It may sound odd to use the word whistleblower to describe someone who merely comments on a public relationship. Though I think it fits in that here we have an insider who breaks with their organization’s formal talking points in comments to the Times of London story entitled “Amnesty International is ‘damaged’ by Taliban link” and is immediately punished for it.

H/T to Terry Glavin, Harry’s Place and Stroppyblog.

Amnesty International and Cageprisoners
Statement by Gita Sahgal

I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg’s consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty’s mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially.

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“I got a call from a guy who was from L.A. and who had expressed interest in buying a unit, and he was in town walking around the [Woodward's] building. While he was there, a woman on the sidewalk dropped her drawers in front of him. So he took a photo of her on his cellphone, sent it to me and asked: ‘Should I be worried?’”

But that was in April of 2006, and the optimists seem to have the upper hand these days.

Read the full article at Granville: Woodward’s Revitalizing Gastown?

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While I was wandering, I noticed a protest in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery for Iranians against the thuggish regime. Very pleased to see these people getting the attention they deserve from the masses out on the streets today.

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Remind me again, who cuts our border agents’ checks: the feds or the IOC?

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Of course, this is a city of contrasts. We’re not just a pretty place. It’s complicated. A few examples for our welcome visitors:

* Vancouver aims to be the greenest city on the planet by 2020 and we may just be able to pull it off. But if everyone on Earth lived like people here, we’d need four planets to sustain us.

* Vancouver is one of the most livable cities anywhere. It is also home to the poorest postal code in Canada, the Downtown Eastside, where “livable” is definitely a relative term for some of its most unfortunate residents (like Quatchi?). But there’s another side, too; the DTES, one of this city’s oldest neighborhoods, defies stereotypes with a community that is bursting with spirit and compassion.

* We’ve got a mayor who entered politics as a lefty New Democrat after first making it big as a successful entrepreneur and who has since become a… well, someone not quite defined by conventional partisan politics. Which seems to be a bit of a Vancouver tradition.

* Vancouverites (well, probably all Canadians) have a reputation not just for tolerance (which is sort of a pathetic goal, if you think about it), but for being awfully nice, polite-to-a-fault sort of folks. Yet apparently, we need to be reminded about how to smile properly for our guests.

* Our city is a nice, safe place. Except when the occasional maniac killer stalks our citizens. Or if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the cops show up.

* This is one of the only big cities in Canada where we don’t get ice that stays in the winter. It’s also home to one of the most beloved (and consistently sold-out at minimum $100 a ticket) hockey teams in NHL history.

* For some newcomers to Vancouver who haven’t yet discovered their clique, this place can be cold and unwelcoming. But if you are willing to take five minutes to set up a Twitter account, you can join a rambunctious and eclectic social circle over some locally-brewed pints in less than half an hour.

* Vancouver came on the scene fairly late in the game when it came to settling this continent (well, by people who weren’t already living here for 10,000 years, anyway). Yet we have amassed a unique heritage that is worth preserving; indeed, Vancouver’s late emergence in the modern age was perfectly timed to give us a leg up when it comes to planning and sustaining a city that works.

I hope that visitors to Vancouver will spend some time digging deeper. This is an awfully interesting place to be — even after the Olympics have come and gone.

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“There’s no point developing some kind of a fund to which former insurgents are eligible if we’re not equally providing support to Afghans who are not part of the insurgency now,” he said.

“So we don’t want to create the impression that somehow if you’re a member of the insurgency that you would be uniquely be able to benefit from the fund.”

Further Reading:
* Talking to the Taliban/ANA Update

* Wrong Exit in Afghanistan

* Jack Layton the Peacemaker

A More Appropriate Way to Reach Out to the Taliban

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“The conduct you engaged in here is so appalling the court has to address the principles of denunciation and deterrence,” said Justice Guy DeMarco.

“You pose a continuing danger to society and particularly children. Society expects the mother of a toddler would do everything in her power to make sure her child is protected from harm . . . Not only did you not protect your child, you preyed on that child.”

And, so, in the interests of justice, this predator “will likely spend an additional six to eight months in jail after getting the usual two-for-one credit for the nine months she spent in pre-sentence custody”.

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The government’s move is also a not-so-subtle indictment of a broken refugee support program that has arguably only perpetuated Palestinian misery and held up the Middle East peace process. As we look forward, the international community might take a lesson from the other side of the border from the UNRWA camps to Israel, which may fairly take the title of most successful refugee camp in modern history.

The Forgotten Refugees
When someone uses the phrase, “refugees” in the context of the Middle East, we typically think of the Palestinian refugees who lost their homes during the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967. The common narrative also holds that when we talk of Jewish refugees, we’re talking about white, European Jews who escaped the Holocaust to seek some measure of safety not only in the Holy Land, but also in the USA, Canada and elsewhere. But these narratives overlook a movement of nearly one million Jewish refugees from Arab countries during those same years, roughly equivalent in number to the original Palestinian refugees. They were largely persecuted, second-class citizens set upon by their neighbors and governments.

“We call these people the forgotten refugees,” says Regina Waldman, founder of JIMENA, an organization seeking recognition for these people in the context of an overall settlement in the Middle East. Waldman was herself a refugee from Libya in 1967, surviving anti-Jewish riots and other violence that claimed the lives of her friends and neighbors before escaping the country. Waldman wants to see a regional peace deal that puts Palestinians’ claims “on an equal footing with the Middle Eastern and North African Jews”.

“When the Six-Day-War broke out between Israel and its Arab neighbors, I was 19 year old,” Waldman remembers. “My mother called me at work to tell me that thousands of people had taken to the streets rioting and burning Jewish properties… Killing people, rampaging and burning Jewish properties went on for days. I lived in hiding for a month before returning home.”

A Jewish community that had lived in that country for over 2,000 years, albeit under second-class Dhimmi status, was wiped out as Jews fled lynchings, mob violence and torture and imprisonment by the government. This process was repeated across the region in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran.

One Group Finds Haven, Another is Rejected
Most of the refugees were resettled in Israel. For many, their first stop looked much like refugee camps elsewhere: a sprawling tent city in the middle of a wasteland. But these traumatized survivors would have a vastly different outcome than their counterparts elsewhere, particularly the Palestinians. The refugee tent cities were way-stations, not permanent residences. “All of these people were absorbed into Israel and became part of the society, and without even taking a nickel from the United Nations,” Waldman noted. Israelis ignored the obvious difficulties for a tiny relatively poor state to take in so many refugees at once, understanding that the priority was to give people with a common heritage a home and a chance for better life.

In contrast, where Palestinians attempted to find homes among their Arab neighbors, they were nearly always turned back, despite the ancient links of culture, ethnicity, religion, trade and even close family ties that formerly bound them to other countries in the region. Notably, many Palestinian refugees have migrated quite successfully to countries well outside the Arab world such as Canada. But for the Palestinians who remain in the camps, they have inherited a United Nations welfare state. They’ve received billions of dollars since 1948. Meanwhile, conditions in the Palestinian territories remain atrocious.

Canada’s decision on changing its funding vehicle for Palestinians works as a wake-up call to the international community that we don’t want to keep reinforcing failure. We want to see better outcomes. Hopefully, when a solution does come, it will recognize the claims of all the refugees, including the forgotten ones.

NEW MEDIA EDITOR’S NOTE: If you are a Jewish refugee from the Arab world, the people at JIMENA would be grateful if you would share your personal story with them. They have a growing collection of personal stories of the refugees who immigrated to Israel and other countries. You can contact them here.

A Record of the Forgotten Refugees

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Vancouver writer Frances Bula points out a big problem with consultations on social housing projects in Vancouver, in this case referring to a new proposal for my neighborhood of Mount Pleasant:

As is always the case with “public consultation” these days, the open houses are always designed to split people up, rather than have a big open meeting, so that the angry ranters don’t get a chance to dominate.

That’s good, but I was struck by what I noticed in the conversations I had, which was a tendency among the explainers (city planners, architects, housing groups) to take on a tone of “but you just don’t realize the facts and I’m now going to explain them to you.” Very annoying, as it felt like I wasn’t really being listened to…

In the small groups I eavesdropped on, it sounded as though others were having the same experience and not being persuaded by it. One explainer said the neighbourhood didn’t have to worry about problems with the project because there had been a housing project built on Fraser and everyone had been worried about that, but it was completely unnoticeable now that it was up. But, said the woman listening, that project was much smaller, only 30 or so units, and this was is 100. And the people accepted there were people who’d gone through rehab; this one is for people who still have a lot of problems that aren’t going away any time soon.

Talking past one another is only part of the problem. But another factor is that stakeholders in these public forums may be encouraged in the impression that if they can just talk things out, a compromise solution will be found. But in some aspects of the social housing debate, there may be no middle ground.

Does the argument hold that all citizens, regardless of how addicted or delusional they may be, or whether they are a danger to themselves or others, are entitled to shelter? And that the shelter they are entitled to must be in a location and have amenities that offer a better quality of life than your typical bug-infested Downtown Eastside hotel? Well, then, some people, somewhere, in a community that has managed to create a positive experience for its residents, will necessarily have their own livability diluted.

It’s no stereotype that living next door to newly-moved-in drug addicts and the mentally ill is no picnic — it’s just the way it is. The level of inconvenience and public safety is likely to go down. But how much of a downgrade in livability is the community willing to tolerate so that their more unfortunate fellow citizens can have a chance at a better life?

Well, that really goes to the heart of what cities have always been about. Living in an urban setting has always been about trade-offs in access to amenities, economic opportunities, views, safety and just how comfortable you can be with your neighbors.

As a thought exercise, I suppose I’m comfortable with the idea of a single social housing facility going up in my neighborhood. But right now, I’m fuzzy on precisely how these new residents might affect the neighborhood overall. Won’t the potentially negative impact of the new neighbors be diluted in a densely-populated area of 54000 residents?

I’m also a bit more able to be more welcoming, since I know the project isn’t going up right next door to me. I judge the likely impact on my own standard of living to be relatively small. This seems to be borne out by one recent study showing that social housing facilities in Vancouver thus far seem to have little to no impact on the host community. I’m certain I’d be more emotionally involved if I lived on the same block as the new residents. I can afford to be more open-minded. But the NIMBYists do have legitimate concerns. What we have here is a failure to communicate — though it doesn’t have to be.

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Wu – who speaks very little English – said through a translator that the officers had pulled him outside the house and set upon him as soon as he opened the door.

As the officers apparently cannot claim self-defence in this case, they should no longer work for the police, said Wong.

“The officers should be fired and if they are not fired the chief of police should resign because he’s not in control of his boys,” Wong told CBC News.

Wu, 44, said doctors told him he had suffered fractures in the bones around his eye, which was swollen shut. He also sustained bruises to his knees and to his back, where he said the officers had struck him several times.

When are out-of-control cops going to get investigated by someone other than their buddies on the force? It’s insane that after the investigation of the Robert Dziekanski death at YVR and other incidents, we’re still waiting for justice and a fair process.

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