(no subject)

[frandroid]

Totally go read sabotabby's rant about the "can't they protest nicely without us having to pay any attention to them" crowd.

Tamils have the "right" to protest--we'll give them that because we are oh-so-generous and believe in abstract rights that cease to exist as soon as they inconvenience us--but said protests must conform to the tame and ineffectual standards of the impotent Canadian left.

Let's be honest here. White people in Canada, including the government, did not give a flying fuck about the plight of the Tamils until Tamil-Canadians escalated their protests. White people in Canada still don't give a flying fuck about the plight of Tamils, so this concern troll talk about alienating Canadians and losing support is bollocks. They never had that support, or any hope of gaining it, no matter how saintly and impeccable their behaviour.
[...]
What it comes down to is that white people hold brown people to a different ethical standard than they hold themselves to. The death toll in Sri Lanka now stands at around 8,500 over the past few months, and Tamil-Canadians have responded with peaceful protests. When a few thousand or so Americans and a handful of Canadians died on Sept. 11, 2001, the response was anything but non-violent. It was a brutal, bloody rampage against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq (who, like the Canadian commuters, had nothing to do with the murders). We demand not only pacifism from our fellow human beings in the face of their suffering--though we, the pasty-faced we, are anything but non-violent ourselves--but worse, we demand utter passivity.

She also links to this excellent Royson James column. Yes, the usually irritating Royson James.