Dueling CanadiansHerewith are two radically different views of America from north of the border.Aside from material in related links, they are presented without further comment | |
Dr. Sunera Thobani Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Chair, Women's Studies Simon Fraser University, Brish Columbia Professor, Women's Studies, University of British Columbia Transcript of speech given at "Women's Resistance: From Victimization to Criminalization" conference In Ottawa, October 1, 2001 
We, and this "we" is really problematic. If we in the West are all Americans now, what are Third World women and Aboriginal women to do? If
Canadians are Americans now, what are women of colour to do in this country? And I'm open to suggestions for changing this title, but I
thought I would stick with it as a working title for getting my ideas together for making this presentation this morning.I'm very glad that the conference opened with Tina (Tina Beads, of the Vancouver Rape Relief Women's Shelter) and I'm very glad for the comments that she made, but I want to say also, just (to) add to Tina's words here, that living (in) a period of escalating global interaction now on every front, on every level. And we have to recognize that this level and this particular phase of globalization is rooted in all forms of globalization in the colonization of Aboriginal peoples and Third World people all over the world. This is the basis. And so globalization continues to remain rooted in that colonization, and I think, recognize that there will be no social justice, no anti-racism, no feminist emancipation, no liberation of any kind for anybody on this continent unless Aboriginal people demand for self-determination. The second point I want to make is that the global order that we live in, there are profound injustices in this global order. Profound injustices. Third World women...I want to say for decades, but I'm going to say for centuries, have been making the point that there can be no women's emancipation, in fact no liberation of any kind for women, will be successful unless it seeks to transform the fundamental divide between the north and south, between Third World people and those in the West who are now calling themselves Americans. That there will be no emancipation for women anywhere on this planet until the Western domination of this planet is ended. Love thy neighbour. Love thy neighbour, we need to heed those words. Especially as all of us are being hoarded into the possibility of a massive war at the...of the United States. We need to hear those words even more clearly today. Today in the world the United States is the most dangerous and most powerful global force unleashing prolific levels of violence all over the world. From Chile to El Salvador, to Nicaragua to Iraq, the path of U.S. foreign policy is soaked in blood. We have seen, and all of us have seen, felt, the dramatic pain of watching those attacks and trying to grasp the fact of the number of people who died. We feel the pain of that every day we have been watching it on television. But do we feel any pain for the victims of U.S. aggression? 200,000 people killed only in the initial war on Iraq. That bombing of Iraq for 10 years now. Do we feel the pain of all the children in Iraq who are dying from the sanctions imposed by the United States? Do we feel that pain on an every-day level? Share it with our families and communities and talk about it on every platform that is available to us? Do we feel the pain of Palestinians who now for 50 years have been living in refugee camps? U.S. foreign policy is soaked in blood. And other countries in the West, including shamefully, Canada, cannot line up fast enough behind it. All want to sign up now as Americans and I think it is the responsibility of the women's movement to stop that, to fight against it. These policies are hell-bent on the West maintaining its control over the world's resources. At whatever cost to the people...Pursuing American corporate interest should not be Canada's national interest. This new fight, this new war against terrorism, that is being launched is very old. And it is a very old fight of the West against the rest. Consider the language which is being used... Calling the perpetrators evil-doers, irrational, calling them the forces of darkness, uncivilized, intent on destroying civilization, intent on destroying democracy...Every person of colour, and I would want to say every Aboriginal person, will recognize this language. The language of us letting civilization representing the forces of darkness, this language is rooted in the colonial legacy. It was used to justify our colonization by Europe...
If we look also at the people who are being targeted for attack. A Sikh man killed? Reports of a Cherokee woman in the United States having been killed? Pakistan is attacked. Hindu temples attacked. Muslim mosques attacked regardless of where the Muslims come from. These people also recognize who this fight is against. And it is due to the strength of anti-racist organizing that Bush has been forced to visit mosques, that our prime minister has been forced also to visit mosques and say, no there shouldn't be this kind of attack. We should recognize that it is the strength of anti-racist organizing is forcing them to make those remarks. But even...but even as they visit mosques, and even as they make these conciliatory noises, they are talking out of both sides of the mouth because they are officially sanctioning racial profiling at the borders, in the United States, for entrance into training schools, for learning to become pilots, at every step of the way. On an airplane, who is suspicious, who is not? Racial profiling is being officially sanctioned and officially introduced. In Canada we know that guidelines, the Globe and Mail leaked, the guidelines were given to immigration officers at the border, who to step up security watch is on. So on the one hand, they say no, it's not all Muslims, on the other hand they say yes, we are going to use racial profiling because it is reasonable. So we have to see how they are perpetrating the racism against people of colour, at the same time that they claim to be speaking out against it. And these are the conditions, the conditions of racial profiling. These are the conditions within which children are being bullied and targeted in schools, women are being chased in parking lots and shopping malls, we are being scrutinized as we even come to conferences like that, extra scrutiny, you can feel the coldness when you enter the airport. I was quite amazed. I have been travelling in this country for 10 years, and I have never had the experience that I had flying down here for this conference. All of us feel it. So this racial profiling has to be stopped. Events of the last two weeks also show that the American people that Bush is trying to invoke, whoever they are these American people, just like we contest notions of who the Canadian people are, we have to recognize that there are other voices in the United States as well, contesting that. But the people, the American nation that Bush is invoking, is a people which is bloodthirsty, vengeful, and calling for blood. They don't care whose blood it is, they want blood. And that has to be confronted. We cannot keep calling this an understandable response. We cannot say yes, we understand that this is how people would respond because of the attacks. We have to stop condoning it and creating a climate of acceptability for this kind of response. We have to call it for what it is: Bloodthirsty vengeance. And people in the United State, we have seen peace marches all over this weekend, they also are contesting this. But Bush is (the) definition of the American nation and the American people need to be challenged here. How can he keep calling them a democracy? How can we keep saying that his response is understandable after Bush of all people, who stole the election, how can we ever accept that this is democracy? Canada's approach has been mixed, it has said yes, we will support the United States but with caution. It will be a cautionary support. We want to know what the actions will be before we sign on and we want to know this has been Canada's approach. And I have to say we have to go much further. Canada has to say we reject U.S. policy in the Middle East. We do not support it. And it's really interesting to hear all this talk about Afghani women. Those of us who have been colonized know what this saving means. For a long time now, Afghani women, and the struggles they were engaged in, were known here in the West. Afghani women became almost the poster child for women's oppression in the Third World. And, rightfully so, many of us were in solidarity. Afghani women of that time were fighting against and struggling against the Taliban. They were condemning their particular interpretation of Islam. Afghani women, Afghanistan women's organizations were on the front line of this. But what (did) they become in the West? In the West they became nothing but poor victims of this bad, bad religion, and of (these) backward, backward men. The same old colonial construction. They were in the frontline, we did not take the lead from them then, where we could see them more as victims, only worthy of our pity and today, even in the United States, people are ready to bomb those women, seeing them as nothing more than collateral damage. You see how quickly the world can change. And I say that we take the lead from Afghani women. They fought back against the Taliban, and when they were fighting back they said that it is the United States putting this regime in power. That's what they were saying. They were saying, look at U.S. foreign policy! They were trying to draw out attention to who was responsible for this state of affairs, to who was actually supporting regimes as women all over the Middle East had been doing. Sorry, just two more minutes and I'll be done. So I say we take the lead from them and even if there is no American bombing of Afghanistan, which is what all of us should be working right now to do, is to stop any move to bomb Afghanistan, even if there is no bombing of Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people have already been displaced, fleeing the threat of war--you see the power of America here, right? One word in Washington and millions of people are forced to flee their houses, their communities, right? So, even if there is no bombing, we have to bear in mind how many women's lives have already been disrupted, destroyed, and will take generations for them to put back together again. Inevitably, and very depressing in Canada is of course, turning to the enemy within--immigrants and refugees, right? Scapegoating of refugees, tighter immigration laws, all the right-wing forces in this community, in this country, calling for that kind of approach. This is depressing for women of colour, immigrant and refugee women, anything happens, even if George Bush was to get a cold, we know somehow it'll be the fault of immigrants and refugees in Canada, and our quote-unquote lax border policies. So I'm not going to say much about it, but I just want to expose you to how, this...continues to be resurrected anytime over anything in the world. In terms of any kind of military action, Angela Davis (an American activist) asked in the '70s, she said, "do you think the men who are going to fight in Vietnam, who are going to kill Vietnamese women and children, who are raping Vietnamese women, do you think they will come home and there will be no effect of all of this? On women in the United States?" she was asking this in the 70s. That question is relevant today. All these fighters that are going to be sent there, we think there will be no effect? For our women, when they come back here? So I think that that is something that we need to think about, as we talk about the responses, as we talk this kind of jingoistic military-ism. And recognize that, as the most heinous form of patriarchal, racist violence that we're seeing on the globe today. The women's movement, we have to stand up to this. There is no option. There's no option for us, we have to fight back against this militarization, we have to break the support that is being built in our countries for this kind of attack. We have to recognize that the fight is for control of the vast oil and gas resources in central Asia, for which Afghanistan is a key, strategic point! There's nothing new about this, this is more of the same that we have been now fighting for so many decades. And we want to recognize, we have to recognize that the calls that are coming from progressive groups in the Third World, and in their supporters, in their allies, in the rest of the world, the three key demands they are asking for: End the bombing of Iraq, lift the sanctions on Iraq, who in this room will not support that demand? Resolve the Palestinian question, that's the second one. And remove the American military bases, anywhere in the Middle East. Who will not demand, support these demands? We have to recognize that these demands are rooted in anti-imperialist struggle and that we have to support these demands. We need to end the racist colonization of Aboriginal peoples in this country, certainly, but we need to make common calls with women across the world who are fighting to do this. Only then can we talk about anti-racist, feminist politics, only then can we talk about international solidarity in women's movements across the world. And in closing, just one word--the lesson we have learned, and the lesson that our politicians should have learned, is that you cannot slaughter people into submission, for 500 years they have tried that strategy, the West for 500 years has believed that it can slaughter people into submission and it has not been able to do so, and it will not able to do so this time either. Thank you very much. Transcript provided by the Cable Public Affairs Channel.
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Originally broadcast June 5, 1973 Gordon Sinclair (b 1900 d 1984) 
The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany.
It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the
least-appreciated people in all the earth.
As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did. They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries in to help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped. The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans. I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes. Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon?
When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the bonds, Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke.
This year's disasters .. with the year less
than half-over? has taken it all and nobody...but nobody...
has helped. |
