Being Black on CBC

CBC has had a feature, Being Black in Canada, that has awakened us to the discrimination faced by Black folks across the land.

Oddly enough, there's a Black woman who is leader of a political party in Canada, who is virtually invisible on CBC. Her name is Annamie Paul, and she is the leader of the Green Party Canada. 

You'd think she'd be featured front and centre at the newly woke CBC. After all, wouldn't you think a Black woman leading a national political party would excite those woke white senior execs at CBC?

 

Armenian genocide and Israeli apartheid; what's the world coming to?..

The fact that these two stories are prominent this week signals a major reshuffle in narrative management, which in turn reflects the diminishing influence of Sultan Erdogan in the first instance and King Bibi in the second.

I for one do not view these developments as ushering in a new era of human rights awareness in Western political circles. We're operating in the realm of PR here, not in the realm of actual "human rights." Turkey remains a NATO ally sitting on a geopolitically strategic piece of real estate. Don't hold your breath waiting for meaningful censure of the only Muslim NATO member.

That goes double for "the only democracy in the Middle East." If anything, the opprobrium will be aimed at Human Rights Watch, not Israel. Just last week 330 congressional reps from both parties renewed their vows of fealty to Israel.

The only possible consequence of this narrative turn that is of any interest is that it could lead to a Erdogan - Netanyahu rapprochement. 

Why not?

A random sample of good-news bad-news stories from the CBC today

Here's a good news/bad news story out of Edmonton.

The bad news is that Edmonton still employs the widely discredited carding strategy to harass Natives and black folks living in poverty in the capital city of Canada's most prosperous province. At least it was the most prosperous till very recently.

Thankfully, the Edmonton chapter of Black Lives Matter is shining some light on this travesty.

Stop those "street checks" on Indians and black folks, you racist Edmonton cops!

The good news is that when they stop, we'll be better able to ignore the systemic racism that leaves Natives and black folks living in the streets in the first place.

Here's another one. Looks like the Trump Care initiative to repeal Obamacare is going nowhere fast. Trump Care is bad news. Obamacare was bad news. The good news is that studies have shown for decades that a vast majority of Americans want a single-payer health care system just like most civilized nations in the world enjoy today.

If, per Leonard Cohen, democracy ever comes to the USA, they'll have single-payer in no time.

And here's a good one; Ontario taxpayers just made a commitment to clean up the mercury poisoning in the English-Wabigoon river system that's been in the news since I was a teenager. The story talks about $85 millions, but that will only scratch the surface. We'll spend ten times that and there'll still be mercury poisoning in that river system.

But at least we're finally making an effort. The bad news is that the heirs of the greed-bags who poisoned those waters in the first place live unscathed in their posh mansions and get accolades for their various philanthropic endeavours.

As a taxpayer, I gotta say that sucks.

Finally, here's a good news/bad news story out of the Holy Land. Seems a few mainstream Canadian Jews have their kippas in a twist over the fact that the arch-racist Netanyahu regime has reneged on a promise to allow men and women to pray together at the Wailing Wall.

They didn't notice the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

They didn't notice the egregious colonizing of stolen land.

They didn't notice Netanyahu turning Israel into a pariah state.

They didn't notice the creeping apartheid.

But by God, they're paying attention now that the prayer-wall has been re-segregated!

And that's good! Maybe now they'll be more amenable to noticing all that other stuff.

How to solve the terror stabbings

I see where there's a wave of terror sweeping over the Holy Land, terror promulgated by a young generation of Israeli Arabs who see no future for themselves in what is ostensibly their country.

The greatest leader since Moses is of course milking the latest crisis for maximum personal advantage. After all, the people love nothing more than a strong leader in anxious times, and times seem to be perpetually anxious in the Promised Land.

So here's how you end the terror reign of the knife; give those Israeli Arabs the same weapons that are routinely made available to Israeli Jews. An Israeli is an Israeli after all; unless you're advocating for some sort of apartheid state or something...

I guarantee that the knives will be out of the headlines overnight.

Canada sliding eyes-wide-open towards fascism

Definitions of "fascism" could easily fill a library. The great Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci alone spilt tanker-loads of ink on the project of defining fascism.

In the interest of defining our terms we'll jury-rig an abridged definition right here and now; Fascism is what you're left with when the military-industrial complex of a nation-state dominates the levers of policy-making. There you go; short and sweet.

There is no more a perfect example of a fascist state in today's world than the state of Israel. But wait, is that not the "only democracy in the Middle East?" Sure, but that's got nothing to do with anything. Hitler was democratically elected too.

In Israel, the "security" of the state trumps all other considerations. Never more so than with the new more-rightist-than-ever Likud coalition government.

The security of the state is paramount. Anyone who questions Likud policies is a traitor. All criticism of the government is anti-Semitism. All government policy is designed to further marginalize the Palestinians, thereby guaranteeing instability in perpetuity. Instability equals insecurity, therefore we need a massively over-funded military machine, which is massively profitable for the usual war-profiteers, who are then able to fund their war-mongering Knesset pets to create more insecurity and more military spending ad infinitum.

Under the Harper gang Canada has been jockeying to become the single most slavishly devoted cheer-leader of the fascist Likud regime. And with considerable success!

What occupation?

What illegal settlements?

What apartheid?

What war crimes in Gaza?

The Alliance Church crowd around Big Steve is wilfully blind to everything that is so obvious to most of the world, and was obvious even to previous Canadian governments, both Liberal and Conservative.

Instead, we get FM Baird's embarrassing Toady Tour of Israel.

Big Steve's speech to the half-empty Knesset.

Our prime minister accepting a "World Statesman of the Year" award from an extremist Israeli lobby.

And on it goes, and now it has come to this.

Canada intends to use its hate-crime laws and the odious police-state Bill C-51 to criminalize criticism of Likud policy, no matter how racist and genocidal.

If you criticize the policies of the fascist mob that holds the reins in the Knesset, you are guilty of hate speech.

You are an anti-Semite.

Nevermind that the most cogent critics of that fascist mob have always been Jews. Chomsky. Finkelstein. Uri Avnery. Canada's own Michael Neumann.

Within hours of the CBC story appearing, the Washington Post, hardly an anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli platform, had an opinion piece up slamming the Harperite position and labelling it "very troubling."

And while I don't like to toot my own horn, we had the same story right here months ago.

How does this rabid cheer-leading for the most overtly fascist state in the Western world impact the popularity of the Harper gang?

Harper is leading in the polls a mere five months before the next federal election.

Eyes wide open...