It's too early in the day to be so annoyed, but that's the price of reading the early-morning news. Some other things annoy like chronic coughs or pain in aging joints, but those disturbances in my equanimity might also warn of lung cancer or knee replacement. So with reading-induced annoyance. It masks despair.
I despair of the future for our neighbour to the south. I despair at the drift to the right in European democracies. I listen in despair to the ranting debate of the "loyal opposition" in our Canadian parliament and think there is no loyalty here to anything but power lust and no debate beyond catchwords and claptrap.
I have always been suspicious of moral certainty and I am often morally certain myself. I am certain I don't think harmless people should be harmed, and I am certain that reporting on and believing in are different things. As far apart as those items are, there is a connection and it occasioned my annoyance this morning, especially as I found that there are others who don't care if harmless people are harmed and they are willing to or unconscious that they do collapse any distinction between association and belief. I will clarify.
In Canada, we have just appointed a Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions, one Birju Dattani. Mr Dattani was born in Calgary, but even I won't hold that against him. His official biography states:
Mr. Birju Dattani obtained his Bachelor of Laws with Honours from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 2008. He obtained his Master of Laws in Public International Law from the London School of Economics & Political Science, with merit, in 2011.
Some people don't like Mr. Dattani and want him removed from his position. They say correctly that he spoke on a platform with Adnan Khan from the “Party of Liberation” or Hizb Ut Tahrir. The National Post and an editorialist for the Globe & Mail have thus accused Dattani of speaking alongside a “terrorist group” albeit this group is not on the government’s terrorist list, nor did Dattani even know the speaker in question. Those facts do not seem to have diluted the moral certainty of critics.
He is also accused by writers for those newspapers of espousing the principals of boycott, divestment and sanctions and applying them to Israel. "Not so," says Dattani and the one reference to those beliefs was a misquoted attribution to him. So, he didn't say what they said he said, and he didn't get to check the credentials of other speakers at a conference at which he was one of many presenters. Besides, I think (along with lots of other nice, thoughtful people) that the call for boycotting products of, divestment of funds invested in, and enacting sanctions against, the state of Israel are all legitimate non-violent tools to persuade that state to stop harming harmless people, with 40,000 dead and over 100,000 maimed so far, and I apologize for rounding off numbers that refer to real people. And all that brings us back to the making of distinctions.
Association is not the same as belief. Yes, I may associate with other people who believe some of the same things as I do, but that does not mean we are the same person or that we believe all that the other does. I may deliver a speech about British Columbia at the same lectern at the same conference as someone who thinks Alberta is the best Canadian province with the nicest premier in the country, but good grief, do not think I share those views, nice hockey team notwithstanding.
This idea of guilt by association is not applicable in this instance. I don't mean "guilt by association" is never applicable; simply that we need to distinguish the terms "association" and "belief". If I report on some event or philosophy or group, that reporting does not mean I approve of the event or advocate the philosophy or am sympathetic to the aims of the group. There is a difference between writing advertising copy for Hitler's National Socialist Party (Nazis, the term that mud-slingers love to sling), and writing a report on the atrocities of that organization for the prosecution at Nuremburg.
OK, I have used an extreme example, but I read things this morning that were really annoying because they reported on people who did the same thing – collapsed the "associated with" and the "believes what they believe (or I think they might believe)" and are morally certain that Birju Dattani should not have the position of Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Mr Dattani is an educated teacher and a civil rights expert. He gained his education at the London School of Economics "with merit" and he gained his expertise according to a biography published June 21 in the Yukon News and on the site of the honourable Arif Virani, Minister of Justice as follows:
Mr. Birju Dattani obtained his Bachelor of Laws with Honours from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 2008. He obtained his Master of Laws in Public International Law from the London School of Economics & Political Science, with merit, in 2011. Mr. Dattani was a Teaching Fellow in the Faculty of Law at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London where he taught International Comparative Law, Human Rights Law and European Union Law.
After starting his legal career with the Syrian Legal Development Program under the auspices of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as the Director of Legal Operations for International Law, Mr. Dattani then became the Assistant Regional Director at the Alberta Human Rights Commission. Here he assessed human rights complaints and advised executive leadership on legislative, policy and regulatory issues.
Mr. Dattani would then go on to become the Executive Director of the Yukon Human Rights Commission for three years, responsible for administering the Yukon Human Rights Act, before joining Centennial College in 2023 as the Director of Human Rights and Conflict Resolution.
Mr. Dattani has dedicated his career to protecting and upholding the rights of Canadians. He brings extensive practical and academic experience to the role of Chief Commissioner, having established himself as an expert in human rights law and as a champion for equity, diversity and inclusion.
He may have delivered papers on human rights at conferences at which other people also delivered papers and some of those other people may have been members of groups that some people (but not the Canadian government, by the way) think are terrorist organizations. So what? His critics, if they aren't physically as well as self-righteously constipated, probably associate with others who use toilets every day, but that doesn't mean they are scatological deviants (shit-freaks to us). Of course that's a stupid example of coincident behaviour as identification, but you read the newspaper articles and do even a bit of research and see if his critics are justified.
What more do you want Mr Housefather and others? Get off your high horses and do some work for human rights yourself. And stop taking trips to Israel. I know they're paid for by the Centre For Israel and Jewish Affairs so they didn't come out of the public purse, but surely you have all the information and personal opinion you need to serve your constituents. It's annoying to have to watch your continual whining displays of moral certainty about the Israeli Defence Force being justified in doing what they're doing. The reports of those defences of yours and the character assassinations you perpetrate are really annoying.