G7 Welcoming Committee Records. Uncooperative since 1997.

For those unawares, Mohawk activist Shawn Brant was arrested last Friday, April 25th on bogus charges, and is currently sitting in a maximum security prison, while thugs who were threatening Aboriginal community members with baseball bats walk free. In the past decade Shawn has become a leading voice for action amongst Canada’s indigenous communities — not to mention Canada’s poor, as evidenced by his tireless work with OCAP and has thus been targeted repeatedly by the RCMP.

OCAP has a site dedicated to chronicling the efforts to support Shawn’s case, recently updated with an open letter from his wife and fellow activist Sue Collis.

Less than a month ago, my husband was acquitted of charges he carried for more than 18 months. When issuing the ruling in this acquittal, the judge described the investigative practice and evidence employed and presented by the cops and the Crown as “problematic” and “troubling,” as they related to Shawn. During this same period, CBC Radio aired a documentary in which several Mohawk people recounted conversations with OPP Commissioner Fantino that occurred during the 2007 Aboriginal Day of Action, in which they say he threatened to “ruin” Shawn. During Shawn’s detention at the Napanee OPP detachment last week, several different police officers threatened to “slit his throat” and “cut off his head.”

Incidentally, Propagandhi’s “oldies” (haha) show in Winnipeg at the Albert — which occurred the very day of Shawn’s most recent arrest — managed to raise somewhere in the neighbourhood of $3000 for the defense fund. If you can, consider sending in your own pledge of support.

UPDATE: An interesting critique of Parenti’s article — and his oft-cited sources — can be found on Dissident Voice: A Lie Repeated: The Far Left’s Flawed History of Tibet

With all the news these days about protests in Tibet, China’s crackdown, and talk of Olympic boycotts, it’s worth remembering that — more often than not — the heroes and villains portrayed in the mainstream media are in reality villains and heroes. That is to say: we are presented an inverse view of reality. The world isn’t so black and white of course, but it should be a reminder to dig a little deeper.

In the case of China and Tibet — and the ubiquitous cry of solidarity with the cause of Tibet and the Dalai Lama — it’s worth digging into this article by Michael Parenti which was sent on to me by my friend Pierre. By no means a defense of China, it’s a rarely-heard and sobering analysis of the history the Tibet-China relationship.

To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. “To idealize them,” notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), “is to deny them their humanity.”

It’ll also be interesting to see how much international outcry there will be as we approach the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. (located in Salish territory, which was never ceded to the Government of Canada.) If only the First Nations of Canada had a charismatic leader with celebrity endorsements and CIA backing!

I love these new ads from PeTA for their ABC (animal birth control) campaign.

But interestingly, PeTA doesn’t get high marks in this area from author Nathan J. Winograd in his book Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America. I listened to an interview with him on Vegan Freak Radio not long ago and I was genuinely surprised by some of what he had to say. The programs he’s implemented sound truly awesome. Check ça.

I know it’s been some time since the last sprinkling of news or commentary here at G7’s dot com property, so we figured we’d post an update to let you know what’s been going on, and what we have in the works for 2008.

So let’s get started!

Yup. Let’s fire this thing up!

Uh.

What’s that?

Oh. Nothing? Nothing. Aaalllllrighty.

Sorry folks, false alarm.

No folks, misogyny is not a delicious Asian soup. It’s the hatred of women, and December 6th each year marks the anniversary of an event known as the Montréal Massacre, which sadly exemplifies this hatred taken to its end game.

It would be an interesting coincidence (not irony, as a less incredibly smart and literariliy-minded author might have written) that tomorrow holds the expected verdict of Robert Picton, who is accused of abducting, torturing, raping, and murdering up to 31 women on his farm in B.C.

Alas, it is not, because in our “enlightened” society, misogyny still stews in our culture, our institutions, our workplaces, and even in most of us. In a society that still happily depicts women as sexual objects, domineering nags, or helpless victims, it’s no surprise that those in that society who are prone to violence and are looking for a scapegoat for their shortcomings would specifically target them. And with hundreds of Aboriginal women reported missing in Canada with little or no police action, what message is sent to those already warped by our culture’s fucked-up view of half of the population?

While it’s easy — and even fashionable these days — to point with disdain at cultures in other parts of the world where women are considered second-class citizens and have few rights enshrined legally, we should remind ourselves that women are getting a fucking raw deal in the West as well. Despite hard-gotten gains, there’s still a ways to go.

Hopefully this doesn’t come off as paternalistic, further portraying women as “helpless victims” while condemning that very portrayal. Cuz that would actually be ironic.

And that’s coming from a guy … with a dink!

See previously: 17 years later, how much has changed?.