This nincompoop from New Zealand was, for some unfathomable reason, allowed to spew his horrible message in a newspaper. While it would be most emotionally satisfying to vent at length about what’s wrong with his arguments, I would instead like to focus on something he mentions in passing, at the very end: The assertion that multiculturalism leads to violence.

I find it quite surprising that such a view can be widespread, but sadly it is. So many countries, including the usually progressive ones of Europe, are having huge problems dealing with immigration.

This is certainly not new. So long at there have been immigrants there have been people who hated them. It just boggles the mind that such is still the case in the 21st century.

Last night I saw a good friend who has been abroad for a while. He is a Croat, and I am a Serb. I’m pretty sure that that means we should try to kill each other on sight. Instead, we reflected on the burden of ethnic guilt and the bipolar nature of the search for ethnic identity. I’d never had such a conversation before, and I was amazed to hear someone else feeling the same way I do. Our people (yes, our people, not our peoples) have a gruesome history, one which we would rather not associate with. And yet, being a Serb or a Croat is not like being Serbian or Croatian – it’s not a citizenship that one can renounce. In some way, our flesh and blood belongs to these ethnic groups. But why? Who decided that?

The question of the significance of ethnic identity is probably one that I will ask myself for the rest of my life, but that’s not the point. The point is that, in the end, my friend and I are just two human beings, who ash themselves the same questions.

I should count my lucky stars for living in Toronto, an island of… I don’t know exactly what to call it, sanity? Isn’t it amazing that I can sit at a table with a member of a “different ethnic group” and share these feelings, and see how we feel the same way?

I would like to think that this is what multiculturalism leads to.

I am sitting here, munching on my breakfast of cereal flakes. No milk, no yogurt.

Why? Well, I’ve realized that eating my breakfast at work saves me a lot of time in the morning, time that I can redirect towards the cause of sleep (I couldn’t call asleep until 2 last night, so every additional minute this morning was particularly appreciated). I fill a container with cereal and go.

This morning I arrived at the office to see that we are out of milk. Disaster! I can’t even go out to buy some, because I am the only one in, and I must stay dutifully at my desk in order the guard the premises from the hoards to petty criminals waiting to get in and steal our laptops.

I noticed a cup of blueberry yogurt in the fridge. Assuming that no one would miss it all that much, I took it out and began walking to my desk to pour it over my cereal.

But I couldn’t.

As I walked down the hall I began to read the ingredients on the package. Actually, that’s not true, I didn’t actually read them because the only way the manufacturers could fit the names of the several dozen ingredients – most with names well over ten letters long – onto the package, was to make the type miniscule.

I felt sick to my stomach. The jar of yogurt that is in my fridge at home has exactly two ingredients listed on it: whole milk, bacterial cultures. The cup I was holding in my hand contained many things, but no yogurt.

I am completely socked at what we’ve allowed corporations to tell us we should eat. I am shocked that anyone would eat what was in that cup.

Like most religious people, I am occasionally guilty of lulling myself into to feeling that my religion is perfect.

Of course, I could try to generate some convoluted argument in order to prove that it is. Such an argument would likely involve redefining the terms of the debate (the surest way to win any battle of rhetoric!). To wit: My religion is perfect insofar as we are talking about MY religion, the extremely narrow and unique definition of Hinduism as practiced by Vega Janic. In my Hinduism, everyone is kind and compassionate and polite. Everybody minds their own business, except for when it comes to caring for those in need.

This line of thinking, however, is obviously vain and narcissistic. It boils down to “The world would be better if everyone were more like me (or at least like what I imagine I am like, which may or may not be accurate – though I like to think it’s more accurate than inaccurate).”

It’s probably for my own good (though not so much the good of the world) that I then come across things like this.

Extremism exists in every religion. Indeed, you could argue that it is the natural consequence of living in the modern era. Technology has opened our eyes and our minds. I’m not the most pro-technology person in the world, but I’m certainly aware of what it has done for us. Where once young people were confused by their feelings and tried to repress them, they can now go online and discover “Oh, I’m gay! What’s more, in some parts of the world, that’s not such a big deal. Why not here too?” Women can communicate with their sisters from around the world and learn “Hmm, in some places when a man rapes a woman, it’s HE that goes to jail. Maybe we can use some of that here.” Some of these discoveries aren’t even so profound. Sometimes it’s just as simple as “Maybe I can be myself, and the sky won’t fall.”

Then there are those who are petrified by others thinking this way. The people on the above-linked message board who are throwing in their support for anti-secularism are, I suspect, of such a sort.

Do not mistake me: In events where Hindus are marginalized by other groups, we need to stand up in protest. No one is free unless everyone is free.

But then you find someone who will declare, as on this message board, that “When Dharma is under attack by rogues of uncivilized barbarians, then the concept of Ahimsa becomes useless.” Or phrased more explicitly, when our religion is “threatened” by those whom we have judged by our standards, whatever those may be, to be uncivilized and barbarous, we can throw the principles of our religion out the window in order to crush those people.

DharamRakshak is certainly not the first person in history to make such a suggestion. Let’s just take a moment to remember that when people start making declarations such as his, peace is not what follows.

Having had four days to reflect, I would now like to share some final thoughts on our latest federal election.

To begin, some thoughts – yet again – on the electoral system. As illustrated in my last post, if we had a proportional electoral system, we would now have a very different Parliament. Yes, it would still be a Conservative minority, but a much weaker one. The NDP and Green Party would be much stronger, the Bloc much weaker (though I generally like the Bloc [except for the separatism thing], I do think that it’s inappropriate for a party with so little of the popular vote to get so much representation).

I don’t, however, think that a straight proportional system is the best choice. I do think there is a need for regional representation too, and that’s why I didn’t include the two independent MPs. When a riding elects an independent it means that the voters really know this person and truly believe that the candidate will fight for that riding in Parliament. They are not just blindly voting for a party.

I’m not saying that MMP is necessarily the way to go, though I do like it a lot. All I know for sure is that we need a dialogue to start, and we need our politicians – all of them – to get behind making the Canadian electoral system more democratic.

On a similar note, I think we should take a moment to think about how people think about Canadian politics.

We are not a two-party system, and thank goodness for that. We have some real choices, we have parties that have very different ideas about how the country should be run, and that is fantastic because Canadians have very different ideas about how the country should be run.

I am very disappointed to see that our journalists don’t seem to realize this. I could not believe my eyes when I read the Metro on Tuesday, and saw them describe the NDP and Greens as “bleeding” Liberal votes. Other newspapers were no better, using language like “stealing votes,” as if the other parties had done something wrong by winning votes.

Excuse me? So it’s my fault that the Conservatives won? If only I could have closed my eyes and thought of Canada and voted Liberal, things would have been different, but no, I had to go and have opinions about issues and voted for something other than the two allowed parties. This is disgusting. One of the reasons why I feel so strongly about the need for electoral reform is exactly this: I don’t want to spend my whole life voting against the Conservatives. I want to vote for a party, I want to believe in something. And I certainly don’t want to be made to feel like a traitor for expressing my opinions through my vote.

The cover of the Toronto Star on Thursday (I think it was Thursday, don’t quote me on that) showed a picture of Harper on one side and Dion on the other. Under Harper was the caption “the price of victory” and under Dion “the price of defeat.” Again, this is not a two party system. The Liberals didn’t loose, at least not any more than the NDP or Greens did. This wasn’t a race between two parties; Layton and May did not cause the Liberals to loose. To my recollection, no members of the NDP showed up at my house, held a gun to my head and told me to vote for Olivia Chow or else they would off my kitty. I, a citizen of this country, chose which party I felt represented my views, and I voted for them. Boo hoo for the Grits, but I am allowed to vote with my conscience. It is not my job to not-elect Steven Harper.

I don’t particularly like the idea of “winning” in politics either. The Conservatives didn’t “win:” They were given the privilege, by the Canadian electorate, of leading our 40th Parliament. They are our employees, our servants, and we have bestowed them with a great honour. I think we often forget that. We pay our MPs salaries, and if we don’t like the job they are doing, we need to tell them. Loudly.

But I digress.

I encourage everyone to write to his or her MP and to Harper himself, and let them know you care about electoral reform. Let them know you care about democracy.

We are all Canadians. Politics shouldn’t be about this guy beating that guy, about victory and defeat. We are all in this boat together, we all win or loose together. The election is over and done, and now that it is, it’s time to get on with the actual business of running a nation: And the only way to do that is through compromise, rational discourse, and compassion for our fellow citizens.

I would like to end by paraphrasing John Wayne: “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my [Prime Minister,] and I hope he does a good job.”

Iceland is having some troubles. I am rather upset that in one of the half-dozen or so countries that I would choose to live in, people can't withdraw money from their banks. How could such unethical banking practices have taken place in a country that I idealize so? It's scary, and I don't predict anything short of zombie-apocalypse.

On a brighter note, congratulations to Nambu, Kobayashi and Maskawa for their Nobel Prize in Physics! Yay!

Sometimes I really like Gilles Duceppe. Read this. It's like, Fuck yeah Gilles!
On the other hand, Jack Layton does on occasion disappoint me. We should shut down the tar sands, Michael Byers is spot on, and Jack mustn't be afraid to say so.

Yesterday I had planned to post about our boyfriend Stephen, and his plan to "get tough on crime." But then I got tired and didn't feel like it. Besides, what could I possibly add that isn't obvious to everyone already: Longer jail times don't prevent crime - hell, the death penalty doesn't prevent crime. I wanted to ask Stephen to present me with a single study that suggested otherwise.

Look, I'm just as afraid of getting randomly shot on Younge St. as anyone else. It's probably worse being a woman, because I fear that I am more likely to be a victim of crime (I confess I don't know for a fact if this is true). But when academics who study the subject tell me "Longer jail time for criminals won't make you safer, the only way to stop crime is to address its causes: Poverty, low levels of education, domestic abuse," I tend to listen.

But not our buddy Stephen! Here's what CP24 is reporting:

Harper used the Saskatchewan stop to promise a crackdown on conditional sentences and house arrest. It was the second straight day of Conservative justice reform proposals that many criminologists say will increase prison costs and do nothing to deter crime.

"We're listening to ordinary people," Harper said in rebuttal to the body of academic research.

"Not people who work in ivory towers, but people who actually work on the street and deal with crime on a day-to-day basis."

Good work Harper. I bet Bob at the corner store knows how to fix crime better than some four-eyes in the Ivory Tower who studies the matter all day. What do "criminologists" with a "body of academic research" know?