What else is left to do?

It pains me to have to write another one of these. I fear this will not be the last.

Ephraim Brown was sitting on a fence during a party when an exchange of gunfire between supposed gang members erupted. A stray bullet found its way into the boy's neck, extinguishing his life and his potential. Ephraim was only eleven years old; he is now another martyr in the crusade to rid the world of criminals without addressing the motivators of crime.

The death of this boy, along with the deaths of every youth by violent means, be it gang-related, individually motivated or state-sponsored, has made for another conversation piece among those of us who have never experienced the loss of a close friend or relative in such a manner. Many of us find ourselves sitting at home, swallowing whatever our mass media barons spoon-feed us on the tragedy of this loss, the merits or absurdities of gun control, the significance of police presence, the need for harsher punishment, and so on, and so forth, and pass judgment accordingly, with little or no appreciation of the situation at hand and the events leading to this seemingly senseless act.

Your trusted sources of information will never tell you how and why these individuals had pistols in their hands, nor how they learned to settle disputes with bullets, nor subsequently why young Ephraim Brown is dead, for, if they did, your perceptions of the market economy, of the rule of law, of society in general will all be turned on their ear. For some of you, what I am about to say may seem trite, as I trust you've seen me rehash this argument over and over, but most of us still don't get it, so I am forced to say it yet again:

As far as I'm concerned, arguments favouring gun control, police presence, harsher penalties all bypass the issue at hand: the culture we've created. We cry out for tighter control of weapons, but don't ask why we have these instruments whose sole purpose is to maim or kill. We cry out for a larger police presence and tougher sentencing, but do these actually deter would-be criminals?

We may pride ourselves on the rule of law, but, as you business folk can attest, the bottom line is the bottom line. Guns have been as vital to the procurement of narcotics as they have been to the procurement of the raw materials in our everyday consumables. There is a market for drugs; similarly, there is a market for guns - there is also a market for stories of tragedy... what would our media barons do without being able to scare us with these grim tales? As long as criminal behaviour remains lucrative, we will continue to lose souls such as young Ephraim Brown.

Our market economy, with the promise of individual riches, has supplied the concrete and rebar for the barriers we construct to detach ourselves from each other. The notion of "every man for himself" - you can draw your conclusions as to why I made reference to the male - is killing us. To most of us, Ephraim Brown is a face we saw on the television or in the newspaper with a short blurb attached to it. To his parents, though, he was a son; to his peers, a friend, a brother. Imagine pointing a firearm at a rival gang member, or an enemy combatant, or a bystander: instead of searching for reasons as to why you should extinguish the life you see before you, imagine what it is that binds you to her or him. Would you shoot your sister? your brother? your friend? your father or mother?

Until we get our collective act together, we will continue to see stories such as this one, the war drums will continue beating, and mother and fathers will continue to have to lay their children to rest. We all lost Ephraim Brown, just as we all lost Jordan Manners earlier this summer, just as we all lost Jane Creba on that fateful Boxing Day, just as we all lost our brothers and sisters who don't return from the battlefield, just as we all lost those who aren't worthy of being headline news. We are all responsible for the loss of each and every one of the aforementioned souls.

Ephraim, I've said this to others, and, sadly, I must say this to you: may you one day rest in peace.

Freedom

I wanted to write a little on what the word "freedom" meant to me. I've been struggling for a little while trying to find the words to do my thoughts justice. Finding words, forming sentences to explain my thoughts - "autosaved "by Blogger at 22:52; I hope my words find those good folks well - cause me great difficulty, to a point where I am often deemed "stupid", so bear with me as I attempt to share what I've learned about "freedom" - autosaved again at 22:54; they must really like what I have to say.

Ahem...

What does "freedom" mean to you? If asked, some might answer financial independence from any and all employers, or lack of government intervention in one's life, or the liberty to fuck as many people as one pleases. I can't help but ponder the absurdity of our notion of "freedom", for said freedom always seems to be dependent on something. For instance, how can one claim to be "free" with an insatiable desire for money or sex or both? How can one be "free" when she or he is being told what is "right" and what is "wrong" by someone else who likely does not know what it means to be her or him?

I realize I'm using an awful lot of quotation marks. I was taught to use them to surround words whose definitions carry interchangeable criteria. This is part of the absurdity to which I alluded earlier. But I digress...

What happened to "freedom" from dependency? Granted, we do have needs - nourishment, safety, love, compassion, to name a few... there's a reason we, like our canine counterparts, travel in packs - but how much more beyond the essentials? Why does buying a television set and a cable hook-up give us a sense of "freedom" when they do nothing more than affix us to our comfortable furniter for copious amounts of time? How would we feel if we found ourselves cut off from coffee or petroleum for the day? Fasting is more than doctrine to get you to behave: it's to remind us of our dependencies and (hopefully) teach us restraint. That's "freedom" for you.

What happened to "freedom" from ourselves? Literally. I'm not shitting you. We're so consumed by ourselves, our desires, our aversions, we have little or no sense of the desires and aversions of those around us. Face it: we can each of us try to live in isolation, but it's not that much fun, especially when we're maiming and killing for the luxuries of said isolation. Luxuries? They're manufactured on lies, sold by lies, and allow us to lose ourselves in lies.

"Freedom", in the conventional sense, is one great lie, but it doesn't have to be, not if we free ourselves from ourselves, from what has been ingrained within each of us, and we only start doing that when we start listening to one another and the world around us. I may be the centre of my own existence, but I'm not the centre of existence.

I hope my words succeed in illustrating my thoughts and feelings. I can't always find the right things to say, but I have to say something.

I wish to leave you with the following on "freedom". Those who have seen Easy Rider may recognize this one:

That's what's it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

Pleasant dreams, everyone.

Read this!

I stumbled upon this diatribe on a Toronto message board. You can formulate your own opinion on it. You can probably guess this was written by a man.

All text is original.

Male Rights/Evolution = suppression of the goddess

That's the only way I see this world turning around before a calamity befalls us all. I think women are too much in control of this society -- either directly or concurrently by them sexually selecting men to be sex driven creatures so they can manipulate. Before you vomit out relics like "you're a misogynist" blah blah blah or other ad hominums here's my argument -- I got facts that will strengthen my position during thread development, but I choose the subjective and empirical in my OP because I'm sure most people can relate similar experiences with that gender.

Everywhere you see sin and evil you see a woman right there. On the street corners, in the media, in the clubs, all providing the fuel for the moral degeneracy and turning this world into Sodom and Gomorrah.

Since the 60's this world has progressively turned into a fetid shithole! the only shift I can see was womans liberation and birth control

I think it's in womans inherent nature to only do evil and operate out of sadism. This is why they flourish at human resource type jobs where they can fire a man who has kids and a mortgage to sustain and go suck the bosses dick 5 minutes later and think nothing of it.

This isn't an original thought. Apparently God himself believed it. Judaism gave up Adam and Eve. The Quran says Hell is filled with women. Even Buddah. Satan is regarded by allot of Religions as Gods ex-wife...Da Vinci, Franklin, Plato, Einstein, Nietzsche, and every other man of genius

Opinions? Lets free speech reign

Will we ever learn?

From the moment we leave Mother's womb and enter this world until the moment we depart on our respective death beds, without question, each of us is the centre of her/his own existence, and it is for this reason why I wonder if we'll ever get our collective act together.

As we pass from infancy into childhood, we slowly become exposed to any semblance of "society", in which many self-centred beings must now coexist. A group of individuals often come into conflict, but how are these resolved when all we know is to look out for ourselves? From my own experience as a child, empathy does not do a whole lot, as we are far too young to appreciate the connection we have with the pain and suffering of another. When I snatched a toy from my peer for my own amusement, I didn't stop to think, "That could be my heart that breaks" when I see her/him in tears. Initially, in times of conflict, our instinct tells us to fight or flee - most of the time, I, being physically inferior, found myself fleeing. It is up to our role models - parents, teachers, mentors - to guide us towards an altruistic frame of mind, but can we really count on them?

In our society, as children and through adolescence - let's face it: as adolescents, we're still children - we are pitted against one another as a matter of survival. The leaders use charm and intimidation to satisfy their own desires, while the rest of us find ourselves playing the roles of subjects. Here, we begin to learn altruism when we form attachments to our peers. Great! We're on the road to getting along with each other, but not so fast: what if I'm the alpha of my group, accustomed to receiving praise and generosity without having to provide any myself? Is my allowing these people to bask in my presence my way of "giving back"? Or what if my best friend and I have a crush on the same girl/boy? If I respect my friend's feelings, I lose out on my first love, but if I end up securing this individual as my mate, will it be at the expense of my best friend? How about turning on a dear friend so as to appear worthy before the "cool" crowd? How many of us have put friendships, or any relationship, for that matter, in jeopardy in favour of our own selfish desires? Have we been able to overcome this behaviour?

Now, we enter adulthood, where the stakes are different: instead of schoolyard supremacy, we now fight for wealth. We are now ready to put our finely tuned competitive skills to the test, as we find ourselves pitted against one another, competing for that one job, that one promotion, that one item in the window, that one particular house, that one special person's affection. I wonder if we're too busy competing against one another to appreciate any empathy for one another. If only we knew how we came to be the wealthiest of civilizations, would we then feel empathy for our sisters and brothers in Africa, or Asia, or Latin America, or even in our own backyard in the slums and on the reserves? Would we feel so apathetic towards war, poverty and our changing climate? More importantly, what message are we sending to our children when we behave so selfishly, yet have to teach them the merits of cooperation? Who are we to tell them to get along when we can't seem to do that ourselves?

Finally, on our way out of life - please note, at this point, I'm purely speculating, as I have not yet experienced dying, nor am I able to rely on any anecdotal evidence - when we realize we cannot take our earthly rewards with us, we may wonder what sort of society we're about to leave behind, and what we did and didn't do to render it what it is, provided we have time to do so. Do we learn when it's too late? Do we ever learn?

Alan Johnston is free.

By now, you have heard the news that BBC correspondent Alan Johnston (left) has been released by his captors, ironically, with the aid of one of our sworn enemies, Hamas. Was its gesture genuine? Was it a publicity stunt? Who knows? Getting down to brass tacks, though, it seems Hamas has accomplished what Fatah, Israel and the West could not. I could go on, but this is beside the point I want to make.

As delighted as I am to see Mr. Johnston return home to his loved ones, as touching as it was for him to receive an outpouring of support during his captivity, I can't help but wonder where the public outcry is for Sami al-Hajj (right), an al-Jazeera correspondent detained in December 2001 by American forces who has been since held captive at Guantanamo Bay to this day. Should I be surprised at the lack of support demonstrated by the Western public? How many of us have even heard the name Sami al-Hajj? Surely, his life isn't worth any less than that of Mr. Johnston.

What am I saying? America can do no wrong, thus there must be a valid reason for its detention of Mr. al-Hajj. After all, he was a henchman for the "evil" al-Jazeera broadcasting network, who stops at nothing to spread vicious lies about how American forces are killing and maiming civilians indiscriminately, or how they are detaining and torturing Muslims at will without charge. Perhaps Mr. al-Hajj was carrying a "dirty bomb" in his camera case.

Or, perhaps he saw what America doesn't want you to see.

If Alan Johnston is worthy of our support, certainly, Sami al-Hajj is as well.

Blood on our hands

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” - Howard Zinn



One hundred forty years of whitewashing
has been unable to remove
the blood stains from our hands.

Happy Canada Day.