Rain and the Rhinoceros

Last week my wife and I went out to see my favorite director, Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, There Will Be Blood. I have to say I think this my favorite of his films so far and it is profoundly relevant as it exposes the disastrous human costs of capitalism epitomized in the oil rush.

I have been openly critical of some of my friends choices to go to Alberta in order to “cash in” on the great Canadian oil rush. In my criticisms I am not attempting to place myself on some higher moral ground, for I am well aware that I am complicit in the current human destruction of the earth. However, I still strongly discourage my friends to resist the desire to pay off university debt by means of exploiting the earth’s resources. It is my hope that St. Stephen’s University would become a place that fosters the kind of growth in students that would render active participation in economic exploitation, war, and environmental degradation unintelligible.

Recently, an environmental group called Environmental Defense reported that “Canada’s massive oil sands are the most destructive project on earth.”
According to a Reuter’s article the report noted that “excavation of the oil sands in the western province of Alberta — home to the richest petroleum deposits outside the Middle East — is producing vast amounts of greenhouse gases and poisoning local water supplies.” According to the article “The Alberta provincial government says it has issued leases for 4,264 oil sands projects covering 25,065 square miles . New projects costing more than C$100 billion are on the books for the oil sands region and production is expected to triple to 3 million barrels a day by 2015.”

Coming from a Christian pacifist, the title of this post may come as a shock. Let me explain. I recently read an op-ed in the New Brunswick, well, Irving Oil’s Telegraph Journal, written by a woman of the Progressive Conservative party (PC) of Canada. The op-ed was entitled, “The War on Christmas.” I was on my way back from dropping some friends off at the train station in Moncton and I was intrigued by this article while taking a “pizza break” at a Saint John Greco. I can’t recall all the details, but basically this woman was explaining a situation that upset her regarding a Canadian judge who had a Christmas tree taken out of a government lobby because it was a religious symbol. The author of the article apparently thought this was ridiculous for the judge to do and as the title suggests it is part of a broader “war on christmas.” When I read this I thought of another big Maritime issue: Sunday shopping. In many areas in the Maritimes there a specific restrictions on if and when a store can open its doors on Sundays. Of course, this seems quite strange for a city boy. Initially I remember thinking, no Sunday shopping? Is that a joke? Is the government really making corporations observe the sabbath? The all-prevailing myth in both Canada and the U.S. is this idea of protecting “our Christian values.” Thus, allowing the corporations to open shop would be evidence of the erosion of these values. And, surely taking Christmas trees out of government buildings is crossing the line!!

It is difficult to lay out the theological underpinnings and assumptions of that fuel the defense of Sunday shopping and Christmas trees in a liberal democracy like Canada or the United States. I mean I usually feel like I am living in a very secular, individualistic and consumeristic society that has little time for religion at all, much less Christianity. Indeed, it would take too much time to attempt a thorough analysis of this, but it is just something that has baffled me lately.

Indeed, North American Christmas celebrations have little to do with historic Christianity. The Christmas tree simply symbolizes the idolatry of consumption of goods. So, I guess it makes sense that people would be outraged, if they felt like their religion was being challenged. No Sunday shopping obviously reflects a deep conservatism and traditionalism found in the Maritimes.But it is actually more radical in that it says no to the corporation for a day, which we can all do with out (apparently the gov’t thinks so too).

For many Christian radicals Christmas is a difficult time, for it is when the state of our religion shows its true consumeristic colours. Is this really the way we celebrate the birth of our king? Aren’t we instead acting like we’re celebrating the birth of the corporation? Though there may be some effort to help the poor, this does not make things any easier for the radical who thinks there should be no poor. Indeed, the radical wants people to ask why there are poor, but not much space is given for this kind of questioning in the church, for it threatens to remove our Christmas trees.

December 01, 2005
Seven Oaks

The Canadian Peace Alliance recently held its 20th anniversary conference in Ottawa, November 11-13, gathering close to 200 anti-war activists from across the country. Convened under the slogan of ‘Challenging Canada’s Role in Empire’, participants came out of the weekend resolving to make March 18, 2006 – the 3rd anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq – the largest day of protest against the occupation since the massive pre-war rallies of 2002-2003.
Peace and justice coalitions and organizations in Canada are also gearing up to campaign against war and occupation during the federal election. Foreign policy issues that need to be highlighted – and that have yet to be consistently raised by the federal New Democrats (NDP) or any other major party – include Canada’s stepped-up role in the occupation of Afghanistan, the overthrow of democracy in Haiti, and the Liberal government’s refusal to come out in support of U.S. war resisters’ right to stay in Canada.

So as we set out on the anti-war campaign trail, towards both mass rallies on March 18 and the goal of having a meaningful impact on the discourse surrounding the election, it is useful to consider the obstacles in our path.

The first, already alluded to, is that the NDP – unlike in the period before the launching of the Iraq war – has failed to aggressively raise any of the key issues, with the possible exception of the war resisters. Jack Layton’s refusal to condemn General Rick Hillier’s bellicose and racist remarks regarding the Afghanistan war in July 2005 was an ominous signal; the NDP’s silence on Haiti, with some important exceptions, has also hurt efforts to disseminate the truth about Canada’s role in throwing out a democratically elected president in the hemisphere’s poorest country. The sheer scale of the human rights disaster in Haiti, and the growing exposure of Canada’s role, may just compel the NDP and Layton to make this a campaign issue.

There are, though, larger and more deeply rooted causes behind the lack of awareness of Canadian complicity in policies of war and Empire. The generalized corporate media blackout, of course, almost goes without saying, but it has been particularly galling with respect to the lack of substantive coverage on Haiti.

The single biggest impediment to getting people mobilized around war and occupation issues is the widespread perception that Canada’s hands are clean in the world; that unseemly regime changes are things carried out by George W. Bush and that at worst we are benevolent bystanders or well-meaning peacekeepers coming in after the fact.

Perhaps one under-utilized way to get around this pervasive myth is to highlight the blatant war profiteering of massive Canadian corporations. While the sordid operations of the likes of Exxon and Halliburton are internationally known, equally rapacious war companies based north of the 49th parallel are getting away with scant attention. The two that stand out are Gildan Activewear and SNC-Lavalin.

For commuters in the Vancouver area, in particular, these two mega-corporations are becoming downright ubiquitous. SNC-Lavalin has been awarded the contract for the largest P3 (public-private partnership) in British Columbia’s history, the multi-billion dollar construction of a rapid transit line from downtown to the airport and the suburb of Richmond (the RAV-line). Meanwhile, SNC also partners with the public sector wherever the Canadian and American armies venture, holding a contract to supply the U.S. army with hundreds of millions of bullets each year, building the new Canadian Embassy in occupied Port-au-Prince, and receiving ‘reconstruction’ contracts in Palestine, Iraq and elsewhere.

Gildan Activewear is a massive garment manufacturer, controlling 40% of the North American t-shirt market. Following the coup against Aristide, and the de facto government’s decision to overturn minimum wage increases brought in by the Lavalas Party government, Gildan announced that it would be moving some operations from Honduras to Haiti. The company is currently engaged in a massive publicity campaign, with ads on hundreds of bus shelters in Vancouver proclaiming the sweatshop label ‘A part of your life’. It has been speculated that they are building their public profile with an eye to winning the Vancouver 2010 Olympics clothing contract. The cases of Gildan and SNC are not unique in terms of Canadian corporations, but only two of the most blatant examples that belie the quaint notion of a harmless, innocent big business community, and the related myth of a political policy pursuing lofty, disinterested ‘humanitarian’ objectives.

Nearly two years ago now, at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, acclaimed author and activist Arundhati Roy made a widely discussed call for the anti-war movement to take aim at the corporate backers of Empire:

I suggest we choose by some means two of the major corporations that are profiting from the destruction of Iraq. We could then list every project they are involved in. We could locate their offices in every city and every country across the world. We could go after them. We could shut them down. It’s a question of bringing our collective wisdom and experience of past struggles to bear on a single target. It’s a question of the desire to win. (‘The New American Century’, The Nation, February 9, 2004)

No such coordinated global campaign has really taken flight. This doesn’t, however, diminish the importance of identifying and exposing the corporate machinations behind war.

Here in Canada, we should focus on explaining the very real business interests behind our government’s foreign policy, beginning with the profits of Gildan and SNC-Lavalin. These corporations are indeed ‘a part of our lives’. It’s high time we made them, and their government allies, pay a political and financial price for the destruction they have wrought, from Iraq to Haiti and far beyond.

Today’s system of empire is much more than the demonic image of Dick Cheney and his Halliburton gang. As we head into a federal election campaign, and build towards the March 18 rallies across Canada, we would do well to remember that there are more than enough warmongers with addresses much closer to home.

I realize it is old news that Canada legalized gay marriage, but a friend recently showed me this article by Mark Morford. I think its great! I would be interested to hear your responses.

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Canada Goes To Hell

Legal pot? Legal gay marriage? Universal health care? What’s next, free porn and candy?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north?

Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations?

Because it’s happened. Canada’s high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires, redefine marriage to include gay couples, which it has declared it will do almost immediately, thus solidifying Canada’s place as the chilly yet mellow and gay friendly and hockey-riffic epicenter of all known hell.

It’s true. It’s rather amazing. Gay marriage will be completely legal in Canada very soon. It’s been oddly ignored in much of the U.S. media and hasn’t really been much discussed among those in the terrified red states except when, deep in the night, from their respective lumpy twin beds, they whisper to each other across the room as they pop their Ambien and stroke their portfolios and curse their very genitals: oh my God what’s wrong with those freakin’ Canadians?

I mean (they continue), I thought they loved red meat and brutish sports and manly hunting. Are they all just freaks and perverts now? Have they been sniffing too many elk pelts? Is it something in the clean and plentiful water up there? Something to do with those weird French-esque people in Quebec, maybe?

I knew we should’ve been paying more attention to that border! Didn’t I say so, honey? Didn’t I say we should keep an eye on those northern weirdos after they dissed the Iraq war and legalized medical pot and sort of went about their happy and calm Canadian business whilst we here in panicky red-blooded America chewed our own karmic legs off in a paranoid and jingoistic rage? Hippies and perverts, I said! Save a few bombs for Ontario, George, I say!

Let us now do the naughty math: Canada has roughly 32 million inhabitants, of whom about 75 percent are over 18, of whom it can be loosely estimated that anywhere from 2 to 8 percent are gay (depends, of course, on who you ask).

All of which translates into a ballpark figure of anywhere from 1 million to 2 million gay Canadians of legal marrying age who will now eagerly laugh and kiss in the streets and confound poor reactionary born-again George W. Bush, and they will flash their wedding rings at parties and annoy all the single people, all while proving for the umpteenth time that love knows no gender limitations or legal restrictions and will trump your whiny sanctimonious religious puling any given Sunday. Heathens!

It’s getting more confusing by the minute, isn’t it? I mean, Canada now has legal medical pot and legal gay marriage and universal health care and no known terrorist enemies and a relatively successful multiparty political system. They also have, according to U.N.’s Human Development Index, one of the highest qualities of life in the world. All coupled with a dramatically reduced rate of gun violence and far better gun-control legislation than the U.S., despite having the exact same per capita rate of gun ownership and gun-sport enthusiasm.

What the hell? How is this possible? Why aren’t they scared to death like whiny red-state Americans? Why don’t they want to kill each other along with anything that might threaten their access to televised hockey and cheap beer and yummy poutine?

Aren’t they aware of what’s happening in the world? Don’t they know they are openly hated for their freedoms and their cafés and their vinegared french fries? Aren’t they human, fer Chrissakes? Oh, red states. How confused and irritated you must be.

After all, unlike the U.S., Canada backed the Kyoto Treaty (along with 165 other heathen nations). They also spend more per capita on education and less on health-care overhead than the U.S. They have a $10 billion federal surplus, a new record. They are not, as of yet, abusing the hell out of their vast natural resources (freshwater, huge forests, oil and natural gas, mineral deposits, etc.) and embarrassing themselves on a global scale every single day and making a mockery of their constitution or their citizens’ civil liberties. What the hell is wrong with them?

Yes yes, I know, Canada’s universal health care is flawed and not always of the best quality, and a great many Canadians think their prime minister is a bit of a schmuck and they hate paying taxes and of course they can be all profitable and progressive when they don’t have a massive bogus unwinnable war to pay for, one run by a ravenous and fiscally idiotic federal government, and they only have one-tenth of our population and one-fiftieth of our desperate consumeristic gluttony. They have it easy, right?

Remember, Canada is boring. Canada is rarely in the news. Canada has no massive belching socioeconomic engine like America does, what with our NASCAR and Hollywood and Fox News and bad porn and the absolute best medical care on the planet despite how only a tiny fraction of us have access to it while the rest languish in bloated abusive HMOs and poverty and disease and 40 percent of us have no access to health care whatsoever. Take that, Canada! Oh wait.

We hate gays and love guns and think pot is evil but hand out Prozac and Zoloft like Chiclets. Meanwhile (as “Bowling for Columbine” so beautifully illuminated), Canadians leave their doors unlocked and don’t feature violence and death on every newscast and still value community and diversity and discussion over solipsism and protectionism and a general hatred of foreigners and the French. See? We rule! Oh wait.

All of which makes you wonder: how many more countries will it take? How many more nations will have to, for example, prove that gun licensing works, or that gay-marriage legislation is a moral imperative, or that health care for all is mandatory for a nation’s well being, before America finally looks at itself and says, whoa, damn, we are so silly and small and wrong? Is there any number large enough? After the announcement that gay Chinese and gay Russians may legally marry and grow lovely gardens of marijuana as they all get free dental care, will America remain terrified of nipples and queers?

Canadians. So mellow. So laid back. So gay. So not producing any truly superlative modern-rock music or ultraviolent buddy-cop movies and not actively siccing Wal-Mart or Starbucks or Paris Hilton on the rest of the world like a goddamn cancer. They’re just so … nice. And boring. And calm. And solid. And friendly.

And they simply beat us senseless on the whole open-minded, progressive thing. Kicked our flag-wavin’ butts. Trounced our egomaniacal self-righteous selves and made the red states look even more foolish and backward than the whole world already knows them to be.

They did it. Canada made the whole gay marriage issue look effortless and obvious and healthy, and a massive black rain of hellfire did not pour down upon them and the very idea of hetero marriage did not immediately explode and their economy did not unravel like all the sneering cardinals and right-wing nutballs screamed it would. We must ask, one last time: what the hell is wrong with them?

Oh wait. Maybe we should rephrase. What the hell, we should be asking, is wrong with us?