Over the course of the tour we’ve watched a lot of DVD’s. One of my personal favourites to watch on a tour bus is the full-length version of Das Boot, basically because being on a tour bus is somewhat like being in a submarine, especially when you’re in bed (minus the depth charges, of course). Beyond that, the original made for German television version is amazing, so you can’t complain.

One of the other films that we’ve watched is The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy. Having seen it numerous times now, and while I realize it’s fantasy, I have some problems with it…

1) If the Nazgul are so powerful at the end of the film, why is Aragorn able to defeat them on Weathertop? Obviously it’s far different than what occurs in the book, but that’s beside the point. He basically takes on five of them with a sword and a torch and wins. If that’s the case, then why isn’t Gandalf able to kick their collective asses at the end of the film? After Faramir abandons Osgiliath, Gandalf rides out and dispels them with a blast of white light, but when the battle starts he seemingly has no power to stop them.

What’s up with that?

2) As you’ll recall, Gandalf is rescued from the tower of Orthanc by the giant eagle Gwahir. At the end of the film, Gwahir and his fellow giant eagles not only take on the remaining Nazgul with ease, but also rescue Frodo and Sam. So why, when the secret council was held at Rivendell, didn’t someone come up with the idea of using Gwahir and his posse of giant eagles to fly into Mordor to Mount Doom and toss the ring? It would have taken a week, tops.

What’s up with that?

3) How is Gandalf able to summon Shadowfax in seconds by whistling? Was he grazing conveniently nearby and, as luck would have it, heard Gandalf whistling?

What’s up with that?

4) How is it that when Frodo falls at the Inn Of The Prancing Pony the ring happens to defy all physical laws and land exactly on his finger?

What’s up with that?

5) When Sam wades into the Anduin when Frodo is attempting to leave, why does he go from being shoulder deep in water to drowning in what seems like 100 feet of it even though when Frodo rescues him they’re only about 15 feet from shore?

What’s up with that?

6) When Theoden and Aragorn ride out of the citadel at Helm’s Deep, why are they able to plough through thousands of Urukai as if they were cutting through butter when moments before they couldn’t hold the fortress?

Seriously, what’s up with that?

My next installment of What’s up with that? will deal with the Harry Potter films.

Wars are replete with confusions and contradictions. One of the most bizarrely overlooked is the ability of modern major powers, even if ultimately resigned to defeat, to never be faced with answering for their actions or truly seek swift and irrefutable justice on behalf of those that were wronged during their occupations of foreign lands.

Iraq, like Vietnam, has produced war crimes. Some have been committed by US personnel based on policy, some by soldiers gone array, and some by mercenaries based on the inability of those who employ them to apply proper oversight. In all three cases, the United States reserves the right to condemn and hold accountable others guilty of such crimes. But when the mirror is turned in on itself, the same cannot be said with vigor, or even realistic assertion.

Some time ago I was emailed and asked why I hadn’t mentioned that those charged in connection to the Haditha massacre had been acquitted. I was questioned as to whether I would be retracting my initial remarks about the incident, being that the acquittals somehow suggested to that individual that the event itself had been blown out of proportion or that what occurred that day, for all intents and purposes, didn’t.

This, at long last, is my response.

Back Stories And Precedent

During the Vietnam War, an incident took place in the small adjoining villages of My Lai and My Khe in which 347 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, most of them women and children, were massacred. Prior to their executions, many of them were either raped or tortured, with numerous bodies being mutilated afterwards.

On November 12th, 1969, Seymour Hersh broke the story of the now infamous My Lai Massacre, having interviewed Second Lieutenant William Calley who had by then been charged with several counts of premeditated murder. It should be noted that the entire incident would never have come to light had Ron Ridenhour, a soldier that had heard first hand accounts of the massacre from soldiers present that day, not sent letters to various politicians, including President Nixon. Ridenhour’s letters were sent a year after the massacre took place. The only individual that gave it serious attention was Morris Udall, then a Congressman from Arizona.

Of all those that took part in the events of March 16th, 1968, only one would ever serve time in jail. The rest, including those in command positions, would receive acquittals or be beyond prosecution because they had been discharged. Lieutenant William Calley, whom Hersh had initially interviewed for his story, was sentenced to life in prison, but two days later was released by Presidential order on the grounds of a pending appeal. Ultimately, Calley would serve just four and a half months at Fort Leavenworth.

Were the same actions confronted at war crimes tribunals following the Second World War, those guilty of them, be they German or Japanese, would have faced the gallows. But in the context of Vietnam, even though the United States would find itself ultimately defeated, those that were responsible for war crimes would only ever face an internal form of justice that was not in the practice of selling out its own. They would never face Vietnamese justice for their crimes or international justice.

The Façade

What makes Western powers immune to the judicial ramifications of their actions on both local and international scales? Interestingly, to many it is impossible to conceive of any US soldier being tried for war crimes by an international tribunal or local government in the context of a conflict such as Iraq or Afghanistan, the prevalent belief being that they’d not receive proper justice. But then, isn’t the same true when they are faced with being tried for crimes by their own government or military?

Sure, in the case of Abu Ghraib a few token scapegoats were given prison sentences to allude to the existence of transparency, but the reality remains that no military intelligence personnel or member of the Pentagon or Department of Defense were ever held accountable, let alone anyone in the administration itself. It was swept away as a tragic occurrence that had no root in policy or mismanagement when, in fact, it was steeped in both.

In the case of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, and the murder of her family, by US troops, justice was again only handed out after the incident hit the headlines. All of those tried by the military cut deals, receiving sentences between 5 and 110 years in length. Even the soldier that received the longest sentence, Pfc. Jesse Spielman, will be eligible for parole in a decade. The supposed ringleader of the incident, having been discharged before it came to light, is being tried in a court in Kentucky where he has plead not guilty.

Were the afore mentioned crimes to have been committed during the Second World War, those responsible, as well as the command infrastructure in place, would have faced prison or the gallows.

Haditha

The reality of Haditha is that we may never know what actually occurred that day. The initial US military press release reads…

“A US marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another.

Interestingly, no civilians were killed that day by an IED explosion, as was confirmed by the wounds sustained by the victims, be it the five individuals killed in the taxi, four students and the driver, or those killed in four nearby houses that were stormed by US troops.

Video taken by Taher Thabet, the founder of the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, shows women and children with bullet holes in them, which is consistent with reports made by the director of the local hospital. In fact, the wounds of those killed were inconsistent with shrapnel wounds which would have been present had an IED been the cause of death.

At this point one has to ask the question – is this the result of immense internal confusion or something altogether different? If the official press release stated that 15 civilians were killed by an IED explosion, but that it was later discovered that the majority of those killed were found in houses and had wounds completely inconsistent with the affects of such an explosion, then how was that initial conclusion drawn? To me, this one element renders the validity of everything that came afterwards suspect.

In a 2006 report written by Major General Eldon Bargewell regarding the incident, Bargewell included the following…

“Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get ‘the job done’ no matter what it takes. These comments had the potential to desensitize the Marines to concern for the Iraqi populace and portray them all as the enemy even if they are noncombatants.”

To me, such a conclusion speaks volumes, and it is certainly backed up by the testimony of Sergeant Sanick P. Dela Cruz, who was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.

Dela Cruz asserted that he watched Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich shoot five Iraqis that were attempting to surrender, that both of them had fired into the bodies after they were dead, and that Dela Cruz then relieved himself on one of the corpses. This was, of course, after Lieutenant William Kallop, who ordered the assault on the four houses, testified that the rules of engagement were followed that day and that nothing suspect occurred.

Added to this convolution is the testimony of Major Dana Hyatt. Hyatt testified that eight of those killed that day were insurgents, four of whom were in the taxi, with the remaining four being killed in a single house. The problem, of course, is that nineteen of those killed that day were killed in three other adjacent houses and included women and children.

Of those killed in the taxi, four were students from the Technical Institute in Saqlawiyah – Mohammed Mahmoud, Akram Flayeh, Khalid al-Zawi, and Wajdi al-Zawi. Ahmed Khidher, the fifth victim, was the taxi driver.

Of the houses, only one contained four men, all of them brothers – Jamal, Chasib, Marwan, and Qahtan Ahmed. The other residences were occupied by civilians as young as one and as old as seventy-six. Between you and me, I honestly can’t remember the last time that I saw an infant fire a weapon, but maybe things are different in Iraq. In this case that logic would also apply to a three year old, a four year old, two five year olds, and two eight year olds.

The fact that the various charges brought against those involved have been dropped does not come as a surprise to me. What does is this…

The incident took place on November 19th, 2005. The official military press release, which claimed that 15 people had been killed by an explosion produced by an IED, was released the next day. Since then, the evidence has shown that that press release was entirely inaccurate and wholly based on a Marine Corps communiqué, which was issued the day of the massacre. On March 19th, 2006, the United States military confirmed that, contrary to that initial report, 15 civilians were accidentally killed due to the actions of Marines and not an IED. In the testimony that would follow in the years following the incident, there was no reiteration of the initial statement that involved the IED scenario as the chief cause of civilian deaths.

Again, I could care less who was acquitted. The question remains, how do you go from an initial ground report to a press release a day later to the uncovering that both were fraudulent without suspicion remaining ever-present?

Two things are for certain regarding what happened that day in Haditha. The military, given the convolution of events and testimony, was afforded the ability to spare their own, the damage having already been done with regards to Iraqi public perception. The second is that when an assault on a group of houses by professional soldiers results in the deaths of infants and old ladies, and it is claimed by those that commanded it that it was done ‘by the book’, then the time has come to question whose book it is and who it does, and does not, apply to.

There’s something to be said when some 300 US diplomats turn up at a State Department meeting incensed at the fact that some of their numbers are being forced to serve a year in Iraq - at either the US embassy or at other locations - or face the loss of their jobs: that the reality of the security situation is still so dismal that serving in the most heavily fortified part of the country is still deemed a risky affair. According to the BBC…

“The meeting was called to explain the “forced assignments” order made by state department human resources director Harry Thomas.

Last Friday, he notified about 250 “prime candidates” that they had been selected for one of 48 one-year postings at the embassy in Baghdad or in a Provincial Reconstruction Team elsewhere in the country.

They were given 10 days to reply.

Senior diplomat Jack Croddy, who once worked as a political adviser with Nato forces, highlighted safety fears of staff who would be forced to serve in a war zone.

“It’s one thing if someone believes in what’s going on over there and volunteers, but it’s another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment,” Mr Croddy said.

“I’m sorry, but basically that’s a potential death sentence and you know it. Who will raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded?

“You know that at any other [country] in the world, the embassy would be closed at this point.”

For months, US officials have been warning that a lack of volunteers could lead to this diplomatic call-up, says the BBC’s James Coomarasamy in Washington.

Many positions are due to become vacant in 2008.

But unions say the constantly growing embassy in Iraq is straining human resources.

An attractive financial package is being offered as well as a generous leave allowance.

But the Baghdad embassy is considered a hardship posting due to security risks and because spouses and children must be left at home.”

The US embassy in Iraq is the largest of its kind in the world, a rather ridiculous fact considering the state of affairs in the country itself. It symbolizes to many Iraqis the permanence of a US presence, and has even been involved in both financial and human rights scandals during its construction – both to do with the Kuwaiti firm hired to build it. In some instances, foreign workers were flown to Iraq and forced to work on the project having believed they were being taken elsewhere. While there, they were also forced to endure what have been called ‘slave labour’ conditions.

I wrote, some weeks ago, that nothing would come of the criminal behaviour that Blackwater has been guilty of in Iraq. I stand by that statement, despite various investigations into criminality, predominantly to do with the events on September 16th of this year at Nisoor Square in Western Baghdad.

Witnesses of that event claim that Blackwater personnel did not come under fire, but rather opened fire without provocation. They are, believe it or not, in the majority as far as witnesses go. Unfortunately, they’re Iraqis, and thus somehow not as believable as, for example, Blackwater representatives that deny any wrong doing. And who, at the end of the day, is the Western public going to believe? Iraqis or Blackwater’s prim and proper all-American president?

The event hasn’t hurt Blackwater’s contractual relationship with the government either, having recently secured a $92 million dollar contract with the Pentagon to operate flights in Central Asia and a portion of a $15 billion dollar contract to help fight the ‘war on drugs’.

The ugly truth is that despite what happened at Nisoor Square that day, or on a variety of other occasions that could certainly be deemed criminal, Blackwater will be protected by The State Department because the State Department’s chief goal in this affair is to protect itself. It doesn’t matter if the Iraqi government passes legislation ending the immunity from prosecution of foreign security contractors, nor does it matter that the military is now in control of supervising all State Department security convoys in Iraq. Like the Abu Ghraib scandal, those ultimately responsible for oversight with regards to Blackwater’s conduct will never be properly scrutinized. And it’s not as if the conduct of Blackwater hadn’t been brought to the State Department’s attention by the Iraqi government in the past either. Not surprisingly, on those occasions, absolutely nothing was done, which only helped expand the company’s reckless parameters.

It is easy for us to claim that the rule of law now exists in Iraq, having been hammered over the head that the country has been gifted democracy, but the reality is that it is entirely ambiguous in its application, and certainly does not have the power to reach into the realm of dealing with foreigners that are guilty of war crimes. Going in, the United States took steps to protect themselves, the most important being their refusal to adhere to the scrutiny of the International Criminal Court. Had they not, then the President down to those guilty of the Nisoor Sqauare massacre could very well be tried for war crimes. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world, we live in this one – the one in which nations that profess to promote justice and transparency are, themselves, anything but just or transparent. Such is the reality of nations that knowingly have the ability to exercise their own set of specific rules precisely because they cannot be confronted. Justice, liberty, and a host of other terms are merely warm remembrances used to placate societies that desperately want to believe that such principles actually still endure. A Greek orator once remarked - “the theatre never was what it was”. The same is true of those principles on which we lean for comfort and a sense of lasting right. We are not only not what we once were, but we never were to begin with. And until we come to terms with that, then government by and for the people will never truly exist, let alone justice being done to those among us that are guilty of crimes against others deemed of less worth.

Two weeks. That’s all I have left before I get to see my boys again. It might sound somewhat lame coming from a 36 year old man, but I miss those guys.

I was supposed to turn around a week after arriving home and start a string of dates in the US. I decided to have them moved to the new-year, so look for announcements in the future. They’re going to coincide with South By Southwest, so I’ll start on the west coast, play down to Los Angeles, go to Texas, then pop up to Chicago and begin there again and move east. For those of you wondering what the tentative cities are – and by that I mean tentative - right now it looks like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, Austin, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Rochester, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and DC. Of course, that could change. There could be more, there could be less. Like this current tour, I will be performing acoustically without a band, so keep that in mind as well.

One of my reasons for wanting to move the shows is that I felt it didn’t give American fans much advanced warning, which is something I think important given that if you live in San Diego, for example, it’s better to know in advance when I’m playing in Los Angeles so that, if you’re going to go, you have time to arrange it. The same applies to those living in locations close to those cities I’ll be playing on the east coast.

There is also the matter of just wanting to defuse for a little while and work on some new material that I’ve been penning. I haven’t ruled out doing a short acoustic EP of songs that have fallen between the cracks over the last year, such as If I Was A Tidal Wave and Keira Anne. There may very well be live versions of a few songs from the Massey Hall show that could appear on it as well, but I have yet to go through the recording, so will need time to do that as well.

The EP, if I do it, will most likely be available exclusively through the website and iTunes only. If I get enough demand from fans to make hard copies, I might look at a limited run, but that will depend on interest.

Anyway, happy Halloween to everyone.

When it comes to fantastic shit disturbers, Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo ranks among the best. His entry today entitled The Lobby, Unmasked - The Israel lobby: “We have an ‘unwritten contract’ with the American media” employs Raimondo’s enjoyably brash style, one that is refreshing in a world filled with tempered analysis.

The hot topic of late continues to be Iran and what is, and is not, happening with regards to US internal deliberations regarding military action against it. There is little question that in the event of a strike against Iran, Israel would most certainly be used as a proxy, and that the action itself may be undertaken very much for their benefit. But even then, the fact that the US military is already at what some have called ‘the breaking point’ should also not be overlooked. Even the institution of an air war against Iran would have serious ramifications, and Israel’s involvement in it, were it to occur, would be somewhat disastrous with regards to the reaction of Arab states in the region, not to mention their cooperation, even if tentative and uneasy, with US regional initiatives.

But as Ray McGovern wrote yesterday in an piece entitled Attacking Iran For Israel?, all bets are certainly not off..

“Her claim last week that “the policies of Iran constitute perhaps the single greatest challenge to American security interests in the Middle East and around the world” is simply too much of a stretch.

To gauge someone’s reliability, one depends largely on prior experience. Sadly, Rice’s credibility suffers in comparison with that of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohammed ElBaradei, who insists there is no evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iran.

If this sounds familiar, ElBaradei said the same thing about Iraq before it was attacked. But three days before the invasion, American nuclear expert Dick Cheney told NBC’s Tim Russert, “I think Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong.”

Here we go again. As in the case of Iraq, U.S. intelligence has been assiduously looking for evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran; but, alas, in vain.

Burned by the bogus “proof” adduced for Iraq—the uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes—the administration has shied away from fabricating nuclear-related “evidence.”

Are Bush and Cheney again relying on the Rumsfeld dictum, that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?” There is a simpler answer.

The Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Sallai Meridor, let the cat out of the bag while speaking at the American Jewish Committee luncheon on Oct. 22. In remarks paralleling those of Rice, Meridor said Iran is the chief threat to Israel.

Heavy on the chutzpah, he served gratuitous notice on Washington that effectively countering Iran’s nuclear ambitions will take a “united United States in this matter,” lest the Iranians conclude, “come January ’09, they have it their own way.”

Meridor stressed that “very little time” remained to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. How so?

Even were there to be a nuclear program hidden from the IAEA, no serious observer expects Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon much sooner than five years from now.

Truth be told, every other year since 1995 U.S. intelligence has been predicting that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in about five years.

It has become downright embarrassing — like a broken record, punctuated only by so-called “neo-conservatives” like James Woolsey, who last summer publicly warned that the U.S. may have no choice but to bomb Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons program.

Woolsey, self-described “anchor of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,” put it this way: “I’m afraid that within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they [the Iranians] could have the bomb.”

The day before Meridor’s unintentionally revealing remark, Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated, “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

That remark followed closely on President George W. Bush’s apocalyptic warning of World War III, should Tehran acquire the knowledge to produce a nuclear weapon.

The Israelis appear convinced they have extracted a promise from Bush and Cheney that they will help Israel nip Iran’s nuclear program in the bud before they leave office.

Never mind that there is no evidence that the Iranian nuclear program is any more weapons-related than the one Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld persuaded President Gerald Ford to approve in 1976 for Westinghouse and General Electric to install for the Shah (price tag $6.4 billion).

With 200-300 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, the Israelis enjoy a nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. They mean to keep that monopoly and are pressing for the U.S. to obliterate Iran’s fledgling nuclear program.

Anyone aware of Iran’s ability to retaliate realizes this would bring disaster to the whole region and beyond. But this has not stopped Cheney and Bush before.

The rationale is similar to that revealed by Philip Zelikow, confidant of Condoleezza Rice, former member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and later executive director of the 9/11 Commission. On Oct. 10, 2002, Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia:

“Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat is—it’s the threat to Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name…the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.”

Gareth Porter also offers some insight…

“Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute had been more aggressive than anyone else in arguing that Iraq’s Shi’ites, liberated by U.S. military power, would help subvert the Iranian regime. But in April 2006, he called in a Weekly Standard article for continued bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites until the Iranians stopped rebuilding them.

Within the administration, meanwhile, Wurmser was looking for the opportunity to propose a military option against Iran. In his September 2007 interview with the Telegraph shortly after leaving Cheney’s office, he insisted that the United States must be willing to “escalate as far as we need to go to topple the [Iranian] regime if necessary.”

That opportunity seemed to present itself in the aftermath of Israel’s failed attempt to deal a major blow to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

Neoconservatives aligned with Cheney argued that Iran was now threatening U.S. dominant power in the region, through its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian territory and its nuclear program. They insisted the administration had to push back by targeting Iran’s Quds Force personnel in Iraq, increasing naval presence in the Gulf, and accusing Iran of supporting the killing of U.S. troops.

Although the ostensible rationale was to pressure Iran to back down on the nuclear issue, in light of the previous views, it appears that they were hoping to use military power against Iran to accomplish their original goal of regime change.”

There are those that believe that the use of military force against Iran would be politically disastrous for the Republicans with regards to the upcoming Presidential election in 2008. In my opinion, I think that they have resigned themselves to the fact that they’re going to lose the White House; even more, that the Democrat that succeeds them will be a centrist that will be unable to disengage from those policies that they have enacted in a timely fashion without retaining the ability to point to the Bush administrations disastrous undertakings as the reason why, thus shielding them from a storm of public discontentment.

It’s working. To think that it wouldn’t be would be a stretch. At this point, just like the tactics that were employed to discredit and sideline Hans Blix, the United States is already working to undermine the integrity of the head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, who has claimed that his agency has no evidence that Iran is attempting to build a nuclear weapon. The IAEA is, of course, the UN’s nuclear watchdog…

“Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CNN Sunday that he had no evidence Iran was building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding “fuel to the fire” with their warlike rhetoric.”

The statement was countered by US State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, who said…

“He will say what he will. He is the head of a technical agency. I think we can handle diplomacy on this one. We appreciate the work that the IAEA is performing but it is the member states of the international community that are going to be responsible of the diplomacy with respect to Iran and its nuclear program.”

How well are the efforts of the Bush administration working? Well, according to a recent poll…

“More than half of likely voters in the United States would support a U.S. military strike against Iran to prevent it from building a nuclear weapon, according to a poll released Monday.

The poll found 53 percent of Americans believe it is likely the United States will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the November 2008 presidential election.

The nationwide telephone survey, conducted by polling firm Zogby International, found 52 percent of U.S. adults interviewed would support such a strike.

In the months leading up to the United States’ imposition of fresh sanctions against Iran on Oct. 25, top officials of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney, have issued a series of harsh remarks. Cheney said last week Iran will face “serious consequences,” if “it stays on its present course.”

A very wise man once opined that history repeats itself. In this case, it may very well do just that in a matter of four years.

One wonders if Mohamed ElBaradei’s offices have been bugged too.

Recently, three Pakistanis that had allegedly been recruited to fight in Afghanistan were paraded in front of television cameras by Afghan authorities. They relayed stories about how they were fed false information regarding their recruitment; that nothing they were told turned out to be true when they arrived in Afghanistan to fight, and that they just wanted to go home. There were no questions allowed them by the media, no Afghan official appeared on tape, and yet we are supposed to take their admissions as fact. And yet, when Montreal’s La Presse ran a story yesterday about accounts from captured detainees and the Afghan Human Rights Commission that the Afghan secret services continue to torture prisoners, even those handed over to authorities by Canadian forces, it was immediately dismissed by the government as Taliban propaganda.

We’ve seen this before, of course. When the Globe & Mail first reported that it was taking place it caused quite a stir, one that was addressed by the government in some ways and downplayed by them in others. Unfortunately, it seems that now that they feel they’ve addressed them problem, the chance that it could still exist isn’t something they’re willing to admit, let alone even discuss. And that’s a rather dangerous precedent to set.

The CBC has a rather interesting look today at the growth of Canada’s military exports. If you’re under the impression that we’ve remained a small player in this sector, think again…

“Canada’s military exports have soared in the past decade, a CBC News investigation has found, yet the federal government has not released an annual report on exports of arms and high tech military goods for four years.

Faced with a lack of information from Ottawa, CBC News did its own analysis, by constructing a database from figures kept by the Canada Border Services Agency.

CBC News found that military exports rose 3.5 times between 2000 and 2006. And according to the most recent report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service, Canada was the sixth biggest supplier of arms to the world in 2006.”

To read more on their methodology and conclusions, I encourage you to read the rest of the article.

Obviously, transparency is a very important, and something that we as Canadians should be demanding with regards to this issue.

I suppose I could have given a lecture as to why I don’t believe that we should be involved in combat operations in Afghanistan. I suppose I could have talked about the declination of human rights post 9/11, the dissolution of my marriage, bipolarity, or a host of other dour subjects between songs during my recent performance at Massey Hall. According to the Globe & Mail, it seems their reviewer would have preferred those in attendance to leave with the overwhelming feeling of wanting to slit their wrists rather than laugh at some impromptu between song banter. At least he thought the music was well done.

As most of you that have attended shows are aware, between songs I tend to employ levity more than heavily confront audiences with geopolitical subject matter or analysis of my state of mental health and the struggles that I’ve been through because of it. As far as I’m concerned, the record that I wrote does that in spades, and compounding its message between songs on an ongoing basis would be a little much. Further to that, it would be very difficult to openly discuss songs like Born Losers without delving into very personal aspects of my marriage and my ex-wife – something that I don’t feel is appropriate.

Yesterday we sat on the bus and watched the video of the performance in its entirety. Laughs between songs were rather unanimous, meaning that the painting of the audience’s intellect by the reviewer is about as negative as he seemingly hoped I’d be between songs. Rather hilariously, he also mentioned my use of the word ‘ya’ll’, which is actually an expression that I use in conversation quite a bit, and have my whole life.

As most of you are aware, I use this website as a daily platform regarding my political beliefs and views on world events. In truth, it contains far more entries regarding such subjects than it does my music. And while I think it important to, at times, address audiences about such things, sometimes I find that it’s best to let certain songs speak for themselves and use this website as my primary outlet. Of course, it also has a great deal to do with what sort of frame of mind I’m in as well when I take the stage. In various cities I have gone on at length about, for example, Canada’s role in combat operations in Afghanistan and the state of the mental welfare system in Canada. At some shows I don’t. As I said, it all depends on my state of mind that day. Prior to the Toronto show I posted an entry about developments regarding mounting tensions between Iran and the United States, as well as Russia, and that was the topic on my mind that night. But it didn’t seem particularly applicable to the setting, so I refrained from bringing it up.

Throughout the tour we have, at the merchandise table, offered concert goers literature about The Rideau Institute’s Ceasefire initiative and Naomi Klein’s latest book, The Shock Doctrine, the latter of which I believe we’ve now run out of, if not both. But as is always the case on my tours, I endeavor to promote those things that I believe in – and always will.

If there’s one thing that I want this tour to accomplish it’s the deconstruction of the preconceived notion that I am an entirely one-dimensional person – always negative, always dour, always high minded. As has been evident at shows, I am just like everyone else in more ways than I am unlike them – I joke around a lot, an aspect of my personality that is rarely divulged, and that I speak a certain way, which includes the use of profanity on a rather regular basis, not something that one might automatically assume after reading my entries on this website. I am, like many of the people that come to see me, the product of a rather non-illustrious upbringing, and one that doesn’t shy away from revealing that to audiences. I don’t have a PHD, I never went to University, I worked at gas stations and restaurants and countless other jobs just like most people have. Of course, my parents utterly abhor my employment of expletives, and have my entire life – they are, after all, very proper, old school people. But if there is one thing that remains ever present in my personality, it’s the fact that I am immensely influenced by the surroundings from which I came. Some might ultimately argue that my inability to disassociate myself from it diminishes my credibility with regards to what is commonly termed ones ‘intellectual’ prowess, but in truth that’s simply arrogance on their part. Because to hold such a belief is to discount a great deal of any population, and is a state of mind that I find extremely elitist and counter productive.

I sometimes tell jokes about The Lord Of The Rings. Stop the presses.