Matthew Barlow

Allison Des Forges was one of the victims of Thursday’s plane crash in Buffalo, where she was returning home.  Des Forges was a leading human rights activists, working with Human Rights Watch, where she was their Africa specialist.  She was also one of the first to call a spade a spade in Rwanda back in 1994.  The world has suffered a great loss.  She was 66.  A tribute page on Human Rights Watch’s website can be found here.

On the website of The Gazette, Montréal’s Anglophone newspaper, there is this headline: “Canada can decide its own future in Afghanistan: US.”  In other words, the United States of America, paragon of democracy, is actually allowing a foreign sovereign state to decide on where it will send its military.  Oh, thank you, great overlords! 

BUT, click on the link, read the story and it’s a rather different story being reported.  In actual reality, the Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen said something very different.  He said that he has not, and will not, ask Canada to extend its combat role in Afghanistan beyond the 2011 deadline agreed to by the governing Conservatives and some of the opposition parties last year.  That, said Adm. Mullen, is something for Canadians to decide, though he’s, not surprisingly, love to see Canada extend its mission.  But he will not, he repeats, formally ask Canada to do so.  In fact, Adm. Mullen seems to be aware of the political minefield the Afghan mission is in Canada and would like to stay far away from that.

So, what in the name of God is The Gazette up to?  No good, it would seem.  There is a very strong sentiment of anti-Americanism in Canada.  It’s a good way to score cheap points, politically, and also, it seems, in a newspaper.  It’s not as if this anti-Americanism isn’t entirely justified.  Former US Ambassador to Canada Paul Celucci did, at one point, tell the Canadian government to spend less money on healthcare and more money on the military.  Former US President Lyndon Johnson did shake former Canadian Prime Minister Leaster B. Pearson by the lapels for having an opinion on the Canada-US Auto Pact that didn’t jibe with Johnson’s.  There are other examples, but the point is less that than the fact that Canadians do have an historic right to be suspicious of American designs and goals.  

But, The Gazette is purposefully mis-leading its readers here.  And while I’m not usually a big fan of The Gazette at the best of times, this is just a cheap shot.  There is nothing in the story to connect to the headline.  Instead, the newspaper is going for the cheap, lowest common denominator.  And that is just wrong.

Geoff Manaugh over at BLDGBLOG, one of my favourite sites, has an interesting bit about a Welsh farmer who found a unique way of protesting Wales’ banning of genitically modified food.  It seems that, upset with the fact that the Welsh assembly did not open the decision up to debate, the dude got himself some genetically modified seed and planted it, grew it, and fed it to local sheep and cattle.  The seed he got was on the EU’s common variety list, making it legal to grow anywhere in the EU. 

This is rather fascinating, in a scary kind of way.  Genetically modified food has kind of become part of our cultural landscape in recent years.  Whether we want to or not, I’m sure most of us consume it if we don’t go out of our way to ensure we eat organic.  But this got me thinking about a case here in Canada a few years back involving a farmer in Saskatchewan.  I’m not sure I’m remembering this completely correctly, but I seem to recall that he was sued by Monsanto for illegally acquiring its GM wheat. From what I recall, he had the seed because it blew onto his farm. 

This, in turn, led me to ponder my general desire to eat organic fruits, veggies, and meat.  Pesticides are kind of a scary thing, I think.  Does the consumption of GM wheat on the part of these Welsh sheep and cattle, even inadvertently, now mean that dairy and meat products that come from them cannot be considered all-natural or organic?  Does this mean that if GM food blows onto a farm or ranch and the animals consume it, or it gets mixed in with the organic seed, that we now have non-organic food?  It would seem to me that that is indeed the case.  So what does this mean for organic farming and meat production?  What does this mean when I head off to Marché Atwater tomorrow and specifically purchase organic beef?  Does this mean that I need to be wondering what this cow ate, that maybe it’s not organic?

Does this count as agricultural terrorism?  One of the responses to Manaugh’s post seems to think so.

My apologies, Janet Ajzenstat replied to me nearly two weeks ago, but I have been insanely busy.  Most notably, I have finished and submitted my doctoral dissertation.  Finally.  So, without further ado:

In response to my initial post “Power & Colonialism,” (which itself was inspired by the Professor’s blog)you can find the Professor’s comments.  I’m not so sure that I’m entirely ready to accept her argument that “even humanitarian aid can have a depressing effect on democratic development.”  All sorts of things can have a depressing effect on democratic development, including democracy itself.  Exhibit A would be the actions of the late, unlamented Bush Administration in the United States.  During Bush’s tenure in office, many anti-democratic measures were taken and/or insituted by the American government, from wire taps, to the Patriot Act, and beyond. 

However, the Professor is very correct to note the ambivalence and contradiction of the British colonial project.  British democracy is founded upon the Lockean principle that populations cannot be governed without their consent.  Indeed, this is exactly what the Americans were on about at the time of their War of Independence in the 1770s and 1870s.  However, a major portion of the British colonial project involed governing over subordinate peoples, ostensibly to teach them how to goven themselves, but just as often to enrich Britain (case in point: India).  Not that this did not have some positive benefits, though I think imperial apologists like Niall Ferguson go too far.  In his Empire, Ferguson almost completely lets the British off the hook because they brought democracy around the world and essentially civilised the natives.  I’m sorry, but that is not a good enough defence to justify the brutality of the colonial experience in Asia, Africa, and Ireland. 

But then the Professor turns back to Israel and notes that its democratic institutions are also founded on Lockean principles.  And yet, here is Israel acting as imperialist in the Gaza Strip and beyond.  The recent move by the Israeli Central Election Committee to ban Arab parties from running in the upcoming elections there is more than slightly disturbing.  This enforces a form of apartheid.  I am not entirely prepared to accuse Israel of apartheid in its relations with the Palestinians, but decisions such as this are frigthtening, anti-democratic, and have the appearances of apartheid.

In Le Devoir today, Catherine Côté, who teaches Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, has an interesting piece on the political discourse of Barack Obama and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, entitled “Obama et Sarkozy: Même discours.”  In it, she notes the similarity in their campaign trail discourses in the French presidential election of 2007 and the American presidential election of last year.  Indeed, even their campaign slogans are remarkably similar.  Sarkozy: “Ensemble, tout devient possible.”  Obama: “Yes, we can!” 

I’ll leave those interested in the article to read it themselves, but I will offer up here a few quotes Côté provides us to compare the two politicians.  In the first istance, she compares Sarkozy’s speech eight days before the French election at the palais Omnisport de Bercy, with Obama’s infomercial six days before the American election.

Sarkozy: “Huit jours pour fair de nos rêves une réalité; huit jours pour se lever; huit jours pour bâtir l’espérance dont la France a besoin; huit jours pour dire ce que nous voulons pour nos enfants; huit jours pour dire que la France est un vieux pays qui a tant de choses à dire au monde, à l’Europe; huit jours pour faire du travail, du mérite, de l’effort, de la récompense, de l’humanisme, les valeurs de la République française; huit jours pour que l’avenir soit une espérance; pour convaincre, pour rassembler, pour que tous ceux qui aiment passionément la France nous aident à bâtir la France de renouveau…J’ai besoin de vous, comme jamais un candidat n’a eu besoin du peuple à ses côtés; j’ai besoin de vois, pour être le candidat du peuple de France; j’ai besoin de vous, la victoire est en vous; la victoire sera belle parce que ce sera la vôtre; vive le République et vive la France!”

Obama: “In six days, we can choose an economy that rewards work and creates new jobs and fuels prosperity from the bottom-up; in six days, we can choose to invest in health care for our families, and education for our kids, and renewable energy for our future; in six days, we can choose hope over fear, unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo; in six days, we can come together as one nation, and one people, and once more choose our better history…If you will stand with m e, and fight with me, and give me your vote, then I promise you this: we will not just win North Carolina, we will not just win this election, but together, we will change this country and we will change the world. Thank you. God bless you, and may God bless America!”

Côté does not suggest that Obama is ripping off Sarkozy, but she is arguing that they are making very similar arguments that might seem to stand at odds with what we think of when we think of Obama.  Let us not forget that Sarkozy is a conservative, or at least that’s how he was elected, as the candidate for the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, the mainstream right-wing party in France.  Côté concludes that: “Dans les deux discours, une même incarnation pour conquérir les coeurs: patriotisme, conservatisme et populisme, une même incantation qui se fait homme.”

Barack Obama as a conservative populist.  Hmm. 

I would also suggest that there are more similarities between Obama and Sarkozy than their political discourse.  Both tout their non-partisan approaches to politics.  Indeed, Sarkozy has appointed Socialists to his cabinet.  Obama has appointed Republicans to his, though we have yet to see how Obama will work in this sense. But perhaps even more, both are cultural phenomena.  Sarkozy, largely because he left his wife, or she left him, and he hooked up with Carla Bruni, the sexy chanteuse.  But through Bruni, “Sarko,” became the number one celebrity in France.  Indeed, so obssessed did Sarkozy become with his image, he had his buddies in the media airbrush his love handles off him in a photo of him canoeing.  It got so bad that last year, the French people began to turn on him because they saw him more as a rock star than a president and there was a sense that he was beginning to do damage to the Office of the President.

Obama, on the other hand, is a rock star of his own accord.

Either way, Côté brings up some interesting points about everyone’s (including mine) favourite American president.

Janet Ajzenstat, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at McMaster University has a fascinating post on her blog on the issue of money and colonialism.  Ajzenstat is interested in the Gaza Strip and its colonial status, which, she argues, is a given.  But the question, in her mind, is who is the coloniser?  Rather than fall back on the standard argument of Israel as coloniser, she goes a bit deeper and follows the money. 

One of my favourite TV shows is The Wire.  In the first season, the cops are trying to pin down one of the biggest drugdealers in Baltimore, Avon Barksdale.  In Episode 8, “Lessons,” the cops learn something important.  They’re used to busting the drug dealers and the drug addicts. But this time, they stop the bagman, the dude carrying the drug money picked up from the point-of-sale to be taken to the safe house.  So they arrest the bagman and the money.  The bagman is the driver for a Maryland state senator.  This is where it gets interesting: where is the money going?  Detective Lester Freamon notes that if you follow the money, you end up in all sorts of uncomfortable places.

And so this is where Ajzenstat is going with her exploration of the colonial status of the Palestine, noting that the money comes largely from Arab supporters of the Hamas on the Gaza Strip.  Thus, she concludes: “So by Ajzenstat’s definition, Gaza is a colony. But is Israel the colonizer? Insofar as it is supplying humanitarian aid, yes. But so are the “Arab sources”…Iran, the UN, and “the West” relieve Hamas of the necessity of improving the lives of its people.” 

In other words, she concludes that because the money for the heavy-lifting of governing the Gaza Strip comes from these Arab sources, they are the colonisers in this sense.  This is a fascinating argument and one that should not be dismissed.  She argues that “Colonizers can be defined as groups or countries that make rules for others by which the colonizers themselves are not bound. And as I explained a couple of days ago colonizers often enforce those rules by paying into the colony’s coffers.” 

This is an interesting argument, but personally, I am not entirely ready to accept her argument.  The question arises out of what the Arab states purchase with their money in the Gaza Strip.  Money is power in a lot of senses, including this one.  

But money is only part of the story.  And colonialism is not so simply defined.  Colonies can take on all sorts of shapes and sizes.  Canada was a colony of Britain for most of its history.  But what did that mean?  The British were not here to civilise and extract great profits from Canada.  But the British also colonised other locales.  Like, for example, Ireland.  What did the British do in Ireland?  They proscribed the freedom of the native Irish population, attempting to “civilise” (this is the word the British used, not me, go look it up) the natives.  They also wanted to not have a potentially hostile nation on its periphery.   In India, they had other things to do.  Sure, the “civilising” mission was there, but India also made Britain a boatload of money.   So, in these three instances, the finances really only matter in one location: India. 

Of course, in making her argument, Ajzenstat points to colonial early-19th century Lower Canada (Québec today), and the fact that by some estimates, Britain was paying nearly half of the Lower Canadian colonial government’s expenses.  Hence the connection to the Gaza Strip today.

This, however, is only part of the story.  There is also the question of who is proscribing Arab movement and power in the Gaza Strip.  The answer to that question is Israel.  So we must not lose track of that fact of this colonial situation.  Israel’s role goes beyond the supplying of humanitarian aid, which is what Ajzenstat points to in locating Israel’s colonising status in the Gaza Strip. 

Having said all of this, what makes Ajzenstat’s argument so interesting is the complication it brings to the usual debate about Israel and the Gaza Strip.  Complexity is what is needed here to try to make sense of a complicated, and messy situation.

Mike Innes has an interesting piece over on his blog, picking up the discussion of the zero trope.  This is an interesting discussion, at least to me, as Mike and I have been arguing, haggling, and bickering for the past year or so on the issue.  This piece is interesting.  He picks up on an article written by Antoine Bousquet in 2006 that looks at 11 September 2001 as a ground zero.  Bousquet, in effect, argues that 11 September, like the Hiroshima bombing (and I am going with Mike’s interpretation of Bousquet’s argument here, as my institution doesn’t allow me to access the full text of Bousquet’s article) was a rupture in the historical consciousness of the Western world.  

Mike takes issue with suggesting that 11 September can be properly termed a ground zero in the sense that Bousquet means it: a total rupture of the historical consciousness, and narrative, of Western culture.  His problem arises from the fact that we don’t have historical perspective to judge the impact of 11 September on our historical consciousness yet.  In building his argument, however, Bousquet uses the example of Hiroshima as an analogy, Mike suggests the Holocaust.  Either way, I think both of those historical moments can be seen as ruptures.  Hiroshima ushered in the nuclear age, led to the Cold War and the dominant ideology anyone over the age of 35 in Europe and North America, if not elsewhere, grew up in.  The Holocaust was such an evil that the world has reeled since, in a sense, we live in the age of genocide now, in part thanks to Raphael Lemkin coining the term, in part due to the world’s response to the Holocaust, and those famous words: “Never again.”  Of course, it has happened again, and as many historians have shown, lingering anti-semitism amongst the ruling classes of the UK, Canada, and various other nations ensured that Jews could not flee Nazi Germany for safe harbour there.  

But I digress.  The point is made.  But I’m going to be the historian again here.  Recently, I argued on the CTlab review in response to another posting of Mike’s, which was itself a response to an article in The Atlantic reviewing archaeologist Barry Cunliffe’s new book, Europe Between the Oceans.  I won’t get into the details of my argument there.  But it is relevant to the argument I am going to make here.

The problem I have with this push to find the ground zero, I think, is this: ground zeros exist all around us.  

Mike and Antoine have both thought of two alternate ground zeros for Western historical consciousness, both in the same era: Hiroshima and the Holocaust.  They argue over whether or not 11 September is one.  I might also add the Vietnam War, which was the introduction of television into how war is fought and the attendant responses of belligerent states.  How different would wars be since Vietnam if there weren’t TV crews following soldiers around Afghanistan and Iraq today?  Or in Somalia in the early 1990s?  Or in Iraq and Kuwait a few years earlier?  

Ruptures in the historical consciousness happen on the meta level with relative frequency, I would argue.  In the first half of the twentieth century, Europe and North America experienced: World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Depression, World War II (including the Holocaust and Hiroshima), and the outset of the Cold War.  Those events all caused massive, fundamental change.  In some ways, each caused a rupture in the Western cultural historical consciousness, which I interpret to be, basically, the stories we tell ourselves as a culture.  

Similarly, ruptures have occurred on the national level, depending on the nation.  In Ireland, independence was gained in the aftermath of World War I, or at least independence for most of the island, because there was also partition.  Independence for what became the Republic of Ireland and the creation of the Northern Irish unionist state are clearly moments of rupture in Ireland’s (and Britain’s) historical consciousness.  

In Canada, in October 1970, armed terrorists kidnapped the British trade minister in Montréal, James Cross, as well as the Québec Minister of Labour, Pierre Laporte.  Laporte was later killed.  The terrorists were the Front de Libération du Québec.  Their goal was Québec’s independence, and they sought to do so through violence.  The FLQ had spent much of the 1960s exploding bombs in and around Montréal, but nothing compared to what happened in October 1970.  There were soldiers on the streets of the city for most of the autumn and early winter of 1970.  This certainly caused a rupture in our historical consciousness in Canada/Québec.  Gone was our prosaic belief in our peaceability, or our belief that we’re safe.   

Personally, we all experience our own ground zeros on a regular basis.  Moments where we experience a rupture in our own personal historical consciousness.  And this doesn’t always have to be negative, they can be positive, too.  Getting married.  Our parents dying.  Being diagnosed with a catastrophic illness.  There are always moments after which nothing is ever the same.  Indeed, given that there are always consequences of all of our actions.  If we want to get down to the micro-historical level, our actions are always leading to different outcomes, our lives are never the same after any given moment in our lives.  How do I know how else my decision to go to the dépanneur this evening could have played out?  Maybe I would have otherwise stayed home and not missed the call from an old friend in Vancouver?  Maybe not.  Maybe the call would never have come if I wasn’t home. 

I am fascinated with this exploration of the zero trope, and I’m not trying to suggest there is no point to such explorations.  However, what I am suggesting is something similar to which I suggested in the CTlab post, and that is we, as a culture, spend so much time trying to find rupture, moments that the world changed, the moments the world stood still.  This doesn’t mean necessarily that we shouldn’t look for those great moments of rupture, those instances where our historical consciousnesses are altered.  What I’m suggesting is that perhaps they are more common than we think.  Or at the very least, we need to be prepared to recognise the multiplicity of such moments, and to recognise that they exists at the meta and micro levels, as well as those levels in between.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports today the the United States has no faith in the deal cut in September that would see Mugabe and Tsvangirai share power, with the former as President and the latter as Prime Minister.  The United States doesn’t believe that Mugabe intends to actually do so. Jendayi Frazer, who is the US Assistant Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, also noted to reporters in Pretoria, South Africa, that Mugabe’s claims that the west is engaging in biological warfare by launching cholera in Zimabwe shows that Mugabe is “a man who’s lost it, who’s losing his mind, who’s out of touch with reality.”

Tsvangirai, meanwhile, claims that 42 of his supporters have been abducted by state agents, and so he and his Movement for Democratic Change have pulled out of power-sharing discussions if nothing is put forth by New Year’s Day.

That is discouraging. 

Meanwhile, the CBC allows for people to pontificate on news stories on its website, which usually leads to a whole raft of, for the lack of a better term, interesting positions put forth.  One argues the following: “Currently popular opinion that “Mugabe is guilty for everything” is apparent oversimplification. The sad truth is that if it was not Mugabe, it would have been Nkomo; if not Nkomo it would have been someone else, but the result would have been the same, as the same scenario repeats itself over and over again in literally ALL African countries liberated from “white rule”. The history of failures of newly liberated African countries proves over and over again that “equal representation” democracy does not work in Africa.”  By “equal representation”, he means equality between blacks and whites.  He goes onto argue that blacks in the former Rhodesia were still tribesmen in the 60s and 70s and were not literate, nor did they speak English.  This, in his mind, means that black Rhodesians were not ready for democracy and self-rule.  

He also argues that land was distributed equally to blacks and whites under British rule in Rhodesia and that whites farmed the land better, whereas black farms suffered from soil erosion.  Of course, in reality, white Britons received the vast majority of land in Rhodesia, all of it well-drained, fertile, and on flat land.  Blacks, on the other hand, got less land (though they were the majority) and it tended to be land on hillsides, have poor soil, and not well drained.  

Another poster argues, after having read an article in The Economist on the civil war in Congo, and Rwanda’s involvement therein, argues that all of the people commenting on this article “blames the west, the US, Britain, France or China. They blame greedy corperations, they blame a weak AU. Anyone but the combatants. A continent that cannot take responsibility for it’s actions cannot rule itself.”  He actually posts in response to this article, too, arguing that Africans behave like spoiled teenagers.  I think he’s referring to the leadership cadre. 

I find this kind of commentary depressing.  The first poster on the CBC’s website is basically making the same argument the British used for centuries to justify their colonialism in various parts of the world, including India, Rhodesia, and Ireland.  The natives aren’t ready to rule themselves.  Funny, but seems to me that they were doing fine before being colonised.  A former colleague once argued in response, vis-à-vis Ireland, that the British united the fractious kingdoms of Ireland into a unified nation.  This, in his mind, justified imperialism and colonialism, and the horrors attached thereto.  

As for the poster’s argument that the fact that black Rhodesians did not even speak English meant that they were unfit for democracy and self-rule is so far beyond the pale of being worth responding to.

The second poster’s arguments are from the same vein.  In the end, on The Economist‘s website he seems to be arguing that it is time for Zimbabweans to rise up against Mugabe.  Fair enough, but the poster is also Canadian.  He lectures people that in Canada, when faced with a corrupt régime, we turf them out of office.  As I noted in a previous post, this is exactly what Zimbabweans tried to do in the spring of 2008, vote Mugabe out of office.  Mugabe refuses to take heed.  I also noted that Mugabe’s response has been violence.  Very easy to be sitting in Canada and suggest that people who are starving, poor, desperate just to survive, to say nothing of the cholera epidemic, should be taking up arms against their government.  Very easy.  But then he goes on to suggest that Africans are spoiled teenagers and the continent (the entire continent, mind) is incapable of self-rule, though he does pat South Africa on the back for being on the right track.  

Commentary like this just astounds me.  Where do you start to respond to this?  It’s so wrapped up in racist, colonialist mindsets.  The logic of their argument is inconsistent, arguing on the one hand that the citizens of Zimbabwe need to rise up against Mugabe, and then arguing that Africans are incapable of ruling themselves.  Which one is it?  Then they complain that everyone blames the west, in purposeful reductionism.  The problem with this type of mindset is that, 1) it refuses to recognise the legacy of colonialism, and 2) it advocates neo-colonialism as a solution.  This, my friends, is what logicians call circular logic.  Me, I call it disturbing and offensive.

Stephen Ellis has an excellent analysis of the role of the African Union in the Zimbabwean Crisis at the CTlab’s Review.

Oy vey.  Robert Mugabe.  Today’s Globe & Mail reports his latest paranoid dictator declaration: “Zimbabwe is mine.”  He goes on to state that not only do other African states lack the will to remove him, but that only Zimbabweans can remove him from power.  Funny that.  It seems to me that that is exactly what Zimbabweans tried to do back in the spring.  But, of course, Morgan Tsvangirai didn’t win an absolute majority in that election, so there was a run-off.  Mugabe held onto power in that run-off by having his goonda squads run around beating, imprisoning, and threatening Tsvangirai’s supporters.  So, in the end, he maintained power through nefarious means.  We all know the result.  But the thing that I find most frightening about Mugabe’s most recent outburst is this, taken from the same Globe & Mail article:

On Friday, Mr. Mugabe harangued his party leaders and supporters over his loss, accusing some of them of supporting the opposition – charges that highlighted splits in the party over Mr. Mugabe’s continued leadership. “I know some of you were campaigning for MDC,” he said. “No wonder I lost dismally but some of you won your seats.”

He warned: “Now we know you and we are watching you closely.”

Does this mean that Mugabe is going to make like Stalin and engage in purges of people he thinks are disloyal?  Paranoia is certainly not out of the question for Mugabe, given his continued pronouncements against the British.  

Either way, it is time for Mugabe to go.  At this point, it seems that Zimbabweans have suffered too much.  More than enough.  Mugabe has no interest in looking out for his people, his interest is in looking out for himself.  

The question is, then, what is to be done?  What is the solution?  Will Mugabe’s ouster have to come from within Zimbabwe?  Or will other African nations put pressure on him, whether diplomatic or militarily, to resign?  Or will that force come from outside of Africa?  It seems that the entire world is calling on Mugabe to go.