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The Week in Evil (27/3/10)

27 Mar

So much evil… where to begin?

1) Oh, here. While being sentenced for two rapes committed on the York University campus in 2007, Daniel Katsnelson declared that he “hopes some day the victim will be able to take away something positive from this, as he has,” and “suggested that now maybe she will know to keep her doors locked”. Which brings us to this clever list, and also very clearly to this — though obviously not to this.

2) Similar theme, but it gets a bit more horrifying here. Bibi Aisha, a young Afghan woman, was married at 10 to a man who kept her in a stable until she began menstruating at 12. She was jailed when she tried to escape, and upon release returned to her husband’s family (by her father) — who cut off her nose and ears as punishment for ‘shaming’ the family. Donations to fund reconstructive surgery and other assistance can be made here.

3) And last, I’ll point to allegations by Inuit that the RCMP slaughtered up to 20 000 sled dogs in Nunavut, northern Québec, and Labrador between 1950 and 1980. If you want to erode your belief in the decency of Canadians, read the comments. Mixed in with the statements of outrage (the kind that maybe make you hope that humans are not such wicked beasts after all), we find these gems:

“I think RCMP went to Nunavik, saw how the dogs were treated and the condition they were in and thought they were doing the right thing by putting them down.”

“My father was an officer in the north at this time. The citizens were warned to fence their dogs and keep them on leashes when out walking. The reason being the dogs were attacking people and killing people. The dog cull protected the community.”

“my father shot my dog and i want money too.“

So — in other words — an mass animal slaughter that was part and parcel of a colonialist cultural genocide was, of course, carried out for the good of the colonized. And my goodness, if only they wouldn’t whine so much about it. We can pretend that these aren’t the sentiments underlying comments like these, but we’d quite simply be lying to ourselves.

Now: take all of that anger — I stirred it up on purpose, people — and do something good with it.

CSIS, Khadr, Human Rights — and an aside about health care.

24 Jul

As reported by the CBC, the Security Intelligence Review Committee has released a report indicating that CSIS violated Omar Khadr’s human rights by not taking his age into account when he was interrogated at Guantanamo Bay. (He was sixteen at the time, and as video evidence shows, broke down crying for his mother while being questioned.)

Further, as reported by Kathleen Petty of CBC on The House, SIRC’s report indicates that “CSIS cannot carry out its mandate solely from an intelligence-gathering perspective. They have to take things like human rights into account.”

I’m not going to comment on this in depth, but I’d like to say — thank goodness. It remains to be seen whether or not CSIS will develop a proper protocol for dealing with youth in the future, but the declaration by SIRC that human rights have to take precedence over gathering information fits quite precisely with what I like to imagine to be Canadian values.

And, on that note, an aside about health care. Today, I decided that I wanted a specialist opinion about a (definitely not urgent) health issue. So, being in the US and having good insurance through my student-employee union, I checked the directory for my insurance provider, and booked an appointment. In about two weeks, I’ll be seeing a specialist (with a subspecialty, even), and paying about $10 out of pocket.

So, for a few minutes, I thought — maybe this is better than the care I’d receive in Canada. Back home, I’d certainly be waiting longer for this doctor, and being in a smaller area I’d like not be able to find a doctor with this particular subspecialty. I wouldn’t be able to decide on my own, either, that I wanted this issue double-checked, and then to make my appointment.

But then I thought, you know, I would gladly sacrifice those benefits to be sure that I was in a system where other people are getting looked after. I’d quite happily wait a few more weeks or months to be seen (with no likely health consequences). I’d quite happily consult with my GP about a referral. And all of that is, quite simply, because that’s the way I think things should work.

So, at the risk of playing Smug Canadian (a game I try to avoid), I’ll point out that this too is part of what I imagine to be Canadian values. Just as I’d choose to protect human rights over ‘intelligence gathering’, I’d choose to be part of a national collective that protects the basic healthcare needs of everybody over the convenience of those privileged to have good coverage. That’s not to say that the Canadian system is perfect — because it isn’t, of course. But the principle behind the system is, well, the right one.

Aieee! Have I gone patriotic?

Another reason for the CBC to go commercial-free

17 Jun

Okay, I know it’s late, but I’m watching The Hour on Newsworld. (I don’t have TV in my house, let alone Canadian TV — so when I visit my mom, I like to catch up.)

And then, I saw this:

Is that really necessary? I think not.

Harper, Carbon, and the G8

9 Jul

The CBC site is reporting the following:

As the Group of Eight summit wrapped up in northern Japan on Wednesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it’s a “mathematical certainty” that developing countries will bear the brunt of the work in lowering global greenhouse gas emissions.

His comments to reporters in the resort town of Toyako came as several developing countries reportedly balked at climate change targets proposed by the G8 countries the previous day.

The major industrial countries represented by the G8 set a goal Tuesday to halve emissions that contribute to global warming by 2050, though no international baseline year was set and the plan lacked midterm goals.

Harper said that by 2050, developed nations will likely account for no more than 20 per cent of global carbon emissions.

“So, when we say we need participation by developing countries, this is not a philosophical position. This is a mathematical certainty,” he told Canadian reporters at a news conference Wednesday.

“You can’t get a 50 per cent cut from 20 per cent of emissions.”

1) Developed countries have spent a couple of centuries “developing” while emitting massive amounts of carbon. It’s why we have the technology and industry we do today.

As the developing world catches up in terms of technology and industry, how is it that we now get to blame them for the state of the environment?

The ruling class will always try to maintain its status. That’s part of what this is about: plain and simple, economic imbalance works for the developed world, and we collectively want to maintain it.

2) Way to shirk your responsibility, Harper. Regardless of what’s going on in other nations, it’s still incumbent upon Canada to do better. We’ve made commitments to reducing carbon emissions. If you’re short-sighted, you might be focused on the economic undesirability of making such a change.

But, hell, I don’t really know about economics. That’s not what I do. Sometimes, though, you just have to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do — not because you see a concrete long-term benefit for yourself, and people like you. I’d like to see a national leader who understands that.

The CBC, or, highbrow/lowbrow

10 Mar

I spoke to my father this evening, and we came to the topic of the CBC. Apparently, in his opinion, the CBC has hit a ‘new low’ this year with programming such as MVP (which has in fact already been cancelled), and The Week the Women Went (which has apparently been very popular, and will return for another run). My father’s solution? The CBC should run “more of the good BBC shows”.

Now — I’m a total sucker for BBC programming. I’m not sure what percentage of my Netflix rentals over the last two years have been BBC shows, but it’s a substantial number. I’ve gone through the new Doctor Who, As Time Goes By, Fawlty Towers — and, actually, after that, the list starts (ahem) to get embarrassing. But, as I said to my father, “We’re not a colony any more!”. Given the near-saturation of Canadian channels with American (and, to a lesser extent, British) programming, my nationalist inclination is, perhaps problematically, this: if we’re producing television about Canadians, and Canadians are watching it, that’s a good thing. Genres that people watch — yes, even soap operas and ‘reality’ television — do have a place on the programming roster of a government-funded national broadcaster.

This is a problematic perspective, yes. The more I dig into the issue of nationalism, the more I’m inclined to see it as something toxic — and, in fact, to think that Canada works reasonably well as a country specifically because it lacks the coherent, mythic identity of so many more powerful, and historically more dangerous, nations. At the same time, I have to dig in my heels when I see my national culture being subsumed — or aborted? — by Anglo-American imports. Even if its content is lowbrow, even if it’s the product of a Canadian government institution, I instinctively regard Canadian cultural products as evidence of postcolonial resistance, be it to the colonial power of the past (Britain) or the pseudocolonial power of the present (the US). Perhaps I’ve spent too much time immersed in the work of Margaret Atwood, Dennis Lee, et. al. — the generation of writers who came of age in the late 1960s — but there still seems to me to be some inherent value in this enterprise.

There is, however, an inherent paradox in this argument, because at least with regard to television, what this comes down to is a debate about the model in which the CBC, as a public broadcaster, should be cast. Should it be highbrow, ‘educational’, something that strives to provide a clear alternative to the lowest-common-denominator programming of private broadcasters? Or, as an institution funded by taxpayers, should it be concerned with offering programming that appeals to as broad a range of Canadians as possible? The paradox: the former model is that of PBS; the latter, that of the BBC. So though I might defend a broader-based approach to programming by the CBC, including Canadian content of all stripes, what I’m really defending is the model of the BBC.

I’m not sure what the alternative is. Is there a third possibility, a new model for the CBC? Is our best option to simply follow the BBC model, with an emphasis on Canadian content (as was done literally with MVP, which turned Footballer’s Wives into the wives of hockey players)? What I’d love would be a reinvigorated CBC, with all the shining glory of its best programming — The Newsroom, Twitch City, This Hour has Seven Days, even the old Degrassi. What was so glorious about all of that old programming? Thinking, offhand, of these examples, I’d have to say that they were deeply Canadian without being intentionally Canadian. The express national identity, with little explicit nationalism. They didn’t hide their Canadian attitudes, Canadian settings — but they weren’t terribly emphatic about them, either. They set aside most of the anxiety about national status, accepted that they were immersed in Canadian culture in a global age, and went about their business. Perhaps instead its persistent identity crises, the CBC could try learning from its past successes, and take these up as models.

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