MATTHEWGOODONLINE

I watched Anton Corbijn’s Control last night and was mesmerized by it. Truth be told, I had forgotten the impact that Joy Division had on me in me in my youth - the simplicity of their music and yet its mesmerizing power. The only downside to the film was the fact that during the closing credits a cover of Shadowplay by The Killers was included. I mention that only because, to me, The Killers are a poor man’s version of Joy Division and have built a career on resurrecting something that others did far better, and with far greater risk, thirty years ago.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Joy Division I urge you to head directly to iTunes and purchase The Best Of Joy Division as a place to start. Once you do that, listen to Transmission, which was released as a single in 1979, at a volume that will piss off everyone within a 1 mile radius. Either that or watch them perform it live below…

Joy Division’s catalogue is small, consisting of only two LP’s and a handful of singles, though what they began would ultimately produce a group that would go on to sell millions of records and influence an entire generation - New Order, which consisted of Joy Division’s remaining original members following Ian Curtis’ suicide with the addition of Gillian Gilbert. Truth be told, had Curtis lived, Joy Division may have very well outdone New Order’s global success.

All of that said, the film was very well done. One aspect of it that I truly appreciated was that Curtis’s widow, Deborah, who helped produce the film, and whose book it was based on, was extremely open with regards to the extra marital relationship that Curtis had with Annik Honoré, what she meant to him, and how the strife caused by it truly affected him.

One thing about Ian Curtis that I have always admired was his dislike of fame and for admitting that Joy Division’s growing popularity was something that he felt suffocating. At the time of his suicide the band had gained notoriety but did not enjoy the sort of sales that are usually equated with a band of significant popularity. Even at that level, Curtis found it difficult to cope. Coupled with his battle against epilepsy and the stresses of his personal relationships, his death seemed an inevitability in many ways. Unfortunately, as is the case throughout modern music history, his suicide cemented Joy Division’s place in history instead of providing a wakeup call to the realities of what can happen to artists when their personal difficulties are given less attention than the pressures placed upon them to placate audiences.

US Army active duty suicides were up in 2007, according to Pentagon officials, surpassing the number of suicides in 2006, reaching 108. And to think that not too long ago there were actual discussions taking place at to the merits of post-traumatic stress disorder. One truly unfortunate aspect of this news is that a quarter of those that took their own lives did so while in Iraq.

While on the subject of Iraq, many of you are probably aware that former Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book makes some interesting assertions about the Bush Administration’s reasons for going to war in Iraq and the way in which the war was promoted and planned. Not surprisingly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is defending the administration claiming that the fundamental reason for invading Iraq in 2003 was the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Her logic? That you can’t look at it from a current point of view, but rather one prior to the invasion given the intelligence available.

Ya, Curveball was an amazingly reliable source, Condi.

Rice also employed the term ‘liberated’ with regards to the invasion and occupation. Five years, and countless lives after the ‘liberation’ of Iraq, it remains the most dangerous place in the world. So much so that millions of Iraqis have fled ‘liberated’ Iraq.

Of course, this is where those with no leg to stand on will point to the tyrannical realities of the Hussein regime and claim that his removal from power was paramount, that he was responsible for mass murder and a laundry list of other crimes.

And that’s true. I’m not going to argue that at all. But having said that, let’s have a little fun with a timeline regarding a horrible event that many pro-war pundits like to use as an example of why the Hussein regime needed to be overthrown.

1) In 1988 the Kurdish village of Halabja was gassed. Thousands were killed and injured in the attack, which was condemned throughout the world.

2) After the attack, Congress voted to stop all military and financial assistance to the Hussein regime.

3) President Ronald Reagan vetoed it.

4) The United States continued to aid the regime of Saddam Hussein.

This is fact, not fiction, and it would be well of those that believe that the removal of Saddam Hussein was of paramount importance to remember that the United States had dealings with Mr. Hussein as far back as the mid 1960’s.

You do not get to help create and feed monsters only to claim that history is inconsequential when it doesn’t suit your hegemonic objectives. Unless, of course, you’re the most powerful country in the world. Then you can get away with just about anything – including rewriting history, or simply making it disappear.

9/11 did more than just blind a nation, allowing one of the most dangerous foreign policy doctrines in US history to be instituted. It also largely rendered history moot. And that, no matter what the occurrence, is a very dangerous thing indeed.

A few months ago I talked about Megan Meier, a young girl who encountered abuse from a classmate’s mother via MySpace. That abuse eventually led to Megan committing suicide, and sparked a whole series of internet debates about where the fault for something like that lies and how accountable social networks should be for the actions of their users.

Today Facebook announced that they will be implementing over 40 safeguards to help protect its users from sexual predators and online cyberbullying:

Facebook, the world’s second-largest social networking Web site, will add more than 40 safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies, attorneys general from several states said Thursday.

Facebook and officials in 49 states and the District of Columbia agree to safeguards to protect young users.

The changes include banning convicted sex offenders from the site, limiting older users’ ability to search online for subscribers under 18 and building a task force seeking ways to better verify users’ ages and identities.

“The agreement marks another watershed step toward social networking safety, protecting kids from online predators and inappropriate content,” said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who announced the agreement Thursday with his counterparts in several other states.

Obviously I think that’s a huge step forward for the internet, especially since both Facebook and MySpace have agreed to adopt the guidelines set out in the agreement. And while it’s impossible to protect everyone from harm on these networks, I definitely think it’s a move in the right direction.

For those of you that don’t know, this is what an SKS looks like…

The SKS fires 7.62mm rounds, the standard round size for most combat weapons – the M16, AK-47, etc. It’s magazine has a 10 round integral box capacity. Firearm enthusiasts in the United States passionately argue that the SKS is not an ‘assault rifle’, as assault rifles have ‘selective fire’, meaning that they can be set to fully automatic or semi-automatic. The SKS, without being modified, is a semi-automatic weapon at the point of sale in the US.

Nevertheless, it was an SKS that 19-year-old Robert Hawkins from Bellevue, Nebraska, used to gun down eight innocent people in an Omaha shopping mall before taking his own life.

As is commonly the case, those who knew Hawkins claim that he was a quiet boy, one that loved animals, but one that was not without his problems. He was solitary, drank, and suffered bouts of depression. Prior to the shooting he had lost his job at McDonalds, broke up with his girlfriend, and was living with a friend’s family…

“His friend’s mother, Debora Maruca Kovac, told the Associated Press news agency that when he first came to live with them, “he was introverted, a troubled young man who was like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted”.

She said he phoned her about 1300 on Wednesday, telling her that he had left a note for her in his bedroom. She tried to get him to explain.

“He said, ‘It’s too late’,” and then hung up, she told CNN.

In the note, she said, Hawkins had written that “he was sorry for everything, that he didn’t want to be a burden to anybody, he loved his family, he loved all of his friends”.

The note went on to say he wanted to be famous, she said.”

I am, by no means, excusing the actions of Robert Hawkins. What he did was reprehensible. In the end he took his own life, but not before robbing eight others of theirs, robbing eight families of loved ones, and forever shattering the lives of those wounded in the shooting, those who witnessed it, and everyone besides that it will impact. But the question has to be asked – what possesses a young man to go on a suicidal shooting rampage in hopes of securing fame, even if cloaked in infamy? In fact, what possesses any young person to go on a shooting rampage as a way to attain some sort of finality? Is it because they were shit on? Is it because they felt that no one cared? Was it because, at a crucial moment in their development, one, or more, people failed them when they shouldn’t have?

There are, of course, the standard excuses that are relied upon so that the actual roots of the problems that plague everything from inner cities to troubled youths in Middle America don’t have to be faced – video games, music, film, and so forth. But those are simply cop-outs, conveniences that are used to justify that which would actually take real effort to confront. While we swim in the perception of our own societal perfection, the fact that it is rotting away from beneath us remains not merely overlooked, but willfully ignored.

Youth today live in a world of fear, a world of lies, a world of engineered wars, false hopes, false beliefs, and view those that promote such nonsense for what they are – full of shit. What else, given that reality, is there to breed but apathy, exhaustion, and desperation? Contentment is something purchased, that is the reality that young people today have been bombarded with, and to find oneself in the position, even as a teenager, of believing that failure is more probable that success is something so utterly damaging that it’s no wonder that the suicide rate is what it is, that kids are being put on medication to combat depression on an unprecedented scale, and that acts of senseless violence have become more common.

It is impossible to tell a child that the future is theirs to shape when they are given a block of stone and no chisel. Even worse, no idea of even how to sculpt.

Those steeped in religion will claim that the problem lies in a lack of religion. Those steeped in the ideological will claim that the problem lies in a lack of tradition. But neither has much to offer besides one-sided placebos in a world that grows more diverse and interconnected by the second.

Ultimately, and though it might be a bitter pill to swallow because it’s easier to allow anger to rule our feelings in such instances, one has to ask what it would have taken to keep that rifle out of that boy’s hands? And by that I am not suggesting that gun regulation is my primary point, though it is certainly one that must not be discounted. Simply that if he were given a chisel and some direction, eight people might still be alive.

A while ago I wrote an entry about Megan Meier, a 13 year old girl who was driven to commit suicide by means of a fake MySpace user account.

Megan, Image from CNN

A few minutes ago I read this article which indicates that no one involved in this tragedy will be prosecuted whatsoever.

St. Charles County, Missouri, Prosecuting Attorney Jack Banas said an 18-year-old woman posed as “Josh” on MySpace to find out what Megan was saying about a neighbor’s daughter.

The message said Megan was “mean” to her friends, Banas said.

“There is no way that anybody could know that talking to someone or saying that you’re mean to your friends on the Internet would create a substantial risk,” Banas said. “It certainly created a potential risk and, unfortunately for the Meiers, that potential became reality. But under the law we just couldn’t show that.”

But Banas said that conclusion doesn’t mean no one is to blame. “Regardless of what we can charge or what we can’t charge, there is no question the adults should have said something to stop this,” he said.

Asked whether he is satisfied with laws pertaining to the case, Banas said, “The bottom line is there are some — I think — loopholes that I think need to be cleaned up.”

Obviously this whole incident clearly demonstrates that the laws in this area are in serious need of a massive overhaul. It’s hard for me to fathom how a group of people can psychologically abuse a little girl to the point where she kills herself and somehow get off without even a slap on the wrist.

I sincerely hope that this isn’t entirely over, and that additional efforts will be taken to bring about either prosecution of those involved or changes in the laws that apply (or rather should apply) to a case like this.

I came across this article the other day, and found it particularly distressing given the prevalence of online social websites such as Facebook and MySpace these days:

Megan Meier thought she had made a new friend in cyberspace when a cute teenage boy named Josh contacted her on MySpace and began exchanging messages with her.

Megan, a 13-year-old who suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder, corresponded with Josh for more than a month before he abruptly ended their friendship, telling her he had heard she was cruel.

The next day Megan committed suicide. Her family learned later that Josh never actually existed; he was created by members of a neighborhood family that included a former friend of Megan’s.

What’s exceedingly cruel is that the fake account was created not just by a girl at Megan’s school, but was also created in conjunction with that girl’s mother. The reason for creating it, according to that mother was because “she wanted to gain Megan’s confidence to know what Megan was saying about her own child online.”

While still inexcusable, given my own experiences in elementary school, I can at least understand kids saying mean things to each other. But it’s hard for me to fathom how any parent could deliberately attack someone else’s child by repeatedly sending horrible messages to them:

Someone using Josh’s account was sending cruel messages. Then, Megan called her mother, saying electronic bulletins were being posted about her, saying things like, “Megan Meier is a slut. Megan Meier is fat.”

The final straw for Megan, according to her parents, was a message she received from Josh:

Her father said he found a message the next day from Josh, which he said law enforcement authorities have not been able to retrieve. It told the girl she was a bad person and the world would be better without her, he has said.

While I do not have any children of my own, I have a nine year old niece back home that means the world to me. She has spent her whole life surrounded by close friends and relatives who love her to pieces. She goes out of her way to help others, and smiles at everything she possibly can in this world. To think that in a few years she will probably be on a few of these social websites, potentially dealing with situations like this is an absolutely sickening thought that has lately been causing me a great deal of stress. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be a parent, to be constantly trying to protect your child from harm, only to know that there’s a limit to the protection that they can ultimately provide.

Megan’s death was tragic, but was it unavoidable? Where does the responsibility ultimately lie for her protection? Her parents sound like they loved her, and tried to find a balance between protection and her being involved with social activities such as online communities. And yet this still this happened. Should these social websites take a more active role in protecting children?

How many emails a day are governments filtering, looking for keywords about terrorism and who knows what else? We balk at these measures because they invade our privacy, and are outside of our control. But surely on a website where membership is voluntary there should be allowances for filtering emails or whatever else can be done to protect these children from these types of cruelty. I mean seriously, shouldn’t emails containing the word “slut” in a 13 year old girl’s inbox trigger something or someone?

When the dust settles from what happened to Megan, I really hope that some of the social networks will step up and propose measures to limit this from happening. If I was a parent, I would definitely think twice about letting my kids anywhere near these websites today.

There are more ways for a war to kill soldiers than death in a firefight, ambush, shelling, or bombing. In many cases it can rob them of themselves, leaving little trace of the person that existed beforehand. Sometimes it can rob them of relationships, of limbs and other body parts, and yes, even their sanity.

Sometimes the fatalities of a war go unnoticed entirely, domestic statistics that are never pondered by the public at large. I am, of course, referring to suicide.

According to a recent investigative report by CBS, the suicide rate of US veterans was an astronomical 120 a week in 2005, some 6256 veterans that year alone – more than the total US death toll of the Iraq war. The report uses statistics that date as far back as 1995.