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 November 9, 2015
© By John Arkelian
Sometimes a few words, or a single photograph, can create a visceral
 Photograph © 2015 by Belinda Martschinke. sense of a place we’ve never been – and bestir a powerful desire to take flight and wing our way to the very place that has conjured such yearning in our mind’s eye. The longing thus awakened may be wrenching or it may be soft as down, but it persists, like a compass pointing to the heart’s True North. These few words about Greenland, from Artsforum’s German correspondent Belinda Martschinke, awoke such a desire in us – the intimation of a place as yet unvisited but somehow lodged in our very marrow and in the soft whispering of the soul:
“Never before had I such an intense feeling that nothing else mattered than the single moment, nothing past, nothing in the future, nothing at any other place than where I was at the time. This gave me an incredible peace with myself.”
On August 12, 2015
© By John Arkelian
The dysfunction that permeates Canada’s Senate is far more pervasive than the revelations of unethical expense claims of recent months and the pernicious attempt by the Prime Minister’s Office to cover them up – however squalid those events are. Mike Duffy had no business claiming housing or living expenses in Ottawa (which was clearly his principal residence) on the flimsy fiction that his primary residence was in Prince Edward Island. Even if the Senate rules were so abjectly inadequate as to technically ‘permit’ such a claim, making such a claim had everything to do with cynical self interest and nothing to do with honorable stewardship of the public interest (and the public purse). Selfish greed and personal integrity are mutually incompatible. We now know that Duffy was far from alone in taking undue advantage of flimsy Senate rules: Other Senators, too, have chosen to put personal profit over personal integrity – by cynically using weak expense claim rules and weak oversight to their own advantage. Such behavior is insupportable – and it should result in permanent expulsion from the Senate, with a termination of the malfeasors’ Senate salaries and pensions. Equally outrageous is the fact the Senate has operated for countless years without adequate rules governing expense claims – without adequate rules, adequate oversight, or public transparency. There is no mystery as to how to establish such rules, oversight, enforcement, and public transparency. That they have been lacking all these many years suggests that the people we entrust with the levers of government prefer flimsy regulatory systems that they can twist and turn to their own selfish advantage.
Furthermore, it is long overdue that clear, sensible, transparent, and enforceable rules be established to govern precisely what constitutes “residency” in a particular province or region sufficient to qualify a person to represent that province or region in the Senate. Up till now, the government has clearly preferred lax, vague, and flimsy rules – to enable them to appoint a political crony who may have only a tenuous connection (like Duffy’s summer cottage) to the province they are purporting to represent. Lax, flimsy, and vague rules are all the better for manipulating things to the partisan advantage of whichever party happens to be in power. That’s no way to run a modern democratic country.
Then there is the involvement of the PMO. As the tab for Duffy’s dubious claims grew, the hitherto indulgent Prime Minister finally decreed that Duffy must repay the money, lest the growing political scandal damage Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party brand. Duffy refused. But a solution materialized. Nigel Wright, who was Harper’s chief of staff, paid the $90,000 bill himself, while the taxpayers were actively deceived into believing that Duffy had relented and was repaying his own contentious expenses. Before that happened, however, Wright told Duffy that he needed to run the plan by his boss. “Good to go from the PM” was the message Wright subsequently sent Duffy. Does anyone, can anyone, reasonably believe, in light of those words, that Stephen Harper himself was aware of, and approved of, the indirect repayment of Duffy’s tab? The payment in question is being characterized as bribery by the RCMP: It’s part of the 31 criminal charges against Duffy for fraud, breach of trust, and bribery. But, here’s a glaring puzzle: How can the recipient of the bribe (Duffy) be charged with a criminal offense while the man giving the bribe (Wright) is not? It makes no sense – legally or ethically. And the optics are rotten: It smacks of selective prosecution. And, is there anyone who believes that Nigel Wright was truly making a gift of $90,000 of his own money to Duffy? We’ve heard that there are “discretionary funds” within the PMO and perhaps also within the Conservative Party. Basic common sense (and human nature) suggests that Wright would be quietly reimbursed from one of those sources (away from public scrutiny) for his grandly benevolent out-of-pocket “gift” to Duffy. True, there has been nothing in the news to suggest such reimbursement was in the wings; nor have we seen media speculation on the point. But what reasonable man can believe that some such scheme was not quietly in the minds of those involved?
Those are the some of the recent indictments in the court of public opinion against Duffy, the Senate, and the PMO. But there is an even deeper malaise – one that goes back to the very founding of the country. It’s the ill-considered manner in which the “Fathers of Confederation” established the upper house of the Canadian Parliament in the first place. Why are Senators appointed (rather than elected)? Why are they appointed by one man (the Prime Minister)? Why were they appointed for life for most of the Senate’s history (with a retirement age, of 75, only being added later)? Remember the mantra of the old Reform Party, that the Senate should be refashioned to become “Equal, Elected, and Effective?” That model is the only acceptable one. Senators should be directly elected by the citizens of Canada – for fixed terms, and with term limits. There should be an equal number of Senators from every province (to balance the representation according to population model that applies, more or less, in the House of Commons). Or, if Canadians prefer, we could have an equal number of Senators from each region of the country (rather than each province). And, the constitution should be amended to provide a meaningful, effective role for the Senate vis-à-vis the House of Commons: If it doesn’t have real, meaningful powers, then there is no reason for it to exist.
John Arkelian is an award-winning author and journalist with a background in international and constitutional law, criminal prosecutions, and diplomacy.
Copyright © 2015 by John Arkelian.
On January 19, 2015
© By John Arkelian
In the aftermath of recent murderous events in Paris, one can only feel profound revulsion. What can possibly be in a human being’s mind to prompt him to take other lives with such casual, cold-blooded brutality? And how can anyone professing to be religious, commit such horrors with (what they believe to be) the name of God on their lips? “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is Great!”) shout those in the act of bloody murder, grotesquely oblivious to the monumental blasphemy of their words and actions.
Wonderfully perceptive, literate, and erudite, the late Polish essayist and foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuściński described the poisonous characteristics of extremism so adeptly back in 1993 that his words sound as though they were written to describe the brutal violence perpetrated in Paris in January 2015.
“Three plagues, three contagions, threaten the world. The first is the plague of nationalism. The second is the plague of racism. The third is the plague of religious fundamentalism. All three share one trait, a common denominator – an aggressive, all-powerful, total irrationality. Anyone stricken with one of these plagues is beyond reason. In his head burns a sacred pyre that awaits only its sacrificial victims. Every attempt at calm conversation will fail. He doesn’t want a conversation, but a declaration that you agree with him, admit that he is right, join the cause. Otherwise you have no significance in his eyes, you do not exist, for you count only if you are a tool, an instrument, a weapon. There are no people – there is only the cause. A mind touched by such a contagion is a closed mind, one-dimensional, monothematic, spinning round one subject only – its enemy.”**
Such is the foe of civilized man. How then does civilized man respond to violent extremists, to the monomaniacal savages who perversely purport to wield hatred, terror, and murder as though they were the instruments of justice and devoutness? Kapuściński’s next words should prompt us to caution:
“Thinking about our enemy sustains us, allows us to exist. That is why the enemy is always present, is always with us.” **
We need to take care that we do not succumb to a symbiotic relationship with those who want to harm us – each side needing the other as its implacable foe, a mortal enemy that must be crushed at all costs. If there is no reasoning with terror; there is the hope that better education and vigorous outreach can dampen its supply of new adherents. Maybe we need to consider limiting how many new immigrants we import from places whose history and culture are more likely to make some of their expatriates susceptible to the siren call of extremism. Maybe we should ensure that we do not import large numbers of immigrants from places with alien ideas or retrograde norms faster than our society can digest them. Maybe we just need to work harder at assimilating newcomers into Western culture and norms. Maybe we need to find better ways to counter the ideological indoctrination that finds a receptive audience among the dispossessed, the dysfunctional, and those otherwise neglected on society’s fringes. Those who feel included in society, surely, are less likely to strike out against it in violence.
Gradually, but relentlessly, putting in place the devices of a police state (surveillance, warrantless searches, imprisonment without trial, torture, assassination of real or perceived threats, and creeping infringements on free speech), as the West has been doing ever since 9/11, is to admit defeat – to subvert our own societies from within and destroy what’s most precious about them. That is the terrorist’s goal: We must not do his destructive work for him. There are tried and true criminal investigation and prosecution mechanisms in place to combat terrorism. Terrorists commit crimes – shocking crimes, yes, but crimes nonetheless. Let our criminal justice system and law enforcement agencies use the normal implements that have always been at their disposal to respond to this threat. The ordinary implements of our legal system are more than adequate to deal with the particular crime of terrorism.
Instead, there’s talk in Canada (and elsewhere) about further restricting core human rights – by lowering the evidentiary threshold required for criminal investigation or prosecution; by ever greater surveillance (which already unconstitutionally catches in its universal net every law-abiding man, woman, and child); by diluting the essential requirement that a search warrant be issued by a court before a person or premises be searched by the state; or, alarmingly, by employing some kind of “preventive detention,” locking-up potential threats before they can hurt us. Such measures are anathema to a free people. If those intent on violent crime merely conspire to commit it, they are subject to the reach of our criminal law: It is more than capable of dealing with them – without extraordinary police powers or unconstitutional deviations from our most fundamental human rights and freedoms.
In the aftermath of the murders in Paris, it became popular to declare “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”), in reference to the cold-blooded slaughter of editorial cartoonists at the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” and the murder of mere bystanders at a grocery store. But, ‘Qui est Charlie?’ (‘Who is Charlie?’), after all? We are right to defend freedom of speech – including the freedom to criticize and lampoon political and religious figures. Such speech (nowhere more so than in the fine art of political cartooning) can inform, console, or critique. Sometimes it can be scathing. Sometimes it can sting, sometimes deeply offend. But it is invaluable in a free society. And, if we are willing to sometimes offend the minority, we must likewise tolerate speech that offends the majority.
Arresting the controversial (and ostensibly obnoxious) French comic Dieudonné M’bala M’bala for utterances that apparently seemed to sympathize with the terrorists’ murder spree seems inconsistent with our impassioned rally to the cause of free speech. Committing violence, or simply advocating it, is a crime – not free speech. Likewise, shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater as a prank is not a protected form of free speech. One person’s freedom ends when it causes actual harm to another person. But that leaves us with much speech that is ignorant, deplorable, or prejudiced. Provided that such speech, as noxious (and possibly hateful) as it may be, stops short of advocating violence or other criminality, it is to be protected. Freedom for decent people means extending freedom (of thought and speech) to those who are indecent.
A free people cannot afford to sacrifice core freedoms in the spurious name of greater security. And spurious it is, too. No amount of arbitrary state power will completely protect us from the danger of an extremist cabal or a lone crazed gunman intent on violence. If we sacrifice freedom for security, we will end up with neither. Further, we have far more to fear from the incremental moves toward police power trumping civil rights than we do from the terrible (but ever so remote) possibility of being killed by a terrorist. Lest we forget, police in Toronto corralled (or “kettled”) and unlawfully detained scores of law-abiding citizens, among other egregious human rights abuses, during the G-20 conference held there in 2010. That happened despite our constitutional guarantees (in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms), despite a mature legal and law enforcement system, and despite supposed systems of oversight and accountability. (To date, Toronto’s chief of police, Bill Blair, has, shamefully, been excused from testifying about his role in authorizing such gross excesses.) If the safeguards failed us then, as they manifestly did, how much more probable is it that the feeblest safeguards extant in the realm of counter-terrorism and surveillance will signify for nothing at all? Meaningful oversight and public accountability are all but illusory in the murky world of state surveillance and counter-terrorism measures. That’s why Canada, of all seemingly benign places, was complicit in past unlawful U.S. “rendition” of prisoners to secret interrogation sites abroad. That’s why Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were, for a time, handing over their prisoners to local authorities who were very likely to torture or kill them. If we honor the metaphor of “Charlie,” we must stand fast against the seductive temptation to give away our core values and our inalienable human rights.
John Arkelian is an award-winning author and journalist with a background in international and constitutional law, criminal prosecutions, and diplomacy.
Copyright © 2015 by John Arkelian.
**Quotations are from “Imperium” by Ryszard Kapuściński (page 248); translated from the Polish by Klara Glowczewska. (Vintage International, N.Y., 1995) Originally published in Polish in 1993.
On January 19, 2015
As they used to say in “The X Files,” fight the future, by signing this online petition to stop Canada Post’s addle-brained plan to end home mail delivery:
https://www.change.org/p/don-t-let-canada-post-end-door-to-door-delivery
The online petition was started by a concerned Canadian, Susan Dixon. To date, it has attracted over 210,000 signatures, to no apparent effect, as far as Canada Post and its government overlords are concerned. Not for the first time, the will (and best interests) of the people seem to count for nothing by those who purportedly represent us.
And see below for “Postal Follies,” our March 26, 2014 editorial decrying the insupportable move by Canada Post management to unilaterally abdicate their core responsibility.
We happened to come across this nice assessment of Artsforum in the online magazine Offscreen:
Offscreen Notes: Artsforum Magazine — July 6, 2014
“Recently discovered this Canadian wide-ranging cultural issues online journal [Artsforum Magazine] which reminds me in its scope and literary bent of the excellent print magazine, The Believer Magazine, perhaps with a more politically driven interest (and from a Canadian perspective). Still, it is an ‘old-fashioned’ (I mean this in a good sense) liberal arts style magazine with a critical interest in all the arts (film, poetry, painting, photography, music, television, theatre, fiction).”
Donato Totaro, Ph.D
Offscreen (an online magazine)
Visit Offscreen at: http://offscreen.com/notes/view/artsforum-magazine
On May 27, 2014
Egyptian democracy crushed under the boot of another military ‘strongman’
© By John Arkelian
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same. Nowhere is that more true than in Egypt, which has fallen back into the rigid embrace of military tyranny after a painfully brief flirtation with democracy. In February 2011, a protracted popular uprising, part of the so-called “Arab Spring,” swept one general turned president-for-life, Hosni Mubarek, from office after his nearly 30 year autocratic reign. Parliamentary elections in November 2011 gave Islamist candidates two-thirds of the seats, with half of those bearing allegiance to the 85-year-old Muslim Brotherhood movement. Then, in June 2012, a member of that movement, Mohammed Morsi, was elected president with 51.7% of the vote. It was a first for Egypt, despite that country’s long history – the democratic election of a civilian head of state. While this magazine holds no brief for Morsi or for the Muslim Brotherhood, it does appear that their electoral success was free and fair. Likewise, it appears that they adhered, more or less, to lawful measures once they assumed leadership of the government. But they remained bitterly unpopular with a large segment of Egypt’s divided population. Those who opposed them took to the streets en masse to angrily demand their ouster. Egypt’s military was only too happy to oblige, especially after the Morsi government amended the constitution in a failed attempt to bring the military under civilian control.
In July 2013, barely a year after he took office, Egypt’s first democratically elected president was forcibly (and unlawfully) removed by a military coup d’état. If that were not bad enough, the West acquiesced in the coup, declining even to call it by its rightful name, lest our own laws oblige us to suspend our sizeable military aid to the Egyptian generals. In the months that followed the coup, a travesty of justice has ensued, moving from one excess to another. An estimated one thousand Morsi supporters were slain in the streets while protesting the military overthrow of the elected government. Journalists have been suppressed and in some cases arrested. More recently, kangaroo courts have pronounced mass death sentences on hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, on what gives every indication of being grossly trumped-up charges: On one occasion, 529 defendants were sentenced to death at the same time; on another occasion, an additional 683 were sentenced to death – among them Mohammed Badie, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Unsubstantiated charges of “terrorism” were levied against Morsi, allegedly pertaining to his dealings with the Hamas administration in the Gaza territory that borders on Egypt. Morsi has been reduced to appearing in court isolated – from his lawyers and everyone else – in a soundproof glass cage. Apparently, Egyptian “justice” is not just blind, she is also deaf.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s new man on a white horse, General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, not content to exercise an iron grip behind the scenes, answered the (real or imagined) ‘call from the people’ to throw his camouflage helmet into the ring as a candidate in today’s (May 27th) presidential election. Having killed, cowed, or imprisoned his strongest rivals, effectively disenfranchising half of the nation’s population, this tin-pot pharaoh is a sure-bet to take the reins as Egypt’s latest military dictator. It’s quite an accomplishment for a man who previous claim to fame was defending the so-called “virginity tests” perpetrated by police on female protesters in Egypt’s 2011 popular uprising against tyranny, nepotism, and corruption. The tangle of competing motivations and aspirations that embroiled Cairo’s Tahrir Square and other flashpoints is difficult to sort out; but one thing is clear. Among those clamoring for change in 2011’s ill-fated Arab Spring were idealistic voices calling for true democracy, rule of law, respect for minorities, and secular government. Those who sought true democracy, freedom, and justice have been betrayed – by Egypt’s military, and by the rest of the world for acquiescing in the violent overthrow of a government which we may not have liked very much but which had in its favor the unique distinction (for Egypt) of having been freely elected. Sadly, too many in Egypt have been jubilant at the return of an autocrat. What a wasted opportunity for the Arab Spring to bear lasting fruit.
John Arkelian is an international affairs analyst, lawyer, and former diplomat.
Copyright © 2014 by John Arkelian.
Editor’s note: A tin-pot dictator (including those of the pharaonic variety) is an autocratic ruler who has little or no political legitimacy but abundant delusions of grandeur.
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