European multiculturalism

Europe is not managing its multiculturalization at all well. The first-round lead Nicolas Sarkozy won in presidential elections in France this month attests to that nation’s poor grasp of the process. Sarkozy’s platform is largely based on a softer form of French chauvinism, and anti-immigrant bigotry, than what has been long espoused by fellow countryman, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

It may seem odd to think of it as “chauvinism” when this level of odious bigotry is expressed in France. Yet it is no less unacceptable than if “French” chauvinism were expressed in Algeria or in Vietnam. French chauvinism in France has been tolerated only because there is a strong temptation to buy into a chauvinism that has been around so long.

There is an even stronger Italian chauvinism in Italy, and now British chauvinism in Britain has reared up. “Immigrants ‘are ruining the British way of life’” reads a recent headline on International Express. “Britain is losing its identity as a nation thanks to record immigration levels, a think tank has warned,” the story begins. “In the course of Britain having become a nation of immigrants, it would have ceased to be a nation,” warns David Conway, of Civitas, the think tank mentioned in the story. But the notion that France should be forever and completely “French” or that Britain should be forever “British,” is an outdated one, both for practical, and for moral, reasons. Canada is the model for Europe’s future, if Europe can see it’s way to it through the haze of its own ages-old bigotry and chauvinism.

There is no “Canadian” character or way of life in the sense that is meant by those terms when used in Europe. This is often bemoaned in Canada as a tragic lack of identity, but in fact it is a strength, not a weakness. The term “Canadian” will always mean whatever Canadians think it means, as the makeup of that body of people called “Canadian” shifts with the times. Not being locked down to some ancient and outdated concept of “Canadian,” the way the meaning of “Italian” is locked down in Italy, and “French” is locked down in France, means the concept of “Canadian” for Canadians is free to shift in meaning to whatever those people who are in Canada at any one time think it means. It is the tall grass that bends in the wind, not a rigid stalk that resists and eventually breaks.

Once “Frenchness” or “Italianess” or “Britishness” is defined with ancient pedigrees in mind and insisted on for incoming immigrants, the politics of exclusion, with all its attendant social stresses, fractures, and eruptions of violence, becomes the order of the day. Unless the doors are closed to immigrants—which would be economic suicide in Europe—immigrants must be allowed to participate fully in public life, and that includes participation in defining the character and meaning of the nation.

Detainees are prisoners of war

Alberto Gonzalez, US Attorney General and the man who is now answering charges of aiding and abetting the illegal torture of US prisoners of war, contrary to US treaty obligations under the Geneva Convention, might have been the legal counsel in the White House who invented the intentionally slippery term “detainees.” That term has been used by US forces and political leaders since 9/11 in order to avoid the restrictions on treatment of prisoners of war as spelled out in various war crimes treaties. The term “detainees” was created deliberately to cast a legal shadow over what is illegal activity.

It is therefore disheartening to see the term “detainees” used by Canadian officials, Canadian leaders, and Canadian media, to describe prisoners of war captured by Canadian forces in Afghanistan—prisoners of war now at the centre of our own abuse and torture scandal.

The term “detainees” has no legal definition in the US, but at least there are policy makers in the US accountable for its invention and the circumventions of law that it has allowed. It has no business being uttered in Canada whatsoever and its appearance in our media and on the lips of our military officials and political leaders is regrettable. The parameters around the issue of torture and abuse becomes much clearer when correct and legally defined words are used, as opposed to invented, slippery, and undefined words: Canada is engaged in war in Afghanistan, and those people in the stories of abuse and torture are our prisoners of war. As such, we have clearly defined obligations toward them which are spelled out in treaties we are legally compelled to live up to.

Who’s the crazy one?

US leaders now want to build tall concrete walls around different neighbourhoods of Baghdad as part of their new idea for security. Margaret Wente, writing in the Globe and Mail, has suggested “we can tattoo a maple leaf on the guys we round up” in Afghanistan. Christopher Hitchens, writing at Slate.com, argues that Iraq was going to go pear-shaped anyway, so no blame for the mess should be laid at American doors.

And yet all three are on record calling those who are fighting US and NATO occupation forces in their home countries “mad.” They’re mad alright, mad as hell, I am guessing, at people like these.

Rent-a-protester

It was asserted in court this week that David Basi, charged in crimes related to the sale of BC Rail to CN, used a Liberal Party slush fund to pay operatives to protest on radio phone-in shows and to shout at political demonstrations.

That is to say, at a time when Premier Gordon Campbell smeared opponents of his draconian economic policies as mere “rent-a-protester,” with no evidence the protesters were anything other than genuinely concerned citizens, his political office was doing exactly that—actually paying a rented band of fake protestors.

It’s a staple of the couch-talk trade that people attack personality traits in others that are most prominently in their own personalities. But rarely do we see the truth of that psychiatric maxim laid out so pure and true.

Self-determination doesn’t include foreign armies

More on the “they’re all mad!” file: British foreign office minister Kim Howells came to Ottawa to warn Canadians they should not think of pulling troops out of Afghanistan because “these people will attack whichever target they think is easiest to attack and brings the most spectacular results.” He worried, later in the interview with CanWest news service, that our children will ask us: “Why didn’t we try and stem them?”

“These people,” says this apparently self-described expert on those people whom no scholar claims to understand to an equal degree, “are not friends with anyone who espouses democracy or the notion that people should have a say in the way in which their own countries and own lives should be run.”

The Taliban, by all credible accounts, enjoy popular support in the Pashtun-majority south of the country. There, the Loya Jirga is the system by which various tribal leaders have a say in the way their country and lives should be run. The Afghans were pretty much running their country and their lives the way they wanted to before all the foreigners showed up with guns, helicopters and Humvees, and dressed in US, British, and Canadian military uniforms.

As Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame said in his memoirs about Vietnam: It wasn’t that we were fighting the wrong side; we were the wrong side.