Author: Justin Podur

The Canadian population, like India’s a few months ago and Spain’s before that, has stared into the abyss and decided not to jump in.

To do so, they had to hold their nose and vote in a system of lousy choices. But even with all their limitations, elections often reveal a kind of democratic genius on the part of people when they have the space to express it. So Canadians managed to humiliate the corrupt Liberals quite a bit, by handing them a minority. They managed to humiliate the despicable Conservatives a lot by handing the Liberals far more seats than the Conservatives. They managed to express why they are humiliating both of these gangs of crooks when they voted for social democrats and Quebec sovereigntists in more seats than before. In the context of a pretty abysmal system (although it doesn’t compare to the US system for being a farce of a democratic system) it is really as good an outcome as could have been hoped for.

The CBC story reporting the election outcome discusses what I think is a serious issue as well: the polls lied. This is no isolated incident for Canada nor is it a small thing. Someone will have to look into it, but it seems obvious that polls are increasingly done to be self-serving prophesies: the polls predicted a Conservative minority government and a much closer race than actually happened. It might be that that polls intended to strengthen Conservatives by reporting artificially high strength galvanized people into voting liberal out of fear of Harper’s potentially disastrous agenda.

There is still plenty of trouble on the horizon, both for Canadians themselves and in terms of the mischief Canada will be doing in the world, accompanying the US. But things are much better than they could have been today, and there is more space for movements, if we can figure out how to take advantage of it, than there would have been.

NOTE: Samer Elatrash from Concordia University pointed out to me this morning that Jeffrey Simpson from the Globe and Mail has analyzed the Canadian election in terms of fear and loathing. Coincidence? Hmmm…

A few things, now that I have a minute to blog again.

First, it seems they did the ‘handover’ of sovereignty in Iraq a couple of days early. Now Saddam Hussein can be tried before an Iraqi court. One wonders if that court will get into his long history with the CIA and such… perhaps not, since the current PM also has such a history.

A comment on this: it makes the ‘sovereignty’ bit into a bit of a joke, doesn’t it? Rather like Bush asserting his firm control over Iraq by sneaking in like a thief in the night to ‘handover’ some turkey in November? You know you’ve got amazing sovereignty when you get it in a surreptitious ceremony. Why did they do it? Did they suspect the insurgents would mount an ambitious serious of bombings and attacks on the 30th, and there will be various protests and so on, and they wanted to manipulate the timing and the media? Or maybe they just wanted to do something to counter Michael Moore’s film on opening weekend?

I said last night, under the influence of a multifaceted good mood, that I thought Farenheit 9/11 is just what the US needs right now. It seems to me, from the content of the film and the response to it, that Michael Moore has essentially become the official opposition in the United States. When Tariq Ali did various speaking engagements in North America last year as the Iraq insurgency was beginning to become widespread, he said: the difference between the US and Iraq is that Iraq has an opposition and the US does not. Moore is filling that void.

I realize the film has limitations, and so on. But even the limitations are understandable choices I think. What I like about it more than anything else is that it is really making a case, in a very strong way. Moore knows how to talk to people who are undecided, or rather, to tell a story that makes the case on its own. He understands North Americans and US culture.

Speaking of US culture, it’s worth talking a little bit about Clinton, hype about whose book is overshadowed only by Moore’s movie right now. Why do we have to suffer Clinton after having suffered Reagan?

Diana Johnstone has part of the answer I think. Michael Albert discussed Reagan in terms of elites flexing their pro-Bush muscles. This makes sense to me. But I think the Clinton business is similar. Essentially, if Reagan was celebrated to try to show that Bush is still kicking, Clinton is being celebrated to make the case for Kerry. Kerry bends over backwards to say he’s not anti-war per-se and that he’s a devout imperialist. So, too, does Clinton. Kerry bashes Bush’s way of doing the Iraq war, and Clinton, as Johnstone said, had a ‘good’ war in Kosovo. There’s some saying that says to fight monsters you have to worry about not becoming a monster. Well, the Democrats’ problem in this election, and indeed in general, is how to beat the Republican monster while still staying a monster themselves. The Clinton way is the best way to pull this off, so it’s no wonder that Clinton’s little book tour is their answer to the Reagan bonanza.

But it seems to me that Michael Moore’s little film could throw a wrench into their plans…

More tomorrow, but three pieces of excellent news.

First, the Canadian elections — the Conservatives lost. It looks like a Liberal minority government. The NDP is stronger and so is the Bloc. This is very good. It’s a capitalist system, the rules are unfair, but there is a tiny bit of space for citizens to do the right thing — and they really did do it tonight. Something to celebrate.

Second, apparently the sale of tanks to Colombia by Spain, something that has been worrying many Venezuelans for quite some time, has been suspended. More on that tomorrow.

Third, I saw Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 tonight. It is an exemplary movie. Exactly what the US needs at exactly the right time. Genius. No real complaints, though I’m sure leftists will have many.

As I said, more tomorrow. Tonight though, is a night for some small comfort amid the world’s horrors.

So it’s almost over, and it’s still the ‘nail-biting’ race that it was at the beginning. It is ironic that this is the weekend of gay/lesbian pride, when probably millions all over Canada will celebrate, and tomorrow we could elect a homophobic fascist for a prime minister.

It always amazes me how hard-right administrations squeak into for various bizarre reasons or with very narrow mandates (Bush because the election was a statistical tie, his brother helped him cheat, and the Reagan-era appointed Supreme Court sealed the deal; Harper because of media ‘scandals’ and divisions in the Liberal party) and then proceed to do devastating, irreparable damage to the infrastructures and political culture of the country. More left or centrist administrations get in with bigger mandates and find they can’t do anything at all… sometimes not even because they don’t want to do anything.

This being one of those periods of ‘calm’ when only Palestinians are being killed, you probably wouldn’t know that 11 Palestinians were killed in Nablus by the Israeli military in the course of a recent ‘operation’. And dozens of people injured along the wall as they try to protest against it. And the starvation in Gaza. And the humiliations of the checkpoints. Is Palestinians’ desperation really so difficult to understand?

Read an interesting piece by Walden Bello on ‘Empire and Resistance’ in Iraq. He believes that “that the crisis of the empire is not o­nly good for the world. It is good for the people of the United States as well, for it opens up the possibility of Americans relating to other peoples as equals and not as masters, really learning from them, and really respecting and appreciating them. Failure of the empire is, moreover, a precondition for the emergence of the truly democratic republic that the United States was intended to be before it was hijacked to be an imperial democracy.” He thanks the Iraqi resistance for this.

Of course, real respect by the people of the US for the peoples of the world would be a very good thing. But there is something problematic about people outside cheering for a people who are being slaughtered en masse. I know this isn’t quite what Walden or any of the people who ‘support the resistance’ are doing. But it does sound like that, somehow. Like the Vietnam analogy, where people say, somewhat smugly, that Iraq is like Vietnam, implying that Vietnam was primarily a defeat for the US, as opposed to a holocaust of Vietnamese.

Where I agree with Walden is here:

“What western progressives forget is that national liberation movements are not asking them mainly for ideological or political support. What they really want from the outside is international pressure for the withdrawal of an illegitimate occupying power so that internal forces can have the space to forge a truly national government based o­n their unique processes. Until they give up this dream of having an ideal liberation movement tailored to their values and discourse, US peace activists will, like the Democrats they often criticize, continue to be trapped within a paradigm of imposing terms for other people.”

This is exactly right. And it cuts both ways. For those who ‘support the resistance’, what do Iraqis — who have uranium and missiles raining down on them, a collapsed infrastructure around them, and depraved torturers rounding them up — care about whether or not people ‘support’ them, rhetorically (given that there’s no other kind of ‘support’ people could offer here)? What would be genuine ‘support’ would be “pressure for the withdrawal of an illegitimate occupying power so that internal forces can have the space to forge a truly national government based o­n their unique processes.” Being able to bring that “pressure” depends not on how well we understand every nuance of what’s going on in Iraq, but how well we understand nuances of what’s going on in our own countries and now how to build a movement and act, where we are.

Many people who have spent time in Iraq and studied Iraq closely end up feeling like antiwar folks here don’t understand Iraq at all. They don’t understand how vile Saddam Hussein was, and how much of the resistance consists of people from that regime, and they end up picking sides in that divided country, and forgetting about the Shia majority and the Kurds. These criticisms are valid; but so is the warning that Iraqis (and the rest of the world, too) are capable of solving their own problems if they are not being starved and bombed and occupied by others, and that is the part that one must never forget. The admonition about not picking sides, like the admonition about ‘supporting’ the Iraqis, cuts both ways.

I’ll be traveling this weekend — not sure how much blogging I’ll be able to do.

Tanya Reinhart is indispensable on Israel/Palestine. So, too, is IMEMC. Go to it, and you’ll find yourself in a different world from the mainstream media. You’ll learn about the latest murders by the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories — like the 19 year old killed in Nablus and the three more killed in Gaza today. You can read more about Greg Philo’s study, ‘Bad News from Israel’, that shows just how misinformed the public is because of TV news on Israel/Palestine. About the use of dogs against prisoners. About the daily protests against the wall (Tanya’s article is about this too). And about reports and decisions at various levels of government. It is a truly impressive source, please check it out.

Because the campaign against unionists and activists is so blatant and murderous in Colombia, these folks are often provided with bodyguards or allowed to have them. In the past, the Colombian government has tried to strip unionists of this protection, or replace trusted bodyguards with agents of the state or paramilitaries. A more obvious strategy is simply to use the paramilitaries to kill the trusted bodyguards, and that was the strategy taken against a SINTRAMETAL (metalworker’s union) bodyguard and his wife on June 22. Details below.

Policy of the extermination of trusted bodyguards of Union Leaders continues in the Cauca Valley, Colombia.

Assassinated: SINTRAMETAL BODYGUARD HUGO FERNANDO CASTILLO SANCHEZ AND HIS WIFE DIANA XIMENA ZUÑIGA

JUNE 23rd 2004.

The Trade Union of the Pacific Iron and Steel Company SINTRAMETAL YUMBO, The Association for Social Research and Action, NOMADESC and the participating organisations in the “National and International Campaign Against Privatisation, Corruption and the Criminalisation of Social Protest: FORBIDDEN TO FORGET” denounce before the National and International community the brutal assassinations of bodyguard HUGO FERNANDO CASTILLO SANCHEZ and his wife DIANA XIMENA ZUÑIGA. We appeal to that you demand of the Colombian Government that they put a stop to the violent attacks against bodyguards of trade union leaders and defenders of human rights in the Cauca Valley, Colombia.

The Acts:

1.. At 10:30pm on Tuesday the 22nd of June 2004, HUGO FERNANDO CASTILLO SANCHEZ, his wife DIANA XIMENA ZUÑIGA, their four year old son JUAN FERNANDO CASTILLO and five year old nice NICOL CASTILLO were waiting for food in their car outside the drive-thru restaurant “YOGUI” on the Calle 27 with Kr 31ª in the Jardin neighborhood. A grey Mazda 323 X car with blacked out windows pulled up and a black male got out and firing multiple shots at the couple in the car in front of the two children.

2.. HUGO FERNANDO CASTILLO SANCHEZ was a bodyguard assigned to the Home Office Special Protection Program for trade unionists and human rights defenders. He had been working for the program for the past three years as an agent of the Security Administration Department (DAS) and was assigned to The Trade Union of the Pacific Iron and Steel Company, SINTRAMETAL YUMBO.

3.. HUGO FERNANDO CASTILLO SANCHEZ received six 9mm calibre bullets to his body which killed him instantly. His wife, DIANA XIMENA ZUÑIGA reached hospital alive but died before it was possible to perform surgery.

4.. The couple assassinated, HUGO FERNANDO CASTILLO SANCHEZ of 26 years of age and DIANA XIMENA ZUÑIGA, of 22 years leave two children orphaned; 4 year old JUAN FERNANDO CASTILLO ZUÑIGA who witnessed his parents´murder and two and a half month old baby MELANY CASTILLO ZUÑIGA.

5.. This policy of extermination of bodyguards known and trusted by union leaders in the region occurs at the same time that high risk trade unionists have refused to accept unknown bodyguards assigned to them by the Security Administration Department (DAS). Many union leaders have preferred to go without security schemes provided by the government rather than accept bodyguards in whom they do not have total confidence. While some union leaders are currently protected by precautionary measures taken by the OEA this brutal unofficial response to the refusal to accept assigned guards leaves high risk trade unionists effectively unprotected.

ANTECEDENTES

1.. On the 14th of April, 2004, the attempted assassination of SINTRAMETAL leader EDGAR PEREA ZUÑIGA resulted in the death of his brother RAÚL PEREA ZÚÑIGA.

2.. On the 15th of April, 2004, SINTRAEMSIRVA leader, CARLOS ALBERTO CHICAIZA was assassinated.

3.. On the 1st of May, 2004 twenty demonstrators were injured by police on the peaceful May Day March in Cali, Colombia.

4.. On the 2nd of May, 2004 JESÚS ALEXANDER HERMANDEZ, bodyguard assigned to the special protection programme for union leaders and human rights defenders and community leader in the San Luis Neighborhood was killed in an assassination attempt against SINTRAMENTAL leader EDGAR PEREA ZUÑIGA.

We urgently Demand:

a.. A thorough and exhaustive investigation into to bring to justice the material and intellectual authors of the assassination of HUGO FERNANDO CASTILLO SANCHEZ and DIANA XIMENA ZUÑIGA.

a.. The immediate provision of the necessary and sufficient mechanisms of protection to guarantee the safety of the bodyguards of the Home office Protection Programme for Union Leaders and Human Rights Defenders.

· That the Colombian Government explains the reasons for the ongoing and systematic persecution of union leaders and their bodyguards in the Cauca Valley, Colombia.

· That the Colombian Government provide sufficient and necessary guarantees for the respect of constitutional human rights to life, security, freedom of opinion, information, assembly, protest and the right to form trade unions.

Asociación Para la Investigación y Acción Social

NOMADESC

Sindicato de Trabajadores de Las Empresas Municipales de Cali
SINTRAEMCALI

Sindicato De Los Trabajadores Universitarios De Colombia

SINTRAUNICOL

La Unión Sindical Obrera
USO

Asociación para el Desarrollo Social Integral

ECATE

Central Unitaria De Los Trabajadores
CUT – VALLE DEL CAUCA
Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Minería en Colombia

SINTRAMINERCOL
Movimiento Estudiantil del Valle del Cauca y Nariño

Corporación Servicios Profesionales Comunitarios

SEMBRAR

Fundación Comité De Solidaridad Con Presos Políticos Seccional Valle del Cauca

Sintramunicipio Bugalagrande

Sintramunicipio Yumbo

Sintramunicipio Dagua
Sintrametal Yumbo

Organizaciones Barriales Juveniles Artísticas y

Populares de Santiago de Cali

Reading the Toronto Star for the Fear and Loathing Report I came across an article on Sudan, which continues to get worse., as the war leads to humanitarian crisis, as inevitably occurs. Most of the people who die in wars — I realize this is repeated over and over — don’t die from bullets or bombs, but from starvation and disease due to the collapse of infrastructures. The pattern of war in Sudan seems to me to be one drawn from paramilitary strategies around the world: the government backs militias to massacre and displace the civilian population to try to destroy an insurgency — or, simply, to use the insurgency as a pretext for displacing the people and promote a kind of ‘development without people’: sometimes the displacement is the point. That’s a common thread in Colombia: the saying goes, in Colombia it isn’t that there is displacement because of war. There is war so there can be displacement.

More than 100 people killed in attacks in Iraq today. In the usual pattern in these filthy colonial wars, civilians were the bulk of those killed. The war of beheadings has continued in its grotesque fashion as well. You’ve heard of the South Korean who was beheaded. The Taliban and the US allies are apparently beheading one another in Afghanistan.

Patrick Cockburn published an article on Iraq, I assume originally in Counterpunch, but republished on ZNet. He speculated on the nature of Iraq after June 30.

Discussing Iyed Allawi, Iraq’s new PM’s strategy to restore order, Cockburn says Allawi “wants to rebuild an Iraqi army and security force by persuading senior officers from Saddam Hussein’s army to reconstitute their units. He says he will centralise control of the armed forces so they are no longer auxiliaries for the US army, and direct them against the insurgents. “

But I had always assumed, without much to confirm it, that much of the insurgency, particularly in the early days, was precisely reconstituted units of the army. Directing these against themselves is likely to be a difficult proposition indeed. I could be wrong on this.

Rahul blogged about today’s violence arguing that it is very dangerous for Iraq right now. Not sure if I agree, but worth reading. Also very much worth reading is Dilip Hiro’s analysis of the June 30th business.