Ottawa’s St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Church held its annual Lebanese festival from July 16 to 20, with food, drink, and music.  Also present was Ibrahim Shalaby, displaying his art work.

Shalaby brought his wife and five children to the festival.  Originally from Amman, Jordan, he spent much of his life in Jerusalem and traveled widely throughout the Arab world, before coming to Canada in 2002. 

He is an architect and interior designer, but now he expresses his artistry with his paintbrush.  Shalaby deliberately paints in a variety of styles, often portraying landscapes and streetscapes. His works often portray Arab elements. I find his dreamy, warmly colored buildings to be particularly fetching.  These appear to be done in the style of Lyonel Feininger, a German-American painter influenced by cubism.  Feininger died shortly after the middle of the last century.     

Vast prison camp planned for Afghanistan

American plans to build a huge prison camp at Bagram Air Force Base north of Kabul in Afghanistan are coming under opposition.  Critics point to the case of Jawad Ahmad, an Afghan reporter who worked for Canadian television station CTV and was taken into custody in October 2007 and is still being held without charge.  He is accused of speaking to Taliban.  Ahmad is one of 650 people held in the same prison, all without going to trial.

Barbara Olshansky, deputy legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, charges that the purpose of the imprisonment of journalists is “just to shut people up,” “to make sure that the people of those countries and the United States do not know what is going on.”  Tina Monshipour Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, says that a number of the 650 are Afghan journalists working for Afghan media.

Olshansky suggests that the new prison facility is planned for the U.S. air base so that prisoners will be unable to have access to local courts.  She believes it will be “a second Guantanamo,” where inmates will have no rights.  

Liberal flip-flop on Khadr

Being out of power seems to have a chastening effect on Liberal politicians.  Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham, who used to assure everyone that Omar Khadr was being treated fairly, has had a change of heart.  Now former Prime Minister Paul Martin has joined the parade: “If we had known then what we know now….”  Dan McTeague, who was a parliamentary secretary with responsibilities for Canadians abroad, now regrets his past assurances about how Khadr was being treated.  “I had to take them at their word,” he said with regard to American officials.

All of this naïve innocence looks questionable to those of us outside the Liberal inner circle.  The videotapes of the Canadian agents interviewing Khadr were made during that time, along with the report of the pre-interview “softening up” with the “frequent flyer program,” during which he was moved every three hours to a new location, for three weeks. 

There was enough other evidence as well to cause all but the most gullible, of the Canadian assurances, which mirrored American assurances.  There was the matter of continuing refusal to allow consular visits.  The videotaped interviews had been arranged for interrogation purposes, not consular ones.  Considerable information about conditions at Guantanamo was coming out and widely available.  The fact that he was taken prisoner at age 15, a child soldier, has not changed since the Liberals were in power.  In short, the recent conversion of these Liberal worthies is little more than evidence that they were unworthy of the trust that Canadians had placed in them.

Now we come to the Conservatives.  The Conservatives who now lead a minority government knew quite well all about conditions at Guantanamo.  Yet, they pretended otherwise.  In the talking points prepared for Conservative MPs, they were coached to answer questions about Khadr by telling all comers that the United States had assured Canada that he is being treated humanely.  Well, we now have authoritative details of the “humane” treatment of which the Conservatives have long been fully aware.

It’s time to get the re-write boys in to re-do the talking points.