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“Would the French accept people singing the ‘La Marseillaise’ in English as a sign of French patriotism? Of course not,” said Mark Krikorian, head of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports tighter immigration controls.

The quote goes with a story about a Spanish recording of the Star Spangled Banner, which we think is a cool idea. What’s really funny about the quote is the way the French are suddenly back in style as models of American patriotism. Without any prejudice to the French people, this is surely a sign of right-wing desperation.
When the French refused to follow us to war, the redneck right insisted on having “freedom fries” (instead of French fries). But now that red-white-and- blue bigotry is busy turning the war machine homeward, well golly, French patriotism (or some ideologist’s projection of it) is invoked as the gold standard of nationalist purity. In either case, what the yokels need most from the French is support for all-American instincts to violence and intolerance.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once explained that confronting social evil is a lot like treating a big blister. At some point, you have to let the bad juices flow. If it’s the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish that serves as the needle in this case, then so be it. It is a sign of coming health to watch these poisonous attitudes flow.

As for the French, let us be clear. On the bus ride down Mirabeau B. Lamar Boulevard this morning, I was very much enjoying my Cambridge Companion to Foucault, a philosopher who would no doubt have delighted in the contemplation of bilingual liberation, and who would have most probably joined in.

“But that’s so gay”? Oui, exactement.–gm

Prime Minister announces Canadian membership of North American Competitiveness Council

June 13, 2006
Ottawa, Ontario

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced the Canadian membership of the North American Competitiveness Council, which was launched at the meeting of North American leaders in Cancun, Mexico, in March 2006. The Canadian members of the Competitiveness Council are Dominic D’Alessandro (Manulife Financial); Paul Desmarais, Jr. (Power Corporation of Canada); David Ganong (Ganong Bros. Limited); Richard George (Suncor Energy Inc.); Hunter Harrison (CN); Linda Hasenfratz (Linamar Corporation); Michael Sabia (Bell Canada Enterprises); Jim Shepherd (Canfor Corporation); Annette Verschuren (The Home Depot); and Rick Waugh (Scotiabank).

“I am delighted that these accomplished individuals have agreed to apply their considerable private sector expertise to help us identify and pursue initiatives that will create a more competitive North America,” said the Prime Minister.

The Council comprises 30 senior private sector representatives, 10 from each country, and has a mandate to provide governments with recommendations on broad issues such as border facilitation and regulation, as well as the competitiveness of key sectors including automotive, transportation, manufacturing and services. The Council will meet annually with security and prosperity ministers and will engage with senior government officials on an ongoing basis. The Competitiveness Council is an initiative of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

Biographical notes are attached.

* * * *

NORTH AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS COUNCIL – BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Dominic D’Alessandro

Dominic D’Alessandro was born in Italy in 1947. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Loyola College and qualified as a chartered accountant in 1971. He has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Manulife Financial since 1994.

Mr. D’Alessandro has had an extensive and varied background in the financial services industry. From 1968 to 1975 he was employed by Coopers & Lybrand, where he spent time in the firm’s Paris office. In 1975, he joined Genstar Ltd. and worked in Saudi Arabia as Director of Finance and subsequently Manager, and was later based in San Francisco as Vice-President of the Materials and Construction Group. He joined the Royal Bank of Canada in 1981 where he held a number of positions, including Executive Vice-President. In 1988 he was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Laurentian Bank of Canada.

Mr. D’Alessandro has been a member of several boards of directors and was the 2001-02 Campaign Chair for the Salvation Army and for the Greater Toronto United Way in 1998. He has received numerous honours, including Canada’s Outstanding CEO of 2002, Officer of the Order of Canada in 2003, and Canada’s Most Respected CEO in 2004.

Paul Desmarais, Jr.

Paul Desmarais, Jr. was born in Sudbury, Ontario, in 1954. He obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University and graduated from the European Institute of Business Administration in Fontainebleau, France, with a master’s degree in business administration. Since 1996, he has been Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Power Corporation of Canada (PCC) and has been Chairman of the Executive Committee of Power Financial Corporation (PFC) since 2005.

Prior to joining PCC in 1981, Mr. Desmarais was with S.G. Warburg & Co. in London, England, and with Standard Brands Incorporated in New York. He was President and Chief Operating Officer of PFC from 1986 to 1989, and Chairman from 1990 to 2005.

He is also a director and member of the executive committee of many Power group companies in North America including Great-West Lifeco and IGM Financial. In addition, he holds executive board positions with several European companies, including Pargesa Holding S.A. (Switzerland), Imerys (France), Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (Belgium), Total S.A. and Suez (France).

Mr. Desmarais is Chairman of the Board of Governors of The International Economic Forum of the Americas, Founder and Chairman of the International Advisory Committee of l’École des Hautes Études Commerciales and Founder and Member of the International Advisory Board of the McGill University Faculty of Management in Canada. He is a member of the International Council and a director of the European Institute of Business Administration. He is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the La Poste Group in France.

In 2005, Mr. Desmarais was named an Officer of the Order of Canada and received the Executive of the Year Award from the Academy of International Business.

David A. Ganong

David Ganong was born in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, in 1943. He received a B.A. from the University of New Brunswick in 1965 and an M.B.A. from the University of Western Ontario in 1970. He is President of Ganong Brothers Limited.

Mr. Ganong is a director of the Canadian Council of Chief Executive Officers, Sun Life Financial and the Conference Board of Canada. He is also Chairman of the Board of Governors of the University of New Brunswick and the New Brunswick Business Council. Some of his previous positions include Chairman of the Confectionery Manufacturers’ Association of Canada, Chairman of the Board of Clarica Life Insurance Co. and Chairman of the Young Presidents’ Organization for Canada. He has also been a director of the Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation and Air Canada.

Mr. Ganong was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2005 and was inducted into the Canadian Professional Sales Association Hall of Fame in 1999.

Richard Lee George

Rick George was born in Brush, Colorado, in 1950. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Colorado State University, a law degree from the University of Houston Law School and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Program for Management Development. He was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of Suncor Energy in 1991.

Mr. George has held various positions with Sun Company both in the U.S. and the U.K. in the areas of project planning, production evaluation, exploration and production, and in the international oil business as managing director of Sun Oil Britain Limited.

Mr. George was named Chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives in 2003 and is Chair of the 2008 Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference. He is also a member of the board of directors of the U.S. offshore and onshore drilling company, Global Santa Fe Corporation.

He was named Outstanding CEO of the Year in 1999 and received the Canadian Business Leader Award in 2000.

Hunter Harrison

Hunter Harrison was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1944. He became President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian National Railway Company (CN) in 2003.

Mr. Harrison’s railroad career began in 1964 when he joined the Frisco Railroad (St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad) as a carman-oiler while still attending school. He held positions of increasing responsibility at the Frisco and Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) after BN acquired the Frisco in 1980. He joined the Illinois Central Railroad in 1989 as Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer and rose through the ranks to become President and Chief Executive Officer in 1993. CN acquired IC in 1999. Prior to his current position, Mr. Harrison was CN’s Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer from 1998 to 2003 and he became a director in 1999.

Mr. Harrison is a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and was named North America’s Railroader of the Year in 2002.

Linda Hasenfratz

Linda Hasenfratz was born in Guelph, Ontario, in 1966. She holds an Honours Bache
lor of S
cience from the University of Western Ontario and completed an Executive M.B.A. from the Ivey School of Business at the same university in 1997. She is Chief Executive Officer of Linamar Corporation.

Ms. Hasenfratz joined Linamar Corporation in 1990 and embarked on an extensive training program to gain familiarity with all aspects of the business, working as a machine operator, engineering technician and production control coordinator. She was Materials Manager of the Traxie subsidiary and in 1995 became Operations Manager for the start up of Comtech Manufacturing Ltd. She was named General Manager of Comtech and Vehcom Manufacturing in 1997. Ms. Hasenfratz was named Chief Operating Officer of Linamar in 1997 and President in 1999, before assuming her current position in 2002.

Ms. Hasenfratz is a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the Catalyst Canadian Board of Advisors, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Original Equipment Manufacturers Association.

Michael J. Sabia

Michael Sabia was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, in 1953. He received a B.A. in economics and politics from the University of Toronto and an M.A., M.Phil. from Yale University. He is President and Chief Executive Officer of Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE).

Mr. Sabia held a number of senior positions in the Canadian Public Service, including Director General of Tax Policy in the Department of Finance, and Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet in the Privy Council Office. He joined the Canadian National Railway Company as Vice-President, Corporate Development, in 1993 and was appointed Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer in 1995. He joined the BCE group in 1999 and was appointed President and Chief Operating Officer of BCE and Bell Canada in 2002.

Mr. Sabia received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa in 2006.

James A. Shepherd

Jim Shepherd was born in Quebec City, Quebec, in 1952. He graduated from Queen’s University in 1974 with a degree in mechanical engineering and is President and Chief Executive Officer of Canfor Corporation.

Mr. Shepherd has been employed in the forest products business for more than 25 years in both Ontario and B.C., first with British Columbia Forest Products Ltd. and then with Crestbrook Forest Industries Ltd. He joined Slocan Forest Products Ltd. as President and Chief Operating Officer in 1999 and became Chief Executive Officer in 2000. In 2004, he became President and Chief Executive Officer of Canfor.

Mr. Shepherd is a member of the Board of Governors of the University of Northern British Columbia, the Board of Directors of the Council of Forest Industries, the B.C. Progress Board, the Vancouver Board of Trade, and the Asia Pacific Trade Council, and is Chairman of the Forest Products Association of Canada. He was Chair of the B.C. Forest Safety Council and has participated in the United Way since 1995

Annette Verschuren

Annette Verschuren was born in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1956. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from St. Francis Xavier University. In 1996 she joined The Home Depot Canada and is Division President of the company’s Canadian operations.

Ms. Verschuren began her career as a development officer with the Cape Breton Development Corporation in Sydney, Nova Scotia. She went on to work with Canada Development Investment Corporation as Executive Vice- President and then joined Imasco Ltd. as Vice-President of Corporate Development. Prior to joining The Home Depot, Ms. Verschuren was President and co-owner of Michael’s of Canada from 1993 to 1996.

She has been honoured with a doctorate from both Mount Saint Vincent University and St. Francis Xavier University, and was named the 2005 Distinguished Canadian Retailer of the Year by the Retail Council of Canada. Ms. Verschuren was installed as Chancellor of Cape Breton University and she is currently on the board of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, Chair of Habitat for Humanity’s National President’s Council and a member of the Canadian Corporate Council on Volunteering.

Richard E. Waugh

Rick Waugh was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1947. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from the University of Manitoba, and a Master of Business Administration from York University. Since 2003, he has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Scotiabank.

Mr. Waugh began his career with Scotiabank and served in a number of positions in the retail and commercial, investment, corporate and international banking areas. He was appointed Senior Vice-President, North American Corporate Banking in 1983. In 1985, he moved to New York where, for the next eight years, he played a pivotal role in the development and expansion of the bank’s U.S. activities.

In 1993, Mr. Waugh returned to Toronto as Senior Executive Vice-President, Corporate Banking. He was appointed Vice-Chairman, Corporate Banking in 1995, and Vice-Chairman, International Banking and Wealth Management in 1998.

Mr. Waugh is a Fellow of the Institute of Canadian Bankers, serves on the Board of Directors of St. Michael’s Hospital and is Campaign Chair of the United Way of Greater Toronto’s 2006 Campaign.
Source

Mexican History: Readings From The Left

By Rodrigo Saldaña Guerrero
Guest Columnist from Mexico

Benito Juárez García was born in 1806. He became president in the midst of a civil war. What were his politics?

This champion of Mexican nationalism was in favor of U. S. intervention in Mexico. He confiscated Catholic Church estates that sustained many welfare activities, and sold them cheaply (he did not use them to strengthen the state, as his myth maintains). He terminated Indian communal property.

These interventions in Church and Indian affairs fostered the formation of the latifundies that made infamous the Porfirio Díaz regime and against which Emiliano Zapata fought in the next century.

He was a capitalist who believed that progress laid in making every Mexican a liberal Western person. He clung to power until his death, violating the law and using electoral fraud.

In other words, his politics were precisely the same of the much criticized Díaz. Díaz started a revolution with a No Reelection slogan, became president for four years, left the presidency in charge of a friend, and later reelected himself over and over until a revolution toppled him.

The revolution aborted and gave way to a civil war. The winner of this was Alvaro Obregón. He became president for four years, left the presidency in charge of a friend, then started reelecting himself. Then he was assassinated. In many ways, his career paralleled that of dictator Díaz. But he elected to build his power on a progressive rhetoric that, without being precisely socialistic, repudiated the laissez faire capitalism Juárez had sponsored.

Here the complications begin, because Obregón did not repudiate Juárez himself. Juárez became one of the civic saints of the patriotic myths on which Obregón and his successors built their regime. The capitalistic Juárez was presented as a leftist.

The system Obregón founded, perfected by Plutarco Elías Calles and, above all, by Lázaro Cárdenas Del Río, built on a large measure on the oppression of poor people, and which kept the people poor, was publicized as a center left party.

A political landscape was painted in which this system (which in time was known as PRI) was the only sensible choice between communist left and rightist PAN (this party was not rightist at the time, by the way, but official propaganda helped making it so).

The PRI system was deeply corrupt, and many of his people got richer at the expense of the poor, who suffered fierce repression whenever they tried to resist. It tried to cover up this situation with subsidies, debt and inflation, that future generations would have to pay for. Many intellectuals were generously paid for their part in this make up work, a part that included writing Mexican history in such a way that it would conform to the official rhetoric.

All this made a mess of the historical consciousness of the Mexican people. Juárez capitalism and PRI-ist corruption and oppression were successfully presented as left.

All this is only part of the story, of course. We have, for instance, the fascinating joining of men who were mortal enemies in one pantheon of heroes. But the point I want to emphasize is the mess the PRI version of Mexican history, mainly of the Juárez period and of the nature of the system itself, has caused in the ideological debates of the present. The insistence of many intellectuals in the validity of that version is like a virus that makes it very difficult to examine objectively a series of issues.

The enormous complexity of history is too often simplified for party purposes, sometimes causing a very serious distortion. The cure for this cultural illness is cultural health: making people aware of the true nature of historiography, and of the true history of the society they are interested in.

Mexican historiography has developed enormously in the last half century or so. For some strange reason, political debate has remained far behind it in its understanding of Mexican history. Intellectuals that should know better keep using old myths in their approach to present day issues.

The natural solution for this problem would be to dialogue about the history that lies at the bottom of that approach. There is, however, a vicious circle: the present day approach contaminates the understanding of history and prevents an objective look at it. I suggest showing these two trends in their interrelationship and inviting comments on this point.

Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely

By NINA BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
Published: June 15, 2006

A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation.
The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants detained after 9/11, and it dismissed several key claims the detainees had made against the government. But the judge, John Gleeson of United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, allowed the lawsuit to continue on other claims, mostly that the conditions of confinement were abusive and unconstitutional. Judge Gleeson’s decision requires top federal officials, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, to answer to those accusations under oath.

This is the first time a federal judge has addressed the issue of discrimination in the treatment of hundreds of Muslim immigrants who were swept up in the weeks after the 2001 terror attacks and held for months before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported. The roundups drew intense criticism, not only from immigrant rights advocates, but also from the inspector general of the Justice Department, who issued reports saying that the government had made little or no effort to distinguish between genuine suspects and Muslim immigrants with minor visa violations.

Lawyers in the suit, who vowed to appeal yesterday’s decision, said parts of the ruling could potentially be used far more broadly, to detain any noncitizen in the United States for any reason.

“This decision is a green light to racial profiling and prolonged detention of noncitizens at the whim of the president,” said Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the detainees. “The decision is profoundly disturbing because it legitimizes the fact that the Bush administration rounded up and imprisoned our clients because of their religion and race.”

A spokesman for the government, Charles S. Miller, would not respond to those assertions, saying only that the Justice Department was “very pleased that the court upheld the decision to detain plaintiffs, all of whom were illegal aliens, until national security investigations were completed and plaintiffs were removed from the country.” He said the government was reviewing the rest of the opinion to decide whether to appeal the rulings Judge Gleeson made to allow the plaintiffs’ other claims to proceed.

In his 99-page ruling, Judge Gleeson rejected the government’s argument that the events of Sept. 11 justified extraordinary measures to confine noncitizens who fell under suspicion, or that the attacks heightened top officials’ need for government immunity to combat future threats to national security without fear of being sued.

But his interpretation of immigration law gave the government broad discretion to enforce the law selectively against noncitizens of a particular religion, race or national origin, and to detain them indefinitely, for any unspecified reason, after an immigration judge had ordered them removed from the country.

“The executive is free to single out ‘nationals of a particular country’ and focus enforcement efforts on them,” the judge wrote. “This is, of course, an extraordinarily rough and overbroad sort of distinction of which, if applied to citizens, our courts would be highly suspicious.”

Yet, he continued, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that Congress and the executive branch, in exercising their broad power over naturalization and immigration, can make rules that would be unacceptable if applied to American citizens.

In the judge’s view, the government has the right to detain people indefinitely as long as their eventual removal is “reasonably foreseeable.” If that interpretation stands, it could apply to millions of noncitizens, including tourists removable for visa violations, said Gerald L. Neuman, a law professor at Columbia who is an expert in human rights law and was not involved in the case.

“It doesn’t seem to limit the motives the government has to have in being slow in removing them; it could even be just basic neglect,” he said.

But Professor Neuman cautioned that “it’s only a district judge’s decision.”

“The decision encourages the government to behave this way without fear of financial liability,” he said, but it does not carry the weight of a ruling by an appellate court. “This interpretation is attackable even among other judges in Brooklyn, let alone Lower Manhattan.”

But David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and a co-counsel in the lawsuit, said the ruling was the only one of its kind and made New York “an equal protection-free zone” because the government can detain immigrants wherever it chooses.

“What this decision says is the next time there is a terror attack, the government is free to round up every Muslim immigrant in the U.S., based solely on their ethnic and religious identity, and hold them on immigration pretexts for as long as it desires,” he said. “We saw after 9/11 what the government did in an era of uncertainty about how far it can go. Judge Gleeson has essentially given them a green light to go much further.”

The class-action lawsuit, Turkmen v. Ashcroft, is the first and largest of several brought by immigrants held after 9/11. The named plaintiffs in the case include former detainees who came back to the United States this year for depositions and were required to be in the custody of federal marshals at all times. Among them were Hany Ibrahim, a deli worker, and his brother, Yasser, a Web designer, Egyptian Muslims who said then that putting themselves back in the hands of the government they were suing was an act of faith in America.

Yesterday, Yasser Ibrahim, who had lived in New York for three or four years on an expired tourist visa and was delivered in shackles to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn soon after Sept. 11, said through his lawyers that he was shocked and very disappointed by the judge’s decision.

“I can’t believe the court would allow this to happen,” he said.” I am frightened for other Muslims in the United States, who could face the same discrimination and abuse that I suffered.”

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Five Democratic members of Congress were arrested at the Sudanese Embassy and led away in plastic handcuffs Friday to protest the atrocities in the Darfur region.

The lawmakers — Reps. Tom Lantos of California, Jim McGovern and John Olver of Massachusetts, Jim Moran, of Virginia, and Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas — were among 11 protesters arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly. The charges are misdemeanors.

The international community has accused the military dictatorship in Sudan of an ongoing genocide of its non-Arab citizens. Several hundred thousand refugees are in the Darfur region after having been driven off their land.