Sandro Contenta's Notebook:

The Tamil Tigers of Toronto

At the end of March, I wrote about the how the Tamil Togers burst onto the political scene in Toronto, which is home to the largest diaspora of Tamils in the world:

TORONTO — Canadians are not flag wavers. If someone is draped in the red maple leaf, chances are he or she is a victorious Olympian or a dead soldier. Anyone else suggests a level of nationalism that makes many Canadians uncomfortable.

And yet, for the past two months, the streets of downtown Toronto have been regularly clogged by protesters waving Canadian flags alongside a strikingly different one: a yellow tiger jumping through a hoop of bullets crossed by two rifles atop a red backdrop — the symbol of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Also known as the Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankan guerrilla group has been fighting since 1983 for an independent state for the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka, long marginalized by the Sinhalese-dominated government. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the civil war.

The death toll has escalated in recent weeks. Sri Lankan government soldiers have surrounded the last rebel stronghold in the north of the South Asian island, trapping civilians in the crossfire. International agencies have accused both government and rebel forces of likely breaking humanitarian laws.

Nowhere have demonstrations to denounce the killings been bigger than in Toronto, home to the largest diaspora of Sri Lankan Tamils in the world. Some estimates say up to half of Toronto’s more than 200,000 Tamils took part in the most recent protest two weeks ago. ...

To read the rest of the column click here.

A hundred days later, in Canada

Swine flu spreading in Canada — 13 cases have so far been confirmed — bumped U.S. President Barack Obama’s 100 day-report card off the front pages.

Still, the commentary was largely positive.

Most noted that despite enormous challenges, particularly with the economy, Obama has managed to convince Americans the U.S. is back on the right track.

“At least for now, there is a symbiosis between the president and the American public. Mr. Obama's cool charm, his obvious high intelligence and quiet confidence, make people feel good about their leader, and better about themselves,” writes John Ibbitson, Washington correspondent for the Globe and Mail newspaper.

“To the extent he can sustain this new consensus, Mr. Obama's presidency could be the most transformative since Ronald Reagan's,” he adds.

In an editorial, the Toronto Star newspaper argued that, “Few American presidents have reached as high as Barack Obama in their first 100 days in office.” His activism on a range of issues, including the stimulus package, the environment, and the war in Afghanistan, is leaving Canada’s Conservative Party government panting to catch up, the paper said.

Canada's Harper joins chorus for US to lift Cuban embargo

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called on the United States to end its trade embargo against Cuba.

Speaking at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago — a gathering received with a big yawn in Canada — Harper suggested the decades-old embargo has had the unintended effect of propping up the Communist state.

“If one wants to break down a state-socialist economic nationalist model with walls, I don't think a trade embargo's the way to do that. So we would obviously urge a different course of action,” Harper said.

“That said … we don't turn a blind eye to the fact that Cuba is a communist dictatorship and that we want to see progress on freedom, democracy and human rights as well as on economic matters,” he added.

Unlike the U.S., Canada has long maintained diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba. U.S. President Barack Obama recently lifted some travel and telecommunications restrictions on Cuba in the first steps to thawing relations.

Harper has made free trade in the Americas his main message at the summit, one that hasn’t gone down well with all 34 leaders.

“There are some countries that want to keep fighting the Cold War and frankly wars that go a lot farther back than that,” Harper said at a brief press conference.

Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua have been especially vocal in denouncing western-dominated global capitalism.

Harper is pushing an issue that caused heated debates at the summit four years ago, when leaders voted down the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.

At this weekend’s summit, Harper also pledged $4 billion to the Inter-American Development Bank, which lends money to developing countries in the Americas.

The summit has received little media attention in Canada. Most news organizations didn’t send reporters to cover the summit.
 

Billy Bob Thornton's complex relationship with Canada

Actor and musician Billy Bob Thornton has hightailed it out of Canada. Some would say he was run out of the country, but Thornton insists it isn’t so.

What’s clear is that Thornton and his band the Boxmasters dropped their two remaining shows as the opening act for Willie Nelson after being booed in Toronto for comparing Canadian audiences to “mashed potatoes with no gravy.”

The cancellations and boos came after a now infamous non-interview Thornton gave CBC radio on Wednesday. It went sour from the moment host Jian Gomeshi referred to Thornton’s Oscar-winning film career in the introduction. Thornton rolled his eyes, looked up at the ceiling and the interview went downhill from there. Here’s a sample:

Ghomeshi: Billy Bob, You guys formed only in the last couple of years, right?

Thornton: I don't know what you're talking about.

Ghomeshi: How so?

Thornton: I don't know what you mean by that.

Ghomeshi: Well, when did the band form?

Thornton: I'm not sure what that means.

Ghomeshi: Oh. When did you guys start playing together? (A band member with an understanding of the word “formed,” then answers the question for Thornton.)

After several more minutes of petulance, Thornton described Canadian audiences as people who “just sort of sit there” and compared them to “mashed potatoes with no gravy.”

He then refused to sing with his band, which awkwardly proceeded to play an instrumental in the CBC studio while Thornton looked on. By late Friday night, about 1.2 million viewers had watched the YouTube video of the CBC interview.

Between songs at his Toronto concert Thursday, Thornton called Gomeshi an “asshole,” claiming Gomeshi had broken a deal not to bring up his acting career during the interview. “If you look someone in the eyes and promise them something, and you don’t do it, you don’t get the interview,” Thornton said.

The audience jeered and responded with shouts of, "Here comes the gravy!”

Thornton then cancelled the show last night in Montreal and the one tonight in London, Ontario. Thornton’s publicist, Arnold Robinson, insisted it had nothing to do with the CBC interview.

“One of the band members and several of the crew have the flu and need a couple of days off to recuperate,” Robinson told the Toronto Star.

“As Billy said before and during the show last night, he loves Canada,” Robinson added.

If Thornton loves Canada, he certainly has a funny way of showing it.

And in case Thornton is interested in contacting globalpost.com for an interview, we state categorically that any reference to his acting career in this dispatch is purely unintentional.



Gorgeous George

I recently wrote about George Galloway being barred from entering Canada, and about one Canadian's travails:

TORONTO — By now, many around the world have heard that provocative British politician George Galloway has been banned from entering Canada.

Practically no one, by comparison, has heard of Abousfian Abdelrazik. Yet most of those who have would argue that Abdelrazik's case is far more outrageous.

Galloway, dubbed “Gorgeous George” for his fashion flair, is the sole member in the British parliament of the anti-war group, Respect. An uncompromising left-winger, he was thrown out of the Labour Party in 2003 for emphatically opposing the invasion of Iraq. Last week, he was designated a threat to national security and barred from entering Canada for a speaking tour.

A spokesperson for Canada’s immigration minister accused Galloway of raising funds for the Palestinian group Hamas, which the Canadian government considers a terrorist organization, and of being “a popinjay for those Taliban fighters who are trying to kill Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.”

To read the rest of my column, click here.

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