Fantino to Public: Stay Out of Police Affairs

As if the death of Robert Dzienkanski at the hands of RCMP didn't put the public's perception of Canadian police officers in jeopardy already. Rather than admitting what it was -- a careless abuse of power -- and distancing themselves from the incident (however dishonest that would be), the RCMP have taken to defending it as a matter of due course. It is apparently part of officer training to interpret raising two hands in the air as saying "go to hell", as it is to assume that four officers can't restrain a man with a stapler without recourse to a weapon. Oh yeah, and Dzienkanski "directly disregarded a command", which begs the question of how someone who doesn't speak English is supposed to regard a command in the first place.

Now OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino -- whose dark imprint left on Toronto as the city's Police Chief can be seen here -- has taken to deriding the public for questioning the incident. He sneeringly dismissed criticism from those who "could never pass recruitment training", perhaps because ordinary people wouldn't be able to bring themselves to taser a confused Polish immigrant five times. The message is clear: issues involving police treatment of the public need to be handled within the force. Perhaps someone should tell Fantino that the concept of accountability and third-party monitoring is the backbone of a democratic society.

Falling Asleep with the TV On

by Zoe Alexis-Abrams



Previewed, dreams turn heinous,
untrue: like pausing a foreign film at its climax,
subtitles bright yellow against someone's chest,
set against picture, not to follow
a general rule: shot of Detroit and
you're a good friend, Steve scrolled below—
veins of traffic running yellow

around Motor City, an aerial view,
the same colour, but a betrayal—
my waking sensibility.

Shoes lined up behind the line,
ready to walk before me.
Hatchet through the bathroom door:

this is my dream,
but not.

Reviews of the Next 10 Blogs on Blogger

Just thought I'd have a scope-out of my Blogger neighbours. Greet my virtual community, and maybe get some future ideas for content.


1. Kerolato Hecho a Mano -- Bogota, Colombia

1 Single Post, with a little rosy-cheeked girl holding some kind of certificate. I don't speak Spanish, but I'm pretty sure it's a certificate for "Most Likely to Start a Blog and then Not Do Anything With It". Also, she doesn't have any followers either, so this was a boost to my self-esteem.

2. Combo Ninos, Jetix Combo Ninos, Serie Animada Combo Ninos, Personaje de Combo Ninos

Ok, we get it. Combo Ninos. Which is, apparently an anime featuring capoeira-fighting kids who change into animals. For "ages 6-10" according to Animation magazine, so I think this blogger is a kid too. Maybe I can get him to design my page.

3. The Hokey Pokey

Finally, something in English. Can I just say that no-one wants their music interrupted by a page that automatically loads its own tunes. Especially Squeeze. The latest post is on a device to apply moisturizer to your back, apparently the result of a sudden burst of inspiration after not posting for two weeks. The rest of the blog seems to be about weather, so I guess those two things are "what it's all about" when you live in rural Washington State. I left before I could be plagued with any more AOR. Also, she has two followers, so I hate myself again.

4. Prohibido Decirno

I'm not sure if that's the name of the blog, or just the link which tells me "Permission Denied", but either way I apparently have to be "invited" to view this. Which, ok fine, I mean I baked you this rum cake, and I was going to invite you to play Twister with me, the 40-year old from Washington and the two Spanish kids, but whatever.

5. Shauna's World

Hey "Little Miss Sunshine", how many pictures can you post of people standing by your stupid snow hut? Also, you say there are all these "fab pics" of your mock wedding to Eleanor, but they're not there, which makes me think this whole "mock wedding" is just a scam so you can get your green card.

Sorry, I just found out that when I press 'Back' on my browser and then "Next Blog" I get something different every time, which means it will be very difficult for us all to reach out and form a Neighbourhood Watch.

6. Laguz Brecho

This appears to be some kind of shoe blog, based out of Brazil. You're not coming to my house because you use too many exclamation points, and I don't want those monstrosities sitting in my front entrance. Also, I don't speak Portuguese.

7. Frost 4 Now

"About Me (Rokt): I am a 80 Draenei Death Knight on the European realm Aggramar. A member of British Empire and an avid Warcraft player." I understand Portuguese better than I understand this.

8. La Trastienda

'Trastienda' is Spanish for "back room" and according to the photos, the blog seems to involve the use of high-tech recording devices and/or seances inside old Catholic monuments to find traces of paranormal activity. Moving on...

9. Filipe Cintra

Lots of headline photos with funny (or I can only presume meant to be funny) headlines, way too many capitals, and a pukey-orange design.

10.

口コミ人気美容健康サロン取材比較レポート

"Healthy and Beauty Space"

Reservations

I hope wherever we're going
they save a space for us.

At the gas station,
I held the door for a man
who squeezed by me awkwardly.

I forget whether I returned his nod.

And you,

my first man-crush

knowing all the back routes to Toronto
but cautious with words.

Vaguely aware that one false move will cast us both into oblivion.

3 Prayers

Desire,

I'm so thankful

for everything you haven't given me.


Dear God,

Please let me live
to beg again.


Dear Mother,
I'm sorry,
I've hung with the wrong crowd.

I will learn to use a knife and fork again.

(Painting "Venus of the Rags" by Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1967 -- Hirshorn Museum, Washington D.C.)

For Lynndie England

What starts at the top
of the chain of command










falls




like a rock

to the bottom.

Where the rope
between your hand
and his neck

pulls
back and forth

across a vanishing front line.

Where your nervous smile
Says you'd kill to be
anywhere else.

Where the ghosts of spoiled regimes,

prisoner and guard,

still have their way.

Letters To Places I've Never Been

I felt that strange itch,
somewhere below my thigh,
to go to the other side of the world.

But romance shrivels up,
Where the old man has pissed his pants,
getting dragged away by the cops.

Rapid City, Manitoba, 1982

My family lived in a small town outside of Brandon, Manitoba a year before I was born, where my father was a United minister. This is more me trying to imagine it than an actual account of what it was like.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wind filters through cracks in windowsills
that seem to appear every winter,
despite constant patching,
as if the shifting atmosphere had conspired to exert all its strength
in these weak spots

its screaming whistle
sounds too much like someone else's pain
to the two bodies inside
locked in place out of
genuine passion out of
safety and
uncertainty.

Perhaps the same wind that blows through Jerusalem
and Toronto
reaches these barren praries

But it all feels slightly feint,
like a childhood fever

Or the way that bodies on the television screen
are the same colour as pavement
when seen under the glare of artificial lights

On days when the sunset was always somewhere else.

A newborn child and a toddler
in the backseat
while my mother sleeps against the passenger-side door
When she woke up
somewhere back in Ontario
she had no idea
of the emptiness they'd crossed.

A family of four,
a force to be reckoned with,
and so they left the place my father was sent to
from the seminary,
like a missionary or a colonizer.

Before they had even thought of me
I was a speck of dirt
in the eye of G-D
Blown eastward from Saskatchewan

Even the townsfolk
-- who erected canted walls
on shaky foundations
of weathered stares
and calculated mistrust,
who worried the prarie might
spread like an inkstain
and level the whole country --

couldn't lift a finger to stop it.

Rob Mazurek - Abstractions on Robert d'Arbrissel

Read the review here.

Canadian Hypocrisy on Khadr Case

The Canadian government continues to show an appalling lack of responsibility when it comes to the case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian captured in Afghanistan at the age of 15.

In a gutless and incomprehensible article in the Toronto Star today, Rosie Dimanno suggests the fate of Khadr "should not be Canada's crusade" after, for some reason, going to great lengths to establish that, at 15, Khadr meets every international standard of a child soldier. She is apparently completely satisfied with Harper's claim that Khadr cannot be classified as a "child soldier" due to the fact that he "belonged to no recognizable army", whatever that means. One wonders whether the milita under mercenary Pachan Khan Zadran -- then a US ally but now considered a "renegade" -- who stormed the house where Khadr was captured would fall under the same considerations. How easily these pitiful little militant groups can gain and lose credibility as "recognizable armies" depending on whose side they're on.

After all, it seemed that Canada had enough of a role when they sent CSIS agents to Guatanamo Bay to offer up their own form of interrogation -- no they didn't use the same methods of torture that US soldiers favour, though they were complicit in the sleep deprivation and other forms of "preparation" Khadr received in lieu of the Canadian visit. Besides, what physical torture could be worse than the CSIS agent patronizing Khadr by suggesting he was being "well looked after", not to mention the crushing despair that he must have felt when he found out the Canadians weren't there to bring him back home, or even report on his condition, but actually freely contribute more "intelligence" for Khadr's trial?

The government says Khadr's case is "judicial" not "political", in which case perhaps they could have picked up on the fact that the "case" against him is a joke. From his initial interrogation at the hands of Joshua Claus -- yup, the same guy who pled guilty to allegations of abuse that led to the death of the innocent Dilawar (see Alex Gibney's excellent documentary Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)) -- to the first tribunal which saw three Chief Prosectuors come and go, and the second tribunal where evidence was deliberately obfuscated that established that 1) Nobody actually saw Khadr throw a gernade at Sgt. Christopher Speer 2) Nobody saw Khadr with any kind of weapon, and 3) The gernade could have been thrown by another man in the house or the American soldiers themselves. Not to mention that "OC-1"'s testimony admitted to shooting Khadr in the back twice while he was huddled on the floor. "Murder in Violation of the Law of War" indeed. Oh yeah, the kangaroo court also stimulated the torture of another Canadian, Maher Arar, whose innocence is now without question.

The Canadian government wasn't always this irresponsible when it came to Khadr. When he was originally arrested in 2002, Jean Chretien ensured that he would receive "due process and proper access to Canadian officials". Perhaps the kind of "due process" that Brenda Martin, convicted of fraud in Mexico, received when the government shelled out over $80,000 to transfer her back home. Harper, who now faces an American government actually ready to shut down the embarassment that is Guantanamo Bay (an opportunity Chretien never had), is going to miss an opportunity to aid the reversal of this vast internationl injustice. Calls from UNICEF, Amnesty International and the Canadian Bar Association appear to have done nothing. It's said that the act of repatriating him would be largely symbolic, but the same can be said of the reasons for the government's refusal to act; the Khadr family's notoriety precedes him.

Most importantly, if Khadr does indeed fall under the international classification of a "child soldier" then it's up to the international community, especially Canada, to intervene. As if, at 15 years old, he could tell the difference between a "legitimate" army and a "terrorist" organization, even if such strict lines did exist. I can't imagine a soldier of any age understanding America's ever-changing, arbitrarily dictated "rules of war", let alone a teenager.

The Backlash Against All-Black Schools

This Magazine ran a recent article making the case for all-black schools in Toronto, and while I think the idea is risky (hence why the article proposed looking at it as a "test"), I find as more disturbing the constant arguments thrown against it based on principle.

Jonathan Kay's piece in the National Post takes as its basic argument the most obvious source of opposition: that the Brown v. Board of Education case ruled that "separate but equal" was inherently racist. But the argument completely divorces the fact that the case was about the rights of black children to attend public schools with whites; something that's not even remotely threatened by the concept of an alternative school. Ironically, the opposition seems to fall more in line with the history of the forces behind segregation, which has been more about telling black families and their children what they can and cannot do than black or white children (or any other racial groups) being separate per se.

It's odd considering the segregation which exists already on some level. Kay brings this to mind when he mentions "the negative correlation between the black population of schools and school-wide academic performance". This presupposes a rather dubious theory about education: that the primary goal of any school is the overall average academic standing of its students, rather than the quality of education they receive. Naturally, a school which in all likelihood is going to be receiving students who have struggled academically (the whole reason for the school in the first place) will receive lower academic standing. Surely this is more positive and constructive than the mostly-black public schools which have become naturally ghettoized over time. By consciously creating a black school, the school board allows for the city's best educators -- who otherwise might have been apathetic about teaching at a low-scoring school -- to potentially contribute to something that breaks the cycle of marginalization that already exists.

By concentrating on a school's overall performance record, Kay unwittingly points to something symptomatic about the majority of the widespread opposition against the school, which is an unwillingness to readily admit the racism that already exists in our public schools and in society at large. At the very least, anyone can admit that the legacy of racism is enough that something constructive needs to be done to counter the effect.

Kay's other arguments seem like window-dressing; piling up useless conjecture that ultimately has no necessary relationship to the proposed school. His claim that the school presupposes the a correlation between self-esteem and academic scoring -- something he dismisses based on evidence that black students statistically have higher self-esteem -- seems to suggest a compact, linear notion of personal well-being that doesn't exist. As if feeling a strong sense of self-worth (something which, at a certain level, becomes more a symptom of feelings of inferiority anyway) is the exact same as having an education that's relevant to your own history and culture; as if self-esteem and self-realization are the same thing. Other points Kay makes -- that Afrocentric schools teach "bizarre fairy tales", or that teaching everything in terms of race is reductionist -- assumes that all-black schools will necessarily by the very fact of their existence teach a certain curriculum.

Perhaps all these problems in black education can be solved within our current public schools, but the point is that it's a question that needs to be approached pragmatically, without all this idealistic baggage.

Antony & the Johnsons - The Crying Light

Read the review here

Cokemachineglow's Year-End Extravaganza

A little late, but if you haven't checked out CMG's Year-End Stuff, including our Top 50 Albums, and Miscellaneous 'Awards', here it is.

http://www.cokemachineglow.com/feature/Yearend2008

"I, Too"

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes....

-Langston Hughes

-----------------------------------------------------------
*A day later I find out I'm not crazy in finding the comparison, one that I think goes beyond race. Here, on the Library of Congress' inclusion of a poem Obama wrote when he was 19 (which is actually pretty good imo), Yale Professor Harold Bloom instantly compared it to Hughes.