With four days left, October has become the deadliest month in Afghanistan for the United States since the country was invaded. I was going to finish that sentence with “eight years ago”, but find it almost impossible to type anymore.

Eight years – the same amount of time it that took the American colonies to win independence from the British and two years shy of American involvement in Vietnam, which represent the two longest conflicts in the nation’s history. Until now, that is. As of this fall, the war in Afghanistan has joined that illustrious group.

Some might accuse me of picking gnat shit out of pepper, but given the inclusion of JTF2 in joint operations in late 2001, Afghanistan represents the longest conflict in Canadian history – period.

The reason that it doesn’t phase us is that the casualty rates aren’t significant enough to warrant alarm. That, coupled with the fact that life on this side of the pond has gone on pretty much as it always has, has marginalized the reality of foreign conflicts with regards to public perception. Sure, we see it on the news, read about it online and in the paper, but its gruesome reality is kept from us.

On September 17, 1862, along a creek called Antietam in the State of Maryland, 23,000 Americans fell in twelve hours. It remains, 146 years later, the costliest day in American history. Not even the losses sustained on D-Day rival those of Antietam.

In the wake of it, photographer Matthew Brady held a photographic exhibition in New York entitled “The Dead Of Antietam”. Nothing like them had ever been seen before. But while the initial shock produced by the images was significant, in the years that followed the American public would become so desensitized to such horrors that the importance of Brady’s effort would be lost. In truth, his was the first real undertaking to show the public the realities of what the war looked like. The irony, of course, is that 146 years later such an exhibition would never be allowed.

The powers that be claim that to show the truth is disrespectful to the fallen. That, of course, is nothing more than a mechanism of control used to ensure that the public is not exposed to the reality of what transpires in places like Afghanistan. Unlike Brady’s exhibition, which was confined to a single city, were such images released today they would garner global attention and most certainly produce significant domestic distress. That, too, is another justification used as to why such images are not shown, but ultimately begs the question – if we can send young men and women to war, why are we shielded from the reality of what befalls them? The answer to the questions is straight forward – because to support a thing without context is easy. To support it with full knowledge of the cost given the context is another matter altogether.

October 27, 2009

One thing that I am constantly asked is if I am a religious person. I have answered that question in the past, but have rarely gone into detail. That said, having been asked the question numerous times of late, I thought that I would address it.

The most common question that I’m asked is if I am a Christian, or if I believe in the Christian God. Being that one deity is the historical base of three of the world’s organized religions, my answer would be that I am neither Christian, Jew, nor Muslim. Having said that, as far as the existence of God is concerned, I do not believe in the existence of a greater power as the application of reason dictates that the existence of such a power is about as likely as the existence of dragons, unicorns, or Leprechauns. If you can’t prove the existence of something then one must rely on faith. When one relies on faith over reason, faith becomes a force of divergence, not uniformity.

Approaching the subject from a Darwinian point of view, I believe that the human race is actually parasitic in nature. True, we possess consciousness, or at least believe that we are the only creatures on the planet that do, though I would argue against that position, but the fact remains that as a species we play no fundamental role within the context of the world’s natural schematic. In short, we exist outside of the natural order of things, and have done so for millennia. Unlike any other species, we are the only ones that possess the ability to transform the world in a truly significant way to suit our needs, and in doing so have become a truly unique parasitic species.

Now, some might point to the above and claim that such an argument aids in the justification of the existence of a higher power. The truth is, unfortunately, that simply because I believe the human race to be uniquely parasitic, in that were we to vanish the natural world would be better off, that doesn’t trump the application of reason when confronting the issue. While other species are able to communicate on a variety of very primitive levels, there are others that possess the ability to use highly complex communicative structures that are entirely divergent from our own.

The prime example would, of course, be dolphins, the existence of which dates back some ten million years. What we know with regards to modern sonar has been entirely gleaned from aquatic species, whose command of it is still far superior to ours. Dolphins not only possess the ability to communicate with one another using sound, but have such advanced sonic capabilities that they can basically “see” the human heart beating while in the water, see human bone structure, and so forth, all through the use of an inherent ability that we’re unable to duplicate. They also use more of their brains than we do, which further cements the possibility that they are sentient beings that simply evolved in a completely different fashion given their natural environment – that being the ocean, which covets more of the earth’s surface than anything else. Like us, they are mammals, and like us they also have the ability to commit suicide by simply choosing not to breathe, something that has been displayed by dolphins in captivity that suffer from depression due to their confinement.

Now, if a species other than ourselves can willfully chose to end their lives based on emotion, then the belief that human existence is the work of an all powerful being that supposedly made us in their image must be reasonably questioned. For if it can be argued that God created dolphins as well, then we are placed in the position of questioning the popular belief that we are singularly unique with regards to complex emotions and communication. In short, God could be a dolphin, and if God could be a dolphin then one must reasonably question the basis of a plethora of religious ideologies.

So where does that leave me? Well, having spent much of my adult life examining most of the world’s foremost religions, it leaves me in a bit of a complex spot. First, I believe in the inherent power of nature, that we are a small piece of its puzzle, and that our arrogance has led us to become one of its greatest enemies. Second, I believe that through the application of reason people possess the ability to solve their own problems. Standing in the way, of course, is the lack of willful participation in that process based on the refusal to universally embrace it. Lastly, I believe that death is part of a natural process, not one that leads to an eternity spent in bliss or agony. That despite our widespread fear of its inevitability, the problem lies not in the need to justify it through the existence of a higher power, but our inability to simply view it as the eventuality of a cycle that is applicable throughout the natural world. For me, there is no fear in facing that conclusion simply because that is the natural order of things. Getting hit by a bus, death in war, or by famine – such are events prevalent because of the state of our species, not those dictated by the unknown ‘wisdoms’ of a higher power.

Those that cannot fathom the application of reason require unreasonable assurances with regards to most things. That is the reason why religion exists. If there is one thing that we cannot handle it’s the unknown. Therefore we create safety mechanisms with which to circumvent our fear of it.

We are all going to die. That process begins the day every person is born. What we do with the time that we have here is the gift that we have been given through a significant stroke of evolutionary luck. Worrying what comes afterwards is therefore life’s greatest enemy. Though there are those that claim we are different, we are not. We are all in the same boat. The question is – where do you want to sail it?

October 10, 2009

Five high school kids with moxie could probably have physically subdued Robert Dziekanski – even with a ‘deadly’ stapler in his hands. Thus, the question must be asked – why couldn’t four RCMP officers, all of whom are professionally trained to deal with such situations?

I find it utterly ridiculous that this whole ‘he was wielding a stapler’ nonsense is even being seen as relevant. Seriously, what was the man going to do, fire stationary staples at them? With such a ‘deadly weapon’ in his hands the RCMP obviously had no choice by to light him up with enough electricity to kill him. Hell, someone could have been ‘stapled’! It’s as if this now famed ‘stapler’ were not a stationary stapler at all, but rather a high-powered industrial staple gun that just happened to be left at an unattended desk at an international airport.

Then there’s the ‘he was coming towards us’ defense – the deadly stapler in one hand, the other a raised fist. It’s amazing that the officers were able to think clearly enough not to pull out their side arms and just drop the ‘psychopath’ on the spot. Thankfully they had enough sense to just taser him four times.

You know, in the early 80’s I once saw three police officers get a pretty large guy into the back of a cruiser that was so high on PCP that during the ordeal one of his legs and one of his arms was broken. Being that he was so high he fought them with almost superhuman strength, completely unaware that he was injured, but that didn’t deter the officers from physically confronting him, subduing him, and getting him into the back of that car. All three of them were sporting injuries of their own after the fact as well.

Now – that was on the street. They didn’t know if he had a knife on him or anything else for that matter. If you want to talk about ‘coming toward’ them, the guy they faced down that evening certainly did – with a vengeance. But those boys handled it, and everyone that witnessed it left with a lot of respect for them – and that included the local hoods whose haunt the entire incident occurred in front of.

You know what the most amazing thing about that incident was? That after it ended one of the officers approached us, as we were young, and actually asked us if we were all right. I mean, here’s this cop that’s been hit in the face repeatedly asking us, who just stood there and watched, if we were okay.

Those were real cops.

Robert Dziekanski was in an international airport. The chance of him having a serious weapon? 0%. So he picks up a stapler, moves towards four armed and professionally trained police officers in a fit of utter exhausted exasperation and winds up dead. Forget that he didn’t speak a word of English, didn’t understand a thing they were saying, and had been in that airport for god knows how long after getting off a transcontinental flight without anyone helping him. None of that matters. Three RCMP officers demonstrated to me more than twenty five years ago that were they to have handled that situation, things would have ended quite differently and Robert Dziekanski would still be alive. So you tell me – why did four RCMP officers think it necessary to taser a man that not only could they have physically subdued, but are freaking trained to?

It must have been the stapler.

“Kosteckyj said initial 911 calls about Dziekanski throwing furniture around were exaggerated, and asked Bentley whether approaching a subject without gathering any information was good police work.

Bentley said there wasn’t enough time to properly assess what was happening.” – CBC.

Not enough time? What, was he wired with fucking C4? Did he have an Uzi in each hand trained on 50 preschoolers? Not enough time to properly assess what was happening? The man was alone in a secured area, how in the hell does that translate to “there wasn’t enough time to properly assess what was happening”? Were there dead fucking bodies on the ground? Were the walls covered in blood? Or was it that that stapler was just sitting there begging to be picked up so that it could cause significant office supply damage?

Who responded to that call – 12 year olds?

A man lost is life because four trained police officers didn’t have the guts to do their job. Without hesitation they thought only of their own safety in a situation in which their safety was not, in any way, significantly threatened as far as police work goes. They hit Dziekanski four times with a taser while not one of them thought it prudent to attempt to physically subdue him. That’s one unarmed Polish immigrant (well, armed if you take the stapler into account) and four RCMP officers. On the streets those aren’t even odds, it’s a foregone conclusion what’s going to happen in a four on one situation – unless you’re facing down Superman.

What a disgrace.

March 2, 2009 70 Comments

In 1991, then President George Bush Sr. placed a ban on news organizations showing the images of US war dead returning to the United States. The Department of Defense has now lifted that ban, though family members of fallen soldiers still have the right to have the images of their loved ones banned upon request.

There are those that believe that the images of the fallen are both unnecessary and disrespectful, a position with which I completely disagree. The human cost of war is something that should never be hidden from the public, especially one that since the middle of the last century has never had to witness the prolonged ravages of those conflicts in which they have participated.

There are good wars and bad wars – and to be truthful, it is commonly the popularity of a conflict that often dictates the public’s exposure to it. Images of US soldiers half buried in the sands of Normandy are not banned from history books, and that is something that should speak volumes about the political ramifications of exposing the American public to uncensored images of US military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan – that when confronted by such images the public begins to seriously question the reasons for war, and many begin to weigh the human cost against the justifications given them by government.

During Vietnam, television revolutionized everything. American families were exposed to terrible images on the nightly news, something that would have a profound affect on the American public and ultimately lead to the antiwar movement ballooning to include Americans from all walks of life. Had the media been ‘handled’ during Vietnam, as it has been since the invasion of Afghanistan, the likelihood of that happening would have been significantly reduced, if not overwhelming altered altogether.

To be honest, the true horror of war cannot be captured by the images of flag draped coffins. They are, in the end, nothing more than sterilized monuments easily dismissed. Were one to look at a picture of six million coffins piled upon one another the impact would not be as significant as images of the reason why six million coffins were required in the first place.

Ultimately, it is quite simple. Reality is cruel and to be sheltered from it produces nothing more than human beings whose learned silence provides pretext. There are two truths to which you can cling.

The first is sheltered.

The second is not.

February 26, 2009 14 Comments

After finishing all the bass tracks for the record last night I decided to drive home for my day off. Sleeping in a proper bed was a relief, to say the least. A little laundry, a lot of not moving, you get the picture. Tomorrow I’ll head back into town to start on guitars, which I’m looking forward to.

Counting The Dead

I once believed that history was the study of past human affairs and their relation to the present and future. But to be honest, I am beginning to believe that it is just the academic practice of counting the dead.

The more death, the more momentous the historic event.

Which is studied more – the civil rights movement or the Second World War? The suffrage movement or the crusades? Religion’s messages of love and compassion or its intolerance of others?

We are vile little creatures with a predilection for death. Unless, that is, we are the ones being killed. Only then does it becomes devoid of fascination.

Some 900 people, penned up in the world’s largest ghetto, have been killed over the last 17 days by a nation that possesses an overwhelming military advantage. The full measure of that military’s might has been unleashed on 1.5 million people unable to escape the 139 square mile strip of land in which they are trapped. There is no where to run, not even the sea offers the possibility of escape.

What is happening in Gaza right now is basically akin to placing a boat in a large tank filled with fish and then lobbing grenades into the water and watching as their carcasses rise to the surface. There are numerous types of fish in the tank, some rather unpleasant, some that gnaw away at the hull of your boat, but targeting them does not preclude killing the others. Being that they’re in that tank, and they’ve nowhere to go, their fate is the same.

Hamas has been lobbing cheaply made missiles into Israel for some time – that fact is the cornerstone of Israel’s current grenade fishing expedition. Never mind that those rockets have killed less than 30 people in 20 years, the death of hundreds of innocents in Gaza, many of them children, is justifiable because the word terrorism is in play. Thus, to kill terrorists the death of innocents is unfortunate, but necessary, collateral damage.

Were every member of Hamas in Gaza to commit suicide simultaneously, how long would it take for the face of everyday life in Gaza to change? A month? Six months? A year? Five years? Would Gaza become a world financial center? Would job opportunities for its 60% unemployed suddenly materialize? And if they did, how many of those jobs would be working in Israeli houses, on Israeli farms, or in Israeli factories? Would Gazans still have to endure the humiliation of passing through Israeli checkpoints every day, their every move monitored? In short – at what point would the people of Gaza actually be free?

If history is the practice of counting the dead then hundreds of Gazans have been freed over the last two and a half weeks. Thus, they no longer have to worry about the future.

January 11, 2009 102 Comments