Second Part. The End Of The World, Coming To Your Neighbourhood Soon

Almost first past the post in that bath of irrelevance, special-pleading, disinformation, and avoidance was CBC’s June 4 Sunday Morning show. There, radio host Michael Enright laid out the terms of discussion acceptable to Canadian power in both Corporations and government. Only once, briefly and hesitantly, did Enright refer to the Central Issue, in his introduction. He asked if the Canadian presence in Afghanistan might contribute to the tendency toward violent actions in Canada. But he dropped that question as quickly as he raised it. True to Enright form, he didn’t once ask that central question in the interview. True to Enright form, there was no guest present to raise the burning question of Canada’s foreign policy and its support of U.S illegitimate wars. The evil result was that well-meaning Canadians of good faith needing and deserving information were denied it. That’s what we call “disinformation”. CBC’s Sunday Morning was quickly followed by the Howling Jackels of the Right screaming (however disguised) anti-Muslim rant and/or refusing to ask why the manifestation of Muslim violence in the Western World has shown its face. For Robert Fulford in the June 8, National Post, Islamic religion is the evil. Period. Simple. For George Jonas (Victoria Times Colonist, June 8 06), rant fills all the gaps. What would satisfy the Muslim activists, he writes, would be if “we ceased being secular, western-style democracies, if we changed our creeds and policies, abandoned our friends, embraced our enemies ….” Such balderdash substitutes for serious analysis and invites brutish responses. What, then, is the truth about the possibility of some born Canadians of Muslim faith wishing to do violence to Canadian persons and property? When I say, using an old-fashioned phrase, “every school boy can tell you”, I do so on purpose, having been one of those school boys once. School boys often have a highly developed sense of justice, of the fair and the unfair, of the presence of bullying – and they often want something done about what they see as blatant exploitation and wrong-doing. In the matter of the Central Issue, all of the people engaging in violent resistance against Western nations, so far, have been from peoples connected to Islam. The region containing much of Islam is a place where blatant and visible injustice is institutionalized and on-going. The open wound of Palestine has been bleeding for decades. Iraq is in the midst of a debacle of illegal invasion and its oil-rich aftermath. The invasion of Afghanistan was a trumped-up monstrosity and continues to be so. This year the U.S. Congress voted seventy-five million dollars to support the opposition in Iran. Satellite countries and puppet states of the U.S. dot the region. In Spain, “the country’s most prominent investigative magistrate, Baltasar Garzon,” has publicly attacked the U.S. Guantanamo Bay jail as “an insult to countries that respect laws”. More importantly, perhaps, he describes it and U.S. “renditions” as “extremely damaging to all our efforts to integrate our Muslim communities who see these actions as unjust.” (NY Times, June 4, 06, 16) Unrelieved oppression results in violent reaction. And, in the case of the Muslims, that reaction can find a focus in fundamentalist readings of the Holy Book of Islam which legitimates resistance to repression of people who believe themselves true to the Faith. But that same book is remarkably tolerant of religious difference where conditions of just social behaviour are present. The situation may not last in which violent resistance to the U.S. and its “Coalition” is made up of guerilla Muslims. As the bloody results of U.S. wars for wealth grow, we may expect to see non-Muslims begin forms of guerilla warfare against U.S. and U.S.-satellite powers. Already in South America the U.S. stranglehold on oil and gas wealth is being challenged – for now – democratically. But the U.S. is rattling sabres there, and its destabilizing forces are hard at work in the region. If warfare breaks out for the control of South American states, we may see violent action against the U.S. in the U.S. by a non-Muslim resistance. U.S.-backed wars for the control of South American and Central American states have been going on for long decades, it is true. The ten-year war against the legitimate government of Nicaragua in the 1980s, for instance, was fought by so-called “Contra” (Nicaraguan) forces. But financing, weaponry, and organizaton for that brutal war were supplied openly and publicly by the U.S.A. Times have changed. They have changed in Canada as well as in the rest of the world. Politics has become increasingly a manipulative front for the repressive rule of Private Corporations. The move to even a minority government led by a known reactionary and U.S. idolater – Stephen Harper – is a visible proof. The narrowing of politics towards a “new repression” is one of the changes. Every school boy (and girl) knows it. Destruction of nature, global warming, and the use of increasingly brutal weaponry is facing us all. Every school boy (and girl) knows that. That’s why the reference to every school boy is relevant. Now, the U.S. is seen differently from the way it was seen even in the recent past – which is why the Howling Jackals of the Right are becoming more and more strident. For a long time the world watched what it believed was an often good, sometimes bad U.S., which was, the world believed, overall, working (whatever mistakes it made) in good faith for a better world – for justice, equality, social advance, economic development, the self-determination of nations, and the liberation of oppressed peoples. But fewer and fewer people believe that myth now. We don’t even have to ask if the U.S. was ever a force working in good faith for a better world. All we have to know is that fewer people now believe the myth. Many of them, in fact, believe the U.S. is an active force for evil. That makes (1) interventions in the naked self-interest of the U.S. harder to pull off. It makes (2) people much more suspicious of U.S. actions AND OF U.S. ALLIES. It makes (3) more highly visible the growing sense of hurt and injustice felt by victims of U.S. aggressive actions. It makes (4) the jungle drums beat, the smoke signals rise, the grapevine peoples’ communication systems hum. In short, it has the result of a compounding and speeding up of the disenchantment with U.S. claims to virtue. But more. It makes (5) the young put together (as they should) U.S. brutality, the U.S. development of a “missile offense” system for dominating the world, the decay of democratic politics, global warming that is visibly affecting human destiny, and the unhindered destruction of the natural environment. The situation, to many young Canadians, looks hopeless. And they are expressing that hopelessness in signs of desperation. At a recent conference on ecology and art I attended, for instance, a woman brought all the participants to stunned silence. A trusted youth advisor, she told us that in recent months, on three separate occasions, male youths between 14 and 16 told her the end of the world is coming (because of the forces mentioned just above) and they (each separately) were considering suicide. How big a step is it from considering being a suicide to considering being a suicide bomber? Older Canadians, who are generally a quiet lot, are much more willing than even ten years ago to express anger at the U.S. What are they angry at? The so-called softwood lumber settlement reveals NAFTA is a farce, serving the U.S. openly, negotiated by the Harper government. The Liberal sponsorship scandal is now proving a farce, too, because Harper used it to get power without the slightest intention of constructing a real system of honesty and accountability. Jean Chretien’s error in sending Canadian troops to the illegitimate war in Afghanistan is further compounded by the Harper government enthusiastically mouthing U.S. platitudes about the war and vowing fidelity to U.S. plans there. The Harper government has dumped attachment to the Kyoto Accord, and babbles about joining the U.S.-dominated Asia Pacific regime. Every school boy (and girl) knows the invasion of Iraq was illegal and – in addition – racist and dirty and self-serving. The invasion of Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden was illegitimate and monstrously violent as well as another chapter in the U.S.'s grisly oil adventure. Every school boy (and girl) knows the U.S. is after Iran because of its important geographic position up against Russian oil – and because of Iran’s own oil resources. More and more of the world – especially the world of the Middle East – wants to know why the U.S., Pakistan, India, France, Russia, and Israel, just for instance, can have nuclear weapons without great distress. But when Muslim countries (unlike Pakistan) not closely allied to the U.S.A. move to possess nuclear weapons, their aspirations are met with threats of sanctions and war. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, remember, was invaded largely on the wholly false claim (compounded by the blatant lies of British Prime Minister Tony Blair) that Iraq was minutes away from using nuclear weapons (that it did not possess). What, then, is the truth about the alleged intention of born Canadians of Muslim faith to do violence to Canadian persons and property? The simple truth is that Canadian government has joined, and increasingly endorses, the U.S. violation, murder, and subjugation of Middle Eastern countries. Since the prime ministership of Stephen Harper, his government has endorsed U.S. policy and backed it with growing enthusiasm. Remember, the first government to withdraw financial support to Palestine’s recently freely elected government was the Stephen Harper government. Canada has no reason whatever to be backing a vicious, illegal policy in the Middle East calculated to gain U.S. economic domination. Every school boy (and girl) knows the U.S. is a tireless instrument of murder, repression, occupation, and self-serving in the region. Certainly, every Middle Eastern school boy (and girl) knows that, while more and more in the rest of the world are learning it every day. Their knowledge is especially relevant as the Bush/Blair/Harper capitalist fundamentalists face off against Islamic Wahabi fundamentalists – both happy to murder the other for “the Faith”. The arrest of the seventeen young Canadian Muslim men is being used by the Harper government for a coup d’etat. Before the eyes of Canadians, justice is being shredded, and a huge curtain of half-truths and sensational nonsense is being drawn across the real situation by a lackey, co-operating press and media. Police, lawyers, judiciary, and journalists are throwing democratic procedures and principles to the wind. Canada is on its knees, giving itself over to treatment of men and their defense lawyers fit for a petty despotism or the U.S.A. Scarcely a voice is asking “why” the alleged actions of the Muslim men, why the coup d’etat – let alone concerting action to preserve Canadian democracy. Among young Muslims in Canada rage grows at what every school boy (and girl) knows. Canadian foreign policy is a colonial farce.* For no reason but the reasons given by any colonial, economic puppet, and military satellite, Canada’s reactionary Harper government backs the vile and destructive polices of the U.S. in the Middle East. If some angry Canadian Muslims succeed in detonating a huge explosive device which kills hundreds of innocent Canadians, the guilt will be overwhelmingly upon Stephen Harper and his government. But the blame will be heaped by our castrated press and media upon “terrorist” Muslims who have rejected Canadian freedom and openness and democracy and love and caring (and have failed to back the Harper government in its support of an evil and destructive imperial power destroying and subjugating countries of the Middle East). [*Concerned friends are talking about creating an organization to pressure for the withdrawal of the Canadian military from Afghanistan, an organization of concerned Canadians. If you think it a good idea, and might like to join, write to me. rmathews@sfu.ca] [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on June 13, 2006]