Hi Paul. Thanks for the link. Of course, I think Canada ought to leave the corrupt UN in favour of some international meeting place for democracies. Right now China and Russia use their vetos to protect Iran, Sudan and North Korea. Let’s leave that swamp.

Until that day arrives, I regret that paying Canada’s UN dues remains a legal duty, if not a moral one.

There is no comparison between that and a $700,000 gratuity this NGO simply gifted to the most corrupt arm of the UN — its “human rights” fraud. And taking that from funds meant to help fledgling democrats in the same dictatorships that run the UNHCR? Disgusting.

That $700,000 belonged to the student protesters in Iran, n

Would it be possible to somehow strand Ezra and Kinsella on a small island somewhere?
With cameras? I would consider changing my anti reality TV stance…

Yep, an anti-Ezra is badly needed. Maybe we can get Ralph Nader to become a Canadian citizen.

Qui veut noyer son chien l'accuse de la rage.

Obama is pro-Ahmadinejad, why would it be absurd for some R/D members?

Oh just for sport, let's ask jolyon to back up that little turd of an accusation.

I'll wait right here.

M, did the Tories actually purge anyone? I mean, actually remove or fire anyone from the board or staff of Rights & Democracy?

First, the Harper government put enormous pressure on president Rémy Beauregard to change the orientation of Rights and Democracy, which Beauregard resisted until he died in his sleep from a heart attack. Then the Harper government appointed a new president of Rights and Democracy, Aurel Braun, who continued this pressure from within, resulting in the resignation of other board members and their replacement by ones more in line with Conservative policy and thinking. At the same time, employees of the organization complained of "psychological harassment" and "intimidation". At the same time, members of the board of directors of Rights and Democracy are asking the ethnic origin of employees and whether they speak Arab.

Of course, Stevie didn't show up with a bunch of thugs and give the knock at 5 am, subsequent to which, board members perceived as hostile to the Harper Conservative agenda disappeared, never to be heard from or of again. He didn't have to – he just had to appoint board members who are sympathetic to the Harper Conservative agenda when others leave because they can no longer stand the harassment, or die of heart attacks, like Beauregard did, no doubt at least contributed to by the immense pressure the Harper government put on him to fall into line. But the concrete effects are the same. This is an ideological purge. attack. Stalin used the same tactics in taking over democratic organizations in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. Conservatives who believe in freedom should be ashamed.

Agree. I can't be arsed to actually pay any serious attention to the issues he's raising, since he offends and mis-represents others so indiscriminately. The truly offence remark about Cotler being a case in point.

M, I take your point, but some of your rhetoric — e.g., equivocating this stuff to Stalin's tactics — is way over the top. Sorta like Ezra.

If you haven't read it, you ought to read Martin Amis' Koba the Dread re: Stalin and what he did. Stalin killed millions and millions of people. For starters.

And this assertion about Beuregard's death, that's the kind of accusation that Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly would make. If I'm in a feud with someone, and then I get in a really bitter, nasty argument with that person tonight, and they happen to die of a heart attack after they go to bed tonight, does that mean I caused their death?

Harper. Stalin. Concrete effects are the same. Might you want to just tiptoe back from that a wee bit?

Stalin had more than one tactic; he didn't just kill millions and millions of people his whole career, he used every means to enhance his power.

Why does every comparison imply equation? Nobody's Stalin's equal, or even very much like Stalin. Personally I use figures like Stalin and Hitler as benchmarks of what not to do and what to suspect. It's a mistake to do so out loud, maybe, because people are always looking for an excuse to freak out; but I find it simply incredible that we would not seek to learn something from their political careers. And, for good measure, we can even bring ourselves to write just "Hitler" and "Stalin" and not feel compelled to add in "the enemy of humanity, Hitler" or "that satanic mass murderer, Stalin" every time we feel like referencing WWII, the biggest event in human history.

This has crossed my mind so many times.
Glad I am not the only one who has commented on this frustration.

Ok Jack, but I just want to make sure that I understand what your bottom-line position is on this: are you saying that anytime a Canadian politician or government appoints a sizeable number of like-minded partisans to any government board, agency, tribunal, court, etc., it is fair and appropriate to say that that politician or government is acting like Stalin?

A purge is a purge. What kind of purge ? It's a purge. And when you have a good purge, it's because it's purged.

Your point about Ezra Levant being a private citizen is very well taken. Now, do you know how he got access to these documents?

See I think you're actually getting at something here. (And you know how rarely I compliment your insight.) I've got really good friends who are delighted with the changes at Rights and Democracy. It's like I wrote a couple of days ago: Politics is almost always a clash of legitimacies in which everyone, on every side, believes himself to be acting in good faith. The Conservatives don't want to promote less rights and democracy, they want to promote them differently. Which does not make them immune from scrutiny and criticism about their choices and method.

Putting your comments together with what Levant has written here, it seems that the Conservatives want to turn Rights and Democracy into a kind of "National Committee for a Free Europe" but oriented towards the Muslim world. If that is indeed their idea, they should drop it immediately. This isn't the Cold War. People who lived in Eastern Europe would have welcomed non-Communist interference in their affairs – many wondered why we didn't invest in overthrowing their puppet governments by force. The same cannot be said for Muslim countries. Without exception, they are very suspicious of any attempt by the United States, and by association, Canada, to influence their affairs, no matter how well intentioned. If it is our government's policy to give material aid to organizations in other countries which seek to overthrow existing governments, essentially funding subversion, this should not be done through organizations which are under public scrutiny.

Couldn't agree more. I guess it comes down to the fact that a lot of Stalin's crimes and other actions were not themselves "Stalinesque," just standard operating procedure for tyrants. But if you talk about them as, I dunno, Pinochet-esque, or De Gaulle-esque, or whatnot, nobody notices because only WWII and its prewar and postwar politics have been mythologised — in a good sense, i.e. only those events and figures carry any weight. How pleased one feels with oneself if one can quote Churchill — but a similar (or wiser) sentiment in the mouth of Gladstone or Disraeli, or Sir John A? Doesn't cut it; nobody's listening; it's yesterday's myth, without even the charm of antiquity. So too with the great 20th C tyrants. Yet I think we miss out on a lot via Godwin's Law (and the Stalin equivalent), because Stalin's crimes are mainly the logical extension of a contempt for the individual, as Hitler's are mainly the logical extension of a hatred for liberalism and of anti-Semitism (if those are not ultimately synonyms): so when we see ideas today that remind us of the roots of Stalinism and Nazism, it's worth remembering that neither movement began by murdering millions of people. On the other hand, as you say, anything can be worn out by overuse — "genocide" being a great example, which has strayed so far from its etymological meaning ("the killing of a race"; cf. fratricide, matricide, patricide, etc.) that it's hard to grasp it anymore. And so with Hitler, and apparently nowadays with Mao too: the teabaggers have, I believe, been comparing Obama to Hitler and Stalin simultaneously, which goes to show how far both tyrants' photographs have faded. My solution would be to expand the range of historical exempla we can invoke, but that would require our intellectuals no longer to take the lowest common denominator as their guideline / lifeline — as they're apparently compelled to do by their democratic conscience, guilty as it already is of thinking.

Hear hear. And the corollary: truth = life.