As various contributors point out in this issue of Montreal Serai, we are obviously now living in an era of immense technical change, most of it centered on digitalization, computers, and nano-technology. At the same time, a large number of the world’s population are cruelly exploited and manipulated, while the 1% enjoy a completely unjustified share of global wealth and power. Worse still, the convergence of “real socialism” with modern capitalism has meant that totalitarian forms of organization, be they in corporations or states, are now universal and can  even co-exist, albeit uneasily,  with the protest movements of civil society and the institutions of liberal democracies.

The men and women at the apex of modern capitalism look down at the world below them from a great height and a principal element of their control is the command of technology.

And the major ethical questions raised by the new technology have everything to do with the economic structure that it serves.

In a recent issue of the Financial Times newspaper, an anglo-american journalist who is a prominent, enthusiastic admirer of capitalism, Sebastian Mallaby, wrote a telling commentary: “Inequality may lead to rage against the machines” (Friday March 9, 2012). Mallaby described the Citigroup’s super-computer “Watson” that earns $1 billion annually for its banker owners, advises healthcare companies, and even won the top prize on the TV quiz show Jeopardy. This is a world of transistors so tiny that 3,000 of them can fit in the width of a human hair, observes Mallaby admiringly, and “As a result, companies can store and analyse information on every aspect of the world around them.” The commentary ended with an assurance that all will be well in the end, but Mallaby meanwhile offered a striking description of the present situation:

“We are in the midst of a technological upheaval; and financial rewards are flowing to the elites who create and control the new machines. Almost everybody else is threatened…”

This threat for the many– inequality, unemployment, immiseration – poses the largest ethical question raised by our machines. Is the new technology good or bad? Does it contribute to our enslavement, or could it further human freedom? And by freedom I mean the capacity to shape our fate and to guide our actions rationally toward a just and democratic society for ourselves and other people.

When Aristotle gave the lectures known as The Politics in ancient Athens, he made it clear, from the outset, that politics must be the pursuit of good for others, what we call “the good of society.” But unlike us, Aristotle believed in inherent inequality, and the 100,000 slaves in his city, out of a population of a little over 300,000, were considered the natural inferiors of their masters. They were the “mechanicals,” the machines of Athenian democracy.

2,000 years later, as Marx, Charles Dickens, and many other writers have pointed out, modern capitalism, for all its complexity, still resembles ancient economies because it depends upon the treatment of workers as machines, passive instruments to be allocated tasks either through a cleverly skewed market or by sheer state power.

Now that we are 7 billion, human beings are still the living and breathing “mechanicals,” the pyramid of labour upon which our inventions rest.

Technology is indeed congealed labour, as Marx said, nor can we forget where this kind of technical wealth comes from. We can look back and remember that in the United States, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the slaves in the country were equal in monetary worth “on the market” to all the capital equipment in the country at the time. Then we can fast forward to today’s India, the world’s “largest democracy.” The country has an advanced high-tech sector, and is increasing its aggregate wealth, while 50% of the children are malnourished. Or we can think of  China which will soon have a higher GDP than the United States. What of the Chinese labourers who produce so much?

The industrial revolution is ongoing and today’s machines are a “meta order,” an outgrowth of all the work, effort, and thinking of a vast number of human beings linked together. Because the underlying social relations are so multi-layered, the machines are indeed “clever,” and their complexity mirrors the social fabric that has produced them. They are, at the same time, the embodiments of the needs both of the workers who produce them, and, more significantly, of the capitalist/bureaucrats who dominate all the world’s societies at this time.

Our needs, purposes, and ethics are in our machines since they are nothing more than our activity. We need to recognize that action as our own and reclaim it for the common good. The argument I am making here is not new and it is straightforward.

The machines are us.

One of the most chilling newspaper pieces that I read in the last year was in The New York Times. The report began with a description of a special team in the American military seeking to kill individual opponents in Afghanistan. Tension, even revulsion, filled the first paragraphs as the reporter described what seemed to be sharpshooters killing a relatively large number of targeted individuals in one day.

Then a surprise came: the most stressful part of the day for the American specialists …was getting through the “traffic jam” when they left Langley, Virginia,  to go back to their homes in the suburbs. The killing had been done in an office using laptops to target and fire drones 10,000 miles away.

That “ethical distance” was at work throughout the carpet bombing during the Vietnam War. Those who execute action in such a context cease to think in a fuller sense and the technology literally removes them from what they actually do. The results are catastrophic because you frequently do not know what you have done or whom you have killed, although you believe the exact opposite.

Of course, the new technology can be also be used in non-destructive ways –to promote freedom and justice and to fight alienation. Activists now are able to communicate effectively and rapidly. E-mail correspondence has soared, producing an electronic version of the correspondence societies that led to political revolutions in the 18^th century. Nano-machines, particularly, may bring enormous benefits in medicine, the search for clean energy, and a multitude of other areas.

At the present time, though, we are trapped in a deeply unequal distribution of power, jobs, and wealth. We need to change that injustice if we want to make technology serve ends that are good and not evil. Without profound social change we will not see the possible good of the technical achievements of this age.

An issue on Canadian Literature has been on the cards for a long time. Here it is, and…… here is to bemused looks, neutral shrugs, crinkled foreheads, and other intense Canadian-isms.

Oh! Don’t get me wrong! We love grovelling in the multi-culti-interculti-stewpot-goulash-curry-prairie-east-coast-big-city-rez-dopey-sex-crazed-iconoclastic-we-are-different-ist mishmash that is CanLit,  which is now taught, researched, admired, funded, trashed, heavily quoted and equally heavily ignored all over the world, so to speak. But Canadians are writing away with ferocious sagacity (another deeply held Canadian bipolarity), unknown in recent times. Every time you turn a corner, there is a new author popping up from behind a lamppost. Ambush! There is a Canadian writer from Montreal, who is now unfolding an entire novel Tweet by Tweet! We are unstoppable!

In the past, Montreal Serai has published Shyam Selvadurai, Rawi Hage, Jaspreet Singh and several others before they scored (Canadians like to) and hit some major targets! But this time we have the full metal jacket, or more like both barrels locked and loaded, to use a not so peaceful analogy…

We have contributions from Linda Leith, the founding Director of the renowned Montreal Blue Met Literary festival; Cyril Dabydeen, much published novelist and frequent essayist from Ottawa; Canadian novelist and Montreal’s Rover Arts Magazine founder, Marianne Ackerman; Julian Samuel, Montreal writer, painter and filmmaker on a new exhibition in New York by ex-Montrealer and Guggenheim scholarship holder (and also a past contributor to Montreal Serai) Abouali Farmanfarmaian.  And to boot, there is an interview with Montreal filmmaker and writer Merrily Weisbord, whose book Love Queen of Malabar is doing very well in readers’ and writers’ forums and on bookstands; and a rising new Toronto poet who has chosen to write Ghazals in English, Sheniz Janmohamed. If that were not enough, we have our perennial reviewer Maya Khankhoje on Ondaatje’s new Book The Cat’s Table, Rosalind Hampton with a powerful interview of the artist Theodore Harris and several more essays, book and film reviews (by Ann Cimon and Prasun Lala) and Ilona Martonfi on the legendary Montreal Literary Space, The Yellow Door. And then there are short stories by Montreal composer Antoine Bustros and as well as others. In short, this is a power-packed, bullet-proof edition for the year ending 2011. Enjoy or be Canadian!

Definitions are falling apart and yet there is a constant need to understand and explain the phenomena without relying on a comfort zone that is steeped in personal affiliations and minor and concealed major doses of fear of the other.

In this issue of Montreal Serai, Patrick Barnard presents an extraordinarily passionate teacher’s perspective on teaching the other. Students today are in a better position to understand and not get easily “affiliated.” Mirella Bontempo covers the entire spectrum of migration, political culture, European adversity to the other in her essay on Multicultural Panic. Mathew Soule questions the evolving soul of Canada.  Prasun Lala and Rola Harmouche do a dynamic exchange covering Algonquin rapper Samian and Basra born Montreal rapper Narcycist and British born Palestinian rapper Shadia Mansour.

We have an extensive interview of Guy Rodgers, Montreal activist for English cultural rights, by playwright and performer Anna Fuerstenberg. And there are essays, short stories, poetry and some live poetry by new suspects and as well by some of the usuals.

We have a rather spectacular issue in place this time with contributions from Sam Boskey, former Councilor from the borough of N-D-G, who played a leading progressive role in city politics during the MCM days; from Dimitri Roussopoulos, leading Montreal grass roots democracy activist, environmentalist and founder of Black Rose Books​ who has just returned from the World Social Forum; from Patrick Barnard, long time Montreal environmental activist, who has fought ardently for green space in this city and Serai editor as well; from Patrick Bolland, long time social activist, who has campaigned against the use of tasers by the city police and is a researcher with the “ coalition pour la retraite du Taser”; from Shubhobroto Ghosh, freelancer in New Delhi, comes an article on Summary Justice and from Sujata Dey,  who has been active in city politics and is a well-known figure in the “multicultural’ borough of Cotes-des Neiges, on community organizing; from Sylvia Goldfarb, poet and freelancer on Prison Politics in Canada today, and then there is an extraordinary collection of photo montages by Mathew Soule, a time-lapse display of a few North American cities by Quebec City photographer Dominic Boudreault including an accompanying interview; essays on the city and a book review by Maya Khankhoje, poems by Montreal poet and writer Louise Carson and others. Enjoy this city’s rich history, spectacular vistas, dynamic political and cultural past, her ugly scars, as well as her vibrant aspirations!

Wikileaks is exemplary when it exposes imperialism and its secretive and militarist execution of global domination. Wikileaks is good when it exposes the real language and racist mindset of Western diplomats. Wikileaks is good when it exposes videos that depict the lawlessness of the US and other MILITARY FORCES in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wikileaks is good when it exposes the fact that the Indian state has used torture routinely in Kashmir and elsewhere. Wikileaks is excellent when it clearly reveals that the Saudis are never to be trusted by the Muslim world.

Wikileaks is also very good because it snatches away the control of mainstream media (and the resultant cultural consensus) and provides “other” information (although there is significant evidence that it also collaborates on what it will not release). Wikileaks also expands on the notion that the industrial working poor are not the only people by definition who are fertile for surplus value extraction. Knowledge workers are at the core of creating the code that allows the gears and cogs of the information industry to turn. Their surplus value extraction is increasingly critical for the military-informational complex. Drones, satellite based warfare, counter-hacking, cyber surveillance would not be happening if this farm of ants was not at work so industriously. Thus their rebellion against the complex is a good thing. Otherwise why else would a Canadian Conservative Minister call for the assassination of Assange on an open line TV show?

But those who say that Wikileaks and Facebook and Twitter, as social media and information technology, are going to bring about revolutionary transformation in “despotic” areas of the world, be it Tunisia, Egypt, Libya or Iran, are actually displaying an old “centre country” colonial attitude towards the “periphery”. It is the old notion of “modernity”, liberating the backward and the medieval. It is an archaic notion that Western democracy and information exchange would be a godsend for a pre-capitalist or neo-liberal society.  A battle tactic, a guerilla weapon, is made to sound like “enlightenment” theory for the underdeveloped. It is like worshipping at the altar of the ultimate transcendental information guru–Baba Ram Twitter or Guru Wiki! Information is good, but worshipping media is not good.

As James Carville, Clinton’s campaign strategist in 1992 once said … It is the economy, stupid! It is the plight of people, poverty, hunger, lack of shelter, poor health, disease, lack of justice and personal freedoms that make people self-immolate and rebel. It is the failure of globalization and neo-liberalization that make people take to the streets with their I-phones, BBs and FB. Twitter does not do it. Twitter and Facebook and even SMS-ing are like lookout couriers for the street corners and rooftops in the real world of rebellion. They are battle hardware, perhaps. The whistle and bird calls in the jungles that guerillas use. To suggest that Wikileaks is the harbinger of a social movement, the unifying core of a world movement opposed to the politics of globalization etc is perhaps in that colonial or post-colonial mode, where khaki clad monkeys from the West tried to tell real monkeys in forests how to whistle and talk English.

A critical thing to observe, however, is that contrary to the fears and anxiety of the Western press, this entire revolt in the Arab world has been an extremely tolerant, secular movement, not at all in the clutches of any extremist religious group. This must worry the West. Because the leverage of using “fundamentalists and fanatics” to stage an invasion by NATO is not really possible. At the same time, it is interesting to note that in cities like Benghazi, where Libya’s oil base is primarily located, flags of the old monarchy which Gadafi overthrew –the Idris dynasty–have appeared prominently. When the mainstream press asks for democracy and peace and bleeds for the people, one must worry.

In this issue of Serai, we have concentrated on the advent of social media, information technology, the imagery for social context and advertising and the relevance of information in bringing about social and cultural change. Contributors who are familiar with code writing, ciphering and deciphering and also those who have engaged for long in thinking about their roles as information workers have put their thoughts together. Bottom line is that you cannot tweet a revolution to completion!

******

A link to a brilliant set of photographs from Reuters, from the Egyptian Revolt :  http://totallycoolpix.com/2011/01/the-egypt-protests/?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d4fe127a7097739,2

This issue of Montreal Serai analyses how a group of people, long settled in a particular region, has been controlled by another group of  people coming from elsewhere and how it is fighting back to heal ancient historical torts and restore the health of the land. An important point to remember is that most indigenous populations consider themselves stewards of the land and all the living creatures that reside on it, hence the universal appeal of their struggle. Tomás Ramírez, a Chichimeca from Mexico, describes the struggles of women in San Cristóbal de las Casas, which has had an autonomous government on and off for years. Carmen Cordero, a Spanish woman, tries to get into the skin of  the corn people, especially the Mayan women in Guatemala. Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, a native of Alaska, deplores the killing of whales in her homeland. Shanti Johnson, a multicultural Mexican with Mayan roots, meditates on the deeper meaning of  indigenous. Other authors offer us their poems  in solidarity with indigenous people, and much more.

Most importantly, however,  the First Nations of Canada let us know, in no uncertain terms,  that they expect the Government of Canada to respect its commitment to the United Nations  Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People to which it finally adhered.

(An editorial essay on the Middle East) 

What is it that we do here in Montreal or anywhere else in the world, as artists, writers, filmmakers, poets, that somehow draws us into the politics in the Middle East? We are not all Jewish or Palestinian.  And yet, we are deeply emotional, angry, pained and affected.  Can this intolerable tragedy continue to affect the world indefinitely? Does the US  understand that the root cause for un-peace in the world is centered on the Palestine-Israel issue?  There are over 1000 US bases all over the world, with key installations in the Middle East in Qatar, Bahrain and certain other locations as well, that are poised to support not only US geo-political interests but also aid and assist any adventure that emanates from Israel. This has been a major incendiary issue for people of that and other adjoining regions.   A major element of the US’ international reputation hinges around its unqualified support for Israel. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5564)

In these times, canards and half-truths, including some very refined revisionism and guilt tripping can no longer survive the scrutiny of an increasingly web-savvy generation. Blind repetitiousness, stale propaganda and statist perspectives can only have a certain lifeline. A growing number of Jewish people  do not accept a monolithic, bull-dozing lobbyist leadership, to say the least. Even mainstream Jewish opinion has gone alternative and then there are progressive Jews and Palestinians working together and finding not only common ground but reason to work together on common causes. But everyone knows that it is not enough.  Palestinians do not accept Mahmoud Abbas as their representative, nor do they have much faith in the Arab countries. The PLO is comprised of a range of political interests from representatives of the CIA and the American-Israeli lobby and centrists to irrational extremists. The Hamas has repeatedly stated that if there is a referendum of all Palestinian people, that accepts a two state solution, they will accept it. A large section of the Israeli population has repeatedly stated their total rejection of the current Likud confabulation and the murderous blockade of Gaza.  Nothing is black and white, red or green.

Some of the prejudices are also being exposed for what they are. Hateful stereotypes. At the same time while there is some desperation rising, it seems that there is also a clear political direction emerging, a hereditary connection between racism, colonial arrogance and the displacement of people and the growing consciousness to work together, to dialogue together and to remonstrate together.  In the past twenty four years, several poems, essays, theatre and film reviews have appeared in Montreal Serai about the Middle East. The submissions get larger and larger. We have now ventured into producing an entire issue on this sensitive subject as the theme. If for that we are condemned, it is then our time!

The One State/Two State Paradigm and the streets of Montreal

There is the one state/two state paradigm that has lead in effect to a no-state paralysis. There is a chronology that one can go back to, all the way to pre-Roman and Biblical times and end up nowhere or one can go back to 1947 and still end up nowhere. However, it is since 1967 that the equations have changed dramatically and ferociously. The Bantustan-ization of Palestinians into untenable barb- wired, check-pointed and walled enclaves and the rapacious settler mentality and bulldozing of homes lived-in by Palestinians for a hundred years or more has completed a circle of no trust and receding hope in the two communities and as well amongst others who are concerned. A one state solution is made to seem like  an unworkable fantasy, and a two state  compromise  is foisted on the Palestinians as an acceptable fate.  The hegemonic cultural propaganda  of the entire world pushes towards an unworkable bifurcation that is condemned to perpetuate violence endlessly between Jews and  Palestinians. As long as genuine peace is not envisaged, this conflict envelopes everyone.

These are some of what we have heard often from Montrealers.  From the banal and mundane to the profane and dangerous.

How does the Middle East affect us in Canada? Why do we get angry in Montreal when it is all happening there?

“Prove once and for all who the oppressor is and who the victim is and let’s get it over with. Can someone please make a ruling on this?”

“The UN has become useless. It takes resolution after resolution and then has no muscle to implement anything.”

 “Tell me some new stuff that will make a difference to my ears…stuff that is only discussed in the quiet of homes, in the quiet of tribal dining tables and in secluded communities. Say stuff that you feel and not what you can put in a sanitized article, because you will offend some groups. It is time to put things down in writing.”

 “Why do Palestinians have to pay the price for the killing of Jews in Europe by Christian Nazis, seventy years ago?”

“Why do Islamic preachers encourage suicide bombings and the killing of civilians as a way towards martyrdom? The argument that they have no other weapons, other than their young bodies is without any humanity.”

 “Hamas won the elections fair and square and Israel would not accept it. And yet we know that Hamas was set up as a counterfoil to Fatah with the open cynical help of Israel. So the West has gone along with the blockade of Gaza. Why?  Democracy before, not democracy after? Why are fruit juice, jam, chocolate, toffees, diapers etc banned from Gaza? And tooth paste? Will terrorists use tooth paste? This is a merciless embargo.”

“Obama is playing games. He is buying time. He can go fuck himself. We know he will betray the Jews eventually.”       

“It was not like this when Israel started out. Now you have an influx of Russian Jews. The Likudniks. They are just racist shits. ”

Keeping it Alive in Canada

We recently ran into an American site http://www.ifamericansknew.org/  — extraordinary compilation of hard facts on the ground. We are not aware of anything similar in Canada. This site says, “Israel receives about $7 million dollars per day from the United States, and there is evidence that the total cost to American taxpayers is closer to $15 million a day. Yet this information is almost never printed in American newspapers. Coverage of the Middle East in general and of Israel in particular, virtually never reports this enormous American connection with this region.”

In Canada too, we have built up this intrinsic connection, with our country assigned, by no less a magazine than the conservative Economist, as Israel’s best defender worldwide. Far exceeding even the United States. Are we citizens of Canada comfortable with this new tilt? The Economist further elaborates— ““It is hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days,” said Avigdor Lieberman, Mr Netanyahu’s ultranationalist foreign minister, on a trip to Ottawa last year. “No other country in the world has demonstrated such a full understanding of us.” Encouraged by a succession of former Liberal governments to think of their country as the honest broker of international politics, many Canadians are uncomfortable with their diplomats so clearly taking a side. Mr. Harper himself has never fully explained his partiality. His opponents say he is pandering to Jewish voters in Toronto and Montreal. His Conservative party has issued leaflets in some districts held by the Liberals accusing them of supporting Hamas and Hizbullah. But the main reason for his Israel policy is probably his own conservative beliefs. In this, at least, Mr. Harper looks like a conviction politician.””

The Economist concludes their May 27^th, 2010 piece by stating, “This year, a junior minister declared that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada”.”  What is somewhat incomprehensible is what is the basis of the growing affinity of Canadian foreign policy and Canadian aid to Israel?  After all it is our tax dollars that fund our artistic and creative efforts that is inevitably being diverted. Why else would Canada stop funding the core budget of the UN Relief and Works Agency, a body that assists 4.7m Palestinian refugees spread across the Middle East, a fund that the US continues to support? Why did the Canadian government intervene so blatantly in the functioning of Rights and Democracy, the Montreal based Human Rights organization that was once led by Ed Broadbent and Warren Allmand, stalwart Canadian parliamentarians? Why did the Canadian government cut the funds of Kairos, a Christian aid agency for Africa?

The fact is that Canada has tilted towards Israel more than ever before. And the reason is very simple. Evangelical Christians, a type of Protestantism to which PM Stephen Harper belongs, and who form 20% of Canada’s population do believe in the type of right wing ideology that Israel also espouses at the present time. Such philosophies go hand in hand with dismissing global warming, as the Bush regime did and walking away from Kyoto. It tallies well with backing out of support for abortion, when funding United Nations Women’s development programs. It makes sense when Canada also wants to spend billions on new prisons when crime rates have clearly gone down. It makes sense when Canada wants to buy billions of dollars worth of Fighter jets from Lockheed Martin in the name of arctic sovereignty. The swing in the mood of the government affects the mood on the street.

Tiredness and Anger

Every time we have had discussions with longstanding friends or colleagues in the Palestinian and Jewish communities, there has always been tiredness coupled with anger, hopelessness and on rare occasions open intolerance combined with righteousness. Facts are sorted out and upheld in partitioned and segmented clusters. Tribes do not talk to each other; consider the reasoning of the other.

Once in a while we hear open discriminatory epithets hurled, which combine conveniently with the current Islamophobic mentality in the western world and the “accommodation” debate in Quebec to evoke rancor towards people from the Muslim world. And in the quiet of our houses, we also repeat the hypertoxic words to release deeply felt disgust towards Semitic people.  In fact , that Arabs are also Semites essentially, is more or less ignored. The idea of a mosque near “Ground Zero” (What is ground Zero anyway? After all there are a hundred ground zeros around Baghdad’s greatest historical mosques) has   also unveiled the deeply felt prejudices of the non-Islamic community towards Muslims. Arabs and the Taliban stone adulterers to death, they say. Gruesome, medieval. Jews have two laws for a murder of the same magnitude in Israel. An Arab Israeli citizen arrested on a domestic manslaughter charge is tried in a military court by a military judge and can be remanded 3 times for a total of 90 days in police custody. A Jew in Israel, arrested for the exact same charge is always tried in a civilian court, by a civilian judge and can be remanded for 15 days maximum and can get a maximum 20 years  sentence. An Arab Israeli for the same charge would get life. This is written into law.

The divisions are deep, everyone says. But are they really? Who is keeping it alive and why?

If you wander through downtown Montreal you see several score Arab falafel, zatar joints. Jews in general rarely go to these shops. Middle Eastern Jews eat nearly the same food, the same hummus, the same mezze. We know that. Things are changing though. Many Jewish friends do. They do not care. Their parents probably did. Jews mobilize in other parts of our city. They stick up Israeli flags on lampposts in certain parts. Arabs avoid living in those areas. There are neighborhoods where only Arab candidates stand for elections and the reverse is true in Jewish neighborhoods. There are bulky advertising-filled, glossy, well sponsored, free-distribution tabloids that are propaganda mouth pieces for Israel and there are grimy indecipherable Arabic newsletters that defend the actions of obscure Islamic foundations. These are the facts of life in Montreal. There is a crop of Rabbis who openly call for the internment of all Palestinians in camps in the West Bank and Gaza or complete expulsion. There are mosques in parts of the city, where the Imams address their following like they are preaching in Riyadh.  On the other hand we also see neighborhoods where Arabs and Jews live close to each other. I see committees sprouting up where Arabs and Jews work together with other communities to defend peace in the Middle East. But Canada does not seem to like such developments lately.

Should this be all about equal time to both sides and then we arrive at no solutions worth remembering? Peace process? Direct talks? Oslo? Camp David? Beirut? Madrid? Road Map? How many have been tried?  Once again, the Palestinians and the Israelis have sat down for Peace Talks. Abbas has no support from his people and Netanyahu has no agenda that he has discussed with his nation or even his party. It is an American orchestration once again that will not bear any fruit. And it affects us here in Montreal. What is the point of the Peace Talks, when the solutions are demanded in advance? Israel says– no pre-conditions. The Palestinians say there must be an agenda. Is not the process of negotiations a dialectical process itself, where the outcome is a result of what one negotiates? Will Israel make a pre-emptive strike on Iran? Will that scuttle everything? There is also a grand plan at play that goes beyond Arabs and Jews.

Where does this Nation stand?

The questions that we also ask ourselves are the following “Is it anti-Semitic to suggest that Israel should be one bi-national state with equal rights for all its citizens?” In a letter written to The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition Combating Anti-Semitism (CPCCA), Diana McLaughlin, a Canadian peace activist asks, “Twenty percent of Israel’s population within Israel proper are not Jewish; they are Palestinian-Israelis. Many to the right on the Israeli political spectrum want Israel’s minorities to swear a loyalty oath to Israel as a Jewish state – not as a state for all its citizens. In the original wording of the Knesset-proposed bill, any Arab-Israeli who refused to uphold the exclusively Jewish character of Israel would be subject to imprisonment. ” Will Canada support such questioning?

What is crucial to understand is that the present government of Canada is itself testing the country’s charter of rights, its own constitution, by introducing mindsets, religion-bound affiliations, feeding notions to the media and quietly pursuing legal maneuvers that in truth sanctify certain conservative policies and in effect outlaws criticism of the government. McLaughlin says, “It thus becomes legal to harass intellectuals, academics, civic and religious leaders as well as peace activists – to silence them. State-sanctioned legal chill backed by the raw power of the state is a form of violence.”

The truth is unavoidable; the cover up and the spin is essential

Ironically, political leaders in Israel have been speaking far more openly about the one-state two-state debate than here in Canada.

From the McLaughlin letter again,

“Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud):

“I would rather [have] Palestinians as citizens of this country over dividing the land up;

Next – racist, but to the point:

“If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished” – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Another prime minister, now currently Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak:

“If, and as long as between the Jordan and the sea, there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic… If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state.”

In written testimony to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Tuesday, March 16, 2010, General David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command, shared this view:

“The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests,” he said in the written testimony. “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples in the [Middle East] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.”

Petraeus’ statement has now been quietly lost. No one is talking about it anymore. When a super war hawk nation like the United States has its moments of doubt, such self-reflections dribble out like uncontrolled ooze from a chancred wound. In some ways they are incendiary statements. They reveal the reality, rather than the constrained consensus that is peddled in the mainstream.

So, is it all about divisiveness being kept alive for other reasons?

Kayhan Irani, a theatre activist from New York, recently back from conducting workshops in Afghanistan writes in her blog  http://kayhanirani.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/another-example-of-theater-of-the-oppressed/    “What I like about the group is that the artists are embodying the change they are inspiring others to make.  They are former combatants who have put down their weapons and picked up theater!  When theater comes out of the artists real lives, it is the most powerful method of engagement.  They are not preaching unity and dialogue, they are living it. ” Perhaps! She is writing about former IDF soldiers and Palestinian militants who have joined hands to form a theatre group. It is a hope we all have. In the end will the Palestinians get a real homeland where they can live as their own first class citizens?

Montreal Serai chose to write on this issue because as an arts and culture magazine it affects us daily. In our art work, in our social criticism and in our daily lives. It is a pernicious affair where injustice is glossed over with falsehoods about democracy, terrorism and fanaticism, whereas murders, assassinations, displacements, massacres of children are lost in the shuffle of convoluted tribal argumentation. We are affected deeply by the Middle East, not only because Middle easterners and Jews live and die with us, but also because it is an issue of race, of international tensions, of fundamentalist assertions, of sowing the original seeds of terrorist activity and finally of cynical geo-political maneuvering.  The War on Terror should have begun in 1967.  

In this issue we have presented essays by well-known experts like Michael Neumann, Trent University Professor  who has written many articles and books on the issue, Samia Costandi , a Montrealer and well–known academic, who writes as a Christian Palestinian on her experiences,  Jooneed Khan, long time political affairs reporter of La Presse on his personal experiences reporting from the Middle East, a photographic essay by Montrealer Scott Weinstein on his visit to the West Bank recently, essays on Israel, Palestine  and the discourse in Canada by Ronit Milo from Montreal Dialogue,  and as well several other book reviews and critical art reviews by Najat Rahman, an extraordinary interview of filmmaker Kamal Aljafari  by Nasrin Himada and despatches from Lebanon and the Shatilla camp by Rola Harmouche.

Shalom and Salaam!

THE ISSUE:  This summer  Montreal Serai focuses on the environment through a variety of viewpoints. Jacqueline Fortson, who has moved to Canada from Mexico, gives us a contemporary photo-essay “Montreal – Nature and the City: What makes Montreal a liveable place?” The Quebec city socialist writer, Malcolm Reid, looks at the relation between the environment and social movements, describing the global biosphere as “the new proletariat.” Reid says nature is the oppressed voice which activists must learn to hear. The Montreal environmental leader, David Fletcher, in his striking  essay, “It’s about ecology, stupid!” draws a comprehensive, stark portrait of the current bio-diversity crisis. It is, he warns, a “global winking out of life,” a “waking nightmare” – unless we rouse ourselves. The transport critic of the Quebec’s Green Coalition, Avrom Shtern, writes about car-mad transport, and the urgent need for mass transit of a different kind, while Maria Worton looks through her center-city window and sees a world that is “Living in Traffic.” Rana Bose comments on the BP spill and Subir Das tells us about California politics. And there is much more writing, prose and poetry, in this issue, with more “pushes” to come later this summer.

Amid the varied views presented here though, there is a common theme: we need new vision to break what the poet William Blake called the “mind-forged manacles” of what was once his London and now our world. 

THE EDITORIAL: While Patrick Barnard has acted as general editor for this issue, the editorial board has decided to use four short comments from some of its members as an introduction.

Susan Dubrofsky

I grew up with Strontium-90, the threat of nuclear devastation, fall-out shelters and Coppertone. I was not allowed to suck the tasty marrow from chicken bones and for a few summers even milk was considered suspect. Fifty odd years later, we live with global warming, ozone depletion and traffic pollution, bees disappearing, increasing numbers of cancers, species extinction, deforestation, resource exhaustion, ad infinitum. When googling news about the latest oil spill, not only do I read about it being a massive disaster but how lawyers are making money on it, how politicians are waffling and scuffling and worse, that leaks and spills are more common than we realize. The Gulf of Mexico environmental catastrophe is the elephant in the living room as I recycle my plastics even though I know that only about seven percent is actually reused, as I buy organic food that still uses insecticides, as I bike in city traffic with high UV levels and carbon dioxide emissions, as I use deodorant without aluminum and as I eat genetically modified foods. My dilemma is that, bombarded by media information of videos depicting oil spills, of photos of ocean garbage patches and of daily predictions that climate change will cause massive disappearance of plant and animal species, I cannot comprehend how my recycling will help. But nuclear armageddon did not happen and the new generation is informed and active. And when I ask my friends, what do you think about our planet, one says, do you know that the water around Montreal is cleaner than it used to be twenty years ago, and another, what about the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement to protect our forests, and another, all those companies going carbon neutral, like the airlines, movie studios, the World Bank and you can too. And perhaps I can, in conjunction with the small and the big, contribute.

Maria Worton

Oil slick-sick, more of us than ever before must be asking, “How can we do this differently?”   We know we’re getting down to the wire.  Johann Hari, reporting in The Independent, asks how anyone will deal with accelerating climate change when, “The most powerful country on earth can’t stop a single leaking pipe.”   And what else can we do when the earth’s remaining oil is beneath the ocean floor, in the Arctic or in risky conflict zones.   Must we really go nuclear?  Sure, it’s non-fossil, more climate, plant, animal friendly.  Trouble is it’s killed a lot of people, and threatens everyone else.  

I was ready for good news when I recently happened upon this wonderful report, http://www.offshorevaluation.org/downloads/offshore_vaulation_full.pdf, an evaluation of how Britain can get 150% of its energy needs through off shore energy production using tidal and wind technologies and an international electricity grid system, creating 145,000 jobs in the bargain.  All of which would come at a fraction of the cost of committing to nuclear energy.  Every country on earth needs such a report that scientifically evaluates new energy technologies and their geographical application.

How does one get there?!  It seems that only public assembly, debate, demand, democracy by any other name, will deliver a movement with the critical mass to incline kleptocratic government to agree energy policy for the planet that does not sacrifice nature or its people. 

Patrick Barnard

I believe that human beings do indeed now face a dire threat to our own existence as a species because of our very own activity, and I think that we have probably reached the extinction threshold. Without radical change we will not survive. State socialism, as we have known it, has been a threat to the capitalist oligarchies that rule the world. However, “existing socialism” has failed dismally on the environment, in part because it is actually a form of state capitalism run by managerial redistributors who have the same misguided ideas about nature as their capitalist counterparts.

Out of necessity, human beings, I believe, will rise to the challenge of preserving life for ourselves and our fellow creatures. But the danger of eco-fascism, both of the statist and corporate form, is very great. Hence, the fight for nature and democracy must go hand in hand.

Maya Khankhoje

Children are taught that birds do not foul their own nest. The irony is that those very same adults who admonish their children to respect the environment are the first ones to foul it when the lure of  filthy lucre rears its ugly head. As a species we seem to have forgotten that money is indeed dirty, literally and figuratively, and that it won’t replace  what we have been so diligently destroying. The Cree Indians have a prophecy: “Only after the last tree has been cut down/ Only after the last fish has been caught/ Only after the last river has been poisoned/ Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.” This issue of Montreal Serai is a nudge towards this simple truth.

            It was exactly  a hundred years ago that Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day. The occasion was the Second International Conference of Working Women and the venue was Copenhagen.

            A lot has changed since then yet much remains the same. Women’s suffrage is almost universal, women are a significant part of the paid labour force and female astronauts, prime ministers and Nobel laureates are no longer unusual. Women have always excelled in the arts and letters, not surprisingly considering that the Greek muses were female, although they have sometimes been forced to hide behind male pseudonyms. Not anymore. Yet today 70% of women in the world live below the poverty line, about 90 million girls are still denied access to primary education and 2/3 of illiterate adults are women. The fall of the Berlin Wall led to a fall in hard-won maternity, health and education benefits for women in former Soviet Block countries.

            Modern day religious extremism has heightened legal and social restrictions on women and even in countries like Sri Lanka with a strong matrilineal tradition there has been a push towards genital mutilation by Islamic groups – a practice which is neither Islamic nor Sri Lankan. The United Nations Population Fund was denied $34 million in US Congressional allotments as part of a gag-rule against institutions that provide abortion.  In countries where women have earned the right to work outside the home, they continue to shoulder the main burden for child-care and house work.  

            So it is clear that there is still plenty of room for  change in society and that women will have to continue doing most of the changing as they have done in the past. When women empower themselves or are empowered by society, healthy change thrives. This simple fact was recognized by Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh who started granting micro credit to women in villages with astounding results. Likewise, when food distribution was placed in the hands of women in Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating January earthquake, food got to the needy instead of the pockets of speculators and hoarders.

            In conflict situations like Ireland and Israel/Palestine it has been women from both side of the divide who have spearheaded peace movements. In Argentina the Plaza de Mayo mothers were able to uncover the veil of deceit surrounding the desaparecidos in their country. The list of examples of women as agents of change is endless.

            This issue, devoted to women changing the world, is but a mere sampling of the historical achievements of women. Yet it has turned out to be the biggest fattest issue in www.montrealserai’s  history, which proves that the women’s movement is neither  anorexic nor dying, as some feared.   We welcome further contributions from our readers, women and men, not only to this issue’s theme (which we will continue to publish for the next three months) but most importantly, to a world issue that affects the future of our species.

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Since there has been a very enthusiastic response to this theme,
another 5 articles on the same theme will be uploaded on April 30 and May 30, 2010.

George Orwell had a sixth rule for writing: Break any of these above rules sooner than say anything barbarous. George Orwell was perhaps not talking about political barbarisms alone, but the barbarity of inappropriateness in general. His sixth rule pretty much gives the licence to write or say anything, short of being barbarous. But because barbarity is itself a relational call, where does it leave us?  George Orwell’s sixth rule intrigues me.

Or, is there a universal understanding taken by all of us on what constitutes barbarism? I do not think so.  Let me therefore deviate partially here, before I disclose the other five rules. The other day on TV, I saw the launching of a new US troop carrier, named the New York. Its bow is made from steel melted from the WTC shell retrieved from “Ground Zero.” Now the Navy spokesperson, talking to the CNN reporter, very solemnly invoked the memory of those who had died on September 11th and proudly also stated that, “this ship can take our forces to go to war anywhere in the world.”   There is a barbarous choice of words here. It is the righteousness in the voice of the young Navy spokesperson, when she talks about the readiness to “to go to war” anywhere in the world, that is worrisome. Why do the big powers inculcate such marauding language in the mental makeup of their citizens? Should someone break the news to this person, that there is an element of barbarity she is engaging in?  Can language and literature be removed from the politics of the times? Can literature be independent of social development? Of course not!

Why is Literature Still a Must?

Without being disdainful about blog and twitter/facebook language (being a partially active practitioner myself) there is an emerging need to uphold the literary event, that is the written word. The book. The novel. The work of fiction. The well-written, well explained document that does not simply engage in a pop haze, a txt language miasma that passes off as literary expression. There is a place for that and there is need for pop culture experimentation, but literature needs to be preserved for distilling the truth, instead of promoting a haze in the name of experimentation.  In the social conditions we inhabit, or in Orwellian language-the times we live in, the word is blurred by sound, fury, effects and Mbps transmissivity. If you don’t trap it in a blitzkrieg millisecond, it has gone past you and delivered to those who live in bytes and pixels. Their needs are fundamental and cannot be suppressed. The flamboyance of the web and the 140 space compact with Twitter is actually a curious deal with the devil. It forces the truth to be stated in a precise and economic manner, for those who wish to convey anything seriously. And for those who don’t wish to do so, the obscure 140 space ramble is possible. It is self serving. Unless one can use this same medium and invent a way of telling the truth. I know of someone who is writing a whole novel on Twitter. Space by space in 140 space releases!  Literature is however, for the time being, only conceivable as the permanently printed hardcopy version! And there is a dire need to preserve that medium.

Now obviously there are five other rules, which we are all interested in and which if stated first would make the life of an aspiring writer considerably self-conscious, restrictive and possibly miserable. I could have blithely started out on this essay by saying, “When I first dived into writing this editorial essay…etc etc etc  ” and I would have ended up on a well travelled path.  Incidentally, one of Orwell’s first rules is: “Never use a metaphor, simile or figure of speech, which you have seen before in print.” There are several other rules about not using long words, when short words exist, cutting out superfluous words, using foreign words unnecessarily, not using the passive when you can use the active —- violations which we have carried out and which I am doing right now, instead of stating simply that “We violate the rules, often.” But most of all we often write stuff, that we have seen somewhere else.

This essay and editorial is not so much about the rules of writing as much as it is about the need for Literature to be preserved and allowed to flourish, as a significant means of mass communication and artistic endeavour in changing times.  Literature is all about telling a truthful story.

What is of the essence in Orwell’s writing, and more so in Homage to Catalonia, than in 1984, is to state the distilled truth, the absolute truth, the feeling that is at the heart with as few words as possible. Are we always able to achieve what we really intended to say? Can we say in a single word, or a phrase, or a sentence what lies at the core of our mind? With half a million words available in the “official” English language to play with and the new words that we can create and introduce,( because the language does not belong to any ethnocracy), can we come across with the clarity of a freshly poured glass of water in a super clean tumbler? Is there a morning that we can describe that best reflects the news that we read in the newspaper? Is it a coffee morning? Is it an alcohol morning? Is it a flower morning? Is it a blood drenched morning? Is there an inherent deficiency in language that disallows true expression or do we garnish the truth with unnecessary eloquence?

Writers, novelists, authors cannot live by rules. The rules are there to assist. In fact writers must settle down to earth early in the morning, after flying around late at night in a daze of expressions and words. The task of the editor then sets in.  Seeking the truth and expressing it, is the cardinal need. It is the essence. But, style, eloquence and a certain cadence intercedes as technique. In fact, writers do engage in deception. Juxtaposing words in an unexpected manner to wake the reader up and cause some interaction and interest. Thus careful and accurate choice of words is followed by an attractive style. Such is the essence of Literature.

In this issue of Montreal Serai, we have combined several poems, short stories, book reviews,  filmmaker interviews and essays that uphold the idea of telling the unambiguous truth.  Included are award winning writers like Rawi Hage and Jaspreet Singh, as well as our own prolific and much published Maya Khankhoje and frequent contributors Nilanjana Iyer, Lesley Pasquin, Anna Fuerstenberg and others.