to collect some documents needed for his intended marriage to a Turkish woman. His fiancé waited outside, but Khashoggi never emerged from the premises. He has not been seen since. Khashoggii was a journalist, who wrote for The Washington Post. He had quit his native Saudi Arabia in disagreement with its harsh authoritarianism, its hostility to democracy, and its enmity to basic human rights and freedoms. Khashoggi was a mild critic of the regime. He urged it to act on its purported interest in reform; he was what could be described as a member of the loyal opposition. He was neither a radical, nor a revolutionary; but the tyrants in Riyadh don’t like to be criticized, not even a little bit.
From what we know at present, it appears that a team of fifteen Saudis (twelve of them connected with that state’s security services, one of them reportedly in possession of a bone saw) were conveniently dispatched to Istanbul on the very day that Khashoggi had his appointment at the consulate. Despite the regime’s initial protestations of ignorance, followed by an absurd tale of a fistfight gone lethally wrong, it appears that assassins were dispatched by the Saudi regime to murder their gentle critic in cold blood – and to do so at the inviolable premises of a mission devoted to diplomatic and consular relations between two states. It is impossible to believe that this outrageous and grisly act of premeditated murder occurred without the foreknowledge and instigation of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who currently seems to call all of the shots there.
We in the West, with our allegiance to liberty, rule of law, inalienable human rights, and democratic, accountable governance, can only abhor an act of such barbarity. It is the act of savages, an act that is utterly reprehensible and repugnant to any civilized human being. Our response must be severe and implacable. The United States, Canada, members of the European Union, and other Western democracies should take these decisive steps: First, we should demand that Saudi Arabia immediately surrender all fifteen suspects for trial in the United States or at the International Criminal Court. (Given Turkey’s odious treatment of its own journalists and critics under the autocratic regime of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, this matter needs to be dealt with in an untainted venue.) Second, we should insist on the FBI investigating the murder. Third, we should resolve to uncover whoever gave the orders that resulted in the murder, even if that person is, as seems all too likely, the country’s de facto leader. We must resolutely ensure that all those responsible are held accountable: if evidence points to bin Salman’s culpability, we must demand that he be surrendered for trial in the West.
Fourth, we should indefinitely suspend all military and security cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including all sales of military equipment, notwithstanding the large financial cost to ourselves in doing so. Fifth, we should immediately suspend all new investment in Saudi Arabia or by that country in the West. Sixth, we should apply severe pressure (including sanctions) on the regime to immediately remove Mohammed bin Salman from any role in his country’s governance or succession, without waiting for the result of the criminal investigation. Sixth, all Western countries should immediately reduce their embassies and consulates in Saudi Arabia to a bare minimum, likewise severely reducing Saudi diplomatic and consulate presence in the West. Seventh, should the Saudi regime fail to cooperate with any of these measures, the West should formally break off diplomatic relations with that state. Eighth, the West should finally (and belatedly) pressure the Saudi regime to get out of Yemen, where it is, with tacit Western acquiescence, engaging in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Finally, it was reported early in the outrage following Khashoggi’s murder that the Saudi regime threatened to retaliate (if the West took measures to penalize them for their act of grotesque savagery) by hiking oil prices and throwing the world economy into chaos. The Saudis have, apparently, backed away from that threat. But, it should be made clear to them that any such action will result in severe countermeasures, up to and including our deposing their barbarous regime by force. There can be no compromise with savagery. Those who choose to behave as savages must be treated as such: Justice, and our own core values, demands no less.
Copyright © 2018 by John Arkelian
On October 24, 2018
© By John Arkelian
How does one appoint a man accused of sexual assault to the Supreme Court of the United States? There were no criminal charges (let alone convictions) against Brett Kavanaugh arising from the sexual assault claims made by Christine Blasey Ford and two other women. But, surely a lifetime appointment to such a powerful position requires a higher threshold than the mere absence of proven criminality? Blasey Ford seemed credible in her testimony before a Senate committee on September 27th. That’s not proof positive of the veracity of her claims, of course; but it ought to have made the approval of Kavanaugh too unpalatable to contemplate. There was a hasty last-minute investigation into her claims; but it looked for all the world like the FBI was severely circumscribed in their work by the Trump Administration. The results of their seemingly truncated ‘investigation’ were not made public (though Senators sworn to secrecy did see the FBI’s report).
Quite apart from the charges made by Blasey Ford and others, Kavanaugh himself gave the Senate ample reason to reject his nomination with his rabid (not to mention unjudicial) demeanor and his harsh accusations of a smear against him orchestrated by the Democrats and by the Clintons. Such an egregious display of partisan political rancor instantly disqualified the man from a place on the Supreme Court. How can his objectivity ever be trusted given that ugly outburst of partisanship? Nor were we impressed by his response to the suggestion that a vote be postponed while the accusations of sexual assault were investigated. Kavanaugh equivocated, when he should have declared: “I not only agree to an investigation, I insist upon one – to clear my name!” Isn’t that what a falsely accused person would demand?
There are other factors that taint this appointment. The first is that no Trump nominees should have been considered by the Senate – for any level of court – while Trump himself is under investigation for possible corruption, conflict of interest, abuse of power, and collusion with a foreign power to subvert a U.S. election. The Supreme Court may be called upon to assess Trump’s alleged wrongdoing in the future. How can it do so without partiality if some of its members were put there by this same president? (Kavanaugh’s reputed views on unfettered presidential powers and immunities are added cause for concern in that regard.) As the maxim states, justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. Finally, Republican Senators improperly refused to meet to consider a nominee (Merrick Garland) for the Supreme Court put forward by Barack Obama in the last half-year or so of his presidency. Their failure to hold a hearing to consider that nominee, and to instead deliberately let the clock run out on the Obama presidency, was a gross dereliction of their constitutional duty, despite their spurious claim that a president in the final months of his last term in office lacked the authority to put forward such nominees. If Republican Senators were determined (as they most assuredly were) not to approve any nominee proffered by that Democratic president, they should have had the political courage of their partisan convictions: They should have held the requisite hearings and then voted down the nominee on their narrow partisan grounds. But they had no courage, only shabby partisanship; and that fact means they have no moral authority to consider any Republican nominee now.
Copyright © 2018 by John Arkelian
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