There’s finally a Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse style cartoon about the federal election set to Post Malone’s Sunflower. This is exactly what the electorate was waiting for.
https://twitter.com/22_Minutes/status/1184150728576831488
Hurray for Brexit
How Brexit Is Boosting Canada’s Film Industry
Per The Hollywood Reporter, European filmmakers used to rely a lot on co-productions with UK partners and shooting in the UK, but with Brexit looming they’re turning more and more to Canada. Also Canada has an existing deal for filmmaking with the UK so shooting in Canada means British actors can continue to be hired by the Europeans.
I didn’t realize Canada would be getting this particular Brexit dividend since I figured we were too far, but I guess a long plane ride is worth it for tax credits and a larger pot to draw financing from. I wonder if CETA has been helping out on this as well.
Anyway, good news for the Canadian film industry, bad news for the UK one.
Je suis un espion
Nest of Spies: The Startling Truth About Foreign Agents At Work Within Canada’s Borders is, as one might expect from the subtitle, a non-fiction book about the spy scene in Canada. Its authors are a journalist and a former operative of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, so the book ends up being more descriptive than deeply analytical.
I rather wish a sociologist had been the one to write this book, as I think one could have teased out some interesting insights from the inside knowledge that the authors clearly possess. As it is, the book mostly recounts spy stories that took place in Canada and organized by the country of the perpetrators. At the very least I wish the authors had organized the book around the traditional divisions of spy work – e.g., human intelligence, signals intelligence, etc. And some deeper comparisons with other countries would have helped put things into context.
But the book is still pretty eye-opening. I’m a big spy buff, so a lot of the generalities of intelligence work are familiar to me, but I hadn’t been aware of the specifics of how the whole thing works in Canada. There are a couple of anecdotes from the Cold War (did you know that when the Soviet consulate in Montreal burned down in 1987, CSIS painstakingly sifted the ashes and exposed at least one Soviet mole in France?) and the newer free-for-all today (did you also know that French spies steal anything not nailed down from not only their enemies, but also their allies such as the UK and Canada?).
The authors clearly wish to avoid libel lawsuits by carefully avoiding naming some individuals, companies, and even entire countries in their anecdotes. This is rather to the book’s detriment, since details are scarce enough in a world as secretive as the spy’s. Quit dangling juicy tidbits if you can’t deliver. I mean, tell me you don’t want to know more about Big Pharma hitmen after reading this passage:
Then there is the tactic of eliminating the [rival company’s] researchers [as a part of industrial competition]. We wish this were a tongue-in-cheek way of suggesting they be bribed, but we are in fact talking about murdering them. The pharmaceutical research industry has a remarkable reputation for brutality. The development and marketing of a single new medication costs on average $800 million, which means that a professional killer’s $50,000-$60,000 tab is just so much small change once the competing company’s two or three lead project researchers have been identified. (p. 306)
I suppose this reticence might be attributed to the inherently guarded nature of a spy (though spies aren’t immune to the lure of Hollywood – witness how this nameless intelligence worker gushes over their organization being featured in an episode of The Good Wife).
Entwined throughout the book’s anecdotes are the authors’ calls for Canada to up its counterintelligence game at the corporate and governmental level. It’s true that no one in Canada really gives a shit about spying. Even after finding out just how much proprietary information is stolen in Canada by friends and rivals alike, I still can’t find it in me to care too much. If it ever comes to a choice between spending money on infrastructure or increasing funding for spy work, I say build that damn Toronto to Montreal hyperloop already. Or just that high frequency rail for the Quebec City to Windsor corridor.
Anyway, this book got me started in reading more about Canada’s spying history. Did you know it’s rumoured that Ian Fleming was the sniper who killed a Japanese spy in New York when the US was still neutral in World War 2, as part of a secretive UK-Canada “corporation” operating with the tacit approval of Franklin D. Roosevelt and J. Edgar Hoover? Or that throughout the 19th and early 20th century the Canadian government hired the Pinkerton detective agency to keep tabs on Irish malcontents in the US? I didn’t, until I started down this fascinating rabbit hole. These stories were from Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peacable Kingdom.
I’ll be doing some further reading on the subject, but for the uninitiated, I’d say Nest of Spies is a fascinating introduction.
What do furries think of the Conservative party?
Yes, this was an actual question that was asked.
This weekend’s Conservative leadership convention shared space at the Toronto Congress Centre with the (much better-attended) 2017 Anime North convention. The National Post’s Maura Forrest took the opportunity to get out of the political bubble and talk to some real Canadians about their views on the issues and who they were hoping would win the leadership.
I have no words.
You’re under arrest
Police lay witchcraft charges after Toronto man billed $101,000 for evil spirit removal
So, uh, why do we still have a law against witchcraft? Couldn’t you arrest Wiccans under this law? This appears to be one of those zombie laws that are probably going to be purged from the Criminal Code, along with laws against crime comics and duelling.
Though looking into it further, the law appears to be against fraudulently practicing witchcraft, so I guess if you can actually transform a prince into a frog you’re in the clear.
The relevant part of the Criminal Code is this:
Canada Criminal Code – Part IX Offenses Against Rights of Property (False Pretences)
Pretending to practise witchcraft:
365 Every one who fraudulently
a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration,
b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or
c) pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have stolen or lost may be foundis guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
A summary offence is apparently a minor crime so you’re not looking at a life sentence here. And if you’re wondering what a “crafty science” is as referred to in c), then according to this Washington Post article, it’s an archaic legal term for fortunetelling and spell-casting. The legal phrase itself dates back to the time of Henry VIII of England, where a specific law punishes
all . . . idle persons going about in any countries or abiding in any city borough or town, some of them using divers & subtle crafty & unlawful games & plays & some of them feigning themselves to have knowledge in physic, physiognomy, palmistry, or other crafty science whereby they bear the people in hand, that they can tell their destinies deceases & fortunes & such other like fantastical imaginations to the great deceit of the King’s Subjects . . .
However, it was used colloquially in The Canterbury Tales to refer to alchemy. Also, this isn’t just a Canada thing – the town of Joplin in Missouri has an ordinance stating that
Any person who shall advertise by display of a sign, circular or handbill, or in any newspaper, periodical, magazine or other publication, or by any other means, to tell fortunes or reveal the future, to find or restore lost or stolen property, to locate oil wells, gold or silver or other ore or metal or natural products, to restore lost love, friendship or affection, or to reunite or procure lovers, husbands, wives, lost relatives or friends, or to give advice in business affairs, or advice of any kind or nature to others for or without pay, by means of occult or psychic powers, faculties or forces, clairvoyance, psychology, psychometry, phrenology, spirits, mediumship, seership, prophecy, astrology, palmistry, necromancy or like crafty science, cards, talismans, charms, potions, magnetism or magnetized articles or substances, oriental mysteries, crystal gazing or magic of any kind or nature shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor.
Do you notice the part where being a therapist who helps patients with relationship troubles legally means you can be arrested for witchcraft in Missouri? I like that part. I gotta say, this is just such an interesting rabbit hole to fall into.
Senpai notices Edmonton
Well, more like senpai notices other senpai blew up Edmonton.
Meanwhile, Rest of Canada argues over which city is Best Girl. Thank you, Grauniad, for your Guardian Canada week focusing on cities and topics across the country.
For increased amusement, check out the comments on the Toronto article, where Canadians alternatively defend and attack the T Dot whilst simultaneously claiming they don’t care if foreigners think Toronto is a world-class city.
Although having said that, I must admit I’ve been obsessively reading each piece in the series. What can I say? I also obsess over what the world thinks of Canada.
The Non-Americans
Fascinating article from The Guardian about the US-raised children of a couple in Russia’s infamous Illegals spy program. It would of course be mind-blowing to discover as a teenager that your parents were secretly Russian deep cover spies trained by the KGB, and the article covers that in depth. Peripherally related to that issue is the fact that the TV show The Americans is very loosely based on the Illegals Program.
It’s kind of interesting to think about how the fictional kids on that show would react to the same revelation of their parents’ secret lives as enemies of the state. The real-life sons are currently trying to regain their Canadian citizenship (their parents’ cover having been that of Canadian immigrants to the US) and on reflection I think I wouldn’t mind if they became legit Canadians. As they point out, they barely know Russia and have few personal ties there. Plus they seem eager to live in and contribute to Canada, so what the hell. There’s plenty of room.
Also interesting is this video of the father in the story, Andrey Bezrukov. There is a noticeable non-native accent in his English speech, but it might be that he is no longer trying to disguise his origins or that his speech patterns have been influenced by the people around him after he has returned home – or both, probably.
I’m doing my part
I just came here to post this campaign video for an independent candidate running in the Canadian federal election in October. I keep rewinding it to watch him fist bump an alien but I also like the part where he kills a robot with his laser eyes.
Public humiliation and the schadenfreude of nationalism
I had to go to work today. Nothing ever happens on Sunday, especially on Canada Day, so my coworkers and I talked about movies and watched the Euro Cup championship online. No one was cheering for Italy mostly because if Italy won then Toronto’s Italian contingent would come out and block the streets in celebration, making it hard to get home after work. Yes, we cheer for countries based on what would inconvenience us less. That’s what happens when you divorce nationalism from international sporting championships, though some people just cheer for the country with the weaker economy.
3:07 PM: Spain just scored, yeehaw! Suck on that, Italian-Canadians.
3:31 PM: Spain scored again. How’s that taste, Italy?
Against all odds, someone called and signed up with my company, and as it happens Spain scored twice more while I had to do the thing I was being paid to do. Curses. But 4-0, there’s no arguing with that score. Ha ha, eat that Little Italy, that’s what you get for blocking the streetcar home and making me take the Dufferin bus after Italy beat Germany. A happy Canada Day to all!
Multi-culti: Good, bad, or ugly?
In an effort to be more environmentally friendly, I am now recycling some of my previous writings from other online forums. In this case, I have here some constructive criticisms I offered to Thomas Hylland Eriksen about his working paper on the relationship between identity and cyberspace. I rather like what I wrote, so it seemed a shame just to keep it on the Media Anthropology Network’s servers. Plus I get to back up my stuff in case of fire or some sort of apocalypse. But, onwards:
My only substantive issue with the paper is the implied position that, were it not mostly for the transnationalizing efforts of migrants aided by the Internet’s technologies, the natural trajectory of the immigrant is towards assimilation. This does not address the active and institutionalized efforts at exclusion enacted by the nation-state and by many of its native-born population towards immigrants and their descendants. Often, this exclusion is based upon an ideology of race, upon the idea that immigrants and those born of immigrants are always already Other than the authentic indigenous population by virtue of being visibly different. I recall Lisa Lowe’s point that she is always an Asian American and never just American (Lowe 2003), or as James Clifford observed, with diasporas many times being the product of exclusion, the rise of a diasporic consciousness can be seen as making the best of a bad situation (Clifford 1997:257). In other words, diasporas are one of the consequences of the political ideology of race.
This ties into a broader point I want to make about nation-states and national identity. In many ways, nationalist ideology and racialized ideology are tied together, or at least are allied ideologies. Nation-states base their legitimacy in part on being the political manifestation of the nation, or being the nation writ large. The logic of nationalism demands that nation-states have homogenous populations, else the legitimacy of the state is called into question — if a nation-state rules because it is the representative of a people, what happens when other peoples exist within its territory? The empirical answer is that the nation-state suppresses these other nations, through direct and indirect violence (think of Native Americans in the former and African Americans and their economic and geographical segregation in the latter, but especially immigrant populations as well). If a nation-state’s people are essentially the same, then those not of the nation-state and its people are essentially different, essentially Other. This talk of essential difference, of course, is linked to the pseudo-scientific discourse of race, which supplies the essentialized categories necessary for many of nationalism’s constitutive fictions (in this way, I think Nazism is really nationalism taken to its logical extreme, but that is a digression).
Now then, what is really interesting is when one considers what nation-states are like today, in light of the new era of mass migration. Nation-states claim to represent the nation, but what happens to that notion when part of the nation exists outside the territory of the nation-state? As Thomas’ paper mentions, a nation-state can try to incorporate its diasporic members into its national and political imaginary, as in the case of Chile’s 14th region, and I will add the example of Haiti’s Tenth Department too. But wouldn’t the host country of those diasporic people object to the meddling of external actors in the host country’s territory? Shouldn’t the host country object, particularly because the new (or rediscovered) ideology of multiculturalism is already attempting to incorporate the otherness of migrants within the framework of the nation-state?
Here I will mention the results of the Canadian Ethnic Diversity Survey, which found that Filipinos in Canada scored highly both in their sense of belonging to their ethnic group and to Canada. They are loyal both to the Philippines and to Canada, in other words. I think this speaks to Sasskia Sassen’s observation that globalization, instead of weakening the nation-state, merely requires its rearticulation. David Graeber’s article on globalization being the re-emergence of older patterns of transnationalism is also interesting in this regard, particularly his point that today’s situation of an international elite in Europe using an international language mostly incomprehensible to the elite’s countrymen and living in cities with working class neigbourhoods composed of people drawn from around the Mediterranean echoes the situation in medieval Europe. My essential point is that what we might be observing is a new or reinvigorated transnational order, where members of a nation-state do not need to be exclusively loyal to that nation-state to be incorporated within it. So is race being decoupled from nation today? I think that race is actually still being deployed in the service of the nation-state, especially within the discourse of multiculturalism. It is, of course, an attempt to incorporate heterogeneity within a nation-state, or rather, an attempt at homogenizing heterogeneity. “Regardless of race or colour or creed, we’re all Canadian here,” is the message being promoted here in Canada. But multicultural discourse also obfuscates the differences between immigrants and already existing oppressed minorities (African Canadians and Natives in Canada’s case). It hides the historical oppression of minorities under the sameness of multiculturalism: Koreans are the same as Haitians, Ojibwa are the same as Poles, and the French are the same as Nigerians. So race still has political consequences even in the brave new multicultural world.
References:
Lowe, Lisa (2003). “Heterogeneity, hybridity, multiplicity: Marking Asian-American differences”. In Braziel, Jana Evans; & Mannur, Anita (eds.), Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader (pp. 132-159). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Clifford, James (1997). “Diasporas”. In Clifford, James, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (pp. 244-277). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Canadian Ethnic Diversity Survey
Statistics Canada
http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/89-593-XIE/89-593-XIE2003001.pdf
Now then, I’ll have to apologize but this only contains half of the information I referred to and does not have the data on Filipino’s sense of belongingness to Canada. I’m still in the process of tracking down the survey data. Actually I know where to look now thanks to my school’s librarians, but I still haven’t gotten around to getting the stuff.
Graeber, David (2002). “The anthropology of globalization (with notes on neomedievalism, and the end of the Chinese model of the nation-state).” American Anthropologist, 104(4):1222-1227.
Sassen, Sasskia (1998). Globalization and its discontents: essays on the new mobility of people and money. New York: The New Press.
Technorati tags: nation-state, nationalism, multiculturalism, national identity, race, Canadian multiculturalism