The Last Exile

I haven’t read Rabbi Tovia Singer’s new book Let’s Get Biblical and I probably won’t. Only because I already know why Jews have not and will not accept Jesus as the Messiah. Although I would highly recommend it to any curious Christians – or any one who had a Christian upbringing. Arutz Sheva, explains by illustrating a pet peeve of mine.

In contrast to most ecumenical Jewish-Christian literature published today, this book makes no attempt to reconcile the Synagogue and the Church. Quite the contrary, The Let’s Get Biblical Study Guide was written in direct response to the growing effort of numerous fundamentalist Christian organizations which aggressively target Jews for conversion.

The book methodically brings to light the fundamental reasons why Judaism does not accept the Christian messiah. It illustrates how the core teachings and doctrines of the Church are incompatible with the cornerstone principles declared by the Prophets of Israel, and are opposed by the most cherished tenets contained in the Jewish Scriptures.

The Let’s Get Biblical Study Guide further shows how, over the course of many centuries, the Church systematically and deliberately altered the Jewish Scriptures in its authorized translations of the Bible in order to persuade its adherents that Jesus is the promised Jewish messiah. To accomplish this task, Christian translators manipulated, misquoted, mistranslated and even fabricated verses in the Hebrew Scriptures so that these texts clearly appear to be speaking about Jesus.

I cannot count the times where someone quotes from the Christian Genesis or Isaiah, citing chapter and verse in a discussion. This always causes me to reach up to pull down my Tanakh only to discover the chapter and verse cited is not the same as mine or the context bares no resemblance to the issue under discussion.

Currently, there is a debate in Israel about the foreign funding of NGO’s. It’s vociferous and brass in a kind of take no prisoners public free for all. This inspires Dr. Dawg with a longing and he admits to the desire to live in an alternative reality wherein he is an Israeli. I have my own Israeli alternative reality where I live in the Golan Heights on a moshav growing grapes and honey. I also get to paint outside in the afternoon sun. Of course, if we did live in our alternative realities – he would be doing his damnedest to have me evicted from my home…but not only would I be fighting tooth, nail and kippots every step of the way; I would still make better cholent.

I thought I would run a follow-up to illustrate one of the examples Dawg used in his post. Ha’aretz ran an article suggesting the Jerusalem Post ’summarily’ fired Prof. Naomi Chazen from their roster of columnists as a kind of pay-back for also being the president of the New Israel Fund whose agenda and sources of foreign funding have recently come under a great deal of criticism. Ha’aretz

Associates of Prof. Naomi Chazan attacked the Jerusalem Post on Saturday in the wake of the English-language daily’s decision to fire the former Meretz MK who is at the center of a right-wing campaign against the New Israel Fund, of which Chazan is president. “The issue now is freedom of speech and freedom of expression,” a source told Haaretz last night. “The paper took a stand against freedom of expression and Prof. Chazan regrets this to the depths of her soul.”

Except, well nothing is as it seems – including ‘freedom of speech and expression’. The Jerusalem Post terminated Prof. Chazen from their roster due to the fact their policy of not employing columnists who sue their employers in the name of ‘free speech and expression’. Personally, it sounds like a no-brainer editorial decision on the Jerusalem Post’s part but I will quote the Jpost and let everyone make up their own mind.

The Jerusalem Post has canceled Naomi Chazan’s biweekly column, after she and the New Israel Fund of which she is president threatened legal action against the paper over a recent advertisement.

The decision was taken by Jerusalem Post management after a legal threat was received at the paper from the NIF and Chazan’s lawyers.

Along with other publications, the Post last Sunday carried an advertisement criticizing Chazan and the New Israel Fund in the context of the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead.

In Friday’s paper, the Post carried an advertisement defending the NIF and Chazan against their critics.

Of course, in my alternative reality I might also be one of Ha’aretz’s litigators part-time so my source of income would remain fluid at all times. No doubt the law firm which handles Ha’aretz’s lawsuits thinks of the newspaper as their own brand of ‘annuity’ client.

Assault is never funny, and assault motivated by a political agenda or made to further the cause of a political agenda should never be met with anything other than the full weight of penalties offered under Canada’s criminal code.

Afterwards, deport Emily McCoy’s raggedy-vegan ass back to American – after she serves her jail term in a Canadian prison. And kudos to Fisheries Minister Gail Shea for acting with restraint and good grace when she encountered an American PETA thug bent on assaulting her to further PETA’s foreign political agenda.

By the way, be sure to mark March 15th on your calendars as its the annual official People Eating Tasty Animals for PETA Day.

I am not a fan to the NY Times or Thomas Friedman for that matter but every once and awhile he says something which makes more sense than not. When that happens, its important to pay attention.

Frankly, if I had my wish, we would be on our way out of Afghanistan not in, we would be letting Pakistan figure out which Taliban they want to conspire with and which ones they want to fight, we would be letting Israelis and Palestinians figure out on their own how to make peace, we would be taking $100 billion out of the Pentagon budget to make us independent of imported oil — nothing would make us more secure — and we would be reducing the reward for killing or capturing Osama bin Laden to exactly what he’s worth: 10 cents and an autographed picture of Dick Cheney.

Am I going isolationist? No, but visiting the greater China region always leaves me envious of the leaders of Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, who surely get to spend more of their time focusing on how to build their nations than my president, whose agenda can be derailed at any moment by a jihadist death cult using exploding underpants.

Could we just walk away? No, but we must change our emphasis. The “war on terrorists” has to begin by our challenging the people and leaders over there. If they’re not ready to take the lead, to speak out and fight the madness in their midst, for the future of their own societies, there is no way we can succeed. We’ll exhaust ourselves trying. We’d be better off just building a higher wall.

Exactly. I tried to suggest much the same thing and ditto on the Israeli and Palestinians. But I am not done with quoting Friedman yet.

Our presence, our oil dependence, our endless foreign aid in the Middle East have become huge enablers of bad governance there and massive escapes from responsibility and accountability by people who want to blame all their troubles on us. Let’s get out of the way and let the moderate majorities there, if they really exist, face their own enemies on their own. It is the only way they will move. We can be the wind at their backs, but we can’t be their sails. There is some hope for Iraq and Iran today because their moderates are fighting for themselves.

Has anyone noticed the most important peace breakthrough on the planet in the last two years? It’s right here: the new calm in the Strait of Taiwan. For decades, this was considered the most dangerous place on earth, with Taiwan and China pointing missiles at each other on hair triggers. Well, over the past two years, China and Taiwan have reached a quiet rapprochement — on their own. No special envoys or shuttling secretaries of state. Yes, our Navy was a critical stabilizer. But they worked it out. They realized their own interdependence. The result: a new web of economic ties, direct flights and student exchanges. A key reason is that Taiwan has no oil, no natural resources. It’s a barren rock with 23 million people who, through hard work, have amassed the fourth-largest foreign currency reserves in the world. They got rich digging inside themselves, unlocking their entrepreneurs, not digging for oil. They took responsibility. They got rich by asking: “How do I improve myself?” Not by declaring: “It’s all somebody else’s fault. Give me a handout.”

Can I get an amen to that?

I am one of those rare birds in conservative circles because I don’t support the continued mission in Afghanistan. I have been seen as a ‘traitor’ and a miserable excuse for a Canadian conservative. I have not always been this way, and in fact, I supported the initial invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. And no, I am not a paleo-conservative or some kind of late in life squishy pacifist but the initial mission was to support militarily the Afghan opposition to the then current ruling government who allowed a foreign terror group to train, plan and launch military offences against foreign civilians outside of Afghanistan.

I remember 2001 very clearly and Afghanistan was meant to be the first strike in the war on terror against those governments who gave safe harbour to terror groups to export their terror operatives to anywhere in the world which did not mean their political litmus test.

I could even support the initial invasion of Iraq thinking it the next logical step in part of a larger strategy to confront one government after another who financed and gave safe harbour in promoting terror operates worldwide until eventually the last and mostly potentially deadly of the terror masters – the Mullahs of Iran would be surrounded by American allied governments. No sane government mapping out a war on terror would leave Saddam Hussain in power and at one’s back when confronting the last terror master. When the spring of 2005 came and went without America leading troops in a Syrian offensive I came to two conclusions.

Either the larger strategy of confronting all the terror exporting governments had been lost or there never was a ‘grand plan’ as I was led to believe. This lead me to doing a great deal of reading concerning the Soviet military adventures in Afghanistan. I mistakenly assumed the opposition to a Soviet-style government was based very similar reasons we in the west would have risen against any Soviet-style occupying government, and yet, deadly opposition to the Soviets was really only triggered all over Afghanistan when the Soviets sought to do things like enfranchising education for all females, establishing an older age of consent and enfranchising legal rights for women outside of Sharia Law.

To understand why these things were not discussed or fully aired when the West started to lend support to various ‘mujahideen’ movements operating in Afghanistan at the time it is important to remember the geo-political realities of the times. The West and the international communist movements lead by the USSR were in the midst of a ‘cold war’ with the West and battling via proxy. This was the height of Western political pragmatism of ‘they might be right bastards but they are our bastards’. Its the kind of political pragmatism which ultimately bankrupts itself and lead Western governments to support financially and militarily some of the most grievous and oppressive regimes. The societal consequences of this morally bankrupt pragmatism often lies at the heart or root of all our current conflicts.

Take a pause and think about this. If the west was not supplying or turning a blind eye to international arms dealers supplying weapons and ammo to the mujahideen forces in Afghanistan what would have happened? Eventually, Soviet military power would have been extended all over Afghanistan and the tribal mentality would have undergone profound changes resulting in a new societal frame work more conducive to the 21st century. Generally, medical and education standards would have improved significantly and Afghanistan’s satellite status as a client state of the Soviet Union would have fallen away as the Soviet empire imploded. And then what? After 30 years of Sovietization would the population remained as feudal and as backward as today? I can’t say as my crystal ball is out for repair but in retrospect I suspect it was the Afghani people’s best chance of entering the 21st century.

The Taliban were successfully overthrown in the fall of 2001 and since then, there have been a variety of mistakes which have lead which leads us today. Firstly, any armed insurrection needs money and lots of it. The Warlords of Afghanistan have consolidated their power base through the financing and controlling the illicit opium trade in Afghanistan. The one bright spot of Taliban rule was the destruction of the opium trade in Afghanistan. The revival of the illicit opium trade could have been avoided entirely by the allied forces if a coherent opium strategy adopted. In fact, considering the worldwide shortage of medicinal opiates; farmers in Afghanistan could have been licensed and controlled for growing the only ‘cash crop’ of the country rather than having Western forces seeking to destroy this war ravaged country’s only means of earning hard foreign currency. There was even a plan but it was ignored. One cannot live on world aid alone especially while the Lords of Kabul dipped first into the trough. This strategy also had the advantage of taking money directly out of Lords of War’s hands, and consequently, stiffling their ability to wage war. But did we do this? No, instead we fumbled the ball and let the Lords of War fill their coffers. Secondly, our blind support of any Afghan governance as long as it was not the Taliban.

For the West to succeed in bringing Afghanistan into the 21th century requires a complete societal occupation spanning generations and to be effective and demands Afghanistan be made into a modern colonial state complete with responsible governance. I cannot speak to the rest of the Western world but I am greatly reluctant to go ‘colonial’. So far, we are trying a new gentler form of ‘colonialism’ in that we will let Afghani’s rule themselves without much outside pressure in the guise of coaxing them with ‘gentle’ persuasion into adopting things like enfranchising the rights of women or adopting Western standards of human rights. So far its been a massive fail.

Furthermore, as long as we turn a blind eye to the innate corruption in the Afghanistan government and the breaches of human rights we are merely giving military cover to another brutal regime, much like the regime which was ultimately toppled by the Taliban in the first place. No one should forget the Taliban came to power riding a wave of popular revolt and could quite easily come back to power riding another wave of popular revolt. I have to give Unambiguously Ambidextrous a hat tip for bringing this TimesOnline report to light on this side of the Atlantic.

When Habiba’s elderly husband was badly beaten in a village brawl there was only one place, she said, that she could turn to for help and justice. Barefoot and weeping, the farmer’s wife, 50, trekked for four hours through Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains to meet the local Taleban commander. “My feet were bleeding and I cried the whole way but I didn’t care about my safety,” she said. “We are poor people. We know the Government doesn’t help people like us.”

Corruption and incompetence in President Karzai’s government — particularly at local level — have forced a growing number of people to seek the services of the Taleban. (…)A senior Nato intelligence official admitted this week that the Taleban “has a government-in-waiting, with ministers chosen,” ready to take over the moment the current administration failed. He warned, in a bleak assessment of the insurgents’ strength: “Time is running out. Taleban influence is expanding.”

The Taleban, which Nato says run shadow governments in 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, are only too willing to help settle local disputes. Their strict, if brutal, interpretation of Islamic law is often preferable to the lengthy and costly Government alternative. “My husband had a broken leg so he sent me to find Mullah Zafar,” Habiba said. “We don’t know anyone in the Government and we know they won’t solve our problems.” Mullah Zafar Akhund is the Taleban’s shadow governor in Jaghatu district, Wardak province, a short drive south of Kabul.

Habiba’s husband, Abdullah, who is 20 years her senior, fought with a neighbour called Qasim over water rights. Village customs prescribe which fields should be watered at which times. Habiba said that Qasim was stealing the water when it was not his time and turned violent when her husband challenged him. “I waited two hours to see Mullah Zafar,” she said. “He listened to my story and sent three of his soldiers to come back to my village. They spoke to the village elders who told them the same thing. The soldiers beat Qasim and ordered him to give us his water for seven nights.”

The return to power of the Taliban is almost preordined given our failure to significantly influence and establish responsible government throughout the country after 9 years of trying – abet ineffectually. We can pour more NATO troops and flood Afghanistan with American soldiers and demand they fight and die for a cause in which ordinary Afghans are reluctant to embrace. Or we could admit we just aren’t good colonists and use modern technology to firewall the country until such time that the Afghani people as a whole are willing to embrace a more westernized notion of governance and human rights. We can seriously impede and stone wall the country so even if the Taliban give safe harbour to the likes of Al Qaeda; Al Qaeda cannot use Afghanistan as a launching pad to export their violence into the wider world.

Speaking as a Canadian I am not on side for making Afghanistan as a new province of Canada and given the choice; I’d rather into discussion with the Turks & Caicos Islands becoming the next province of Canada. Besides, the Turks and Caicos holds a distinct advantage over the Afghans – in that they can freely decide to join the Dominion rather than being forced into that position due to military occupation. Finally, I cannot in good conscience demand any Canadian solider die in a fight for a cause which is not innately our own.

I learned early in life that border crossing are shadowy precarious places so I grew up knowing to tread with the utmost care so I am rarely shocked or surprised by any given incident at any given border crossing. Now a 21 year old American has been blogging about her bad day and the ‘rough’ treatment metered out at the hands of Israeli border guards. Ha’aretz carries the outrage.

Israel Border Police officers shot at an American student’s laptop as she entered Israel via Taba, Egypt, two weeks ago. Lily Sussman, 21, wrote on her blog that border police subjected her to two hours of questioning and searches prior to shooting her Apple Macbook three times. “They had pressed every sock and scarf with a security device, ripped open soap and had me strip extra layers. They asked me tons of questions?where are you going?” Sussman wrote, describing the experience.

“Who do you know? Do you have a boyfriend? Is he Arab, Egyptian, Palestinian? Why do you live in Egypt? Why not Israel? What do you know about the ‘conflict’ here? What do you think? They quizzed me on Judaism, which I know nothing about,” she continued.

Sussman said that she then heard an announcement on the loudspeaker. “It was something along the lines of, ‘Do not to be alarmed by gunshots because the Israeli security needs to blow up suspicious passenger luggage,’” she wrote on her blog. Moments later a man came to her and introduced himself as the manager on duty. “I’m sorry but we had to blow up your laptop,” Sussman said he told her.

“The security officers did not ask about my laptop prior to shooting it,” Sussman told Daily News Egypt. “They used the word ‘blew up’ when they told me they destroyed my laptop. I don’t know why they shot it.” Sussman said the guards also looked through the photos saved on her camera, flipped through her journal and asked her about a map a friend had drawn for her that pointed out a main street, central bus station and the hostel where she was planning on stayig in Jerusalem. She added that she had also been carrying an Arabic phrasebook, stamps from Syria, Qatar and the UAE and a Palestinians in Palestine guidebook.

The Israeli border police did allow Sussman to retrieve her hard drive and she is being compensated for the cost of her lap top. I could say Israel lives in a tough neighbourhood wherein most of the neighbours dream of the day when the Israeli state is pushed into the sea but that’s just rationalization.

Now let’s imagine you are a Canadian attempting to leave the US border – no wait – imagine you are a Canadian Science Fiction writer named Peter Watts and you are attempting to leave the United States and return to your own country when US border officials decide to stop and detain you from leaving the country – no wait – you don’t actually have to imagine how the US border officials of Lily Sussman’s country treat you – you can actually read about it in The Toronto Star:

For Peter Watts, life can be stranger than science fiction.

Watts – who has written six such books – was on his way back to Toronto last Tuesday after helping a friend move to the U.S. Before crossing the Blue Water Bridge into Sarnia, American customs officers pulled him over. He says when they began rifling through his car and luggage, he got out. They ordered him back in the car; he asked what was going on. What happened next has become the talk of the blogosphere: Watts too has waded in on it, posting that he was assaulted, punched in the face, pepper-sprayed and thrown in jail for the night, only to find that he was the one charged – with assaulting a customs officer.

Customs officials told the Star Watts was given directions “and became non-compliant…he did not follow directions and a physical altercation” ensued. An officer with the Port Huron police told the local newspaper that Watts “angrily” got out of the rental car and when he refused to get back in, they tried to cuff him and he became “aggressive.” In the melee, police said, Watts “choked” a customs officer.
“As a result of that he was detained and turned over to local authorities,” says Ronald Smith, chief customs and border protection officer at Blue Water, adding officers were conducing “outbound operations” stopping and inspecting vehicles after the toll booths but before they hit Canadian customs.

Watts empatically denies any such action. “I can state categorically that I did not choke anybody, I did not use profanity and did not raise my voice, I did not initiate any physical contact,” says Watts, who is also a marine biologist with a PhD in zoology. “All I basically did was use words to ask what was going on.”

If I had to choose between Israeli Border security shooting my Macbook and compensating me for it or taking a beating at the hands of US Border officials and then being arrested and charged with a criminal offense – I choose Israel. But hey, that’s just me.

There is something ubiquitous about national security now that the Conservatives are running the show. In fact, national security now seems to be have been expanded to include anything which might show the Conservative government in a bad light rather than a threat to the security to the citizens of Canada. Toronto Star

OTTAWA–A former governor of Kandahar who is accused of personally torturing Afghans might have been removed from office as far back as 2006 if Canadian officials hadn’t defended him, according to diplomatic memos that have never been made public by the Canadian government.

The revelation about Asadullah Khalid, who stayed on as governor two years after concerns about his reputation were raised, opens up another embarrassing avenue of inquiry over Afghan prisoner abuse.

The new allegation is contained in a two-year-old report by Richard Colvin, the whistleblower foreign service officer. Colvin’s disgust that Canada would support a “known human-rights abuser” was palpable and formed the most incendiary paragraphs of the report. References to Khalid were entirely blacked out in the version of the report publicly released to the Military Police Complaints Commission.

But an uncensored version of the end-of-mission report was shown for the first time to The Canadian Press on a confidential basis. “As far as I know, Canada has never suggested to (President Hamid) Karzai that Asadullah be replaced,” says the memo, dated Oct. 24, 2007. “In the one meeting where the subject was discussed, in July 2006, it was the president who raised the issue; Canada defended the governor, thereby ensuring his continued tenure.” The uncensored report sheds further light on Colvin’s testimony last month before a special House of Commons committee, where he stated the governor was considered a “bad actor” on human rights.

So many of my ‘Torie’ compatriots have taken to parroting the line Afghanistan is a tough neighbourhood and we should all just buck up and shut up but what they appear to forget – is the peril and cost of letting evil triumph while good men do nothing.

The warnings about Khalid – whose brazen decision to display the battered dead body of a revered Taliban leader to local Afghan media, before refusing to return it for a proper burial, triggered a massive bombing campaign in Kandahar city in the spring of 2007 – were heard loud and clear in Ottawa.

The implications of the spring bombing campaign in the spring of 2007 triggered by Khalid’s barbarity should all make us pause given that Canadian soldiers were operating in and around Kandahar in the spring of 2007. In the un-redacted memos; there is no safe place for the Torie government to hide.

Concerns were serious enough to be raised at the highest levels of the federal government, foreign affairs and defence sources said. A meeting was called in December 2006 in Ottawa to discuss the matter. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s national security adviser, Margaret Bloodworth, attended the session, sources have said. “There was no policy for dealing with something like this, something sensitive,” one source said. “Nobody quite knew what to do.”

Yet throughout 2007 the warnings kept getting louder. A foreign affairs source said a memo sent by Colvin in the winter of 2007 was searing in its criticism and indicated the governor was corrupt, dangerous, self-serving and deeply unpopular with Afghans. One Afghan government official apparently pleaded with Canadian diplomats and police officers for Khalid’s removal during a meeting in February 2007, said the source, who has seen a document outlining the meeting. The official made a direct request to Canada to intervene with the president, the source said. Two months later, a prisoner handed over to Afghan authorities by Canadian Forces alleged Khalid had personally tortured him in a facility next to his palace, according to a memo from Colvin’s colleague, Gavin Buchan, on April 25.

Never have I lived through a Canadian government so unready and unable to meet the challenges of governing.

I would never have thought it possible for anything to happen to make me care less about Tiger Woods than I already do, but alas, the media feeding frenzy of Tiger Woods’ domestic situation is making my lack of tolerance meter jump into the danger zone. Enough already. There isn’t really anything even vaguely compelling about him – he’s a professional golfer for heaven’s sake.

I was never much of a CNN fan but if I had to choose my late night falling in front of the television news coverage – I prefer Aaron Brown to Anderson Cooper. I’ll take a well-meaning middle aged liberal bumbler over a the sneering of a young metrosexual any day of the week – with or without the tears. Nothing makes me want to give a man a good cuff to the head like crying on television. So its with a sweet sense of schadenfreude that I see Cooper’s ratings slip lower and lower in the rating race.

Climategate. I really don’t care about the internal discussion between scientists trying to discuss possible reasons why the weather is not cooperating with their climate models. I never bought into the whole-global-warming-we-are-all-going-to-die because I am 47 years old and I have already lived through the sun-is-going-to-burn-out – the-population-explosion-will-occur-and-mass- famine-will-result- the-nuclear-bomb-will-drop-and-we-will-all-die meme a few times. And while most of my conservative peers are ooohing and ahhing over the alleged climate hoax I would like to point out; you are missing the big picture. The world is a finite resource and its in our best interest to conserve not only energy but everything we consume on a daily basis. If there is a better, safe and cleaner way to do anything – that is where our energies should be directed. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend there are no global pollution issues but pollution is merely not a Chinese problem – air travels and when it does – it brings along the Chinese toxic sludge. Some days, it hard to believe ‘conserve’ is at the root of the word ‘conservative’.

Apparently, Windsor Police Chief Gary Smith has gotten himself into hot water with ‘anti-muslim’ community which sees any action that reeks of tolerance or consideration for the religious sensibilities of Canadian Muslims as a betrayal to the larger non-Muslim community rather than what it really is – a a gesture of respect. CBC

Windsor, Ont.’s chief of police has publicly apologized to the city’s Islamic community after officers who arrested two Muslim men suspected of involvement in a radical Islamist group offended and embarrassed the men’s families in the process.

“We’re looking at what we can do differently, what we would do differently here, and that’s going to take us a little while longer,” Chief Gary Smith told a news conference on Thursday. His comments relate to an incident on Oct. 30 during which Windsor police assisted the RCMP in arresting Yassir Ali Khan, 30, and Mohammad Al-Sahli, 33. The two were wanted by the the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation on charges of conspiracy to commit federal crimes. During that arrest, the wife of one of the suspects was padded down by a male officer.

One of the things me and the tribe often do in the summer is sit out on the porch in the evenings and watch the Toronto Police raid various homes up and down the street. Its one of the unofficial perks of living on the downtown eastside – we do not have to watch cops shows on television to be entertained.

Being a veteran Toronto Police raid watcher there was one thing about this Windsor raid which struck me as unusual and that is the fact that no woman officer was present to pat down any potential females found in house during the raid. While I recognize my experience is purely anecdotal I suspect the reason for having a female officer on site is to protect the any females from any questionable or inappropriate conduct by a male officer as well as working to ensure a defence from unfounded charges of inappropriate conduct by a male officer towards a female suspect. And before anyone gets on their high horse I would simply state its not unheard of for a male police officer to be charged and convicted of sexual assault before.

But it isn’t only religious Muslim woman who would find it humiliating and/or being unnecessarily degrading to be ‘patted down’ by a male officer. Religious Jewish women wouldn’t be thrilled either. I do not see how a small accommodation to the religious sensibilities of others is necessarily a bad thing. But by all means, go ahead and convince me.

There was a time when Canadians were famous for their tolerance and respect towards others. I am glad to see Windsor Police Chief Gary Smith hasn’t entirely lost sight of that value even if other Canadians see it as sign of submission rather than a strength of character.

The Toronto Star article releases the pictures which started the ordeal. The photo on the left is the Kenya airport picture allegedly taken of Suaad Hagi Mohamud on arrival and the other picture is her ‘departure’ pictures was taken as she was being interrogated at Nairobi airport. The distress from her ordeal is obvious from her photo. My best guess is that the first picture was taken with a wide angle lens of some kind but there are rather obvious identification marks between the two pictures. The eyebrow shape, the lip lines, the shape of her nose and the proportion from shoulders to neck and the hair line remains similar. Seeing the departure picture taken at the Nairobi airport suggests to me that she did in fact resemble her passport photo sans glasses.
The CBC has details which the Toronto Star does not carry concerning the alleged inconsistencies.

In one interview with the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, Mohamud indicated she was a student at Humber College and was studying fashion design. But in another interview, she denied it and said she was only thinking about going to school at Seneca College. The documents allege she lacked knowledge about Toronto, where she had lived for 10 years.

She couldn’t name Lake Ontario, and even though she took public transit to work, she had trouble explaining the acronym TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission. She didn’t know that the acronym for her Toronto workplace, ATS, stood for Andlauer Transportation Services. She also couldn’t name the current or previous prime minister and was unable to describe in any detail how she obtained her driver’s licence.

The documents also allege she gave a wrong date for her son’s birthday and couldn’t provide details on the circumstances or place of his birth. Mohamud also provided an incorrect date of her marriage, saying first that she was married in 2006, which contradicted the July 4, 1996, date on her immigration application. Mohamud divorced her first husband and married a Kenyan man in December 2007. The Canadian High Commission officer who conducted the interviews said Mohamud looked different from her passport photo, that she was six or seven centimetres shorter than her driver’s licence stated and that her signature wasn’t the same.

By the end of the second hour-long interview, the officer suspected he was talking to an impostor, possibly Mohamud’s younger sister, according to the documents.

Ah, the impostor theory. Well, the problem I with this alleged explanation is that the woman who provided supporting documentation, in addition to her passport to a consular official at the airport where she was being detained, just happens to be the same woman who showed up on numerous occasions at the High Commission office. No one to date alleges the same woman in detention didn’t show up at the High Commission’s office.

And while the unnamed consular official alleges she was 6-7 centimetres shorter in person than her driving licence photo. Six to Seven centimetres does not translate 6-7 into inches. My guess is that her driver’s license photo and height were taken when she was wearing a pair of 2 1/2 to 3 inch heels on. Although, if proof of Canadian citizenship now rests with the height on your driver’s license – I must tell my mother that her citizenship is now in jeopardy as my mother’s drivers license claims she is 5′2”, but she is a good three inches shorter than me and I stand 5′ and 3/4”.

Frankly, the other alleged questions she failed to answer to the satisfaction of the consular official sound a bit flimsy to me. Son’s birthday, I personally can never seem to keep the years straight between the children and I don’t remember off the top of my head the dates of my previous marriages. It just never seemed important to remember what is not being celebrated. But how would an impostor, who was attempting to sneak into the country just happen to know the names of two Canadian Toronto based colleges handy in their memory? No slur or smear meant to the colleges, but neither Humber or Seneca are high enough profile to be considered internationally renowned so that an African impostor could reel off their names without preamble.

The other ‘alleged’ inconsistencies seem quite consistent with a woman under emotional distress which no doubt she was. I suspect I could interview a 100 people at the corner of Yonge & Dundas and a goodly portion would not be able to name the current or past prime minister of Canada or what the name of the lake is which borders Toronto…and they wouldn’t be under duress, but then, we have only the word of the government she answered ‘inconsistently’, and at this point, I am not willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt without physical evidence and multiple witnesses.

Of course, we do have an advantage that the unnamed consular official did not have. We know beyond question that Suaad Hagi Mohamud is exactly who she claims to be. Furthermore, we know the government was going to defend the actions of consular officials in their Statement of Defense but what is far more interesting to me is what the government statement of defense doesn’t claim; which is this – the individual interviewed and detained at the Nairobi Airport did not resemble her citizenship card, her driver’s license or her Ontario Health Card.