#Canada was built on Indigenous genocide

[remirixjones]

Imagine if Hamilton was about Canadian history...

"John Alex MacDo-ho-nald;

My name is John Alex MacDo-ho-nald.

There are natives that I haven't culled;

But just you wait, just youuu wai-hait."

Yes, this nation was built on Indigenous genocide.

[fatehbaz]

Indigenous genocide and removal from land and enslavement are prerequisites for power becoming operationalized in premodernity, a way in which subjects get (what Wynter names) “selected” or “dysselected” from geography and coded into colonial possession through dispossession. The color line of the colonized was not merely a consequence of these structures of colonial power or a marginal effect of those structures; it was/is a means to operationalize extraction (therefore race should be considered as foundational rather than as periphery to the production of those structures and of global space). Richard Eden, in the popular 1555 publication Decades of the New World, compares the people of the “New World” to a blank piece of “white paper” on which you can “paynte and wryte” whatever you wish. “The Preface to the Reader” describes the people of these lands as inanimate objects, blank slates [...]. [Basically, "Man" is white, while non-white people are reduced to an aspect of the landscape, a resource.] Wynter suggests that we [...] consider 1452 as the beginning of the New World, as African slaves are put to work on the first plantations on the Portuguese island of Madeira, initiating the “sugar-slave” complex - a massive replantation of ecologies and forced relocation of people [...]. Wynter argues that the invention of the figure of Man in 1492 as the Portuguese [and Spanish] travel to the Americas instigates at the same time “a refiguring of humanness” in the idea of race. This refiguring of slaves trafficked to gold mines is borne into the language of the inhuman [...].

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The natal moment of the 1800 Industrial Revolution, [...] [apparently] locates Anthropocene origination in [...] the "new" metabolisms of technology and matter enabled by the combination of fossil fuels, new engines, and the world as market. [...] The racialization of epistemologies of life and nonlife is important to note here [...]. While [this industrialization] [...] undoubtedly transformed the atmosphere with [...] coal [in the nineteenth century], the creation of another kind of weather had already established its salient forms in the mine and on the plantation. Paying attention to the prehistory of capital and its bodily labor, both within coal cultures and on plantations that literally put “sugar in the bowl” (as Nina Simone sings) [...]. The new modes of material accumulation and production in the Industrial Revolution are relational to and dependent on their preproductive forms in slavery [...].

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Catherine Hall’s project Legacies of British Slave-Ownership makes visible the complicity in terms of structures of slavery and industrialization that organized in advance the categories of dispossession that are already in play and historically constitute the terms of racialized encounter of the Anthropocene. In 1833, Parliament finally abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, and the taxpayer payout of £20 million in “compensation” [paid by the government to slave owners for their lost "property"] built the material, geophysical (railways, mines, factories), and imperial infrastructures of Britain and its colonial enterprises and empire. As the project empirically demonstrates, these legacies of colonial slavery continue to shape contemporary Britain. A significant proportion of funds were invested in the railway system connecting London and Birmingham (home of cotton production and [...] manufacturing for plantations), Cambridge and Oxford, and Wales and the Midlands (for coal). Insurance companies flourished and investments were made in the Great Western Cotton Company, for example, and in cotton brokers, as well as in big colonial land companies in Canada (Canada Land Company) and Australia (Van Diemen’s Land Company) and a number of colonial brokers. Investments were made in the development of metal and mineralogical technologies [...].

The slave-sugar-coal nexus both substantially enriched Britain and made it possible for it to transition into a colonial industrialized power [...]. The slave trade [...] fashioned the economic conditions (and institutions, such as the insurance and finance industries) for industrialization. Slavery and industrialization were tied by the various afterlives of slavery in the form of indentured and carceral labor that continued to enrich new emergent industrial powers from both the Caribbean plantations and the antebellum South. Enslaved “free” African Americans predominately mined coal in the corporate use of black power or the new “industrial slavery,” [...].

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The labor of the coffee - the carceral penance of the rock pile, “breaking rocks out here and keeping on the chain gang” (Nina Simone, Work Song, 1966), laying iron on the railroads - is the carceral future mobilized at plantation’s end (or the “nonevent” of emancipation). [...] [T]he racial circumscription of slavery predates and prepares the material ground for Europe and the Americas in terms of both nation and empire building - and continues to sustain it.

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All text above by: Kathryn Yusoff. "White Utopia/Black Inferno: Life on a Geologic Spike". e-flux Journal Issue #97. February 2019. At: e-flux dot com slash journal/97/252226/white-utopia-black-inferno-life-on-a-geologic-spike/ [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity and context. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism.]

[empenvs3000f24]

Unit 4 Blog Post

Hi Everyone :)

With one of my minors being Art History, I have learned to be more of a critical thinker when it comes to interpreting art and nature’s involvement in many of the pieces we view today. How many of these artworks are ethical, original, and ephemeral? I try my best to see the beauty in nature through art, while also giving myself the grace to understand the backstory to the piece/landscape. With today being the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (Orange Shirt Day), I’ll touch on Indigenous art and how we’ve done a disservice to Indigenous talent in Canada’s art world.

In terms of the Group of Seven who really put Canada on the map via showcases in predominantly Canada, The United States, and Europe. Their art expanded worldwide and pretty much dominated galleries in Canada for decades, pushing out other artists and Indigenous works. In hindsight we can understand that their more popular pieces did not exactly depict Canada for what it was at the time. Many of their landscapes were painted in Algonquin, Algoma, and out West; where major logging and pollution was occurring. Some of the artists painted scenes of Indigenous communities, but failed to represent the cultural genocide and residential schools tearing those families apart. Canada was depicted as this abandoned land, solely made up of landscapes and tranquility. Moving forward we can look into Indigenous artists to learn about how they interpret nature through art and the concept of ‘the gift of beauty’ through their lens. 

Interpreting art in nature is a great way to hit more than one of the learning styles. Even in a gallery setting, a painting can target visual learners, the plaque can offer a description for the readers/writers, and there are auditory options available in most galleries. We can also achieve this in nature interpretation; using multiple learning styles can enhance the ‘art’ aspect of nature and allow us to encompass some additional information to a picturesque landscape. This notion ties into the ‘gift of beauty’ and how there is more than meets the eye when it comes to understanding nature through art. 

The importance of immersing ourselves in nature is exemplified in Hahn’s Social Declines of Modern Youth. I feel like the use of social media and abundant technology is the culprit of these ‘social diseases’. We are all so accustomed to being able to see whatever we want, whenever we want it. We can google any image of nature and get a million different vantage points of it. I think this allows us to sometimes take for granted the fact that we could go outside and see the beauty of nature with our own two eyes. A big factor in experiencing nature in person is the stimulation of the senses; as opposed to only sight and maybe sound when we view something online. By stimulating all 5 senses in person, the experience becomes more holistic and memorable. 

Got off my phone and walked around the Arboretum this summer!

We can only learn from our mistakes as people and as a country. Understanding equality in art, risk in nature, and beauty in our daily lives, is built through the experiences of others; we simply have to listen. 

[missegyptiana]

i do not celebrate canada day or independence day for a reason. these countries are stolen land and were built around genocide. plz take the time today and july 4th to reflect, honour and remember the indigenous peoples that suffered throughout colonization especially when it first began. <3🪶

[communistkenobi]

something i’ve never liked is how, when people talk about dealing with the problems indigenous people face, there’s always this assumption that we shouldn’t “punish” non-indigenous people by involving them in the solution. just because their ancestors did something wrong that doesn’t mean they have blood on their hands and that their ancestors’ intentions aren’t their intentions.

i’m not somebody who thinks we should take responsibility for running society instead of the government, but, the situation just just rubs me the wrong way. like if your ancestors wronged people and the people they wronged have to deal with the consequences of of said wrongs everyday, do you not owe it to society to be part of the solution?

i don’t know what to do about this situation, but i just feel like society teaches non-indigenous people they are not responsible for pursuing justice here and i was wondering what your thoughts on the matter. tysm in advance if you reply 🤍

Even if you accept that current settlers are not in any way responsible for or benefit from past colonial violence (which I don’t, but we will sit with this hypothetical for a moment), then the same reasoning must be extended to indigenous peoples. If my wealth and privilege in a settler colonial state is not morally linked to the history of said state, then the oppression of indigenous peoples are doubly not their own faults - which is all the more reason to resolve current inequalities! But this line of reasoning is not logically extended to indigenous people because in the Canadian imaginary (and other settler colonial contexts, but I’m most familiar with Canada so I will speak on this context) indigenous people are considered to be subjects stuck in history, always “behind” us in time. Of course, indigenous people are treated as indigenous in every conceivable way, but they are treated as if they are in the wrong time period. The only acceptable version of this for settlers is for there to be no more indigenous people - only then will there be no debts to repay.

But obviously this is not the case, and can never be the case. I think concepts of individual punishment or retribution are a flawed way of understanding decolonial efforts. A more productive understanding is what Fanon says - for decolonisation to happen, the last must come first. This can be in the form of wealth and land redistribution, legal autonomy, official apologies, the abolition of various colonial institutions, and so forth. This can include stripping institutions of their wealth which consequently means powerful people will lose status and power (the church, for example, which was one of the primary architects of residential schools), but this is not based on individual punishment. Obviously this isn’t immediately realisable in the current state of affairs, and so supporting current indigenous struggles (such as blocking oil pipelines, the MMIWG project, etc) is of prime importance.

And also like just on a general note, settlers do still directly benefit from settler colonialism. Like whenever you hear about a new pipeline being built on indigenous land, the argument is always about how many jobs it will create (for settlers). Churches profit fucking massively from indigenous genocide and every settler Christian directly benefits from this. The RCMP is an arm of the Canadian state that is constantly used to conduct massive amounts of violence and suppression of indigenous people. etc.

And this is also a deeper disease of white supremacy: this open denial of history allows white people today to believe their accomplishments, their privileges, their wealth, are entirely of their own doing, ignoring the mountain of colonial architecture that affords them these privileges in the first place. This also has the dual effect of individually blaming indigenous people for their own oppression. At the heart of this sentiment is an existential white insecurity - white supremacy promises what it says on the tin, and while many white people buy into it wholeheartedly, deep down there is an anxiety about the true nature of white supremacy, because white supremacy only works if it is constantly, violently reinforced at every turn. White supremacy, contra to the claim of white supremacists, is not naturally occurring, it has to be fought for at every moment, it has to constantly add bodies to the pile to justify itself. So when (especially white) settlers claim they are not responsible for the sins of the past, this is motivated reasoning, because if the past does not exist then their privilege as a white person is a result of some biological process outside of history, emerging naturally and organically. 

So like you, I don’t buy this argument, I think it’s deeply racist, and I don’t think it’s arguing the thing people think it is - of course Joe Average on the street is not individually responsible for his government’s genocide, because settler colonialism is an institutional project, but calls for decolonisation are not calls for white genocide or whatever other nonsense. It is like all serious left wing projects an aim towards the abolition of class, the abolition of the settler as a historical subject that exerts power over the indigenous subject. and while decolonisation is a violent process (and I use violence in an expansive, inclusive sense, not just interpersonal physical violence - many indigenous struggles you see today are violent in some sense or another because they are confronting the state), it is only that way because settler colonialism itself is an eternally violent machine and must be sloughed off violently 

[samspicturesandwords]

I am white, and I live in Canada. This land was violently colonized by Europeans centuries ago. It was stolen. The indigenous peoples of what is now Canada were violently displaced and brutally subjegated. Many died, and many others endured hardship and injustice at the hands of the colonizers. Slavery was legal here until the 1830s. Canada was built on stolen land, through violence, exploitation, and oppression. Sadly, racism is still alive and well here. I am not overlooking the crimes of my own country's past and present. I've been focusing on what's happening in Palestine because that genocide is at a fever pitch right now, but I want peace, freedom, and equality across the world. The country I live in was built on land theft and genocide. You're damn right I'll oppose anyone trying to replicate those historic crimes in the modern day.

[hussyknee]

People who equate being anti-zionist with antisemitism actully give me brain damage. Do you think supporting Indigenous people in Canada is anti christian/ anti white? Genuinely what is the thought process here

Well Zionists are some of the most racist assholes around with one of the biggest victim complexes, and Christian Zionists think their Sky Daddy promised them not just Israel but the whole damn world, so yes they do think Indigenous sovereignity is anti-white and anti-Christian. That's why they keep trying to rebutt giving Israel back to the Palestinians with "would you give America back to the Natives?" And then get mad when they're told "...yes?"

Zionism is white supremacy. There's no point trying to reason with white supremacists, or trying to draw analogies because they're racists plain and simple. The ostensibly "leftist" Zionists on this site are as toxic and racist to Black and brown people as the white conservatives they rail against even without the issue of Palestine because you simply cannot make racial marginalization and colonization understood to people who think religious discrimination is the same as racial, that their oppression is exceptional, and feel attacked by being held accountable for colonization. That's what white supremacy is— the steadfast belief that you as a white person are oppressed by people of colour, the belief that your race and religion entitles you to other people's land, and that any amount of violence is justified to defend it. Colonization and genocide is built on these things. That's why we call Zionists Nazis— because they are.

[newsfromstolenland]

Your a social worker right. Do you think social workers would be a better replacement to cops? Though social workers can be racist too.

I'm a social service worker- the difference is I went to college instead of university

I think that while social workers are a less deadly alternative to cops, the social work system that we have in place is still a colonial one with a long history of racism and genocide

personally I refuse to work for the government and instead I volunteer with and look for jobs with community organizations that operate outside of and often against the existing structure, but even so social work and social service work have massive issues with racist and colonial practice

for example, the place I volunteer at helps immigrant communities access free clothing and job training which is great, but I still find myself having to advocate for internal progress in the organization due to racist white volunteers

quite frankly, social work and social service work in canada are built on a foundation of racist colonial practice- social workers were instrumental in justifying residential schools and continue to disproportionately remove Indigenous kids from their homes and put them in the child welfare system

basically, while preferable to cops, social workers are in no way free of racism and colonialism, and I believe that the system is broken beyond repair (or rather, purposely created in a way that is harmful beyond repair)

[skaruresonic]

I also don't think folks realize how annoying it is to not vote and have "vote no matter what" rhetoric crammed down your throat as a moral imperative when doing so may in fact harm your tribal sovereignty. I choose not to vote not because I'm lazy or a fascist sympathizer, but because I literally cannot without risking the overall welfare of my tribe.

Voting in a system that was inherently built on Native peoples' genocide will change literally nothing for us except rotate the prison guard. The US government has broken every single treaty and every single promise it has made, which includes both Republicans and Democrats. There's no reason to expect anything will improve as long as indigenous people in this country continue to be subjugated and ignored.

I got in trouble for merely registering to vote. We take issues of tribal sovereignty seriously because if we don't, the government can dissolve us and say we're not self-governing. This is so they can take our land, which is the ultimate goal of blood quantum laws; if no one counts as indigenous anymore, no one "owns" the land.

This extends even as far as getting a passport: you have to either take your chances and pray bureaucracy accepts your tribal card, or you have to potentially cripple your tribe's self-determination by agreeing to get a US passport. They told us to consider this when we were like high school students.

The Jay Treaty says the Haudenosaunee are permitted to freely cross the border into Canada, but it's a dice roll on whether the border patrol will actually let you through. Most of the time they're just gonna be like "fuck you, you need a birth certificate." And hell, the reason I didn't get my permit for a few years is because the DMV didn't recognize our tribal card.

This is also why I don't take personal offense to other countries bashing 'murica because I'm like

[mask131]

As a non-American, I always have a mocking smile on my face when Americans (aka habitants of the USA or of Canada to be precise) call out a country "evil" or "criminal" and call for its complete destruction and dismantlement... Because A) "They're not a real country, they're settlers that colonized a land that was not theirs" and/or B) "They built their country on a genocide and killed the indigenous people".

This type of discourse pops up a lot with the Israel situation currently, but it had been around before for other countries and... I just laugh at the sweet ignorance of these blissfully unaware Americans who are literaly describing the history of their OWN country, little colonies that became the nation they are today by mass-genocide of the people native to the land.

So if you think one country should not exist because it is a "genocidal colony" and that everybody in it should return from "where they come from", think hard about it because it also means you want to destroy and dismantle the United-States and Canada, and also a lot of countries in Southern America. Basically the entirety of the American continent. If that's your opinion so be it, but if I see anymore hypocrite that goes "Yes X country should not exist because it was built on colonization and genocide but the USA/Canada is the greatest and has all the rights to be there", I'll hold them for what they are, aka morally short-sighted and self-centered morons. If you want to apply this line of logic to other countries, be ready to apply it to your own country too and be aware of the irony of your situation.

[And I think it is very important to remember that because recently the far-right groups in the US have been trying to erase all the "bad side" of the USA history, aka they have been erasing or dowplaying from media and school and other information outlet stuff like the American genocides and the way a huge part of American society was built on slavery... I mock a bit viciously above, but truly sometimes I am sad for Americans who literaly know less about their country than other people - I, just following a regular European school-course, ended up learning more about the USA's history than a lot of Americans I talked to.]

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter 6. Revolution

How will reparations for past oppressions be worked out?

If government and capitalism disappeared overnight, people would still be divided. Legacies of oppression generally determine where we live; our access to land, water, a clean environment, and necessary infrastructure; and the level of violence and trauma in our communities. People are accorded vastly differing degrees of social privilege according to skin color, gender, citizenship, economic class, and other factors. Once the exploited of the earth rise up to seize the wealth of our society, what exactly will they inherit? Healthy land, clean water, and hospitals, or depleted soil, garbage dumps, and lead pipes? It depends largely on their skin color and nationality.

An essential part of an anarchist revolution is global solidarity. Solidarity is the polar opposite of charity. It does not depend on an inequality between giver and receiver. Like all good things in life, solidarity is shared, thus it destroys the categories of giver and receiver and neither ignores nor validates whatever unequal power dynamics may exist between the two. There can be no true solidarity between a revolutionary in Illinois and a revolutionary in Mato Grosso if they must ignore that the one’s house is built with wood stolen from the lands of the other, ruining the soil and leaving him and his entire community with fewer possibilities for the future.

Anarchy must make itself wholly incompatible with colonialism, either a colonialism that continues to the present day in new forms, or a historical legacy which we try to ignore. Thus an anarchist revolution must also base itself in the struggles against colonialism. These include people in the Global South who are trying to reverse neoliberalism, indigenous nations struggling to regain their land, and black communities still fighting to survive the legacies of slavery. Those who have been privileged by colonialism — white people and everyone living in Europe or a European settler state (the US, Canada, Australia) — should support these other struggles politically, culturally, and materially. Because anti-authoritarian rebellions have been limited in scope thus far, and meaningful reparations would have to be global in scale because of the globalization of oppression, there are no examples that fully demonstrate what reparations would look like. However, some small-scale examples show that the willingness to make reparations exists, and that the anarchist principles of mutual aid and direct action can accomplish reparations more effectively than democratic governments — with their refusal to acknowledge the extent of past crimes and their embarrassing half measures. The same goes for revolutionary governments, which typically inherit and cover up oppression within the states they take over — as exemplified by how callously the governments of the USSR and China took their places at the heads of racial empires while claiming to be anti-imperialist.

In the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico, the Zapatistas rose up in 1994 and won autonomy for dozens of indigenous communities. Named after Mexican peasant revolutionary Zapata and espousing a mix of indigenous, Marxist, and anarchist ideas, the Zapatistas formed an army guided by popular “encuentros,” or gatherings, to fight back against neoliberal capitalism and the continuing forms of exploitation and genocide inflicted by the Mexican state. To lift these communities up out of poverty following generations of colonialism, and to help counter the effects of military blockades and harassment, the Zapatistas called for support. Thousands of volunteers and people with technical experience came from around the world to help Zapatista communities build up their infrastructure, and thousands of others continue to support the Zapatistas by sending donations of money and equipment or buying fair-trade goods[105] produced in the autonomous territory. This assistance is given in a spirit of solidarity; most importantly, it is on the Zapatista’s own terms. This contrasts starkly with the model of Christian charity, in which the goals of the privileged giver are imposed on the impoverished receiver, who is expected to be grateful.

Peasants in Spain had been oppressed throughout centuries of feudalism. The partial revolution in 1936 enabled them to reclaim the privilege and wealth their oppressors had derived from their labors. Peasant assemblies in liberated villages met to decide how to redistribute territory seized from large landowners, so those who had labored as virtual serfs could finally have access to land. Unlike the farcical Reconciliation Commissions arranged in South Africa, Guatemala, and elsewhere, which protect oppressors from any real consequences and above all preserve the unequal distribution of power and privilege that is the direct result of past oppressions, these assemblies empowered the Spanish peasants to decide for themselves how to recover their dignity and equality. Aside from redistributing land, they also took over pro-fascist churches and luxury villas to be used as community centers, storehouses, schools, and clinics. In five years of state-instituted agrarian reform, Spain’s Republican government redistributed only 876,327 hectares of land; in just a few weeks of revolution, the peasants seized 5,692,202 hectares of land for themselves.[106] This figure is even more significant considering that this redistribution was opposed by Republicans and Socialists, and could only take place in the part of the country not controlled by the fascists.

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Infrastructures of Violence

Solarpunk isn’t new to debates about violence, its pros and cons, whether it is a true reflection of the movement’s values or antithetical to its ethical commitments. I figured I’d give my own two cents’ worth here; I know I might be retreading old ground, but given this season’s focus on housing in particular and the built environment generally, I wanted to address this topic specifically.

Before I begin, though, I want to note that I am deeply indebted in my thinking to Rob Nixon, specifically his book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor for giving me language and a framework of thinking about this issue. There are many types of violence, it turns out! Some are just harder to see than others. On top of that, who is labelling what action as “violent”? Who gets to define violence? These are some of the questions I tend to chew over whenever the word is used.

Today, I want to talk about how infrastructure and violence are intrinsically linked, and not just in the sense of clashes between the people living there. Architecture can perpetrate violence simply in its design: take hostile architecture, for example. Apart from threatening violence in actual physicality, hostile architecture perpetrates a violent ideology: there are people who do not matter, who need to be shooed away, who don’t deserve basic human kindness or decency. This is a forerunner to genocidal action - the constant dehumanization of a particular population, making it easier to eventually do actual, physical, spectacular violence to them without causing much psychic damage to/causing protest from the rest of the population.

In my view, solarpunks’ goals are to create a world where that ideology is, as Christina put it, “beyond the pale”. A world where compassion reigns and every individual matters as an important part of the community. A world where disputes are resolved through skillful negotiation, where interpersonal conflict is arbitrated with compassion, where peace and care are valued and valorized.

We don’t live in that world yet. And it will take a lot of intentional choosing of nonviolence as well as organized opposition to a status quo that interprets any opposition to it as necessarily violent. Taking an example from my own society and culture, Canada has a history (though recent) of branding enviromentalists as terrorists, with terrible consequences. A recent episode of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) podcast “What on Earth?” explored how misogyny and racism can combine with anti-environmentalist sentiment into a toxic stew that greatly affects female environmentalists, and thus can have a chilling effect on women’s speech and actions. (Because Canada was first and foremost founded as a resource colony to extract goods for Europe, and only became a country after negotiating with the companies that had laid claim to Northern Turtle Island, any opposition to the extractive settler-colonial mindset is labelled domestic terrorism).

Speaking of racism, Canada, the status quo, and the violence inherent to certain forms of infrastructure, both 1990’s Oka Crisis and the current struggles of the Tiny House Warriors come to mind. The Oka Crisis, or Kanehsatà:ke Resistance, was basically a struggle over whether the township of Oka, Quebec, had the right to build condominiums and expand a golf course over disputed land that also included an Indigenous burial ground. Mohawk protestors blockaded a highway with trees and trucks; the Quebec Police, the Canadian Army, and the RCMP showed up with tanks. To defend infrastructure.

The Tiny House Warriors are a group of Indigenous-led protestors who are part of a mission to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline from crossing unceded Secwepemc Territory by building infrastructure of their own - tiny houses. Ten tiny houses were built in strategic places along the Trans Mountain pipeline route, reasserting Indigenous presence on their own land. They are now in court, after having been attacked and abused (sometimes physically) for their commitment to fighting violent infrastructure with infrastructure that asserts their sovereignty and provides homes.

The label of violence can be stretched, in this way, to cover even peaceful protestors. Or artists - Elizabeth LaPensée's short video game Thunderbird Strike, wherein the player directs a thunderbird to attack the oil pipeline and infrastructures encroaching on the land, was described by a Minnesota politician and oil lobbyists as “encouraging eco-terrorism”.

Much like the debater who takes a critique of their argument as an ad hominem attack, there are governments that see only violence in certain actions that solarpunks may not see as violent at all.

The violence against the Wet’suwet’en protestors, the #NoDAPL protestors, and many, many more is sourced in how those who defend the status quo see any movement against it as violence or the threat of violence, and feel justified in retaliating with force. Never mind the centuries of colonial violence and dehumanization, the official doctrine stating that non-Christians and their lands were fair game for European state invasion, the historical and ongoing land theft and consequent forcing of people out of their homes to live in unfamiliar places, the brutal repression of language and culturally important ceremonies… I could go on, but I won’t. According to the status quo, though, those aren’t technically violent acts - or, if they could be called “violent", they happened in the past, and so somehow do not count, as if history doesn’t shape our present or memory is no object.

All that said, I’m not sure where that leaves us. I do know that solarpunk is not okay with interpersonal violence at all, nor is it okay with war, oppression, torture, subjugation…. those are all the easy violences, the ones we can immediately see, identify, and react to.

But violence against infrastructure? When the term “violence” is defined by the very forces we are actively attempting to dismantle? I don’t think that acting in defense of one’s safety is wrong: pushing back against violent infrastructure might look like blockading a road or railway. It might look like tiny houses, built in the path of a pipeline. It might look like sabotaging the machines in a warehouse. It might look like a group of people united by the belief that human life and the health of the land is more valuable than any profit that could be made from this infrastructure, any benefit it might give.

To dismantle infrastructures that perpetrate violence is to commit violence. So perhaps the aims of solarpunk could be interpreted as violent in that sense, because destroying, hindering, and otherwise f&%ing up fossil fuel infrastructure, or military weaponry, or modifying hostile architecture to make it human-friendly… that is, in the eyes of society at large, violent.

I think I’m starting to think myself in circles, however. It’s time for some input, because this is just how I’m thinking about this issue, and it’s by no means any sort of manifesto or final word on the subject; it’s necessarily restricted by my own biases and location, and I need perspective. So, what do you think?

[realjaysumlin]

The Philosophy of Colonialism: Civilization, Christianity, and Commerce | Violence in Twentieth Century Africa

The theft of Africa by Christianity and whiteness broke Africa and the African People, the same thing happened to all countries and continents that were colonized by the European colonizers. Australia and Africa shared the same fate as the Americas and Canada.

The genocides were immense and the Indigenous Populations were drastically reduced almost into extinction. This is the true evil history of Christianity and whiteness interwoven by colonization and imperialism, according to the Christian Doctrine of Discovery was to reduce the Indigenous People history to perpetual slavery.

This has worked because the majority of Black People globally see their history interwoven in slavery as if they didn't exist before slavery occurred. Nothing could be further from the truth in regards to Black Indigenous People history.

This is a sinister plot implemented by the European colonizers to divide and conquer and forbidding anyone to teach Black Indigenous People to read and write even though many Africans were already educated and experienced in many areas.

Some of the Black Africans were part of the African Royal Families and Chieftains of their many tribes. Education as we know of it today originated in West Africa. The French were credited with building the first university of Mali before historians proved that the University was built before any Europeans had reached Africa Gold Coast.

The University of Mali Africa was changed into a library making it the first library in the world and only the University in Morocco Africa became the first university in the world long before Europeans knew anything about education.

European history in literacy was very low even compared to Africa, the European illiteracy rating was very high with only one out of 700 people in Europe who could write their own name changed after colonization of the world.

The history of Europe before colonization would be an undeveloped country and poor. European poverty is something that people forget about as if Europeans were always rich under the control of whiteness, even though the rich people of European History are that of the Moorish Empire and part of the Ottoman and Mongolian Empires before the death of Ghghis Khan.

The Great Famine of Europe along with the Black Plague and the many wars that were going on in Europe almost destroyed the entire economic structure of Europe. It wasn't until the colonization era began and the Europeans named this period as the age of discovery, which meant that the Europeans would change history in their own name, replacing the natural history of the Black Indigenous People of the world.

The new idea of scientific racism added a new chapter for controlling the power over the world by dividing the human population based on Christianity and a dubious science that we now call scientific racism.

This idea is accepted by the majority of the world today even though this construct is false. This is the true history of Christianity and colonization being interwoven together by the Europeans.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Reciprocity Benefits" cigar

"Uncle Sam - I'll smoke it, you may smell it."

From the Berlin (Kitchener) News Record, September 6 1911

[Context from my pal DN]: The 1911 federal election was the first "free trade" election. In office since 1896, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier's Liberals sought their fifth consecutive sweeping majority. President Taft's proposal of lowering tariffs became the central political issue. Wrapped in the Union Jack, Robert Borden's Conservatives opposed free trade and argued that Canada would be taken over by the United States.

The election was close but the Conservatives came out ahead. The entrenched Liberal machine built around Laurier ensured the Liberals carried Quebec, but with a significant loss of seats to the Conservatives. The Liberals also carried Atlantic Canada, but just barely, signalling the crumbling of the old opposition to Confederation in the 1860s in which it was correctly predicted that losing free trade with New England would result in Atlantic Canadian industry being swallowed up by Montreal capital. The predictions came true, and Nova Scotia in particular suffered through a wave of deindustrializatoin in the 1880s and 1890s as Montreal capital bought up local concerns and shuttered them in favour of greater concentrations of industry in Montreal and the St. Lawrence Valley.

In the new prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Liberals continued to dominate as colonization rapidly expanded the number of farmers who quickly found themselves locked into an east-west trade cartel controlled by the rail monopolies of CPR, Canadian Northern, and the Grand Trunk Pacific (the latter two would be nationalized and form Canadian National in 1919). The farmers were incensed that they were blocked from trading south to American markets at cheaper freight rates.

The Conservatives cut into Liberal support in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, but the bulk of its support came from Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia - the three Anglo provinces where industrial capitalism had taken hold during the "Second Industrial Revolution" that began in the 1890s. Not only that, but Ontario, Manitoba and BC were politically dominated by the most militant Anglo founders of Confederation. Through the Orange Terror of the 1870s against the Métis and their democratic allies, and a sustained political struggle against French language schooling rights, the bilingual and multicultural character of Manitoba had been legally and politically extinguished by the mid-1890s (and was a contributing factor to Laurier's Liberals winning the 1896 election, ending 18 years of Conservative rule).

Likewise, British Columbia was politically loyal to the project of Confederation. It had been aggressively established as a British colonial outpost in the 1850s for the Empire's project of a united British North America and establishing a British base in the northwestern Pacific. The 1860s was marked by a series of colonial wars and punitive expeditions by British gunboats, redcoats and settler terrorist groups. Colonial victory was achieved with the deliberate smallpox genocide of Indigenous peoples on Vancouver Island which spread to Haida Gwaii and the mainland. Estimates of 15,000 to 30,000 Indigenous peoples died in a year - half the Indigenous population of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii. White people in Victoria, population 5,000 in 1862, were busy getting vaccinated, the smallpox vaccine having been discovered decades before available in the Pacific Northwest by the 1850s. By 1911, British Columbia had become a major coal and lumber exporter and the terminus of three new transcontinental railroads (CPR at Port Moody and Granville; Canadian Northern at Port Mann and later Pacific Central Station; Grand Trunk Pacific at Prince Rupert).

It seemed like the Conservatives had re-established their once-powerful "National Policy" coalition of British imperialists, Canadian capitalists and the Anglo working class. However, the Second Industrial Revolution, the two new transcontinental railways, and colonization of the prairies had radically expanded and altered the character of the industrial working class and the role of the state in society. The brewing rebellion of farmers, the Vancouver Coal Wars of 1912-1914, the great IWW strike of the Grand Trunk Pacific in 1913, and the success of state capitalist development (Ontario Hydro Commission - 1906, Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway - 1902, King's Industrial Disputes Investigation Act - 1907) were all harbingers of radical change that exploded with the pressure cooker of the Great War.

Farmers struck out on their own after the war with farmer parties taking power in Ontario (1919), Alberta (1921) and Manitoba (1922). The working-class insurgency of 1919 shook the ruling class and forged a broad and complex vanguard of radical working-class politics and action that formed a foundation for the great class struggles of the 1930s and 1940s.

The Conservatives, during and immediately following the war, were pressed to concede the vote of women, albeit through opportunistic means to win the 1917 election in favour of conscription, nationalize the CNoR and Grand Trunk in 1919, and lose its popular "producer" base that had won it power in 1911 and undergirded its electoral success during the first 30 years of Confederation.

Ever the opportunists, the Liberals under King abandoned the free trade mantra and spent the next 30 years overseeing the renovation of the Canadian state in the interest of capital while playing a ruthless game of stick, carrot and more stick against the growing insurgency of the "producer" classes which had grown too large and self-conscious to contain within a bourgeois two-party system.

The next seventy years would hold to this pattern until the economic base of the farmer and labour movements had sufficiently crumbled by the 1980s, at which point the Progressive Conservatives (a name courtesy of a 1940s merger of the Conservatives and a section of the farmer-based Progressives) pulled the plug on the National Policy of protective tariffs and home market development in favour of free trade with the United States.

With Mulroney's victory in the 1988 "free trade" election and subsequent refusal of provincial governments to challenge the free trade agreement (Bob Rae promised he would during his successful 1990 election campaign), the old 20th century political arrangements have collapsed. The small farmer class has disappeared to political insignificance. The working-class has been radically transformed since deindustrialization and free trade. The three-party political system that dominated the 1919-1990 period has collapsed and been remade with new coalitions of forces and factions - even if the party names carry forward into a new century.

With one "producer" class still standing - the working class - and the colonial and capitalist failures of Confederation coming home to roost at home and abroad, can a new vision and program for Canada be forged by a new working-class movement?

[mightdeletelater]

It's going to be so interesting to see how the ICJ's recent ruling carries broader implications, impacting not only what is happening in Gaza but also influencing dynamics in global justice. Unsurprisingly, Israel's stance towards the ICJ ruling has been dismissive. Anyone who knows anything about Israel's defensive nature towards human rights organisations and the UN could have seen that coming. The accusations of anti-Semitism are, of course, rife. When major government officials simply respond with phrases like "Hague Shmague", you know that what you're dealing with is a state built on forever denying accountability.

Despite Israel's scepticism, the recent issuance of historic measures by the world court carries profound implications. These measures specifically call for Israel to take decisive steps to prevent genocidal acts, address incitement to genocide, and provide a comprehensive report on its actions within a month. The ICJ has limited enforcement powers, but I think their ruling adds to the political discomfort experienced by Israel. The increased prominence of the ICJ and its recent rulings, particularly on the matter of incitement to genocide, have shifted the narrative, challenging those who previously shielded Israel from international criticism.

The tendency for defensive rhetoric may persist, but there is a noticeable transformation in the global perception of hypocrisy and double standards. I wrote about it in a previous post, but the hesitancy of the United States, the UK, Canada and other Western governments to criticise Israel and their discernibly selective approach to justice has actually been brought to the forefront. The recent judgment emphasises the imperative need for a more balanced and equitable approach, underscoring the significance of justice in various conflict zones worldwide.

The world court's increased visibility and the gravity of its recent rulings bring attention to the evolving narrative. Previous rulings by the ICJ, even on critical matters like genocide in Bosnia or the legality of the Israeli "separation barrier," barely made headlines. Despite the final judgment being a distant prospect, governments supporting Israel now find themselves needing to navigate the challenges created by their own stance on South Africa's case, previously deemed empty and illegitimate.

A compelling aspect of the recent ICJ proceedings has been the evidence presented on incitement to genocide, a crucial element outlined in the 1948 convention. Even before the South African submission, a former director general of the Israeli foreign ministry and others had discussed "extensive and blatant incitement to genocide and expulsion and ethnic cleansing." But many governments were hesitant to confront this self-evident truth.

It is incredibly frustrating because sometimes I listen to the politicians, and I just feel such a strong sense of anger mixed with disbelief at the words that are coming out of their mouths. Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying that they do not accept the premise of the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel. Funny that she should say that, given that Canada’s model of colonial confinement of its Indigenous peoples through the reserve & pass system was adopted by apartheid South Africa and later imported by Israel. So much of the Canadian government's time is spent convincing its people that they have moved on and learned from their past. The irony of today's events and their response could not be more obvious.

In the UK, the former prime Minister and current foreign secretary stutters on live television when being asked very basic questions about Gaza before saying that he isn't a lawyer and he can't answer in good faith. The foreign secretary cannot answer questions on foreign affairs in good faith. And weeks later, after the ICJ ruling, he's back on our screens, saying in a strong, assured voice that he actually disagrees with some of the strongest, most sound legal minds on the planet.

It's like come on.

I'd be typing for ages if I start to give examples from leaders in the US and the EU but the point is the reluctance of Washington and co. to condemn human suffering in Palestine has not only been detrimental to the Palestinians but also poses challenges for Israel. The repercussions extend beyond the immediate conflict, reflecting a pick-and-choose approach to justice. This approach proves to be perilous for justice globally, with implications seen prominently in the current north-south divide involving Ukraine. Why? Because Russia now has the ultimate ammunition.

Ukraine's efforts to gather support has now been made that much harder. As long as Israel and Western governments choose to dismiss the ICJ, the international community will turn Ukraine into a "your victims" versus "our victims" case. How can these countries say they are acting in good faith when it comes to Vladimir Putin but refrain from addressing the actions of an ally responsible for the deaths of over 25,000 civilians in a couple of months?

It feels like a waste of breath at this point, to be honest. The countless stories coming out of Gaza since October and well before that are vile. Millions are being cramped into one corner of a strip while everything they've ever known and loved is discriminately bombed. People are eating animal food out of pure hunger in Gaza. A child dies every 15 minutes in Gaza. Women are forced to use pieces of the tents they have been forced to live in as menstrual products in Gaza. Miscarriages are up 250% in Gaza. There has been countless reports of sexual and domestic violence by soldiers in Gaza.

And when these issues are brought up, there is a laughable amount of whataboutism to justify it all.

There is a poignant reminder of the fundamental principle of justice itself for politicians here. Unequal justice is tantamount to no justice at all. The destabilising impact of such inequity matters not only for Gaza and Ukraine but resonates in conflict zones globally, from Ethiopia and Sudan to Myanmar and Congo. If the ICJ's judgment manages to compel Western governments toward a more balanced approach, it would undoubtedly be a valuable outcome. Turning a blind eye to these issues could lead to detrimental consequences not only for the Palestinians but for the global pursuit of justice.

[seraphdreams]

for real it's like how are you going to alienate me from my own culture and country for stating a fact about racism?? 😭😭 be serious. i honestly need the us, israel and russia all to fall and crumble to dust. uk as well for their bombing of yemen. i'm so fucking sick of occupying colonizing scumbags.

you know what? let’s add canada to the mix, they’re genocidal occupying pieces of shit too. have the nerve to say they don’t “recognize israel’s doing as a genocide” like of course you don’t, you have schools built on the graves of indigenous people. i can’t stand the west, i swear.