Canadian Governor-General Michaelle Jean has been touring the Arctic this week, likely as part of the conservative government’s ambitious agenda to exercise Arctic sovereignty. Apparently she’s causing some waves for, as one journalist so succinctly puts it, “a day when she gutted a freshly slaughtered seal, pulled out its raw heart and ate it.”

Hundreds of Inuit at a community festival gathered around as the Governor-General knelt above the carcass and used a traditional blade to slice the meat off the skin. After repeated, vigorous slices at the flesh, the Queen’s representative turned to the woman beside her with an enthusiastic query: “Could I try the heart?” Ms. Jean then grabbed a tissue to wipe clean her blood-soaked fingers, and explained her gesture of solidarity with the region’s Inuit hunters.

So now a bunch of hippy urbanites and animal rights activists are up in arms over Jean’s apparent display of support for Canada’s much-maligned sealing industry.

Rebecca Aldworth, the director of Canadian wildlife issues for the Humane Society of the United States, said Ms. Jean’s performance in Rankin Inlet “was yet another cynical attempt by the Canadian government to blur the lies between Inuit subsistence hunts and the industrial scale slaughter of seals for their fur which is conducted almost entirely by non-aboriginal people in Canada.”

Bruce Friedrich of People for the Ethical treatment of Animals (PETA) said: “The Canadian Governor-General’s sick PR stunt is a predictable, if revolting, attempt to save a dying industry.”

But wait a minute… who brought up the seal hunt? Here was Jean displaying cultural sensitivity and an interest in learning more about one of Canada’s indigenous cultures, whom she is meant to also represent, among with the majority culture. She nor anyone present brought up the controversial seal hunt carried out in Labrador and Quebec every year.

In fact, it is this dangerous conflation that has led to such ridiculous antics as Scottish comedian Billy Connolly crying while an Inuit family he was using for his travel show hunted seal.

The problem is that people have gotten it into their heads that seals are somehow more beautiful and thus more deserving of life than those other, ordinary animals that are okay to kill and eat. I don’t want to hear one more whining foreigner telling me how sad it is that people hunt seals in Canada while they sit in their leather shoes and eat chicken nuggets from McDonalds.

No, Michaelle Jean was not in Nunavut to support the annual seal hunt. In fact, she’s made it part of her personal mission to push the federal government to establish a university in the Arctic to advance the social position of the Inuit living there.

But Ms. Jean says the region needs more. She points to the University of Tromso, which serves Norway’s Sami aboriginals, as an inspiration for Canada.

Tromso’s medicine, law and geology faculties are the kind of programs, she says, that could inspire more Canadian Inuit to pursue an education. The high school graduation rate in Nunavut is the lowest in Canada, at a mere 25 per cent.

With so few university students in the North, Ms. Jean suggests opening up the school to students throughout Canada and breaking it up into smaller satellite campuses throughout the Arctic.

Several town councillors applauded the Governor-General at a round-table meeting for speaking up in favour of the idea.

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Last week, US President Barack Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss peace between Israel and Palestine. Since the state of Israel was established, the United States has shown unwavering and uncritical support for Israel. Thus, through decades of conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis, the US has always opposed a ‘two-state solution.’ Therefore, when Obama met with Netanyahu and urged that he consider a two-state solution, it surprised many – probably Netanyahu most of all.

Obviously, this was not something Netanyahu was willing to agree to. Thus, Obama also urged Netanyahu to agree to freeze illegal Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory. Three days after the meeting, the Israeli government dismantled an illegal Jewish outpost in the West Bank, something most observers saw as a gesture to Obama’s request.

Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, met with settler leaders on Wednesday and told them that the illegal outposts were damaging Israel’s international relations and their own cause. He said the outposts would be removed “if not through dialogue, then through swift and aggressive enforcement.”

However, today news broke that Netanyahu has rejected Obama’s call to freeze illegal settlements, and announced that construction will continue in existing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

“We do not intend to build any new settlements but it wouldn’t be fair to ban construction to meet the needs of natural growth or for there to be an outright construction ban,” he said.

“Natural growth” is the term Israel uses for expansion to accommodate population growth inside the existing settlements. However, the 2003 US “road map” for peace explicitly calls for a freeze to all settlement activity, including natural growth.

The Israeli cabinet is divided on the issue. Defence Minister Ehud Barak said 22 settlement outposts, out of a total of about 100, would be taken down. However, Interior Minister Eli Yishai opposes dismantling the outposts, claiming, “There is rampant illegal construction on the part of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. If we go for enforcement, then enforcement has to be unified.”

So, just when it looked like we might get some moderation in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, hopes are crushed once again. However, I still think it’s encouraging that the new US president had the gall to say to Netanyahu:

The fact is, is that if the people of Gaza have no hope, if they can’t even get clean water at this point, if the border closures are so tight that it is impossible for reconstruction and humanitarian efforts to take place, then that is not going to be a recipe for Israel’s long-term security or a constructive peace track to move forward.

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Last week, a Canadian court, operating under the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes of certain magnitude, found Désiré Munyaneza guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide for his participation in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Canada is a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a document that applies the principle of “universal jursidiction” that allows countries to prosecute crimes against humanity that occur outside of their national jurisdiction. The prosecution was made possible by a relatively new law in Canada, the 2000 Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, that allows residents of Canada to be tried for crimes committed overseas. This landmark ruling makes Canada one of the few countries in the world to have successfully tried crimes aganist humanity.

“Canada is one of the biggest champions of international tribunals, but up to now had done nothing to deal with international criminals on its own territory. This will redress that to some extent,” said René Provost, head of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.

While the verdict will help to mitigate Canada’s reputation as a haven for war criminals, experts say lack of political will and meagre resources will prevent many more prosecutions.

Only about $3-million of Canada’s $15-million annual war-crimes budget goes to criminal investigations and prosecutions, they say. Most of the money goes toward deportations and preventing suspects from getting to Canada.

Mr. Munyaneza is considered a low-level genocidaire. At the time of the genocide, he was 27 and ran a store owned by his father in the town of Butaré:

“The store ordered 2,304 machetes from a wholesaler months before the massacre. The court heard that Mr. Munyaneza helped pass them out as the killings began.”

In the verdict, Munyaneza was found guilty on all seven counts brought against him related to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in and around Butare, Rwanda. Judge André Denis stated that he had no reservations about handing down the verdict:

“The accused’s criminal intent was demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt, as was his culpable violence,” Denis wrote.

“Désiré Munyaneza specifically intended to destroy the Tutsi ethnic group in Butare and in the surrounding communes. To that end, he intentionally killed Tutsi, seriously wounded others, caused them serious physical and mental harm, sexually assaulted many Tutsi women and generally treated Tutsi inhumanely and degradingly.”

The defense has argued that the evidence presented in the case did not justify the conviction and stated that they will be appealing the decision.

I think it is rather evident that the judge on this case would like to receive the acclaim of being the first in Canada and one of the few in the world to preside over a successful war crimes trial. Therefore, do I think it likely that he was less than objective in hearing testimonies from witnesses of both sides? Yes.

However, considering the length of time the RCMP took investigating the claims by a Rwandan group called African Rights, which initially raised the accusations against Munyaneza, before arresting and charging him, I imagine there is sufficient evidence of Munyaneza’s involvement in the genocide.

So I don’t know what to conclude – justice served? Likely. But was the process as objective and unbiased as the law is meant to be? Probably not.

Canada still harbours at least five other suspected genocidaires from the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda has asked for the extradition of five men believed to be living in Canada who played key roles in the 1994 genocide.

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Two weeks ago, the Kenyan Women’s Development Organization, a coalition of women’s advocacy groups, announced that they were commencing a one-week sex ban to protest the in-fighting that has stagnated Kenyan politics.

Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida), one of the organisations in the campaign, said they hoped the seven-day sex ban would force the squabbling rivals to make up.

She said the campaign would start from her bedroom and that emissaries had been sent to the two leaders’ wives, Ida Odinga and Lucy Kibaki, urging them to join in and lead from the front.

“Even commercial sex workers should join in the campaign which is so vital to the country,” Mrs Nyaundi told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.

“Great decisions are made during pillow talk, so we are asking the two ladies at that intimate moment to ask their husbands: ‘Darling can you do something for Kenya?’”

Well, now a Kenyan man is suing the sex ban activists as his wife’s refusal to sleep with him has caused him “anxiety and sleepless nights.” He says, “I have been suffering mental anguish, stress, backaches, lack of concentration” as a result of his wife’s refusal to sleep with him.

In court on Friday, Mr Kimondo said through his lawyer that his wife, Teresia Wanjiku, had denied him his conjugal rights.

He is seeking undisclosed “general damages” from the organisers of the boycott, on the grounds that it “interfered with his happy marriage”, the Kenyan broadcaster KBC reports.

Sounds like a man who doesn’t believe his wife’s body is her own. Siggidy sigh.

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Can you believe that this is what the media focuses on? I had had enough already with the “Michelle” haircut and all the hubbub about her being the most stylish of the first ladies.

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