Refugees in Name Only : Illegal Migrants

"[Costs per migrant are expected to increase in future years, reaching an average of $16,666 per migrant for those that arrive in the year 2019]."
“This is largely due to longer projected wait times for migrants to complete the entire asylum claim process. This is a result of projected inflows being greater than the capacity of the federal organizations to process these claims, leading to greater expenses for federal health insurance costs."
"Given that future transfer payments [to cities caring for the illegal migrants] are not yet known, and the federal government is under no obligation to make these payments, the PBO [Parliamentary Budget Office] is unable to project these potential costs and they are therefore excluded from the cost estimate."
Costing Irregular Migration Across Canada's Southern Border — Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux

Asylum seekers cross the Canadian border at Champlain, N.Y., on August 4, 2017. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada estimates the cost per migrant entering Canada illegally to be $19,000 for those arriving over the border deliberately bypassing official border crossings from the United States in 2017-18. This is the cost to the federal government only, exclusive of provincial costs so it falls into the realm of processing applications. At the provincial, municipal level costs relating to shelter, welfare, medical services are additional.

Toronto has announced that their public welfare emergency shelter housing is now 40 percent occupied by illegal migrants. The statistics for Montreal are similar. While illegal migrants are in Canada awaiting the outcome of their refugee applications they draw from provincial welfare coffers. Though they've crossed illegally, by declaring themselves refugees Canada accepts their claims as valid and processes the applications accordingly. But since so many do not fall into the refugee category their applications are rejected.

Under the Canadian system the failed applicants can appeal endlessly, stringing out their welfare status for years. The Canada Border Services Agency has identified an emerging and successful ploy on the part of claimants entering Canada illegally. This is a calculated move for a family to send one of its members ahead to declare refugee status and once in Canada that person acts as an "anchor relative", whereby other family members may enter at a port of entry declaring themselves prospective immigrants.

A family, saying it is from Colombia, is arrested by RCMP officers as they cross the border into Canada from the United States as asylum seekers near Champlain, N.Y., on April 18, 2018.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

Effectively, a migrant crosses into Canada between official entry points avoiding the Safe Third Country Agreement where they would otherwise be viewed as ineligible, since the United States is a 'safe country' and as the first country of haven, declaring on entry to Canada is rendered invalid. Migrants seeking refugee status make their claim in the first "safe" country accessed. Claim registered, the way is open for the migrant to access the welfare system while engaging the asylum claims process allowing them hearings and appeals and sponsorship of other family members.

The Liberal government likes to portray any critics of this ineffective and failed process as a bigot behaving in the most "un-Canadian" of ways. After characterizing critics as racist exclusionists they point out the number of children who are involved accompanying their parents as refugees, so critics are also obviously inhumane preferring to set aside universal human rights in the interests of blocking those they consider undesirable as future citizens of the country. Not the "Canadian way".

The sponsorship by illegal entrants to Canada of family members is open to pretty wide strokes including parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces; extended, not just nuclear family units. The never-ending appeals process gives migrants new hearings at the Refugee Appeal Division should their claim be rejected by the Refugee Protection Division, and then another appeal beckons, at the Federal Court if the intermediate one fails. Years of living on the public dole. How mean-spirited to point that awkward factoid out.

The Immigration and Refugee Board held the capacity to hear 24,000 claims in the 2017-18 year during which period 52,142 new asylum claims were logged, of which 23,215 represented illegal migrants flooding the system with claims beyond its capability to handle; a backlog created of 64,929 cases. Which, needless to say, extends the period by years, resulting from those making claims and then appealing rejections.

Of the refugee claims, over half were made by irregular migrants from Haiti and Nigeria, an observation that the Liberal government labels as "fear-mongering". There is a right way to file an application for immigrant or refugee status and that is through recognized official channels, respecting a country's borders and its right to choose who it will permit entry. The wrong way is being used and it is being rewarded. Something here does not compute.

Laggardly Reclaiming Honour Posthumously

"[Company involvement in the deportations of Jews] is a black page in the history of our country and our company."
"For us it is important to put care ahead of speed [in determining how many survivors or their families would be eligible for reparations]."
Erik Kroeze, Dutch national railway company spokesman

 Dutch Jews rounded up in cities were sent to concentration camps on state rail lines. (Wikimedia Commons: Albert Konrad Gemmeker)

"What this means for me is that the NS [Dutch railway company] sees that the suffering is not over; that very many Jews are still suffering."
"That is why I am so happy that they now see, on moral grounds ... that reparations will be paid."
Salo Muller, former physiotherapist, Amsterdam soccer club Ajax

Mr. Muller is the child of Holocaust victims. His parents under Nazi-occupied Holland were rounded up with the invaluable aid of Dutch police -- just as French, Polish, Ukrainian and other national police aided the Nazis in their determined and highly successful program of genocide, later to correct history by saying they had no choice but to obey the command of their Nazi occupiers -- and sent packing by rail to the Westerbork camp in eastern Netherlands.

Thanks to the cooperation of the occupied authorities 70 percent of Holland's Jews were sent to death camps, their lives destined to be summarily destroyed. And so it was with Mr. Muller's parents, transported to Auschwitz from Westerbork where they too were murdered in the gas chambers that so efficiently destroyed most of Europe's Jews. Over 100,000 Dutch Jews were murdered, representing a relatively small proportion of the six million Jewish lives that were exterminated before World War II came to an end.

Speaking for the rail company, Mr. Kreoeze is careful to remark that Dutch Jews died at the hands of the Nazis. On the other hand, in Holland as elsewhere throughout Europe the work of the Final Solution would never have been as successful as it turned out to be in terms of its horrendous effectiveness without the cooperation of the local populations, sometimes quite willingly, more often under the duress of occupation.

NS, the national railway, has decided that restitution would be a good move at this rather late date. As though money in any event could possibly compensate for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent children, of their parents and their grandparents, their cousins, their aunts and their uncles, their friends and their neighbours.

A rabbi places a rose on rail tracks near Westerbork, a former transit camp, in the Netherlands on May 9, 2015. Jews were taken from Westerbork and then transported to Auschwitz.Peter Dejong / AP file

Through the ongoing horror Jews remained optimists. Reading the words of Anne Frank, a child of the Holocaust, a chronicle of a sunny child's yearning for freedom and trust that justice would prevail and liberation was nigh, one cannot help but sigh over the hopelessness, the helplessness of Europe's Jews never imagining that their plight of discrimination, anti-Semitism, isolation, rejection and pogroms could ever amount to wholesale slaughter.

The commission that will be tasked to write up who will receive payments, how many could be eligible, how much they would receive has not yet been formed. The announcement was made of the intention to proceed. Should anyone really feel grateful about this? Too little, too late. Even latent consciences must have their salving moments. Imagine yourself a citizen of a country you love and that country's authorities submit to the will of an occupying force whose agenda is genocide.

A small country like Denmark resisted. Denmark's Jews were saved. What repercussions sufficed to make the Danes regret their actions? None that history records. Yet Dutch Jews were disabused of the notion that their country valued them and would protect them. Most Dutch Jews rounded up in cities were taken by train to those camps established in their own country and then forwarded on to German trains headed for concentration camps, labour camps, death camps. Restitution for that?

It takes far more than releasing funds to victims to restore a nation's honour.

In this Monday May 9, 2015, file photo, Canadian World War II veterans put roses on the railroad tracks at former concentration camp Westerbork, the Netherlands, remembering more than a hundred thousand Jews who were transported from Westerbork to Nazi death camps. The Dutch national railway company NS says it will set up a commission to investigate how it can pay individual reparations for its role in mass deportations of Jews by Nazi occupiers during World War II. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Transition to Haven and Freedom

"I'm not a killing machine and I don't want any part in destroying Syria. I don't want blood on my hands."
"It's very clear by now that there is no place for me on this earth as no country is allowing me in."
"I did not believe it [that he would be going to Canada as a privately sponsored refugee] until they showed me the ticket. I said until I reach Canada, nothing is sure."
"I've done my time in airports, no more airports. I'd rather use a horse if there's no car."
Hassan Al Kontar, 37, stranded Syrian refugee

Hassan Al Kontar arrives in Vancouver after flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Monday. (Ben Nelms/Canadian Press)

This man's story has been experienced by others before, and it has become a fixed point for film portraying a man with no official documentation, unable to pass visa requirements to enter any country, and stranded as a result, stateless, without hope of leaving the precincts of an airport yet despite isolation and a scarcity of opportunity eventually finding an escape to a country that would finally accept him. For Hassan Al Kontar, stuck for months in Malaysia, unable to enter the country, permitted to remain in the airport terminal, Canada was that country.

He had left Syria in 2006 for a job in the United Arab Emirates in the insurance business. His intention was to evade military service in Syria. His work visa in the UAE ran out, wasn't renewed and the Syrian government refused to renew his passport in 2011, when the civil war began its long agonizing trajectory into the brutal history of the Middle East. He had the option of returning to Syria but the original intention of evading military conscription was even more valid at that point than when he originally left.

His passport expired and with it his work permit. So he worked illegally in the UAE for a number of years, was discovered, arrested and ordered to leave the country. He then flew to Malaysia on a visa that granted him a three-month tourist visa and began working to save for a ticket to take him to Ecuador. Only to discover when he went to board the plane to take him to South America, he would be turned away with no explanation.

He flew on to Cambodia but was refused permission to enter there, forcing him to return to Malaysia where he was informed he could not re-enter the country having overstayed his visa. His money gone, he settled into the terminal where days turned into weeks, and then months. Through the kindness of strangers he was given food to sustain him. He posted photographs of himself on social media tending a potted plant he called his 'garden', and walking a stuffed animal on a leash. His attempts at humour gained him an audience, mesmerized by his plight.

Al-Kontar took to social media to document his daily life in the Kuala Lumpur airport terminal [Hassan al-Kontar/Facebook]

He posted a screenshot of an email he sent to NASA asking to join the next Mars mission, inspired by "a lot of space movies", he had seen. He posted complaints that world leaders violated his human rights refusing to grant him asylum. The monotony of Terminal 2, his home for so many months, led him to gratitude over small gifts from well-wishers, like a Starbucks instant coffee. Once, a janitor propped open a door onto the tarmac and for the first time in over a hundred days he was able to breathe fresh air.

"This is what I call a great day", he wrote on Twitter and posted a photograph of sunlight flooding the hallway. Thousands of people followed the daily updates of his video diary, among them Whistler, B.C.'s Laurie Cooper. Along with a group of like-minded friends she petitioned Canada's Immigration Minister to admit the man as a refugee and began a crowdfunding campaign to raise the $13,600 they needed to privately sponsor a refugee.

In October Mr. Kontar was arrested by Malaysian officials for being in a restricted airport area without a boarding pass. His sponsors in British Columbia stepped up the momentum of their contacts with immigration officials in fear he was about to be deported back to Syria. But on Sunday Ms. Cooper received a text message from her friend that he was on his way. A new video appeared on his Twitter feed. He was at the airport.

Hassan Al Kontar talks with Laurie Cooper, who sponsored him to come to Canada. (Ben Nelms/Canadian Press)

He arrived in Vancouver Monday night wearing a T-shirt, jeans and flip-flops, more than a trifle inadequate for a winter evening in Canada, even in Vancouver. Ms. Cooper is prepared to host him in her home. He has received a job offer from a hotel in Whistler where he will be staying. "I'm very grateful that Canadian officials, when Hassan was truly in peril, worked very, very hard to expedite the process", said Ms. Cooper.

"In real life, there are moments that are more beautiful than the dream itself", he said of his journey from Malaysia to Canada and freedom. "For me, walking on the street again and smelling the fresh air, it's not a normal thing: It's the sound and smell of freedom."

Oh, What a Tangled Web of Deceit

"I didn't want the clients in the shadows, because it's in the shadows that they'd end up disappearing or being killed."
"My clients were de-facto participants in the whistle-blowing exercise that Mr. Snowden made, and the Hong Kong government just wants them to disappear."
"If you look at all the evidence together, to me it's quite obvious that the Hong Kong government, the Chinese government, whichever government it is -- they're very uncomfortable with the Snowden refugees." 
"I'm pretty much out of money. My wife and I are pretty much living in poverty. The bottom line is my career in Hong Kong is over."
Rob Tibbo, Canadian expatriate lawyer

I think a gamble was taken to bring attention to them in a positive way."
"It doesn't seem like that worked."
Oliver Stone, "Snowden" film director

"Clearly there is an attempt at getting rid of my clients."
"They have been increasingly targeted by Hong Kong authorities. [Canadian authorities must act swiftly, otherwise they will be] condemning them to death [the refugee clients of Mr. Bibbo whom he convinced to hide Snowden; a Sri Lankan couple with two children, an unrelated Sri Lankan man and a Filipino woman and her daughter]."
Marc-Andre Seguin, Montreal lawyer

Rob Tibbo arranged for the U.S. whistleblower, then the planet’s most-wanted man, to hide with three refugee families. Now they seem to be facing the consequences

"This is retaliation at its most brazen. You can't look at something like this without getting a sense that the mask has dropped ... [and] there's a machine that would burn everything we love to the ground without a tear if it meant making a problem go away."
"[American officials are pulling strings in Hong Kong to do] what they can to make the lives of the families harder, because they're a symbol."
Edward Snowden, former U.S. National Security Agency contractor

"Welfare case officers asked me how many days Edward Snowden stayed in my house. I refused to answer the question and they cut all my assistance ..."
"I'm shocked."
"I helped him from the bottom of my heart. There was no pressure for me, no thinking twice to help him ... What he's done, I'm very proud of him, he's a hero."
Vanessa Rodel, Filipino, refugee claimant, Hong Kong

"To allow them to be identified with Edward Snowden, and to have their names, photographs and where they live widely publicized could well be damaging to their safety and interests [the sole reason that the Hong Kong Bar Association is giving credence to a] large group of exasperated barristers [at the professional conduct of Rob Tibbo]."
Robert Pang, bar association spokesman

Canadian lawyer Robert Tibbo with Edward Snowden in Russia last year. (Lindsay Mills)

Here is a Canadian lawyer who has been practising immigration and refugee law for the past 14 years in Hong Kong who took it upon himself to render service to Edward Snowden, wanted by the United States for having absconded with classified document disclosing that the U.S. and allies were conducting Internet surveillance along with those of telephones, in their dragnet meant to capture the presence of enemy infiltrators post 9/11, which also caught unrelated data belonging to millions of American citizens.

Mr. Snowden took that documentation to be 'leaked' to journalists in the breaching of classified information revealing digital spycraft; a situation that clearly identifies Snowden who through lifting that intelligence into the public sphere became a traitor to his country. He resides now far from the reach of American agents who would like to spirit him back to the U.S. to stand trial, in Russia which has given him haven, a country which dispatches their own citizens who betray their country to a quick death wherever they happen to find refuge abroad.

Mr. Tibbo portrays himself as someone whose intentions have been nobly-inspired, much like Mr. Snowden's, and just as Snowden is viewed by many as a hero, so too does Mr. Tibbo portray himself, a man who answered his conscience and who for his pains is now being victimized by the very law society he was part of in Hong Kong, as well as the island state's police. China doing the bidding of its nemesis, the United States? More likely China fearing that doing nothing will encourage others to do against China what Snowden did against his own country.\

Lawyer Robert Tibbo, right, arrives with his refugee clients to speak to the press outside the Immigration Tower in Hong Kong on May 15, 2017. (Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images)

The wisdom Mr. Tibbo demonstrated in manipulating vulnerable people awaiting refugee status in Hong Kong for his own ends has boomeranged on him as he is now persona non grata in Hong Kong, his professional status there no longer viable. And in implicating the seven refugees from Sri Lanka and the Philippines in his bid for notoriety and fame he has ensured that their application for haven has been irrevocably closed off and their futures uncertain.

Not much to be proud of, there. While awaiting verification or denial of their refugee claims in a backlog of such applications, the government of Hong Kong was providing funding to the three families for their living expenses. They have now been effectively cut off from any financial support from Hong Kong. The man they trusted and continue to trust convinced them they would be performing a humanitarian act in shielding Snowden from the consequences of his actions.

Tibbo could, after all, have taken Snowden in to shelter him in his own home. Who might have suspected? Instead, he chose to implicate innocent people who were his clients dependent on  his professional expertise, leaving them now in a mess that his actions has resulted in, while bemoaning the fact that he has been the victim of repercussions relating to his professional misconduct. He is now back in Canada, preparing to put his professional life back together.


The plight of the Hong Kong-resident refugees is now being defended by a group of Montreal lawyers who are pressing the government to proffer asylum to them to ensure they are not sent back to their countries of origin, where, the lawyers claim, they will be certain to suffer horrendous discrimination, a possibility that 'terrifies" the refugees. Refugee-hungry Canada will come to their rescue.

Prophet or Lunatic?

"I have exposure to the most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it."
"I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal."
"Maybe there's a five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe]. The purpose of Neuralink [is] to create a high-bandwidth interface to the brain such that we can be symbiotic with AI. How much smarter are you with a phone or computer than without? You're vastly smarter, actually. You can answer any question pretty much instantly."
"I think we'll have something interesting to announce in a few months that's at least an order of magnitude better than anything else — probably than anyone thinks is possible. You're currently in a symbiotic relationship with your cortex and limbic system. Best-case scenario, we effectively merge with AI, where AI serves as a tertiary cognition layer. It will enable anyone who wants to have superhuman cognition."
"I tried to convince people to slow down AI, to regulate AI, but this was futile. I tried for years. Nobody listened. Normally the way regulations work is very slow. This time frame is not relevant to AI. You can't take 10 years from the point at which it's dangerous."
"The merge scenario with AI is the one that seems like probably the best. If you can't beat it, join it."
Elon Musk, 47, billionaire inventor, Tesla CEO

Elon Musk ✔ @elonmusk

If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.

37.3K

7:29 PM - Aug 11, 2017

Mr. Musk looks to the future with both a scientific impresario's curiosity and foresight and awareness of the drama that could be unfolding as humanity is challenged by artificial intelligence looming on the horizon with its promise to change our world at least as much as the Internet has done, but, according to Mr. Musk with potentially grave consequences. He believes that artificial intelligence once unleashed has the potential to challenge humankind's primacy as a controlling vector of the future.



He appears to be pragmatic in his approach, believing the worst could happen, that humans could become subservient to a far more intelligent creation than ourselves; that describes the pessimist in this man's inventively creative mind. And on the other hand, he feels that if the initiative is adequately taken humankind can absorb artificial intelligence and in one fell swoop match its intelligence quotient to defray the cost of submitting with our inferior brains to the far more adept and deep intelligence of an artificial construct of a thinking non-human intelligence.

"Essentially, how do we ensure that the future constitutes the sum of the will of humanity? And so, if we have billions of people with the high-band-width link to the AI extension of themselves, it would actually make everyone hyper-smart", he enthuses. "Electron to neuron interface at a micro level", he explains would process humanity into a creature capable of out-thinking and uber-manoeuvring a mere electronic mechanism 'taught' to think."Digital intelligence will exceed biological intelligence by a substantial margin. It's obvious."

So, who among us is willing, perhaps eager and ready to 'upgrade' their human intelligence by having a chip implanted in their head along with "a bunch of tiny wires", the goal of creating a hard drive for peoples' brains to be achieved? What, after all, could go wrong? Everything! Perhaps -- perhaps not. But even so, by submitting to that kind of creative boosting of intelligence will we transcend our human condition? How will we benefit, other than to guard ourselves against the possibility that a computer will gain power over us?

If those of us who agree to having that implanted chip alter our insight and creativity gaining cerebral function well beyond that with which our brains have been endowed will it be a plus for humanity and for the individuals involved? Will we create monsters? With greater intelligence comes the possibility of enhanced power. And humans are simply that; human beings endowed with all the emotional frailties of humanity. Just as hate and love are emotional antagonists that are very closely related, so are noble intentions and corruption.

"We worry", chides this man Musk, "more about ... what name somebody called someone else ... than whether AI will destroy humanity. That's insane." Yet to the uninitiated, Mr. Musk's preoccupation might appear in flirtation with the lunatic fringe of humanity. Ay, there's the rub.... Theatrics, Mr. Musk? Why wouldn't an 'intelligent' computer stop at the victory it is capable of claiming in chess? Why succumb to the fear that a machine would inevitably absorb the more base characteristics of humanity to wish to conquer and control?

Getty Images    Elon Musk

Lacking Academic Scruples

"It's positively related with winning school-of-business research awards. They tend to get paid more because it's a lot easier to write for predatory publications so you've got more time to do overload teaching to earn extra money teaching extra courses or teaching online courses."
"You'd think the mistakes would be made by the most inexperienced people. However, the higher the academic ranking, the more likely they are to have predatory publications."
"Right now, they're saying I'm banned from the university."
"By separating them [suspension and teaching] they can try to claim it's not related to academic freedom."
Professor Derek Pyne, school of business, Thompson Rivers University, British Columbia

Thompson Rivers University economics professor Derek Pyne has been suspended by the school since July. A faculty association says it is investigating if that constitutes a violation of academic freedom. (tru.ca)

Junk ersatz medical and science online journals have become a scourge. It might seem logical to think that anyone aware of what they represent; scams, rip-offs, shams and crooked business in academia would be ashamed to be connected in any way with them. These are journals utterly lacking scientific credibility for they will publish anything for a price. They advertise online that they're accepting articles, they send phishing announcements through email, they make their brief case on Twitter, and their purpose is absolutely transparent. They're a scamming, money-making business.

Legitimate scientific journals have garnered a reputation for the quality of what they publish. They maintain rigorous academic standards. They don't charge for publication; those whose articles are published have passed the standards of peer review and may consider themselves fortunate to be published which adds to their academic veracity and value in their research. Through the peer review mechanism where other scientists and academics familiar with their field of research comment, make suggestions where appropriate and ultimately accept the final paper, there is treasured validation.

Much stock is placed in the value of publication, and many academics feel pressure to produce papers that see publication in journals. Those who take pride in themselves and their place in their field of study would never consider tarnishing themselves through association with these predatory journals. A good too many, however, anxious to appear to have produced publishable papers will pay the fee it takes for publication in these rags. And it was just this situation that drew the attention of Professor Pyne who decided to reveal in a public forum what has been transpiring at his university.

Thompson Rivers University economist Derek Pyne. TRU is ultimately accountable to the government and, notwithstanding certain restrictions in the University Act, Minister of Advanced Education Melanie Mark shouldn't hesitate to ask the administration for an explanation into Pyne's suspension. PNG

He chose a journal published by the University of Toronto Press and his article was published where he raised the topic of some professors who publish their research in predatory journals. There are no standards to speak of in these journals' publications, only the funds that ensure their articles will be accepted for publication have moment. Investigative reporters have run off 'scientific' articles with sloppy syntax, poor spelling, pooling various topics together in nonsensical fashion, only to have them accepted for publication -- at a price.

Over the eight-year period when Professor Pyne has taught at Thompson Rivers University's school of business and economics he noted that some of his peers submitted papers to these rags, and decided to write a research article which he titled The Rewards of Predatory Publications at a Small Business School, which saw publication in 2017. No names of professors appeared in the article, and nor did he name the university in his article peer-reviewed in the Journal of Scholarly Publishing. But he does make clear that 15 of 27  professors with research responsibilities paid predatory journals to publish papers.

What's even more astonishing is that not despite of this, but because of it, they ended up being promoted. According to a later interview with Professor Pyne, the careers of professors who published in predatory journals have advanced. And then his campaign to out the situation came back to sting him. He has experienced what it's like to have his academic freedom violated since the university has retaliated in lock-step with his research into the situation gaining wider attention.

"Action taken against Dr. Pyne was not related to his specific research, the dissemination of his research, or the exercising of his right to academic freedom", declared the university in a statement, claiming Professor Pyne's academic freedom remains fully protected under the collective agreement with the Thompson Rivers University Faculty Association. The professor, however, has been banned from campus since May, placed on an unpaid suspension linked to his feedback of a colleague being considered for a university position.

His feedback consisted of allegations that the colleague was involved in a dozen instances of predatory research. Staff members at the university routinely give feedback that is collected for the perusal of the selection committee. It and the then-president of the university denounced Professor Pyne's feedback as defamation. It is a position that is being challenged, however. Executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers David Robinson noted the group has informed the university a committee has been formed to examine whether the professor's academic freedom has indeed been violated.

As far as Mr. Robinson is concerned, emails and documents forwarded by Professor Pyne do indeed suggest his research on predatory journals remains at the heart of the university's actions against him. "We had hoped that in the spirit of clearing things up and getting to the bottom of the matter that the administration would cooperate with the investigation",observed Mr. Robinson. "I don't know how this could constitute anything other than a violation of Dr. Pyne's academic freedom, given what we know", added Professor Mark Mercer, president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship.

A university lecture hall. What's happening in all those academic journals?  Craig Glover/The London Free Press

Seeking Refuge -- Or Invading?

"Then in two weeks, another 3,000 will arrive. Hopefully that information will prove false, because we are worried that we will lose control."
"[One person was arrested, who] came to incite the protesters. We are expecting more protests [from residents of Tijuana], but we are prepared."
"That is one of the problems. They [federal government] are the ones that are giving us the problem because they couldn't control it [migrant caravans].
"The situation is very complicated. But we are coordinating it so that we don't lose control. I ask the community of Tijuana for common sense. This is not our fault. Our  obligation is to give security to our community and the people who are arriving."
Tijuana Police Chief Mario Martinez, Tijuana, Mexico

"Don't get it twisted -- this is an invasion."
"Once you cross the borders, once you went through those borders with violence, it became an invasion."
Guadalupe Arangure, local Tijuana resident, Mexico

CUstoms and Border Protection shuts down San Ysidro border crossing as caravan approaches  still from video

At first, from news reports, the impression was given that compassionate, good-hearted Mexicans did what they could to ease the travail of hundreds, then thousands of Central Americans determined to cross Mexico for their final destination -- entry to the United States. They were convinced, people who said they were fleeing their countries of origin in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, out of economic necessity, and to escape violence, corruption, fear and privation. Mexico itself has similar problems of corruption, violence, drug trafficking, poverty.

Clearly enough these are nations failing to observe the most basic of civilized norms in safety and security and good public order along with dependable civic institutions, sound educational opportunities and employment for their citizens. Those citizens who are voting in an unusual manner, not at the ballot box but at the borders of their countries, crossing them to embark on arduous, long journeys that are dangerous and require sacrifice and confidence that their plight will move those who have no wish to welcome them. Insisting on entry to a wealthy country with its own problems of crime, violence, drug trafficking and corruption.

Mexicans, it would appear, have seen their patience evaporate in the face of an ongoing exodus from Central America of haven-seekers. Most of whom, offered the opportunity to remain in Mexico and make application for asylum there, have chosen to refuse. Their goal is to forge onward, since America the land of prosperity and opportunity is where they headed for and where they plan to end up. Their sacrifice in leaving their homes behind obviously imbuing them with a sense of entitlement to do just that.

Tijuana is hosting thousands of Central Americans, desperately attempting to provide shelter, food and medical aid for them. An estimated 6,000 migrants have made their way to that border city, with more on the way. As the initial caravans progressed and updates were made on how they were managing and where they happened to be, they inspired others to join them or to embark on their own journeys assembling caravans of their own. The more 'successful' they are seen to be the more others will feel encouraged to do the same.

Meanwhile, Tijuana has a problem, an imposed responsibility to look after the welfare of thousands of people passing through but meanwhile settling down temporarily as they have been doing awaiting their opportunity to cross the border which the United States refuses to permit. The new president-elect Obrador has made an agreement with the U.S. that Mexico will keep the migrants on their side of the border while the U.S. slowly studies each migrant's application to determine who may cross and who will be refused.

The municipal police in Tijuana have handled the situation and for their pains had rocks hurled at them by migrants a week ago. "Fortunately, there was also no injury", noted Chief Martinez. "We managed to control the situation". That makes quite the impression, doesn't it? Imposing upon the city in Mexico for all their existential needs for however long they will be there, and expressing gratitude for the attention given in a humanitarian situation by tossing rocks at the police whose job is to maintain order.

Migrants break past a line of police as they run toward the Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018, near the San Ysidro entry point into the U.S. More than 5,000 migrants are camped in and around a sports complex in Tijuana after making their way through Mexico in recent weeks via caravan. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Police in that week arrested 57 of the intruders for such crimes as drug possession, public intoxication, and fighting. Tijuana secretary of public security Marco Antonio Sotomayor listed off 47 of the arrested from Honduras, five from El Salvador, four from Guatemala and one from Nicaragua; 42 of them to be deported, no longer able to remain legally in Mexico. A police officer overheard a number of migrants at the main camp claiming to be MS-13 gang members. U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials claim the presence of over 500 criminals among the migrants.

Dressed in riot gear, 200 Tijuana police officers were deployed to create a barrier between the migrant camp and some 400 local residents who set out to protest the presence of the migrants a week earlier. Local protesters claim to be sick of the migrants complaining about the food given them, and nor are they impressed by the violence the presence of the migrants has sparked in their city. The caravan broke through a fence on the Guatemalan-Mexican border a month ago to push north.

A group managed to climb the first barrier   AFP

And on Sunday a group of 500 of those migrants repeated the performance, storming the barriers near Tijuana to cross into the U.S. Mexico's interior ministry described the attempt as "violent" and "illegal", with video showing dozens of people rushing toward the fence separating the U.S. and Mexico, to be repelled by tear gas used by American border officers. Mexican police rounded up those involved as they "tried to cross the border in a violent way" which was "far from helping their objectives". Violating the legal migration framework could have resulted in a "serious incident", said the interior ministry, now prepared to deport all those involved.

U.S. military personnel and Border Patrol agents gather at the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday at the San Ysidro border crossing point south of San Diego. (Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty Images)

Rooting Out Nazi War Criminals

"It is uncontested that [Helmut] Oberlander obtained his Canadian citizenship by false representation or by knowingly concealing material circumstances by failing to disclose involvement in the SS at the time of his immigration screening."
"There is no doubt that to have done so would have resulted in the rejection of his citizenship application." 
Federal Court Judge Michael Phelan, Ottawa 

Helmut Oberlander says he was forced to join a Nazi death squad. He never disclosed this activity when applying for Canadian citizenship

Ukrainian-Canadians mounted a funding campaign and a resistance toward the Government of Canada's eventual decision to root out Nazi war criminals who had entered Canada post-
WWII, enabled to do so by withholding admissions of their war-year activities. Ukraine-born Oberlander, now 94, arrived in Canada in 1954, becoming a citizen six years later. He had been a member of the Nazi death squad Einsatzkommando 10a (Ek10a). Since being identified as a war criminal he has asserted his exculpatory youth and forceful induction into the death squad.

As far as the Canadian Ukrainian nationalists are concerned, the war is long past, and bygones should be bygones. They, like Polish Canadians, cite the fact that under Nazi occupation, Ukraines and Poles suffered as well, somehow able to bypass the horrendously deadly reach into the existence of European Jewry in a formidable bid by Nazi Germany to exterminate them entirely. Neither ethnic groups willingly admits that their countries were hotbeds of anti-Semitism and were complicit in the Nazi death machinery. Jews, with their centuries of experience, bid otherwise.

Former Nazi death squad member Helmut Oberlander is seen in this undated file photo,   CIJA / Handout

Einsatzkommando 10a  was responsible for killing about 100,000 prisoners, most of whom were Jews. The government revoked the retired businessman's citizenship in 2017 -- for the fourth time since the mid-1990s. Now, through his lawyers Oberlander has launched yet another challenge to his loss of citizenship and imminent deportation on the basis that he lied to Canadian authorities on his immigration application, making him ineligible for entry to the country. A Federal Court judge had ruled the government acted responsibly in the case, limiting his appeal capacity.

"With his [accused, 95-year-old Hans Werner H.] service as a guard he aided or at least made easier the killing of many thousands of inmates."
"[In his role as guard he would have] known about the various methods of killing as well as the disastrous living conditions of the imprisoned people."
"[As a guard he would have] been aware that a large number of people were killed with these methods and that the victims could have only been killed with such regularity if they were being guarded by people such as himself."
Martin Steltner, Berlin prosecutor

"In a sense it gives a certain very nice closure that someone like this is brought to justice, which I'm sure would have been Simon's [Wiesenthal] dream."
Efraim Zuroff, Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Jerusalem

Emaciated prisoners sit outside the hospital barrack in Nazi Germany's Mauthausen concentration camp during World War II. This undated photograph taken at great risk by Swiss prisoner Kurt Zalud, was later used as evidence in the Dachau war crimes trial.   jad/str/Kurt Zalud/AP

 For reasons known only to German justice, the last name in recognition of privacy regulations has been withheld of Hans Werner H., accused of serving as an SS guard in Mauthausen concentration camp and complicit in tens of thousands counts of accessory to murder. During the time of his service in northern Austria from 1944 to 1945, 36,223 people were murdered at Mauthausen, mostly by gassing, but also through lethal injection, shooting, starvation or exposure, according to meticulously kept Nazi-Germany's record-keeping, and cited by Berlin prosecutor Martin Steltner.

Nazi guard Hans Werner H. charged over 36,000 deaths at Mauthausen concentration camp - CBS News

Roughly 95,000 prisoners are believed to have died in the Mauthausen camp system among whom were 14,000 Jews -- along with Soviet prisoners of war, Spaniards fighting General Francisco Franco, and others viewed as enemies of fascism. As a member of the SS Rottenfuehrer accused of serving in the outer perimeter of the camp as well as within, guarding prisoner work details at a nearby quarry, he is held responsible in the deaths for the part he played as a guard.

Legal reasoning in Germany has advanced recently, holding that former Nazi camp guards may be charged with accessory to murder whether or not evidence exists that they personally took part in any specific deaths, an argument that has been upheld by Germany's highest criminal court, leading to a number of successful prosecutions. At this juncture, a court must review the charges to determine whether the man is held to be medically fit for trial. According to the prosecution, however, he is considered to be fit to stand trial.

KZ Mauthausen: Häftlinge auf dem Appellplatz   Foto Archiv BV

 

Bringing Alberta Oil To Market....

"When you have a price differential that's up around $42, $50 even, that's a massive challenge to local industry, to the livelihood of a lot of Albertans. I hear that very, very clearly."
"There is no question that folks in Alberta, folks here in Calgary, are living through extremely difficult times. This is very much a crisis."
"You think there's a super-simple easy answer and there's not. There's a multi-faceted complex issue and as much as there is a tendency out there in the world to give really simple answers to really complex questions, unfortunately the world doesn't work like that."
"We need to make sure that we're moving forward in the right way and that is where actually listening to the experts is sort of the best way to make policy."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"The crisis happening in this province affects the whole country but they [the federal government] are speaking a different language."
"We must get our product to tidewater and nothing today addresses that [urgency]."
Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci

"We need more [rail] cars. We need to order more locomotives in order to get more cars onto rail. That's the bottom line."
"In the meantime however, we need to take a close look at the tools available to us to close the differential where it's feasible."
Rachel Notley, Alberta Premier

"My sense is that we will be able to do that [get projects built, such as the Trans Mountain pipeline which the federal government used $4.5-billion in tax funding to purchase the project from Kinder Morgan Canada Limited whose shareholders were fed up with all the obstacles put in the way of completing the pipeline by the very Liberal government which swears it intends to see that Alberta oil gets transported in a timely efficient manner so that it will no longer be sold at discounted rates] in a way that will provide confidence to the sector."
"I don't accept the argument that this government has not been very, very focused on how we can deal with the challenge of getting our resources to international markets."
"We're the government that substituted action for words."
Bill Morneau, federal Finance Minister

Before he was elected in 2015 by a Canadian public that failed to appreciate the guardianship of the Canadian economy and international relations that had Canada in a healthy fiscal and global position led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau made no secret of his long-term goal to leave Canadian petroleum products underground. First, he meant to gradually wean Canadians off their dependency on oil with alternate sourcing of energy, and then he would shutter the oil industry leaving Alberta (Saskatchewan and Newfoundland) to find other sources of income) while delivering an ostensible environmental plus under his watch.

In the struggle to build pipelines, he compromised by promising the Trans Mountain pipeline would be built, but the Northern Gateway pipeline would be abandoned, at a time when Canada desperately needs to move its petroleum extraction industry forward both for domestic and trade purposes, rather than rely on oil sourced from Saudi Arabia. The Liberal government has focused on its pet project of empowering women, LGBTQ-2, Aboriginals in every sphere of public life, while ignoring the realities of the country's finances teetering vulnerably with a deficit far higher than anticipated and a growing debt, costly to the country's future.

Ontario along with Alberta were considered the nation's two power-house economies that kept the country strumming along, providing billions in equalization payments to the other provinces to ensure that social programs throughout the country were equally distributed. Ontario lost manufacturing jobs to cheap-labour countries and its wheels of commerce and production groaned to a downward spiral, while Alberta has had to struggle with opposition from the very provinces that benefit from its financial support, while they pursue an environmental agenda hostile to the very source of its wealth.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers estimates the price discount ("differential") that affects heavy oil and has spread to light oil is costing Canada dearly. The impact for the first ten months of this year was a loss of $13-billion in revenue. In October the difference between what U.S. crude sold for a barrel and Alberta crude was a whopping $50-million daily. "The differential has blown out to such an extreme level for two reasons, the lack of access to markets and the fact we really have only one customer (The United States)", explained Tim McMillan, CEO of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.


"If Northern Gateway had come on as planned, we wouldn't be in this situation", he said. "If this keeps up and we start to see either a lack of growth or more shutting in some of this production ... you're losing jobs and even personal income tax as well", noted Kent Fellows, research associate at the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, who estimated the differential would translate into a $13-billion economic loss if it persisted for a year; $7.2 billion for the Alberta government, $5.3 billion to industry and $800 million to the federal government.

Poland Should Study Remorse and Humility

"During World War II, due to the demoralizing circumstances and German actions, it is true that vile-acting individuals could be found among Poles and Jews alike."
"Yet, we should remember that the objective of the Germans was also to 'eradicate the Polish nation' and 'completely destroy Poland'."
"In his numerous publications and public statements, he [Grabowski] falsifies the history of Poland, proclaiming the thesis that Poles are complicit in the extermination of Jews."
"The attempts to ascribe part of the responsibility for the crimes of the World War II and the Holocaust to the Poles are evidently actions damaging Poland and are based on Jan Grabowski’s unconfirmed estimated figures."
Polish League Against Defamation statement

Jews are loaded onto trucks in the Lodz Ghetto, to be sent to an extermination camp in 1942.

"What is important, from my point of view, is that the militant nationalists who nowadays hold sway in Poland be warned that they will be held to account, that they are wrong if they think that their outrageous statements and slanders will go unnoticed."
"The more I studied these issues, I saw a level of complicity of parts of Polish society in the destruction of Polish Jews."
"From among the approximately 250,000 Polish Jews who had escaped liquidations of the ghettos and who had fled, about 40,000 survived. We have thus more than 200,000 Jews who fled the liquidations and who did not survive until liberation. My findings show that in the overwhelming majority of cases, their Polish co-citizens were – directly through murder, or indirectly by denunciation – at the root of their deaths."
"Whether they lived or died depended to a large extent on the attitude of the Poles. [While some Poles did save Jews], Polish society demonstrated various behaviours, some of which were horrifying."
Jan Grabowski, Holocaust researcher, professor, University of Ottawa

Jews are liquidated from the Krakow Ghetto in 1943.

"[The Polish League Against Defamation] has attempted to silence Prof. Grabowski by criticizing both his academic credibility and his personal integrity. Most recently, the league circulated a letter to universities in Europe and North America – including the University of Ottawa – that questions Prof. Grabowski’s widely acclaimed scholarship and accuses him of defaming the Polish nation."
"The HRREC affirms our confidence in the highly respected scholarship of Prof. Grabowski and we underline his academic freedom to pursue and publish his research without fear of attacks on his person or reputation."
"The HRREC strongly denounces the attacks on Prof. Grabowski as well as any endeavour to interfere with independent research."
Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC), University of Ottawa

After the Second World War, Jewish refugees who settled in Canada among the already long-settled Jewish immigrants from Europe, became aware that it was entirely conceivable that they might come across a former guard from any of the extermination or forced-labour camps operating in Eastern Europe walking the streets of Canadian cities. East Europeans, post-war, made application to leave their countries of origin and settle in Canada. They took steps to conceal their past during the war and succeeded in their applications for settlement in Canada.

Among them a good number of Ukrainian and Polish nationals who had collaborated with the Nazis taking up prison work with relish, work that made them complicit in the deaths of millions of Europe's Jews. When the Canadian Jewish Congress applied to the various governments of Canada over the years to establish a commission that would root out former war criminals living in Canada who took part in Nazi Germany's genocide against the Jewish population of Europe, nationalist Canadian-Ukrainian did everything they could to circumvent any such actions, denying that Ukrainians had ever been part of Germany's extermination plans.

For the past few years Poland has been strenuously applying itself to teaching the world that it is morally incorrect to refer to 'Polish' concentration camps, though so many were located in Poland. The Nazis knew that in establishing death camps in Ukraine and Poland they could anticipate local complicity. Even in occupied France French police and authorities were swift to make common cause with the Nazis, helping to round up Jews to be dispatched to concentration camps from which they would never return. Poland prefers the descriptive of 'Nazi' concentration camps, never 'Polish' concentration camps.

Dr. Grabowski, a highly internationally respected Holocaust researcher, has been the victim of a campaign of defamation by the Polish League Against Defamation, allied with the conservative ruling party of Poland which claims that his research uses wholly fictional accounts in a deliberate effort to slander Poland. History speaks for itself. There is more than ample documentation, from meticulously-maintained German archives, much less personal testimony of Holocaust survivors to attest to Polish complicity in Nazi atrocities. Ukraine's defence is Poland's as well. Most Eastern European countries lent themselves under Nazi occupation, to the hunt for Jews.

Poland's Law and Justice party attempted to make it a criminal offence to label the concentration camps in that country where millions were exterminated 'Polish' installations. International indignation convinced it to back down. Professor Grabowski wrote an historical accounting of Poland's complicity during the Holocaust years titled Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland, to document the involvement of Poles finding and killing Jews who managed to escape from ghettoes attempting to survive by installing themselves surreptitiously among non-Jews.

With its publication, heated debate ensued even as the book was recognized in 2014 for an award by the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research. That award was not the only recognition given Dr. Grabowski for his research and writing; he received numerous death threats. A German newspaper review of the book recognized its quality of revelations and that favourable review saw a response from a far-right Polish website which chose to publish an article alongside a photograph of Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister.

"Sieg Heil, Herr Grabowski, Three times Sieg Heil" ran the headline of the article. Leading to a successful libel suit. Now, with this latest besmirching of the professor's scholarship and literary and moral  integrity, the Polish organization is being sued for libel by him, in recognition of its public campaign accusing him of slandering Poland by writing of Polish violence against Jews. Should justice prevail, he will win this lawsuit as well.

Poland does itself no favours by their disingenuous efforts to exonerate their wartime record. Far better to be resigned to the reality of history, to express regret and shame and the intention to cultivate a more humane and responsible admission of wrongs done and deplored. What has passed is past; what is required is to ensure that there can be no repeats of the past. This offensive defensiveness does the country no credit whatever, other than bringing more shame upon it for denying its part in the horrors of genocide.

An inscription 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sits above the main gate at the Auscwitz-Birkenau concentration camp museum in Auscwitz-Birkenau, Poland, February 28, 2018.   Bloomberg