So much so, that I’ve signed up for their 90-day free trial subscription. Mainly, I’m looking to get a stack of newsprint for lining our garden this fall for next spring.

And it’s not just because the CanWest zombie has rebranded itself as PostMedia [whatever they intend that to mean].

So last Tuesday, the editorial board of the National Post released this heap of rhetoric; it cannot stand. Here are some excerpts.

Canada has to act quickly to ensure that our valid interest in protecting genuine refugees who face real persecution at home does not leave us open to boatload upon boatload of economic migrants who should be using normal immigration channels to try to enter the country.

The assertion here is that the Tamils are economic migrants posing as actual refugees. The editorial board is free to assert this if they have some evidence and if they can answer [at the very least] all of these questions so they can demonstrate why they think the 490 are just looking for a better job. There is no evidence to support that presumption.

To this end, it’s smart that Ottawa has pledged to put more pressure on foreign governments to avoid displacing persons and creating refugees in the first place.

This is a great idea if refugee generation was a small industry with sporadic output. The UNHCR esitmates 175 million international refugees and asylum seekers, plus 25 million internally displaced people. The naivety of this tactic is like if Harper could phone up Sri Lanka and ask them to not put out the trash can in front of our driveway so we can get our car out in the morning. And through some easy tweaks the refugees would go away and simply not be our problem.

Stop displacing people? Stop creating refugees? A great idea, but no amount of pressure from Stephen Harper alone will enable that to happen.

Really, though, we’re talking about international NIMBYism. Enough of that, now.

But the truly significant changes will have to come through thorough reform of the refugee and immigration system.

Once the regular immigration channels were working in a timely manner, there would be less incentive for economic migrants (and other would-be Candians not facing persecution at home) to abuse the refugee process.

quickly and efficiently sort out the those truly in need of asylum from those merely jumping their rightful place in the immigration line.

• August 15, 2010 -- The Tamils’ Gift: Some Needed National Values Exploration (5)
• August 12, 2010 -- A Basic Primer on the Tamil Ship (3)
• August 17, 2010 -- Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 8.16.10: The HST, Tamil Ship, Haiti… (3)

Patient readers will bear with me as I sink into the quagmire of Balkan and, specifically, post-Yugoslav politics to make a broader point about states and the nature of politics in a state-dominated world.

The Kosovo Precedent?

Recently, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on the legality of the unilateral declaration of independence of the Republic of Kosovo from the Republic of Serbia. Putting all obscurantist legal jargon aside, the Court found it impossible to negate what has been apparent since at least 1776: a declaration of independence cannot, by definition, be “illegal” because its entire raison d’être is premised on the negation of laws which would hold as much. That is, after all, the entire purpose of a declaration of independence. It is not to ask for permission for independence from former masters or oppressors (and they were certainly the latter in the case of Serbia’s relationship with Kosovo) but rather to announce it as an objective (de facto) reality or a stated goal.

This much is obvious, of course. Serbia, in bringing this case to the Court, could not possibly have expected any other outcome. It was, in truth, merely the latest attempt by the new, ostensibly democratic regime in Belgrade to appease its nationalist base by continuing the failed, genocidal and irredentist politics of the 90s. Much has been made of the supposed implications of the case, and the leader of the Serbian entity within in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik, has seized on the opportunity to make the case that if Kosovo is “allowed” to secede then by any objective, moral, judical standard, surely, the Republika Srpska ought to be allowed to do the same. Unfortunately for Mr. Dodik, his supporters, and all those sharing this perspective on the implications of this case, have all either completely missed its true lesson or are willingly ignoring it. I suspect the latter, as we shall see.

Living by the Sword: The Yugoslav Experience

Max Weber, the famed German Sociologist, is credited with having coined the term the “monopoly over the legitimate use of violence,” which he characterized as being the defining feature of the state form. While Weber was a strong proponent of state power, his definition illustrates the chief problem, at least for anarchists, with the state perfectly. In short, it is an institution inherently founded and based in violence and despite any veneer or actual functioning representative or democratic machinery it remains defined by the monopoly over the legitimate use of violence. Whether republic or theocracy, the state remains based in and defined by violence.

"In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first." - Ambrose Bierce

This is crucial point to remember when considering any debate about sovereignty, independence or any of the other proverbial pissing contests that define international relations in the modern world. The simple fact of the matter is that despite the many layers of international and humanitarian bureaucracy that exist presently to define some sort of “order,” the very nature of statecraft makes this a fleeting, quaint notion, at best.

The present world order of politics is defined by power. Kosovo, for example, managed to gain independence from Serbia because it won this, in essence, through a military conflict in which it was supported, actively, by NATO. In contrast, the Serbs in Bosnia were essentially rewarded for having successfully waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Bosniaks and Croats by the US and their allies who had committed themselves to the establishment of a partitioned, apartheid-like Bosnian post-war state. One should note that despite their best efforts, the then Serbian government was in large part unsuccessful in ethnically cleansing Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian majority. Largely due to the fact that said majority composed upwards of 90% of the population. This demographic skew is based in the simple reality, ignored by Serbian nationalists and mythologists, that contrary to their claims of Kosovo as being the “spiritual and political heartland of Serbia” in all its history, Kosovo been under the direct administration of Belgrade or the Serbian state for barely 50 years.

In any case, in contrast to the experience in Kosovo, by the end of 1995, when the Bosnian and Croatian militaries had managed to finally to reverse the losses of years prior to the by now increasingly undermanned but still superiorly armed Serbs, US diplomats stressed that the liberation of Bosnian territory would only be allowed to proceed to a certain point. Richard Holbrooke, arguably the chief American diplomat involved in the forming of the subsequent Dayton Peace Accords, has even gone on the record stating that:

“We asked them not to take Banja Luka [the capital of the self-declared Serbian republic within Bosnia], but we did not give the Croatians and the Bosnians any other ‘red lights.’ On the contrary, our team made no effort to discourage them from taking Prijedor and Sanski Most and other terrain that is theirs on the Contact Group map.” (Apartheid cartography: the political anthropology and spatial effects of international diplomacy in Bosnia, David Campbell, Political Geography 18 (1999), pg. 415)

As Marko Attila Hoare illustrates in his excellent study of the military aspects of the war in Bosnia (How Bosnia Armed, Hoare, pg. 121-127), Holbrooke’s claims of leniency may not be entirely true. In fact, the evidence strongly suggests that by the end of the war, as the tide had turned against the Serbs, the Americans threatened the Bosnian government with air strikes if they continued with the liberation of their country. Why? Because as Holbrooke stated above, the Americans had decided that “peace” in Bosnia would mean a 51-49% division of territory between the Bosniaks and Croats (51%) on one side, and the Serbs (49%) on the other. They had the power to enforce this, this was their ambition, and so this was the nature of the subsequent Bosnian peace agreement.

"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." - Albert Einstein

The ability to dictate the terms and scale of violent repercussions when opposing parties fail to acquiesce (read: might makes right) is the defining feature of international politics in the world of states. Thus, during the actual war in Bosnia, the stated and practiced aims of the Bosnian Serb government, the so-called Republika Srpska (currently headed by Mr. Dodik), had been accomplished through incredible violence without any regard to international law or moral indignation. Of the six stated strategic goals of this government, number one had been the “separation from the other two national communities [Bosniaks and Croats]—separation of state”; in other words, the creation of an “ethnically pure” Serbian state, carved out of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The other five merely expanded on this chief goal by elucidating the actual, detailed, process through which this would be accomplished. (Prosecution Submission of an Expert Reporter of Dr. Robert J. Donia to Rule 94bis, Robert J. Donia, The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: Case. No. IT-02-54-T, August 1^st, 2003, pg. 3)

The Serbian government, the same government currently so outraged by the internationally recognized independence of Kosovo, has continued to remain steadfast in their support of the nationalist, racist, genocidal and xenophobic political establishment of their brethren in Bosnia—which it had been actively involved in establishing in the first place. With their ability to wage war effectively destroyed, all that has been left to these pretenders of nationalist empires no more has been recourse to a tired chorus of moral indignation. When the Serbian political establishment, however, was in possession one of the largest military arsenals in Europe, during the 90s, it had few qualms about ignoring international law and moral outrage as it went to war in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and finally Kosovo. Such, after all, is the way of the sword. One lives and dies by it.

The Double-Standard Banner Waving High!

Ironically, in opposition to Kosovo’s independence, Russia, one of Serbia’s long-time allies, which had up until then likewise been harping on about the need to respect international law, sent its military to support the secession of  South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Why? It wanted to, and more importantly, it could. The Serbian government remained dutifully silent on the matter.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs and accomplished genocide-revisionist, Milorad Dodik, has paid a visit to another prominent international purveyor of unilateral violence, Israel, and pledged his support and sympathy. Dodik’s belief in international law, it seems, does not extend to either the genocidal entity he heads or the State of Israel, currently in violation of nearly all of the 225 UN Security Council Resolutions passed against it.

Like Israel, like Russia and like Serbia illustrate, the general position of any state regarding violence, war and international law can be summed up rather neatly: we are for it when we are in charge, we are against it when we are not. International resolutions are all good and well so long as we are dictating the terms or free to ignore them as we please. Once this is no longer the case, then cry havoc! Cry bloody murder! Cry propaganda films exposing the supposed “true story” of our nationally exclusive suffering!

While this fact provides one with no want of mind boggling examples of blatant hypocrisy, it is, in truth, an entirely expected, indeed, necessary function on the international, state-based political order. As states are based, founded and propagated through violence it is inevitable that any notion of “international law” will, in reality, have to simply be based in the old dictum of might makes right. After all, that is why the make-up of the UN Security Council is composed of states such as the US, Russia and China and not Switzerland, Lesotho and Nepal.

A legitimate and morally consistent international judicial order would have to first tackle (and abolish) this reality of the nature of the state form. Until then, what we will continue to have is a global regime in which might will, ultimately, determine practical, if not, moral “right.” Combined with the imperatives of the global capitalist system, what we are left with is a world order in which “humanitarian intervention” will be reserved for economically viable and exploitable polities, while secondary concerns (such as Rwanda, for instance) will be left to their “own” devices, until such time as when their colonial masters see fit to return to their historical domination.

A deviation from this tendency must be premised on a rejection of all state power and not merely the state power of some “other” nationalist, religious, political or ethnic collective. The state is violence, it is misery, it is war. True peace lies outside of its borders.

• No Related Posts

The video podcast of the conversation lives at Vista Video.

You can watch it in Miro, the best new open source multimedia viewing software: http://www.miroguide.com/feeds/8832

or…

You can watch it in iTunes: itpc://dgivista.org/pod/Vista_Podcasts.xml

or…

The podcast file is at http://dgivista.org/pod/COOP.Radio.8.16.10.mov

Enjoy!

• August 15, 2010 -- The Tamils’ Gift: Some Needed National Values Exploration (5)
• August 12, 2010 -- A Basic Primer on the Tamil Ship (3)
• August 23, 2010 -- Respinning Unsound Tamil Presumptions in the National Post (0)
• August 16, 2010 -- A Voice from Haiti, Who We Are Further Victimizing (1)

Today I read about one woman’s experiences. She sounds so much like us. Getting to the human level during these kind of existential events, we always see that “they” are just like “us”. I wonder if we can think of our new Tamil visitors that way?

Beyond some poignant quotes below, she finishes here piece this this, which seems like a futile hope from where we stand:

We have a lot of work to do. We need to have dialogue so we can tell the international organizations what we need, what problems we have. I’d hope that the Haitian authorities and the international community can collaborate, can have good relations to develop really useful solutions for those who have problems.

Some other disturbing elements of her piece:

Young women suffer sexual aggression because they have to bathe in public.

…

There’s a lot of theft, you have to watch what you have very carefully. …Anyone can just frequent the camp, whether they live there or not

…

You have to work hard not to get sick. You see children who were normal before January 12 and now you see their color has changed, they’re skinnier, they have bumps all over their skin.

…

You can’t be walking around all day with all your belongings under your arms. You have to be able to say, “That is my place, that’s where my possessions are, that’s where I sleep, that’s where my home is.”

via t r u t h o u t | Amid Haitian Housing Crisis, Student Calls for Dialogue.

• August 16, 2010 -- How We [and the French] Keep Ripping Off Haiti (0)
• September 6, 2010 -- Labour Day, Dignity and Doubling the CPP (0)
• August 17, 2010 -- Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 8.16.10: The HST, Tamil Ship, Haiti… (3)

But how much money pledged has shown up?

And worse, did you know that Haiti spent more than a century paying off France reparations money for their own freedom? Imagine what the country would have been like if it didn’t pay that odious debt.

Let’s explore all the odious exploitation of Haiti for the last 206 years, with special focus on the last seven months.

A group of international academics and authors has written to Nicolas Sarkozy calling on France to reimburse the crushing “independence debt” it imposed on Haiti nearly 200 years ago.

The open letter to the French president says the debt, now worth more than €17bn (£14bn), would cover the rebuilding of the country after a devastating earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people seven months ago.

via France urged to repay Haiti billions paid for its independence | World news | The Guardian.

Do you know what odious debt it? Try this scenario on:

1. Some random banana republic is controlled by a kleptocratic dictator.
2. It arranges national loans from developed world banks [like the ones who own the bank machines we use] who know how screwed up the countries are.
3. Over a decade a billion is borrowed, but only 100 million goes into roads, schools and hospitals. The rest ends up in Swiss bank accounts of the relatives of the despot.
4. There’s a glorious revolution and the people take [back] their country.
5. After getting new locks on the parliament and senate doors, they get a visit from the banks’ emissaries in black SUVs. They are demanding repayment of the debts.
6. The people don’t own the debt. The people have received virtually none of the money. The banks, really, have merely been robbed by the despot. Now the banks think the people of the fresh, new nation should pay it back.
7. That’s just sick. It’s odious, even. Thus odious debt.

Ok, now let’s go to Haiti. Upon throwing off the shackles of slavery held by Napoleon, the French gunboats demanded 150 million francs, in 1804 currency, worth over $21 billion today. They were gracious enough to reduce it to 90 million, which Haiti paid until 1946, worth 17 billion Euros today.

That’s some kind of bold, despicable and cynical action from France that had just decades earlier helped the American colonies overthrow their British rulers. I suppose that wasn’t pure altruism, though, for the French.

That’s some kind of odious debt.

And the Haitians were slaves, after all.

Strangely, when Haiti’s president was kidnapped in 2004, through the coordination of Canada, the US and France, Haiti had begun legal proceedings against France to recover that money. How lucky for France when the suit was dropped after the president was whisked off to Africa.

So today we read that not only has only 2% of the pledged money landed in country, Canada is one of the deadbeats having delivered nothing as of a month ago. Disturbingly, Venezuela has also delivered nothing, though it forgave some debt. I had higher expectations of them than of a Canada, it run by a blue sweater vest of pain.

And now there is a movement for France to repay the freedom debt.

Count the ways we’ve been ripping off Haiti for 200 years.

Then count how much french wine and cheese and trips to Paris and Nice are consumed by people who happen to otherwise care about Haiti. I wonder if a boycott would be effective.

But more immediately, did you know that pledges for help after the earthquake have been mostly lies so far?

Did you know that Haiti had to pay cash for its own independence from slavery and that France has spent decades wallowing in the glory of that blood money while Haiti could have used it to avoid the destitution for which it has become the western hemisphere posterchild?

Because if you didn’t know Haiti had to pay almost CAN$23 billion in today’s money for the right to remain former slaves, I’d bet most of your family and friends didn’t know.

So let’s figure out whether a French boycott would work on another day.

Today, your job is to tell everyone that we’re still ripping off the Haitians. And that French is the baton twirler at the front of that parade.

That’s odious. Let’s spread some truth around.

• August 16, 2010 -- A Voice from Haiti, Who We Are Further Victimizing (1)
• August 17, 2010 -- Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 8.16.10: The HST, Tamil Ship, Haiti… (3)

What kind of people do we want to join our country?

Should we take no refugees, some, more, less, all?

Do we believe in the moral of providing asylum for those who are persecuted? I sure do.

Canada’s involvement in the abandonment of Rwanda in 1994 contributed something to the debate about our identity and integrity as a people, as did how we treated the Jews aboard the St. Louis in 1939 when Canada sent a ship of Jews away from asylum.

One useful analogy, I think, is how Canada commits to the international moral norm of responding when a plane crashes in our territory. Canada spent $57 million on the investigation alone of Swissair 111 because there is this notion that it’s the right thing to do. And if you have any connections to people of or near Peggy’s Cove, you’ll know that that plane crash has forever altered our identity, largely for the better, I’d conclude.

I remember TV documentaries exploring the lives of the people of Peggy’s Cove and the relationships they formed with the families and friends of those who died on the crash. How such profound human connections can come from such tragedy is at once not at all surprising, but also very moving.

What about refugees?

“Since the Conservatives came into in power, the number of approved asylum claims has dropped by 56%.”

Personally? This is not my Canada.

I do not agree with what I would call a kind of xenophobia with Australia’s approach to uninvited guests. The Church of England in Australia has strongly opposed it on humanitarian grounds. Whether theirs  is a racist policy, I couldn’t say, not being familiar enough with it. But from what I know of it, I don’t want my Canada to continue to be less and less of a safe haven for the vulnerable of the world.

But then again, judging from how Canada suspended its constitution and mistreated its own citizens in Toronto six weeks ago, and considering how Canada has been a serious anti-social threat to global climate change activism and hopes for a more egalitarian global economy, Canada is becoming a bad guy in many sectors.

I remember during the 1995 Quebec referendum, “My Canada Includes Quebec.” I think now, “My Canada Includes…lots of morals that we happen to be abandoning.”

I hate what Canada is becoming.

We are one of the richest places in the world. Our population density is crazy low. Our country is not so full of people that we’re bursting. We have quite a bit of fresh water and arable land. 100 years ago we were madly trying to fill up the place. But now we’re all largely prosperous [and insanely rich compared to the poorest 4 billion people] and we’re locking the doors behind us.

Not me.

We have this increasingly undeserved reputation for coming to the aid of people around the world, yet our nation seems to be turning its back on the idea that we can and should help make people’s lives better.

If there is a federal election in the fall, I would hope the most significant election issue is the Canadian identity. Who do we actually want to be?

The G20 moral crisis and the government’s rejection of tracking accurate data about ourselves in the long-form census in favour of faith-based policy-making are important issues that contribute to the discourse about who we actually are as a nation and who we are really becoming.

Similarly, if we don’t want people risking death, economic disparity and horrible exploitation to smuggle themselves into Canada, we should create a more welcoming refugee and immigration regime. Maybe then the ships and the coyotes/snakeheads will be out of commission.

If we don’t want any refugees, let’s close our doors and deport everyone who lands illegally.

But most importantly, let’s at least have a national debate about it because what I’ve seen in the last few decades in terms of quietly eroding humanitarian citizenship policy is unacceptable to me.

And really, if Canada gets together this fall to debate our identity in the context of an election, I’ll hope we remember that we’re all immigrants. I’ll also hope that we have a full debate and that people will vote robustly for what they actually want. It’s not comfortable sometimes talking about things that evoke race and culture, but if we don’t talk about it, it festers in the kind of distasteful dialogue we’re seeing in the comment section of web news reports of the Tamil ship. This is not how a mature country debates critical policy.

And if Canada turns into a place that is even less welcoming of people than it has been becoming, at least I’ll know I’ll have a new hobby for the next generation or so: to fix what is increasingly a country that I am embarrassed to call my own.

Or I’ll just leave because I can’t take much more of this.

• August 12, 2010 -- A Basic Primer on the Tamil Ship (3)
• August 23, 2010 -- Respinning Unsound Tamil Presumptions in the National Post (0)
• August 17, 2010 -- Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 8.16.10: The HST, Tamil Ship, Haiti… (3)
• August 27, 2010 -- Terrorism + Child Abuse Joke = National Post (0)

For instance, we have this statement in a news report:

The Tamil Tigers have been outlawed in Canada as a terrorist group since 2006.

via CBC News – British Columbia – Tamil migrant ship nears B.C..

Some questions:

1. Why are they considered a terrorist group by Stephen Harper and his gang?
2. Why are they outlawed and how far through Canadian society does that outlawing extend?

That’s a start, but really there are lots of things people need to know before they start spouting half-baked, prejudiced conclusions or go all Komagata Maru on the situation.

1. Who are the Tamils?
2. What has really been going on in Sri Lanka?
3. Are Tamils being persecuted in Sri Lanka?
4. Who are the Tamil Tigers?
5. Are they terrorists, freedom fighters or something less black and white?
6. What definition of terrorism is Stephen Harper using to call them terrorists in 2006 when the disputes in Sri Lanka have been going on for decades?
7. Why do so many people cram onto boats like this to get to Canada, and do our federal immigration and refugee policies contribute to these situations?
8. Does the Canadian government prefer rich, or white or European immigrants and refugees to those from other parts of the world, and if so, is that a recent thing or part of our government’s character?
9. How did this ship get organized?
10. How much did these people pay to get on?
11. Who are the people on the ship, like as individuals?
12. In the CBC report linked above we read: “Last October, another ship, the Ocean Lady, was intercepted in Canadian waters off B.C. after crossing the Pacific from Sri Lanka. The group on board claimed to be fleeing persecution. But there were concerns some had links to the Tamil Tigers. The 76 Sri Lankan migrants from that ship have since been released and their refugee claims will be processed over the next two years.”
    1. What were those concerns that some had links to the Tamil Tigers?
    2. Were those links substantial or things like folks sharing the same last name as some Tigers?
    3. How were those concerns resolved?
    4. Who even had those concerns, because if it was the federal government, I have some concerns about how they like to suspend the Canadian constitution and terrorize peaceful protesters in Toronto 6 weeks ago.
    5. If the migrants were released and are now being processed, does that indicate those concerns were resolved?
13. What kind of Sri Lankan communities exist in Canada, since we have the largest population of Sri Lankans in the world outside their country?
14. What do these people hope to do here?
15. What do we think about immigrants?
16. Are all Canadians aware that the vast majority of us are immigrants or descended from immigrants?
17. Is there much of a lingering desire among white people to hold onto our dwindling numerical majority in Canada, and could that influence how we feel about this ship?
18. No One Is Illegal has a few things to say about the ship.
    1. They characterize the Canadian government and society as having “racist and anti-immigrant sentiments and policies.” There sure is a rich history of that. Does it still exist? Will it affect how authorities and the public consider this situation?
    2. NOII states: “Public officials and the media must refrain from stereotyping these migrants as queue-jumpers or terrorists based on unsubstantiated speculations. The migrants have survived a long and arduous journey in the hopes that the Canadian state will fully comply with its international refugee and human rights law obligations to the right to asylum.” Does this seem reasonable to you?
    3. We also learn that “UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appointed a panel to investigate war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan military against Tamils last year.” Are similar investigations happening with the Tamils, and if so, who is conducting them? Does all this affect your opinion? Do you wonder why this was not included in the CBC report above?

So as you can see from the complexity of these questions, many of which I have only simple answers to at this point, when this ship in intercepted by the navy and coast guard, or allowed to dock somewhere, or is sent away from here, most Canadians will be quite unprepared to properly discuss what is actually happening.

What is your job as a thinking person as all of this unfolds?

• be critical
• keep an open mind
• be aware of the existence of bias in the media, government and civil servants
• be aware that you may not be able to discern that bias
• ask yourself if you know what your own biases, values and opinions are

If we all do our jobs, maybe we can avoid giving ourselves some preventable black eyes.

• August 15, 2010 -- The Tamils’ Gift: Some Needed National Values Exploration (5)
• August 23, 2010 -- Respinning Unsound Tamil Presumptions in the National Post (0)
• August 17, 2010 -- Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 8.16.10: The HST, Tamil Ship, Haiti… (3)
• August 27, 2010 -- Terrorism + Child Abuse Joke = National Post (0)

I can understand the reluctance to change the name of something like that park. The unscientific, but still relevant, Globe and Mail poll has people rejecting the idea 6 to 1.

Vancouver, Washington is thinking of changing its name to Fort Vancouver to re-assert its own identity. That kind of branding exercise is difficult and highly controversial.

But when it comes to other re-branding in our region, it hasn’t been so controversial. Eradicating “Queen Charlotte Islands” for Haida Gwaii and changing the names of the water around here to Salish Sea are less controversial because of relatively less impact of those name changes compared to Stanley Park.

But we also saw a sad and not so ironic example on Canada Day of a sickly outpouring of racism, bigotry and stereotypes during the Stanley Park name change debate. I wasn’t surprised, but I was disgusted.

So the article below suggests some politicians favour going with an informal name change, and I tend to agree.

In the 1980s, I recall people starting to talk about Haida Gwaii and being corrected, but then defending their use of the term with a description of some significant, but generally disregarded BC history. Ultimately, we got some good education and debate about an important issue. Now we happen to have a political name change as well.

Lately, I’ve been corrected by some as I’ve been refusing to acknowledge Myanmar as the new name for Burma because I don’t recognize the junta that changed its name. I was told at various times that I am in no position to confer that status. Nonsense. I am a citizen of the world. I don’t have to be a nation to make that judgement, nor does anyone else.

So as I watched a quarter century of “Haida Gwaii” usage lead to political change, I would like to see some similar political consciousness-raising around the nature of Lord Stanley’s park, and along the way, we can separate the emotional relationships we have with Stanley Cup from the debate.

So I’m going with Xwayxway, pronounced “kwhy-kway” to see if a quarter century from now the kind of Canada Day bigotry we heard last week can evaporate and we can all understand a little bit more about how 96% of BC exists as unceded First Nations land.

At the opening of an aboriginal-themed village site in Stanley Park last month, a native elder suggested renaming the park Xwayxway – pronounced kwhy-kway – which was the name of a native village at the current site of Lumberman’s Arch in the northeastern part of the park.

The concept garnered some support, with some politicians suggesting the park could be known by both names. Ian Campbell, a hereditary chief and councillor with the Squamish First Nation, said he would pursue a formal proposal. And tourism groups said it would be possible to build marketing plans around the new name.

The idea also gained support as a way of acknowledging aboriginal culture and history. In B.C., residents could look to the example of Haida Gwaii, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. And the Salish Sea is now used as a name of waters also known as the Strait of Georgia, Puget Sound and the Juan de Fuca Strait.

via No name change for Stanley Park: Stockwell Day – The Globe and Mail.

• No Related Posts

What an interesting story about changing the name of Stanley Park to remove the colonialism. We now have Haida Gwaii and the Salish Sea. Removing colonial markers is about us as it is about the First Nations.

But I am thoroughly astonished, but sadly not surprised, at the degree of racism in the comments to this story. There are 16 comments now, only one in favour of the name change and many of those opposed spouting such racist bunk that it truly sours Canada Day.

More shame.

• No Related Posts

Jean-Jacques Rousseau once remarked that “the English people believe itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.” The same can be said of the modern Canadian populace except that even when we are “in-between” governments we are still largely a people living in self-deception. Something has been rotting in the State of Canada for a long, long time.

Toronto Burning?

The events in Toronto over the past weekend have illustrated a number of startling facts. To begin with, the Toronto Police arrested over 900 people. The vast majority of those have been and will be let go, without any charges. It has already become clear that what the Police were doing is “fishing.” They rounded up hundreds of innocent people in an effort to find possibly a handful of guilty individuals. This is a clear violation of rights, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has already suggested that court challenges will be imminent.

Remember that controversial “five meter rule,” passed in secret in the Ontario Legislature, that allowed Police to search anyone within a five meter radius of the G20 security fence, ask for identification, and arrest anyone who resisted? Well, funny story…no such rule existed. The Police lied. As of this writing, they have just admitted that they lied. But it’s okay; they lied to protect us. Without a shred of exaggeration this is the argument that just about every military junta and dictatorship in history has made when “momentarily suspending democracy.” We are suspending your rights to protect you. Protect you from the insidious dangerous “other.”

In Toronto the “other” was the notorious Black Bloc. The Chief of Police, Bill Blair, has said of the Black Bloc that “they came to destroy our city.” You will notice that in much of the media the argument has been advanced that the Black Bloc are foreigners of some sort or another. Either they are Europeans, professional terrorists or worse still…Quebecois (who were specifically targeted by the Police). No God-fearing, lawful, English-speaking Canadian could possibly engage in the sort of actions we saw in Toronto. We represent God and Country, Law and Order, the Crown and Parliament. They represent chaos, “anarchy” and violence.

Ironically enough, the entire idea behind Black Bloc is not exclusion but inclusion. The masks are worn to say, “we are you.” You need only don the black to join a mass that will protect you, will free you, will fight for you and all of us. Nobody complains about the heavily armed, masked Police. A body that in two days has committed far, far more crimes and more egregious crimes than the humble Black Bloc could ever hope to. Remember friends, when the people resist and put their lives and bodies on the line like they did in Toronto they have no mechanism to rely on other than themselves, their friends, their families, and the bonds of solidarity that exist between these groups. When people go into the streets like they did in Toronto, to confront a cabal of men and women who are actively destroying the lives of billions of people around the world, including our own—we do so with love. Love for our sisters and brothers in Toronto as much as in Mali and Nigeria and Thailand and Burma and Columbia and Argentina.

But Jasmin, you say, this one incident. One, unfortunate, weekend where things got out hand for everyone. No, it is not one weekend; it is a pattern of behaviour.

During the Olympics, the same massive security apparatus that was deployed in Toronto was used in Vancouver. Hundreds of cameras, miles and miles of fencing and a billion dollars worth of Police, military and private security guarding a two-week party for the rich and super-rich. The same violations, the same instances of police brutality were reported once again. Much as they were in Vancouver in 1997 at APAC Summit and in 2001 at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. Again and again and again the Police and state, protecting the forces of capital, act with impunity, with violence, brutalizing ordinary citizens, outraged at the fate of their democracies.

Days before the G20, CSIS came out and without any sort of evidence whatsoever (that they were able to produce, at least) accused potentially thousands of ordinary citizens of being spies for foreign governments. When the expected storm of controversy erupted over this claim, CSIS furiously attempted backtrack on this claim. So, to what end would they do this? As in Toronto, as in Vancouver, as in Quebec it is to rule by fear, to rule by decree.

Our Local Lords

In BC an incredibly unpopular tax is being advanced despite the protests of the vast majority of British Columbians. The fact that we, as ordinary people, oppose the HST is irrelevant. Who supports it? The governing BC Liberals, the right-wing Fraser Institute and the corporate establishment they both serve. They rule through decree and the brute force of legislative power. The recall campaign that has been launched against members of this government, while popular amongst ordinary people, will have a difficult time toppling any actual MLAs. The rules for launching a successful recall campaign are so steep as to be functionally impossible. As unpopular as the Liberals have become, our system is as such that they are likely to remain in office until 2013, at least.

And if they do, the odds of them losing an actual election are just as shaky a prospect. Because, we must recall, Canada is one of only a handful of “democracies” in the world which continues to use a First-Past-the-Post (FPP) electoral system, instead of some variation of Proportional Representation (PR). Thus, as it happens regularly in this Province in particular, we allow parties to win perhaps 50% of the popular vote and then translate this into 98% of the actual seats in the Legislature and Parliament. And even when an opposition party wins more than 2% of the seats, like the current incarnation of the NDP, they exercise exactly 0% of the actual power in Victoria.

It doesn’t help that when we had a referendum to attempt to change this atrocious system, the party that had historically made electoral reform part of its platform suddenly said nothing. In fact, in practice, they opposed electoral reform. Why? Because the NDP would rather be the perpetual opposition than allow for challenger to emerge on its Left that might actually force this party to stand on principle and ideology rather than an oft quoted rumour that they are not, in fact, the BC Liberals. They have become party to this same system, merely a Janus face of it.

At least in Ottawa there a multiple parties, you say. Often times, agreements are struck between the parties and this represents a consensus of the governed, yes? To answer this we should merely recall the most common refrain that was heard in the media and amongst many citizens when the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals attempted to form a coalition government. It was unconstitutional and illegal, they told us. We do not even understand our own system of government. We do not understand just how warped our “democracy” has become. We see little danger in a government repeatedly suspending parliament when they are in danger of losing power. Perhaps, understandably given our history, we see this merely as the latest in a long series of authoritarian practices which have sullied our “democratic” record.

A History of Violence

Say what you will about our imperialist cousins to the South but at least they had the “common sense” to revolt against the monarchy. Canada began as little more than a corporate holding of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the personal domain of the British crown. Little has changed in nearly a 150 years of history. We are now the personal holding of a number of transnational corporations and Parliament still governs, essentially, by decree. We have symbolic votes every few years and in the meantime we sit with our collective thumbs up our collective anal sphincters.

Yet we somehow have this popular conception of Canada as a benevolent, utopian, northern wonderland. This is a country steeped in blood and violence, against both its own citizens and the peoples of far flung nations.

To begin with, there is the obvious extermination and ongoing persecution of the Native Peoples of “Canada.” Many, quite literally, live in Third World conditions on reserves where there is little or no running water, electricity or most any other basic amenities. Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie Canadian establishment is busily attempting to turn their ancestral lands into Golf Courses. And where extermination and exploitation have failed, cooption has been the watchword. Hence, the token Native “themes” during the Olympics, “power-sharing” agreements with certain Nations and the “marketization” of traditional cultures. The veneer of culture is preserved in the form of totem poles and postcards, while every significant feature of their culture is eradicated or banned.

It is no accident of history that the Canadian state attempted to ban the traditional potlatch, in part, because this bizarre habit of sharing things was a clear affront to the capitalist market system which was tightening its grip on the land. Nor is it an accident that the last Residential Schools, an experiment in cultural genocide, remained opened until the late 1980s.

While the Americans openly waged war and genocide against their Native Peoples, Canada did so only marginally more covertly. The effects were largely the same, however.  A similar fate awaited both Chinese and Indo-Canadians, who had been brought over in the thousands to work on the railroads as slave-like labour. The Canadian government actively recruited these people for exploitation and in turn targeted them for discrimination with all manner of racist legislation and policing.

After 9/11 there was a great deal of controversy surrounding Canada’s new anti-terrorism legislation. The controversy was misguided as critics seemed to be under the impression that these impositions on our civil liberties were somehow new. Even a cursory glance at the Canadian approach to civil liberties will demonstrate a history of violations.

The Boer War is generally regarded as Canada’s first “foreign war.” It is also, however, regarded as the first time that an entire nation of peoples, the Boers in this case, had been targeted for internment (i.e. placement in concentration camps). The British Army set up an extensive network of concentration camps, originally “refugee camps,” which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Boer civilians. Predominantly Anglo Canadian soldiers actively participated in these pogroms.

During both World War I and II, the Canadian government set up dozens of internment camps on Canadian soil. Thousands of Austro-Hungarian, German and later Japanese Canadians were interred in these camps, their rights denied, their property confiscated. After the war(s), they were released into a hostile climate, destitute and violated. Apologies and restitutions would not be forthcoming for decades and many are still waiting.

In October of 1970, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to tackle the so-called “October Crisis” in response to the kidnapping of a British trade minister and Quebec cabinet minister by a Quebec sovereignist group calling themselves the “Front de libération du Québec” (FLQ).  During the period in which the Act was invoked, Justice Minister John Turner claimed that 497 people had been arrested, 435 of whom had been released by February of  1971 with no charges, 62 were charged, and 32 had been charged with offenses of a more serious nature. With tanks in the streets of Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec, the Canadian state once again went fishing. Hundreds arrested, thousands harassed to capture a handful of suspected terrorists.

Since then, the modern Canadian approach to anti-terrorism has been marked by the outsourcing of torture, the illegal deportation of citizens to foreign prisons and a generally racist and two-tiered approach Canadian citizenship. Gods help you if you are a Canadian of colour stranded abroad. In the meantime, Canada has actively participated in the toppling of democratic regimes (Haiti) and in numerous imperial occupations (primarily Afghanistan, “merely” a supporting role in Iraq).

Canadian Democracy?

This has been a lengthy piece. Much has been skimmed over, still other topics ignored all together. All of this, however, is to make one very simple point: we do not actually live in a functioning, democratic state. We live in an oligarchic state which engages in a ritualized, symbolic process of electioneering once every few years, giving its citizens the illusions of democratic norms and actual citizen power. In practice, as the current government has shown, we have a very tenuous grip on anything remotely “democratic” in this country.

There is little to be said, I believe, for Canadian democracy. When speaking of Canadian politics it is more proper to speak of a Canadian regime, one that has for over a hundred years been involved in a war against its own citizens, and the citizens of foreign nations, often as a hand-maiden to still more powerful empires.

Events like the ones which took place in Toronto over the past weekend are a far more accurate representation of what people power looks like: necessarily in conflict with the state in capital. We are free only when we oppose, confront and eradicate these institutions and systems. The state and capitalism do not represent us, they do no protect us: they enslave us. And the institution of slavery, as French activist and author Yves Fremion has written, is perhaps unique in history in that it seemingly exists for no other reason than to be abolished.

• July 1, 2010 -- A Better World is Needed: The oh-so ‘Canadian’ style of dissent (8)
• June 26, 2010 -- Protecting the people elected to do the peoples’ work from the people who want them to do their work (3)

Three Mohawks from Quebec travelled to Cochabamba for April’s climate summit. They left on the Haudenosaunee Passport since they accept neither Canadian nor American citizenship. They were easily allowed out of Canada with those credentials.

But then Canada wouldn’t let them in unless they signed a Canadian document. Their story is moving and inspiring. There are allies and enemies to their desire to travel internationally under their own flag. And it shames me to say that most of the enemies were Canadian officials and our policies.

“The Haudenosaunee Passport is a non-violent expression of our distinct identity as a sovereign people,” Deer concluded. “While both Canada and the United States claim us as their citizens, the Haudenosaunee Passport is a constant reminder that our people have never acquiesced our citizenship as Haudenosaunee people. It also provides our people an alternative to acquiring Canadian or U.S. documentation.”

via Prevents Mohawks from Returning from Bolivia with Haudenosaunee Passports

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Saddest for me is the lack of time and opportunity for children to play. This is why we have Clowns Without Borders.

Here is a brief, yet expansive report from the Canadian Red Cross. There are more details at the Canadian Red Cross Haiti page. Hurricane season is coming. We need to keep building relationships to restore and enhance stability compared to where they were before.

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The only order jigging I did was to put my belief at the end, the one about engaging with members and the progressive social movement in BC that I contributed to Think Forward BC NDP.

In describing the category of reasons why people think we lost that dealt with Carole James, among the 5 reasons I included that people were suggesting, one of them was that she is a woman.

Not explicitly writing that I don’t necessarily believe this list of explanations of the electoral loss meant I left some ambiguity about what I do believe.

I don’t believe we lost the election because of any of the first 8 categories of reasons, including that our leader is a woman. I believe we lost because we alienated our members who chose to not fund, volunteer for or vote for a party that no longer reflected what they felt the party should be.  I don’t think it was the gender of the leader.

I think people who don’t think women should be premier wouldn’t vote NDP anyway. I have also talked to party members who were concerned about having a female leader because they feared sexist voters wouldn’t vote for the party. But like I said, I don’t think they’d vote NDP anyway.

The sexist reality of this province is that one’s gender can be an element in their political success or failure. There are also racist elements in the political culture in BC. We don’t talk about either of them too much, though. They are very touchy subjects, understandably.

But we need to talk about race and gender and all sorts of demographic issues that unjustifiably bias the public’s political decision-making.

These are real issues to discuss, not in the context of deciding how to let racism and sexism sway our political existence, but to figure out how to build a progressive society in BC that is beyond this kind of bigotry.

Two days ago, Carole James discussed one example of this bigotry in politics:

“It’s difficult for women because you can be seen as shrill very easily,” Ms. James said. “You can be seen as haranguing in a way that men aren’t. When you take on tough issues I think there’s also a tougher standard for women to find that balance.”

What kind of civilized, enlightened society exists in which a provincial political party leader who happens to be a woman has to moderate her political existence to accommodate troubling perceptions in the population? It turns out, ours. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a few things to say about how we ought to judge people. Decades later, we still have a way to go.

And when we voted for an equity policy at the 2007 convention, there was much debate: uncomfortable and touchy, but necessary.

This weekend we’ll receive the Equity Mandate Report and decide what to do in the future to encourage more diversity in NDP candidacies.

Having had the pleasure of watching the equity policy contribute to a number of successes like Mable Elmore’s election in Vancouver-Kensington, I will encourage continued discussion about the various forms of bigotry that exist in our political culture, with a goal of moving past it.

I voted for the equity policy in 2007 and I will vote for the new Mandate recommendations this weekend.

Dialogue is important.

It isn’t always easy and it is often cumbersome to the point of wondering if it’s worth it. But in a progressive political party, earnest members of good intentions deserve the space and the freedom to discuss controversial subjects in a productive way.

While I don’t think we lost either of the last 2 elections because our leader is a woman, some people still do. And that is worth discussing because if we don’t, the elephant in the room will remain, which is what we’re trying to avoid when we examine equity issues in the first place.

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So Kootenay East Liberal Party candidate Bill Bennett did it again. First his campaign planned to host a beer night at a pub, advertising free beer. Bennett claims it was not his idea, but some over-zealous person on his campaign. Plausible deniability. Have a seat in your throne, Mr. Bennett!

Now he runs an ad talking about how voters want to elect someone who pays taxes BLAH BLAH BLAH. I’m trying to think of a provincial politician in a scandal about not paying taxes. Maybe that’s why he mentioned that idea.

Tom Daschle lost his chance at a cabinet post because of tax problems. Oh, wait. He was looking for a spot in Obama’s cabinet.

Ok, there appears to be no obvious context for him to make that comment, unless not living in Kootenay East means I’m missing out on some local controversy.

It is only when you look at the heredity and policies of his opponents do we see value in the statement.

NDP candidate Troy Sebastian belongs to the Ktunaxa First Nation and lives on an Indian Reserve so is exempt from federal and provincial taxes under the Indian Act. Wilf Hanni, leader of the BC Conservatives, and one of his party’s top contenders for winning a riding, is opposed to the governing Liberals’ Recognition and Reconciliation Act.

Bennett has recently broken with party policy to also oppose the new relationship, all to remove one of Wilf Hanni’s greatest wedge issues. He has also run ads recently that neglected to include the Liberal Party branding, since it carries such a stink to it these days.

So, if Bennett is more crafty than daft, his tax comment is all about continuing to remove Hanni’s wedge and play the race card against his NDP opponent. Plausible deniability exists again. Here is your scepter, Mr. Bennett!

And while daft and clueless [and arrogant and out of touch, the quite accurate NDP mantra against the Liberals] are possibilities, my money is on Bennett being crafty, sneaking free beer and racism against First Nations in because he is desperate to keep a seat he only barely won.

And in the end, he’s in trouble either way. If he’s too daft and clueless to see how free beer and a comment about paying taxes might be spun badly, why would anyone vote for him as their MLA?

And if he’s crafty, then he’s a lying, scheming, opportunist who will flip on party policy and attack an opponent by pandering to racists, and that is not a person worthy of representing any British Columbians, except of course for Liberal voters who happen to be bigots.

But then again, the BC Liberal Party has a convicted drunk driving for a premier, a former mayor under criminal investigation, a now-resigned cabinet member with a suspended driver’s license, a few others with drunk driving or a plethora of moving violations and a homophobe. And don’t get me started on the sick and disgusting things I heard come out of Harry Bloy’s mouth during question period while I was sitting in the gallery several years ago when there were two female NDP MLAs in the house. That vitriol steams me to this day.

And while the NDP has its share of candidates with some speeding tickets, the trophy with the headless bowler goes to the Liberals for either criminal or madly anti-social behaviour–and don’t get me started either on how anti-social their policies have been for 8 years.

So in the end, Bennett seems more crafty than daft to me, in part because he would fit right in with his party.

So when you go vote tomorrow, Saturday and Tuesday, if you live in Kootenay East, ask yourself if Bill Bennett is just stupid or a lying racist. Whichever answer you get, make sure you don’t vote for him.

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On Monday, May 4, 2009, Politics, Re-Spun met Coop Radio on “The Rational”, a Monday evening issues program. This is the second visit, with the next scheduled for Monday, May 11th, the night before the BC provincial election.

Imtiaz Popat and I talked about the leaders debate last night, how horribly condescending and unprofessional Gordon Campbell was, how the parties are polling, why STV is so important, all parties’ environmental plans that generally need to be far more expansive and robust, how the BC Conservatives’ leader, Wilf Hanni, will beat BC Liberal Bill Bennett [not that Socred guy] in Kootenay East, the carbon tax, the Port Mann bridge, the Gateway project, who will win the election, how much corruption in candidates the BC Liberals tolerate, why Mel Lehan will likely defeat Gordon Campbell in Point Grey, John van Dongen’s teflon political career, and the importance of voting on Wednesday to Saturday in the advance polls to set the trend of a higher voter turnout which will signal a change in government…so vote early! But we didn’t get to how Campbell cancelled his upcoming CBC radio debate with Carole James because of how poorly he did last night, and we again missed a chance to debrief the Billy Bob Thornton mayhem.

The video podcast of the conversation lives at Vista Video. 

You can watch it in Miro, the best new open source multimedia viewing software: http://www.miroguide.com/feeds/8832

or…

You can watch it in iTunes: itpc://dgivista.org/pod/Vista_Podcasts.xml

or…

The podcast file is at http://dgivista.org/pod/Coop.Radio.5.4.09.mov

Enjoy!

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It’s time to let Colombia–and our federal government–know that human beings deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

Follow the link to read the details and email Colombian President Uribe to let him know that we won’t stand for this: Colombia liquidates Cali unions < Global Justice | CUPE.

Paul Moist is asking CUPE members to send email to president Alvaro Uribe Velez after riot police and soldiers evicted city workers in Cali, Colombia and liquidated their union.

Sixteen members of Cali’s public sector unions have been killed since 2004, including union executive Carlos Alberto Chicaiza Betancourt.

“This is privatization at gun point,” said Moist. “It’s chilling to think that the people who are doing this are those with whom our government has just signed a trade agreement.”

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They should be worried! I don’t know if they need to be $1b worried, but if you do the math, there is earned concern:

((The Olympics corporate welfare program) + (obscene reductions in government spending for human beings) + (radical and radicalized groups who object to the billions wasted on this spectacle, and what in our culture it has steamrollered) + (sponsors and government groups that flaunt their glee in the faces of those suffering) + (an opportunity to capture attention on a global scale)) x (an unpredictable economic depression [ooops, Great Recession]) = a perfect storm of wariness.

And while the CBC recently reported that the carnage that has become the lower mainland in the last 2 months is likely the playing out of choked distribution points in the Mexican drug war, the climate of fatal violence in and around Vancouver increases the likelihood of radicalized responses to the Olympics.

And if Gordon Campbell gets re-elected [by the way...did you know that Gordon Campbell hates you?] then we should all expect things to ramp up considerably once he implements his crowning agenda buoyed by being elected a third time!

— —

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In a world where the deregulated global market capitalist regime is imploding, there is wide open space to re-frame the local, national and global economy in a socially and economically just way.

An off-shoot of this progressive agenda is the celebration of authentic community where people/consumers/citizens can get out of their cocooned homes and participate in the cultures of community.

What better way to do it than in this event?

Details:

SATURDAY MARCH 21. rhizome cafe, 317 e. broadway

* 6:30 – 7:30 pm: artists of colour showcase. please bring $ and support their creations! (tshirts, crafts, prints, posters, art and more) Free food served during artists showcase (on us and Rhizome)
* WITH: Louis Cruz, Tania Willard, Afuwa Granger, Riadh Hashim, Angela Sterritt, Gord Hill, Kat Norris, People’s History of Kanada posters, Café Ramona and products made by Zapatista Mayan women, and more.

* 7:30 – 9:30 pm: wicked performances and inspiring words includes spoken word, storytelling, children’s songs, hip hop, comedy, musical performances, and talks! Enjoy dinner and drinks from Rhizome’s delicious menu
* WITH: George Ciccariello-Maher from OAKLAND!, Kat Norris, Aysha and Sahara, Carnegie Community Action Project Choir, Hari Alluri, Reem Alnuweiri, Ros Salvador, Sinag Bayan Filipino Cultural Collective, Priscillia Mays, Gupreet Kambo, Alaaeldin Abdalla, and Lindsay Bomberry.

• June 29, 2010 -- Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably (0)
• June 4, 2010 -- Interested in Contributing to Politics, Re-Spun? (0)
• May 18, 2010 -- Pettiness: the Defining Quality of Politicians? (3)
• June 21, 2009 -- Ignore My Copyrights (0)

• June 29, 2010 -- Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably (0)
• June 4, 2010 -- Interested in Contributing to Politics, Re-Spun? (0)
• May 18, 2010 -- Pettiness: the Defining Quality of Politicians? (3)
• June 21, 2009 -- Ignore My Copyrights (0)

When I think about race and politics I look at BC’s legislature and our nation’s House of Parliament and see an unjustifiable abundance of white men.

I think about two StatsCan reports over the last several years that hit the front page of Vancouver’s daily papers describing how in just under 10 years, white people in Canada will dip below 50% of our population. Short of putting racial and gender quotas into our legislatures, I don’t see how that will stop over 50% of our legislators from continuing to be white men…unless, of course, there is an intentional, pro-active cultural dialogue about what representation really means. And we can’t have that unless we put race on the table and not in a tokenist or affirmative action sense.

So as well as the events below, I received by email today this notice from the OECD, that grand promoter of corporate neo-feudalism and neoliberal homogenized globalization. In it we read that the OECD thinks that “OECD governments need to do more to help immigrants integrate and make better use of their skills.” They are, of course, right. They are also, of course, wrong.

While OECD countries are domestically xenophobic about letting “them” exercise “their” vocations “here” because “they” may have learned to become brain surgeons or engineers in dodgy “overseas” “schools,” we who are already running the OECD nations are also eager to shore up our national crises of declining birth rates and the threat of not being able to support the rapidly aging boomers–many of whom are the white men in legislatures who represent the corporate white men who run things around here.

The flip side is that while a generation ago Canadians were worried about the brain drain to the USA as all our “best” professionals and such gravitated to the great Horatio Alger-land of the USA, leaving us unable to perform our needed brain surgery and bridge building. But thanks to neoliberal globalization, Canada has also become a destination for brains to drain to–and that doesn’t even count our strong dollar. Except we don’t always use those brains. There used to be two Croatian engineers who delivered pizza at a nearby pizza restaurant. We’ve all met these folks…or maybe we haven’t all met them, which might be part of the problem.

So many Canadians are really not in a position to interact with the vocationally dispossessed that we lure here. And the sociologists have a myriad of explanations for this, but for now, let’s just say that this is something we need to put on the table–and fast.

And if we can shake our minds out of our heady stupor of the fast approaching Olympics surreal spectacle/corporate greed-fest to truly examine the cultural makeup of “Canada” for the next generation or so, we’ll see that white men in power need to face the very real fact that we aren’t in charge. We can hang on to it and functionally disempower other groups, or we can figure out that narcissistic xenophobia is just fear of emasculation. And a future of Canada with healthy cultural interaction is not really an emasculation threat at all–unless you think you, as a white man, have something personal to be ashamed of. And if that’s the case, maybe you have it coming.

And while the OECD piece goes on about how “the better targeted immigration policies are, the more successful integration will be. This in turn will help reduce the risk of political backlash against immigrants,” the enlightened of us who are now ready to face our cultural inter-subjectivity need to realize that it’s not about marketing and luring the “right” people “here.” It’s about putting it on the table and seeing how a new Canada should be structured based on the reality that we are.

And if you can’t handle that, then it’s you who has the problem.

See you in March!

* mark your calenders for March 1 and March 21 . please forward. *

A series of events to commemorate March 21 International Day for the
Elimination of Racism. March 21 marks the anniversary of the 1960
Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa when police opened fire on hundreds
of South Africans protesting against Apartheid’s passbook laws, killing 67
and wounding 186…

STRUGGLES AGAINST RACISM ARE NOT OVER!

*** March 1st: An evening of film, speakers, spoken word, and more ***

Award winning film CONTINUOUS JOURNEY; opening talk by critically
acclaimed writer and activist LEE MARACLE; spoken word and poetry from
inspiring community members SADHU BINNING, RITA WONG, and RAUL GATICA

——————————
SATURDAY MARCH 1
FOOD @ 4:30 PM
Multipurpose Room (2nd floor), Bonsor Community Centre
6550 Bonsor Avenue (1 block east of Metrotown Skytrain Station)

Pay what you can.
Wheel chair accessible. Bus tickets available
Childcare on site (pls call 604 220 0451 to register)
——————————-

* To mark the 100 YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the racist and exclusionary
Continuous Journey Rule passed in 1908 we are screening the highly
acclaimed and award-winning film “Continuous Journey”.

The Kamagata Maru entered the port of Vancouver in 1914. On board were 376
immigrants, who for two months, lived like prisoners, threatened by famine
and disease as the ship was refused permission to land with scores of
people, media, and government calling for “White Canada Forever.” The
incident marks a dark chapter in Canada’s immigration history and
contributed to the growing anti-colonial sentiment in India. The film,
which required eight years of research, is solidly documented, packed with
archival material, and resonates powerfully with contemporary events.

* Talk by LEE MARACLE: Lee is of Salish and Cree ancestry, and a member of
the Stó:lô Nation. She is a gifted orator and the author of critically
acclaimed “Ravensong”, “I am Woman”, “Bobbi Lee-Indian Rebel”, “Daughters
are Forever” and the poetry collection “Bentbox”. She has been an active
member of the Red Power Movement and Liberation Support Movement and her
writings reflect her efforts against racism, sexism, and white
cultural
and colonial domination.

* Poetry by SADHU BINNING (Punjabi, English). Sadhu is at the forefront of
Punjabi/English diasporic writing with dozens of poetry collections, books
of fiction, and plays. He edited a literary monthly Watno Dur; co-edited a
quarterly Watan; and is a a founding member of Vancouver Sath, a theatre
collective. Nearly all his poems reflect on the legacy of the Komagatamaru
and other struggles of Indian immigrants agaist racism and labour
exploitation such as the farmworkers in BC.

* Poetry by RITA WONG. Rita is the author of monkeypuzzle and forage. Her
poems have appeared in anthologies such as Ribsauce: a CD/Anthology of
Words by Women, The Common Sky: Canadian Writers Against the War, and
Shift and Switch: New Canadian Poetry, and more. Her work investigates the
intersections between decolonization, social justice, gender,
racialization, labour, migration, and contemporary poetics. She was a
founding member of Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation (DARE).

* Poetry by RAUL GATICA (Spanish, English). Raul is a member in exile of
the Consejo Indigena Popular de Oaxaca Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO-RFM), an
indigenous community organization in Oaxaca, Mexico. His struggles embody
those of indigenous self-determination, against neoliberalism affecting
people of the Global South, and of a refugee to North America.

MARCH AGAINST RACISM!

Join us on March 21, International Day for the Elimination of Racism, to
show our communities collective strength in challenging ongoing racism.
Canadian multiculturalism is not enough!

//////////////////////////////////////
COMMUNITY MARCH
Friday March 21 at 1 pm
(Good Friday Holiday)
Meet at Clark Park on Commercial Drive and 14th
//////////////////////////////////////

==> Bring your children and family.
==> There will be food, water and snacks during the march.
==> Rest vehicles will accompany the march.
==> All welcome!

For centuries, communities have led countless courageous struggles against
racism and the many ways in which it manifests itself in our daily lives.
Although many would like to believe that racism no longer exists, we are
reclaiming the tradition of anti-racist marches to reveal the ugly truth
about the worsening reality of racism both locally and globally. Join us
on March 21 to celebrate the dignity, strength, and resilience of our
communities!

- End individual and institutional racism, racial violence, and racial
profiling!
- Stop the theft of indigenous lands!
- End all racist wars and occupations!
- Stop the deportations now!
- Living wages, healthcare, education, and housing for all!

[[[ Events organized and supported by a community network including No
One Is Illegal, Indigenous Action Movement, Komagata Maru Heritage
Foundation, Canadian Arab Federation, John Graham Support, Siraat
Collective, Association of Chinese Canadians for Equality and Solidarity
Society, DTES Elders Council, SIKLAB - Overseas Filipino Workers
Organization, Anniversaries of Change, International Indigenous Youth
Conference Secretariat, Canadian Muslim Union, Asian Society for the
Intervention of AIDS, Justicia for Migrant Workers, Al-Awda Vancouver,
Salaam Vancouver, Iranian Federation of Refugees, Cafe Rebelde Coalition,
VIRSA, Latin American Connexions, Hogans Alley Memorial Project, Filipino
Nurses Support Group, La Surda Latin American Collective, Indigenous Free
School, Canadian Network for Democratic Nepal, Canada Palestine
Association, Group of Relatives and Friends of Political Prisoners in
Mexico, South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy, Consejo Indigena
Popular de Oaxaca Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO-Vancouver), Chetna Dalit
Association, Philippine Women Centre of BC, Coalition of South Asian Women
Against Violence, Vancouver Status of Women, The North Shore Women's
Centre, Battered Women Support Services, Friends of Women in the Middle
East Society, Women Against Violence Against Women, Canadian Union of
Postal Workers, Hospital Employees Union, Industrial Workers of the World,
SFU Teaching Support Staff Union, Vancouver District Labour Council,
Canadian Union of Public Employees - Local 1004, Gallery Gachet, Rhizome
Cafe, New World Theatre, Colouring Book Project, UBC Realities of Race,
SFU Public Interest Research Group, BC Committee for Human Rights in the
Philippines, StopWar.ca, Anti Poverty Committee, Politics Re-Spun,
Building Bridges to Chiapas, Alliance of People's Health, International
Solidarity Movement Vancouver, Vancouver District Labour Council Young
Workers Committee, Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance ]]]

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