I’ve been in Canada for the past 27 hours. What a breath of fresh air! I mean, to fly to a place (Toronto) where the airport book store puts out front of the store to attract readers a lot of books by Noam Chomsky and Patrick Cockburn already tells you you’re not in the US any more….
I had a bit of an embarrassment at the passport line there. The guy behind the counter said, “So when were you last here?” I wasn’t feeling very sharp and I’d been thinking about my kids a lot, so I recalled a family driving trip we made to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks in the (American) Rocky Mountains, back in 1993 or 1994, at the end of which we drove back east through Canada. So I said, “Oh, I think it was 1993 or 1994.” I had completely forgotten (1) a short visit I made to Windsor, Ontario, with my daughter Leila when she was living in nearby Detroit in 2001 or so, and (2) the visit I made to London, Ontario to speak to a conference in probably 2004 or so.
No wonder the guy looked at me as if I was dissembling. Forgetting is what I was doing… If I hadn’t been a White person, or if I’d been a person of Muslim origin, would he have been a lot less forgiving?
Anyway, I’m now in Victoria, BC, which is actually the capitol of BC. I had a bit of a chance to explore this morning. It seems like Wellington, New Zealand, in so many ways: Lots of water lacing in and out of the land-masses; great deep-water port; an important political capitol; bracing fresh air; fascinating attempts to come to terms with the past sufferings of the indigenous people; a very colonially “English” place in many ways.
Boy, did those British naval explorers of the 18th century know how to seize control of and develop great deep-water ports in so many handy places around the world!
I went to the Royal British Columbia Museum, which has a wonderful– and extremely poignant– exhibit on the “First Nations (indigenous peoples) of coastal BC.
It was so tragic, I almost couldn’t bear it.
One of the things that made it seem particularly tragic was that– as in the Te Papa Museum in Wellington– they had many black-and-white photographs of the First Nations people here, made in the second half of the 19th century.
Somehow seeing this very modern, and at one deep level quite “true” and irrefutable, representation of these people underlines in in an unarguable way the fact of their existence, the dignity and integrity of their existence, and the unspeakable tragedy of the fate they met from the White colonialists.
They even had a short moving-picture clip, taken in 1914, of three large Haida canoes moving over water, each with a costumed spiritual/dancing figure in front who danced on the boat while the canoeists beat on their seats with their paddles. Very eery, mysterious, and emotional. (Those must have been some of the very earliest moving-picture images ever recorded in British Columbia?)
The museum exhibited so many pieces of evidence of the cultural genocide enacted against these people, including a reproduction of a document many of them were forced to sign attesting to the fact that they had become “Christians,” would forever foreswear their traditional practices, and give no safe haven to anyone who continued to practice them.
… The main reason I came here, though, was to participate in the inaugural Board Meeting of a body called the Global Partnership for the International University of Iraq. It’s a group that I’ve been involved with for 2-3 years now. But only now– today, in fact– has the organization become properly constituted under (Canadian) law.
It is such a wonderful project! And it was a huge pleasure and honor to meet and sit down to work with the other people involved. I’ll tell you more about the people and the project, later. Let me just say, now, that it’s very important to me that it’s an determinedly international effort to work with Iraqis to build a university in Iraq (when circumstances permit) that embodies the highest qualities of academic freedom, great pedagogy, and socially relevant learning and research.
Anyway, I’m really tired. If you want to learn some very interesting things about what’s been going on in Iraq, I direct you Badger’s recent postings on his “Missing Links” blog and the latest offering from Reidar Visser.
18 thoughts on “In Canada”
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For more info about “IUI” this link will tell you.
http://www.arabisto.com/p_blogEntry.cfm?blogEntryID=815
BTW, this another view about Basra fighting
Beyond the battle of Basra
for daily updates on the situation in Iraq, go to Iraq Today
http://warnewstoday.blogspot.com
Aotearoa is the post colonial Maori name for New Zealand, Helena, though like many foreigners you apparently choose not to use it. We use it a lot here, especially in offical circles, did you notice when you visited? And to educate me better can you tell me what is the post colonial Indian name for America, or Canada?
It is certainly true that the original British settlement of Aotearoa lead to many deaths. Land was stolen, diseases spread, passive resistance quashed and the Maori had to fight a war with the Pakeha to have the founding document of our nation properly recognised.
However, Maori in New Zealand now have recognised title to their land. The Waitangi tribual continues to resolve historical treay issues. Do old photos of Maori make you sad? There are both old and new photos of Maori. They are by no means a dead people. Just do a Google image search on ‘Maori” and see what you find. The Maori, the surviving first nations people in New Zealand Aotearoa will outsize all other ethnic groups in a few decades. Tell me, is this true of native peoples in America or Canada? Would you like to share with me the names of a few internationally famous first people citizens from America and Canada?
I won’t even ask about Iraq, It’s clear America is destroying that country in a Holocaust which hasd killed about 5% and inflicted tragedy on about 50% of the pre occupation population, (ORB report Sept 07). It’s also pretty clear to us folks next door to Antarctica that your country intends to invade Iran next in a second war of agression, a second war crime, and commit a futher Holacaust among the Persians. Count us out from your nations’ current and planned war crimes. In New Zealand, OTOH numerous Maori have received international recognition in a range of fields, particulary the arts, despite being just 15 % of a tiny, tiny country (4,263,519 people ATM ).The Maori are a corageous, proud and cuturally flourishing people. Is this also true of Red Indians and the Inuit?
We are no longer into genocide here, by the front door or the back. We did not accept your invitation in 2003. Kindly recognise that fact.
Welcome to Victoria. Hope you enjoy your stay here.
Roland,
Does using the words New Zealand make you sad? I suggest you learn to live with the internationally recognized name for your country.
In a rude way you are somehow conflating Helena Cobban with all the wrongs of the US and Canadian governments, which is nonsense. She consistently opposes those wrongs, if you would notice. Apparently you are so full of historical correctness that you have no capacity for understanding either Just World News or the guidelines for posting here.
Helena,
If I hadn’t been a White person, or if I’d been a person of Muslim origin, would he have been a lot less forgiving?
Ah, “WHITE”? Rev. Jeremiah Wright some how have some truth what he said?isn’t Helena?
Thus why “White” Americans went outraged by Obama with his Pastor Wright speech?
Whats make American so denial of all those words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and attacking their only “BLACK” candidates for his friend speech?
لا وصف يعلو على وصف الشاعر البصري بدر شاكر السياب لما ال اليه الحال بام النخيل بعد وصول المالكي اليها. والقول للسياب:
للسياب وهو يوصف مستقبل العراق وثغره الباسم :
Well Don, thankfully no New Zealander needs to be sad about our country, we have plenty of reasons to be proud of it. We have choosen what we call our country, I believe we are within our rights to do so. What is so wrong with the Maori name Aotearoa that you will not use it? How ironic.
Yes, Aotearoa New Zealand had colonial beginnings. Historians from The US and Britain sometimes visit. They stay a week or two, tell us we are just like them, we follow just the same colonial model.
Well, I’m sorry, but we don’t feel that we do. To us, the differences are clear and material. They are evidenced in areas such as the development of land and other treaty rights, suffrage, universal education and healthcare, overall social equity and electoral reform. Becoming nuclear free. Keeping our combat troops out of Iraq. In Peace keeping both in the Pacific and further afield. What we call ourselves.
Where our history differs from Canada, the US, British Kenya etc is the course we have taken and continue to take as a country.
I’m sorry, but I am going to talk to you about Iraq again. The NATIONS that participate in the Holocaust of Iraq, whether overtly as the US and Britain or covertly as Canada, are responsible for their war crimes. Polite, sophisticated even erudite criticism and debate on blogs about these endless, massive, and growing crimes is no exoneration in the eyes of the free world or in International law. Stop kidding yourselves. Actually end the occupation and the Holocaust of Iraq or be collectively responsible for it. And get used to being offended the way 1.5 million Iraqis so far have gotten used to being dead during this occupation.
Well done Australia for getting rid of Johnny Howard and getting out of Iraq.
Salah, thank you for your poetry, tragic as it is. I hope your country is free soon, and that you stay safe.
Ah yes! Build something!
If you can put-up with my personal experience; a long time ago, I was doing refugee relief work and village development in Vietnam. As you can imagine, many things angered me and continually made me want to strike-out against people and organizations that did stupid and cruel things.
But, I got to know a monk that had many very good insights and abilities. Also, a couple times, he needed to flex his power and he produced 10,000 demonstrators in a matter of a couple days.
One day, he told me that I should be careful not to let the war and stupid people distract me from building something that can endure. He said that I could continually try to stop bad people and try to —-I guess the best translation is “knock them away”. But if I focused on that, someday I would leave or die and nothing would have changed.
I really regret that I was young and too inexperienced and did not pay better attention and learn more from that guy.
Bob Spencer
That was an interesting and constructive post Bob. Your work in Vietnam sounds intriguing.
Helena’s post from Canada told us about her work there planning the building of a major constructive project in Iraq, a university.
However, this noble venture notwithstanding, the occupation of Iraq is still a massive criminal Holocaust perpetuated by the US and Great Britain and therefore it must end. Did Americans read the Sept 07 ORB report on Iraq, was the report even in the news there? I know the March 07 one was. What changed?
Looking at America from without, during your Presedential elections, we only hear reported a sense of resignation about a perpetuating Iraq occupation, replete with permanent bases, which the US public seems now convinced isn’t so bad because “the surge is working”. And we hear your current President and some candidates make repeated, factually unjustified, logically inconsistent threats at Iraq’s neighbour Iran. Threats backed by what appears to be mounting Xenophobia. We saw how quickly anti-war candiates were marginalised.
The three trillion dollar tax committment into the Iraq occupation is a major part of the US spiraling into heavy recession, but this is apparently just a second elephant in the room. This is aggrivating, depressing and frightening to many people in other western nations. America, how have you become like this?
If Iraq is Balkanised any further, you will need to build at least three universities:
From http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-478/_nr-589/i.html
“In Iraq, university teachers always have to take account of the authority of the ideological community to which a student belongs. They do not risk confrontations which they might lose – especially since the laws which would protect them are scarcely taken seriously.
Many teachers – not only former Ba’athists – hide behind a mask of religiosity. They remove their ties, perhaps grow a beard. They start using religious idioms when they speak, wear a seal ring and carry a rosary. It’s clear that a new age has begun. They have to adapt if they are to hold on to their jobs and their standard of living.”
Bob, I guess most of us would conform to the archetypes contained in your monk’s advice from time to time, the builder, the angry young person, the idiot. I know I can.
There is a perenial underlying question in your monks advice about the nature of good and evil, how much these labels are about the dynamics between acts of creation and destruction. My own view is of the latter is “nothing in excess, including moderation.”
Roland, the more I hear about New Zealand, the more I wish I could emigrate there. Though I am able to provide for myself a good level of material comfort here, I find living in the U.S. to be increasingly depressing. I leave soon for a month in the Middle East, and I find that each time I travel outside this country, when it is time to leave for “home”, I feel more and more bereft, even when conditions where I am visiting are not exactly those of modern comfort.
But while I agree with what you have said about North America, and about its involvement in Iraq, in your first comment here, I DO feel you were being quite unfair to Helena – perhaps unintentionally.
Helena, I apologise fully and unreservedly for being quite unfair to you in my earlier post.
The dwindling effectiveness of ethical and progressive movements in America in the face of a number of grave issues is obviously not the reponsibility of any one person, least of all you. The elements that have been leading US political direction are not answerable to conscience.
Beyond that, I have already explained my concerns in my intervening posts. I won’t detract from my apology now with more of the same.
Roland, mate, I happen to have been to Aotearoa-New Zealand. During the course of my stay I went to Manukau, a place that might be familiar to you, as well as out east where there’s a marae at every milepost. What I saw there, and the census figures back me up, is that while there may be Maori bankers and legislators, most of them cluster toward the bottom of the socioeconomic scale (albeit higher than the Pacific Islanders) while the pākehā are on top. Not to mention that the land they hold now under Waitangi is a hell of a lot less than they started with.
Sure, you lot have been much more just to your First Nations than the North American countries, Argentina, Chile and Australia have been to theirs. That’s not a very high bar. On the other hand, you haven’t been nearly as just as you ought to be – or are Maori emigrating to Australia as fast as they are because NZ is such a racial paradise that mere mortals can’t stand living in it? And you haven’t been very just at all to the aforementioned Pacific Islanders. NZ is, at the end of the day, a settler colony, even if its colonialism is (as the South Africans used to say) “of a special type.”
In other words, while you’re quite right to condemn the United States for its crimes in Iraq, a little reduction in sanctimony may be in order. And especially so if it leads you to condemn Helena out of hand, given that she’s probably done a good deal more than you to fight against those very crimes.
Azazel, Buddy
There will of course be people that know Manukau better than both of us, but I’ve been there. Manukau has similar issues with violent crime (by NZ standards) though as an area it has less poverty than Christchurch, where I live. Unlike Christchurch, Manukau is not a scenic “Little Victorian English city” and despite being far more ethnically diverse it doesn’t see such high levels of overseas tourists staying there long. Still I’m sure it beats a holiday in Camden New Jersey hands down. Maybe you were there as it is close to Auckland Airport? As for the East Coast (of I guess just the North Island?) this includes the lovely Gisborne and Wellington our rather wealthy capital city. I imagine you weren’t talking about Wellington, though it has a high and visible Maori population. There is, as has been noted here, a Marae (meeting house)inside Te Papa museum. I’m not sure what significance you think Marae have? Do you think that most Maori people still commonly live in settlements around them, or that some areas don’t have them?
Statistics on Manakau: “The city is one of the most culturally diverse areas in New Zealand, with over 180 ethnic groups. 142,683 or 46 percent of Manukau residents identify their ethnic grouping as European (this includes New Zealanders), 15 percent as Māori, 28 percent as Pacific, 22 percent as Asian.” 15% ARE MAORI.(Statistics NZ)
It is certainly true that ex-British settlers in New Zealand had not claim or title to land before they arrived, and it’s also true they had no legal title to any land until one was agreed through a treaty which we now honour at law. Like your ones with the Inuit and Red Indians?
You correctly noted out that Australia’s handling of first peoples has in the past been and brutal very unjust, (though new PM Kevin Rudd’s recent apology to the Lost Generation of aborigines is surely to be deeply commended). You then make the leap that NZ Maori are going there to be better treated. That doesn’t seem to be a necessary or even likely conclusion to your premise. As Australia has had much faster economic growth for decades, I wonder if the New Zealanders of all ethnicities that go there to work do so for better pay? Pakeha New Zealanders go too. I’ve been a kiwi in Sydney and Perth, we don’t go there to be liked, and we tend to stick with our own (meaning other kiwis) much like other migrants. A quick Google on “Maori emigration Australia” will be informative.
Yes, I briefly summarised the differences between New Zealand’s progressive milestone’s and those of places such as Britain, the US and Canada. You wisely haven’t challenged these, in fact you even admitted one or two. However, you say it was “sanctimonious” for me to mention them, seemingly because I shouldn’t be so proud of what my country has done. My list certainly did not include exaggerated or untrue claims like what you appear to be responding to. I dodn’t claim NZ was a: “socialist paradise” “utopian society”,”economic power house” or “world superpower” etc, etc. Yes, there may be nations that have raised the bar higher than New Zealand in some or indeed many areas of progressive policy. Let’s hear more about them! New Zealand is also doing poorly in many areas you didn’t mention. For example, since our Police received high level counter-terrorism training overseas, they now often over-react to such “terrorist” groups like recently Greenpeace protesting a coal shipment. A Google of “New Zealand Police scandal” will find one or two far more appalling stories. Let’s see, what else? International ratings of our business managerial competence are often low, though the research on that needs more than a brief Google. You could perhaps unfairly extrapolate that we have some of the world’s most stupid Tories. I still see no reason not to be proud of my country’s progressive record. It’s important to do a lot of research on other people countries, even the little ones, before debating them with those countries nationals. Tourism, fleeting subjective impressions, and browsing headlines may not suffice.
I won’t justify any criticism I am seen to have made of Helena personally. It would be poor form to start qualifying a full and unreserved apology, such as I already made, even when effectively challenged to. I can say that unlike her I am obviously not a professional writer, nor an academic, nor an expert on the Middle East. Helena didn’t respond because she is fully aware of those differences as well as her own opinions thus she didn’t feel any need to. Nor honestly did I expect she would.
The “progressive” “movement” in America, Canada and even Britain (Chile is excused for recent historical reasons and Argentina is an interesting question) has noticed your establishment is becoming increasingly corrupt and dangerous but seldom agree on any really vigorous strategy. Hence the ongoing Iraq war crimes and genocide in your name. The pervasive “strategy” seems to be to describe what’s unfair; sometimes eruditely,less often eloquently,in social gatherings, in blogs, or in seemingly dwindling protests. This is unlikely to prevail against a ruthless, immensely powerful (albeit incompetent) enemy; that is, your own national leaders. This “strategy” may have felt like it was working when there was an external “Red Peril”, a youth movement and a civil rights movement simultaneously threatening the establishment, but these complications have been overcome and no longer exist. The US leadership is now in a position to (haphazardly)orchestrate massive global military interventions without such high levels of interference until; or more correctly as, the money runs out.
I do what I can as an activist, activists in my country have helped form and lead our national direction over the last 40 years. Activists in your far more pivotal countries over the last 40 years have not, and are increasingly marginalised and blatantly irrelevant to public political debate and foreign policy. One day, I am more than sad to say, your nation’s actions will wipe the slate clean of everything we have achieved here over many many generations. The Chicago School of Economics influenced IMF almost already managed that here in the 1980s. When this happens there will be some critical analysis, perhaps some will even be quite good, and maybe a polite little protest or two. Hand wringing and noble gestures will then win the day.
Believe it or not, Roland, I actually kind of admire New Zealand. As I said and you agree, it hasn’t been perfectly just, but noplace is, and since 1975 it’s at least been trying. I’d like to see another country I care about adopt the Waitangi framework as a method of integrating its non-Jewish citizens. So yes, there’s a call for pride.
All right then, why was I at such pains two comments ago to highlight NZ’s flaws? Part of it was what I saw as an unfair attack on Helena – I didn’t see your apology until after I posted. Most of it, though, was your seeming belief that NZ’s somewhat-better-than-Canada track record makes it completely different from other New World countries and entitles you to sneer down on the rest of us from Olympian heights. You may not have intended to convey that impression, but believe me, you did.
You seem surprised that I admit my country’s flaws. Of course I do – it’s a flawed place. I’m glad that you can recognize the shortcomings of your own country and be proud of its undeniable achievements anyway. Grant the same right to the rest of us, OK?
Anyway, you assume that I was in NZ as a tourist. You are not correct. I’m also more aware of the complexities of modern Maori society than you probably think I am. One of these days I’d like to discuss it with you further (although I’ll say that, while plenty of Maoris in Australia did go there for better wages, some of the ones I met in Sydney told me, in substance albeit not in exactly those words, that in Australia they can be settler-colonists like everyone else).
In the meantime, though, I need to get busy on what the progressive movement in the United States is up to these days – trying to elect a president. You may have heard of a candidate who’s been inspiring a lot of activists this year, and who isn’t cut out of the Bush-Clinton mold.
(And what country do I think has done better than NZ in managing settler-indigenous relations? New Caledonia. I’ll grant, though, that the Noumea Accords had a lot more to do with demographics and French mediation than with any good intentions on the Caldoches’ part.)
Oh, and two more things. First, the Dawn Raids happened long before your police got anti-terrorist training. And second, I agree that one should conduct a great deal of research about a country before debating it with its nationals: you might want to keep that in mind the next time you lecture an American.
The thing about US foreign Policy is that we foreigners get to experience it at home to one degree or another. In part I guess it’s a matter of scale, and in part a matter of the actual policies. Iraqis apparently get to know something tangible of America without ever leaving home. This is a qualitatively and quantitatively different issue from the degree to which Americans are exposed to NZ domestic politics and the status of our indigenous peoples, or vice versa (excluding the domination of US TV and film).
I believe when someone from another country makes a comparison between one’s own and either theirs or another that seems false or misleading, then that can be quite upsetting. People commonly attest to the domestic conditions in their own country.
Robert Muldoon was an NZ PM who bore a striking physical resemblance to the “Jaba the Hut” character in Star Wars. His demeanour was something of a match. So we are not immune to selecting the wrong leaders here either. If you can’t do so you don’t have a democracy. Muldoon organised dawn raids on Pacific Island visa overstayers, so not Tangata Whenua (people of the land) or the “first people” of NZ in the 70s. He was elected out not that long after for that and many other reasons. So yes, the dawn raids were bad, (see the Dawn Raids Wiki) they lasted here around a decade and stopped here 30 years or so ago.
I referred to some contemporary NZ Police matters. The dawn raids were not like a massive Police presence overwhelming quite peaceful Greenpeace protests, nor like the national raids one day last year on 60 houses containing anyone who had ever met some ‘activists” who had been playing revolutionary militia in our mountains last year. These are, as I said, and as local Greenpeace reps have said, new problems to us.
I will certainly look into the the Noumea Accords. I would have to know a lot more about Kanak living standards before I could be very enthusiastic. I’ve been to New Caledonia. The schools looked quite good. I saw many Kanaks that seemed to be in physically hard and/or servile work, and many who seemed out of work, (which hasn’t been common here for years now). I appreciate what work there is work is mostly in Nickel mining and tourism there. Accommodation seemed expensive, communities segregated. Despite a per capita GDP apparently a touch higher than ours, the kanak citizens seemed to have a low standard of living compared to kiwis and even more so the French there. I also briefly saw a local medical facility, near Ansi Vata one evening in which there only seemed to be native patients, where there was blood and what appeared to be urine on the floor, and seriously ill people lying and slouched and unattended in the lobby, while someone dressed like a nurse sat metres away unperturbed. To a New Zealander, that was quite shocking, but this could have been some kind of unique situation. I did enjoy the fabulous Tjibaou Cultural Centre, there was a whole exhibit devoted to the execution of native leaders by the French (possibly at a civilised time of day) in the late 1980s:
“On May 5, 1988, 300 French elite troops stormed a cave near Gossanah in northern Ouvea to rescue 16 gendarmes captured two weeks earlier by Melanesian freedom fighters.
Nineteen Kanaks (the collective name used by the indigenous peoples of New Caledonia) died in the assault, including several who suffered extrajudicial execution at the hands of the French police after being wounded and taken prisoner.”
These are just a pair of snapshots of course, I will look more at the the Noumea Accords tonight and am sure many other good things could be happening in New Caledonia. I’m interested in any inter-cultural initiatives wherever they occur. We can always do better by learning from others.
If there was any sense of Olympian height to my post, it was only created by my revulsion as an ordinary human being at the depth of criminal depravity in the US occupation of Iraq and to a much lesser extent my sensitivity about the ease with which we can slip into chauvinistic tendencies in cultural analysis. The US-Iraq occupation seems to be (and tell me if I am wrong), increasingly taken for granted in your country. That would not seem to be a success for American progressives, but that’s just my take. If a change is ‘a comin then well and good.
In any case, sometimes the nature of a truth means that there is no point in asserting it, in any manner. In the end, I may simply have been fooling myself. But in the middle of a calamity you can sometimes feel anything is worth a try.