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Olympics
Strike back
The Work Less Party proposes a strike against war and games
By Chris Shaw and Conrad Schmidt
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“Any strike, whether it happens in a factory, a nation, or a marriage, amounts to a reaffirmation of consent. The strikers remind their overlords—and, equally important, themselves—that the seemingly perpetual machinery of daily life has an off switch as well as an on.”
—Garret Keizer
Canada’s war in Afghanistan is now almost in its sixth year, already longer than World War II, a war that the Chief of Defense Staff cheerfully tells us will take generations to conclude.
Generations? Yes, generations.
The number of Canadian soldiers killed tops 73. The number of wounded is in the hundreds. Both numbers are certain to grow. The Canadian army is proud that it has killed thousands of “insurgents,” less proud, one hopes, of those Afghan civilians who may also have died or been wounded.
Contrary to the happy-face spin put out by the Canadian government, the insurgency in Afghanistan is growing, not shrinking, according to the Senlis Council, an international policy think tank. Whoever makes up the insurgency—and it is not at all clear even to the military who the parties are—they are learning rapidly and changing tactics in the face of superior Canadian and NATO firepower.
The bottom line is this: The insurgents live there and can afford to fight a generations-long war; if they can’t beat the Canadians in Kandahar, they’ll try elsewhere in the country. In Kandahar province, the Canadian army occupies a village and the insurgents leave; the army departs, and the insurgents come back. In the areas notionally under Canadian control, this pattern has repeated itself since 2006. In all regards, Canada’s “new” government has locked the county into fighting a classical “4th generational war” on the dubious moral premise that our “obligation” is to give Afghans a country with institutions just like those in Canada.
The outcome is utterly predictable: One day in the foreseeable future, for all the blood of our soldiers and the tears of their families, for all the good intensions we profess, we are just going to go home. Just as for the British and the Russians before us, both with their own “moral” reasons for being in Afghanistan, when we leave, the Afghans will be left to sort out the mess for themselves. Meanwhile, back at home, we have circuses to distract us, indeed the mother of all circuses, the Olympic Games.
The Olympic enterprise is another spin-doctor’s wonder, the illusion of sports-for-peace cobbled together by the same corporate media who tell us we’re fighting for Afghans to be free. Every now and then the veil slips and we can see the interconnection between war abroad and circuses at home. For example, the company supplying crucial support services to the Canadian Forces in Kandahar is none other than our own beloved SNC-Lavalin, the efficient folks who’ve torn up Cambie Street for the Olympic’s RAV project. SNC also makes munitions for the US Army in Iraq. Small world: The US company that destroyed Eagleridge Bluffs for the Olympics (Kiewit and Sons) also builds US army bases.
As Garrett Kieser noted in a recent article in Harper’s, it’s remarkably easy to become dispirited, to feel helpless when there seems to be no real choices on the table, no courses of resistance that don’t seem destined to fail. Sure, we can try to vote in different political parties to stop the war or halt the Olympics, but the efficacy of this strategy for many was dealt a theoretical death blow by the unwitting admission of MP David Emerson that the mainstream parties are all pretty much alike. As unlikely as it seems, Emerson, the neophyte politician, had actually told the truth: In Canada today, it doesn’t really matter which of the mainstream parties is in power. We can march through the streets with our placards, but at the end of the day we know, just as our rulers know, that such demonstrations are ineffective and are tolerated for precisely that reason. Protests against the invasion of Iraq stopped nothing; demonstrations against the Olympics are OK now while the world is occupied elsewhere, but won’t be allowed at all once the television cameras are aimed this way. Canadians are outraged that the RCMP killed an innocent man at Vancouver International Airport? Yawn, so what. It’s still pretty much business as usual in Victoria and Ottawa
What would work? What would at least give us some shred of a sense that we, the citizens of this country, have had enough and want the politicians do our bidding for real? What could we do to restore some glimmer of hope and dignity to a citizenry that appears to have lost both? Well, we could strike . . . and on the day of the strike we could buy nothing.
Much of the Western economy is built on endless—and in many cases mindless—consumption. Those who doubt this have only to revisit George Bush’s urgent advice to Americans in the days following 9/11to shop and consume. The North American economy, predicated on consumption, would collapse without it. This simple fact gives us a modicum of leverage with the powers that be: We have it within our power to punish the system by withdrawing our work and our dollars. If the best the government can offer us is wars and circuses and the extrajudicial killing of hapless tourists, then there is a price to pay: We will have a one day strike and not go to work, not buy anything. The number of people participating at first may be small, the impact miniscule, but it would merely be a beginning. And, there is this: To do the right thing often begins with a small, seemingly inconsequential step.
So here is the Work Less Party’s proposal: Since Canada first sent troops to Afghanistan in the winter of 2002 and the combat mission in Kandahar began in February 2006, we pick Monday, February 4th, 2008, as the date for a general strike against the war. Stay home on that day with your family; or better yet, meet with your fellow strikers to organize other actions. Tell your employer why you’re doing this. Tell the merchants why as well. It’s a guarantee that if enough people eventually join the strike, business will be screaming bloody murder and will let the government know.
Will a one day strike in February stop the war or the Games? No, but we will repeat it a month later, and the month after that until perhaps one day it begins to hurt. If a day comes when the simple act of resistance by withdrawing consent begins to get the attention of those in power, we will have taken back something fundamental, something we should never have allowed to slip from our grasp in the first place: power.
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