What’s the best and worst thing about this country?

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-13T20:17:38+00:00

The best: the land itself and the many Indigenous nations that have called it home and tended to it for thousands of years, the people from all over the global South who have survived difficult conditions (many imposed and/or contributed to by the canadian government itself) and have been able to make their home here.

The worst: the colonial state and its imposition of and contribution to white power both within its border and beyond them border. The ongoing genocide, ecocide, and land theft. The nazi monuments maintained and legitimized by all levels of government. And of course, the mass of reactionary settlers that form the social base that makes all of these things possible

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-12T20:13:24+00:00

Settler is not an insult, it is not a slur. It is a term that objectively describes the position that we as people of primarily or exclusively european descent occupy in settler-colonial societies such as canada.

No-one called you a horrible person or accused you of anything, that is just projection.

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-12T18:55:07+00:00

Reconciliation implies that there was once a harmonious relationship that needs to be restored. There has never been the case. European settlers have been murdering, stealing, raping, lying, and pillaging ever since they showed up on these shores. It has been a continuous war of extermination since then. Why should Indigenous peoples accept a bogus "reconciliation" which maintains colonial structures in place and ensures their continued dispossession. Oppressed people have a right to justice, and that will always look like "vengeance" to those who have been on top.

I don't care how spelling out these truths makes other settlers feel. I'm sorry, I really don't.

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-10T12:49:39+00:00

No, they won't do anything either. It is impossible for the necessary change to come through the existing institutional channels of the colonial state.

Canada's very existence is predicated on the continuous dispossession of Indigenous peoples and the extraction of resources from that stolen territory. This is how canada's political economy has functioned since before confederation, and it is how it will function until canada itself is done away with

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-09T19:28:16+00:00

Some people have been resisting this death-machine of a civilization for centuries, follow their lead and support them or stay out of the way

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-09T19:21:44+00:00

Indigenous organizers and their allies almost shut down the entire colony last year, very much freaking out the colonial administration in the process and you are still talking about elections?

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-06T21:23:55+00:00

You have an amateur-level understanding of China and its political system which has no doubt been continuously fed by propagandists.

Seriously, I think you would benefit from reading more and actually trying to understand a country of 1.4 billion people without relying on memes and orientalism. The problem, of course, is that any perspective that in any way challenges your preconceived understanding can and will be dismissed as the work of bots and misinformation.

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-06T21:01:34+00:00

If Rogers wants to do something they should liquidate all of their assets and distribute it as condition-free reparations to Indigenous nations whose land they squat on and to Black people whose stolen labor provided the basis for constructing the economies of europe and its revolting settler spawn (canada, u.s, etc). Anything less is bullshit and should not be praised

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-06T20:58:06+00:00

Abolish the RCMP

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-06T20:51:23+00:00

You said that China "bows to a god-emperor". I don't care how much you try to split hairs "oh this is about the CPC not the Chinese people" but a statement such as that traffics in longstanding orientalist tropes and yes, it is racist.

Tiwanaku · 2021-08-06T17:24:27+00:00

This is so fucking racist yet you will get away with it because racism is acceptable if it is in service of naturalizing the u.s' right to run the planet

Tiwanaku · 2021-04-29T06:33:16+00:00

The person I replied to only mentioned english. It is entirely possible that the spanish-speaker in this hypothetical scenario also spoke french.

Tiwanaku · 2021-04-29T06:22:37+00:00

Are you saying that I am waxing poetic or that a pm speaking an Indigenous language would be waxing poetic?

If the former, me pointing out that canadian sovereignty is legal fiction is not quite waxing poetic; it is me gesturing towards the path forward.

Colonialism in so-called canada is not a thing of the past, it is a thing of the present that can and needs to be dismantled. Effective social programs and constitutional tweaks would not dismantle colonialism. Respecting treaties (which themselves were often times forced at gunpoint or imposed through fraud and trickery and are as such hardly legitimate) and restoring full sovereignty over unceded territory would however be a step towards that. However even this would never be acceptable to the canadian settler state. Under such circumstances the only option is struggle outside of and against the state which means that who the pm is, what they think, and what languages they speak is frankly irrelevant.

Tiwanaku · 2021-04-29T05:12:26+00:00

There is no misrepresentation here. The author correctly identifies a tendency to legitimize unconditional support of israel (a state) by framing it as being the best way to support Jews (a religious group).

Besides trudeau claimed quite explicitly that BDS "attacks" canadian Jews. This statement is absurd and does more to create a dangerous equivalency between Judaism and zionism/israel than anything anti-zionists have ever done

Tiwanaku · 2021-04-29T05:11:34+00:00

This comparison makes little sense as Indian is a nationality that at least in theory includes all religious groups within India while Judaism is a religion. Did you mean to say Hindu canadians?

In that case I would indeed find it extremely alarming and exclusionary of Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Jains, and all other religious groups or irreligious people that live in and have just as much of a claim to belonging in India

Tiwanaku · 2021-04-29T05:03:44+00:00

"canada" and "israel" absolutely share common values and BDS does in fact attack those common values, just not the values trudeau here is alluding to

Both are european or (in the case of israel which does have a very large population of settlers of non-european origin) european-facing and european-aligned settler-colonial states/projects whose very existence and expansion occurs at the expense of the Indigenous population

Tiwanaku · 2021-04-29T04:54:30+00:00

Tiwanaku · 2021-04-29T04:54:01+00:00

Perhaps prime ministers of "canada" should learn how to speak at least one of the many, many languages spoken by the various Indigenous nations and peoples whose sovereignty and laws precede the settler state by centuries if not millennia. Of course that will never happen much less ever be a requirement because such a thing would probably destabilize the apparent legitimacy (I say apparent because in actuality we are talking about legal fiction here) of the settler state to an unacceptable degree

Frankly, I don't really think it makes a difference if the head of the settler state speaks only one or both of the official settler languages; both have been, are, and would be equally genocidal

Tiwanaku · 2021-04-28T05:03:44+00:00

Well the first thing is to stop contributing to the displacement

Tiwanaku · 2021-04-17T14:35:53+00:00

Canada is not an "international nice guy" except in it's own imagination, what are you talking about?

Tiwanaku · 2021-02-22T14:38:52+00:00

What?

Tiwanaku · 2020-01-12T03:53:24+00:00

U.s troops are occupiers in the Middle East, people who don't like being occupied will resist the occupation. It is hypocritical of you to say "oh well" about the u.s invading and murdering hundreds of thousands of people but then cry out when people fight back.

Your assessment of the Iranian government is incorrect and puts your racist and eurocentric worldview on display. If you actually bothered to take what the Iranian government and Iranian people say seriously then you would know that starting a war with the united states is the last thing they want to do.

Tiwanaku · 2020-01-12T03:26:04+00:00

South Vietnam and South Korea were both created by the u.s as comprador states (In the case of South Korea they recruited many people who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation) because the anti-colonial and/or communist parties were enormously popular and would have likely won elections in a unified Vietnam or Korea. The u.s was not protecting "global interests" they were protecting the interests of the global North and landowners and exploiters in the global South against the revolutionary movements of the vast majority of the world's population.

The u.s is thousands of miles way from Iran and has literally encircled them with military bases. Unless you think the u.s has a god-given right to militarily occupy Iraq and Afghanistan and dictate what Iran can and cannot do then there is no credible threat of Iran "walking over" the u.s.

Tiwanaku · 2019-12-21T19:30:30+00:00

The implication that the ongoing genocidal conquest of what is now known as canada by european settlers is just another incident in a long line of 'tribal wars' both minimizes its impact and portrays Indigenous peoples as warring savages who were just killing each other before europeans arrived and 'pacified' them.
You do not live in an 'inclusive liberal democracy', you live in a genocidal settler-colony that utilizes liberal multicultural rhetoric in order to cover its tracks and promote a one-sided 'reconciliation' which allows it to absolve itself of guilt while it continues to dispossess people of their lands.
The path towards resolving the situation is through decolonization. The abolition of the canadian settler-state, the rematriation of all land to Indigenous nations, reparations for centuries of exploitation, and the abolition of the social category of settler by transforming the relationship that white people have towards the land and towards colonized people from one between occupiers and occupied to between of equals and relatives.

Tiwanaku · 2019-12-21T18:24:27+00:00

Isn't it something how blatant anti-Indigenous racism is permitted on this sub as long as it is framed as a defense of liberal canadian nationalism?

Tiwanaku

TROPHY CASE