Dawg’s Blawg

Cowards flinched and traitors sneered. Pundits (in the UK and over here) mined a seemingly inexhaustible supply of smugness. The baronial press was a collective Cassandra.

Jeremy Corbyn? An old, rumpled, past-it relic, with cartoonish ideas and an awkward presence, who couldn’t even keep his own caucus in line. Washed up. A spike driven through the heart of the Labour Party.

Google “historic defeat” and “labour,” referring both to a by-election this past February and to prognostications for yesterday’s election. How the squalid media monkeys loved that phrase. Historic defeat. I can’t help repeating it, over and over, like a mantra. Last night I certainly watched an historic defeat. Austerity. Blairism. The phrase “dustbin of history” comes to mind.

Labour’s over-all vote share rose by 10%. For all of the salacious talk of Labour “anti-Semitism,” Corbyn increased his vote share in the so-called “bagel belt” of Finchley and Golders Green, Hendon and Chipping Barnet by 4%, 4.2% and 11% respectively, over his Jewish predecessor, Ed Miliband. Whoops! But the pundits, spinning like dreidels, claim he “faltered” there. (Google “Corbyn” and “faltered.”)

Corbyn himself was elected for the ninth time, with an “historic” vote in his constituency, the largest any candidate has ever achieved. “Safe” seats?” I’ll see your Copeland and raise you Canterbury, Tory for a century. He “defied the polls,” we are told—another punditish cop-out phrase I adore.

Just watch the pundits now. “Labour would have had a majority if not for Jeremy Corbyn” is the new flavour. One’s jaw drops at the sheer shamelessness of it.

Historic defeat there was. Of cynicism, distortions, spin, smears and outright lies. Of smirking scribblers whose brows have never been furrowed with unconventional thoughts. Of political opportunists in the Labour Party whose knives were always out when the leader’s back was turned. Of the Tory “vision” of incessant austerity for all but the rulers. And of that ruling class who gave all this breath and life.

Theresa May won the election, but lost. Jeremy Corbyn lost the election but won. An extraordinary number of “woke” voters somehow saw through the incessant poisonous fog of journalistic propaganda. Those numbers can only increase—the snowball effect—now that Corbyn has seized the time. I, for one, can’t wait for his next “historic defeat.”

Beatrice Hunter. Truth and Reconciliation be damned.

I thought that I was reading satire, forgetting for a moment that, in 2017, satire is dead.

Two white women from Portland, Oregon, ventured down to Mexico and, while they were there, decided they wanted to learn how to make the perfect tortilla—like the ones they’d been scarfing down for days. So they asked around. Their Spanish was “broken,” and no doubt there was a lot of confusion, but they nailed the ingredients, and tried to get a sense of technique across the language barrier. With what in less fraught contexts would be immediately recognizable as youthful exuberance and hyperbole, they wrote about sneaking around and peering in through the windows of local kitchens. Whatever. They learned the art of tortilla-making.

They returned to Portland and started up a food truck, which evolved into a pop-up shop. They stuffed their tortillas with “California-inspired” ingredients. And then something hit the fan, and it wasn’t refried beans.

“Cultural appropriation,” shouted the Usual Suspects, and the battle was on. It was a short battle. The identitarians shut the two-person business down. Victory!

Some time ago I recall having a chance thought that food would be the next frontier for the silo-progressives, but that was just dark fantasizing, a reductio ad absurdum, and so I put it from my mind. In today’s Left ideological landscape, though, it was probably foreseeable. When the political economy of cultural artefacts and practices is factored in, we can be assured that the latter—be it costumes, painting, yoga, music or food—will become political actors in and of themselves. (Actor-Network Theory, anyone?)

A cigar is sometimes just a cigar, said Sigmund Freud (never), but in the instant case we might ask if a burrito isn’t sometimes just a burrito. Well, all right, let’s not rush to judgement in either direction. Here’s a little sic et non to chew on.

The women didn’t pay anything for their information. They simply went down south and colonized local women, plundered them of their knowledge, and fled up north to make a bundle. What they did stood as nothing less than a metaphor: it was the history of Latin America, its peoples bled to a fare-thee-well by Spain back in the day, and then by the US. Raw materials flowing ceaselessly out. The indigenous people, and the transplanted peasantry, ruthlessly exploited and cruelly oppressed, knowing nothing but poverty, torture and mass slaughter. It’s all there in Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. Or just about anywhere else you look for information on the subject, actually. Still happening, too. Check out Hillary Clinton’s Honduras, or the current attempted destabilization of Venezuela.

Or…maybe women just asked other women for a recipe.

There are already Mexican food joints in Portland. Run by Hispanic people. Why not patronize them, instead of these white interlopers?

Or…who says those other entrepreneurs were losing any business at all? A market is not zero-sum.

This was “stolen intellectual property.”

Or…is culture really “property?”

And so the battle raged:

“Now that you all boldly and pretty fucking unapologetically stole the basis of these women’s livelihoods, you can make their exact same product so other white ppl don’t have to be inconvenienced of dealing with a pesky brown middle woman getting in their way. Great job.”

“White chefs can do what these two horrid women did: vacation somewhere and ‘get inspired’ and appropriate an entire culture’s cuisine and claim it as their own.”

An “entire culture’s cuisine?” A tortilla?

Some indignant folks even put out a list of “White-Owned Appropriative Restaurants in Portland.” Now, it’s true that white people have made good money off world cuisines, while ethnic chefs have traditionally been expected to cook the food of their own ethnicity, and their businesses tend to be lower on the corporate ladder. There’s already a literature on food vending and racism. But that seems to be changing now. I live in a city where the best pizzas seem to come from Lebanese-owned businesses or franchises. Where fusion cooking is all the rage. Where the staff of one of my favourite Japanese restaurants, other than the sushi chefs, seems to be almost exclusively east Asian. I see a lot of culinary intermingling and borrowing, but that’s not appropriation, or (a term I prefer because it cuts these debates down to size) misappropriation.

The author of the article referenced in my lede, by the way, can’t seem to tell a tortilla from a burrito, or a burrito from a taco. Could that be because she isn’t Hispanic? Nemmind. Whatever those women were selling, it was a capital offence, business-wise. (Why couldn’t they sell white food instead? Whatever that is, and I challenge anyone to define it.) Anyway, let’s be clear: a burrito is not a tortilla. Sometimes it really isn’t even a burrito. Everybody sells those things now, and stuffs all manner of ingredients into them. Why pick on a couple of food-truck women who actually took the trouble to learn how to make a decent wrap for one?

We really need to step back, and we probably should have a long time ago. Was all this cultural warfare really worth it? What lessons were learned? I shudder to think. This can be said with some certainty, however: no one was actually hurt in the making of those burritos, other than, finally, the young women who were making them. Portland ethnic restaurants lost nothing. The abuelitas in Mexico who have apparently perfected the tortilla lost nothing. When it comes to food, the love you take is equal to the love you make. But some folks just had to enact a charivari of virtue-signalling outrage.

We might ask: if the alleged “theft” of Mexican cuisine is really at issue, why settle for shutting down a two-woman business? If folks want to strike a blow against “cultural appropriation,” AND take on the 1%, where are the El Monterey and Old El Paso boycotts? Why not go trash their local Taco Bells? That would at least rise above bad political micro-theatre. For in fact there is something disturbingly fake about this cheap bullying exercise—and perhaps that’s the worst part of this whole sorry affair.

UPDATE: Alerted by constant reader forgottobuytinfoil, I found that the link in my lede no longer points to the delicious article that gave rise to my post, but to the following:

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR (5/31/17) Dear readers: Due to new information that has recently come to light, we have taken down our blog post, “This Week in Appropriation: Kooks Burritos and Willamette Week.” It was not factually supported, and we regret the original publication of this story.—eds.

Thank goodness for the Wayback Machine, allowing me to replace the link.

This erasure is, in any case, mysterious enough. There was indeed a substantial controversy (see the humongous comment thread under the original article in Willamette Week that sparked it) and much of the same content, by another writer, continues to appear elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the Willamette Week followed up with this opinion piece. I’m not spoiling it here, but suffice it to say that it may be a real-life rejoinder, in more than one sense, to the recent film Get Out.

[Note to commenters: If you want to access the comment thread from the sidebar, change “05” to “06” in the URL displayed with the error message. Thank you, Disqus.]

Maybe not.

Discuss.

Even for France, whose judicial system is nothing like ours, its latest move in the simmering case of Hassan Diab is unprecedented.

For those who have not been keeping up, Diab, a Canadian citizen, was falsely accused of involvement in the terrorist bombing of a synagogue in Paris in 1980. Although the “evidence” against him was next to nonexistent, the unhealthy combination of a Harper government and a publicity-seeking French examining magistrate, Marc Trévidic, proved enough to have him extradited to France in 2014, where he has held ever since—without charge.

Under the French system, an examining magistrate has four years to delve into a terrorism case and determine if a trial should be held. Diab, whose extradition was based upon what even the extradition judge conceded was flimsy evidence that would likely not stand up in a Canadian court, has been in jail pretty much ever since. The examining magistrates who have been seized of his case since Trévidic stepped down in 2015 have found nothing to warrant his continual imprisonment. Indeed, one of them has turned up strong evidence that Diab was in Lebanon at the time of the Paris bombing.

But now, for the sixth time, an order for his release by the examining magistrates has been overturned—without explanation—by an appeal court in France. The French state wants a sacrificial lamb for the 1980 bombing, and has no wish to appear soft on terrorism. Islamophobia may have been playing a role as well, from the Harper government’s initial move to extradite him to the continued imprisonment by France of this clearly innocent man. Had Diab been named Mike Smith or Jean Lacroix, it is highly unlikely that any of this would have happened.

Hassan Diab must be free. Justice demands it. It’s time for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to demand it as well.

Happy May Day, everyone. Solidarity!

I was privileged to attend a several-hundred-strong gathering at the Human Rights monument in Ottawa last evening. The demonstrators were there to protest the benign neglect of the Ottawa Police Service and City Hall as women are consistently bullied, yelled at and even spat upon by “pro-life” fanatics at the Ottawa Morgentaler Clinic on Bank Street.

In an earlier post, I wondered aloud why it was that the Chief of Police and the Mayor of my city were claiming that nothing could be done because of the Charter of Rights and inadequate by-law language. Those claims are palpably false. Court injunctions, and provincial legislation in British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador, have kept anti-choice harassers away from the vicinity of abortion clinics, and have proven robustly Charter-proof. This, in fact, is settled law by now. Nothing is stopping the City from enforcing the existing by-laws or, if necessary, drafting new ones. It was good to see the experts weigh in on this.

Meanwhile, my own Councillor, David Chernushenko, was regurgitating the police and mayoral talking-points, and likely some other Councillors were doing the same, but not all of our municipal representatives are keeping their arms folded and hanging back. Councillor Catherine McKenney, in whose ward the clinic is located, has been pro-active on the matter: as the popular outcry has increased, she (and the Mayor, who could hardly say no) have asked for a legal opinion:

Can the City Clerk and Solicitor provide Council with legally enforceable options to allow the City to ensure that people providing or seeking counselling or medical procedures at any clinic or medical provider in Ottawa will be able to provide or access those services free from harassment, threats or intimidation and in a manner that respects their dignity and privacy.

The options should include new or amended provincial legislation (such as the creation of “bubble zones” that have been done in the Provinces of British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador) and/or new or changes to the City’s own by-laws.

At the demonstration, Councillors Jeff Leiper and Tobi Nussbaum flanked McKinney in silent support as she spoke.

I caught sight of an old friend who had been part of the 1970 Abortion Caravan. “47 years later, eh?” I said to her.

This is not 1970. Pro-choice sentiment is mainstream. The bullying of vulnerable women in downtown Ottawa has created a rising wave of public disgust. I suspect that the Mayor and the Chief of Police have grasped by now what their indefensible inaction has unleashed.

There will be more chapters of this tale written over the few days and weeks. There will be no going back.

Photo Credit: Jean Levac/ Postmedia News

“Paddle faster!”

A recent column by the Toronto Star’s Heather Mallick indicates that the pro-choice struggle is far from over. It’s not the law getting in the way at this point, although in New Brunswick that has been the case until recently, and in some measure remains so. The issue these days is access, hampered by too few abortion facilities and by the ceaseless intimidation of vulnerable women by “pro-life” fanatics.

First, the good news: no, abortion clinics are not closing as Mallick mistakenly claims: indeed, thanks in no small part to my late friend Wendy Robbins, access is actually improving, if far too slowly. But the fetus fetishists are a live, malignant force, and can be counted upon to create misery wherever they appear.

On university campuses they show up with large gory pictures comparing abortion to the Nazi Holocaust. They shove their propaganda through letter slots. And they can also be observed within spitting distance of abortion clinics—despite “bubble zone” legislation in BC and recently in Newfoundland and Labrador that is supposed to force the harassers to remain some distance away from clinic property. Elsewhere, a patchwork quilt of by-laws and court injunctions has helped to keep them at bay—but not always effectively. In Fredericton, they are building an anti-abortion office right next door to the newly-reopened abortion clinic.

And then there’s Ottawa.

A city by-law is supposed to keep the harassers across the street from the Bank Street clinic. But somehow they have gained impunity, marching unimpeded right in front of the clinic doors to intimidate clients.

The Ottawa Police Service appears to be acting in complicity with them. Calls to the police have achieved nothing. In fact, according to the clinic’s director of operations, the cops have threatened clinic staff with arrest for daring to complain. Since when is a citizen subject to arrest for reporting lawbreaking to the police? Something smells malodorous here.

Mallick’s article, and its consequent social media uproar, have wrung a promise out of Ottawa’s glad-handing Mayor Jim Watson to investigate. A Watson sceptic, I’m not holding my breath. But let’s stay tuned.

UPDATE: Both Mayor Jim Watson and the Chief of Police have washed their hands of the matter. “It’s a grey area,” “But the Charter of Rights,” “We can’t enforce our own by-law,” that sort of squeaking can be heard from City Hall and the cop shop, while clinic staff admit they have been driven to the breaking-point by the continual harassment.

“Go get a court injunction,” says the pathologically risk-averse Mayor Watson, helpfully. Those injunctions to create “bubble zones” around abortion clinics to keep the “pro-life” predators away have been successfully sought elsewhere—in Toronto, for example—and the zones are now law in two provinces. They have proven to be effective and able to withstand Charter challenges. But here’s the thing: the Ottawa by-law that restricts picketing to the other side of the street in effect establishes just such a bubble zone. Yet the Mayor and the police chief whine and weep and claim their hands are tied.

Here are a couple of suggestions. First, test the existing by-law: enforce it, make arrests, lay charges. If the harassers find a legal hole in the wording—here’s a thought, wait for it—write and pass a new by-law. (Damn, I must be some sort of genius to have thought of that.) To repeat: we already know that bubble zones are Charter-proof: a by-law having the same effect would be as well.

By doing nothing, both City Hall and the police are taking the side of the harassers. Get hold of your city councillor, jam the Mayor’s phone lines, step up, be heard. Make their lives miserable until something is done. Join any clinic-approved demonstrations and chase the harassers away from the doors.

Push has come to shove. The public bullying of women in Ottawa must be stopped. If the cops and City Hall refuse to act, then citizens will have to do their jobs for them.

UPPERDATE: (April 25) Legal experts shred Ottawa City Hall cowardice.

Right now the biggest news in Europe is the Turkish referendum, whose ballot-counting is going on as I write this. The referendum is for a constitutional change that will favour the office of the Turkish presidency, currently occupied by the dyspeptic Erdoğan, who has stuffed Turkey’s prisons with journalists and judges. The full implications of the referendum and the associated constitutional change, expected to be a Yes vote (probably narrow), are disputed, but in a nutshell, it eliminates some of the distinctions between the executive and the legislative branches, and creates a much more powerful presidential office. Some people in Western Europe and the Turkish opposition consider it to be a step directly into Erdoğanist dictatorship.

A good summary of what is going on is available at this Foreign Policy article, which casts the “narrow” conflict in terms of the role of the bureaucracy:

In order to get things done in government, elected politicians traditionally were obliged to constantly bargain with the groups that composed this “bureaucratic oligarchy.” Most of Turkey’s political trends, such as the Leftists or Nationalists, have long had their natural networks in the corridors of the state, and would leverage them to get things done. The prime minister would be from one of these groups and be responsible for the day-to-day business of government. The president would always represent the Kemalist order and oversee the senior cadre of the Constitutional Court and senior military officials. The basic rhythm of government was not one of formal checks and balances, but tension between the president and prime minister.

It’s important to understand that prior to Erdoğan, much of Turkey’s public also did not experience Turkey as a democracy in which they had full rights. There was an underlying class conflict part of which was realized as a conflict over public religiosity. In the minds of western media, and in particular Western European society, the religious dimension of the conflict overshadowed all other aspects of it: the Kemalist elite were generally regarded as heroes holding a backwards “Islamist” Anatolia at bay using French-style laicism.

For the supposedly backwards Anatolians, the world had a completely different character: an urbanized, Europeanized elite ignored and neglected economically, dangling a chimera of acceptance in exchange for agreeing to sell away their heritage. Under Erdoğan, women’s participation in the economy and politics, went up, leaving the secular elites seeming like macho poseurs demanding that pious women disrobe before they could go to school. (They also apparently had “persuasion rooms” at school to browbeat and humiliate girls from religiously conservative backgrounds into taking off their headscarves.)

To Erdoğan’s core supporters, the Kemalists were doing this in order to gain a kind of superficial acceptance from a Europe that would never actually accept them properly — such is the experience of those who settled in Germany, France, and so on. To Erdoğan’s core supporters, a Yes vote and the further empowerment of Erdoğan, the Man Who Was There For Them, is also a kick in the teeth of a hypocritical, lecturing Europe. Erdoğan himself knew this and deliberately provoked crises with European leaders. European leaders knew this too, but for various reasons (among them, yes, Islamophobia) played along.

The layers of conflict in this referendum and the events preceding it are too many to disentangle in a quick blog post. Class. Religion. The Europeanization of European politics, which, despite everything, Turkey is very much a party to. The conflict in Syria. The Kurdish conflict. All knotted up in a country that can’t help but be “strategic”.