6 June 2008, terribly early in the morning
I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that Obama is going to be the Democrat nominee during the upcoming US elections this November. This is good. I have no real issues with Clinton, save for the fact she scares the shit out of me. It’s a bit disappointing that because she’s a women she has to act ten times as crazy as her competitors to be taken seriously. And her ass has been straight up crazy this election season. I’m not convinced it’s anything but an act: she never struck me before as being so far to the right. (Maybe I just don’t pay enough attention.) Enough on her. Obama is awesome. I think many people—myself included—see him as a modern day JFK. He has far more charisma than McCain, and there is really no comparison when we take a look at Bush. I want him to win just so I can hear him give kick ass speeches with some frequency. Of course, it now remains to be seen if Americans will still vote for the scary old White dude. I kind of think they will.
[1] Current Events | Politics
29 November 2007, early morning
If some Muslims have their way, it will soon be illegal to say Muslim immigration is bad for the West. 9-11 be damned.
Michael apparently still holds onto the notion that too much immigration into the US is what caused 9/11. If you are ever so unlucky as to read through an articles on Vdare you will find that a lot of people think immigration policy is the root cause of all the ills in the West. If you suffer with high taxes you can blame immigration. Unemployed? Blame immigration. High blood pressure? You’re worrying about immigration too much. Can’t get all the stars in Super Mario DS? That sounds like an immigration issue to me. No date to the prom? Damn those sexy immigrant boys and girls. And 9/11? Well that is obviously an immigration issue: if the attackers weren’t here how could they fly planes into the Twin Towers? (You know, because planes from abroad never ever enter the US.) You may also recall that for similar reasons immigration was the root cause of the Virginia Tech massacre.
Michael is upset with the Canadian Islamic Congress who are upset with Mark Steyn. Steyn wrote an article MacLeans, The Future Belongs to Islam, they have issues with. A part of me likes reading articles like The Future Belongs to Islam just to sit in awe of the ignorance and arrogance it takes to write something like that. Some people really need to read A Discourse on Colonialism.
Steyn and his ilk look at the Middle East and see a place where people hate the West because they apparently have nothing better to hate on. For people like him there is no history or context to anything. Steyn mentions, “in the same three decades as Ulster’s ‘Troubles,’ the hitherto moderate Muslim populations of south Asia were radicalized by a politicized form of Islam,” but doesn’t stop to consider why that may be. When did the US decide that propping up a regime in Saudi Arabia was a good idea? When did they decide that maybe Eygpt wasn’t so bad after all? (Wait: who was flying those planes again?) And was it really Islam that radicalized them? I imagine if you are young and your life is shit it won’t take an Imam to make you angry. So yeah, I don’t think Steyn’s article is exceptional or interesting or even well thought out. It rehashes arguments bandied about all the time: it’s all demographics and “oh-no what will White people do?”.
Now I can see why Muslims would find the article offensive, as apparently Muslims are the future architects of the destruction of civilization as we know it. At the very least Steyn acknowledges half-assedly that not all Muslims are terrorists. I’m sure the Human Rights commission will give him points for that.
[3] Current Events | Politics
13 November 2007, terribly early in the morning
I’m barely a third of the way through Naomi Klein’s last essay for Harper’s, Disaster Capitalism, and I’m already seething with rage. I suspect the last two-thirds will be equally as good and as frustrating to read. I love Harper’s.
After each new disaster, it’s tempting to imagine that the loss of life and productivity will finally serve as a wake-up call, provoking the political class to launch some kind of “new New Deal.” In fact, the opposite is taking place: disasters have become the preferred moments for advancing a vision of a ruthlessly divided world, one in which the very idea of a public sphere has no place at all. Call it disaster capitalism. Every time a new crisis hits — even when the crisis itself is the direct by-product of free-market ideology — the fear and disorientation that follow are harnessed for radical social and economic re-engineering. Each new shock is midwife to a new course of economic shock therapy. The end result is the same kind of unapologetic partition between the included and the excluded, the protected and the damned, that is on display in Baghdad.
Consider the instant reactions to last summer’s various infrastructure disasters. Four days after the Minneapolis bridge collapsed, a Wall Street Journal editorial had the solution: “tapping private investors to build and operate public roads and bridges,” with the cost made up from ever-escalating tolls. After heavy rain caused the shutdown of New York City’s subway lines, the New Yark Sun ran an editorial under the headline “Sell the Subways.” It called for individual train lines to compete against one another, luring customers with the safest, driest service — and “charging higher fares when the competing lines, stingier on their investments, were shut down with tracks under water.”[It’s not hard to imagine what this free market in subways would look like: high-speed lines ferrying commuters from the Upper West Side to Wall Street, while the trains serving the South Bronx wouldn’t just continue their long decay-they would simply drown.
It’s a very good read so far. I imagine her book The Shock Doctrine on the same topic will be an interesting read. (It inspired Alfonso Cuarón to create a short film of the same name.) The October Harper’s is particularly good; this months not so much, though I did enjoy the Mitt Romney article very much.
(Also, Harper’s new web site continues to amaze me. I’m so impressed with what they’ve done.)
[2] Current Events | Politics
10 October 2007, early evening
Tony Ruprecht holds the lead at the moment with 50% of the vote — with 10 polls reporting. My man, Peter Ferreira, is in second place with 27%. It’s not looking good, but it is still early. 64% of Ontario are in favour of the current electoral system, first past the post. What the fuck people? Seriously?
Update: Every time a new poll reports in, Ferreira has a few more seats. He has 34% of the vote now, with 42.65% going to Ruprecht. Hopefully this trend continues, but Ferreira needs a few polls going to him for things to really flip.
Update: The Green Party is doing better than the Tories in this riding. Does that make them a proper party? I’d say so.
Update: Ruprecht has been sitting at 40% of the vote for a while now, Ferreira at 37%. I can’t believe it’s this close.
Update: Well it looks like Ruprecht has it, unless the last 36 polls decide to do things very differently. He’s up by 1000 votes. The split remains more or less the same; now it’s 41% vs. 36%.
Update: I just realized that if everyone who voted for the NDP voted for the Green Party (of vice versa) Tony wouldn’t be winning this riding. (Of course, if you add the Liberal and PC numbers up they’d come out on top.)
Update: Well, at least the season premier of Intelligence was really good.
[5] Politics | Current Events
1 October 2007, lunch time
[ed. This is an edited version of a message I originally posted in response to a comment on the DigIn mailing list. If you haven’t been following the MMP debate on the news, it probably won’t make much sense.]
I’d like to say there has been a lot of discussion on the voting referendum taking place during the upcoming election, but really, there hasn’t been.
We’ve had how many governments in a row now where a 40% popular vote returns a huge number of seats in parliament? In 2003 the Liberals had 46.4% of the vote, which earned them 70% of the seats. We’d be moving to a system that would temper this sort of thing.
People opposed to MMP seem upset by the party lists. We (the people) currently don’t get to pick which politician chooses to run in our ridings. The party lists represent a new group of people we also don’t get to pick. That said, if you want a say in who is running for the NDP, you do have an option: join the NDP party. More so, to pretend we don’t get to vote for this new set of people is misleading. You see the party lists before the election. You know who your “party vote” is going towards. All this talk about “non-elected” members making it to parliament is straight up scare mongering. If these people do a bad job of things, the party will need to think hard about including them on their party list for the next election, lest voters decide to give their party vote to someone else.
More so, from voteformmp.ca we learn:
“Conservative Party leader John Tory, NDP leader Howard Hampton, and Green Party leader Frank de Jong have already stated their parties would used democratic processes to nominate their at-large candidates should the MMP system be adopted in the referendum.”
The 3% popular vote barrier to get the party seats does shut out fringe parties for the most part, but this really is no worse than the current system, which gives fringe parties absolutely no venue to address this. Chances are the Green Party will break the 3% barrier this coming election. In the current system, that doesn’t matter, because they’ll probably never win a riding with those numbers; under the new system, this would get them a seat.
Also keep in mind that straight-up proportional representation is not without its issues, and would generally not be considered a democratic system of government. We don’t have referendums on gay rights for a reason.
I don’t think MMP is perfect, but it is certainly a step forward.
[5] Politics | Current Events
23 August 2007, terribly early in the morning
Bush has started going on about how Iraq is the new Viet Nam. Wait, I know what you’re thinking, why would you compare the new war to America’s most shining example of defeat? Well, Bush has been trying to argue that America shouldn’t have given up in Viet Nam when it did — I shit you not. This from the man who didn’t actually fight in Viet Nam. I’m sure if the US continued to bomb the shit out of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia for a few more years they would have “won” the war, whatever that even means.
Bush also thinks the Khmer Rouge would have cooled it with all the killing had the US won the war in Viet Nam. There are a few things to keep in mind here:
- Many historians believe that the US bombing campaigns in Cambodia are what pushed the Cambodian peasantry to support the Khmer Rouge. They certainly destabilized the country.
- This bombing campaign killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. The bombings were stopped in 1973, at which time the US had dropped 540,000 tons of bombs on the country. If you are going to talk about genocide and mass killing, you can’t leave the US out of things.
- It was the Communists in Viet Nam who actually invaded and stopped the Khmer Rouge.
- The US itself has supported the Khmer Rouge. After Pol Pot was ousted from power, the US supported him and his insurgents for much of the 80s.
So yeah, fuck Bush.
[6] Current Events | Politics
14 August 2007, terribly early in the morning
I finished reading The Culture Struggle last week. As the title suggests, the book is about the conflicts that arise from, or are rooted in, culture. The book is comprised of 4 sections, each section contains a few short essays. Despite the subject mater, it’s a fairly easy read.
The book begins, more or less, with a discussion on how the dominant class within a nation use culture to reinforce its interests. The book ends with a section on hyper-individualism, which is probably the most America-centric section of the book. The end ties into the start of the book in that the culture of individualism that is so prevalent in the United States is what helps perpetuate much of the inequity that exists in the country. Individualism is the cultural base that helps the dominant moneyed class maintain there position in society. The middle two sections of the book are on imperialism, the subjection of people, and racism. (There are two chapters on violence against women which are insane; I need to look up the source he cites because the facts he spits out sound so unbelievable.) The chapters on racism are quite good, examining how slavery, amongst other things, was made palatable. Parenti also touches on how the dominant class will sometimes try and instigate racial strife so as to redirect anger that would rightly be directed at them. So, for example, you have poor White workers complaining about immigrants stealing their jobs, not about those who control all the money. The middle two chapters of the book were what I found the most interesting.
The topics may sound a bit heavy, but I found it to be a fairly easy read. The essays in the book are all quite short: Parenti makes a few points, and then moves on. The book as a whole is really a series of observations, and interesting topics for further discussion. Any essay in this book could probably be turned into something far more substantial. On the whole it’s a great read; it leaves you with a lot of things to think about.
[4] Politics | Comics and Books
13 August 2007, early morning
[Siracusa’s list of enterprise desires for the iPhone] is, to be blunt, horseshit. It’s apologist blathering to cover up a failure of imagination and ambition. And it’s saying that people cease to become people when they’re at work, and are instead Enterprise Employees.
The emphasis here is mine. This is a tiny point from a much longer article by Anil Dash on developing products for the enterprise market. I thought it was interesting he didn’t feel a need to argue this point: obviously you are the same person at work that you are at home; to think otherwise is ridiculous. To many this idea is axiomatic. In reality, its a reflection of the cultural norms within a capitalist society. For the vast majority of people in the world, work does strip you of your humanity. Our relationships to our coworkers, our bosses, and our customers, can’t be called “human” in any sense of the word. People do become enterprise employees when they arrive at work. Those of us living in the West live in a world built by people who were interested in preserving their wealth, and the modes of production that allow them to continue generating wealth. Think about how important property rights are in any country that operates with a capitalist economy. Property rights are of paramount importance. Think about the cultural norms put in place to explain away poverty and inequity in these countries. Poor people are poor because they are lazy. Rich people are rich because they work hard. These are 18th century puritan Christian ideas that are no longer questioned. Finally think about how we can reach a point where working in a cubicle farm can be called being human.
Politics
30 July 2007, late morning
I haven’t been living at Bloor and Lansdowne too long now, but I have been here long enough to realize that Tony Ruprecht is a thoroughly useless MPP. Ruprecht is the most senior Liberal MPP not to make cabinet. And this is the only fellow in Toronto that endorsed McGuinty’s leadership bid, so to be passed over seems like quite the disrespect. You may recall he gained some notoriety for spending way too much time in Cuba. He claims he was trying to learn Portuguese — I shit you not. (So maybe not having a cabinet position suits him fine.) He is also somewhat infamous for taking donations from all sorts of people you probably would not want to be associated with. As election season approaches I’ve seen him out and about more frequently. When I saw him last he was asking the cops what needs to be done to help reduce crime in the area — this was after they discussed at length what they needed the provincial government to do. To say he comes off as a bit clueless is an understatement. Apparently it was more of the same this weekend at a community march he attended. The worse part is that more likely than not he will win again. He always wins as far as I can tell. What is wrong with people? Please, think before you vote.
Update Sep 12th: Ruprecht is currently doing a good job of avoiding any and all all-candidates debates. There is one scheduled for the 25th of this month he is refusing to participate in thus far. Apparently various community group leaders have been ringing his office up trying to get him to commit. They’ve had no luck thus far. He recently skipped an all-candidates debate on Gold Hawk Live. Yesterday he was at a DigIn meeting, but apparently left before it actually got underway. I wonder if he is worried about people actually hearing what he has to say. Ah the life of an incumbent.
Update Sep 25th: The all candidates debate was today. Ruprecht opted to show up, which was great; it was an actual all-candidates meeting. Even representatives from both communist parties where there. Tony is amicable enough in real life, but he just doesn’t deserve the job he has. He’s been at his post for years, but doesn’t seem to have effected any real change in the area. My vote is probably going to Paul Ferreira. Not only does he have a lot of experience, he was easily the most well spoken of the candidates at the debate.
[7] Bloor and Lansdowne | Politics
19 July 2007, terribly early in the morning
I’m reading through Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason — which I can confirm could be renamed An Assault on the Bush Administration — I just finished reading Nemesis, and I watched V for Vendetta again with Shima last night. I now feel like starting a riot, but then I live in the idyllic wonderland that is Canada: I’m not sure what’d I’d riot about. Why don’t Americans riot? This is what I can’t understand. You have a government that clearly operates in its own interests, not in the interests of its people. There is blatant cronyism in most everything the Bush administration does, from the laws it passes to the people it protects. Democracy is supposed to be by the people for the people. I don’t know what is up in America now, but it certainly can’t be called a Democracy. Now if the poor were getting less poor, they might welcome the slow march towards fascism, but as far as I can tell this isn’t the case. It is amazing what you can convince people they want. I need to read Manufacturing Consent one of these days.
[7] Current Events | Politics
3 July 2007, early morning
There are so many things I wanted to write about today, including my brand new transformer, and a visit from my cousins, but instead I’ll mention that unsurprisingly, President Bush has commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby.
I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.
This isn’t all that surprising. I don’t think anyone actually expected him to spend any time in jail. You can almost feel the rage on MetaFilter. I wonder how much press this will get today, or over the course of the week. Any of you in America have a sense of how people are reacting to the news?
This quote from the Times sums things up nicely:
Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.
Of course, in the grand scheme of crap things the administration has done, this barely ranks. I’ve been reading through Nemesis now, a book Martha bought me for my birthday last year, which is a pretty neat and tidy account of why America is constantly fucking up, and why it is probably totally fucked. I think it’s well worth checking out. There is so much truly evil stuff Bush has got up to since taking office, it’s hard to get worked up about Libby being let off the hook for outing Plame — more so since in all likely hood he was covering for Cheney.
I wonder if anyone in the US will ever get charged as a war criminal. They’ve certainly got enough of them running around living it up.
[5] Current Events | Politics
15 June 2007, terribly early in the morning
The cover of the Globe and Mail features a Hamas fighter standing on a table in Fatah’s intelligence headquarters, brandishing a Kalashnikov and a Qur’an. It’s a pretty amazing photograph. Gaza is now under control of Hamas. The West Bank remains under the control of Fatah. There are reports of gun battles out there though, so fighting may flare up in the West Bank next. How did we end up with Palestinians shooting at Palestinians? Somehow I doubt this this will lead to Palestinian self-determination.
[3] Current Events | Politics
15 February 2007, early evening
Hossein is part of a generation of idiot savants who have the audacity to refer to themselves as human rights activists, while sipping on five dollar latte’s and attending bogus conferences in the proverbial West. These quasi-intellectual talking heads have no scholarly understanding of human rights discourse, and an even poorer understanding of their own country’s history. — Samira Mohyeddin (of Banu fame.)
I follow the news on Iran much more closely than I ever did before, mostly because of Shima. I used to read hoder.com to get some insight on Iran because I foolishly thought — like many bloggers I suspect — that Hossein Derakhshan actually had something insightful to say. To be brief: he really doesn’t. Hoder is pro-Reformist and Tehran-centric in his outlook. He is very critical of anyone that doesn’t share his political ideology. Reading his site during the last election, you would think it was guaranteed that the Reformists would win, when I suppose if you had been actually paying attention it would be clear this wasn’t going to happen at all. People who can fly back and forth between Iran and Canada are not the sort of people that you should look to for reliable criticism of Iran.
So why bring this all up today? I checked out his site again after he posted on MetaFilter today, and he describes Reading Lolita in Tehran as anti-Iranian propaganda-literature. And you know he’s saying that with a straight-face. This is the go-to guy for news on Iran?
Update Feb 22nd 2007: He posted his thoughts on Reading Lolita in Tehran on MetaFilter today.
[2] Politics
23 January 2007, terribly early in the morning
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!
This was the last speech Martin Luther King, Jr, gave before he was assassinated. He was killed the very next day. It’s an excellent speech — like all his speeches — and well worth taking the time to read.
[4] Quotes | Politics
22 December 2006, early morning
Cheap Polish labour is pushing British workers out of the construction industry. I’m curious what the British workers bring to the table that the Polish ones don’t? If the answer is nothing, then I don’t see why they should expect to be payed 20% more just for being British.
These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
In a capitalist society, if you are a worker, you need to remain competitive. That’s cold, but it’s basically how the system works. It’s the big reason why big box stores like Walmart can move into a town and destroy all the mom and pop shops that used to operate there. It’s why companies choose to outsource to places like India rather than operate locally. It’s why capitalism will eat itself.
The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus, the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.
Actually, I lied, I don’t really think capitalism will eat itself anymore. Most governments put in place just enough socialist policy to keep the system working. Most developed countries have some form of unemployment insurance, health care, welfare, etc. Even if you are living in squalor, its hard to rage against the machine that is paying your way. So who do you get mad at? Who do you demonize? I think that answer should be clear.
(All quotes are from the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels.)
[5] Politics | Current Events
28 November 2006, early morning
The LTTE are particularly infamous for their recruitment of child soldiers. It is the most common criticism hurled against them. For quite sometime now the LTTE has contended they don’t have child conscripts in their army — whether you believe them or not is a choice you need to make. Recently, a representative of the United Nations accused the government of being complicit in the recruitment of children into the Karuna Group today, Human Rights Watch has also made this accusation.
We have clear and compelling evidence that government forces are helping Karuna forces abduct boys and young men.
— Jo Becker, children’s rights advocate at HRW.
That’s one hell of an accusation. Whether it gets any play whatsoever in the press remains to be seen. The government of Sri Lanka has gotten off fairly easy despite the fact it has an equally poor record when it comes to protecting children. Unrelated to the war you have a very bad child pornography problem. With respect to the war, you have the way the army handles itself in the pursuit of Tigers. The government has no qualms when it comes to shelling civilian areas in the hopes of hitting some LTTE cadres. For example, they blew up on orphanage not too long ago. It’s easy for people to argue away criticism like this; you can call it the cost of war or something equally stupid. (A little known fact: It’s even easier to argue this sort of thing away if it isn’t your children being blown up.) It’s hard to defend recruiting child soldiers: it’s premeditated and malicious; you’re preying on the truly helpless. I’m curious to see how the government will respond to the charge. [Update: Parthi lets me know the government has called the charge village gossip.] I’m curious to see how the world will respond to the charge.
HRW is also in effect agreeing with the LTTE’s accusation that the Karuna group is another arm of the government’s military apparatus. The LTTE have accused the government of waging a hidden war against them through the group for some time now, and it would appear these charges have a lot of merit. When the LTTE claim they have no choice but to wage war with the government, it’s hard to argue against them. The government involvement with a paramilitary group like this is beyond reproach. How can you be involved in a cease-fire agreement, while supporting a group whose goal is to goad the LTTE into violating that very agreement.
So I am left wondering why here in Canada, the US, and Europe the LTTE marked as terrorists and not the government of Sri Lanka? Both groups are vicious and undeserving of support.
An aside: Sepia Mutiny felt mocking Prabhakaran’s wardrobe was a better use of their time and resources than covering this topic. That’s their prerogative; they have no real obligation to anyone. I just find it hard to take them seriously when they get all fired up about racism in the US or whatever their issue of the moment is. (In their defense, he does look pretty ridiculous. All of the photographs of various Tamil rebel leaders I’ve seen make them look like they could be my uncles.)
[5] Current Events | Politics
13 November 2006, evening time
This is one of the few times I wish I had a TV. I feel like heading out to one of the election parties to check out the results live. I’ve been following along with the Torontoist’s live blogging of the election. Pitfield has already conceded defeat to Miller, so that’s good at the very least. I think it was pretty brave for Pitfield to challenge Miller: she gave up her very safe seat to make the attempt. I’m still waiting to hear who wins our ward. It was very hard to decide who to vote for.
Update: With 30 of 31 polls reporting, Adam Giambrone looks to be the clear winner of Ward 18. The crowd at Lula Lounge must be quite happy.
Update: Toronto Star pick Chin Lee has won my families riding, Ward 41.
Update: Proving incumbents have it easy, David Shiner wins another election. Sanaz got a comendable 10% of the vote. Ed Shiller, the other oposition clocked in at around 30%.
Update: Ward 17, just North of me, looks to have gone to the incumbent Cesar Palacio. It was a very ugly campaign, and i’ll be disappointed if Bravo can’t recover. 1 poll to go. She needs to make up 200 votes. I don’t see it hapening.
Toronto | Politics
11 November 2006, mid-afternoon
I attended a small vigil last night. It was organized by a couple of people in DigIn. A few of the city councilors running in our ward were on hand to talk to people about their platforms. Simon Wookey was there at the start of the event, and I got to speak to him a fair bit before he headed off to get back to canvassing. Simon had prepared a speech for the event, but since it was a fairly small crowd, he opted instead to chat with anyone who wanted to talk to him. One of his volunteers passed on his speech for the event to me, which I’ve included below:
Read the rest of this post. (609 words)
Bloor and Lansdowne | Politics
9 November 2006, mid-morning
Yesterday a small all candidates meeting was held at Dewson Public School. The two candidates that I was most interested in seeing, Simon Wookey and Adam Giambrone, were both in attendance. There are 6 candidates running in our ward, some clearly more capable than others. The turn out at the event was fairly small. I don’t think people are too interested in civic politics, which is stupid since it really effects you the most.
Read the rest of this post. (749 words)
[2] Bloor and Lansdowne | Politics
At Atchuvely, during the first week of November, some L.T.T.E. members threw grenades at the I.P.K.F. and escaped through a Proctor Balasingam’s house. Two soldiers were killed. Soldiers entered Proctor Balasingam’s house and called out the Proctor, his wife and another person, who were helpless parties in the matter. Subsequently all three were shot dead.
—From A Broken Palmyra (Chapter 2.3 Scenes from the October 1987 War)
18 July 2006, mid-morning
So you may be well aware that I think our prime minister, Harper, is a bit a jack-ass. My opinions of the man haven’t changed in recent days. His response to what is going on Lebanon is ridiculous. Before he was aware that 7 Canadians were killed by Israel in a bombing, he had declared that Israel’s response to the kidnappings thus far had been measured. (As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been. Israel was right to respond, but blowing up a country seems a bit much.) Since learning of the deaths, his opinion hasn’t changed. Really, he doesn’t seem all to concerned with the deaths whatsoever.
Mr. Harper said neither he nor his officials have contacted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for an explanation of the air strike on Sunday that killed a Montreal pharmacist, his wife, their four young children and others. He offered his condolences to the victims’ families at the start of his news conference.
Well, be sure to let us know when you get off your ass and figure out what actually happened. I suspect the little girls weren’t working for Hezbollah, but one can never be sure. I am sure as with Air India, and Zahara Kazemi, Canada will do nothing about this.
It annoys me to no end that Harper is our representative in the world. Canada has joined team crazy.
[2] Current Events | Politics
30 March 2006, late evening
I watched No More Tears Sister again tonight with my parents; I bought them a copy of the DVD. The film is about the Tamil human rights activist Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, who was murdered by the LTTE in 1989. The movie is a pretty good introduction to the conflict in Sri Lanka, although its focus is always on Rajani and her sister Nirmala, who was also a fairly famous activist. (Nirmala was the first female political prisoner held by Sri Lankan government. My parents remember when she was broken out of jail by the LTTE in the early 80s; It was quite the news in London.) There are some brilliant photos of the LTTE cadres featured in the film. I am curious who took them and where they came from; they really are quite amazing. Much of the story in the movie is told by Rajani’s family: her sisters, husband, and daughters. It is pretty touching at times, and this gives the movie a very human feel. Rajani’s youngest daughter plays her in various flashbacks during the film. I imagine this must have been very hard for her daughter to do—in particular filming the shot where she is laying in the street dead. How does one participate in the reenactment of their mothers death?
My family is from Jaffna. My mom remembers Rajani from there. Apparently she would ride a boys bike around town. Women riding bikes in Jaffna was scandalous back in the day; I’m not entirely sure why. (I might be generalizing here: I suspect it’s just my family that was particularly purantical but I suppose I’ll never know for sure.)
I saw this film at the Hot Docs festival last year. I enjoyed it then, but didn’t feel like writing about it at the time. Even now I don’t know what to say about the film. I think it’s well put together, and is something people interested in Sri Lankan politics should definitely watch. The movie paints the LTTE in a fairly dark light. (The movie is about how the LTTE killed this particular woman, so clearly they aren’t going to come out looking nice.) My (Tamil) friends who watched the film the same night I did were not as impressed with the film as I was. Sometimes I feel like Tamil people feel obligated to hate anything that points out the uglier side of the LTTE.
The official No More Tears Sister web site. The movie is being discussed at Samudaya , Film Gecko, and the BBC. The name of the movie comes from a chapter in the book Rajani co-wrote called The Broken Palmyra.
[2] Movies | Politics
17 March 2006, early morning
Sometimes when I have felt a little depressed I would go to Parliament to sit in the public gallery and look down at all those ‘terrorists’ now occupying the government benches. It is something to lift the heaviest heart to behold those who were regarded by the previous apartheid government as the most dangerous terrorists, and who now, in the new democratic dispensation, are the Hon. Minister of this or that. I would recall that some of them were fellow marchers in rallies against the awfulness of apartheid, and with some we were targets for tear gassing, and now here they are, members of a democratically elected National Assembly.
—South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu in The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter.
I found this quote in the opening executive summary on a report from the University of Oslo on the LTTE and how it manages the areas it controls. When Haran got back from Sri Lanka last, he was quite impressed with how well managed the LTTE controlled areas of the island were. The one problem is that these institutions aren’t democratic, but I suspect for most people, the fact that they are functional is more than good enough. My concern with LTTE getting power in the North and East is that they would continue to be autocratic—they haven’t really done much to suggest otherwise. We’ll have to see what happens in the future.
[1] Politics | Current Events
3 February 2006, early morning
My Marxism professor felt that the moment blacks ceased to consider themselves slaves, and saw themselves as men and women proper, that the abolition of slavery was inevitable. If you think about Slavery, you can see that it is both a state of being and a state of mind. Only the first state can be overcome by forces external to oneself. The Emancipation Proclamation made salves free in a pragmatic sense. It takes more than a piece of paper to make someone free in the truest sense of the word.
I was thinking about this after my cousin showed me an interview with James Baldwin. It is part of a series of three interviews, the two other interviewees being Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the end of Baldwin’s interview, he is asked what he sees as the future of Blacks in America, to which he responds:
What white people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, because I’m not a nigger, I’m a man, but if you think I’m a nigger, it means you need it.
This interview is definitely worth watching.
If you are curious about what the abolition of slavery has to do with Marxism, the same ideas about slavery come up when you discuss the worker overcoming his slavery to the capitalist, to his work, and to the products of his work.
As an aside, I should mention that Steven Harper plans to reopen the gay marriage debate in parliament, presumably with the goal of having the previous law on the subject overturned. I am of the opinion he is wasting his time. Once people have decided they aren’t second class citizens, you can only do so much to hold them down. Does Harper think the gays and lesbians in this country are going to sit down and keep quiet all of a sudden? I think you can only stifle personal freedom for so long.
[3] Politics
30 January 2006, early morning
I linked to a story on Hamas winning the Palestinian election a few days ago, and didn’t really say much more on the topic. Sunny had the following to say:
The peace process has just taken an u-turn and the Palestinians have made it crystal that they don’t give a damn about the peace process. You can’t negotiate with these folks in good faith.
Sunny’s opinion is inline with what I have heard on the news, either from political analysts or from world leaders. Now, I assume that if Fatah won the election then the peace process would be on course to come to an amicable solution. (If not, then there is really no point lamenting a Hamas win.) Now, I don’t live in Palestine. Neither does Sunny. Neither does George Bush, or any of the leaders of the EU. The people who do live there seem to be of the opinion that Fatah is not getting much done. Hamas won the election because Fatah has been ineffectual so far, at least in the eyes of the only people whose opinions matter on this subject, the Palestinian people. That Fatah could be removed from power without a civil war is a good thing. In the past Canadian election we saw that Canadians were sick of the Liberals and voted someone else into office to replace them; no one complained that this was a failure of democracy. If you can’t live with the results of an election, why bother supporting democractic institutions in the first place?
Of course, everything I just said hinges on Hamas shutting up about wanting to destroy Israel. That country isn’t going anywhere. Both sides need to learn how to get along.
[1] Politics | Current Events