WHERE IS THE GUN?

(WHERE IS THE GUN? was initially posted on Facebook, December 8, 2012.                     http://goo.gl/qVMQI )

There’s no shame in admitting that people may be right in their opinion that “nobody gives a shit”.

It would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise, especially when those people constitute an overwhelming majority. The ‘nobody’ is supposedly everybody in that majority, a nonperson in a self-inflicted dystopia, similar to that in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, arguably one of

a handful of definitive novels of the last 100 years, and for good reason.

Given these numbing times it seems equally ridiculous to resurrect the words of Ibsen or Miller, through the character of Dr. Stockmann, but it’s when they're needed most:

``I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right! I tell you now that the majority is always wrong . . . Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes 50 years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.``

Today’s majority fervently believes it is right. Just as it did in Ibsen’s time, in Giordano Bruno’s, Machiavelli’s, Galileo’s, Seneca’s, and Socrates’. But it’s a bigger majority and connected to the world, a portion of it, and to its members more than at any other time in human history. The town hall meeting in An Enemy of The People is now being played out on Facebook.

The majority has found the perfect medication (Facebook) for perfecting the nonperson, and paying for it like never before. How much of this was by design, or simply what happens to humans when worshiping golden calves, will be known long after we’re gone.

As 99-year old author William Krehm said to me (a couple of days ago), essentially repeating what he has said many times before in books and essays: he’s absolutely horrified at the state of the world, at the economic, political and social decline since WWII, and the “shattering waste of valuable human capital that is currently being perpetrated”.

In his 2010 essay, Industries Squandering Society's Human Capital to Revive Their Profits, he stated: “And as for the universities – they should be reminded that the very name of their institution implies interdependence of all science and learning. Not only our history, but the ideas evolved during the Depression of the 1930s that kept banks out of stock market gambling, should be dusted off and introduced to their economic faculties. And the latter in turn must be guaranteed the freedom of speaking their full mind. Refusing to allow them to do so is further destructive handling of society's human capital.”

By the way, Krehm and Orwell were friends and fought side by side in the Spanish Civil War (not many people living today can say the same.)

If Krehm repeats his narrative like a CD on replay it’s because he has witnessed the world first hand and written about it since the 1930s, and people are not listening to a tune that can only stop when people do listen and take action.

When Krehm was shopping for a lawyer qualified to understand the complexity of the Bank of Canada claim, who would dare take the case on and argue it in court, only one name came up. Rocco Galati.

Khrem is a man who does his research.

His reminder to the universities also applies to all those working in theatre, film and television: they are not merely professionals but people sprouting from a seed from a particular soil, a culture, a way of life and thinking.

One sign of our present-day devolution is that we don’t need one policeman (or soldier) for every four citizens pointing a gun to their heads or shooting randomly into an unarmed crowd to silence it as with the bloody Boston massacre of 1770 (that ultimately backfired and triggered the thirteen American colonies to fight for – and secure - their freedom and independence). Boston reacted and changed the course of history.

Today, here, there is no cop or soldier pointing a gun at us, even with the G20 mess in Toronto. The gun is in our hand. And pointed to our own head, as Nick Mancuso reiterated last night after the screening of Letter One.

Today the prisoner is also the jailor. We’re merely perfecting the world Orwell depicted in his novel while convincing ourselves that we’ve successfully averted that fate.

An engraving by a modern-day Paul Revere capturing the decline and death of human capital would not spread the way it did in 1770 and have no effect whatsoever if it did. Facebook is way more powerful and potentially more effective than Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin’s men on horseback speeding up the delivery of mail, cutting it by half, and extending the post office’s organ and tentacles. But in reality Facebook is not as powerful or effective that way, unless you live in “Tunisia”. Here, Facebook is often the gun or medication we keep in our own medicine cabinet.

Nobody should ever be condemned for stating that the Internet is for whining and bitching, and not for organizing or action. But to pretend that the statement does not reflect a political opinion designed to affect a specific political action is not only naïve but reflects a desire to see the human as a quadruped.

Any statement on Facebook is political and an attempt to organize, to inform, to sensitize, to promote, or reflects a call to action of some kind.

Orwell said it best in his book Why I Write: “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

For those who believe that Facebook (or Internet) is not strictly for whining and bitching, and I know there are some, please voice your opinion on the Letters ON Facebook.

As much as I appreciate the people who email me in support of Letter One, and value their heartfelt and reasoned opinion, I encourage them to share publicly what they’ve stated privately.

That was the whole point behind the Letters. Open and public debate.

Otherwise you leave Facebook to those who sincerely believe that aspiring to an IQ of an early human form is something to brag about, that possessing a 12-word dictionary is a tool for discussion and debate, and prove it constantly through what they post.

I know there’s always the very real risk of being ridiculed or bullied on Facebook. The social media forum has in many ways become the modern-day coliseum, where people (even in pajamas and at all hours of the day) take great pleasure watching other people take turns playing lion and victim. The fear is legitimate. But silence or whispering (in agreement or even in opposition) doesn’t address the fear, but multiplies it.

As for thugs:

My father used to say that men are endowed with two heads but should operate with the one above the neck and not the one below the belt.

Some men have been endowed with two of the same. And do an excellent job of doing to themselves what only a few mammals with incredible flexibility and skill are capable of.

IN DEFENSE OF ARTHUR PENN’s In Defense of Friction, and the HISTORY OF US: when it’s nothing but duh.

IN DEFENSE OF ARTHUR PENN’s In Defense of Friction, and the HISTORY OF US: when it’s nothing but duh. (posted on Facebook December 4, 2012)

(inspired by Tony Nappo’s Sunday, Dec. 2, 20012 posting: http://www.twisitheatreblog.com/archives/1609)

I don’t know about you, but when an actor with a big heart and talent like Tony Nappo writes, "If you have anything at all to do with theatre in Canada, this is required reading. Two masters in conversation with the wonderful and extremely informed Amanda Campbell" you want to read. You know he wants you to read especially if you have anything at all to do with theatre in Canada. The implied importance and almost urgent appeal can’t be clearer.

When ‘required reading’ gets thrown in there, well, you feel you have an obligation to the craft and all those who practice it. Even to an audience. Those we serve. ‘Required reading’ is a big endorsement.

And so I read. The entire piece. Twice. I didn’t get it. No big deal. Like most Canadian comedy where you give it a chance you would never give a pedophile, and rewind the tape to see where and why you missed the joke. And always do. Why you didn’t laugh. And have to rely on some foreign comic, like George Carlin, to remind you what is funny (and simultaneously true) and that you’re the fucking problem when thinking that something that isn’t funny should be funny just because someone said it was funny.

I still don’t get it. The piece.

More important, I don’t know why Tony Nappo said it was ‘required reading’.

There are MPs sitting in Parliament representing ridings with less people than Nappo’s list of Facebook friends. I can’t imagine an email bulletin from the worst MP to 2400 constituents stating ‘required reading’ without offering an opinion, a morsel, a bone, something to back up WHY it’s required reading, unless of course, it’s self-evident. It wasn’t in this case.

The thing is, when people don’t offer a reason we still look for the “important” in what we’re told is “important”, even if we never locate it.

Coincidentally, Brad Fraser posted a piece by Arthur Penn (http://jamesgrissom.blogspot.ca/2012/12/arthur-penn-in-defense-of-friction.html), and endorsed it with a simple comment: “Theatre. I totally couldn't have said it better myself.”

That’s clear. That’s an opinion.

I saw a connection between Arthur Penn’s piece and the piece posted by Tony Nappo. Much of what is contained in the latter (in my view) inspired the former. That still doesn’t tell me why Nappo thought it was ‘required reading’. And so I asked him a couple of WHYs, WHATs, and HOWs.

We won’t need Canada’s greatest legal or critical minds to analyze and assess the contents of the emails Nappo and I shared on this.

Nappo’s initial answer was essentially what most parents throw at inquisitive children who ask a series of WHYs.

Because. Or it’s no big deal.

It somehow doesn’t strike many parents that children ask WHY only when they DON’T KNOW why.

I'm still a child asking WHY?

I'm still waiting to get started in this thing we call theatre, film, television and acting (on an individual and collective basis). Honestly. That’s not a put-down of WHERE I have been to date but a deep desire to get to where I HAVEN’T been yet, creatively (individually and with others). Probably in keeping with Schopenhauer’s concept of individual will, motivation and desire.

When we stop asking WHY and assume that privilege, history, status, press, and all that crap, is a credit card with no limit, a bulletproof vest, and a right to entitlement that places artists above all criticism and reproach, we’re screwed and may as well open the door to our self-inflicted, custom-made concentration camp.

Apparently making a statement with no opinion or reason as to why one made it endows the statement with a library of reasons, meanings and explanations (accessible, I imagine, through a crystal ball).

WHY is the piece Nappo posted “required reading?” I’d like to know.

HOW does it relate to the reality outside the shit-infested orifice of theatre?

Basic questions. Truly basic.

And should be expected from anyone who works in the theatre, film and television. I would think that even McIvor and Brooks would welcome those questions. It's the minimum. And doing the bare minimum does not constitute having “balls”. Nowhere close.

Not too long ago someone on Facebook unleashed a revolution in Tunisia and toppled a dictator. Some of the words people use on Facebook, especially the young, drive other young people to premature death. So this is a nasty little tool. Useful. But nasty.

But even here, I was corrected. “Tunisia, my ass. This is Toronto. The internet don’t work like that here. It's for whining and bitching, not organizing or action.”

Thank you. Mr. Nappo.

How does the piece he posted fit into that view I wonder?

Predictably, the only reason given for posting the story was “to point people towards a conversation between one of the most successful and accomplished teams in the history the Canadian Theatre which you seem to have so much disgust towards.”

Correction: I have a problem with Nappo posting the piece as ‘required reading’ and not explaining why, even when asked. I don’t think McIvor or Brooks asked him to post it. They were probably just having fun in an interview like a couple of Somerset Maughams sipping tea in some botanical garden (please read the piece and let me know).

I have problem with Nappo apparently agreeing with Arthur Penn and then building his own defensive wall around the meretriciousness of our theatre and theatre artists and highly recommending the content of a piece for no reason other than sharing with his constituents “a conversation between one of the most successful and accomplished teams in the history the Canadian Theatre.”

He has a problem with my taking issue with him, as if I’m perched on some tree waiting to ambush him. His words. (Anyone who spends any time on Facebook will notice I don’t share urine and stool samples on Facebook). When we’re swimming and drowning in that logic even a sunny day or a rainy one will seem like nature (or God) has it in for us.

That I am taking issue with his thinking and not the person didn’t register. And I’m back to the hell that inspired, provoked, the three Letters.

I have a problem with generic compliments, statements and platitudes to carpet bomb a piece, an issue or an artist. (I feel equally uncomfortable when general, no-name compliments are thrown my way. And if Nappo saw Letter Two, which he did, and heard any of it, he probably heard me say that being born Calabrian automatically installs a bullshit detector in one’s being: we naturally distrust more those who compliment than those who face reality or offer a critical view, like Arthur Penn.)

If one can’t explain or reason WHY a piece is "required reading", that, in my view, automatically invalidates the claim that it is required reading.

I’m also supposed to appreciate the bizarre logic that Arthur Penn doesn't see any good in people, actors or artists because his entire piece points out only what's bad with theatre and those in it. Nappo never said this about Penn. But he accused me of that for my criticism of theatre, film and television in the three Letters.

Do we actually think for a minute that the seminal theatre artists and thinkers in human history saw critical debate and critical thinking as putting people down?

Nothing in human history has grown out of forced, constipated harmony. Michelangelo sculpted the David specifically to take issue with the very family that had taken him under its wing and roof since he was a child and fed him and subsidized his art (the Medici). With his art he tried to bring down the Medici dictatorship (the David sculpture representing the desired Republic and Goliath the imposed Medici Dictatorship). Interestingly Penn’s piece is titled: In Defense of Friction.

If our world is actually driven by a "continually dissatisfied will" and our need to "continually seek satisfaction" (as Shopenhauer maintained) should we not ask to what end – for what purpose - and how our work relates to the real world we live in, the one outside theatre and film? That was my question to Tony Nappo about the piece he posted.

If individual motivation and basic desires are at the core of Shopenhauer’s philosophy of the “will”, and if he had problems with Hegel’s concept of the Zeitgeist, is it not worth asking what is the motivation behind every individual working in the theatre, producer writer, director, actor, on stage or off?

Nappo’s brilliant artillery of reactive insults proved once more that theatre’s worst enemies are actors, not writers or directors. (If I had taken a shot at, say, a casting director, I’d be getting a ton of emails of support from all actors, and before I’d have the chance to explain that it’s just a critical view, they’d tap into to their inner, primal nature, and roast the casting director in a second. It’s what happened in 2001. Many jumped on the bandwagon and failed to acknowledge any responsibility. I ended up defending the same casting director I initially took issue with: the acting community’s tribal reaction to my criticism was way worse than anything the casting director had done.)

Bottom line: Tony Nappo sees no point in my effort (meaning the 3 theatrical Letters). No purpose in them whatsoever. That’s fine. It’s his prerogative, as it is mine to take issue with what he posted on Facebook. Apparently the day after seeing the first two Letters he woke up and the world and industry had not changed one iota. So I let him and everyone else down because I didn’t change the world. His words. At the end of the day all I apparently did was bitch about what is wrong with it and left it as it was. His words. Wait. Apparently his coming to the Letters was out of respect. I know. It’s why he posted the piece on McIvor and Brooks. Personally I don’t need that kind of respect. It’s not even the word I’d use. I’d appreciate it if everyone spared me that generosity. I don’t trust it. I’d rather take my chances with people’s opinions. At least they’re organic.

This from a guy who apparently doesn’t give up. So the problem is not the Letters’ content (or that he sees the same problem, does nothing about it and can’t see how he contributes it), but that the Letters, that someone else, did not solve the problem for him.

Where do I start? I thought I addressed that point ad nauseam in the Letters. I can’t blame him for not getting the Letters since he’s correct when he says that it’s never the audience’s fault if it doesn’t “get” something. I wish he would apply the same logic to people telling him they don’t understand the content of the piece he posted or why he posted it.

The Letters are actually my way of saying that I don't see any purpose in his kind of logic, except slow but sure death (of the actor). Many theatre colleagues share his view, by the way, and look for others to solve the problems while they’re having a good night’s sleep and hope to find a royalty check in the mail the next morning (15% for feeling the vibe, wanting to change the world in spirit while lying in bed. BTW: changing the world has not been on my agenda to date.)

People who ask WHY, who want to seriously debate, so that a third party might see a truth emerge from the two debating sides, are constantly told they’re engaging in “bullshit”.

Throwing in the towel is the easy and cynical part, and what comes naturally to most people in the theatre. Yet they claim they’re always open, even if they don’t leave any room for debate and accuse debaters of wanting to be right. Always.

To remain silent on issues, I guess, is a sign of strength, friendship, and collective support. This is Dark Ages shit.

The characters we often play on stage, especially from the classics, truly don't have much time for bullshit or “harmony”. Neither did the writers who wrote and actors who initially played in them. Perhaps as a destination, certainly not as a point of departure.

To genuflect, in my view, for that’s how it reads, is not an act of generosity. It’s irresponsible. Generous is to dare an opinion, regardless of how others interpret or take it. And to welcome critical views.

As for my view of the piece? Other than the fact that I get nausea reading that sophomoric, vomit-infested, meaningless, self-important, up the yin-yang drivel that in my view is the supreme example and the distilled manifestations of celebrating one’s own ego and stroking one’s own private parts publicly and expecting people to applaud the spectacle or go down on the artists’ "creativity"… nothing. Absolutely nothing!

And what do I think about Tony Nappo posting the piece on his Facebook page (which is fine) without making any thoughtful or compelling remark to back his belief that it’s "required reading"?

Nothing. No comment.

It boggles the mind to make it numb.

I don't smell humanity anywhere in that piece. A deflective shield, maybe. I smell self-inducted royalty. And Tony Nappo genuflecting to get a whiff of it. And it doesn’t matter if you have a big heart and talent when you intentionally choose to play a small game. Arthur Penn took issue precisely with people who notwithstanding their heart and talent justified why they were playing a small game. And Penn, in 2006, at 78 years old, knew we’ve only got one life to live. And Penn thought he was old? Now he’s dead.

If you love the country I hate and hate the country I love, for it is one and the same, please read this:

(If you love the country I hate and hate the country I love, for it is one and the same, please read this: by Tony Nardi posted on Facebook on Friday, November 18, 2011 at 2:21am See https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150400556257866)

 Honour-killing our constitutional rights and constitution is ALSO tribal. And so is our constitution.

                                                               *           *         *

 "MULTICULTURALISM Immigrants should adopt Canadian values to settle here, survey finds" Globe and Mail Nov 16, 2011

 "Adopting Canadian values should be the price of admission" The London Free Press, Nov 18, 2011

 "Culture over cash—Public says adopting Canadian values should be a higher priority for immigrants than achieving financial self-sufficiency: Trudeau Foundation Poll" Canada NewsWireNov 16, 2011

 "Adopting Canadian values should be immigrants’ ticket into country: poll" The National Post Nov 16, 2011

 "Adopting Canadian values should be condition of immigration: Poll" The Calgary Herald, Nov 16, 2011

 "Dalhousie poll finds Canadians think immigrants should assimilate our values" Nov 16, 2011

                                                           *            *           *

It’s hard for people in this country - including many in the arts – to see the kind of racial profiling our national media, government, publicly funded institutions and pollsters engage in daily without even being aware of it. Or maybe they are.

Let’s start with Section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:


- 27. This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.

I don’t have a problem with Section 27, its wording. But I don’t like Multiculturalism. This is not a contradiction. I don’t like Multiculturalism as it is practically interpreted and practiced in this country. And I don’t like the political and social reality in Canada, in short, those forces that sketched out the reasons for the creation of Section 27.

Section 27 excludes the English and the French Canadians. Apparently they are not part of the multicultural makeup of Canada. They are distinguished by their “bicultural”, “founding nations” status. And that’s a problem. (Would anyone ever even think English and French Canadians are not part of a multicultural world?).

Therefore Multiculturalism in Canada and the constitutional dog bone (section 27) that exclude English and French are in fact segregationist: they define two classes of (and for) Canadians: English and French in first class, the others in second.

If everyone in Canada is equal under our constitution and enjoys the same Fundamental Freedoms (Section 2) and Equality Rights (under Section 15) why do we need the extra interpretive ammunition of Section 27? “Bicultural” Canada limits at every turn “multicultural” Canada, Section 27 notwithstanding. More money goes to bicultural Canada than to multicultural Canada, notwithstanding that population wise multicultural Canada constitutes the majority. But the majority receives minority treatment and funds.

Within this reality, the recent articles in the Canadian press (National Post and the Globe and Mail, etc.) reporting on the results of a survey conducted by Environics and commissioned by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation (with majority, which includes immigrants, apparently wanting new immigrants to adopt Canadian “values” as a precondition to settling here), are very troubling. “A new poll suggests … there’s a solid consensus around the notion that immigrants should accept certain ‘typical Canadian values’ as a precondition for joining Canadian society.”

If Canada is a “multicultural” country, and section 27 of the Charter Of Rights “officially recognizes” multiculturalism as a “Canadian value”, essentially protecting the right to the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians, what exactly does the press (and the polls) mean by “Canadian” values? Which values? Whose values? Clearly the implied answer is ... Canada’s “bicultural” values.

What are those Canadian “bicultural” values ? And why should “gender equality” and “tolerance of others” be defined as “Canadian values”? They are certainly not intrinsic Canadian values of the ‘bicultural’ peoples of Canada; they are Rights for all Canadians protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If these rights had to be included in the Charter it’s because their exclusion (in a so-called multicultural Canada) would have been very problematic and permitted some of “bicultural” Canada’s “traditional” values to thrive and run amok: namely racism, intolerance and gender inequality.

(Native, aboriginal languages are not protected under the constitution as an official language. Only English and French.)

(Canada was not a leader in “gender equality”. The 1930 Edwards vs. Canada - the Persons case - proves it, notwithstanding Dr. Emily Howard Stowe being one of the “first” female doctors to practice in Canada in the late 1800s, also an activist of women’s rights and suffrage. Canada had a female prime minster once, in 1993. Twenty-six other countries had voted for a woman leader before Canada, which includes India, Indira Gandhi first elected Prime Minister in 1966; and Israel, Golda Meir in 1969)

Framing a question in a poll and reporting on its answers may lead readers to make troubling “racially-based” connections that I believe are intentional on the part of the pollsters and press. This is why people like my friend Carol Sinclair can say: “Certainly, they should not drown their daughters for dressing slutty”. They, presumably, refers to immigrants, new arrivals to Canada. I agree with Carol. Do we actually think that Mohammad Shafia drowned his daughters for dressing slutty because he hails from Afghanistan? Should we increase our racial profiling at the borders as a result? Should we change our entire immigration policy? Should we categorically distrust those people who come here from countries and cultures we hardly know? On what basis or precedent? Canada's track record with native, aboriginal peoples? What should we do? Have customs, immigration and citizen officers asks every person who wants to settle here: “Will you promise not to drown your daughter or wife if she dresses slutty, because, as you know, or should know, it’s not one of our Canadian values? So, please answer the question to the best of your knowledge and ability. Have you ever felt the urge, the need to drown your daughter or wife, given where you come from, your culture, religion, traditions, beliefs and all of that? Yes? No?”

I love this racial profiling, I just have a problem with where we draw the line. No father/husband has a right to drown a daughter or wife for dressing slutty, regardless of culture. Our laws do not permit murder, unless its state sanctioned, of course. But that goes without saying.

Did anyone ever ask about the cultural (religious) background of the former Toronto police officer who killed his long-time lover by sealing her in a 60-gallon plastic garbage container in the basement of his home? Did anyone in the press question his cultural tribe, beliefs and traditions once he was convicted for his heinous crime? Or is it possible that his cultural background had nothing to do with the nature and extent of his crime? Were the early settlers from England and France racial-profiled when they came to these shores? Did they adopt ‘traditional” native aboriginal “Canadian” values? No. They actually proceeded to obliterate from the face of the earth and massacred the entire native population on the premise that they were more civilized.

And let’s look at Canadian Air Force colonel Russell Williams. We can also look at Clifford Olson. But Russell Williams will do. He’s more recent. Williams was “a decorated military pilot who had flown Canadian Forces VIP aircraft for Canadian dignitaries” (Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, The governor general, and the prime minister). “On October 21, 2010, Williams was sentenced to two life sentences for first-degree murder, two 10-year sentences for other sexual assaults, two 10-year sentences for forcible confinement and 82 one-year sentences for burglary; all the sentences will be served concurrently at Kingston Penitentiary. The life sentences mean Williams will serve a minimum of 25 years before parole eligibility.”

It’s interesting how Globe and Mail reporter Tim Appleby defines Russell Williams in a book, A New Kind of Monster. Williams is apparently not a psychopath. “He is not even close to being one… Williams was not that kind of murderer at all… had feelings, emotions, attachments of all kinds: he cared about his wife, he cared about the military; he was devoted to his cats, and he also appears to have a moral compass …”

I’m just looking at the facts, and WHY Williams is behind bars. Williams has very “impressive” pedophile tendencies, had child porn on his computer, but agreed to plead guilty to the other crimes and therefore no charges were laid for child porn. Williams stole underwear of girls as young as 9 years old, clocked 82 fetish home invasions and attempted break-ins between Sept. 2007 and November 2009. He broke into 48 different homes in the Belleville-Tweed area and Ottawa. One home was hit 9 separate times. He was an expert in the field. Of the 82 break-and-enters 61 went undetected or were not reported. He dressed in panties and bras he stole. He apparently lay on the beds of his victims and masturbated, even in young girls’ rooms. How many more was he capable of killing? Would he have killed? We’ll never know.

Were Williams’ ancestors racial-profiled when they came to Canada? Why not? Once Williams was convicted, did anyone in the press attempt to make any connection (or suggest one) between the nature and degree of his crime and his cultural (religious) background? Why not? Based on skin colour, religion, and spelling of his name, does Williams’ deviant sex-killing social behaviour and pathology perhaps reflect a general White Anglo Saxon western world immoral murderous tradition and DNA?

Well, let’s look at the history. Judging from the relatively recent history, the historically proven White Anglo Saxon slave-trade industry and crimes against humanity, that Britain and its colonies essentially owned (and set the standard) for the better part of the last few hundred years, it’s a question worth asking. Were I looking at the west from the east I may just ask these questions. If Williams’ last name were Mohammad, you can bet the number of people polled by Environics who supposedly believe, “…immigrants should be more evenly distributed across the country,” would increase tremendously.

Given this reasoning, I wonder why “Canadians” are not demanding that people with Williams as a last name or who belong to Williams’ cultural-tribal-religious ethnic group are not more evenly distributed across the country so they can perhaps adopt and absorb ‘traditional” Canadian values? Unless, of course, what Williams did (the crimes, the pathological behavior) does in fact constitute a ‘traditional’ Canadian value. Or perhaps what Clifford Olson did and Robert Pickton did also qualify as ‘traditional’ Canadian values. They are after all good solid English Canadian names. And let’s throw in Marc Lépine, the 25-year old who massacred fourteen women and four men at the Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989. Of course we could look into his background and blame his Algerian father (and DNA) for his horrible crime and not his French-Canadian mother. Their crimes (serial killing) apparently can’t be blamed on their cultural background. But crimes committed by immigrants CAN be inked to who they are culturally, religiously, and racially. But not names like Williams, Olson and Pickton.

Some "traditional" Canadian "values" simply mystify me. The illegal internment and confiscation of property of thousands of Canadians of Ukrainian, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, German background during WWI and WWII qualify as traditional “Canadian” values. For a good long stretch during the 20th century illegal internment of Canadians on home soil was a tradition, a pattern, and a habit, if of course they were “ethnic” Canadians. It continues today. Canadian-Muslims are the present-day enemy aliens of choice. Can you imagine if Mohammad Shafia (father and alleged killer of his three daughters) had once flown with the Queen of Great Britain, Prince Philip and dignitaries all over Canada in a military jet or helicopter? When do you think another Mohammad or Shafia would be allowed to fly with the Queen on a Canadian Air Force jet? Or even allowed to clean her toilet or stables? You want to see what kind of racial profiling would kick in for anyone from Afghanistan or Pakistan wanting to join the Arm Forces? Not officially, of course. Tribalism doesn’t work that way; it exists in spite of the laws and the constitution and sometimes it’s built into them.

So, in the wake of the recent Honour Killing Trial in Kingston it’s suddenly open season on our present immigration laws, and the interpretation of Canadian values, what they are and who should adopt them. Not only are the articles and polls presented within a racially offensive context and doctrine, MULTICULTURALISM, but their timing is conveniently piggybacked on the Honour Killing Trial, attempting to make a connection in the “collective Canadian imagination” between one (albeit horrid) crime and an entire culture and people numbering over one billion and a half.

The constitutional lawyer who recently told me the Crusades never took a break since they first started in the year 1096 is right, yet again.