One Would Hope This Isn't What They Meant...

Above is a rather alarming video posted to YouTube.

Modelled as a campaign advertisement, the ad features a hand on a table with its fingers outstretched.

As another hand stabs a knife in between each finger, a woman's voice narrates a rather typical -- and unimpressive -- list of grievances (both actual and imagined). As the woman tells viewers "no way" to Harper, the woman's hand is pulled away, revealing a picture of Stephen Harper.

The other hand then stabs the knife directly into Stephen Harper's eye.

"On October 15, take control of the game," the woman advises.

And she would suggest Canadians do that precisely how? By stabbing Stephen Harper in the eye?

Encouraging the assassination of a political leader is far from the most constructive way to "take control of the game." One can only hope that this isn't actually what the producer of this video intended, and that she merely didn't think her message through.

Then again, judging from some of Canada's anti-conservatives, that might be a little too much to hope for.

Viral Politics 101

With the advent of web 2.0, viral politics has been all the rage for a good long time now.

Yet with many attempts by presumedly younger (predumedly hipper) individuals attempting to take their political messages to the internet, it's probably ironic that a 72-year-old man can do it better.

The Broadbent video above is everything a viral video should be: captivating, and worht passing around through word-of-mouth.

Quite unlike the Conservative alternative below.

In the above ad, Broadbent manages to successfully brand himself as hip by accepting his inevitable un-hipness. The ad is a classic throwback to the terminally un-hip ads of the early 1990s when rap and hip hop were only becoming household words. Its campiness -- and clearly intentionally poor production value -- carries it a long way.

(Admit it. You can't stop watching this bloody thing, can you? -Ed.)

If only Canada's current political leaders could manage something this brilliant, they'd really be in business.

Khadr Case Reaches Definitive Turning Point

Guantanamo interrogation tapes having a profound effect

On The Root of All Evil, Lewis Black ruled that YouTube is, in fact, the root of all evil.

In a show comparing YouTube to pornography, Black determined that YouTube has had such a decisively negative impact on western civilization -- transforming us into the words of advocate Patton Oswalt into a "country of Caligulas".

But if YouTube has really had such a negative impact on civilization, it's hard to overlook some of the good it's done as well. When Robert Dzienkaski succumbed to his injuries after being excessively and mercilessly tasered by airport security, it was YouTube that ultimately brought the outrage to the world's attention. When University of Florida student Andrew Meyer was tasered for asking Senator John Kerry a question that somebody didn't like, it was YouTube that prevented the story from being swept under a carpet.

Now, it's YouTube that has brought the severe psychological stress being experiened by Omar Khadr unignorably to the world's attention. And, just as with these and countless other previous cases, YouTube has had an abrupt effect on the case.

Such is the case with a recent National Post editorial in which Jonathon Kay has finally come around to the thinking of those who agree Omar Khadr should be repatriated to Canada:

"As I write this, at 1 p. m. on Tuesday, piteous video images from Omar Khadr's interrogation at Guantanamo Bay are not only the #1 news item on the National Post Web site, but also the lead item on BBC News and USA Today. Millions of people are now wondering why Canada's government has acquiesced-- and as the video shows, even participated -- in the unconscionable treatment of a blubbering boy-soldier.

As someone who otherwise considers himself one of the War on Terror's noisiest Canadian cheerleaders, I submit that the bleeding hearts are right on this one: Omar Khadr needs to come home.

Here's why:

Omar Khadr was a child soldier

During the carnage that gripped Sierra Leone in the 1990s, the most terrifying crimes often were committed by gangs of children who'd been abducted by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Isolated from their families, and stripped of any sort of moral compass, these child brigades were renowned for such monstrous acts as hacking off the legs and arms of defenceless villagers. When the RUF's war with the government ended, many of these children were assimilated back into civilized society. No one -- in the West, at least -- blamed them for what they had done. As in Sri Lanka, Congo and other parts of the world where children are abducted and forced into combat, it is universally recognized that child soldiers are not morally culpable for their actions in the same way as adults. That's why the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal didn't prosecute child soldiers -- it prosecuted the monsters who exploited them. Can someone please tell me why this principle has not been applied to Omar Khadr, who was all of 15 when he allegedly threw the grenade that killed Sergeant Christopher Speer of Delta Force in 2002?

What makes the case for Khadr especially strong is that he was essentially recruited into combat from birth--by his own flesh-and-blood, no less. The true monster in the Khadr narrative is not Omar, but his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, an al-Qaeda lieutenant who moved his whole family from Canada to central Asia so they could share in the glory of jihad.

As a nine-year-old, Omar drank in his father's Islamist propaganda -- spending months by his father's bed as the jihadi patriarch lay hunger-striking against Pakistani authorities, who'd arrested him on terrorism charges in 1995. Following 9/11, Ahmed (who, thankfully, was dispatched to his celestial virgins in 2003) enlisted his son as a sort of sidekick and maidservant to a jihadi cell hiding out in the Afghan outback. It was in this capacity that Omar tagged along with the pack of terrorists who would eventually meet their maker in the June 27, 2002, firefight that claimed the life of Sergeant Speer.

I have been reading a lot of tough talk on the blogs about how Khadr should be "waterboarded until he stops crying" and such. I wonder if those same hard hearts could tell me how they would have turned out if they'd been told --literally, since birth--about the necessity of jihad and the beauty of martyrdom; if, since their early days, they'd been propagandized into believing that the West was waging a genocidal war against Muslims; and that military resistance was the only path of survival. Are we to expect some sort of inborn moral sense to activate -- to tell us that everything being told to us by our own parents is wrong -- even before one is old enough to shave?

I know about 20,000 former child soldiers in Sierra Leone who could tell you the answer to that question. And unlike Khadr, not one of them stands accused of "Violation of the Law of War."

We don't know that Omar Khadr killed anyone

The U.S. government's line on the events of June 27, 2002 -- reported uncritically, for the most part, by the Canadian media -- is that a cowardly Khadr popped up from the rubble in the aftermath of a firefight in the Afghan hinterland, killing a U. S. medic who was looking to treat wounded survivors. In fact, the grenade that killed Speer (who was fighting, by necessity, as a solider, whatever his training as a medic) was thrown when the four-hour long battle was still hot. And it is far from clear who threw it: Contrary to initial accounts, there was a second jihadi still alive when the fatal grenade was thrown -- and since Khadr was badly wounded at the time, the second militant (who later died) is the more promising suspect.

(We might also dispense with the idea that Speer was on a mission of mercy: Post-battle testimony from his battlefield companions suggests they were -- quite understandably --more interested in shooting the wounded than healing them.)

My own view is that Speer may well have been killed by a grenade thrown by one of his comrades. (Reports from the battle suggest that grenades were flying thick and fast from both sides.) As the Pat Tillman scandal shows, the U. S. military sometimes goes to extraordinary lengths to cover up friendly-fire deaths. And in the Khadr case, his U. S. Department of Defense attorney claims, there is at least one instance in which a lieutenant-colonel retroactively amended and backdated a battlefield report to buttress the case against Khadr.

Even if Khadr did kill Sergeant Speer, he did so as a soldier, not a terrorist

There's little doubt that Ahmed Khadr was training his sons to be terrorists -- the sort of people who blow up buses and restaurants, or who wear civilian clothing as they lie in wait to detonate explosives under vehicle convoys. But what Omar Khadr did on June 27, 2002, wasn't terrorism. It was participation in a military engagement -- a fact that can't be changed merely by slapping a label like "unlawful combatant" on him.

Moreover, it was a military engagement fought on American terms: After U. S. soldiers sealed off the village encampment housing Khadr's cell, they prosecuted the siege with about 100 troops, some of them Special Forces, as well as Apache helicopters, F-18 Hornets and A-10 Warthogs. You can say that Khadr was fighting in an evil cause when he was captured, but you can't say that he was preying on the defenceless.

Even if you don't buy anything I've written above, Khadr's treatment still ranks as abominable

Let us assume that Omar Khadr actually threw the grenade that killed Sergeant Speer, that he did so as a cold-blooded killer, not as a soldier, and that his status as a child combatant is irrelevant -- in short, that Omar Khadr is a murderer. Well then, how do we treat murderers in Western countries? Answer: We put them in jail. We don't beat them, or move them from cell to cell every three hours, or terrify them with threats of pedophilic rape, or deny them appropriate medical care -- all punishments that Khadr has endured -- a litany of abuse so traumatic that, according to one piteous detail among many, he took to falling asleep at Guantanamo desperately hugging a Mickey Mouse book brought to him as a gift.

In the space of six years of incarceration, Khadr has endured more brutality than any ordinary jailbird would endure in 60. And if he had any intelligence value to his American captors, it surely has been exhausted. Please bring Omar Khadr home. If he is to face justice, let it be in Canada."

Naturally, those who disgustingly insist Khadr should be "waterboarded until he stops crying" will consider Jonathon Kay way off the reservation on this one.

But he's right. Whether it's to be put on trial for his alleged crimes or reassimilated back into society (but absolutely not before his demobilization can be assured, Omar Khadr must be repatriated back to Canada.

Which makes the government's insistence that they can do no such thing all the more unacceptable. In time, as the Khadr tapes continue to make their rounds via the mainstream media and YouTube, this position will become utternly untenable.

Even the alleged arch-conservatives at the National Post are beginning to see that.

Ezra Levant: Angry, Angry Man

Levant rages against the HRC machine, posts video to the internet for posterity

A long and sad chapter of the varying controversies surrounding Canada's Human Rights Commissions took an interesting twist today, as Ezra Levant, subject of a complaint by the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and Syed Soharwardy, posted video of his hearings to YouTube.

Through the course of the videos, a hapless Human Rights Commissioner is subjected to a stern lecture on the nature of freedom of speech and the various failings of Canadas HRCs.



In his opening statement, Levant voiced the full measure of his distaste for the HRC.

"When the Western Standard magazine published the Danish cartoons of Muhammad two years ago, I was the publisher. It was the proudest moment of my public life," Levant announced. "I would do it again today. In fact, I did do it again today. Although the Western Standard sadly no longer publishes a print edition, I posted the cartoons this morning on my website, EzraLevant.com."

"I am here at this interrogation under protest. It is my position the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violaton of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press and in this case, religious freedom and seperation of Mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta Human Rights Commission is the agency violating my rights."

Levant went on to outline the origial purpose of the HRC, and how these Commissions have been subverted by special interests.

During the statement (at one point of which he stops to thank all of his supporters who read The Western Standard), Levant rages against the HRC Commissioner who alternates between shuffling uncomfrotably and shuffling angrily in her chair.

Levant certainly hadn't come to make any friends.



"We published those cartoons for the intention and purpose of exercising our inalienable rights as free-born Albertans to publish whatever the hell we want no matter what the hell you think," Ezra insists. "It's my right to do so for reasonable intentions and its my right to do so for extremely unreasonable purposes. I refuse to concede to you that what my political thoughts are in my mind and in my heart are will determine whether or not an artifact is legal or illegal."

Of course, Levant is right about this last part. The cartoons in question were part of the story the Western Standard was commenting on -- the rioting of Muslims over the cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. Levant and the Standard had every right to do cover that story, and bore no responsibility to cover any part of it up.

At points, however, Levant veers strongly into the perversity of unrestrained freedom, particularly when that freedom is unrestrained even by the better natures of the person exercising them.

"I published it without reservation. I published it in the most unreasonable manner," Ezra insisted. "Whatever offends you, I reserve the right to publish it for whatever offensive reason I want."

"I reserve the right to publish those cartoons for exactly what they complain about. I reserve the right to publish the cartoons to do every offensive thing they claim is in my heart."

At its most base level, Levant is right. But those offended by him also have the right to censure him, and to seek censure from other sources. While they are absolutely abusing the system in attempting to use the HRC to do this using the strong arm of the law, Syed Soharwardy has every right to be offended, and has every right to protest.

In part three, however, Levant really turns up the heat:



When asked about claims that publishing the cartoons inspired hatred and hostility toward Muslims and put them at risk, Levant draws blood for the first time when he notes that nowhere in Canada has a conclusive hate crime been committed against Muslims.

However, he notes that hate crimes have been perpetrated in Canada by Muslims against other identifiable minorities.

In particular, he notes the firebombing of Edmonton's Beth Shalom synagogue

"This dumb, radical, fascist, Muslim, arab from Jordan firebombed my synogogue in Edmonton. So when Larry Shayman cries wolf he's just a fibber. He's crying wolf. The last house of worship torched in Edmonton was my synagogue. It's not these cartoons that create hatred. It's radical muslims who blow things up. Who torched my synogogue. Who file nuisance suits. They're the ones who make people hate Islam."

"When these radicals start trying to import their values whether its violence, or honour killings like Asqua Parvez or torching synogogues like the Beth Shalom that make people say 'I hate you'."

The complaints of imminent threat directed toward Muslims and other minorities tend to fall flat when that violence so often fails to materialize.

Then again, when one ignores incitory factors until such violence manifests itself, one begins to fall under an immense moral hazard. Such violence could be prevented, if only those inciting it could be stopped. However, this is a very thin line to walk: perhaps one that HRCs have proven themselves unable to walk.

When asked about Charter limits on freedom of speech, Levant once again unloads:



"I do not believe their should be any limits whatsoever on political or religious speech that doesn't fall into the categories of incitement to riot or conspiracy to cummit murder," he insists. "It is the bedrock of our western liberal society, that unreasonable speech should be permitted. In fact, unreasonable speech is the only reason we've ever had progress. People who offend the order, whether it's women offending the patriarchy to get the right to vote for suffragists. Whether it's Martin Luther King offending white society for black equality. Whether it's homosexuals who offend norms in order to get equal rights. No liberal progressive cause has ever advanced except for through offending the order. And many of those offences used quite rude language, or at least language that was regarded as quite rude in the day."

Of course, comparing himself to Martin Luther King or Nellie McClung may not seem quite as accurate as Levant would like to think, even if he considers it personally flattering.

Mostly because King, McClung and their historical compatriots (to whom Levant alludes) all fought for justice not merely for themselves, but for entire groups of people.

Levant's fight is almost entirely for himself. He wasn't protesting a great historical injustice when he published the cartoons in question, he was essentially -- whether rightly or wrongly -- accusing an entire culture of barbarism.

Yet Levant makes a very strong point when he notes the absurdity of ordering apologies.

"For them to want the state to compel me to utter words I don't believe is Orwell at its apex. For me to say words I don't mean. Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, the most heinous criminals in this country, convicted of mass murder, the state cannot order them to apologize. It's cruel and unusual punishment. More to the point, people know they wouldn't mean it. What's the use of an apology if they wouldn't mean it? A convicted murder cannot be ordered to apologize, but a convicted publisher can be ordered by the state to apologize."

"I'll rot in hell before I use my mouth to say those fascist words with [the commission] as an instrument to compel me."



Levant's lecture on freedom of speech, however, misses an important element: that of responsibility.

Levant does, indeed, have the right to say what he wants. However, he is also responsible for what he says, and what he publishes. While in this particular matter he was actually acting entirely responsibly, there is no guarantee that he can say or publish whatever he wants in future without facing any kind of consequence.

Unfortunately for Levant, one of the reasons he can't esscape responsibility for his comments is because of his own success. He has managed to earn for himself a position in the public discourse where he is well known and (by some) respected. When Ezra Levant says something, many people listen. A few people even reach for their phones and dial up the HRC.

Another reason why Levant cannot escape responsibility for his comments is because he possesses the courage to allow his comments to be identified with his own name. Particularly on the internet, there are some cowards who will spurn responsibility for their comments simply because they lack the courage to accept responsibility.

Hopefully, Levant's appearance before the AHRC will bring this sad, sad chapter of the abuse of Canada's HRCs to a close. Perhaps it will even provide the impetus for those with the power to do so (are you listening Stephen Harper? Ed Stelmach?) to fix the problems with Canada's Human Rights Commissions once and for all.

Not by abolishing them, as some self-interested individuals would insist, but by reforming them to operate like a real court of law, rule of evidence and all.

In the meantime, Levant actually has every right and reason to be angry.

Video Never Lies

Amateur Attack Ads Tell Interesting story

It’s official. YouTube has become a cultural phenomenon.

Like many recent cultural phenomena, perhaps the greatest strength of YouTube is that it offers its users a do-it-yourself online media outlet (not much unlike blogs – hello!).

Like any do-it-yourself media outlet, YouTube was quickly harnessed for political means. Various people have used YouTube – as well as similar sites such as Google Video – for various political purposes. Those with a stake in the current Liberal leadership campaign are no different.

Often, the way the grassroots uses the do-it-yourself online media tells an interesting story.

Once again, the current Liberal leadership contest is no different.

A number of amateur attack ads have been uploaded to these sites. They convey an interesting image of the Liberal party at this turning point in its history – and it may not be a very pretty picture at that.

The bulk of the videos take aim at one of two targets (if, of course, one ignores the mass of attention paid to George Bush and Stephen Harper): frontrunners Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff.

”Once a Dipper, Always a Dipper” takes aim at Rae, predictably highlighting Rae’s career as the disastrous NDP premier of Ontario, and listing several inflammatory quotes made about the Liberals during that time. “Keep leadership in the family,” becomes the theme of the piece.

”Timmy” portrays a couple of pop-art Ontarians, NDP supporters turned Liberals, shocked to learn of Rae’s candidacy for the Liberal leadership. While the mother is driven to drinking, the father tells his son Timmy the story of “Rae days” in scant detail. Rae Days are also the subject of ”Potholes”. In ”NDP Orange” it is actually suggested that Rae’s candidacy for the Liberal leadership metaphorically pisses on the “great” image and legacy of the Liberal party.

George Bush and the Republicans also become an omnipresent spectre. In ”Michael Ignatieff Outakes”, a South Park-style animated Ignatieff needs to be corrected after announcing his candidacy for the Republican party. He is later on seen ogling a map of Iraq. ”Fit to Be President” makes use of Hulk Hogan’s famous “Real American” entry music, and makes reference to some of Ignatieff’s contentious writings on imperialism and torture, as well as a photoshopped image of Iggy with an Eagle perched on his outstretched ”Presidential Finger”. A video of this title tries to turn a hand gesture into a political issue (yet curiously makes few references to Pierre Trudeau’s Prime Ministerial finger).

Speaking of Pierre Trudeau, no Liberal campaign of any sort could possibly be complete without someone exhuming his ideological grave, and this campaign is no exception to this rule. ”Quebec as a Nation: A New Perspective” quotes Pierre Trudeau at length on the issue of Quebec nationalism, painting Michael Ignatieff – whose recent Quebec as a nation appeal reopened the issue – as an outsider, out of touch with Liberal values. Video can also be found of Justin Trudeau responding to Ignatieff’s suggestion.

Even nutbars such as Alex Jones have weighed in, spreading their typical paranoid nonsense, and insinuating that Bob Rae could be used as a sacrificial lamb to allow the Conservative party to help institute a North American Union of Canada, Mexico and the United States.

To be fair, there are some bright spots. In particular, Gerard Kennedy’s supporters have posted some positive ads, highlighting their candidate’s strengths.

Frankly, these ads do not paint a flattering picture of the Liberal party.

Not only do they paint a start picture of a party divided against itself, they also reinforce the (arguably) popular public image of the Liberals as a party running headlong into a dead end – of a party so committed to living in the past that they cannot possibly lay claim to the bold vision for the future they often lay claim to. Between rampant anti-Americanism, and political xenophobia, these ads show a side of the Liberal party they would likely much rather remain private.

But nothing remains private when it is posted to online video, for the entire world to see.