Canada

On February 11, my friend and mentor Manuel Rozental did a talk on Haiti at York University, where he gave some of the regional perspective that I got from him and presented in some of my talks. It is below.

"And yet, for all my fulminating, one fact is uncontested: I am writing about Naomi Klein. She isn’t writing about me."

--Jonathan Kay, September 12, 2007

I have to admit I stay away from Jonathan Kay's writing as much as I can (a stomach can only take so much, even though I've had two doses of Ducoral now). I can honestly say that I have never encountered a piece of writing of Kay's that doesn't mention Naomi. It's vaguely creepy for me as a reader, and I can only imagine how creepy it must be for her.

Report Back: Congo Briefing
A report from the Eastern DRC by Justin Podur

Wednesday July 29, 2009, 7pm Tinto Coffee House
89 Roncesvalles Ave, Toronto
(416) 530-5885

Writer Justin Podur visited Bukavu in South Kivu in the eastern DRC in June/July 2009 and interviewed human rights defenders, mining researchers, and medical and legal experts on sexual violence.

Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe Velez, actually presented a dossier from his intelligence agencies when he visited Canada. The intelligence agencies were claiming, based on a magic laptop, that there were FARC guerrilla cells operating in Canada, masterminded by the cousin of the assassinated guerrilla leader Raul Reyes.

Sorry for the break. Short of a substantial posting, here's an update on what I'm up to these days.

* Working with Colombia solidarity groups against the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The best source right now I'd say is the Canada-Colombia project of La Chiva.

Michael Ignatieff, sometimes described as Canada's "Prime Minister in Waiting", is sometimes falsely accused of justifying torture. He is actually much more sophisticated. He is willing to consider torture, and thinks that people, like him, who are against torture should be honest with themselves that this might be a costly decision. He wrote in Prospect in April 2006.

Like any sensible person seeking to escape the Toronto winter, I decided to spend a few days in Winnipeg! Last time I was in Winnipeg was 2002, and the fall, and I told my hosts in the marvelous activist community out there that I wanted to return in the winter and experience the legendary -20 to -30 C or colder. For better or worse, this trip, thanks to global warming or natural variability, it was a positively balmy -5 C, not much colder than Toronto.

If national media help make a nation, then we all need to stop reading and listening to conventional Canadian media if we want to make a decent Canada. Benedict Anderson, perhaps the leading scholar of nationalism, wrote that the daily newspaper (along with other innovations like novels, maps, censuses, museums) played a key role in creating national consciousness. People in a country like Canada use their own media - public (CBC) and private (CanWest, TorStar, CTVglobemedia) - to know what is happening in their own country. Media are also an important part of forging a national identity.

In Canada, the Conservative minority government might just become the opposition in parliament this week, replaced by a Liberal-NDP coalition with support from the Bloc Quebecois from the outside.

Justin Podur
October 23, 2008

Talk given at rabble.ca media democracy day. University of Toronto.