Mad Dogs, Root Causes, Englishmen, and Fish

Michael Byers is a very smart guy. He’s been generous with me, too, having helped me sort out some of my own questions about international law and “war law,” which is his field of expertise. Michael makes some very good points today about why Canadians should keep their heads, in the aftermath of last weekend’s arrests of 17 Muslims on terrorism-related charges.

I am a little bit troubled by the suggestion that part of the work of keeping our heads, as Byers sensibly advises, is the business of getting at the "root causes" he associates with the alleged plotters. If there is any truth at all to the allegations that they planned to chop off the prime minister's head and blow up the CN Tower, isn't it a bit of a stretch to assume there are any legitimate root causes here, or any legitimate grievances involved at all?

But there are a couple of points Byers makes that I find myself not just objecting to, but recoiling from. I expect it’s mainly because of my Irish-Catholic immigrant background, which is probably what also allows me to not recoil from, but rather feel a deep sense of affinity with, the points Asma Arshad Mahmood makes about the same dilemma that Byers addresses.

Says Mahmood: "I am a very devout Muslim, an extremely old-fashioned Muslim in many ways, (but) I do not believe that the clergy has any right to represent Canadian Muslims in any way," Mahmood said. The primary role of an imam is to conduct prayers and educate people about faith, not to dabble in international politics, she added.

The reason I can so readily relate to what Mahmood says is that it's more or less the Muslim version of my own view of the Catholic clergy, which is that they should visit the sick, bury the dead, administer the sacraments, and shut their yaps.

The thing that bothers me in Byers' article, owing to being a Mick, is this: The IRA taught the British an all-important lesson: If you're fighting to defend your way of life, you mustn't give up your way of life. And this, in aid of the assertion that despite the Irish Republican Army's bombing campaign in England, the British kept their heads: Yes, people were concerned. But they went to work the next day, their rights were not compromised, and people of Irish ancestry and adherents of Catholicism were not collectively blamed.

I'm not so sure one can say that the British, in response to the Irish Republican Army's bombing campaign, were defending their way of life. The Irish Republican Army, for all its failings, was most certainly not at war with the British way of life. And Catholics, specifically Irish Catholics, while never failing to find friends and allies among the English people, suffered terribly from "backlash." Their rights were compromised. The Irish in Ulster, while considered British subjects, were often subjected to the most outrageous treatment. They were imprisoned without trial, and were routinely subjected to torture.

Secondly, for whatever one might say about the ill-advised, barbaric and indeed sometimes "terrorist" aspects of the IRA campaign, it was in aid of a negotiable and finishable agenda, with a clear objective that was broadly supported by democrats and progressives around the world - and in England itself, incidentally. The objective was easily articulated, and was understandable in rational, democratic terms, and it remains the objective of Sinn Fein, which is represented in the British House of Commons: the reunification of the six counties of Northern Ireland with the 26-county Irish Republic.

Another key point is that the IRA, even during its most bloodthirsty periods, always enjoyed fairly significant support from the community on whose behalf it claimed to be fighting.

Clearly and obviously, there is absolutely no evidence that Canada's Muslims support anything vaguely like the ugly terrorist fantasies that have been attributed to the 17 Ontarians arrested last weekend. Indeed, whenever a Canadian Muslim is presented with the opportunity of a microphone and an audience these days, the message is pretty consistent: We're not a bunch of jihadists; and we need your help.

As for the "root causes" of alienation among Muslim youth, wouldn't at least one of those causes be the dunning and incessant lie, so fashionable among the pseudo-left, that the Canadian government is whipping up Islamophobic hysteria while engaging in an illegal and imperialist war of occupation in Afghanistan? If I was a Muslim kid and I allowed myself to believe that, I'd be alienated, too.

Meanwhile, Georgie Monbiot draws a bit of tortured comparison between Iraq and pre-independence Ireland here. This bit is both untrue and nutty: The other side - whether it concerns Ireland, India, Kenya or Malaya - is always inadmissable. The torture and killing of the colonised is ignored or excused, while their violent responses to occupation are never forgotten.

It's nutty because it's such a sweeping generalization. It's untrue because of the overwhelming evidence against it, especially in the case of Ireland (the English have probably done more to recount the story of Britsh atrocity in Ireland than the Irish have). But this, even though it's in aid of a convoluted comparison, redeems the piece: Occupations brutalise both the occupiers and the occupied.

Moving along with convoluted comparisions involving race and ethnicity and stuff, here's my favourite of the week:

If this had been a fishery where, say, only Canadians of English descent were allowed to fish commercially and all other Canadians had to be tied to the dock, this program would have been struck down in a second.

That' s Phil "Race Card" Eidsvik, in response to a unanimous decision by five judges of the British Columbia Court of Appeal that puts to rest the notion that race has anything to do with the fisheries undertaken by the Musqueam, Tsawassen and Burrard peoples.

Those fisheries are not "race-based fisheries." Period.

Eidsvik isn't giving up, though. He expects to take his silly arguments to the Supreme Court of Canada, because: It's pretty darn common sense that when one race can go to work on another day and another race can't - this is discriminatory treatment.

My old pal, Ernie Crey, whose Sto:lo people fish upriver from the Musqueams, sent me this note yesterday, in response: Terry: Don't go to work tomorrow because it's a Sto:lo only workday at your desk.

Hilarious.

Here's the upshot of the judges' decision:

The people of Canada, through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, are obliged to and are certainly entitled to issue communal fishing licences to certain aboriginal communities in order to allow them to conduct their fisheries in a lawful, orderly way. If we feel like it, we can also draw up the licences in such a way that fishermen in those communities can sell their fish if they feel like it.

Certain belligerents in the commerical fishing industry who don't like this can't stop us from doing this. And the fact that aboriginal fishing communities might be said to come from a "particular race" has nothing to do with anything. These folks could be pink, purple, orange or spotted or striped for all we care. It's irrelevant. They are Canadians. Their ancient communities also happen to be vested with constitutionally-protected fishing rights, arising from their customs, traditions, and practices. It's the old English common law way of figuring out what "rights" are.

If Canadians would like to be able to buy some of the fish caught in those aboriginal fisheries, then Canadans can see to it that the aboriginal communal licences allow the sale of fish. That is the way things are done in a democracy governed by the rule of law.

With the tiniest bit of luck, one effect of this ruling will be to dissuade eejit reporters and editors from allowing the inflammatory and mischievous and inaccurate term "race-based fishery" to show up in headlines and news copy about aboriginal fisheries.

It's a fiction. And an ugly one. It should stop.

Stopping ugly and hateful speech isn't easily done by law, though.

I'm thinking of this guy.

I'm also thinking of this kind of thing, which alleges that the "Stop Genocide in Darfur" campaign is really a Zionist plot, aided by Yankee evangelicals. And is really all about oil.