the daily snivel

Today I'm feeling very sick and phlegmy, so I decided to take the day off from studying for my upcoming civil procedure exam, and even refrained from casework at the Legal Clinic, so as to convalesce at home with a soothing hot beverage and perhaps curl up in bed with a nice, toasty cat. Finding myself with a day of peace, I finally got some laundry done and thereby diminished the leaning tower of socks and underwear that was casting an ominous shadow across my floor and my life (and, besides, I was all out of clean everything). Now I'm thinking about filling out some Christmas cards and generally being incredibly boring on a Friday night.

Yesterday was a little more stimulating. I wrote my immigration law exam, which I thought went quite well, despite being three hours of hand-cramping madness as we all frantically dashed through 9 questions (each with four subparts) about the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and its Regulations, and seminal cases with easy-to-cite names like Zolfagharkhani or Thiruvarulselvan. After that, my weary friends and I painted the town whatever colour spilled beer is, as we went out for pints, dinner, and yet more pints. The ridiculous thing about going out with other law students, however, is that it's akin to being a five-headed monster, each head more opinionated and bossy than the last, and none being able to agree on very simple things like "So, where should we go for dinner?" I had to eat somewhere that served at least some vegetarian food (our first stop was a Churrasco restaurant, which essentially serves meat, meat, and more meat), one person didn't want pub food, another didn't want Indian food, and another didn't want pasta. After all that wandering around, we settled on an Irish pub and ate boxties anyway. Then we hit the Manx Pub, which is a fabulous little basement pub on Elgin Street, and soaked ourselves in pints of Keiths and amusing stories and (as law students will) got engaged in a discussion about whether George W. Bush is a war criminal (and whether we should invade, a la The Mouse that Roared).

One of my exam questions touched loosely on this idea, as it was based on the refugee claim of Jeremy Hinzman, as US soldier who has fled the US and is seeking refugee protection in Canada on the grounds that he is a conscientious objector refusing to serve in an illegal war where torture and other war crimes have been perpetrated. Some of the real facts behind this story can be read here:

...
Jimmy Massey, 33, a staff sergeant who served in Iraq before being honourably discharged after 12 years' service, said he had seen troops shooting civilians at road blocks and in the street. A code of silence, similar to that found in organised crime gangs, prevented troops from speaking about it.

"We were shooting up people as they got out of their cars trying to put their hands up," said Mr Massey. "I don't know if the Iraqis thought we were celebrating their new democracy. I do know that we killed innocent civilians." Mr Massey said US troops in Iraq were trained to believe that all Iraqis were potential terrorists. As a result, he had watched his colleagues open fire indiscriminately. In one 48-hour period, he estimated his unit killed more than 30 civilians in the Rashid district of southern Baghdad.

"I was never clear on who the enemy was," he explained. "If you have no enemy or you do not know who the enemy is, what are you doing there?" His claims were made during an immigration hearing in Toronto, Canada, to assess a claim for refugee status made by a former US soldier, Jeremy Hinzman. Mr Hinzman, 26, fled to Canada after refusing to go to Iraq with his colleagues in the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg.

Mr Hinzman is seeking permission to remain in Canada with his wife and child and believes he will face a court martial if he returns to the US. "We were told that we would be going to Iraq to jack up some terrorists," he told the hearing.

"We were told it was a new kind of war, that these were evil people and they had to be dealt with." Mr Hinzman is among several American soldiers seeking refugee status in Canada, hoping the country's opposition to the war will help.
...

Were it any country but the United States, I don't think there would be any doubt that Mr. Hinzman would be entitled to refugee protection as a conscientious objector, but he has a lot of hurdles to overcome, not the least of which is the political price Canada would pay if it allowed a US citizen to come to Canada as a Convention Refugee, and which Mr. Hinzman has absolutely no say in.