Photoblogging - Part II

The following is probably the most creative piece of bathroom stall graffiti these eyes have seen.







Thoughts?

Deconstructing the Child President

You may not believe me when I say this, but I can't help but feel empathy for George W. Bush; my latest entry will attempt to tell you why.

By now, you are familiar with his less than impressive oratory skills - his propensity to struggle finding the right words and stutter uncontrollably when addressing an audience or faced with a question requiring thought - and have been quick to chide him for his perceived stupidity. You might think me to be mad for coming to his defense, given everything for which he stands, but I feel obligated to say thus: that bumbling, stumbling boy you see on stage is me.

"How on Earth can you compare yourself to, of all people, George W. Bush?" you might ask, and rightfully so, for we seem to be polar opposites of one another. Throughout my life, I have sought to rationalize how I was different from everyone else, how I was not them, and, in a way, I was right; but, as time passed, I witnessed the barriers I erected between myself and others in the process, and learned to see how we are the same, which is why I can sit here today and tell you straight up that I am the same as George W. Bush.

The most obvious place to begin my comparison is his perceived stupidity. Growing up, nearly everyone I met thought me to be utterly dumb until they saw my report card. They came to this conclusion after hearing me speak, that is to say, struggle to speak. I am, in every sense of the word, a lousy orator. I have great difficulty explaining things to people, even when writing; the difference here is, when I write, I have time to ponder and formulate an appropriate response, whereas, with speech, a live audience does not afford me such a luxury. If you and I were to have ourselves a conversation, and you put me on the spot, you would see first-hand my struggles to convey my thoughts to you. I firmly believe I have lost out on many a job opportunity because of this, as one requires a fast tongue to make a favourable impression in the professional world, something I lack.

Reason being for my social ineptitude is my inability to think on the spot and make snap judgments. The wheels in my brain need time to turn, to absorb and process the input before generating the proper output. Further, I have a horrid attention span, frequently drifting off into daydream mode, my mind adrift in a sea of a thousand and one simultaneous thoughts. George W. Bush, I imagine, is probably the same way, and it shows in the speeches and responses to interrogation he delivers. He is, by no means, a "stupid" man - the way I see it, there is no such thing as "stupid" (I intend to elaborate on this mantra in a later entry).

Another reason why I feel empathy for this man is his experience in the shadow of his father and the family empire; the former, particularly, is something to which I can attest. Every one of my twenty-seven-and-a-half years out of my mother's womb have I been under the scrutinizing gaze of my father, though don't tell him, for he will vehemently deny this. I don't blame him for it - we all have expectations as to what our children will do with their lives - but, unbeknownst to him, his expectations of me have not sat comfortably with me, to say the least; to this day, I have never conjured the courage to tell him how I felt about it. I feel George W. Bush may have had (and continue to have) a similar experience with his father, who had such high hopes for the boy who bore his namesake, even had his future mapped out for him. No need for young George to find himself: Father did the finding for him. Nothing left to do but party his sorrows away resign himself to a lifetime of servitude for Father Bush and his gang of suits.

George W. Bush, I doubt you're reading this, but, if fortune happened to put your eyes before my essay, my message to you is thus: break free of your father's mould; it is not who you are. If you have truly accepted Jesus the Christ into your heart, now is the opportunity to repent. Don't let your father continue to pull your strings; he's using you for his personal gain. I know you say the things you say out of ignorance; I know you say these things because you're doing as you're told. Now is the time to stop being your father's son, and start being you. Now is the time to grow up and start taking responsibility, start recognizing you are one with the people whose utter ruin you've ordered. You have the opportunity to attone for your sins. Do you wish to be rememberd as the Child President who wrought death, despair and chaos on the world so his Father and friends could strike it rich?

You may be philosophically opposed to me, but you are just like me.

ABC 20/20: 9/14/07

If any of you happened to be watching 20/20 last night, you would have seen it's attempt to establish a causal relationship between the pursuit of profit and the greater good of humanity. Of course, being ABC, its staff only sought to cite arguments in support of its pro-capitalist agenda, neglecting to expose the dire consequences of profit, mainly egregious human rights abuses (cutting corners in design and manufacturing can fall under this category, as humans are directly affected by this practice):

Weapons, designed to kill and maim, yield enormous profits, as do drugs, designed to induce dependency - let's face it, we're far more interested in treating illnesses than preventing or curing them if we can sell more drugs. Atmospheric pollution and the destruction of ecosystems are direct consequences of the pursuit of profit, but don't tell ABC.

What struck me most about this piece they ran is the list of examples they used to tout America's profit-driven ingenuity: Jose Carreras, famous Spanish tenor; the late King Hussein of Jordan; Silvio Berlusconi, former Prime Minister of and wealthiest man in Italy; the wealthiest of the wealthy, all reaping the benefits of for-profit health care. The only "commoner" featured was a white elderly woman whose cancer medication is said to be responsible for her being alive today. When asked how she felt about the merits of profit, she responded (and I'm paraphrasing), "I don't care if someone makes money off of it; what matters is that I'm alive and well today."

Why didn't ABC poll anyone in the inner cities - or anyone else of the working poor, for that matter - to see how they feel about for-profit health care? Why didn't they make any mention of the burgeoning medical costs plaguing the common American? Did I turn off my television set too early and miss all of this? Well, if the last line I heard before commercial was a praise of American ingenuity capped by the words "and all thanks to profit", my guess would be no.

I could continue to cite examples - the tendency of your automobile mechanic to sell you parts you don't need or fuck something else up in your car to keep you coming back, for one - but you get the point I'm trying to make, which is thus:

The pursuit of capital is exactly that, with little or no regard for integrity in design, construction, or consumer well-being, so long as that steady stream of money keeps flowing into their coffers.

Mobscene

I had an earlier version of this entry, but it wasn't to my satisfaction, so I will attempt to write it again. In short, I wished to shed light on the psychology of the mob, and the danger of elevating someone to a celebrity status. I hope I can do my thoughts justice this time around, so here goes.

It seems the best way to be a force of good in this world is to somehow do it anonymously, drawing as little attention to oneself as possible to avoid becoming a celebrity to the people. I say this out of fear of the mob - I hate to refer to us as such, for we are all beautiful people in our own way, but I do so given the tendencies I've witnessed - latching onto this figure and elevating her/him to iconic status, ignoring the message in the process. Don't get me wrong: it is necessary for someone, now and again, to stand up for what is right and show us the light, but once shown the light, then what? Do we sing our leader's praises, or take it upon ourselves to carry out the task set forth by her/him? Do we mob her/him in an attempt to grab a piece of her/his greatness for ourselves, or do we recognize this greatness within us and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her/him, as we would with one another?

As an example - and I cite this out of familiarity - I wish to use the story of Jesus the Christ, and his (or her, for all we know) ascent from humble being to folk hero to idol. Here was someone whose interest was to spread a message of love and hope in a time of despair, whose bloodied image is now worshiped the world over. To me, it seems Jesus the Christ as icon is more important than the message he intended to share with his fellow human beings, a message of love and compassion. If we love him so much, why do we kneel before the image of his murder? Why do we not love our neighbour as we do him? Why do we spend so much time praying for our own souls when the solution is so simple, when the seed has been planted within each of us? How did a humble servant of Mother Earth and all her creatures give birth to a two-thousand-year-old institution of obedience?

I worry that we do all of this - following our leaders like sheep in a flock - as a result of our lack of faith in ourselves to be good people. I want this not to be the case, for, as I said earlier, each one of us is beautiful; each one of us is brilliant. Why do we insist on these icons? Would it be any different if, say, Dolores from down the block expressed the same love and compassion Jesus the Christ did? Why don't we form a mob around Dolores as she walks to the grocery store? Why don't we erect statues of her? Where is the Church of Dolores? I understand the need for guidance in life, and I understand the desire to express gratitude to our teachers for said guidance, but I worry when we make idols of them.

Let us all have faith in ourselves to do the right thing, which is easy when we allow love to be our guide in life. This is probably the most important lesson I've learned in my twenty-seven-and-a-half years out of my mother's womb - I humbly thank my teachers, who are really the people I've known and met, for teaching this to me.

On a final note, I wish to apologize if my entries of late seem rather sappy. I assure you, I expelled copious amounts of anger over the years on account of letting my ill feelings accumulate within me, and I despised every minute of it. Yes, I'm still prone to frustration at times, but these days, anger is replaced by melancholy as my feeling of disapproval: a loving heart can easily be a broken one.

You are all brilliant, each and every one.

It doesn't have to be like this.

It breaks my heart to see beauty being destroyed by us because we want it for us and only us. I do want to be happy, I truly do, but I can't turn off the despair, not when I'm surrounded by it. I'm told to relax, breathe out the toxins, clear my mind, and live in the moment, and I will feel unconditional joy, but then I have to return to the world and somehow keep my head up amid the chaos.

Live in the moment. Sound advice for me, but in that moment during which I am experiencing unconditional joy, somewhere, a woman is being raped; somewhere, a child is being shot dead; somewhere, a bomb is being dropped onto a neighbourhood; somewhere, a wife is being beaten; somewhere, a war is being planned; somewhere, a river is being poisoned. Yes, I'm focusing on the negative, but I can't help it, so long as beauty is wantonly being destroyed.

It doesn't have to be like this, for each day brings us beauty: a child enters the world, a flower blooms, a river flows, a person finds love. Beauty gives me reason to get out of bed each morning. Beauty gives me reason to stand up to the forces who aim to destroy it. Beauty gives me reason to be.

The very computer I use to write this message is soaked in blood and sweat; I'll wager the clothes on my back are, too. Beauty was destroyed so that I could live in luxury. The irony of it all is, had it not been for the rape and pillage of lands both domestic and foreign, I would not have this voice, though I may not have needed it.

As I write this, I can hear yelling from my neighbours' apartment. This is nothing new, which makes it that much more unsettling, for it seems to see no end. If only they could see what they're doing to each other, to themselves, with all this hostility. I don't blame them, though; the world is cruel, it is cold, and it is a shame, because it doesn't have to be.

Six years later...

...and all seems to be "normal" inside the Empire: the students are shuffling off to classes, the workers are punching in, breakfast is on the table, and the kids are chatting away on their cellular phones and instant social networking websites. In retrospect, one might have difficulty believing that, six years ago today, the lives of those of us on this continent were altered forever as we witnessed commercial airliners crash into each of the twin office towers in Manhattan that signified the World Trade Center, and the subsequent collapse of said towers - accompanied by an attack on the Pentagon and an airplane crash in the fields of rural Pennsylvania - and deaths of nearly three thousand of our brothers and sisters. We watched the images on our televisions in disbelief and horror. We shed tears for the loved ones we lost, and tried to console those whose lives were shattered. We did not know what was to happen from this point onward: was this carnage to continue? were we safe? what were we going to do?

Then our leaders beat their war drums.

They vowed to find the perpetrators of this great crime against humanity, wherever they might be. They vowed to bring justice, not only to those behind this attack, but to those who harboured them in their homelands. They vowed to protect us from the wrath of this new enemy, to make our world safe for ourselves, our relatives, our friends, our children.

Then they transformed our grief into fear and loathing.

They gave this enemy a name. They told us this enemy prayed to a different God, a non-white God. They told us this enemy converses in a certain tongue and projects a certain appearance. They told us this enemy dwells among us. They told us this enemy hates our "free" way of living, and is bent on destroying it in favour of their style of theocracy. They told us to be wary of and vigilant against this group of people, for it is our enemy.

Then they started stripping away our rights.

They told us they needed to keep their eye on us - listen to our telephone conversations, read through our e-mails, log the information we peruse - for our own safety and "security". They told us our dearest friends could be carrying explosives in their schoolbags, poised to detonate them on the subway train or in study hall. They told us our neighbours - those who fit the vague physical description of the "enemy", at least - could be sending information to their enemy friends and family "over there", information to be used to maim or kill us.

They gave us a choice: either we were with them, or with the enemy.

And on that note, they went to war. First, to Afghanistan, where the supposed mastermind of this calamity, this tragedy brought upon you and me, lay in wait; then, a year and a half later, to Iraq, where an old mortal enemy, supposedly colluding with the aforementioned mastermind, was producing weapons aimed at us, to be used against us at any given moment, and thus needed to be eliminated. They told us these were the prime fronts in our "War on Terror". They told us the world would be safer only if we bombed these nations to the stone age, for it was the only way to rid the world of this vast danger facing us. They told us these perpetrators would be brought to justice, and that the citizens of these nations would greet us as "liberators". They told us we were giving them the gift of "democracy", and that, with this gift from us, they would flourish, like us, and enjoy the "freedoms" we enjoy here.

Six years have passed since that fateful day. The mastermind, confined to a small region, surrounded by our heavy artillery, has yet to be found, nor does he concern our leaders anymore, though he continues to taunt us through videos released at seemingly convenient times. His supposed accomplice, the terrorizing tyrant of the land of Iraq, whom we hanged to ring in the new Year of our Lord 2007, we learned him not to be affiliated with this mastermind at all; these weapons he had: a myth. "Democracy" isn't working so well in Afghanistan, as we continue to be mired in battle; nor is it working so well in Iraq, as the state of living there is nothing short of chaotic. Hundreds of thousands of lives ended violently as a result of the actions of our leaders. The cities of Bali, Madrid, London, Cairo and Algiers, to name a few, have been attacked, and scores of people, like you and me, have died and suffered. The state of Israel is continuing its ongoing hostility against its Muslim neighbours. The "enemy" is multiplying in droves, fueled by the hatred towards those who wrought death and despair onto its people. The world is more hostile than it was before the eleventh day of September 2001...

...yet all seems to be normal here, in the campus computer lab in which I write this. Friends are conversing casually with one another, sending e-mails back and forth, viewing their favourite videos on YouTube, and keeping tabs on their friends through their facebook accounts. As I walk outside from class to class, I see students doing the same, or congregating in their cliques to pass the time away. The primary concerns here seem to be procuring textbooks for the semester, or finding the right lecture hall, or keeping up with their readings, or making arrangement for the party on the weekend. "9/11", as the event in question has been so appropriately dubbed, is but a mere afterthought, a conversation piece, nothing more.

No one seems to be thinking about what happened six years ago today; as far as our leaders are concerned, it's best to keep it that way.

So long as we pay attention to ourselves and only ourselves, we will not be compelled to ask questions such as, "How did a commercial jet manage to slam into the Pentagon with unusually localized damage and no eyewitness account?", or, "If fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi nationals, why are we not doing anything in Saudi Arabia?", or, "Why haven't we found this 'bin Laden' after six years?", or, "Why do we see these videos from this 'bin Laden' when it's time to choose our next President, or just before the eleventh of September?", though why ask "why", when we can continue to live in our own comfort? Why worry, when we can drink ourselves silly and pick the next American Idol? Why bother, when we can turn on our television sets and feel our cares magically melt away? Why think, when our trusted leaders and media outlets can do that for us?

Are you prepared to find out "why"? For the sake of your own sanity, your very survival, start asking, because the answer they're giving you is a far cry from the answer that is. Once you start asking, you'll see how quickly our leaders barricade you from the answers you seek, but fear not, for lies always come back to bite the liars who delivered them, and the purity and love of the people will triumph over the tyranny and fearmongering of the elite.

Stop knowing what you've been told and start seeing what is.

May love be your guide, and peace be upon you.

Happy Frosh Week

This past week, I became a full-time student again. This past week, on the very campus on which I have resumed my studies, two sexual assaults occurred, while a third was thwarted. They say they occurred early Friday morning; I happened to be sitting in an 8:30 lecture mere steps from where it all went down, though I had no idea until the following day.

The university has decided to take the following action (quoted directly from the linked article) in the wake of these atrocities:

- effective doubling of York security patrols.
- increasing staffing at Vanier Residence.
- increasing staffing at other residences on campus.
- heightened on-campus presence by the Toronto Police Service.
- postering across campus, reminding students to be vigilant.
- alerts issued through all channels, including Web sites, direct e-mails and ongoing contact with student government and associations.
- on-site counselling for students.

While I recognize the necessity of putting the public on alert while the perpetrators remain at large, and of providing ready access to counselling for anyone who may need it, I'm perturbed by the fact that two women were raped, while another narrowly escaped, though her experience, I imagine, was still horrific. What perturbs me most about what happened is the notion that these need not have happened had we been aware of our rape culture.

So long as this is absent from our collective consciousness, no matter how many perpetrators we incarcerate, no matter how many armed police officers patrol the streets, no matter what the mandatory minimum sentence is, more women will be raped. So long as the Toronto Sun trumpets war while featuring full-page spreads of scantily-clad women, so long as it's easy to consume images and videos of women having semen splattered all over their faces and fists inserted to them vaginally and anally, men will have no problem believing women to be subservient to them.

I don't know what else to say, other than this:

Events like these make me ashamed to be a man; the fact that I feel powerless to stop them makes me feel even worse.

Statistics

From Sunday's edition of the Seattle Times: Iraq's civilian death toll rises in August

Quoting the article:

"Figures provided by an Interior Ministry official indicated that 2,318 civilians died violently in the country in August, compared with 1,980 in July."

It's easy for you and me to condemn this war, and rightfully so, but do we appreciate the tremendous loss suffered by the families and friends of these people? Two thousand three hundred eighteen lives - like yours and mine, your best friend's, your lover's - ended by violent means in the month of August alone, and our attachment to these people is through a statistic in the newspaper, a number on the page, no more.

It's easy for you and me to wave these statistics around in condemnation of this war, then conveniently drown our sorrows at the pub with our comrades at the end of the week while waxing philosophical over these tragic circumstances; if only the thousands upon thousands of people around the world killed and maimed in the name of our luxury could be so lucky. Can we fully understand the plight of these folks if, in our minds, they are "them" and this is happening "over there"? It is happening to us, here, on Planet Earth, our home. It was not 2,318 "Iraqi civilians" who were slain last month, but 2,318 of our sisters and brothers, our mothers and fathers, our aunts and uncles, our cousins, nieces and nephews, our children. Are your parents statistics? Your siblings? Your friends and relatives? Your children? Would you continue sipping your coffee, then proceed to jet off to the office after learning your child had been slain in her schoolyard because some foreigners thought there was some oil or other raw material beneath it?

My intent is not to be hostile towards you, for your detachment from the rest of the world is by no means any fault of your own. The powers that be - the same gang of bandits responsible for the 2,318 fatalities in August, and the 1,980 deaths in July, and the 600-some-odd-thousand preceding deaths, and the more than three thousand American military fatalities, and the three thousand deaths on 11 September 2001 (yes, I hold these people responsible) and the billions of lives that have been shattered the world over at the hands of Western capitalism - this same cabal keeps you shrouded in ignorance by selling you product after product, by subjecting you to a lifetime of servitude so that you may put a roof over the heads of your loved ones and put food on their plates, by glossing over the day's events, then distracting you with professional sports, sitcoms and "entertainment news".

How many people are murdered each day inside the Empire? And how many of us do anything about it? The same group of business elites who perpetuate this and other wars for personal gain are flooding the streets with firearms and keeping these people in poverty so that they end up reverting to the gun for sustenance, and, for lack of the same awareness of one another I've just told you, these people will not hesitate to shoot you for their daily bread. This elite banditti, through their efforts to rape, pillage and plunder the planet, has succeeded in driving each of us to "insanity" by detaching us from one another; this is "divide and conquer" on a global scale, my friend, and we can't stop it until we realize what's happening to them in Iraq and everywhere else in the world, including in our own backyard, is happening to us!.

Otherwise, we, too, are nothing but statistics.