Bernie Madoff gets sentenced this week. Personally, I hope that he spends the rest of his life in prison – and not some cushy minimum security facility. He stole $65 billion dollars and ruined the lives of countless people. Surely that rates a cozy cell at Elmira, Auburn, Clinton, or Sing Sing. I really don’t care if he’s a corporate criminal and those facilities are usually reserved for violent offenders. If he gets to spend the rest of his life playing minimum security mini-golf then the injustice will be all the greater.

The question now is – will SEC investigators, some of which were rather cozy with Mr. Madoff in the past, actually go after those that aided him? Because there’s no way in hell he did it by himself, and for the government to allow anyone involved to simply walk would be an utter travesty – not that it’s beyond them.

Today is Casey’s sixth birthday.

While on tour some years ago I found myself at a restaurant in Montreal that sometimes asks celebrities to decorate a dinner plate with a black marker so that it can be displayed. Having done it once before while the Matthew Good Band was still together, I found myself sitting at my table unable to bring myself to doodle something light hearted, as I had done in the past by writing the lyrics to The Future Is X-Rated in a spiral around the plate (if memory serves). So, picking up the marker, I wrote the following passage in bold letters…

“I am eating dinner while the world is at war”.

I don’t think they’ve ever displayed it.

The invasion of Iraq had just occurred. Afghanistan was occupied, and while ‘progress’ was being reported, no end seemed in sight, at least not to those familiar with that nation’s tumultuous history. But there I was, dining at an upscale eatery feeling entirely out of place, my mind bogged down by what was transpiring a world away and the fact that despite the massive protests that had occurred prior to the invasion, the largest of their kind in history to take place on a global scale in defiance of a war that hadn’t even started, the western world seemed to have slipped back into its usual state of unconsciousness the moment it was reported that coalition troops had crossed the threshold.

What else was I going to write?

The world is all about perspective. You can look at it as if it’s flat, recognizing borders, differentiating between governments, religions, and political ideologies – or you can look at it as it appears from space, a singular entity devoid of division, mastered only by the overwhelming forces of its most ancient mathematics.

Death is assured everything, even the world. This planet will, like all of us, succumb in the end. That is the natural order of things, and it is right and proper. Natural selection is a funny thing, even in its most grandiose of undertakings. Were we not naturally programmed to deal death perhaps we would possess the ability to recognize life’s value, but the truth is that we are, as a species, a self fulfilling prophecy all our own. And while the world has been proven round for some time now, it remains undeniably flat in the minds of most.

Being a secular humanist I have always believed that the decision to alter the course of human events has always rested solely with us. But I am also a realist, and am not afraid to admit that we, as a species, may very well be naturally predisposed to see to our own end – simultaneously representing the hunter and prey. For while we possess the ability to reason and an overwhelming capacity for compassion, we commonly only venture into their depths in the wake of our own disregard for them.

One of these days we will go too far. Of course, it will not be a mistake, even though it will be viewed as such at the time. The inevitability of natural selection is embedded within us. It has led us to this precipice for a reason, and like buffalo we will herd ourselves into oblivion all the while wondering – why? And while that most universal of queries has relentlessly consumed us for millennia, rendering us divided and replete with doubt, the irony is that we have always been represented by another ambiguity altogether…

…because.

On Thursday, Simon Jenkins posted an entry over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free delving into the realities of the situation in Afghanistan and the plausibility of foreign military success. Entitled Obama must call off this folly before Afghanistan becomes his Vietnam, it is an extremely well thought out piece.

You know things have become serious when, at prayers today, hard line cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami felt comfortable enough to openly claim that those protesting in Iran are defying God’s law and that opposition leaders should face execution as enemies of the republic.

Defying God’s law? The last time that I checked there was nothing in the Qur’an about the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Republic holding complete religious providence over the entire Islamic faith. In fact, Ayatollah Khamenei isn’t even the “supreme leader” within the context of Shia Islam.

That said, and to my very great disappointment, the employment of USAID might be in the works regarding Iran.

For those of you that that unfamiliar with the U.S. Agency for International Development, which reports to the office of the Secretary of State, it has long been used as an entity to mask covert operations, most commonly by the Central Intelligence Agency. A recent example of its use for such purposes was its role in supporting those that attempted to overthrow Hugo Chavez in 2002.

According to reports, USAID has been in the process of “soliciting applications” in an endeavour to raise $20 million dollars to help “promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in Iran”.

Now, that might not seem strange to anyone given that they’ve been seeking funding for a year, and it must also be pointed out that the President hasn’t sought to sustain “Iran-specific grants” in the 2010 budget, but what can’t be overlooked is that the Near Eastern Regional Democracy Initiative, which doesn’t specify any of the nations that its funding impacts, is being singled out by the administration to be given a $15 million dollar injection of funds.

As I’ve said over the last few weeks, there is absolutely no question that foreign intelligence operatives are in Iran. I would wager that, for the moment, they’re collecting intelligence and helping form a picture of what is happening and how, if it comes to it, the situation can be exploited. Having said that, given what has taken place I’m sure that the CIA is using this opportunity to rebuild its list of assets within the country after an alleged incident in 2004 in which a CIA official in Langley accidentally attached an encrypted list of US assets within the country to an individual that had flipped. According to the account, highlighted in James Risen’s State Of War, which was vigorously denied by the US intelligence community, the incident led to Iranian intelligence rolling up much of the agency’s network in Iran.

While the CIA claimed that Risen’s book contained serious errors in almost every chapter, he was still subpoenaed to appear before a Federal Grand Jury in 2008 to reveal his sources, making the CIA’s assertion rather curious to say the least.

Were I able to literally stand in my inbox this morning, it would have been raining shit on me. The reason? Because last night on Twitter I made a tweet about Michael Jackson’s passing that some thought unwarranted. I wrote – “So I guess this means Peter Pan gets Neverland back.”

I had good reason to.

I will not sit here and deny that Michael Jackson had an enormous impact on popular culture and music – to this day Thriller remains the largest selling album of all time. I will also not sit here and pretend that Michael Jackson didn’t most likely suffer from psychological problems, ones that he was probably deterred from addressing by many of those involved in what was a one man industry. Over time, the fact that those problems were never addressed very likely led to the man’s undoing – but for those that counted on him for a paycheck, I’m sure that their foremost concern was keeping the success train rolling even as he was unravelling. Look no further than Britney Spears for a current example of that phenomenon.

The sort of fame that Michael Jackson endured during his entire life comes at a very high price, no matter how many people believe that being famous is the best thing in the world. Truth be told, the man was in prison from childhood until his death, never knew a normal life, and because he had the financial ability to indulge his fantasies only sank further into a delusionary world. That world could have very well included child molestation. True, he was acquitted of it. That said, OJ was also acquitted of murder.

And that would be why I tweeted what I did. That the term “Neverland” would revert back to Sir James Barrie’s version of it rather than being associated with Michael Jackson’s home. That rather than being tainted by the specter of pedophilia, it would once again become “Never Never Land”, where the Piccaninny’s live and the Jolly Roger roams the seas.

I’ll not beat around the bush. While it’s speculation on my part, Jackson could have very well overdosed on medication that he was taking, medically required or not, could have been suffering from an illness that had been hidden from the media, or could have willfully committed suicide. I highly doubt that the Jackson family will allow the results of the autopsy to be made public, so we’ll probably never know if the cardiac arrest that resulted in his death occurred because of the influence of medication, be it needed or not.

At times like these, people only want to remember the good. But when it comes to art, and artists, what made them what they were cannot be overlooked. Michael Jackson was a very talented man, but that talent came at a price, one that was exposed by his bizarre behaviour over the years. That behaviour was a reflection of the man, and cannot be separated from his work. They are one in the same, just as Francis Bacon’s genius was tainted by dire alcoholism, Rothko’s was fueled by such severe depression that it would result in him shooting himself, and John Lennon struggled with contradictions within himself until the day that he was murdered.

No, an artist’s work cannot be stripped from that which made them great in the first place to placate the needs of those that only want to remember them in a singular way. The sum total of their parts is what makes them memorable, because without all of it converging on a single point within them they would have never produced the art that they did.

To overlook Michael Jackson’s bizarre qualities because he has passed away is to deny that those qualities played a role in his creativity. In truth, the desire to do so is much more a reflection of his admirer’s desire to saint him, to strip him of fault, to disappear those uncomfortable aspects of his personality so that his legacy is untarnished.

William Burroughs shot and killed his common law wife, Joan Vollmer, in Mexico in 1951 while playing a game of “William Tell” at a party. Burroughs had fled the United States to Mexico to escape the possibility of imprisonment in Louisiana after police discovered correspondence in his home between him and Allen Ginsberg regarding the delivery of marijuana. After the shooting, witnesses and officials were bribed to support the falsehood that the gun had gone off by accident. Burroughs would be forced to flee Mexico after his attorney fled back to the US to avoid charges of his own relating to a car accident. In the end, though he had fled the country, he was convicted in absentia of homicide, though his two year sentence would eventually be suspended. It was during his time in Mexico while dealing with the legal ramifications of shooting Vollmer that Burroughs would write Queer, which is now viewed as the pivotal turning point in his literary career.

William Burroughs was a Harvard graduate. He was also a heroin addict. Several years before the Mexico City incident he sold heroin in New York to support his habit. Vollmer, too, was a drug addict, though her addiction was to Benzedrine, which was sold over the counter in those days. It was in New York that he shared an apartment with Jack Kerouac.

As many of you are aware, William Burroughs would go on to write a variety of notable works, including Naked Lunch. Despite his obvious problems with drugs, and the fact that he was a convicted murderer, he still appeared on Saturday Night Live in 1981, in the films Drugstore Cowboy and Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, was featured in U2’s video for Last Night On Earth, and even hung out with Kurt Cobain.

In his later years, many of the photographs taken of him for journalistic and promotional purposes always featured him holding a gun – in obvious reference to his shooting of Vollmer, which, by the end of his life, had been transformed into acceptable legend.

Personally, I have always considered Burroughs a murderer. I have even referenced the shooting of Vollmer, the fact that Burroughs got away with it, and that it became part of his celebrity, in my own work…

“Hey Carmelina
Target practice is for Mexico
And I’ve become spectacular
Which is strange because I feel dumb”

Returning to Michael Jackson, the comparison is simple. Burroughs never had any qualms about admitting that it was Vollmer’s murder that transformed his outlook and forced him to confront his actions, saying later…

“I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan’s death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.”

In Jackson’s case, his ghosts and phantoms were not something that he ever publicly confronted, nor admitted to – which could have included inappropriate sexual behaviour with children. Had his problems been confronted, perhaps he would not have embarked on the destructive physical and quite obvious mental path that he did. In short, had he ever come to terms with himself, perhaps he would still be alive.

In the end, had he done it, would he still have been as loved and admired? Or would the millions that now weep because of his passing have turned their backs on him long ago?

Nothing is created out of nothing. Artists do not simply reach into thin air and capture what others then use to define periods in their lives, their emotions, and even their perceptions of things. They must dig, more often than not in the mud, and in the case of the greatest of them, into places that most would never dare to go.

And so goes the scarecrow.

There are currently 134,000 US troops in Iraq. It’s estimated that by 2010 there will still be more than 100,000 troops stationed in the country. In 2003, the year of the invasion, there were slightly more troops on the ground than there is now.

The Status Of Forces deadline is looming. The bold print seems rather straightforward – all US troops are to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by June 30th, five days from now. The fine print, as I’ve mentioned in the past, is another matter altogether. In truth, some 50,000 US troops will remain in various locations after the deadline, indicating that, like the Surge, SOFA is beginning to look more like PR than reality.

For example, there are 3,000 US troops at FOB Falcon, but US commanders have claimed that even though its’ technically within Baghdad, it’s not within the city proper. Then there’s the whopping 132,000 plus military contractors in the country, 36,000 of them being American, which aren’t even addressed in the agreement. And then there’s the fact that Congress just allotted funds in the latest supplemental bill to accommodate continued military construction.

The big test will come when Iraqis vote in a referendum at the end of July regarding the agreement, a vote that both the US government and members of the Iraqi parliament have worked to postpone. At present, an estimated 73% of Iraqis are against the presence of occupational forces, so if the vote is held the reality is that the agreement will be struck down, and given that US forces would no longer enjoy legal immunity they could be forced to withdraw from the country. If the US refuses to, or looks for a loophole to justify their continued presence – let’s not forget that Congress just gifted the Iraq war effort billions of dollars – things could get quickly out of hand.

…and I know I said that I post something more substantial, but after riding all day in the rain I think I’m just going to have a sandwich and sit in front of the fire.

Going riding this morning. It’s raining. For some reason I’m thrilled about that. I’ll be back later today with something substantial, but until then here are a few article to check out…

- Ex-detainees allege Bagram abuse

- The Afghan-Pakistan militant nexus

- At Least 80 Killed in US Drone Attack

- Loose Ends – The stories we never heard the end of

…and of particular import…

- Iran’s Election Drama More Elaborate Than You Think

Pakistani military operations in the Swat Valley, which the government claims are coming to an end, have produced one of the most significant humanitarian crises in recent memory – and one that is going largely unnoticed.

After just the second week of the offensive, some 95% of the region’s 3 million inhabitants were displaced. During the first week of operations, 1 million people were displaced, a figure that is roughly equal to one fourth of those displaced during the entire Iraq war.

The Pakistani government isn’t known for its forethought with regards to the displacement of civilians, as was demonstrated during last year’s much smaller offensive in the Bajaur Agency during which it carried out operations against a very small insurgent force. Those Bajauri that fled the fighting ended up in many of the same refugee camps that are now populated by Swatis that have fled.

To put the immensity of the crisis into context, it is the worst of its kind since the Rwandan crisis in the 90’s. But unlike Rwanda, the speed at which it has occurred is unprecedented.

The United Nations has issued a warning that those displaced are facing a situation that could result in significant deaths if the international community does not begin to take the situation seriously. At present, only 35% of the funding requested by the United Nations to deal with the problem has been met.

Not to be a skeptic, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. We are, after all, talking about The War on Terror. As far as the West is concerned, the specter of 9/11 still casts a pall over almost everything to do with it, which is most likely why the crisis in Pakistan has been so overlooked.

The Pakistani military is currently gearing up for another offensive in South Waziristan, which many believe will rival the scope of the Swat Valley operation. That said, thousands have already begun to flee the region fearing what is to come, most into areas that are completely unable to deal with an influx of refugees.

Unfortunately, it looks as though the problem is likely to get much worse.