Adbusters #95 May/June 2011 19(3)

I just recently purchased the current issue of Adbusters magazine; it is titled "Post West", and subtitled "the philosophy issue".

I found a fantastically insightful (well, to me, at least) passage by Jacques Waardenberg, from "Reflections on the West" which is a chapter in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century:

Today the West stands for a disintegrating society in which egoism and human solitude prevail. It is the land of the loss of mind, where materialism reigns and where people are imprisoned by their desire for goods and money. It is the land of the loss of soul, where a secular way of life dominates, and people drift without deeper norms and higher values. It is the land of the loss of true feelings, where changing appetites are the norm, and people fall victim to desire and lust. It is the land of the loss of human dignity, with a value system based on economics, and where people aggressively exploit each other. Finally, it is the land of metaphysical alienation and loss of God, with man-made idols and people who have no relationship to Being, nature, history and each other. This barbarian West is seen as not only destructive to itself, with violence flaring in bitter economic, social and political conflicts, but also as a real danger for the rest of the world, and especially the Muslim part of it. (emphasis mine)

Another passage, uncredited (and so thus editorial?) is the following:

Instrumental rationality - the calculation of the most efficient options for achieving a given desire - has overwhelmed Western thinking over the past 300 years, generating a cold, empirical, calculating mindset.

The problem lies in the Western process of thinking - how we 'think about thinking'

There are several more excellent passages floating on a sea of disturbing images (e.g. Jessica Simpson peeling off a pair of camouflage shorts to reveal a 'Stars & Stripes' string bikini, with a wad of chewed bubble gum stuck over one eye) which suggest just how insane the Western world has become in the eyes of the rest of the cultures on this planet. I've just barely begun reading the articles, and already I'm both terrified at Western hubris and its inevitable fall, and encouraged by the small acts of resistance to Western hegemony that are reported in the pages of this excellent publication.

I feel vindicated for my (unpopular) interpretation of Western society's celebration of the killing of Osama bin Laden, for my desire for my culture to consider the reaction of other cultures, mostly Muslim peoples, but also other peoples (I'd love to see a sovereignist Indigenous perspective!) before creating YouTube videos such as the one included in my last post.

I love the editorial statement that acknowledges "we are embarking on an era of "contested modernity," one in which Western nations no longer impose their own values on the world at large." I just hope the West wakes up to this fact soon!

on the killing of an Islamist extremist

Why are people so happy about this?!

Or am I the crazy one because I do not believe an eye for an eye is the way to operate in the era of universal human rights? Did we learn nothing from the Holocaust? Are we really content to spread HATE and malice around the world?

I read a fascinating post online through a facebook friend. It was a speech from a fundraising event, spoken by Chris Hedges, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of al-Quaida for the New York Times. This writer stated he knows al-Quaida intimately, and he is terrified by this organization... even more so now that bin Laden has been killed. Hedges stated bin Laden had absolutely no operational role in al-Quaida, and killing him will not stop this organization.

Yet so many are jubilant. So many feel this is an end to al-Quaida.
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Also on facebook, I have seen the following posted over and over and over:

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thank goodness for compassion!

on the federal election

I am somewhat alarmed for the country with a Stephen Harper conservative majority. Although voting 4 times in 7 years is as frustrating as many journalists have recently suggested, I'd gladly do it every year if it meant avoiding a neo-liberal majority.

I have grave concerns for the environment, especially oil tankers off the BC coast, the AB tar sands, and most importantly, the health of wild BC salmon while farmed salmon remain in our oceans (I have lived very near to these net pens and I have seen the damage they cause first hand).

I am also lead to believe that women's rights and reproductive freedoms may be at risk?! Further, the same sources suggest gay marriage is similarly at risk?! Some sources say Harper won't legislate anything specifically regarding either issue, rather, he will appoint ultra-conservative judges who will attempt to affect these matters. Other concerns include dismantling the CBC, privatized health care or slashing public services to pay for corporate tax cuts.


I also have concerns for the demise of the Liberal and the Bloc Québécois, as suggested by these two articles. Although I am pleased for both the Green party on electing their first MP, and for the NDP on becoming the Official Opposition for the first time, I worry that neither now has any effective power (my sources were the elections coverage last night on CBC, CTV and CHEK).


However, this was the very first time in all my history of voting in both federal and provincial elections that the candidate for whom I voted was first-past-the-post. This will be the first time in my life that I am represented in my riding by a candidate with similar political and social values. So this is a small personal victory, I suppose... I'm just having a hard time celebrating.

on finishing my practicum

Thursday was the last day of my 420 hour final practicum. I have a paper and an exam remaining for my Disability Issues class, and then I can get a letter of completion of BSW requirements from the university, which means I can get a job.

A job!
It's been 3 years since I've worked, and 5 years since I started back to school after becoming a mom. I'm so happy to soon be receiving paycheques!! I can pay bills! I can buy groceries with cash instead of credit! I can work towards becoming financially solvent!

However, I had my interview with MCFD 3 weeks ago, and I have no idea when I will finally hear if I will be hired as an auxiliary. I hope it is in time to receive a paycheque before June's rent is due :S

Sad heart

This has been a hard semester for my family, not just because I am so busy with a 30 hour per week practicum on top of course work. We have had 3 deaths in the family in 3 months.

The first was my mother in law, at the end of January. She had no chronic conditions, so it was rather a shock. However, she was 68 years old, so it didn't seem outside the realm of possibility. Further, she had raised 10 children and had almost 20 grandchildren (including foster and step kids). She had lived a full life.

The second was my husband's foster father, with whom he had lived from the age of 11 until about 16 or 17 (when he moved in with his girlfriend and her family). He was not so old as my mother in law, being in his early 50's, however, he had been very sick as of late. He had been in hospital for an entire year, had had heart surgery, and had lost his lower leg and half his other foot to diabetes. He had been out of the hospital for awhile, and had died of a heart attack at the end of February.

The last was very tragic, and also very recent. My 23 year old cousin was shot by police at the end of March, and it is believed to have been suicide by police. He had tried to o/d in January. I hadn't seen him since my wedding a year and a half ago. My heart aches for his loss.

Further, less than a week before my cousin's death, I was volunteering at the crisis line, and I spent 2+ hours talking to a suicidal young man, who eventually ended the call to kill himself. I had nothing but a phone number from call display, but I felt the risk was immanent, so I called 911 with only that information.

I have been feeling overwhelmed by death and sadness, so I have taken this past week off of practicum. As well, my profs have both very kindly extended all my papers and assignments. I am grateful for their generosity, and that of all the MCFD staff who are supervising my practicum - two different social workers and their Team Leaders, as well as the practicum coordinator.

My sister (slash roommate) has also taken most of this week off, and my husband had already had it scheduled off as vacation time, so as to care for our two boys during spring break (daycare is expensive). It has been nice to be together as a family, and to just relax or to work on our new garden.

My cousin was 12 years younger than me, and his family had lived with my family for a couple of years when he was 3 and 4 years old. He was a very sweet boy who would cuddle with me any time. He loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My mom made him and his brother capes while they lived with us, and the boys loved running around with the capes billowing out behind them. For the last Halloween that they lived with us, they dressed as Super Mario and Superman.

Time has made this loss easier to bear, but the memorial service is still to come. Many people, family and friends, are flying in form across the country to be with my aunt and her husband as we morn for our loss. This will make it fresh again. I ask that your thoughts and prayers are with us in our time of grief.

The Children Left Behind: UNICEF report on children in the richest countries

I've been meaning to prepare a blog post for readers of GPS so as to answer some of the questions posed to me in the comments of these two posts. Like something explaining what "social control agent" means. Or describing exactly what a child welfare specialization entails. I'm getting there.

However, this is too important to not blog about right now! The link takes you to a page which is a press release for the report, and where you can download the pdf version.

The following is copied from that page:

"[The report] ranks, for the first time, 24 OECD countries in terms of equality in health, education and material well-being for their children. The report looks at a particular aspect of disparity – bottom-end inequality – and asks how far behind are rich nations allowing their most disadvantaged children to fall."

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives blogs about the report here, in a post titled "UNICEF shames Canada for inequality among children". (That's right, they SHAME Canada. If only UNICEF could impose harsher sanctions than shaming. CCPA concludes by wondering if our government has any shame at all.)

CCPA reports the study "looks at inequality by measuring the gap between those at the middle of the pack (the median position) with those at the bottom. The critical question, the report says, is just how far behind children should be permitted to fall?"

One final quote, (from UNICEF) and I will end my rant:

"The idea that inequality is justified as a reflection of differences in merit cannot reasonably be applied to children. Few would deny that children’s early circumstances are beyond their own control. Or that those early circumstances have a profound effect on those present lives and future prospects. Or that growing up in poverty incurs a substantially higher risk of lower standards of health, reduced cognitive development, of under achievement at school, of lower skills and aspirations and eventually of lower adult earnings, so helping to perpetuate disadvantages from one generation to the next.

None of this is the child’s fault."

feminism and women's role in North American society

I took a course on feminism in the political science department of UFV almost 2 years ago. At the time, I felt I had a firm grasp on the ins and outs of the term. We studied Liberal feminism, radical feminism, anti-racist and post-colonial feminisms, Marxist feminisms, Indigenous feminisms and male feminisms as "centers" of feminist and gender politics. We also studied the "category of woman" including questions of commonality, of difference, of identity and intersectionality. It was a pretty thorough study.

However, after the theoretical course ended, I began bumping up against "feminist" ideals in the real world.

Most notably, while attending the BC Association of Social Worker's (BCASW) annual conference, I listened to a speaker who operates a woman's shelter, Vancouver Rape Relief Society. The first year I heard her speak was during a plenary titled, "Where's the Harm", which discussed Canadian prostitution laws and the two Constitutional challenges to these laws. Her perspective here was that women were forced into prostitution because of social, cultural and financial marginalization; women didn't have a real choice. However, men who purchased these women's sexual services DID have a choice, and they were making the wrong choice. At the end of the talk, I felt very disempowered, because I felt that men were the "bad" guys, this was a war, and I'd better choose the "right" side to be on for the duration.

The second year was a plenary titled "A Master Class in Advocacy" and this same speaker decided it was a good idea to shame social workers for not doing enough to help marginalized people, especially her clients. She felt there was no point in negotiating with government, and that she was perfectly entitled to flout the law. Social workers were "the privileged" and had better start sending personal donations to women's organizations, because Stephen Harper has quietly cut most of their funding.


Other "real world" encounters with feminism include that whole "Sarah Palin is a feminist" debacle. Um, yeah, okay Sarah, if you say so... Another was at an ethics committee meeting for people, mostly social workers, employed in elder care. A woman who works for the Alzheimer's Society talked about a Muslim woman she saw in her community (in the Greater Vancouver area) who was wearing a veil. This woman felt the Muslim woman was oppressed by the veil, as if she couldn't possibly have chosen this garment on her own.

But really, my brand of feminism does say that if you call yourself a feminist, then you are a feminist - no policing the boundaries of the feminist politic. No one gets to be the expert, no one gets to say, "no, you're NOT a feminist!" My brand of feminism foregrounds individual experiences over theory. My brand of feminism is interested in being inclusive, in solidarity movements, in forming alliances. It's about action. It's sometimes called "third wave" feminism, but sometimes it rejects such labels, reminding us that there never has been a cohesive woman's movement! Even the second wave movement in the US in the 60's was about middle class women and their rights, not about the rights of Black women or Indigenous women or disabled women, etc...

Regardless, feminism seems to have a bad rap these days. Often, "third wavers" prefer to think of themselves as a part of a post-feminist world, and to think of feminism as "the F word". In some ways, I can understand this, such as when it's a reaction to the "war between the sexes". I don't want to fight against men; I have 2 sons, and they are the most important people on the planet to me. Then again, I'm mystified and horrified by gendered violence, by the patriarchal dynamics of power and control that play out in intimate partner violence. How do our sweet boy children become these 'batterers'? How are they led to believe that it's okay to control their wife or girlfriend through intimidation and fear? When I think of the violence committed against Muslim women by their governments in oppressive countries, I feel devastated and helpless. How can feminism ever hope to stand against such willful aggression?

It can't. We can't "divide and conquer" when it comes to such beliefs about intimate relationships. We have to work together, in partnership, without vilifying one another.

Still, it is important that feminism stay vital and relevant, because there is a great deal that needs to shift about women's roles in Western Society. Why is it okay that mothers are judged by much harsher standards than men?

I see this a lot in my studies to become a child protection social worker. We talk about "mother blaming" a lot. Especially in the rhetoric of violence against women - a woman who chooses to stay with an abusive partner is "unwilling" to keep her children safe, and may have them removed. Of course, intimate partner violence has a devastating impact on children, but mothers are not the only ones responsible for children's safety. The husband, the partner, the father, also has a significant role to play, especially if he is the perpetrator. Why is being a "bad mother" so much more stigmatic than being a "deadbeat dad"?