Here is what I read to a crowd of people at Homegrown Cafe in Hamilton, ON, last night for the Time and Place: A Cultural Quarterly event. And what a great night is was. "This is a photograph I took in Rwanda last year as part of a course I was taking at Western. Part of the course included an intense, and condensed ten-day trip in which we visited the six national genocide memorial sites and about a dozen local, community sites. Before I get into my experience of the time and place in this photo, i want to take you back in time to the events that led to the creation of this space. In early April 1994, many of us were focused on or distracted by Kurt Cobain's sudden death, the first democratic elections in South Africa since the fall of apartheid, the spectacular, sensationalistic murder trial of OJ Simpson, while there was also the news of a small African country in Joseph Conrad's deep, dark heart of Africa (as the press would continually portray it), where government-backed militias unleashed a most horrific, brutal, carefully calculated and unprecedentedly swift genocide against the minority Tutsi population. From April 6 to July 4, in the space of 100 days, over 800,000 people were killed at the hands of the militia, government forces, the Rwandan police and army, and at the hands of neighbors, friends, and in some cases even family members. Some of you may remember this, or have learned more about it since then. Some of you may recall that a Canadian general, who has since become somewhat of a household figure, Romeo Dallaire, was the head of the UN Peacekeeping mission in Rwanda at the time, there to oversee peace negotiations between the extremist government and the rebels that had been in conflict for the previous four years. Some of you may also recall the controversy over the fact that UN soldiers were not allowed to intervene as it was against their mandate. This photograph is of a forest adjacent to one of the six national memorial sites. It is the site of the largest resistance against the genocidaires. The memorial site on the Bisesero hill overlooks the hilltop where the resistance fighters held off their perpetrators for nearly the full length of the genocide, only to be overcome in its last few days. The memorial site also overlooks a nearby village inhabited by a few of the survivors of that resistance group.
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I was disappointed by the views expressed in the recent editorial concerning the climate activists appearing at a Vancouver Board of Trade meeting attended by PM Stephen Harper (Delicate Balance of Protecting the PM, January 9, 2014). These were clearly non-violent protesters (they didn't even throw pies) yet the newspaper vilified them. No mention was made about their reasoning behind taking such measures in an ostensibly democratic country. Pulling something like this off takes a lot of planning and arranging, not to mention courage, in the hopes of raising attention for issues that don't get proper exposure in the mainstream media. Instead of worrying about the safety of the PM, a security concern that has been the same since the early days of parliamentary democracy (and feudal monarchies and empires before then), the media should be writing about why these people were protesting in the first place. Again, this is an example of the media focussing on the spectacle rather than the content. Essentially, this protest was not just about the Keystone XL pipeline, but was about other environmental issues including the shale gas fracking taking place (or about to take place) in parts of Canada, particularly in New Brunswick where protest are ongoing, and continue to be ignored or misrepresented by the media. Writing about how it is possible for these protesters to get so close to the PM is an interesting angle for a story. A look at the rationale behind these protestors' actions, and the degree to which the current government is already imposing barriers that make so-called 'proper channels' for voicing concerns much more difficult would be informative for readers. It is hardly common knowledge that to even get into the 'public' hearings to learn about the XL pipeline required mountains of paperwork to be completed long in advance of the hearings in order to attend. So far, Canada is still a democracy and we should not feel obliged to be 'profiled' in order to participate in our civic duties. But if the press keeps spouting inflated fears of terrorism in the same breath as reporting on peaceful protestors, then we are bound to find ourselves faced with more and more restrictions imposed on our rights as the governments, and the big businesses they represent, feel justified in imposing more bureaucratic and physical barriers to democratic acts (be they peaceful protests or participating in public meetings). Likewise, if the media were to do its democratic responsibility to report news (e.g., Harper goven't Omnibus bills that poise international conglomerates to 'extract' the planet dry) rather than stereotypical tropes (e.g., protesters are violent), then protests like this one to raise awareness of issues important to Canadians (maybe not to all Canadians, but a democratic paper writes for everyone, not just one group) wouldn't have to happen. I would have let this editorial go un-commented if it hadn't been for the opinion piece printed a couple days before (Pope Francis is wrong about capitalism, January 6, 2014) that extolled the virtues of free market capitalism. The two article are really related; to comment on one requires comment on the other. In response to the article by Milke (a representative from the Fraser Institute, a conservative think-tank), yes, capitalism has enabled much poverty reduction, improved health, and 'standards of living’; even the most famous critic of capitalism, Karl Marx conceded this point. But the 'free market' is anything but free as it is manipulated and contorted by political and business cronies. Canadian and US economic and political systems are as corrupt as the Argentinian, it's just that here it is legalized because it's the ‘cronies’ who are in power. The only reason capitalists want less regulation is so that they can exploit people and the planet more easily. The reason why unions developed and are necessary, along with other regulations, is to ensure that there will be people and a planet left for future generations (be they capitalists or the rest of the 99%). Cutting people's wages to near or below poverty-line levels is not at all necessary. 'Austerity' measures are a capitalist-system induced fabrication that enables companies to justify cutting wages, while producing larger profits. Our current economic crisis would likely not have happened had there been more regulations in place, regulations that would have - yes - limited to some extent the 'freedom' of capitalists to reap ever more record-breaking profits (AKA bonuses), but these regulations are meant to ensure there are consumers to buy the goods and services offered by the capitalists. Without proper wages, people can't buy. Without people buying, eventually the system will collapse. Me, for one, I'm curious to see what will replace this system once it collapses. Unfortunately, it won't be in my lifetime. Protestors like Sean Devlin and Shireen Soofi should be applauded for getting noticed, and for taking their duties as citizens of this country and this planet seriously. |
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