Currents

Here is an excerpt from Lyle Neff’s (aka Earnest Canuck’s) recent article about a Mobilization Against War and Occupation-organized hip-hop concert. A version of this article appeared in the Fall ‘07 issue of VR.

“Drury and MAWO aren’t really for peace,” K. said worriedly. “They’re for the other side. They are fans of the jihad. And mainstream publications like 24 Hours aren’t investigating such groups – they’re funding ‘em.”

Yes, they are. Brooding on this, I recalled the hip-hop consciousness of the Mississauga MC Zakaria Amara. Speaking his grassroots truth, comparing Muslims to Canadians, Amara spat out such rhymez as this:

Our sisters are purer
Than your Jennys and your Heathers
The only good thing about you
Is your Tim Horton’s muffin fritters

– just before he and the other Toronto bomb plotters took delivery of the alleged ammonium nitrate. Allegedly. Now, the MAWO cadres may genuinely believe MC Zak to be an unjustly imprisoned casualty of the neo-colonial Islamophobic imperialist apparatus. They have a Charter right to such a belief, the same way we countrymen of Zakaria Da Bomb uphold his freedom to express his frothing, murderous contempt for us.

Did the musicians and performers at MAWO’s circus realize the radical organizers were employing them in defense of blank-eyed little bigots like Amara, though? I suspect most didn’t. That’s why the “enlightened,” political division of hip-hop is almost as dull as the gangster division. Sorry, Kia; it doesn’t matter whether you’re “conscious” or not, if in point of fact you’re oblivious.

Who likes war? Not me. Neither does anyone I know. Yet the latest outing by the Stopwar.ca people outside the Vancouver Art Gallery just showcased the problem with the peace movement today: hijacking by loopy people.

Millions of Canadians would protest for peace if it didn’t mean standing next to dinks holding giant banners stating that 9/11 was an inside job.

How would it have felt for featured speaker Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya (suspended from the Afghan parliament for rightly calling out her fellow politicians for being war criminals and drug lords) to realize that she’d fallen in with a bunch of wingnuts? It must have been a hard thing for someone with such apparent integrity to make that sacrifice in order to keep bringing attention to her troubled homeland.

Joya has a lot of valid criticisms of NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan. Sadly, all of it was pretty much ignored as the crowd droned internally with their “Out Now” mantra - a position which Joya doesn’t actually seem to share, if one listens carefully enough.

“Out Now” and “Leave as soon as possible” are not the same thing.

“We were wrong,” says dumbstruck Mobilization Against War and Occupation Vancouver representative Kira Koshelanyk. “Most Afghans actually think their country is headed in the right direction, and just 15 per cent of them want foreign troops out of their country right now. The rest think NATO should stay, at least until the country is secure. Who knew?”

Well, the statistics from the CBC and the Munk Centre are true, even if the quote and attribution shown above are entirely false. Koshelanyk and her colleagues at MAWO said no such thing.

Of course MAWO has no intention of issuing a press release showing that more than 70 per cent of Afghans think their president is doing a good job in running the country (Try to remember the last time a Canadian leader got such high marks). Considering the guy is leading the largely corrupt administration of a country that is facing an existential threat from opium-financed jihadist thugs, that’s a lot of admiration for a so-called puppet regime.

Will Afghanistan ever become the kind of country where Canadians can travel anywhere safely outside of a NATO convoy? The history of the country certainly doesn’t lend itself to optimistic predictions. But progress has been made; A real estate building boom in Kabul speaks volumes about the Afghan population’s morale.

Thanks to 24 Hours Vancouver reporter Ian King for the heads up on the poll. Nice post, Ian.

Of course, not everyone is on the same page. Mobilization Against War and Occupation, based out of Vancouver, still spews the stale lies about the Taliban being a popular resistance movement valiantly fighting vampiric foreign devils in NATO uniforms. Osama bin Ladin’s old allies in the war on civilization may triumph in the end, but will they remember to thank MAWO on V-Day?

Ah, well. I’m sure CUPE is happy to have their support in their revolutionary struggle against the ruthless oppression of Vancouver City Hall.