Tag: canada

Oh Canada! 5

~ The Koboi Project
SW 3rd Ave. Portland, Oregon, USA. 2019

The only possible justification for the invocation of emergency powers in the context of the Canadian Trucker’s protest and the occupation of Ottawa is the facticity of a fascist threat. Precisely, was the Freedom Convoy infiltrated by either domestic or foreign far-right elements. The Liberals have called for these extreme emergency measures and the NDP have supported them, but notably, the Conservative Party of Canada has been unequivically opposed.. The upshot of this bifurcation on the understanding of the facts or, at least on their interpretation, heralds the arrival of an unsightly and possibly irrevocable division in the political culture of the nation. We watched with incredulity as this happened to our neighbours in the USA. Their polity is now irreconcilably split between those who are ‘deplorable’ and those who want to ‘make America great again!’ Many thought it could not happen here in Canada, but the spread of such political decay in the liberal democracies of the West seems ubiquitious and inevitable.

While communal and sectarian sentiments are present in all societes, they are generally innocuous, until they are exploited and exacerbated by politicians to populist ends.When the nation’s mainstream politicians either court extremist sentiments (lets call this populism) or deem it fit to cast such aspersions on significant sections of their fellows (and this the spectre of populism), they are indubitably heralding a clamitous eventuality for their polity. When populism presents itself as an inherent part of the electoral process, it threatens to usurp democracy itself. (see my series of posts ‘It is Time to be Clear 1-8) But returning to the events in Ottawa, this facticity remains in question – are there far-right elements behind the Truckers movement, and was there in fact a tangible threat to the security of the nation? If there are organized right wing groups funding and/ or running the movement with a view to toppling our democratically elected government, I too am in full support of the invocation of draconian emergency measures. If, however, these fringe elements are meerely incidental and opportunistic hangers on to this movement, and their role and import have been greatly exaggerated, then I must take a very different stance.

Will these matters be aired and debated for the consideration of all Canadians? This question holds oraclular import for the future of the nation. Is there fascism … and who are the fascists?

Oh Canada, how are thy Laurentian fathers (and sons) fallen!

Oh Canada! 4

~ The Koboi Project

A motion to approve the Emergencies Act was passed in the Candian Parliament by 185 to 151 votes on the 21st of Febuary, with members voting along party lines. While Trudeau had not officially designated it as a no confidence vote , he had compared the it to a vote on a throne speech, thereby putting pressure on his caucus.to toe the line, by implying implying that failure might lead to the minority Liberal government falling. Joel Lightbound, the Liberal MP who had unequivocally criticized the government over its handling of the crisis, also voted in favour of the motion. According to the North Shore News , he said that he would be inclined to vote against the measures if it were not a vote of confidence.

In the course of the debate preceeding the vote, the Liberals were accused, by Conservative MP Raquel Dancho of strongarming his backbench and making a power play against political dissidents.

Oh Canada, how are thy Laurentian fathers (and sons) fallen!

https://www.nsnews.com/national-news/emergencies-act-passes-commons-vote-and-ukraine-on-edge-in-the-news-for-feb-22-5087612

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-mp-politicization-pandemic-1.6343730

Post-tradition in Canadian Politics

~ The Koboi Project

The revivification of religion in contemporary society leaves me with a sense of foreboding with regard to the future of humanity. There has been a resurgence of religious values in the politics of the 21st Century as theocratic and quasi-theocratic modes have made an impression, even in what were once staunchly secular democracies. The Christian right has brought socially conservative positions to the forefront of the politics of the USA. The Hindu right has turned India’s avowedly secular democracy into a nation-state steeped in Hindutva (Hinduness). Before these developments, there were the theocentric formulations of Islamic fundamentalism and Zionism. Tragically, all of these ‘post-traditional’ hybridizations of religious truths with modern politics have resulted in the division and alienation of peoples.

There are, however, examples of a more integrative incorporation of religious values at the forefront of human affairs. Canadian politician and leader of the NDP (New Democratic Party), Jagmeet Singh, is an exemplar of this more inclusive post-traditionalism. In a 2017 interview with GQ magazine, he articulates his religious approach to contemporary secular society, “My Sikh spirituality … influences my political style. We strongly believe in social justice as an element of our founding philosophy—that there is one energy and that we are all connected, kind of like the force. So if I see someone else suffering, as a Sikh I see that as me suffering. There’s this morality that flows from this idea that we are one and connected, and we celebrate diversity and people of different backgrounds, cultures, and religions..” He underscores his point by citing a Sikh mantra that wishes for the “betterment of all humankind.”

https://www.gq.com/story/jagmeet-singh-interview

Chennai, a place in between

~ The Koboi Project

I am happy to note that Jane Frankish has had her essay, Chennai, a place in between, published in the Liberal Studies Journal ,Simon Fraser University hosted within the Ormsby Review. This short piece tells the story of our family’s migration from Malaysia to Canada through the lens of a visit to Tamil Nadu we made on route.

1218 Chennai, a place in between

https://ormsbyreview.com/category/sfu-graduate-liberal-studies/

https://ormsbyreview.com/

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It’s Time to be Clear 2

~ The Koboi Project

So what is Fascism? In The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton defines fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

While there is no doubt that Donald Trump and by implication the Republican Party have been flirting with White Supremacy, and thereby bringing the USA within the ambit of Paxton’s definition, as a Malaysian Tamil who has lived in the UK, I can not but think of the analogous forces that have given us Brexit, Ketuanan Melayu and Hindutva.

Further, as an immigrant to Canada and as a resident of British Columbia, I struggle to disentangle my new, welcoming and multicultural home from its White Supremacist provenance, and I wonder about the future.

http://libcom.org/files/Robert%20O.%20Paxton-The%20Anatomy%20of%20Fascism%20%20-Knopf%20(2004).pdf

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist151/Paxton_Fascism/Paxton%20Anatomy%20of%20Fascism%20Chap8.pdf

Canadian Genocide 2

~ The Koboi Project

In 2016, a spate of teenage suicides on the remote native reserve of Attawapiskat shocked the nation and, as the news spread widely, the world. This newsworthy spate of suicides must be set within what the Suicide among First Nations people, Métis and Inuit (2011-2016): Findings from the 2011 Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohort (CanCHEC) describes as the “historical and ongoing impacts of colonization.” This report highlights the following act of colonization – “forced placement of Indigenous children in residential schools in the 19th and 20th centuries, removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities during the “Sixties scoop” and the forced relocation of communities” and links them causally to the resulting “breakdown of families, communities, political and economic structures; loss of language, culture and traditions; exposure to abuse; intergenerational transmission of trauma; and marginalization,” suggesting that these might indeed be linked to “the high rates of suicide.” 

At the height of the crisis in 2016, a state of emergency was declared (the 6th since 2006) and this tragic phenomenon occupied news headlines next to an equally visible celebration Canada’s generosity to Syrian immigrants as exemplified in Kareem El-Assal’s article in The Conference Board of Canada website titled 2016: A Record-Setting Year for Refugee Resettlement in Canada? As an immigrant myself, I can vouch for this nation’s generosity to and inclusion of newcomers regardless of race, religion or any other aspect of difference, still, this juxtaposition of images – the picture of indigenous damnation, on the one hand, and that of immigrant salvation, on the other, strikes me like a freight train. It brings to the surface a deep sense of unease – the sense that I have made my Canadian home by displacing someone else form theirs. This deep awareness in me rises up to the surface, along with a vivid replay an impression from my youth – the opening of the Sex Pistols’ Holidays In The Sun where, Johnny Rotten slurs out “A cheap holiday in other people’s misery!”

I wonder if this is ultimately what it means to be a Canadian, on this here Turtle Island. Are we all building our good lives “in other people’s misery.” In seeking mitigation for this horrific remembrance, I reflect on the fact that the supplanting of some people by others is the the very stuff of nation, the historical reality of all nations. There is, however, a difference, an uncomfortably contemporaneous quality to this displacive aspect of nationhood, here, in Canada (as, I imagine, there is in all other settler states). As I contemplate this presence, a deep malaise comes over me, with respect to my own life and livelihood on this land. Returning to the aforementioned tragedy of teenage indigenous suicide in my new home, I cannot but conclude that it is a continuation of a founding genocide. The contemporary nation’s failure to mitigate this endemic and often epidemic condition seems, to me, to be a recurring trope of the original genocide. All Canadians are complicit in the travesty of disproportionate indigenous teenage suicide and we are all responsible for ensuring its abatement.

Updated from a post made in April 2016

Image: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-big-stories-of-2016-photographer-julie-oliver-on-the-suicide-crisis-in-attawapiskat

https://torontosun.com/2016/04/16/five-more-suicide-attempts-in-attawapiskat

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/99-011-x/99-011-x2019001-eng.htm

https://www.conferenceboard.ca/commentaries/immigration/default/hot-topics-in-immigration/2016/02/02/2016_A_Record-Setting_Year_for_Refugee_Resettlement_in_Canada.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

Canadian Genocide 1

~ The Koboi Project

Suicide is colonized and nothing more,
just another dead native on the floor.

Suicide is Genocide
Xhopakelxhit

Tamara Starblanket has been awarded the 2020 Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy for her book Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State. In this book, Tamara makes a legal analysis of genocide, and argues convincingly that, according to international law, Canada has committed and continues to commit genocide against Indigenous Peoples. She demands, as noted in the announcement of the award on the SFU website, that a “comprehensive dialogue on Canada’s history and present be opened recognizing its culpability for the crime of genocide.”  

As I contemplate the disturbing idea of a Canadian Genocide, in terms of my own life and times, I am convinced that as human beings have an innate tendency to demonize and destroy each other. When we act this out collectively, against other collectives, this is when the what we mean by ‘genocide’. It seems to me that we are deluded as to our own actions and motivations of the moment. This is what enables us to disregard the sanctity and the inherent worth of others as we pursue our own group interests. Ultimately, given our common human being, this behaviour is self-destructive. In this series of posts, I will reflect on the the relationship between genocide and suicide from the perspective of an immigrant to Canada, who is domiciled in British Columbia.

Updated from a post made in April 2016

Image: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-big-stories-of-2016-photographer-julie-oliver-on-the-suicide-crisis-in-attawapiskat

http://ancestralpride.ca/poem-suicide-is-genocide/

http://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/stories/2020/08/sterling-prize-2020–how-canada-changed-the-definition-of-genoci.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2b7e2091-7b22-4b4b-ae79-cd4e51a839ef

PETRONAS’ Pipeline Interest 3

~ The Koboi Project

On 13, 2020, it was reported on the UNIST’OT’EN website that, in what would be an escalation of the conflict over CGL pipeline, the RCMP (Police) have set up an “exclusion zone” at 27km and are blocking media, Wet’suwet’en people, and food from getting up to their territory. The report claims that this is a violation of the Wet’suwet’en’s human rights, of Wet’suwet’en law, and of their constitutionally protected rights as Indigenous people. The report also highlights the fact that the ‘last time RCMP set up an ‘exclusion zone,’ they had authorized lethal force against unarmed people.”

I am observing these developments as a Malaysian resident of British Columbia and I cant help thinking of our own Malaysian indignation at the Indian state’s mistreatment of Kashmiris with curfews and media black outs. Malaysians must be made aware that our premier Crown Corporation stands to benefit from these apparently analogous acts of the Canadian state. As I have noted before Malaysia’s PETRONAS’ investment in Kitimat is totally dependant on this CGL pipeline which will transport natural gas from PETRONAS’ own North Montney fields. So once again, the interests of the exemplary Malaysian bumiputera (indigenous) led enterprise is contrary to the those of a group of indigenous people from British Columbia.

http://unistoten.camp/jan13/

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/malaysian-pm-says-india-invaded-occupied-kashmir-at-unga/articleshow/71362388.cms

The Rashomon Effect!

~ The Koboi Project

roshomon effecrOf the 5 accounts (the woodcutter’s original account, the raped wife’s, the bandit’s, the murdered husband’s ghost’s, the woodcutters second account) of the truth of events in Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece, Rashomon, only the woodcutter’s secound account, the last version recountes, is preceded by ‘honest contrition’ (as film critic Ritchie has called it in his Criterion Collection commentary). This renders it, for me, the most believable of all the versions. In the ongoing SNC Lavalin affair, there has been, in the testimonies given so far to the House of Commons  Justice Committee, no sign of any such contrition! In former principal secretary to the Prime Minister, Gary Butts’ nonchalant, “I am fully aware that two people can experience the same event differently,”  we have an acerbic invocation of the multiplicity of realities that can accrue from one set of events, a multiplicity that has become known as the ‘Rashomon effect.’ If Gary Butts showed no contrition, the Privy Council Clerk (the most senior civil servant in the Canadian government) Michael Wernick was positively bristling with indignation as he revealed, amongst other titbits, how the Chairman of the Board at SNC-Lavalin, Kevin Lynch, from whom he took a phone call in the run-up to the crisis, was a  former Clerk of the very same Privy Council! … O Canada!

Previous Posts on this affair –
Its the neo-liberal Economy Stupid
A Key to the SNC-Lavalin Affair

Collaged from: https://drafthouse.com/show/rashomon

Collaged From: https://warriorpublications.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/indian-act-chiefs-and-idle-no-more-snakes-in-the-grassroots/

https://globalnews.ca/news/5025941/gerald-butts-testimony-transcript/https://www.greybrucethisweek.ca/news/politics/two-people-can-experience-the-same-event-differently-gerald-butts-offers-his-take-on-the-snc-lavalin-scandal/wcm/45ac3263-88aa-48f6-8adf-eb8c5b23c3b1?video_autoplay=truehttps://globalnews.ca/news/5025938/gerald-butts-dinner-jody-wilson-raybould/https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/michael-wernick-live-testimony-on-snc-lavalin

https://www.greybrucethisweek.ca/news/politics/thats-the-bar-its-not-criminal-key-exchanges-from-the-michael-wernick-testimony/wcm/95bafc7f-c950-44fe-ab44-8d9b0b025daa

Lelu Wolf Totem

~ The Koboi Project

totemlelu

On Friday, 20th October, a totem pole carved by Tsimshian artist Phil Gray of a wolf and an orca fin was ceremoniously erected on Lelu Island British Columbia to commemorate the victory of the resistance against the PETRONAS/ provincial government of British Columbia/ Federal government of Canada plans for a massive LNG terminal. According to Ian Gill in his article in the Tyee Gwishawaal Ken Lawson, a house leader of the Gitwilgyoots tribe said modestly, “It’s a small pole, but the wolf is here,” Ken Lawson jointly claims stewardship rights and responsibilities on Lelu Island with Simoyget Yahaan, Don Wesley  for the Tsimshian First Nation. In the course of the proceedings, Don Wesley, who publically led the resistance to protect the island and the Skeena watershed, was presented with a copper shield by Guujaaw, the leader of the Haida Nation to acknowledge his resistance.

Image: https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/10/25/Life-Breath-Skeena-River/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/our-blood-is-still-on-the-land-tsimshian-raise-totem-pole-declaring-victory-over-b-c-lng-project-1.4367586