The Antisocial Socialist

From Rabble.ca; good enough to post in its entirety.

Seven myths about the Tamil refugees

By No One Is Illegal-Vancouver

August 20, 2010

Surviving a dangerous three-month ocean journey, 492 Tamil refugees -- including around 60 women and 55 children -- arrived in B.C. after fleeing war and persecution in Sri Lanka. When the ship the MV Sun Sea first neared Esquimault on Vancouver Island, the territories of the Songhees First Nation, it was immediately boarded by the Canadian armed forces, border services, and RCMP.

( continued under the cut )

M.I.A.'s new video: Holy fuck. I guess 9-minute-long music videos are the thing now. Anyway, this one is amazing on every level. I love M.I.A.; she's proof that there can be innovative pop music. Not that this one is particularly poppy or danceable.

Warnings for everything. NSFW, sex, horrific violence, pink mist, oppression of gingers, unflinching portrait of U.S. military-industrial complex.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

---

On a happy note, Peter Watts isn't going to jail. Which is yay!

---

Also, I met our soon-to-be-former Mayor Miller today. He was handing out Save Transit City flyers at Kennedy Station, which was a pretty good idea. I looked at the map and almost wept, because I think that asshole McGuinty will nix it, and it would make the city and my own life so much better.

Pictures and more recipes to come. It's 12 am and I'm lazy.

curgoth: Dal Puri
neeuqdrazil: Spanish Beans with Spinach
culpster: Spring rolls with shiitake mushrooms. (These were excellent; the curry ones blew my mind.)

I made aubergine and butter bean biryani, adapted from this recipe. It is super-easy and quick to make.

What you need

1 tin of butter beans (Or 2 tins if you like them) [I like them so I used two.]
8 oz. brown rice [I used basmati. I don't like brown rice.]
1 medium aubergine [I used a big one, and called it an eggplant.]
1 red pepper, sliced
1 tin chopped tomatoes
Poppy seeds
Mustard seeds
1 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. turmeric
1 tsp. garam masala
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 tbsp. soy sauce
3 tbsp. natural yogurt [I used soy yogurt because we were expecting poor sick corbet. Anyway, it's vegan if you either omit the yogurt or you use non-dairy yogurt, so might as well make it vegan.]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Slice the aubergine in two lengthways and sprinkle generously in salt. Leave for half an hour. This draws out the bitter juice from the aubergine. Rinse the aubergine and cut into cubes.

Heat a little vegetable oil in a large, heavy pan. Add poppy and mustard seeds and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the brown rice and cook for 3 or 4 minutes.

[At this point in the recipe, sabotabby runs upstairs: "zingerella! Is it okay to cook rice without water? Will something explode?" She assured me that it was possible so, gritting my teeth, I went back down to the kitchen to try it out.

Mix the spices in a cup and add a little water to make a paste. Pour the paste over the rice and add aubergine and red pepper. Drain the butter beans and add to the pan. Add the tinned tomatoes, 1 pint of hot water and soy sauce. Cover the pan, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rice is cooked. Add the yogurt.

The recipe said that it serves 2-4, which is not true. We had seven people over, six of whom had some, and there's enough for a few lunches left over.

I also bought frozen paneer paratha made by Deep Foods and they were incredibly tasty. So next time I'm down on Gerrard I need to get more. I didn't know pre-packaged food could taste so good.

( Food porn under the cut )

The LTTE surrendered and/or committed suicide, according to early news reports. But the fighting hasn't stopped, and according to TamilNet there are still thousands of dying civilians who haven't been evacuated and are being denied medical care. Prabhakaran is dead, maybe.

So what happens now?

I rung in the big 3-0 in the only way conceivable under my present circumstances

getting drunk at McVeigh's

and then going to the Tamil protest in front of the U.S. consulate

anything I've lost this year, all of my age and weariness is balanced out by the knowledge that I've done the right thing. I've done okay.

I love you all.

Goodnight.

This shit seems to be the general sentiment among Canadian honkies, at least if you watch the mainstream news. Tamils have the "right" to protest--we'll give them that because we are oh-so-generous and believe in abstract rights that cease to exist as soon as they inconvenience us--but said protests must conform to the tame and ineffectual standards of the impotent Canadian left.

Let's be honest here. White people in Canada, including the government, did not give a flying fuck about the plight of the Tamils until Tamil-Canadians escalated their protests. White people in Canada still don't give a flying fuck about the plight of Tamils, so this concern troll talk about alienating Canadians and losing support is bollocks. They never had that support, or any hope of gaining it, no matter how saintly and impeccable their behaviour.

Some points need to be made, though they ought to be self-evident at this point. First off, the protesters are as Canadian as the descendants of pillagers and murderers who are currently whining about being held up in traffic, the poor babies. Secondly, the less dramatic demonstrations were met with utter indifference. I know, I was at them.

What it comes down to is that white people hold brown people to a different ethical standard than they hold themselves to. The death toll in Sri Lanka now stands at around 8,500 over the past few months, and Tamil-Canadians have responded with peaceful protests. When a few thousand or so Americans and a handful of Canadians died on Sept. 11, 2001, the response was anything but non-violent. It was a brutal, bloody rampage against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq (who, like the Canadian commuters, had nothing to do with the murders). We demand not only pacifism from our fellow human beings in the face of their suffering--though we, the pasty-faced we, are anything but non-violent ourselves--but worse, we demand utter passivity.

Royson James is frequently wrong, but he gets it dead-on with this column. He seems to be a minority voice though, and it's increasingly frustrating to see the anguish of the Tamil community up close, every day, while reading largely unsympathetic coverage in the news.

Among the worst thing I've heard is the accusation that the LTTE (and from some fetid corners of Toronto, the Canadian protesters) are using "human shields." If it's okay with everyone, can we consign that term to the dustbin of doublespeak along with "homicide bomber," "freedom fries," and "collateral damage"? I've only ever heard it used by war criminals or those defending war criminals. What is a human shield but an innocent civilian who has gotten in the way of your bomb or bullet? These pundits and commenters, safe and secure in Canada, seem to envision some sort of gallant, quaint form of warfare, where two equally matched sides clash swords on a battlefield removed from the general population. War ain't like that, not anymore if it ever was. It's ghastly and asymmetrical. One side drops bombs on houses from the safety of airplanes and proclaims itself to be the good guys no matter how indiscriminately it targets its victims. The other strikes ruthlessly from the ruins of these bombed villages and cities. Yes, the targets and the victims live in the same places--why should anyone expect otherwise? In what bizarro-universe do these guys live?

Freedom of expression, freedom of protest--as immaterial and abstract as these supposed rights are, we in the West profess a belief in them. These rights, and every privilege that we enjoy, were not won by being polite and letting the flow of traffic supersede basic human dignity. They were gained through ugly battles that are seldom taught in history books. Some people in this country remember this, or understand it intuitively. Some people, I suppose, would gladly give it up so that the metaphorical trains will run on time.

Shorter sabotabby: Fellow Hogtowners, grow the fuck up.

I made the mistake at lunch today of reading comments on the Torontoist and the Star to articles about the continuous Tamil protests in front of the U.S. Consulate. Now, granted, blog comments and online newspaper comments are not a good barometer of public opinion, because I will give up all hope if the average IQ of Hogtowners is that low. But it's a dismaying read nevertheless.

The worst comments are the ones that claim that the Tamil community, by inconveniencing a few commuters, has lost the goodwill of the "Canadian" (read white) population. This is bollocks. Most white Canadians had never heard of the Tamil struggle before the protests started, and probably couldn't find Sri Lanka on a map even now. But the consensus seems to be that the genocide currently being perpetrated by the Sinhalese government has nothing to do with "us." I kind of want to go all Godwin on their asses and ask them if they'd have objected to Jews protesting Nazi atrocities in the 1930s, but I'm a bit afraid of what the answer would be.

At any rate, the unaffected "us" does not include my white Canadian ass. Greater principles of universal human rights aside, I know people whose families are under fire right now. It's as personal as it would be if it were happening in Brampton or Calgary or somewhere else where I don't actually know anyone directly but I know someone who knows someone. I don't understand the hatred and apathy in my city, I really don't.

Which brings me to springheel_jack making a good point as usual about the swine flu and what's likely to happen when it's all over. Many, many people will die; just nobody you know.

Damn.

I think everyone who becomes a teacher knows at some point that he or she will have to teach a sex ed lesson to a bunch of 13- and 14-year-olds, but I had no idea it would happen so soon in my career.

---

By utter chance, I ended up here today. I must be looking respectable and authoritative these days, even with my Soviet hat and skull mittens on a string, because lately whenever I go to a protest, random people want to interview me for the news. Today was especially strange, as I was like one of three non-Tamil people there, and obviously knew less than anyone else that could be plucked from the crowd.

But anyway, they were insanely happy at the idea of a non-Tamil joining in on the protest, so happy that it brought tears to my eyes because people who are currently scared shitless that their friends and relatives are being massacred in Sri Lanka were coming up to me and thanking me. Unreal.

Hundreds of people are being killed every day over there. It barely makes the news unless something like tonight's protest shuts down parts of the city.

---

On the way home, a nice young man on the subway who wanted bar recommendations in my neighbourhood asked me if I was old enough to drink. I suspect he was just flirting, but it still made me smile.

---

I'm on my annual Brecht/Weill kick, so please recommend to me your favourite covers of Brecht/Weill songs. I clearly don't have enough on my iTunes and it's the best commuting music ever.

Here is my least favourite Brecht/Weill cover ever, and high-octane nightmare fuel:


You can reset your brain afterwards with my favourite Brecht/Weill cover ever.