 |
|||
 |
|||
  Monday, March 1, 2010Overthrowing the UnderclassAs you may know, not long ago I was living in Canada, the second-largest country in the world. But long before I moved to Canada from Britain, the UK had sent its colonialism there, where it was embraced; cherished. It was with angst that I arrived there, then - carrying the same angst that all Anglos do when recent history reminds us of the atrocities of our ancestors. But it's true that the colonialism was taken to heart - not overseas, but at home; internally. And yet this is rarely realised. Often largely due to Canada's favourite historical figure, groundbreaking socialist Tommy Douglas, the nation's international image seems to have become one of a "classless" and/or socialist society while defining its identity by simply reinforcing its differences from its notorious neighbours to the south. This all came about while millions of Canadians grew up in fear of conflict between the United States itself and the Soviet Union, with terrifying Cold War visions of nuclear missiles flying back and forth overhead. The world, in turn, had nothing but affection for Canada.  It was in the United States that I lived briefly following my engagement to a nurse there who, funnily enough, I met in Toronto, Ontario. The accents and highways and suburban sprawl were similar, but these were just superficialities, with a gulf separating Canadian and American fundamental ideals. However, the trip that cemented my own affection for the country of Canada came after that, when I was earning almost $100,000 a year, and paid for myself and my girlfriend at the time to go on vacation in Vancouver, British Columbia. I'd never seen such an amazing place: in a single day, you can go from walking a suspension bridge over the Capilano, amongst the rainforests, along snow-covered mountains, on a ferry, across sandy beaches, to walking between skyscrapers en route to bustling cafes - making the city one of the most desirable destinations in the world for those who can afford it. Of course, this comes at a cost; you can't have rich without poor. But I wanted to go there again; my girlfriend didn't. It was representative of the growing differences between us as she attended university and I craved other outlets beyond Britain. After an amicable parting, I went back again, and my life was changed, meeting the Ontarian woman who would become my wife. When you arrive in Southern Ontario, you find yourself in the most Anglocised area of the entire country, with town names like London, Windsor, and Scarborough. In Brantford, you may catch a glimpse into the secret shame of the country by discovering the appalling living conditions of the Six Nations people there, on the Grand River. It was an eye-opener for me, for sure. To find somewhere more relatable, this Sheffield lad headed to the steel city of Hamilton, only to find that it, too, had seen its workers laid-off and the industrial jobs few and far between. If you travel along Highway 6, you'll see many weird and wonderful sights, from giant model dinosaurs to fences made from bicycles to abandoned tractors and other things seemingly sprung from a Tim Burton film. My then-wife vowed to make a photographic exhibition project about it - it really does have to be seen to be believed. But that's not the only part of the country that's like something from Bizarro World; I've said before that all those smiles and reassurances of socialism conceal something sinister, and the unease I felt on Highway 6 was warranted. Moving to Canada is fine if you have money - and without a visa, mine had soon run out. My wife and I would soon separate, and only hours later it was further up Highway 6, in Guelph, that my dear close personal friend Lenna Titizian and I would see Naomi Klein speak about Canada's worrying trends, at a New Democratic Party rally, and have her sign her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (the kind of capitalism that was, in fact, taking over Canada, too). I had worked with Klein's colleagues in Toronto, such as those from Ontario's Coalition for Social Justice. And such movements were needed. Canada, too, was becoming post-industrial, thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement actually opening the gates for a flow of labour trickling down all the way to the sweatshops of Mexico. This was something I actively opposed whilst living in the city of Kitchener, in the region of Waterloo. It was there I conceived SilenceBreaker Media - though (fortunately) its limited success there allowed it to grow into something much more innovative and feasibly sustainable back in Britain. Despite claims to the contrary, I held several workshops, events, and successfully won funding for the proposed company in Kitchener, in spite of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his minority yet militant right-wing government slashing funding for the creative industries, too. It was ol' Steve that offered a lame apology to the Natives after it emerged there had been genocide committed against them on Canadian soil via "residential schools" throughout most of the 20th century.  Funnily enough, while Harper's government were tightening belts and cutting arts funding, they were able to find money for the Winter Olympics, sweeping the disgusting mistreatment of native people under the rug, just as Australia did when they too played host to the International Olympic Committee (while China used the Olympics to mask its attack on civil liberties).I flew back to the Old World by plane with an empty seat beside me, having been asked by airline staff why my traveling partner - my wife - wasn't with me as booked. I didn't know the reason, and still don't know to this day. We'd been put through a lot of pressure by people determined to see us fail: bitter obsessives who stuck the knife in my back as soon as I turned around to leave Britain for a while (as I was no longer a meal-ticket for many, they influenced a shut-down of my UK company in order to seize its assets). We were to fly back there together, to develop collaboration on a documentary I'd been asked to make, titled Overthrowing the Underclass, and begin a reconciliation; a reconciliation inexplicably abandoned by my wife, and a collaboration killed. But it was on that long flight that I also had time to reflect on my time there, in a country where its natives - be they First Nations or otherwise - are each systematically overthrown by avarice and exploitation, chewed up and spat out to make way for the next economic policy in the interests of the elite few represented by Stephen Harper. I had discovered Canada as another kind of pioneer, finding an uglier layer beneath the progressive front: a Canada of unemployment, poverty, prejudice, and of peoples in need of unity to fight for the land they all share. What happened next? Well, Kitchener was finding itself the destination dumping ground for homeless people being sent there to cleanse neighbouring up-market Waterloo, a city which - like Canada as a whole - was continuing its crucial branding, in its own case as "Top Intelligent Community" and home of the Blackberry loved by right-wingers. Meanwhile, the wife I was sadly divorcing thrived on that prestige - running high-brow amateur events, sending a clear message to the government that they apparently didn't require funding, while calling herself "working class," daughter of a school principal who grew up in one of the largest domestic houses I have ever been in. My current partner, who was born and bred in the Soviet Union, the first largest country in the world, shakes her head at these pampered people supporting separatism and internal issues when there are "bigger, more important problems" they should be united on. Obviously, the Canadians don't truly know the class system. But at this rate, they will. Sadly, they will know it all too well. Their country isn't quite what they like to think it is. As John Lennon sang, "You think you're so clever and classless and free, but you're still f*cking peasants as far as I can see." - Jay Baker; South Yorkshire, England Jay Baker's brand-new book is Pissing in the Mainstream. You can read a compilation of his best blogs from the past several years, and a few exclusives, in the book Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist, available here. Labels: Canada, intellectual capitalism, Naomi Klein, Olympics, Soviet Union, Stephen Harper
posted by Jay Baker at
4:17 AM
0 Comments
Sunday, January 31, 2010Reservations About Reservationsa.part.heid noun A system or practice that separates people according to race, caste, etc.It's pretty extraordinary how humans have been treated like animals - worse, in fact: like commodities.Of course, border controls have only been around for barely more than a century, largely concocted to prevent Jewish people from entering countries like mine - Britain - when it was considered merely an inconvenience. Millions of dead Jews later, the feigned concern for them was used as an excuse to stop Hitler's Nazi quest for white-power world domination when, in fact, it was just that this was a capitalist with potentially more might than our capitalists. Lord Kitchener, after all, had already popularised use of the "concentration camp" model long before those pesky Nazis used it. Before that, though, the first examples of a concentration camp were in the United States, where predominantly European invaders slaughtered, tortured, raped, pillaged and plundered Native land, and incarcerated their people in confinement. Not satisfied with that, these "Americans" then found that there weren't enough "Injuns" left over to exploit - so had to try to satiate their greed for slavery by going and kidnapping Africans to bring them back over with them for more capitalist exploitation. Yep, you can't have a rich, fat, elite without an exploited poor huddled masses. Why do you think immigration was considered such a good thing at the time, the French beacon to the world's unwanted positioned at the coast? The fat cats were licking their chops at the sight of all these desperate people as tools for profit. The United States of America became an apparatus of avarice, taking in, chewing up, and spitting out minorities in its American Dream machine. My dad always said, "They can't all be Indians; you have to have Chiefs." The dream was an illusion; in actuality a nightmare. It's been said that in modern America, the concentration camp still exists, but in another form: the ghetto. In these areas, the people with even less chance of realising any kind of "dream" at all have hardly any opportunities, kept at the bottom of the barrel, while U.S. TV shows show the rest of us images of only financially comfortable, perfectly coiffed and manicured African-Americans like Bill Cosby and Damon Wayans in their big suburban homes, while even the aptly-named White House has a token black man placed in it to serve the interests of the privileged class he's surrounded by and harp on with the American DreamTM rhetoric to keep everyone calm. In-keeping with the agenda, the further abuse and use of Judaism for capitalist methods led to the creation of an Israeli state that would forcibly and often illegally encroach on Palestinian land to steal resources, leading to reactionary violence that Western media would label "terrorism" since it wasn't given approval from a rich white man's rubber stamp or seal while wearing a sharp suit, instead using the tales to demonise Islam and Muslims and commence a colonial War on TerrorTM that continues to this day under the present administrations. And last but not least: Down Under, in the nation of Australia often considered comprised of convicts from Europe, the Aboriginal people who were there first suffer their own punishment for no sin besides being in the way of greed. The businessmen bartering for an Olympics show on their turf when taking the International Olympic Committee on a tour of Australia hid the sorry sights of these people from the bigwigs. And don't even get me started on Woomera refugee camp, seen in the closing moments of my film Escape from Doncatraz. But stop the press - there's more! In the same way yet going one step further, the Canadian elite has not only yet again waved its banner and buoyed its image as "accepting" and "tolerant" and, well, "not American" to woo the IOC their way while hiding the horrors of the living conditions of First Nations people there - but even allowed their Olympic projects to help them sweep them under the rug. Oh, what you can get away with in your own backyard when you're juxtaposed against your rowdier, drunken, more violent next-door neighbour. How much longer will the world fall for this pathetic PR attempt from a country with such appalling treatment of First Nations people and a substandard welfare state? Sorry, Canada, you are American: North American, and all that land was native land. But that's for another time and place. Few have reservations about reservations. Few recognise the apartheid that exists all around the world to this day thanks to a voracious elite distracting, dividing and conquering the mass majority in the world who are not white, yet poor. Slavery never ended - we just gave it another name: capitalism. - Jay Baker; South Yorkshire, England Jay Baker's brand-new book is Pissing in the Mainstream. You can read a compilation of his best blogs from the past several years, and a few exclusives, in the book Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist, available here. Labels: apartheid, Australia, Canada, Escape from Doncatraz, Israel, Palestine, racism
posted by Jay Baker at
9:53 AM
0 Comments
Subscribe to  |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
