“I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”
Albert Camus, in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, 1960

By now most Canadians are familiar with the story of Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen whose return to his Ottawa home was interrupted by authorities who stopped him at JFK Airport and sent him to Syria, where he was tortured and jailed for over a year. Fewer are aware of the three other Canadians who suffered similar abuses around the same time. In Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror, author Kerry Pither reveals how Canadian agents were complicit in the detention and torture of Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almaki and Muayyed Nureddin. These three men, like Maher Arar, were guilty only of being Muslim in the tense aftermath of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. They attracted the attention of overzealous, blundering RCMP and CSIS agents who thought their heritage and frequent travel made them suspicious extremists. For that, these four unfortunate men paid a heavy price indeed.

Writing in a compelling, fast-paced dramatic style, Pither exposes the ineptitude, if not the outright malevolence, of other Canadian officials who not only turned a blind eye to the plight of the four Canadians as they rotted in jail, but actually relayed interrogation questions to their Syrian torturers. The Syrians apparently felt they were doing Canada’s bidding and the Canadian consular officials who were in a position to disabuse them of that notion, and return the four men to their Canadian homes, utterly neglected to help. Pither names names, and her portrayal of Franco Pillarella, former Canadian ambassador to Syria, and his subordinate Leo Martel, is less than flattering. The reader cannot help but be angered by the obtuse ignorance of these men and their complete failure to discharge their primary duty, which was to safeguard the interests of Canadian citizens abroad.

Pither also documents the despicable leaking of false information calculated to demean the reputations of the four men and to cast doubt on their innocence. Every Canadian should read this book, for as Camus said later in the same essay quoted above, “it is at least worth knowing that when expressed forcefully truth wins out over falsehood”.

DNC, Thursday

Kenneth Oliver, 45, died August 15th in Miami after reportedly being Tasered four times by Miami police. His death will go unnoticed by most, but he is at least the 60th person to die in similar fashion since Robert Dziekanski’s death at the Vancouver Airport last October. Robert Dziekanski was at least the 301st person in North America to die after being shocked by the Taser’s 50,000 volt output. The list of subsequent similar fatalities, which includes five more Canadians, appears below:

302. October 14, 2007: Donald Clark Grant, 54, Asheville, North Carolina

303. October 17, 2007: Quilem Registre, 39, Montreal, Quebec

304. November 1, 2007: Seldon Deshotels, 56, Lake Charles, Louisiana

305. November 2, 2007: Stefan McMinn, 44, Hendersonville, North Carolina

306. November 7, 2007: Roger Brown, 40, Miami, Florida

307. November 16, 2007: Paul Carlock, 57, Springfield, Illinois

308. November 18, 2007: Jesse Saenz, 20, Raton, New Mexico

309. November 18, 2007: Jarrel Gray, 20, Frederick, Maryland

310. November 18, 2007: Christian Allen, 21, Springfield, Florida

311. November 20, 2007: Conrad Lowman, Jacksonville, Florida

312. November 22, 2007: Howard Hyde, 45, Halifax, Nova Scotia

313. November 24, 2007: Robert Knipstrom, 36, Chilliwack, British Columbia

314. November 29, 2007: Ashley R. Stephens, 28, Ocala, Florida

315. November 30, 2007: Cesar Silva, 32, Los Angeles, California

316. December 10, 2007: Leroy Patterson Jr., 41, Walton County, Georgia

317. January 2, 2008: Brandon Smiley, 27, Mobile, Alabama

318. January 9, 2008: Otis C. Anderson, 36, Fayetteville, North Carolina

319. January 11, 2008: Xavier Jones, 29, Coral Gables, Florida

320. January 14, 2008: Ryan Rich, 33, Las Vegas, Nevada

321. January 15, 2008: Mark Backlund, 29, New Brighton, Minnesota

322. January 17, 2008: Baron Scooter Collins, 21, Winnfield, Louisiana

323. January 18, 2008: Daniel Hanrahan, 44, Staten Island, New York

324. February 3, 2008: Louis Cryer, 32, Port Arthur, Texas

325. February 3, 2008: Joseph Davis, 50, Brandon, Mississippi

326. February 7, 2008: Richard Earl Abston, 53, Merced, California

327. February 19, 2008: Garrett Sean Farn, 41, Bakersfield, California

328. February 26, 2008: Barron Harvey Davis, 44, Mayes County, Oklahoma

329. March 4, 2008: Christopher Jackson, 37, Clay, New York

330. March 6, 2008: Javier Aguilar, 46, Roswell, New Mexico

331. March 18, 2008: Roberto Gonzalez, 24, Chicago, Illinois

332. March 20, 2008: Darryl Wayne Turner, 17, Charlotte, North Carolina

333. March 21, 2008: James Garland, 41, Deerfield Beach, Florida

334. March 29, 2008: Henry Bryant, 35, Indianapolis, Indiana

335. March 30, 2008: Walter Edward Haake Jr., 59, Topeka, Kansas

336. April 2, 2008: Jason Jesus Gomez, 35, Santa Ana, California

337. April 6, 2008: Yvelt Ocean, 31, New Kent County, Virginia

338. April 22, 2008: Uriah Samson Dach, 26, Richmond, California

339. April 24, 2008: Kevin Piskura, 24, Cincinnati, Ohio

340. April 24, 2008: Dewayne Chatt, 39, Memphis, Tennessee

341. April 27, 2008: Paul Thompson, Greensboro, North Carolina

342. April 28, 2008: Jermaine Ward, 28, Jackson, Tennessee

343. May 4, 2008: Joe Kubat, 21, St. Paul, Minnesota

344. May 6, 2008: James S. Wilson, 22, West Alton, Missouri

345. May 28, 2008: Ricardo Manuel Abrahams, 44, Woodland, California

346. May 31, 2008: Robert Ingram, 27, Raceland, Louisiana

347. June 5, 2008: Willie Maye, 43, Birmingham, Alabama

348. June 6, 2008: Donovan Graham, 35, Meridien, Connecticut

349. June 8, 2008: Tony Curtis Bradway, 26, New Yotk, New York

350. June 22, 2008: Jeffrey Marreel, 36, Norfolk, Ontario

351. June 25, 2008: Ernest Graves, 29, Rockford, Illinois

352. June 27, 2008: Nicholas Cody, 27, Dothan, Alabama

353. July 2, 2008: Isaac Bass, 34, Louisville, Kentucky

354. July 8, 2008: Samuel DeBoise, 29, St. Louis, Missouri

355. July 22, 2008: Michael Langan, 17, Winnipeg, Manitoba

356. July 27, 2008: Anthony Davidson, 29, Statesville, North Carolina

357. August 4, 2008: Jerry Jones, 45, Orange, Texas

358. August 5, 2008: Andre Thomas, 37, Swissvale, Pennsylvania

359. August 7, 2008: Lawrence Rosenthal, 54, Hemet, California

360. August 10, 1008: Kiethedric Hines, 31, Rockford, Illinois

361. August 15, 2008: Kenneth Oliver, 45, Miami, Florida

The first week of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games is over and Sweden has handed back more medals than Canada has won. Canada, with its vaunted “Own the Podium” strategy, has exactly zero medals to its credit thus far, prompting much hand-wringing among the chattering classes. What’s the big deal? After all, the Olympics are nothing but a jingoistic orgy of government and corporate spending where sporting achievement is almost an afterthought…Good for the athletes for training and trying hard, but there are certainly more important things to worry about.