Hello from Islamabad

I thought I could start blogging about the situation here in Pakistan, where I will be for a couple of weeks, and perhaps India as well, where I will be a couple of weeks after that. Even though most of what I will say here is based on reading the english-language Pakistani press (lacking any Urdu beyond the first three chapters of “Teach Yourself Urdu” that I have gotten through), which I could have done from Canada, perhaps there will be something of value here.

There are several very important things going on here, and here are some initial impressions.

Continue reading “Hello from Islamabad”

On a quest for secular piety: Reviewing Tarek Fatah’s “Chasing a Mirage”

Tarek personally asked me to review his book, Chasing a Mirage: the tragic illusion of an Islamic State (CM). With a book being favorably reviewed in the Canadian (and US and UK) media, including the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Huffington Post, the UK Guardian, and the Asper-family owned newspapers (Ottawa Citizen and National Post, which also published long excerpts of CM and frequently runs op-eds by Tarek), CM hardly needed a review from me to get attention. I therefore took the request as a signal of a serious desire to engage with people who might disagree about the ideas of the book.

CM’s basic thesis is that religion and politics should be separated in Islam. Although it has major flaws, it also has many attributes of interest and will be thought-provoking on the relationship between religion and politics, and between Islam and the West.

A flawed book with some thought-provoking ideas

The experience of reading the book is a jarring one. Tarek frequently overreaches, making claims beyond what the evidence provides. “the pain we suffer is caused mostly by self-inflicted wounds, and is not entirely the result of some Zionist conspiracy hatched by the West.” (pg. xi) How IMF restructuring or repeated US bombings, invasions, and occupations are “self-inflicted” is unexplained. Sentences like that also put all Muslims together, though the politics and problems in different Muslim societies are different. CM includes preposterous statements about “nations such as India and China, with few natural resources other than their burgeoning populations” (pg. 325). India and China in fact have tremendous natural resources (especially agricultural resources) that are exploited to the fullest because of their large populations.

Tarek also says “being Canadian has had the most profound effect on (his) thinking”, and lists his Canadian heroes, which include both men and women, French and Anglo-Canadians. But his list does not have Louis Riel or Joseph Brant or any other indigenous person. Tarek’s references to “ordinary Canadians” don’t include the country’s indigenous people or the crimes that were done to them. It is striking though, given his emphasis on Canadian-ness and his expressed desire to hold a mirror up to the Muslim community, that he shows a blind spot for Canada’s disgraceful colonialism.

The book is also jarring because of bombast and cliche. Phrases like “the Palestinian movement cannot be allowed to degenerate into a fad for out-of-luck leftists in search of a cause… When these rich armchair anti-imperialists spout on Palestine, they seem to do it out of an addiction, not a commitment” (pg. 74) occur throughout, and make the whole book very demoralizing to read. The use of phrases like “the new found love affair between the left and the Islamists” (pg. 318) make a case by insinuation, a problem found throughout the book, especially when describing Muslim organizations in the West and money they receive from Saudi Arabia and other places. His newspaper columns are no different, and are part of what makes it an easier choice to simply discard what he has to say.

On the other hand, CM also offers interesting information, especially about Islamic history and recent debates in the West. His attacks on rigid doctrine, internalized racism, and illiberal politics are valid and important. He has more than once presented me with obvious things I hadn’t thought about. When Maher Arar was being tortured in Syria, for example, he wondered why people didn’t demonstrate at the Syrian consulate, but only the US and Canadian consulates. To be sure, to send someone somewhere to be tortured was horrific, but shouldn’t some anger be directed at the torturer? When a Palestinian refugee was threatened with deportation for having been a member of the PFLP (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftist Palestinian formation that Canada has deemed “terrorist”), Tarek wrote an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister saying he, too, had been a member of the PFLP and so if al-Yamani was going to be deported, so too should he be. For reasons like these, Tarek deserves better than casual dismissal. If the flaws can be filtered out, what remain are important questions on very serious matters worthy of debate.

Tarek divides his target audience in five parts. First, Muslims, who he hopes to persuade of his central thesis: that being a good, pious Muslim, to follow the Qur’an and the five pillars, does not require a particular form of state, and that trying to create an Islamic state can only lead to calamity. Second, “ordinary, well-meaning, but naive non-Muslims of Europe and North America”, who he hopes to persuade that Islamists are not authentic anti-imperialists. (pg. xiv) Third, “conservative Republicans in the United States and their neo-conservative allies in the West” who he hopes to persuade that “dropping bombs helps the foe, not the friend.” Fourth, Arabs, “who have suffered at the hands of colonialism”, whose “cause is just”, but who “need to recognize that… the plight of the Palestinians has been abused and misused by their leadership for ulterior motives. They also need to fight internalized racism that places darker-coloured fellow Muslims from Africa and Asia on a lower rung of society.” (pg. xvi) Last, “Pakistanis who deny their ancient Indian heritage”, and who, as a consequence, “have become easy pickings for Islamist extremist radicals who fill their empty ethnic vessels with false identities that deny them their own ethnic heritage.” (pg. xvii) Because I suspect I have only limited access to only the second part of Tarek’s target audience, this review will focus on what is of interest to the “liberal and left-leaning”.

The premises of Chasing a Mirage

CM’s explicit thesis, that religion and politics ought to be separated in Islam, rests on several implicit theses. The most important of these is that Islam, or political Islam, is the major reason for what is wrong in places like Pakistan, Saudia Arabia, Iran, Palestine, and immigrant Muslim communities in the West. Tarek sometimes acknowledges colonialism and occupation (though he is more dismissive of the idea that there might be racism against Muslims in the West), but also blames Islamist doctrine and ideology as a cause (as opposed to primarily an effect, to which we will return).

From this flows the second implicit thesis, that there is something unique about Islam in this respect. When Europe went through Renaissance and Enlightenment, Christianity and Judaism advanced, and Islam remained behind. “While most of humanity has come to recognize the futility of racial and religious states, the Islamists of today present (the) sordid past as their manifesto of the future.” (pg. 19) Failure to separate religion from politics in culture and theory left the way open for Islamists (Syed Qutb, Abul Ala Maudoodi) to create doctrines based on the politicized use of religion.

The third implicit thesis is that in politics, Western-style democracy is the best form. Tarek is a Canadian by choice, he reminds the reader, and cherishes the freedom that he finds in the West, where “the only Arabs who today vote without fear of reprisal” live (pg. xvii). Islamism is bad for the West and for Muslims in part because it causes Muslims to “refuse to integrate or assimilate as part of Western society, yet wishes to stay in (its) midst” (pg. xiv). Also, there is nothing wrong with Islam itself, nor any other religion. Only the combination of religion and politics is undesirable, and CM remains constantly respectful of the basic tenets of Muslim religion.

From these premises, Tarek in Part 1 goes through a series of case studies. Pakistan’s politics have been distorted by Islamism and were distorted from the start. The Saudi regime, with the US guaranteeing its safety in power and its unimaginable oil wealth, reaches out and sponsors Islamism all over the world. Iran’s Islamists destroyed the leftist revolutionaries who they came to power with, and then imposed their will on a reluctant society in brutal and totalitarian ways. And Palestine has been hijacked by Islamists within and without. Next, in Part 2, Tarek reads medieval Islamic history from the death of the prophet Muhammad through to the Damascus, Baghdad, and al-Andalus caliphates. The point of this reading is to show that this past provides no useful guidance for political conduct in large, complex, industrial societies. In Part 3 he moves on to contemporary case studies: He concludes that the recent attempt to apply Sharia law in Ontario for personal disputes between Muslims was a very bad idea. Democratic laws have to apply to everyone and everyone must receive equal protection. He concludes that the doctrine of jihad in Islamism, which, he says, is not about inner struggle but about war, should be discarded. And while he supports the right to wear the hijab, he argues that it is an arbitrary convention without a solid basis in the Qur’an or core Muslim religion. Finally, he concludes that Islamists and Islamism should be strongly confronted in the West, by democrats of all kinds, Muslim and non-Muslim. Since they hold illiberal views, Islamists should not be allowed to use liberalism to undermine its foundation.

Before assessing CM’s conclusions, it may be useful to state my own rather different premises, for understanding the problems experienced by the societies CM discusses (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Palestine, and the Muslim diaspora) as well as some of those he does not.

An alternative set of premises

I agree that religion and politics ought to be separated. But I believe that political Islam is primarily an effect of what is wrong in Muslim societies, not a cause. Explaining the causes of the problems of the third world is beyond the scope of a book review. But a “left-leaning” explanation would look for causes related to economic and political inequalities within and between societies. While these may have pre-existed colonial encounters (Jared Diamond’s “Guns Germs and Steel” is devoted to explaining why the geography of Europe gave it certain advantages for conquering the rest of the world) they were intensified by them. Millions of indigenous people of the Americas died building wealth for Europe and the American states (see Eduardo Galeano, “Open Veins of Latin America”). Millions of Africans died in slavery and colonialism (see Basil Davidson, “The African Slave Trade”). Throughout Asia, lands and resources were taken over through military conquest, or sometimes through finance, without firing a shot. These encounters distorted the colonizers: they lost their ethical sense, they developed doctrines of racism and exclusive notions of religion, and locked the world into constant warfare.

But by far the greatest trauma was suffered by the colonized These societies were not perfect before colonialism destroyed them: they too were full of caste (see BR Ambedkar’s “Annihilation of Caste”) and class hierarchy, patriarchal traditions and religion, and militarism and violence of their own. But colonialism intensified all of these and used them to its own ends. The former colonies tried to make sense of what had happened to them and how to free themselves from it (one one very important aspect of this attempt, see Vijay Prashad’s “Darker Nations”). Their responses included nationalism and communism, both of which were brutally attacked by the Western powers (on these attacks, see William Blum’s “Killing Hope”). Religiously based nationalism in these parts of the world was often seen as less threatening by the West.

This is where political islam enters the picture in Muslim societies. Tarek is right that it does not provide the freedom and equality so badly needed to address the other urgent problems of our societies. But without a comparative perspective (which is adopted for example by Eqbal Ahmad, one of Tarek’s heroes and one of my own) one is left thinking there is something especially bad about Islam or Muslim societies. This is a convenient belief for Western readers who want to believe the current “war on terror” might be justified. But an equally strong case could be made, and has been, about the caste, irrational belief, and hierarchy in East Asian cultures, or African cultures, or Indian culture, or East Europe, or Latin America, or Europe or America itself – and if the West were at war with these societies such cases would receive greater attention here.

I do not believe that Islam has a monopoly over the failure to separate religion and politics. I believe that all religions are systems of authority, based on irrational belief, that mostly cannot meet the burden of proof for the demands they make of their believers. A distorted, politicized Christianity is a clear and present danger in the United States (see Chris Hedges’ “American Fascists”, Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas? and watch “Jesus Camp”). Similar problems exist with Israel and Zionism (see Michael Warchawski’s “Towards an Open Tomb”, or Uri Davis’s “Apartheid Israel”). As a result I disagree with Tarek’s statement that ” most of humanity has come to recognize the futility of racial and religious states”. If only it were so.

I believe that the rest of the world, including the Muslim world but especially indigenous peoples and Africans, have paid a blood price so that those in the West could live in comfort and freedom. Democracy in the West is worth defending to the degree that it can look in the mirror of these atrocities, condemn them, and redress them. Self-congratulation about Western achievements, freedoms, or superiority in rewarding itself with what it stole from others is harmful to this necessary self-examination. Massive inequalities in Western societies and between the West and the rest of the world distort democracy, ethics, and the possibilities for decent survival on the planet. Dealing with these distortions is the most urgent political task at hand.

We all grow up and live in a world of traumas, hierarchies, and inequalities, and we all rebel against these in different ways (see Bruce Levine’s “Commonsense Rebellion” for a diagnosis of everything alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling, sex addiction, and workoholism as problematic ways of rebelling against meaninglessness and lack of control in daily life). Constructive, collective, political rebellion is what many of us strive to do and hope to see. But there are more problematic ways of rebelling, some of which can sometimes have perverse effects, and these are sometimes better rewarded by the institutions that produce the ills we’re rebelling against.

Because it is usually the oppressed who have to free themselves (and their oppressors), and because many of those powerless and under attack and fighting back (sometimes in ways that are themselves distorted) are Muslims, an examination of the current role of Islam, and religion in general, in politics is important. So, too, is thinking about what that role could or should be. CM’s value is in contributing to that debate.

Assessing the conclusions of “Chasing a Mirage”

Starting from these somewhat different premises, how do the conclusions of CM appear? Take the Sharia law debate in Ontario. Some Muslim organizations argued that Islamic law be used in binding arbitration to settle disputes between parties. Their principal argument, which CM does not mention, was that those principles were already being used in Jewish and Christian communities: if religious arbitration was okay for some religions, why not all? In the event, the Ontario government’s decision was the best one possible: rather than allowing it for all religions, Ontario struck religious arbitration down for all.

Should jihad be discarded, and hijab recognized as an arbitrary cultural convention and not a religious requirement? Yes, in the same way that all doctrines should be subjected to tests of ethics and reason and discarded if they fail those tests. The same is true for using the distant past, described in Part 2 of CM, as a political guide for the future. If some political idea, from history or elsewhere, will have good effects from a perspective of universal human values, then it should be used. If not, it should be rejected. These conclusions are similar to Tarek’s, though they come from different premises.

And what of the importance of challenging the illiberalism of the Islamists in the West? Here we have a more serious disagreement, not on the question of whether illiberalism should be challenged, but on where the illiberalism comes from and what should be done about it. Tarek, like Ed Husain in the UK (author of “The Islamist”) attributes the strength of Islamists in the West to the tolerance of “bleeding heart liberals” and “the left”. In doing so, he attributes more power to this social force than it actually has. Liberals are on the defensive everywhere in the West, and leftists are so marginal that one can only read about us as rhetorical foils in books on political topics. Decency and internationalism have plenty of followers in the West, to be sure. But it is not tolerance, but intolerance and the exploitation of legitimate grievances that others have failed to answer, that has strengthened religious politics.

How can we assess CM’s analysis of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Palestine? Pakistan was indeed founded on a religious basis, and the partition and confrontation between India and Pakistan did incredible damage to both societies over many decades. Saudi Arabia is ruled by a monarchy held up by the US military, that in exchange controls the population and uses its wealth to divert politics in religious directions. CM presents Iran from the perspective of some of its defeated leftists, who helped overthrow the Shah only to be destroyed politically (and, ultimately, physically, in mass murders of political prisoners in the 1980s).

CM’s chapter on Palestine, by contrast, is wholly without merit. Tarek offers the chapter as if it is strategic advice to the Palestinians, but like reading much of the North American media, one can come away thinking Israel’s occupation is a minor issue and that the central conflict is between lslamists and others. This is one of the confusions of Tarek’s politics in general. At times he adopts the tone of a self-critical leftist, who leftists ought to take seriously, at other times the self-congratulation of Western pundits, who leftists would normally dismiss because of lack of time. From both postures, he blasts leftists and anti-imperialists with, at times, ugly rhetoric. What’s more, since the cause of Palestine should be based on universal human rights and self-determination and Islamists (indeed Muslims, or Jews) have no special right to comment on it, Tarek’s dissident Muslim position adds nothing of interest to the debate.

Those concerned about the Palestinian cause could, no doubt, benefit from serious examination of how Hamas came to power and the Palestinian left became so marginal. It is important to think about how best to resist the agendas of Israel and the US (and Canada) for the Palestinians – an agenda of starvation and murder, it bears repeating – and how to relate to the significant social force that Hamas now represents in Palestine, for better or worse. But for that examination, one will have to look elsewhere – perhaps to Azzam Tamimi’s “Hamas: A history from within”, to some of Amira Hass’s reporting since the 2006 election, or Adel Samara’s critiques of “NGO-ization”.

Leftists I’ve spoken to were dismissive. They disliked Tarek’s frequent and sweeping attacks on what he calls “the left” (I prefer to use the term “leftists”, since “the left” does not really exist in any organized form in North America in any case). Another anti-Muslim book, they guessed, part of a cottage industry designed to demonize the selected victims of Western foreign policy. Iraq is occupied, a million people killed. Palestine is occupied, starved, choked to death. Afghanistan is occupied. Iran is threatened. Deportations of Muslims are rampant in Western countries. Secret trials are occurring. The Egyptian regime receives billions in weaponry and subsidies in exchange for support of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and suppression of the population. Other dictatorships in Muslim countries receive similar largesse. Of course, to do all this to a group of people requires an industry to produce convenient stories about them. Anyone who can produce such stories will be rewarded handsomely, with sympathetic reviews, prominent placement in bookstores, and high sales for telling convenient things to people about what they are doing. Irshad Manji’s “Trouble With Islam” was part of this industry, and many might assume CM is as well. While Tarek refused Manji’s acknowledgement of him in her book, he called her “courageous” and expressed sympathy that she was being called opportunist and her message ignored in his own, a fate his book will share, in some quarters.

A better comparison than Irshad Manji might be to black conservatives in the US, such as Shelby Steele or John McWhorter, who draw on a worthy tradition of black self-help but emphasize it out of context to the degree that the central problem of institutional racism is lost.

In any case Tarek and CM should not be quickly dismissed. For all the book’s flaws, it does at times deal with serious issues seriously. It raises important questions about politics in immigrant communities and in poor countries. And although Tarek sometimes lacks compassion, makes cases by insinuation, ignores or blows off key parts of the story, misses crucial context, and makes claims well beyond his evidence, he also presents interesting arguments about history, discusses some neglected crimes whose main victims, after all, are Muslims, and is worth reading on contemporary debates even when you disagree. Unfortunately, to disagree with Tarek is to invite bombastic and overblown replies, but he also at times seriously attempts to engage in a way that might actually advance the debate on how best to advance decent values in both Western and Muslim societies. To advance that debate, it is worth assuming Tarek’s good faith and giving “Chasing a Mirage” a careful reading to separate the parts that are without merit from the parts that have some.

Justin Podur is a toronto-based writer. He can be reached at justin@killingtrain.com

From wikileaks, and UNASUR

A couple of things today. First, this wikileaks leak on US Army military management is worth mentioning and worth a read. The point is something that is familiar in this world of ’embedded journalism’ (John Cusack’s satirical film, War Inc., did a great job taking this ’embedded journalism’ to its logical conclusion, where journalists get a chip injected into their necks and then go into an movie theater where they watch battles on a screen), which is that media management is an important part of US bombings, invasions, and occupations. It is a training manual in PR for US military involved in that work. To see it in action, watch “Control Room”, the film about Al-Jazeera in the early days of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 – one of the characters is a US military PR person, who has a moment where he realizes that he would not like seeing his people being slaughtered if he were Iraqi, but then manages to get over such feelings and get back to the job.

Also, from COHA, this piece about UNASUR, and specifically the CSD, which would be a Latin American military defense scheme like NATO. Spearheaded by Brazil, I could still see it acting as an imperial subcontractor, given Brazil, Chile, and Argentina’s role in that capacity in Haiti. Colombia won’t be joining the CSD, however, and that bodes ill for Brazil’s plan for it, which was to use it to try to mitigate against Colombia’s role as a US client in destabilizing the region. In military terms, Colombia has done a massive increase in the size and armament of its military since Plan Colombia in 2000. Its alliance with the US affords it that much, though the blood price for its people – and to its neighbours – is high. The COHA article, by Jared Ritvo, also suggests that Venezuela’s agenda, more expansive and for Latin America as a whole, is different from Brazil’s, which is to gain more influence for itself on the world stage. This explains their different positions on Haiti, for example, where Chavez spoke and tried to act out of some respect for Haiti’s sovereingty. The article ends by mentioning the return of the US Fourth Fleet to Latin America, a show of US muscle against Latin America’s aspirations for autonomy. If the US lost its Colombian proxy, though, it would have few ways to intervene in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, or anywhere else.

SWAT teams attack indigenous in Cauca

This came over ACIN’s list and was translated into English I think by La Chiva. I reposted it to En Camino and you can read it here. Colombia’s regime is able to go on the offensive regionally and domestically at the same time.

Further on Colombia, a friend of mine from Toronto, Todd Gordon, wrote a fine article on Canada and Colombia – republished on ZNet, definitely worth reading, for more background analysis and the Canadian angle.

Possible Massacre in Choco

Not much is known yet about who is responsible or even who the victims were. But in Choco, one of the regions of Colombia with the largest Afro-Colombian presence and the hardest-hit by paramilitaries, it seems that at least one person was murdered and three others disappeared. The association of indigenous councils of Northern Cauca prepared the following communique and it was translated by the activists of “La Chiva”.

Continue reading “Possible Massacre in Choco”

The FARC laptops and INTERPOL’s investigation

IPS’s excellent Constanza Viera did a very good report (like all her reports on Colombia) on the Interpol analysis of the FARC laptops captured by the Colombian government after they invaded Ecuador and assassinated Raul Reyes in March. It notes that the laptops were interfered with in the first 48 hours after the capture, but not in the week after that. The investigation itself seems credible, with Australians and Singaporean analysts who speak no spanish running the forensic analysis on the computers. They were looking for digital timestamps, apparently, and several thousand files had been modified since the assassination by Colombian authorities.

From what I gather, and I don’t monitor the North American media particularly closely on Colombia and Venezuela issues (I prefer to read the Colombian papers and first hand reports in Spanish), this is the opposite of how it is being presented here, where the emphasis is on how the laptops have been verified to have belonged to FARC. That itself I admit is a surprise to me, though I suppose it was a missile attack and not a nuclear or fuel-air bomb that could have left equipment intact. Viera has an interesting quote from President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. Having had his country invaded and attacked, he of course now has to answer to the media for his connections to the people who were killed. He says: “Ecuador does not have a border with Colombia, but with FARC” – the idea is that the border regions are under the de facto control of FARC, and Ecuador has to have relations and agreements with its neighbours. It is interesting to hear a declaration like that from a president – it is the first I’ve heard of such a thing.

A brutal week

Natural disasters are always exacerbated by social ones. On the one hand, there is what Naomi Klein argues in “The Shock Doctrine”, that elites exploit disasters of any kind to reorganize society in their own interests. On the other, there is what Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for: revealing that undemocratic regimes with unfree presses have disaster-level famines, where democratic regimes with free presses (still capitalist) can only get away with chronic hunger deaths (this last is certainly not his wording!) The regime in Myanmar is one of the worst in a world of terrible regimes, and the people’s suffering is so much worse for it. And then there is the global regime that is destabilizing the climate to make the natural part of such disasters more and more likely for more and more people. Like so much out there, it feels beyond inadequate to write something about this.

Another topic where writing in a little blog can’t begin to make sense of things: yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the day Israel became a state, and while some “supporters of Israel” were “partying like it was 1948”, Palestinians saw “no cause for celebration”. My friend Rafeef explained as much for those who came to a press conference last week and the demonstration in Toronto yesterday. Another friend, Dan Freeman-Maloy, prepared a long piece about Canada’s role in the creation of Israel, drawing from work by Israeli scholars like Benny Morris and Canadian scholars like David Bercuson and bringing different values to bear (which is to say, Dan does not have the contempt for Palestinians that both Morris and Bercuson, and Canada’s Prime Minister Harper, show). 60 years is too long for a people to be denied the right to return to their homes, too long for a people to be occupied and colonized and subjected to intensifying genocidal policies. It is generations of people growing up in refugee camps that are themselves being starved and bombed.

And in a week of massive disasters and 60-year occupations, there are under-reported injustices in this part of the world (Canada) as well. Mohawk activist Shawn Brant was re-arrested (I’ll republish the statement by his wife Sue Collis below, but it’s linked here) on charges that will probably fall apart again, like the previous sets of charges. But by arresting him again and again, they not only punish him de facto by putting him in jail for months at a time, but also help create the image of him and the Mohawks they are trying to put forth.

And in another jail, one of the Toronto 18, Steven Chand, was beaten up in jail by guards, according to his lawyer (the CBC report):

Michael Moon said his client, Stephen Chand, was taking a shower at Maplehurst provincial jail in Milton west of Toronto. When he tried to rinse soap from his hair, Moon said, a guard smashed Chand’s face into a wall, then dragged him naked along a hallway by his hair and threw him into a bare cell smeared with feces and smelling of urine.

The lawyer is demanding that surveillance videos of the incident be released by the Ontario government, though internal investigations at the facility found no wrongdoing by guards.

“These videos capture everything that goes on on the range,” Moon said, “If he [Chand] did anything wrong, it will be shown on the video. If what he says is accurate, that will be shown.”

Moon also says that when another inmate complained about the treatment of Chand, he too was thrown into the bare cell, known as the hole.

A spokesman for the Ontario government had no comment because the case is before the court. But he added that provincial corrections officials were committed to the just and humane treatment of inmates.

Below is Sue Collis’s statement:

Shawn Brant’s Arrest – Statement by Sue Collis, Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory

(May 4th, 2008) Eight days ago, on Friday, April 25th, 2008, my husband, Shawn Brant, was arrested and detained on assault and weapons charges. Since that time, Commissioner Julian Fantino and the Ontario Provincial Police have issued public statements that have, it seems, misstated the events leading to my husband’s arrest.

I believe it is important to the public good for people to understand the circumstances that have lead to Shawn’s incarceration at this time. Those circumstances are as follows:

On Sunday, April 20th, 2008, the community of Tyendinaga responded to threats from a Kingston developer to bring “a crew of 25 to 30 guys”, in order to begin development on a property which falls within in the Culbertson Tract land claim. Mohawks from Tyendinaga did peaceful road closures on Highway 2, adjacent to this proposed development site on Mohawk land.

My husband Shawn has been living and complied with very strict conditions imposed when he was charged in relation to community rail and highway blockades on the June 2007 Aboriginal Day of Action. One of his conditions is not to attend protests. During the evening of Monday, April 21st, 2008, my husband was some distance away from the road closures erected in response to the Kingston developer, talking to a Tyendinaga community member, while he also checked a nearby creek for fish.

During this conversation, Shawn became aware of some commotion down the road, and made his way towards the commotion, parking his car some 50 feet away from where a small group of people was gathered on one side of the road. The first thing Shawn saw a 10-year-old girl shaking and crying uncontrollably. He had no idea what was going on. As he approached the scene, someone yelled “Shawn help us!” The little girl screamed, “They hurt my Mommy! They’re gonna hurt my Mommy.” Someone else yelled, “He has a ball bat!” At this time, Shawn noticed two trucks were parked facing the people who were in obvious distress. Shawn returned to his car and retrieved his fishing spear. By the time Shawn returned to where the people were gathered, the occupants of the trucks were back inside their vehicles. Shawn shouted at the occupants of the trucks to leave. The windows were so tinted that he could not make out their faces. The drivers of the trucks sped away with such force that one of their truck tires was raised in the air, spraying much gravel and stone at the women and the child, some of which they later discovered was imbedded in their skin.

Shawn turned his head to avoid catching stones in the face, and held out his spear in an effort to create some distance between the group of Mohawks and the trucks, out of concern that those in the vehicles would strike those on the road with their vehicles. The trucks then sped away. That is the extent of Shawn’s interaction with the individuals he is now charged with assaulting. To be clear, he is charged with assaulting the men in the trucks.

A 911 call was made during this incident on April 21st, 2008, in which the trucks’ licence plates were recorded. Shortly thereafter, the women made statements to the police, identifying the men driving the trucks as known Deseronto inhabitants, subsequently identified as Jamie Lalonde and Mike Lalonde. The women also testified in police statements that one of the men swung a club at them, drove one of the trucks into them, and threatened further violence. The women also described being injured by flying stones, and described the trauma endured by the young girl. No one but Shawn has been charged.

The men from Deseronto sought out this group of people, deliberately caused them injury and issued threats of further violence. They were targeted for assault and abuse for no other reason than that they are Native. The actions taken by the men from Deseronto were driven by bigotry and racial hatred. By definition, these were hate crimes. Again, no one but Shawn has been charged.

The men are presumed to have filed a complaint against my husband, resulting in a police search of his car on Friday, April 25th, when his fishing spear was taken from his car, and charges of assault and possession of a weapon – the spear – were laid. My husband remains in prison, in maximum security, as a result.

It is our understanding that the prosecution is seeking yet another publication ban on all future court proceedings in this matter. A pattern has emerged with respect to my husband, Shawn Brant. The police and prosecution make sensational and vilifying statements about Shawn in the media, and then seek a publication ban during court proceedings, when the actual evidence is introduced. The starkly different narrative of events that emerges in court is withheld and the public forbidden from hearing it. The version of events I have just presented will all but disappear.

Less than a month ago, my husband was acquitted of charges he carried for more than 18 months. When issuing the ruling in this acquittal, the judge described the investigative practice and evidence employed and presented by the cops and the Crown as “problematic” and “troubling,” as they related to Shawn. During this same period, CBC Radio aired a documentary in which several Mohawk people recounted conversations with OPP Commissioner Fantino that occurred during the 2007 Aboriginal Day of Action, in which they say he threatened to “ruin” Shawn. During Shawn’s detention at the Napanee OPP detachment last week, several different police officers threatened to “slit his throat” and “cut off his head.”

As I deal with the tears of young children who have been robbed of their father once again, Commissioner Fantino claims the OPP is an apolitical and professional organization, dedicated to upholding the rule of law. The events of the past week indicate it is anything but.

– Sue Collis
Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory

My ugly city, and Christie Blatchford’s contribution to it

I was still reeling from the way the media handled the recent TTC strike when I was subjected to a truly inane article by Christie Blatchford in the Globe and Mail. Comparing the Toronto 18, who I’ve written about before, to the gangsters in the Wire (which I haven’t written about though I did spend 60 hours over the past month or so watching it like the addiction that it is, and I suppose mentioned it during a talk I gave last month), Blatchford showed a spectacular ability to miss the point on both sides of the comparison.

Continue reading “My ugly city, and Christie Blatchford’s contribution to it”

My ugly city

I live in Toronto. I live right in the city, and have no car. I get around using public transit – the TTC. Over the weekend, TTC employees went on strike, against a deal that wasn’t all that transparently presented in the media but the contentious part of which involved the increasing use of short-term contracts by the employer (that’s my understanding anyway). The strike took effect midnight on Friday/Saturday. On Sunday, the provincial legislature met and all three parties – the Conservatives (who trashed and looted the province from 1995-2003), the ruling Liberals, and the New Democrats (whose electoral base is pretty much the public sector unions) pushed through back-to-work legislation in about a half an hour.

I suffered some inconvenience from the strike but it was that – inconvenience. You can imagine that my instinctive sympathies are with labor in labor-management disputes. This is no exception. But what is bothering me about this is the way the whole thing is presented in the media – the sense of entitlement for users (consumers) and the utter lack of rights or any legitimate case by the TTC employees (workers) is assumed. The media is full of hard-luck stories of commuters. Take this Toronto Star story:

“I’m very upset with them,” Tameika Fowler, 24, said of TTC workers as she rode an eastbound train on the Bloor subway line this morning.“They don’t think of other people. It was a selfish thing for them to do.”

On Sunday, Fowler took a $43 cab ride from Scarborough to Bathurst and Bloor Sts., where she works as a cashier at a Tim Hortons restaurant for $9 an hour. She worked a double shift from yesterday afternoon through this morning because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get home at midnight after her shift.

“My eyes feel so heavy, I had to drink a lot of coffee just to stay up,” said Fowler, who thinks TTC drivers should be declared an essential service. “I think these people should be grateful for what they have.”

A single mother with an autistic four-year-old, she said she was tuned into the radio all weekend for updates on the strike.

“It was so stressful,” she said, explaining how she had to arrange for her cousin to care for her son overnight.

With all respect for Ms. Fowler’s difficulties, and acknowledging the fact that it was the TTC strike that put her out of pocket for $43, the fact that a single mother with an autistic 4-year old has to make do with $9/hr and very little social support is not due to the TTC or the union. It does, however, have something to do with the Conservative destruction of public welfare in the province since 1995 and the Liberals’ continuation of it since 2003. It’s understandable that Ms. Fowler might get angry at the workers, but that kind of anger – the anger of a single mother towards unionized workers – was the kind of anger that the Conservatives relied on to rule. Seeing it exploited by the Toronto Star just now gave me a reminder of the politics of those days. It wasn’t just the economic policies, the privatizations, the cuts to social services, and the attacks on workers (and, it is very much worth adding, single mothers and people on welfare). It was the ugliness of the whole public (and private) conversation that was encouraged by these very filthy politicians. The head of Ontario’s Conservative party, John Tory, lived up to the repulsive traditions of his party by talking about horsewhipping union leaders. Such talk ought to be beneath decent people, but it is standard fare for Tory and his party.

The first few years after 1995 were full of this kind of poison, and this weekend offered a little taste of those years, for me. The anger of riders at losing a service could be balanced with a discussion of the implications for workers, and what it might mean that any strike action in any important sector can be met by back-to-work legislation of such incredible legislative efficiency and the full support of all parties (and, evidently, the public and the media).

They also never seem to go out to talk to single moms when TTC fares go up, as they have gone up several times over the past couple of years. I suspect that fare hikes put Ms. Fowler out of pocket by much more than $43 over the past year. But the anger of riders can only be told in the media when it’s directed at unionized workers, not at the legislative priorities that decide that user fees of $2.75 (and rising) are acceptable levels for minimum-wage workers, students, and single moms to pay to get to work.

It’s a bit sad that my province and my city don’t seem to be able to have that kind of conversation.