Apres Quebec's Printemps Erables: Will the word “radical” remain a word of abuse?

In the serious and resilient euphoria that persists, and will continue for a while,  Quebec will see more pot banging, head banging, guerilla takeover of administrative councils; rocks, brickbats, some more Molotov’s, emptied beer bottles and shoes will be reserved for Montreal’s thug-police who have shown no hesitation to shoot rubber bullets at close range to the eyes and the skull. But, where will all this head to after printemps is over? There are several possibilities and here is a possible listing.

 There will be road blocking, barricading,  bridge blocking, flag raising on important buildings, mass sit ins, mass arrests, further declaration of martial law provisions, plainclothes goons mugging the students and their supporters a-la Chile and Chicago, more lethal gases released into Montreal's night sky,  more key figures resigning from the Mafia and scam-ridden Cabinet and even from the Montreal city council whose corruption index has now tipped all analog and digital scales. Jean Charest, Quebec's conservative PM in Liberal garb,  will be  looking more and more like a dandelion losing its puffy hair in the hot winds that will come with summer and he will be forced to negotiate with the students, replace his assistants, as he is trying to do now. Very simply put, the rulers had never envisaged that this generation of students had the ability , the energy levels and the political depth to take the struggle to a higher level. In fact, nobody did.

More and more racist pure laine nationalists, hiding behind the revolutionary might of the militant students will desperately piggy-back on them and bleat their cause opportunistically. Quebec and Canada's Peladeau-Thompson media will of course bring in retired voices as consultants and continue to peddle their fetid notions of preserving the status quo, the establishment, the order of things, the notions of law and order, attempting to provoke and CPR  Quebec's comatose "Silent majority", while completely ignoring the disastrous Tar Sands/Plan Nord policies, loss of manufacturing jobs, the manipulative new labour-unemployment laws, the increasing household debt and the increasing merger with the security umbrella of the United States. 

French and English media will hold hands and cry about why the students “have gone beyond the limits.” Opportunists of all hues will cry shrill for an election and a parliamentary roll-over will happen. Legislators will cross the floor and angry councillors and candidates will run as independents.  In the long run, Amir Kadir and Quebec Solidaire will get quite a few more seats in parliament and a hodge-podge coalition of neo-liberalists, nationalists, constitutionalists and social democrats will continue to shriek at each other and run the province and the nation, whether they are in power or in the opposition. But, they will essentially sanctify parliament and the process of “law and order” no matter which side they are on. 

There will be divisions amongst the student leadership as well, for having gone beyond their mandate, perhaps. The government will come down hard in the down town core to ensure that the F-1 event weekend happens without any disruption of the sexist, elitist, exhibitionist, tourist handjobbing freak show that accompanies the F-1. What will happen next? There will perhaps be a summer of diminishing protests, some compromises, egg-shelly attitudes from both sides and the ruling class media will increasingly admonish the government for not taking sterner measures against the students.  There will be some more chaos and then there will perhaps be a withering slide to calm. Chaos is good. But calm is not. Fatigue will set in.  Because what the forces of globalization and neo-liberalism have done in the last ten years has been a veritable tempest; a gang rape of the land, the people, their savings and the environment and they have gotten away with it by preaching obscenities like "bailout, restraint, austerity, job creation.". Their plea for "calm" is the calm of the graveyard, after the tempest that they have run through the neighbourhood.

What is not obvious in this discourse and so far has been escaping the discussion are TWO things: -

 1) That the students, their supporters and detractors all belong to certain classes in their personal lives as human beings. Classes that have a relationship with the mode of production in capitalist society. They have a relationship with the ownership of the means of production. Either they own the capital or they work for capital. Either they run the wheels of capitalism or they are part of the supply chain to capitalism, the petit bourgeoisie.  Some of them come from working class families; some come from middle class families, some from upper bourgeoisified families and are the children of professionals, who once perhaps even took to the streets in protests against war, globalization, the role of the US, against Reagan, Mulroney, Thatcher, Harper and crew, against the  Israeli-US axis etc.  What the students have highlighted is that Capitalism will continue to reinvent itself. But as an economic and political system, it stands totally discredited. Proponents of Capitalism, nervous in their shoes, are now again opening mildewed copies of the Wealth of Nations, By Adam Smith, to find out what went wrong. But, as far  as class formations go, they do not wish to go anywhere beyond. Because that would be courting "radical" notions! The class roots of this conflict is not being prominently understood.

2) Which brings us to the second point. What kind of society do Quebeckers want? They defeated the Bloc-ists and voted in the NDP. They kicked out Harper and Duceppe and they brought in soft social democrats.Today the students have better analyzed the overall economic policies of the State than their parents did. They have found the organic links between the Rectors and Principals of Schools and the CEOs of companies, between the policies that hike student fees and the policies that gang-roll workers into taking cuts in wages after laying them off. The students have found the connections between those who want “law and order”, those who pollute, between those who want war on oil rich nations and those who want the banks to have runaway, obscene profits. They are all on one side. The other side.  The students’ parents protested, marched and went home sulking and yet satisfied. The students have left that "home", have much more information access and have correctly analyzed that the battery of measures taken by Harper and Charest ( in response to the 2008 meltdown-- unemployment insurance measures, refugee and immigration control, temporary worker policies, raising the retirement age, secretively providing subsidies to banks, openly siding with dictatorial regimes abroad and then selectively playing democratic saviors depending on the dictator having oil or no oil) are all connected. They are connected with student fee increases. Notice until now I have not mentioned the student fees.... Because, in reality, what the students have raised goes far beyond that. It goes goes to the core of what society we want for the future. And what is that society we want? A pale imitation of European Social Democracy? Or do we want more of a grass roots direct democracy from the bottom up? Do we want the charade that is the western democracy and Parliament or do we want neighbourhood democracy, community development, sustainable industrial development and a society built up brick by brick from the bottom up based on equity, rights and freedom? That projection has not been made. And we are at that threshold. Do we want a new style welfare society or do we want a new democracy? 

Will the word "radical" continue to remain a scary proposition? In the offices and administrative high rises around down-town Montreal, the word that is being spread is that Gabriel Dubois-Nadeau is a "commie." Oh shudders ! But will that end all debate conclusively? Will putting labels, resolve the conflict in our minds? 

In the final analysis, the students have figured things out better, but unfortunately they do not have a class formation. They have not really formed unions. They do not have organic links with the working class. The working class themselves have middle class aspirations (naturally, in an advanced capitalist society) and not as famously predicted-- that they would be the first to revolt against injustice and exploitation. (One has rarely ever seen a militant Union demonstration with workers in their overhaul, tools, hardhats marching in an advanced capitalist state, unlike in the underdeveloped world where workers still march with their shovels and pick axes and farming implements). The students do not have community organizations, neighbourhood councils, they have not thought of advancing to the next stage of youth councils, neighborhood democratic cells and popular fronts.

They have not done all this, because they have barely gotten off the starting blocks and have barely begun to realize that University policy, curriculum, budgets, allocation are all based on preserving the sanctity of the advanced capitalist state, by any means necessary. The state has its might, the forces of “law and order.” The students have none. Perhaps they are beginning now to realize that at the core of their resistance to the policies of the government, requires organizations of a new type. Not the campus based student unions only. They need their own networks beyond the campus, their own media, their own support base and external organizers as well. 

What the students need is a real radical organizational structure, where questions of disabling the state are on the agenda. They have correctly gone beyond the campuses and gone into the streets. That is an important step. Now they must organize in the neighborhoods. Interesting times? Bien sûr!

The Students of Quebec today are leaders of tommorow!

I am sending this particularly to friends abroad. And to a lot of doc filmmakers....as well, The students of Quebec are seeking a better world..they are not there for themselves. They are not selfish, they are not rioting and engaging in hooliganism. They are protesting and they are being chased around and being brutalized daily. Its nearly three months and they are relentless in their beliefs. They are not fooling themselves or their futures. They are making sacrifices for all. Yesterday, I saw myself, how the police trigger incidents, provoke and then rush in...
This is a world where democracy is being redefined by new restrictions on immigration, on refugee allocations, on snooping on the net, on exchanging surveillance info with the beast to the south and redefining life, liberty and freedom.
Support them! They are not a nuisance. They are not making your life miserable. they are simply asking you to take notice of larger possibilities tommorow. Education is NOT a priviledge. It is a right. Just like food and tolilets. It is a charter right.
They have a large number of professors, parents, peace activists, environmentalists who have joined them....watch the videos carefully. This is all in French, but the police brutality is the same whether in Montreal or anywhere else in the world. There is a gleeful bunch of old style soverigntists who are trying to cash in. But so what? The folks who are getting beaten up, believe in a caring cooperative commonwealth...not a dog snap at dog's arse world...
Visit the site of Operation 1625 to show your support for the red square...wherever you are....

Bonjour tout le monde,
Vous avez vu comme moi la répression policière qui s'exerce actuellement pour faire taire la démocratie.  Voici quelques liens qui vous permettront de voir les choses d'un autre angle que celui exposé par la droite.
La présence policière est imposante: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYbSEfW0XTc
La police manque de jugement: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150823686507658
Le mépris du Premier ministre: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xcVMe5HLF_Q <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xcVMe5HLF_Q>
J'étais présente à cette manifestation hier et je peux vous dire que la répression policière est très violente.  Est-ce qu'on attend qu'il y ait des morts avant de réagir?
Je vous invite a aller signifier votre appui à la cause étudiante par un simple clic.  Lisez le courriel ici bas.
Réagissons pour que cesse cette attitude anti-démocratique de notre gouvernement.
Manon

Bonjour tout le monde,
Au lien suivant, vous trouverez un site Web qui invite le monde par la géolocalisation de leur ordinateur d'indiquer leur appui au mouvement étudiant. Dès que vous indiquez l'endroit où vous habitez un carré rouge s'ajoute sur la carte. Ainsi, on voit des carrés rouges à travers le monde.
http://www.operation1625.com/index_fr.php
PierrePaul

Leading Canada's public healthcare to the free-market guillotine

(A very interesting, day by day dismantling of Canada, happenning here)
"Beyond 2016-17 the plan is to bind federal healthcare spending to GDP growth, a fundamentally dangerous move toward codifying Canada's public healthcare into capitalist economic terms."



from rabble.ca by Stefan Christoff




http://rabble.ca/news/2011/12/leading-canadas-public-healthcare-free-market-guillotine



National discussion in Canada on the Conservative government's new healthcare financial ultimatum, a take-it-or-leave-it-style proposal, largely revolves around myths. First that financing alone is key to securing a sustainable public healthcare system and second that free-market economic winds will provide sustainable guidelines, via GDP, for viable future government healthcare financing.



A surprise delivery from Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to provincial finance ministers, over a fancy lunch-in at the Chateau Victoria Hotel this past Monday, the plan offers no space for negotiation toward collective national solutions for public healthcare.



Essentially, the Conservative proposal works to strip federal responsibility in crafting, via national negotiations, coherent and sustainable healthcare systems in Canada's provinces and territories. A clear move away from the flawed but important Canada Health Act and a political node to provincial governments already working to allocate federal healthcare financing toward enhancing the corporate, for-profit sector role in delivering healthcare, as already seen extensively in Alberta and Québec.



In reality, the Conservative plan will see six per cent healthcare funding increases until the 2016-17 fiscal year, with little regulation over provincial governments increasing experimentation with public-private partnerships. Beyond 2016-17 the plan is to bind federal healthcare spending to GDP growth, a fundamentally dangerous move toward codifying Canada's public healthcare into capitalist economic terms.



Essentially, the Conservative deal stands as cash for healthcare in the near future and uncertainty for the long term. Cash solutions are never long-term solutions to collective challenges, fast money and free market thinking will not solve the deep problems facing public healthcare in Canada.



Beyond important calls for the Conservative government to negotiate viable terms to sustain public healthcare in Canada, with politicians from provincial and territorial governments, also note that zero official opportunity for the people of Canada to contribute ideas toward the future of public healthcare have been outlined.



In reality, a viable and democratic process in Canada, relating to public healthcare's future, would encourage neighbourhood assemblies and participatory political processes coast-to-coast, similar to the general assembly model celebrated by the Occupy movement.



* read full article at rabble.ca

http://rabble.ca/news/2011/12/leading-canadas-public-healthcare-free-market-guillotine



* illustration for article by Elisabeth Belliveau.

http://www.elisabethbelliveau.com/homepagehopfully.html



---

No More Holywood, No More Rock Star

I read the news today, oh boy!.....and before I recirculated it (see at the bottom) I realized it is that point in time...


-that simply passing around these news bytes about the 99% will not fly much further,

-that staying at "home" and imbibing some radical mirth in each other is perhaps wasteful,

-that writing witty, intelligent and quirky pieces or writing purportedly analytical but dismissive pieces from a political high ground is querulous and counter-productive

-that the pulse in the streets of the world is demanding an end to this philosophy of greed and replace it with a philosophy of better humanism, cooperative outlook, respect for the environment and for greater equity amongst people...

-that this will not be a revolution which will bring about change of government or a change of guard in the palace or in the temples of obduracy

-that all the organized movements in the world have lagged behind in mass mobilization on the basis of a minimum program for change and the time has come to re-examine broader unity--and the 99% are a significant statement of that unity

-that falsehood, falseflag, hypocrisy, secret assasinations, drone killings, the entire gamut of creating "coalitions" and carpet bombing nations to secure the energy and geo-political needs of one or two corporate-military-financial nation-entities, known as the "west" is now publicly discredited and ordinary folks have realized that this veneer of "freedom" to oppress, colonize, grab land and masquerade as wielders of "democracy" must finaly go

-that the defenders of "freedom", "free speech", "free Market" "free world" are the perpetrators of violence against the 99% for too long and their mask has fallen down....

-that at this point in time, the widest age group of people, with the leadership of a young and radical intelligentsia have been inspired to lead and the working people of all ages must now stand by them in solidarity and defend the gains and not let things slide....

-that the belly of the beast has been taken by surprise and they will want to distract by concocting incidents somewhere else..

-that this is a call for the end of that body of thought that was supposed to work when it had the "human touch" (and that liberal baloney must be diss-ed once and for all) , but that it is actually a ruthless system run by financiers and bankers who have hidden their nefarious role for too long and they have now come to full exposure finally and that the meltdown was their cold-ass iceberg value-systems and not the values of the people of the world

-that the Thatcher-Reagan-Bush-Bush-Mulroney-years of deceit, distortion, lies and extremism masquerading as "common sense" to privatize, globalize and seize the world's resources in the name of innovation and the "free spirit", has come to a philosophical end, but must be physically put down now....

-that corporate lawyers like Obama, who rode the wave of a similar dissent and hijacked the emotions and sentiments of the young, must also now pay the price and not hijack the movement with sweet double talk, as Obama is now famous for--no more Hollywood, no more rock star....

-that this is a movement against not only the symbols of corporate greed, but also those nations who have based their existence on plundering the resources of developing nations, using debt financing to print money and go to war to postpone their own intellectual demise

-that this is also a battle against those settler-racist-colonialist forces who divide the people by invoking religion, race and profess a philosophy of superiority...

-and it is great and excellent that the people of the United States have realized that they must stand by not only themselves, but the people of the world and it is their involvement and historic engagement that will inspire change everywhere, because it is only when you disturb the guts of the monster, will the beast start unravelling....

: Movement Breaks Borders
October 16, 2011


An unprecedented wave of protest against the international financial elite and prevailing economic policies swept the globe on October 15. And New Mexico, Mexico and the greater US-borderlands were no exceptions. Protests were chalked up in San Diego, Tijuana, Las Cruces, Ciudad Juarez and Mexico City, among many other places. In El Paso, an encampment was announced beginning Monday, October 17, in the city’s downtown San Jacinto Plaza.



In neighboring Ciudad Juarez, protesters from several groups began their action in the downtown plaza but culminated at the US Consulate, where they blasted US economic domination. The world economy, said activist Julian Contreras, was “leaving many people abandoned while privileging the banks and big businessman and not generating employment or letting the young people study…”
Demonstrators also criticized proposals to legally allow soldiers the ability to search homes without a warrant issued by a judge. The Ciudad Juarez event was held at a time when the city is in the middle of a gala, two-week event organized by the government and private sector to improve the city’s image and attract more investment.
In Mexico City, different protests involving hundreds of young people likewise linked issues of violence related the so-called drug war to economic inequities.
“We should unite all the young people, use the social networks to make a new revolution, and construct a new democracy in which there is no violence and inequalities,” said one student at a new protest encampment set up at the Revolution Monument.
Other Mexican protests were reportedly held or planned in Guadalajara, Morelia, San Cristobal de las Casas, Oaxaca City, Cancun, and more than a dozen other cities.
“From American to Asia, from Africa to Europe, the people are rising up to reclaim their rights and ask for an authentic democracy,” declared dozens of pot-banging demonstrators in Monterrey, Mexico’s violence-torn, old industrial powerhouse of the north.
Two days prior to October 15, more than 100 students rallied at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces in a local manifestation of a new national student movement that’s grown out of the original New York City occupation of Zuccotti Park, now rechristened Liberty Square, on the edge of Wall Street.
Other New Mexico cities witnessing October 15 weekend protests included Carlsbad, Roswell, Farmington, Taos, Santa Fe and, of course, the state’s largest city of Albuquerque.
The October 15 Duke City demonstration was a fusion of Americana, Third World iconography and working-class history.
Members of the AFSCME and 1199 unions were plainly visible in a highly spirited display of pent-up outrage against the economic powers-that-be. A younger crowd of protesters marched up Central Avenue from the Occupy/Liberate Albuquerque encampment at the University of New Mexico (UNM) to hook up an older, sign-waving group already positioned in front of a Wells Fargo Bank in the Nob Hill district.
Amid many fluttering American flags, a Che Guevara banner was draped across a bank fence while a nearby sign quoted the late comedian George Carlin on the American Dream.

A leaflet handed out at the event and bearing a picture of a huge mother pig criticized Wells Fargo’s lending practices and contrasted the earnings between an average bank teller and 2007-2008 company Chairman Richard Kovacevich, who the authors’ claimed made more than 662 times the pay of a teller.
A visual sampling of signs quickly revealed the crowd’s political sentiments: “No One Elected the Koch Brothers, “End Plutocracy,” “Bring Back Sherman Tillman and Glass Stegall,” “My Son Deserves a Future,” “Stop the Wars..,” “We are the Real Tea Party,” “Honk if you are Underpaid.”
And numerous motorists honked back, tapping their horns in such a crescendo of bleeps that it was difficult to hear at times. “We are the 99 percent,” “This is what Democracy looks like” and “People Power” chanted a crowd of hundreds made up of the old, the young and the middle-aged. A man was heard urging the return of FDR.

Covered with placards and armed with a list of websites related to a movement that is leaping across continents and rattling political establishments from north to south and from east to west, a woman who identified herself as Tami from Mountainair said October 15 was directed “against globalization and privatization that the banks are spearheading with their massive amounts of money…we bailed them out, we own them.”

A pair of women discovered an innovative use for one of the orange barrels used in the endless road work that makes driving around Albuquerque these days a navigational nightmare, transforming the barrier into a makeshift drum, while down the sidewalk the Raging Grannies musical combo delivered a round of a capella favorites including “Where Have all Our Taxes Gone,” performed to the tune of the old folk classic “Where Have all the Flowers Gone.”

Addressed to mayors and police chiefs, a printed message protested the clearing of Occupy Movement protesters in cities like Denver and reminded authorities of the existence of something called the First Amendment.

“When people across the Middle East occupied public squares, leaders in Washington mostly cheered these protesters and warned Middle Eastern governments not to use force to clear them…” read the statement.

On one corner Elizabeth Mirra carried a sign that read “Save Military Retirements.” In comments to Frontera NorteSur, Mirra said she was very concerned about proposals heard on Capitol Hill of late to slash military retirement pay by 20 percent and raise health insurance premiums for veterans. Until now, Mirra said she and her retired husband, who served 22 years in the military, have been able to live a very good life on his pension but cuts could force the couple “back to work.”

Mirra said the talk about cushy pensions perhaps fits “admirals and generals,” but the criticisms don’t apply to most veterans who receive 50 percent of their active-duty pay. A one-year resident of Albuquerque, Mirra said she also stood with teachers and other workers whose pensions were similarly threatened. “It infuriates me that that one percent of the people like hedge fund managers and war profiteers pay 15 percent (tax),”she added.
The demonstrators’ demands as well as warnings against state repression were strikingly similar to those heard in Mexican protests that erupted after the 1994/95 economic crisis and bank bail-out, events which ushered in an era of austerity and public debt that is still being paid off years later.

Like other places, the Occupy/Liberate movements in New Mexico are not ending with October 15. A teach-in is planned for UNM this coming week, while the Albuquerque City Council is poised to issue a proclamation on Monday, October 17, in support of the protests.

Backed by City Council Vice-President Rey Garduno, the proclamation puts the contemporary movement in historical context, declaring that “Albuquerqeans know that being the 99% also means dealing with the historical legacy of occupation by foreign powers in pursuit of profit; being targeted today by polluting industries; and watching our tax dollars go to bail out wealthy corporations while young people can’t afford to go

to college….

In continuation, the proclamation declares that workers, people of color, immigrants and indigenous nations “know all too well what occupation really means,” and that the privileged one percent of the population and “their protectors in government” threaten to slash and squeeze safety nets and economically beneficial programs.

The proclamation ends, “We are the 99 percent and we stand with the Occupy Wall Street Movement.”
By Sunday, October 16, less than a month after the first spark was lit in New York, nearly 2,000 cities worldwide were involved in one way or another in the new movement that’s beginning to shake up global politics, according to the website occupytogether.org.

I'd rather not be Anna

(Trust her silence.....she does not liveblog mindlessly, does not pop up on the mainstream TV subjecting herself to shrill journalists, is precise, lays down the line and then cuts to the chase...now, lets not simply be reactive to her and break out into hives.... Sibal, Jaitley, Tewari etc need to be nailed for being the front men for India's authoritarian neo-liberalism...BUT Hazare is not India. r)

Arundhati Roy

 

From The Hindu Arundhati Roy.

While his means maybe Gandhian, his demands are certainly not.

If what we're watching on TV is indeed a revolution, then it has to be one of the more embarrassing and unintelligible ones of recent times. For now, whatever questions you may have about the Jan Lokpal Bill, here are the answers you're likely to get: tick the box — (a) Vande Mataram (b) Bharat Mata ki Jai (c) India is Anna, Anna is India (d) Jai Hind.

For completely different reasons, and in completely different ways, you could say that the Maoists and the Jan Lokpal Bill have one thing in common — they both seek the overthrow of the Indian State. One working from the bottom up, by means of an armed struggle, waged by a largely adivasi army, made up of the poorest of the poor. The other, from the top down, by means of a bloodless Gandhian coup, led by a freshly minted saint, and an army of largely urban, and certainly better off people. (In this one, the Government collaborates by doing everything it possibly can to overthrow itself.)

In April 2011, a few days into Anna Hazare's first "fast unto death," searching for some way of distracting attention from the massive corruption scams which had battered its credibility, the Government invited Team Anna, the brand name chosen by this "civil society" group, to be part of a joint drafting committee for a new anti-corruption law. A few months down the line it abandoned that effort and tabled its own bill in Parliament, a bill so flawed that it was impossible to take seriously.

Then, on August 16th, the morning of his second "fast unto death," before he had begun his fast or committed any legal offence, Anna Hazare was arrested and jailed. The struggle for the implementation of the Jan Lokpal Bill now coalesced into a struggle for the right to protest, the struggle for democracy itself. Within hours of this `Second Freedom Struggle,' Anna was released. Cannily, he refused to leave prison, but remained in Tihar jail as an honoured guest, where he began a fast, demanding the right to fast in a public place. For three days, while crowds and television vans gathered outside, members of Team Anna whizzed in and out of the high security prison, carrying out his video messages, to be broadcast on national TV on all channels. (Which other person would be granted this luxury?) Meanwhile 250 employees of the Municipal Commission of Delhi, 15 trucks, and six earth movers worked around the clock to ready the slushy Ramlila grounds for the grand weekend spectacle. Now, waited upon hand and foot, watched over by chanting crowds and crane-mounted cameras, attended to by India's most expensive doctors, the third phase of Anna's fast to the death has begun. "From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, India is One," the TV anchors tell us.

While his means may be Gandhian, Anna Hazare's demands are certainly not. Contrary to Gandhiji's ideas about the decentralisation of power, the Jan Lokpal Bill is a draconian, anti-corruption law, in which a panel of carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won't have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one.

Whether it works or not depends on how we view corruption. Is corruption just a matter of legality, of financial irregularity and bribery, or is it the currency of a social transaction in an egregiously unequal society, in which power continues to be concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority? Imagine, for example, a city of shopping malls, on whose streets hawking has been banned. A hawker pays the local beat cop and the man from the municipality a small bribe to break the law and sell her wares to those who cannot afford the prices in the malls. Is that such a terrible thing? In future will she have to pay the Lokpal representative too? Does the solution to the problems faced by ordinary people lie in addressing the structural inequality, or in creating yet another power structure that people will have to defer to?

Meanwhile the props and the choreography, the aggressive nationalism and flag waving of Anna's Revolution are all borrowed, from the anti-reservation protests, the world-cup victory parade, and the celebration of the nuclear tests. They signal to us that if we do not support The Fast, we are not `true Indians.' The 24-hour channels have decided that there is no other news in the country worth reporting.

`The Fast' of course doesn't mean Irom Sharmila's fast that has lasted for more than ten years (she's being force fed now) against the AFSPA, which allows soldiers in Manipur to kill merely on suspicion. It does not mean the relay hunger fast that is going on right now by ten thousand villagers in Koodankulam protesting against the nuclear power plant. `The People' does not mean the Manipuris who support Irom Sharmila's fast. Nor does it mean the thousands who are facing down armed policemen and mining mafias in Jagatsinghpur, or Kalinganagar, or Niyamgiri, or Bastar, or Jaitapur. Nor do we mean the victims of the Bhopal gas leak, or the people displaced by dams in the Narmada Valley. Nor do we mean the farmers in NOIDA, or Pune or Haryana or elsewhere in the country, resisting the takeover of the land.

`The People' only means the audience that has gathered to watch the spectacle of a 74-year-old man threatening to starve himself to death if his Jan Lokpal Bill is not tabled and passed by Parliament. `The People' are the tens of thousands who have been miraculously multiplied into millions by our TV channels, like Christ multiplied the fishes and loaves to feed the hungry. "A billion voices have spoken," we're told. "India is Anna."

Who is he really, this new saint, this Voice of the People? Oddly enough we've heard him say nothing about things of urgent concern. Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India.

He does however support Raj Thackeray's Marathi Manoos xenophobia and has praised the `development model' of Gujarat's Chief Minister who oversaw the 2002 pogrom against Muslims. (Anna withdrew that statement after a public outcry, but presumably not his admiration.)

Despite the din, sober journalists have gone about doing what journalists do. We now have the back-story about Anna's old relationship with the RSS. We have heard from Mukul Sharma who has studied Anna's village community in Ralegan Siddhi, where there have been no Gram Panchayat or Co-operative society elections in the last 25 years. We know about Anna's attitude to `harijans': "It was Mahatma Gandhi's vision that every village should have one chamar, one sunar, one kumhar and so on. They should all do their work according to their role and occupation, and in this way, a village will be self-dependant. This is what we are practicing in Ralegan Siddhi." Is it surprising that members of Team Anna have also been associated with Youth for Equality, the anti-reservation (pro-"merit") movement? The campaign is being handled by people who run a clutch of generously funded NGOs whose donors include Coca-Cola and the Lehman Brothers. Kabir, run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, key figures in Team Anna, has received $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last three years. Among contributors to the India Against Corruption campaign there are Indian companies and foundations that own aluminum plants, build ports and SEZs, and run Real Estate businesses and are closely connected to politicians who run financial empires that run into thousands of crores of rupees. Some of them are currently being investigated for corruption and other crimes. Why are they all so enthusiastic?

Remember the campaign for the Jan Lokpal Bill gathered steam around the same time as embarrassing revelations by Wikileaks and a series of scams, including the 2G spectrum scam, broke, in which major corporations, senior journalists, and government ministers and politicians from the Congress as well as the BJP seem to have colluded in various ways as hundreds of thousands of crores of rupees were being siphoned off from the public exchequer. For the first time in years, journalist-lobbyists were disgraced and it seemed as if some major Captains of Corporate India could actually end up in prison. Perfect timing for a people's anti-corruption agitation. Or was it?

At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely.

Now, by shouting louder than everyone else, by pushing a campaign that is hammering away at the theme of evil politicians and government corruption, they have very cleverly let themselves off the hook. Worse, by demonising only the Government they have built themselves a pulpit from which to call for the further withdrawal of the State from the public sphere and for a second round of reforms — more privatisation, more access to public infrastructure and India's natural resources. It may not be long before Corporate Corruption is made legal and renamed a Lobbying Fee.

Will the 830 million people living on Rs.20 a day really benefit from the strengthening of a set of policies that is impoverishing them and driving this country to civil war?

This awful crisis has been forged out of the utter failure of India's representative democracy, in which the legislatures are made up of criminals and millionaire politicians who have ceased to represent its people. In which not a single democratic institution is accessible to ordinary people. Do not be fooled by the flag waving. We're watching India being carved up in war for suzerainty that is as deadly as any battle being waged by the warlords of Afghanistan, only with much, much more at stake.

A Global Manifesto in .txt

Rana Bose © Aug 2011

It start out as 11/9

“Bring the wall down”

“De-regulate” he say,

“Cut the fed to size”

“Fire the Unions”

Blow the Jobs away.

Reagan, the actor,

Has his way.

Catch the fire, now,

Fix the fuckin’ left

Once and forever

“Open the Border,

cut de taxes”

Let’s have “free trade!”

Lets bleed the rest.

Them open the border

Them dice the globe

And lo and behold

They fail, they sink

‘Cos the Ol’ Company

No follow,

No rule so great.

They maximize the margin

They curtail the hard workin’

No matter what

they ship the jobs away.

Then, they lose the game

They lose the fray

So they weep and they fret

To devalue the yen

Cos they can’t pay, mes amis

They Can’t pay.

So the deficit go up

A fool man’s game

Its a social deficit, silly,

That matters mostly

But war can save the day.

War is war,

Everything be fair,

So they get hit big time

The Towers come down

And footsie with Jihadi

Is over with a frown

Now they need the war

the many wars

No Soldier on the ground

(Lesson from Vietnam)

So they use the Hellfire

The predator,

And the MOAB

The mother of all Bombs

A Million dead

No war crime for sure!

The coalition they say,

Of the willing and the brave

But they lose the surplus

They get the debt

Now they play the stock

They play the subprime

And go belly up, dead.

And still they blame

Its US and Them

And they reinvent,

They debate

They check JM Keynes

They check with KM in

Highgate

How the market esta free!

And the vida esta loca!

They blame the poor

They blame the middle class

They blame everyone

They blame the call centre

But not the upper class

Now the dollar take a dive

The empire set the sun

Soon, not yet

Riots everywhere.

In Spain, in ancient Greece

And in jolly inglan

The people run amuck

They burn, they loot

Like Luddites rule

The epilogue

Is what it is.

Neo-liberal is it

They nevah thought

That the native could play

The bourgie game

Checkmate the empire

In their own game

So they scowl mighty hard

Multiculti is a big fail

They say,

Senator in Arizona

Massacre in Utoya

But, still they say,

Him loner

Psycho, juste l’etranger

Not the rule

Just the exception.

No pension, no savings

No credit, no bail

the Economist

cry “lord, what go wrong?’

Why we fail?”



The dollar fail

The nations prevail

They trade and exchange

In dinar, peso, rupee,

Rouble and yen.

Riots in Detroit

In Brooklyn, in LA

Lyon on fire

London like Ghostown

Like the Specials say,

The sea from the North

Come sweeping down

The melting polar

Make a beachhead

Right Downtown.

The Music fail,

The concerto is frail

The painting is falling

The Museum is closing

The pillars of the varsity

Are retreating and cracking.

School and colleges

Not for poor,

Libraries on the wane.

China offers the green card

To grads from Iowa

Mumbai offers jobs

in tea Garden,

For Glasgow engineer

But this solve no problem,

no balm.

The working poor,

Don’t take no beating,

No more,

They come from the ruelle

They take to the rue

They Block the highway

They block the state

In Iran, in Israel, In

Algiers, in Cairo, in Delhi

In DC,

They block the square,

They lock the police

This Reagan actor they say

Gotto go!

The papers, the media,

They debate,

Lack of Role Model

They say,

Entitlement

And moral decay!

They don’t get,

The malaise is deep

The system is sick

Oil and grease

Will not lubricate

Is too late

This Reagan actor

Gotto go, they say.

The BBC will never re-broadcast this again!

My son sent me this saying that the BBC will never rebroadcast this again...

The BBC, the exalted mouthpiece of British stiff-lipped impartial, cut-above-the-rest journalism, talk just like Murdoch's Fox, Skynews and CNN style Breaking News--- high strung, hysteric, boom-bang, swishy missile-sound accompanied vapididty. Screaming, hollering, censuring types...who only want to plant certain catch phrases......through the lips of the interviewee..They want their predominantly white, upper middle class audiences to hear the usual crap..."do you condone" "You were a rioter, werent you once a rioter"...what floosy, ignorant-ass, bitchy nonsense......and then comes the usual finger pointing at immigrants...And who are they interviewing? Darcus Howe, well known writer and editor of Race Today....and the way this person speaks to him...hostile, ignorant, rushed....Its a shame how women get discredited...remember the Galloway interview?  Check this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darcus_Howe

And everyone is watching TV and counting how many blacks, how many whites, how many browns...just to salve their predetermined notions of what went wrong..Everybody is rolling their eyes and their heads...and talking about destruction and landmarks etc etc...and how they care about the heritage stones from 1931.... Well shit! .Aint nobody interested in how the cops put 3 bullets thru the head of a black man...? the same old story in Montreal, in LA, everywhere...then a commission will come up with a story about how the black man was acting dangerous, suspicious inside his car, wriggling around like a beast? maybe? ready to pounce?about to pull out a kleenex? Father of four obliterated.... so they put 3 bullets through his head? Did Jagger once sing about this....hello? and now its become routine.....and then they tried to plant a bullet on police wireless set as coming from him.. turned out it was police issue bullet!!...So that story has dissolved more or less. Meanwhile what these foolish people just dont get is that people riot..not because they want to steal and embellish their apartments...they want to F------- DESTROY...that is what the real reason is...They are disaffiliated, disenfranchised, rejected..... they see vapid looking mannequins staring at them with clothes that cost 500 dollars...and they see it day after day.....as they walk to the unemployment lines in tottenham...and now the usual shit has started...muslims...foreigners...gypsies...carribeans.... and crying south asian shop owners sprinkled in to keep the divisions intact...I guess they never learnt from Watts, Rodney King, Fredy Villanueva.... Check this hastily retrieved phone-saved video....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o&feature=player_embedded









YouTube - Videos from this email Reply Forward

I have pics of Merkel, Sarkozy and Cameron looking mighty deranged...

It is quite telling that the reaction in the mainstream media (after the Norway mass murders) is immediately prone towards using expressions like "fringe elements" , "loners"--(when the Arizona politician was shot , there was continued projection of the lunatic looks of the killer, as if he was not part of a larger consensus against immigrants, but a solitary madman....) whereas when describing an attack by Islamic extremists, a massive web of conspiracies are spun, experts are brought in to describe the connections with some dormant cell of al-queda or "home grown" terrorist networks, bearded imams are shown shrieking hysterically, wreaking havoc etc and CNN makes "breaking news" out of the implications of snow falling over Ramallah.

In this case, the real conspirators are Sarkozy, Cameron and Merkel who only weeks ago lashed out at multiculturalism as a "complete failure." It was a calculated move....Why is that not being shown repeatedly? They are the ones who instigated this......I have many pictures of Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron making pretty nasty, murderous gestures, flickering their eyebrows menacingly, twisting their lips in a sinusoidal wave of disdain towards others....Hello? Is there an International Criminal Court handling this? This was a mass killing, innit? Instigated by a wave of racism against the Roma in Europe, against, Muslims everywhere, against brownskin temporary workers in the US, against Arabs in Canada.... Harper has made borderline statements of the same sort and of course his minister Jason Kenney follows through methodically with deportations, posting of nasty looking guys on the web (all non Caucasian) as dangerous for Canada... Who are the real instigators, I ask?

Here is an alternate take below.

Bombing, Mass Shooting Kill At Least 87 In Norway

By Mike Head



23 July, 2011

A bombing and mass shooting in Norway on Friday have left at least 87 people dead. Following a large explosion directed against government buildings in the capital, Oslo, a right-wing anti-Islamic extremist opened fire with automatic weapons on youth at a camp run by the ruling Labour Party on nearby Utoya Island.



At 3:30 p.m. Friday, powerful explosions rocked a government quarter in downtown Oslo that is home to the office of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, the finance ministry and the country’s biggest tabloid newspaper Verdens Gang (VG). Seven people died and 15 were wounded in the blasts.



Some two hours later, a massacre occurred at the youth camp, attended by about 600 people. The gunman, dressed as a police officer, fired repeatedly on a crowd of mostly 15- and 16-year-old campers, killing at least 80. More deaths are expected to be confirmed as police and rescue teams search the island and the surrounding lake for bodies and wounded survivors.



Police authorities subsequently arrested Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old native Norwegian with known links to anti-Islamic Christian fundamentalist groups. Norwegian media said Breivik had many right-wing connections, including a Facebook account in which he described himself as a Christian conservative.



Norway’s national broadcaster NRK and other media posted pictures of Breivik. According to Norwegian TV2, the suspect belongs to far-right groups in eastern Norway and may have registered two weapons—an automatic weapon and a Glock-type pistol—under the name of one of the groups. The Swedish news site Expressen said he was a self-described nationalist and had written a number of posts critical of Islam.



The island shootings were cold-blooded. Terrified witnesses described young people jumping into the lake or hiding behind buildings in a desperate attempt to escape the gunfire. One, 21-year-old Dana Berzingi, said the fake police officer ordered people to come closer, then pulled weapons and ammunition from a bag and started shooting.



Another 15-year-old eyewitness, Elise, told the Associated Press: “He first shot people on the island. Afterward he started shooting people in the water.” Others said the gunman repeatedly shot his victims to make sure they were dead.



Rune Thomas Ege, one of the only journalists on Utoya when the shootings took place, reported: “We saw people still being dragged out of the water. We saw people being taken care of by paramedics on the shore. There were some horrific scenes of the young kids, some crying, some shaking while watching paramedics trying to save their best friend’s life.”



Earlier, in the city, huge blasts blew out windows and caused structural damage. Images on Norwegian television showed the prime minister’s office and other buildings heavily damaged, footpaths covered in broken glass and smoke rising from the area. “People are lying in the street covered in blood,” Ingunn Andersen, a journalist with public radio NRK, said from the scene.



Before details about the alleged killer emerged, political leaders, both domestic and international, insinuated that the attacks were the work of Islamic extremists and declared that the violence underscored the need to prosecute the “war on terrorism.”



President Barack Obama and European leaders swiftly vowed solidarity with NATO member Norway, whose Labour-Socialist Left-Centre coalition government has 500 troops in Afghanistan and is participating in NATO air strikes in Libya.



The Norwegian police had earlier in the year warned of right-wing anti-Islamic groups seeking provocations. In an unclassified report released in February, Norway’s intelligence police agency (PST) stated: “An increased level of activity among some anti-Islamic groups could lead to increased polarisation and unease, especially during, and in connection with, commemorations and demonstrations.”



Friday’s atrocity occurs under conditions where governments and media outlets across Europe, including the Scandinavian states, have condoned or encouraged anti-Muslim racism and anti-immigrant chauvinism. This appeal to the most reactionary and backward sentiments is aimed at diverting popular opposition to austerity measures and the growth of social inequality.

Israel Lobby Loses fight against anti-Semitism

(A friend, fellow Montrealer and member of Independent Jewish Voices, Scott Weinstein has sent in the following post. Worth a read.)

By Scott Weinstein, July 11, 2011

Remember the wacko U.S. statement in Vietnam after years of madness: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."?



2011 will mark the year the Israel Lobby destroyed the fight against anti-Semitism in order to save Israel.



Funny friends of the famous Simon Wiesenthal Center who watch too much Don Rinkles, just compared Hitler to Canadians organizing the Gaza aid flotilla challenging Israel’s blockade ("CANADA'S "SEA HITLER" SET TO JOIN GAZA FLOTILLA").



I'm no holocaust scholar, but I'll bet the Wiesenthal experts 5 to 1 that Hitler wasn’t a Canadian human-rights activist committed to non-violence. Neo-Nazis should thank the Israel Lobby for their efforts to make “Mr. Hitler” respectable.



Timed just before Quebec's Just for Laughs Festival this week, the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism released their long delayed report. Despite contrary evidence from their cherry-picked witnesses of university leaders and police chiefs, they claim anti-Semitism is a growing menace in Canada. Especially in universities. Especially by Palestinian human rights organizations.



Even the stalwartly pro-Israel Globe and Mail newspaper thought that was cute.



Jewish Zionist leaders iced a deal merging with the powerful Jew-despising Christian Zionists to create the Mother-of-all Israel Lobbies. These being the Christians that have a plan for us Jews. They pray for the End of Days when Jews return to Israel, slay the Muslims, and then the Rapture wipes out all remaining non-believers in Jesus Christ (i.e. Jews). Imagine the pitch by the Jewish machers selling the merger: "OK, first they give us all of Palestine, then we become their soldiers for Armageddon, like reverse Shabbos goys, and only after do they plan to exterminate us. But we can finagle the last bit. What could possibly go wrong?"



The Israel Lobby is bored with civil rights, civil discourse and even liberal Zionists. This year, a new umbrella agency for Jewish and Israel advocacy snuffed out the Canadian Jewish Congress. It's 24/7 Israel now.



Do you think their anti anti-Semitism shtick is a joke? They’re laughing all the way to the bank. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Anti Defamation League and the B'nai Brith rake in $millions to ‘fight’ anti-Semitism.

I think they got busted too often embellishing stories of antisemitic incidents. Like the car salesman who hustled my grandfather to buy a new Oldsmobile every five years, the Israel Lobby upgraded the definition to include "the NEW anti-Semitism". Now those of us organizing against the Israeli blockade of Gaza and Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, are dangerous anti-Semites. Somewhere, a clever Zionist is getting a car payment because of my activism.



What will the desperate Israel Lobby think of next? Loyalty oaths to Israel? State sanctions against Jewish organizations supporting Palestinian human rights? That was Israel’s government’s agenda last year. The main difference between North American and Israeli politicians? Israeli politicians are not afraid to criticize Israel.



So the next time someone like Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper affirms his righteous fight against anti-Semitism, appreciate his sense of humor. He’s got a plan.

Mamata B and the Politics of Hon-Hon

There is a Bengali expression that describes the way Mamata Bannerjee, the new Chief Minister of West Bengal, India, charges down the corridors of her office building (Writer’s) and the various hospitals, information centres, cultural institutes she pays surprise visits to. It is called Hon-Hon. Bengali is a language where physical sounds made by human actions or the sounds made outside in the atmosphere turn into words. Thus Hon-Hon is the sound of air that swirls and turns around sharp corners like waves of compression and expansion, thus creating the acoustic effects of drag and swirl which even a wind tunnel experiment cannot accurately simulate. In Fluid Dynamics, the Navier-Stokes equations are hard to integrate and resolve over a difficult topography. But the impact of her Hon-Hon walk is now becoming pronounced and apparent. Her intent seems to be, to shock and awe. She charges down corridors, her hallmark rubber slippers slapping up the floors and streets of Bengal, while rotund Ministers and pot-bellied security personal trip over each other trying to keep up with her. She cuts through the veritable detritus that surrounds a sycophantic society, desperate and unsure as to what is her next move. She is good at this Hon-Hon walking methodology. It is said to be a way of speed and surprise, about delivering as promised, which the CPIM-ised Bengali bureaucracy had lost touch with. It is the notion of serving the people, serving the customer, meeting promised goals instead of joking about it non-challantly in various adda sessions (tea ‘n gossip while priming their cache of lethal weaponry) in 3 story mansions in Lalgarh surrounded by hemorrhaging tribal peasantry demanding basic constitutional rights. It is like a merry-go round session for a nation that has forgotten how to move and deliver. So far, the Hon-Hon tactic seems to have impressed quite a few people. What if she turns up at a government office at the ungodly hour of 11 AM, when everyone has barely begun to arrive? Or how about a Police Station at 10 AM, where the duty officer is reading Ganashkati, the CPI(M) daily or Sangbad Pratidin, while a retinue of people are waiting in an adjacent room to file their First Information Reports?

Mamata Banerjee has gripped the city like a giant spider in a white sari; hovering over Bengal like an escaped genii. Not a day passes without the TV channels and newspapers, giving their audience a minute by minute description of her daily Hon-Hon patrolling routine. She points, she smiles, she namashkars, she shows irritation, she points again and orders people around to take immediate action on pensions, on crooked pictures in Art galleries and poor waiting rooms in institutes. She has the energy of a hurricane in comparison to the roly-poly cotton balls that masqueraded as working class heroes for 34 years.

She ripped down a 34 year old moronic “left” empire, that had converted the concept of Leftism into a stolid, corrupt, misogynist, posturing, in-effective, hollering conglomeration of Bengali middle class title-seekers, just as the upper caste and Brahmin tax collectors did during the British Permanent Settlement era. Screw the poor, unleash gangster politics, bend over backwards to appease criminal corporations and known ore-snatchers and snatch the land of poor minority peasants (whose emancipation they themselves, thumping their chests, had declared some decades ago as their great Land reform miracle) and finally infeudalizing the entire state apparatus with their gawking yes men and women. The new Talukdars, Rai Bahadurs, Munshis of the last 34 years were the enforcers of the CPI(M), as the upper castes had been during British rule. The British practiced their own colonial form of “rational rule”, mediating between the native “rajahs” and the CPI(M) used their Biker gangs and the completely indoctrinated Police Officers to jerk around the aboriginal people of certain districts of Bengal, who only wanted some basic rights. People talk about Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh, as the only crimes of the CPI (M). The only reason why they lost! Why have people stopped remembering Marichjhapi and the rape, murder and burning of Tapasi Malick?

Now, Mamata Banerjee in spite of all the accusations of erratic behaviour, strange pronouncements and strange political affiliations on her part, does seem to have a game plan. Behind the Hon-Hon run, that she has so well perfected, she has collected some progressive folks, well-known articulate thinkers, planners, experienced economists and philosophers, who wish to “change” things. Who are these people? What is their class outlook? Who do they represent? What is the change they want? No one seems to know. Do they want to bring in genuine sustainable development or another injection of neo-liberalism swathed in bullshit slogans like Ma Mati and Manush ? (The mother, the soil and the Human Being, whatever it implies). Do they want to bring in the same discredited policies of the IMF and the World Bank or do they want to introduce some sort of a social democratic welfare state, with the chains of graft, corruption and bureaucracy, broken and severely contained? Everyone is talking about reviving Bengal. (After all no one can get rid of the inherent corruption of the Indian State, No Baba, No Mama! As the rest of India seems to be so convulsed with.)

Shades of someone we know in the White House? Who shattered the dreams of a lot of his followers within two years of taking office? Mamata has shown some of the same propensities. Promising change, fairness, equity and strangely enough and identically like Barack Hussein, who came on the scene flashing his toothy good humor and ear-to ear rhetoric promising paribartan a la american. Yesterday, interestingly, her government declared that easy tapping of phone lines will no longer be possible. Something Barack flipped and flopped over and could not put together. That’s a small snatch of fresh air, really. She also announced that she is having a hard time finding qualified IAS and IPS officers. No wonder there! She is looking for non-groveling humans. She also declared that any physical attacks on the opposition by her Trinamool henchmen would be handled by an impartial body. Something which the CPIM lied about and twisted facts around and could never commit to do, as recently as a few months ago when the Netai massacre happened.

What is however important about this strident style, is that it may just be waking up the Bangali conservative Leftist out of his confidence-bound stupor of thirty four years. And in the background is a strange mix of personnel, from corrupt old Congressmen from the SS Ray era, former Naxalites, current left of centre anti-globalization politicos, some IMF-leaning structuralists and very simply some naïve hooligan enthusiasts with no ideology whatsoever. This Hon-Hon style, however, seems to be raising the curiosity of even the 40% of the electorate that did not vote for her. But what will the Hon-Hon style really achieve? Now that Mamata has come to power, will she reopen all the issues from the past, so that a proper investigation is done of the methodical manner in which the CPIM infested the body-politique of Bengal? Will she examine how the entire level of education, sponsorship scandals and transfer raj that the CPIM created, be dismantled? Perhaps when all is said and done, this Hon-Hon style is a mere charade, a distraction to wean people away from the real fundamental social change that Bengal really needs.

Badal Sircar and Wall-Free Third Theatre

In my theatre life, Badal Sircar remained the singlemost influence for free, uninhibited, unsponsored, un-walled theatre... it made me adapt Michil into a North American context as Death of Abbie Hoffman. Very few people in the west knew about him.....and no one I know of, used fluidity and scene to scene transition as imaginatively as him. Not Boal, not Brecht..but Badal... He passed away this week..Respect and Peace....
Here is a link to a letter he wrote some time ago..
http://humanitiesunderground.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/a-letter-from-badal-sircar/

The Next OBL

If you have been baffled and did not admit to it, try and understand how China has been baffled....they are tied to the monster......in the wake of the the drunkenness of the US economy and its utter failure to regulate its banks and financial institutions and the utter torpor of a fellow named Obama to make good on the notions of 'change' that he engendered.....The Chinese are nervous as hell. But they are constantly studying and changing things quietly. Taking countermeasures.

When a country does not make products for domestic welfare or consumption, (and depends entirely or mostly on export), at some point it will bite. China knows that. And has started switching gears massively. Since 2008 itself, it has decreased its export dependency by 10% points. At the same time China is wedded to the US dollar. So it needs the US to "recover" while China itself must consider alternate measures like trading in domestic currency with neighbours and others. Capital does not solve problems. It is a promissory device. It must be invested in solid projects that have high yield. Low Yield treasury bills are no longer insurance. That is why China wants to ensure that its billions in dollar reserves are invested well, instead of trying to engage in subsidizing the US economy by buying bonds and in turn enabling the US to buy "low cost" goods. That tacit arrangement is not working out well, because the US economy is basically unproductive. So China now wants to buy out brand American corporations, if it is allowed to. If there is a fuss, they will walk away. Buying up brand American companies is not easy, because the Tea party and others get on the JINGO trail immediately.

So, do you want to know who will be the next devil for the West? Well, imagine a nation governed by a Communist Party, already the world's second largest economy, with huge investments all over the world, with fairly advanced defence systems to protect itself and a not-so-bad reputation in Latin America and Africa. Now you need to undermine that country. There is no Ben Laden there! In fact you do not even have a Fidel there! The entire leadership is elusive and unknown and do not go back decades. But they are "Communists." They know the market economy. Sometimes better than the loudmouths in western capitalist institutions. So, watch out you will see a wave of evil deeds from China coming up on the news waves....they sell poison toys, they spy, they sabotage countries' environments,they sell adulterated food, they prop up terrorists, they manufacture lethal weapons and deploy them in outer space...You will soon see more Chinese spies and scientists being deported.... Check this interview below....Chinese terrorist will be found under bridges......Chinese will be found spawning terrorist Venezuelans.....Chinese hand will be discovered in bombings...Dont be surprised. Because, it is not all about Oil/Gas and other such banalilties. It is about geo-political controls, shipping lanes, warm water ports and high mountain airports, satellite stations and other vantage points for the continuing neocon agenda. The Chinese have a policy of not interfering in the affairs of other countries, as they would not want others to interfere in theirs. So, they watch and get baffled by what's happening and quietly take counter measures. 

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6590

The Meaning of a Conservative Majority In Canada, for Quebec

In a picture in Le Devoir, this morning, Stephen Harper had a spare tyre spilling over his beltline, as he smiled awkwardly/arrogantly in his usual stage-managed style. Michael Ignatieff looked resigned and melancholic. Jack Layton looked like he was coming out of the dark from backstage, smiling, moving swiftly on his crutch.
A bunch of us writers, painters, filmmakers and musicians from here in Montreal have been exchanging angry notes amongst ourselves. We should have been rejoicing. Instead we are mighty pissed off with Canada. With the greater Toronto area especially.  That is the main area that Stephen Harper targetted and focussed attention on and they delivered. They delivered like slobberring right wingers, all over themselves and with enormous glee. Like bums in a sugar shack, they huddled, leaked, overflowed and messed up the Canada that most of us were born into or came to live in. Mr Harper even pretended to understand cricket with them during the World Cup and swallowed hard on samosas, dimsums, bakhlavas, piroggis and kebes which he had never had, and they drooled over him. The constituency with the largest Muslim population of Canada voted for the most anti-Muslim government ever in Canada. So much so that even stalwart Liberals like Dryden, Volpe and Kennedy got wiped out.

For now, the issue is really about being radical humanists. That is the distilled truth. About being radical and being humanist. Forget socialism for now. Forget even about using the word capitalism as an evil-ism to score a few points amongst your own private band and confreres in socialist clubs. Most folks do not understand capitalism or socialism (their economic structures, that is, and their relationship to class),except as a word of abuse, on either side. So let's drop those concepts.

 It is all about forthright, no bull-shit ideas about caring for others, sharing this earth. That is what it boils down to. I mean do you want to live in peace and harmony with your fellow citizens and not be run over by  poverty, desperation, destitution, marginalization, every block that you walk on rue Ste Catherine, while glassy-chrome-copper towers rise above you like arrogant totem poles? For that you need a humanist approach. Apparently in greater Toronto they can live with that differential. In Montreal and Quebec they cannot.

 And then you have to ensure that a handful of rogues do not get away with murder, mayhem, media control, non-constitutional shenanigans, secret arms deals, form cartels for worldwide domination of banks, shipping lanes, energy resources and thereby promote a racist hatred towards those who oppose them. For that you HAVE to fight by whatever means necessary. For that you need the radical approach. By the way, I am quite aware that some folks still use the word "radical" in a pejorative sense.  So it comes down to being radical and humanist. That is radical humanism.

 It is all about a caring, healthy society, which not only fights the financial deficit, but also the social deficit. It is about not getting bought over by the constantly erected latest "bogeyman" politics,  of fearing communism, "islamic" terror and other pumped up nightmares that the western world has thrived on and driven it's citizens to swear by. It is about not being gleeful and pedestrian and cheering with bloodlust on the streets of DC and making that into Canadian culture.


 Does Quebec, in Canada, understand it better than others? Not entirely. Quebec has also flip flopped. For example, we voted for the ADQ, the racist underbelly of Quebec nationalism cloaked in the same drunken patriotism that Americans outside the White House engage in, when Ben L's assasination was announced. Quebecers like to listen to straightforward talk from the heart. If you screw up, you admit it. Do not dodge issues. If you are sincere about your beliefs , come across clearly. That is what Jack Layton did on Tout le monde  en parle, on Radio Canada. That is what Rene Levesque did.

So, why did Quebec vote for the NDP? Because, basically Quebecers see the Liberals and the Torys as red neck federalists who have a patronizing attitude towards Quebec. So enough is enough, say Quebecers. The NDP comes out swinging as young and hip, playing post-punk, techno jazz in their rallies, all women bands, whereas Torys and Libs are still playing Na-na-na-na etc etc..Because the Torys and Libs are still in a hockey arena, in Prozac college, if you know what I mean... Because Torys and Libs still wear bow ties and tuxes....Because Torys and Libs still sound like "governing" types and NDPers sound like opposition rabble, like working men and women, sometimes ready to hit the streets.  Torys and Libs are still being driven around in limos. NDPers are down on walking and subwaying. See? So the Torys and Libs are really off the rails in Quebec. But still surviving in Canada.A few of the NDP kids who got elected, were not even in town, did not even participate in debates, did not even know what the NDP was all about six months ago. But they liked the sincerity and the program of the NDP. So they jumped in with a vague social democratic conscience.  Will it work out? Will Quebec really redefine itself, after having dumped ethnic nationalists?

 The NDP is going to HAVE TO give a hard run to Canada's pole sitters, the fence sitters, the centrists and the redefiners of Canada. What Ralph Nader could not do, Jack Layton has done. That is the essential truth. But it is an open battlefield. Yes, the question is, are you with them (U.S) or are you with us (meaning US). I hope the NDP themselves realize that they are on the threshold of a shift in the mindset and not just in their party numbers. Because if the NDP plays games and plays it safe and engages in rump politics and do not stand up for the reasons they have been voted in for, the next logical revolt in Quebec will be for separation, for sure. Because Quebecers do want a different society. A paranoid, but different society. It is not a wonder therefore, that Quebec wants to control immigration into the province. Look what happened, they would say, to the Greater Toronto Area. Post-liberalization, small business mindsets who jumped on the "economic stability" bandwagon of Harper and delivered for him. They were being plain, opportunist bastards. Short-sighted. Not thinking about the country and its prerogatives and independence, but bringing along their tribal affiliations, their local-minded parochialism.  They hooped and hollered while Harper and Jason Kenney plan to shove them all eventually  into a neutered evangelist heaven... And at that point in time, these new Canadians will realize what they voted for.At that point in time, we have to go beyond radicalism and humanism!

Quebecers are duty bound to be left of Church as far as they can go, because they know that there is no going back to the right of the Church. Because the Church was hell...Quebec does not like the Centre. The rest of Canada still bows to the Church and the feudal Queen. Canada did not have its silent revolution, yet. In Quebec, there is no Centre Politics. There is only the Church, which is at the centre. So even in remote areas, where they remember Duplessis, the Socreds, they want a soft social democracy...no church influence. From time to time there are distractions, like some fool insists on wearing the burkha in a bank or in a government office. So that whips Marois and gang into action. It's a nice deflection and folks like ADQ rise and collapse... But in the final analysis, we artists, poets, writers, journalists... we demand freedom...freedom to write, freedom to be respected for writing about ordinary folks and their lives and yes, be paid for that...and make a living out of breaking on the streets, singing, jamming, bombing walls with multicoloured hues and getting paid for bringing life into the souls of people, for making daring documentaries and kick-ass French theatre (sometimess too navel gazing though) and set ourselves aside from plastic and white North America. How come Quebec produces La La La Human Steps, Cirque de Soleil and not Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver or Toronto, which has all the pretensions of being nearly New York? Zippo. Why? Maybe Canada should realize that Quebec is somewhat different, finally, and stiff-handed Harper (he shakes hands with his kids!) should finally give up on Quebec. As much as I love Toronto, more and more, everytime I visit her, there is this uneasiness that is creeping in.

Quebec voted correctly. Canada voted wrong, mostly.

The Ghosts of 1984

For those who cannot see the rot and lies in the entire governing system in India, in Modi's BJP and Godhra, in Sonia Gandhi's Congress and the 1984 pogroms against Sikhs(and Baranagore Cossipore before) and the Bhattacharya/Basu's CPIM and Marichjhapi/Nandigram/Netai massacres----- there must be some worshipful neo-or proto- nazi state of mind in play ( a large number of Indians have always had an admiration for the likes of Hitler).  For in saluting what is touted as the world"largest"democracy, in believing that somehow India will prevail, despite itself, because of its huge faith in the growing mall rat class (.2% of the population) who are distributing amongst themselves the 8% "growth", there must be no conscience left.

None of these 3 major political parties in India reflect an iota of decency, due process, a sense of real compassion for the majority poor of this country, nor for minorities---they laugh and jeer at the poor behind their backs, they kill and rape lower castes everyday, they send their goon para-military after the nation's aboriginal inhabitants, her forests, her rivers, her mountains to extract resources for foreign entities...Is it not ironic that Indians and their expatriate friends have to seek justice in the courts of the United States, whose government is the largest and practically only goon force in the world! And this is very simply because the Indian judicial system has collapsed. It makes "favorable" decisions based on "public perception" , its judges pronounce judgements in favour of companies like Vedanta, because one of the presiding judges "has shares" in the company and so "they must be a good company." And then they commit Dr. Binayak Sen to a life in prison on evidence that even a tin pot dictatorship would blush to carry out. And so we must find "other" ways to glorify this India, some other deflectionary notions, like heritage, like the spirit of non-violence (another myth about the Indian body-politique) or the achievements in cricket perhaps?! And what do leftists and human rightists do? They write columns like this in obscure newsgroups, raving and ranting about definitions. At least the youth of North Africa do not waste time. Please read this piece in Open Magazine
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/voices/the-dead-do-speak

Harper Slaps the Egyptian People-as expected

As expected, Stephen Harper and his handful of schlerotic political neanderthals (mainly from the western reaches of Canada), maintained a deafening silence thoughout the eighteen days of the Egyptian revolt, except for occassional talk about "stability" and then finally when Mad dog Moooobarick finally moseyed on to Sharm-El Sheikh, he stated it was ok, "if Egypt maintained its Peace Treaties." That's all? Nothing about the heroic sacrifices of the Egyptian youth, workers, women, children and elderly? Does Harper and his pea-brained consorts realize that this is a SIX-Thousand Year Old Civilization he is commenting on? Does Harper and his paranormal, tar-sand intoxicated mendicants  realize that there are people out there with dark skins who have intellectual wisdom and capabilities, historical awareness, organizational skills and enormous mental strength that surpasses the narrow mindset of his starchy set?

Hello! peace treaty with who? The Fiji Islands? Tierra Del Fuego? Saturn? Does the Arab world really care anymore for Canada's opinion? Does the whole world, including the United States give two hoots about Canada's foreign policy statements on the Middle East? Do Canadian politicans think that their brains are so enlarged and profoundlly reflective on world affairs, that Canada's opinion counts anywhere? Does Harper and his brand of Canadians think that people from the "underdeveloped" world don't have the chutzpah to organize, overthrow and grind to dust the last vestiges of Arab subservience to the US-Israel axis?

Harper has reduced Canada to a non-player in the world of environmental politics, womens' issues, aboriginal rights and now its cornerstone policy--defend everything about Israel, even if Israel itself has a hard time defending its own actions--is beginning to look comical in the eyes of the Arab world.
Here is a piece from the Globe and Mail, an otherwise staunch defender of Canadian right of center politics. Refreshingly, it draws a vague line in the sand. Between obtuse, obstinate, silly, muddle-headedness and dignified statesman-like politics. Even realpolitik is not understood by this Harper bunch.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/why-did-ottawa-drag-its-feet-on-mubarak/article1904399/

Baba Ram Twitter or Guru Wiki...

There is a tendency amongst a lot of western liberals to go ape about Wikileaks, beyond and above what are its obvious and spectacular contributions.


Wikileaks is good when it exposes Imperialism and its secretive and militarist execution of global domination. Wikileaks is good when it exposes the real language and racist mindset of western diplomats. Wikileaks is good when it exposes videos that depict the lawlessness of the US and other military in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wikileaks is good when it exposes the fact that the Indian state has used torture routinely in Kashmir and elsewhere. Wikileaks is excellent when it clearly reveals that the Saudis are never to be trusted by the Muslim world.

Wikileaks is also very good because it snatches away the control of mainstream media (and the resultant cultural consensus) and provides "other" information (although there is significant evidence that it also collaborates on what it will not release). Wikileaks also expands on the notion that the industrial working poor are not the only people by definition who are fertile for surplus value extraction. Knowledge workers are at the core of creating the code that allows the gears and cogs of the information industry to turn. Their surplus value extraction is increasingly critical for the military-informational complex. Drones, satellite based warfare, counter-hacking, cyber surveillance would not be happenning if this farm of ants were not at work so industriously. Thus their rebellion against the complex is a good thing. Otherwise why else would a Canadian Conservative Minister call for the assasination of Assange on an open line TV show?

But those who say that Wikileaks and Facebook and Twitter, as social media and information technology are going to bring about revolutionary transformation in despotic areas of the world, be it Tunisia or Iran are actually displaying an old "centre country" colonial attitude towards the "periphery". It is the old notion of "modernity", liberating the backward and the medieval. It is an archaic notion that western democracy and information exchange would be a godsend fora pre-capitalist society. For them, what is a battle tactic, a guerilla weapon, is made to sound like "enlightenment" theory for the underdeveloped. It is like worshipping at the altar of the ultimate transcendental information guru--Baba Ram Twitter or Guru Wiki. As some superficial and official sounding liberal once said (I dont know who, although it has been ascribed to many) ... It is the economy, stupid! It is the plight of people, poverty, hunger, lack of shelter, poor health, disease, lack of justice and personal freedoms that make people self-immolate and rebel. Twitter does not do it. Twitter and facebook and even SMS-ing are like lookout couriers for the street corners and rooftops in the real world of rebellion. They are battle hardware, perhaps. The whistle and bird calls in the jungles that guerillas use. To suggest that Wikileaks is the harbinger of a social movement, the unifying core of a world movement opposed to the politics of globalization etc is perhaps in that colonial or post colonial mode, where khaki clad monkeys from the west tried to tell real monkeys in forests how to whistle and talk english......Well, us monkeys have been twitterring forever. It is our culture. We talk and talk and talk, until we turn blue. That is our problem. And now the new info classes have acquired the same disease. Talk and talk and talk and not do much else. But now, they are claiming they are a movement! Not!

-In deepest appreciation of Martin Niemöller

-They first came for the Muslims and we said…fuck it, I am not a Moslem

And anyway, they all end up being Pakistanis

Then they came for the Dalits, and we said we are just about all Brahmins or

Roughly thereabouts... We’ve been shafted too long …

-Then they came for the Christians, and we said good for the nation,

Them Christians only convert….

-Then they came hard and fast on the women and the folks who were against the dams,

And we said we are for development, so screw ‘em

-Then they went for the Sikhs

And we said, send them all to UK, Canada and New Zealand

They’ve been gunning down the Nax for forty years or so and we said

The Nax are violent, we are not…we swear by DIR, POTA, MISA, UAPA, FALANA, DHIMKA

Then they came for Sankar Guha Neogy, they bled him to death

We said nothing.

Then they killed a hundred other Maoists, who also fought back and killed quite a few

We said tit for tat to anti-nationals

Now they come for Dr. Binayak Sen and we are mighty speechless

Because it is our speech they took with the British Act from 1870

Now they will come for me and the house will be empty

Except roaches, maggots, fleas and bugs to defend me.

Soli Sorabji about Dr. Binayak Sen's conviction: "We look like the laughing stock of the world"

Only those who occupy, colonize, stifle and displace need an act to define sedition


Only those who cannot deal with dissent need to define sedition.

Only those who create notions of “national interest” to deflect from their scamster plans need the power of sedition.

Only those who are in a major rush to sell off the nation’s resources need the powers of sedition.

Only those who need a national hysteria to counter a national shame need the instrument of sedition.

Only cowards, recluses, emperors, dynasty huggers and turbaned gnomes, without fig leaves to cover up their diseased crotches, need the power of sedition.

Only those who want to dispense justice hastily and do not have the intelligence to listen out, contend, understand and bear the burden of truth need the claws of sedition

Only, the nervous, the fearful and the spineless who project their insecurities by pretending to be nation-huggers, need sedition like they need a windup toy- to keep up the noise so that they can drown out the signals from the people.

Only the pusillanimous, spineless, lily-livered need the notion of sedition to salve their putrid mental sores-they have no unguent other than to cry sedition

Only the preservers of the status-quo, the myths, and the pursuers of self-promoted trophies about growth need the powers of sedition to preserve their enclaves

Only the .2 percent population who have seen 9 % growth need the powers of sedition.

The British needed the powers of sedition and they handed it down when they left after 200 years.

Making a film is like stepping into a battlefield where the wings of inspirational angels are napalmed

Here below is an interview with Montreal film-maker Julian Samuel, a painter and writer, as well, who is often seen passing by the well-known eatery Les Enfant Terribles on rue Bernard rambling in disgust, in a Punjabi dialect that only he comprehends. Julian, after all that is said and done, is a rejectionist with an expansive frame of mind. Too bad, this was not published--I think it should be read by those who are bored with Montreal as an art alley of some sorts..

Karolyne Marengo interviews Julian Samuel, August 2005



KM: Why are you - or were you - so interested by Imperialism?



JS: Imperialism is a continuum that deserves exposure in documentaries. Imperialism not only transforms world trade, but also transforms the very way in which one sees the world and relations within it. Historically, this force expropriated cotton grown by bonded labour in India, shipped it to shirt-making factories in Manchester which then sold finished shirts back to India for profits. Imperialism transforms oil from the middle-east into condoms; toothbrushes; DVDs or videotape which is used to archive our collective memories of the war in Vietnam; the Intifada; Britney Spears singing in an airplane powered by refined oil; Martin Luther King speaking in Washington, being killed in Montgomery; Space Shuttles blowing up; the World Trade Towers collapsing. The goal of Christian imperialism, internally, is the same as its foreign policy projections: to convince a chubby, television-addicted population to purchase meaningless glitter made by slaves who ‘earn’ two dollars a day.



KM: How would you define cinema?



JS: Cinema is defined by the direct threat it poses to a conservative understanding of the term “democracy”. Throughout its history, cinema has been subjected to and has tolerated censorship; its transformative potential is so great that the people who fund its production and those who distribute it are inexorably censorial and so controlling that many accusatory human-rights stories are ruthlessly suppressed. Only politically suitable and safe stories make it to the production and distribution stages.



Elia Suleiman’s ‘Divine Intervention,’ a film about Palestine, was subjected to hardcore American censorship: On 20 December 2002, ABC News reported, that: “Academy Executive Director Bruce Davis informed Balsan (producer – my note) that the film was ineligible for consideration in next year's Best Foreign Language Film category because Divine Intervention emerges from a country not formally recognized by the United Nations.



( http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79485&page=1 ).



KM: What’s your defination of documentary cinema?



JS: Our national definer of the documentary, The National Film Board of Canada, produces meek, inconsequential works and ought not to get public funding. Writers and film-makers have learnt to use the tool of allegory to cut the noose of the censor. Progressive documentaries are defined by their fight against conservatism: We exist because conservatism exists.



Film-makers can now easily made fiction or documentaries with digital cameras and computers. Although small distribution networks for independent documentaries exist, there isn’t large scale distribution for these documentaries. Large-scale distribution or TV is controlled by the same mentally ill, wretched money hungry individuals who inflict cinema.



KM: What is the importance of documentary?



JS: Certain documentaries encourage sceptical thinking. Do you or do you not want deeply antagonistic questions posed in public?



KM: Why do you make documentaries rather fiction?



JS: Fiction requires big political money, therefore it is impossible for minorities living in Quebec to fully tell their stories in cinema. Bien sur, inoffensive, uncle tom works do get produced, but who gives a shit about these?



KM: What inspires you?



JS: Making a film is like stepping into a battlefield where the wings of inspirational angels are napalmed. Documentary film-makers don’t have a patron saint who comes down from St. Joseph’s Oratory to give them inspiration.



KM: What motivates you to make films?



JS: To expose injustice. Noble cause n’est pas?



KM: Which film-makers have inspired you and how?



JS: The works of Canadian film-makers do not, generally, contain any challenging expository international politics. I have not been influenced *whatsoever* by Canadian film-makers except one: Michael Snow. European and Third World cinema are more cogent than Canadian cinema. This is not a vain attempt at snobbery. Canadian cinema, especially Atom Egoyan’s is infinitely inane. Deny Arcand’s films are boring. Pierre Falardeau leftwingism 101 can be goofy and comic - he gets major funding - guess why? Pierre Perrault has made wide ranging kinds work which are well-researched and well-structured: “Un pays sans bon sens!” (1970) is very good.



I have studied and admire the works of Americans such as Emile de Antonio and Fredrick Wiseman. Joan Harvey has made sceptical films. Cuban Santiago Alvarez has made brilliant films with small budgets; Gillo Pontocorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1965) is as relevant today as when it was made. It wouldn’t surprise me if Tony Blair bans screenings of this work.



My early influences were James Joyce; American musicians such as Little Walter; Abstract Expressionists; Stan Brakhage; and, bien sur, the Russian classics. I studied the brilliant works of D.W. Griffiths whose films are immensely frightening because the North American racists shown in ‘The Birth of a Nation’ (1915) are still here in 2005.



Cinema is an international medium and so one’s influences can come from all over (call it a cinematic collectivity if you want to be a cultural studies type). In Quebec, one is punished for not caressing the local heros. Quebec’s ethnic nationalists, like the crackers in ‘The Birth of a Nation’ fear that the WOG WITHIN will make a better work than the whites who live off hereditary privilege. Quebec’s cultural elites thwart les autres.



KM: What is your style and what distinguishes it from the works of other directors?



JS: Canadian documentaries such as The Corporation and Manufacturing Consent are sound-bite works that are comfortable enough for prostitutional TV producers who buy BMWs with our tax contributions. My documentaries are not as popular as these films. Save and Burn is a multi-thematic work which projects arguments without voice-of-god narration; my documentaries don’t spoon-feed the viewers. Noam Chomsky the star of Manufacturing Consent incessantly exposes Israel and its kissing cousin America. Peter Wintonic and Mark Acbar, the directors of Manufacturing Consent, do not include his commentary on Israel.



KM: What is the message you are trying to send with your trilogy: The Raft of the Medusa, Into the European Mirror, and City of the Dead?



JS: I offer hard evidence on the imperial game.



KM: And The Library In Crisis and Save and Burn?



JS: To show that democracy and the fight for it depends on access to books and libraries.



KM: The future of the book and learning pre-occupy you. You have made two films that look at knowledge and democracy. Why such a marked interest in these areas?



JS: Without democracy we will never have single malt scotch. Documentary film-makers offer the opposite of Prozac – that’s our job.



KM: Save and Burn produced a small controversy – what was all this about?



JS: In Save and Burn I’ve proven that Israelis are not only destroying the libraries of Palestinians, but are also stealing their books to enrich their own collections. I remind people that this pillage could not happen without the support of democratic America. Showing this connection is enough to hamper screenings at festivals and academic conferences. However, one ought to keep in mind that parts of religious America are progressive especially when compared to India, the largest caste-ridden democracy in the world.



In Montreal, the Bibliothetque National du Quebec will not show The Library in Crisis and Save and Burn. I do not think, in principal, that this is rejection is race-related. Lise Bissonnette, the head provincial librarian, is not a racist. I am confident that given her august and inflated stature as an local intellectual, she is nimble enough to connect the dots between D W Griffiths and Jacques Parizeau (George Wallace of Quebec) to George Bush’s war on the Arabs. The BNQ has commissioned a documentary on itself, and in the near future, this work will be broadcast. Mirror, mirror on the wall. It cruel and ruthless for Bissonnette to not tell me why The Library in Crisis and Save and Burn are unworthy of a screening at the BNQ. Furthermore, I published a translation of the following letter in La presse, 16 may 2005:



“Lise Bissonnette director of the Grande bibliothèque du Québec promotes her dedication to reflecting the racial diversity of Quebec within her library. However, she and her collegues, Ghislain Roussel, Secrétaire général et directeur des affaires juridiques, in particular are dead silent on following question: Do ‘visible minorities’ have jobs in key positions within the BNQ?



All the commissioned art works in the BNQ are made by white quebecois francophones. Is there an undeclared policy of favoritism? Julian Samuel”



KM: Is it necessary for documentaries to be polemical?



JS: Yes.



KM: What are your current struggles? And which do you consider important?



JS: The struggle for funding is continual. It would be nice to get the same level of funding as French-Canadian directors or white Anglo Canadian directors. I made my documentaries with a budget seven times *smaller* than the average film made at the ONF. And my income is *five times less* than the average professor of cinema at U de M. I live near the poverty line. Would a cradle-to-the-grave corporate welfare job at the CBC or the NFB have encouraged intellectual suicide?



KM: In varying degrees your works look at the Middle East – why this interest?

Does the fact that you are a Montrealer of Pakistani origin determine the themes you develop in your work?



JS: Pakistan does not determine the subjects of my documentaries. I am a Canadian citizen. I don’t normally revert to being a Pakistani national until I enter Pakistani airspace which is where my acquired nationalities - Canadian and British – are temporarily over ridden. Except in my novel Passage to Lahore (De Lahore a Montreal), my works are not connected with where I was born.



KM: Can you distinguish between a good documentary film-maker and a bad one?



JS: Good documentary film-makers find confrontation amusing. Bad documentary film-makers are craven and always find ways to please producers, audiences, journalists.



KM: What is your next documentary or book?



JS: My next documentary is about belief, unbelief and atheism; working title, ‘Against the incantations of false prophets.’ And a novel, working title, ‘Dark Interloper of the Eastern Trade’ – a comedy set in Charles De Gaulle airport. Also, I might make a documentary about mangoes - I an expert on Pakistani mangoes.



KM: What do you try to reveal in your 60 second clip Visible Minorities Hired by the Media ?



JS: This short clip laughs at the ‘visible minorities’ hired by the Canadian state. American Republican senator Jesse Helms must love our Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s documentary which trashes Fidel Castro and Cuba.