And we call it "democracy"

Last week I got my second opinion letter posted in the campus newspaper. It was a response to the following article written a few days earlier:

Disappointing their cynical doubters yet again, millions of Iraqis took part in the Constitutional referendum on Oct. 15. Iraq, while still largely a work in progress, continued in its quest to become the region’s second democracy.

Oct. 15 served as a show-and-tell for the Iraqi security forces, who directed and led all major operations (coalition forces only played a supporting role). The results were impressive with more than three quarters of the population voting to approve the Constitution.

Iraqis showed the world that despite threats and death they will not be subdued by thugs and murderers. This encouraging development stands as more evidence that the insurgency is weakening and can be defeated if the will to continue remains. The Bush administration’s strategy of “As Iraqis stand up, the coalition will stand down” is clearly paying dividends.

The United States is 229 years old and still a work in progress. Canada is 138 and still a work in progress. Democracy is precious and, as Iraq’s experience is demonstrating, can be tenuous as well. But freedom is worth time and effort. Britain believes it’s worth it, as does the United States and 33 other nations. There are two sides in this reality: terror and regression or freedom and progress. Iraqis are with us; they voted for that which they have never known: liberty and the way forward.

It is sad to say Canada remains absent from this historic moment. If we choose not to support Iraqis, then by our indifference, exactly whom are we supporting?

D. Eric Sayers
President, Campus Coalition for Democracies UWO
Leith R.A. Coghlin
Chair, Campus Coalition for Democracies UWO

After reading that tripe, I simply had to respond. This "either you're with us or against us" mentality is so primitive and useless, it's amazing people still believe that it holds true. I had hell of alot more to say about the issue, but this is what I came up with for the paper:

I’d like to propose a round of applause for Eric Sayers and Leith Coghlin. They’ve bought into everything that they were sold about Iraq and the great freedom they’ve been given. They said that Canadians should’ve supported the US in Iraq along with those 34 other countries, but as an intelligent Canadian with a conscience, I’m forced to disagree.

It sounds wonderful that “more than three quarters of the [Iraqi] population” voted to approve the new constitution, but if you look at the fact that only 63% of eligible voters actually voted, the true number of people in the eligible voting population that truly agree with the constitution turns out to be less than 50%. And allegations of fraud within the vote aren’t far fetched at all when you look at the stats. In some areas 99% of the vote was “yes”. But serious allegations of officials simply taking away and destroying entire boxes of “no” votes must be considered. Hardly democratic if you ask me.

Which brings me to a point about the standard of democracy that we hold so high. In actuality the US is a plutocracy, not a democracy. In a democratic society the people have the power. In the US that power has been usurped and twisted to suit the needs of a few, who remain in office by convincing the people that they have control of the country. Isn’t it odd that the country is run by a man who actually lost in his first election?

So it makes you wonder how this “democracy” can be trusted to force the rule of the people upon a foreign land, doesn’t it? I think it’s fair to say that more than a few Canadians agree with the 157 other countries in the world that didn’t join the US in Iraq. And as we read earlier, the US and Canada are works in progress. Funny how arrogant we are; to believe that we have the insight necessary to influence other nations, yet when we look in the mirror we can’t help but avert our eyes. Assuming we even bother to look in the mirror in the first place.

Travis Brooke-Bisschop
Medical Sciences III

Unfortunately this actually isn't what was printed in the paper. You can find the edited version here. Some of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense (as some key points were left out) but what can ya do?

Now I wait to see if there's any backlash...

Operation Comeback

As you might have guessed, I frequent Matt Good's blog fairly often. It's a good way for me to keep updated on world events, Iraq news, and human rights issues. Not to mention intelligent insights on the world we live in.

But the other day a strange thing happened, as an American soldier left a comment on Matt's site that indicated he was going to commit suicide. He'd just returned from Iraq and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He then found out that while he was away in the Middle East, his wife had an affair with another man.
Imagine that eh? Fighting a war for oil while your sweetheart is fucking some other guy. While this soldier was dodging bullets, his wife's only fear was being found out. (To be fair, she probably did fear that her husband might never return home from Iraq. Strange way of dealing with it though...) Raw deal for any man, or woman for that matter.

Anyway, as it turns out, the US military doesn't do much for soldiers with PTSD that jives with them returning to "normal" life back home. This guy felt so alone that he actually cried out on a website for help. And as it turns out, the technicians that run the Mblog were able to track down this man and get him some help.

Since then, Matt and his team have established a site for distraught soldiers, and not just those from the United States military. It's just barely operational right now, but can be found at www.operationcomeback.com.

And you can't help but respect what has come from this situation.

A life was essentially saved, and a forum for soldiers of all backgrounds has been established to help people from any part of the globe.

Stuff like this makes you think there's still hope for this world.

I don't mean to be racist, but...

The other night a few friends and I hit the bar for what was supposed to be a fairly lightweight night of drinking. As it turns out a few of the boys got pretty loaded, but that's not what I wanna write about.

The thing that annoyed me (and the other guys) was the moocher in the washroom who wanted our money. If you're a guy you know what I'm talking about, but if you're a girl I bet you don't. Apparently only males get fleeced by this type of thing.

Of course I'm talking about the black guy who stands there to watch you piss. Once you're done, he first gets the taps for you, making sure the water is nice and warm (in reality he'll probably scald or freeze your hands, depending on your luck.) Then he'll hand you paper towels to dry yourself with, and follows that up by offering you one of a dozen types of colognes.


And we're supposed to give him money to do this. Things that we're entirely capable of doing ourselves, but we're expected to pay for nonetheless. Even if you tell him you're alright and don't need any help, he'll force his services upon you.

Now you may have noticed that I mentioned that this dude was black. I've seen this type of thing more than a few times, and every single time it's been a black guy. And I'm convinced this is no mistake. Not even fucking close to being a mistake.

It's as if society is expected to feel bad for black people, so they implant an unnecessary service into the economy to balance things out. But things in Canada are pretty balanced as they stand for people from all corners of the world, which is why I take offense to this type of bullshit. You never see an Asian, Hispanic, or Caucasian guy essentially begging for quarters in the john. I bet that black guy at TJ's the other night had a decent job and a pretty good education too.

Alot of people get uncomfortable with this type of thing, which explains why none of us wanted to go piss more than once at the bar. Generally, nobody wants to be watched in a washroom, let alone feel an obligation to pity someone else while they're in there.

So I propose that if ever you see one of these guys in the pisser, don't pay a dime. Because if we all withhold our pity and see the whole thing as a cherade, sooner or later these guys will pack up their shit. Once the well is bled dry, they're not gonna stick around for too long.

They'll probably just find some new way to convince us they deserve our money, because of all the wrongs that were done upon Afro-Americans in the past. So keep an eye for that too, and don't toss a coin in that cup either.

We've got no war to name us

Another Remembrance Day come and gone. And it seems that every year that goes by, we take less time to reflect on what the day really stands for.
Every year there seems to be fewer and fewer poppies around town.
People wear them on their bags, their hats, and on the right side of their jackets.
They don't seem to know (or care) that we wear them over our hearts for a reason.
Fewer people care to take a moment of silence, or to sit alone and contemplate the realities of war and freedom.
Every year we seem to take the lessons and sacrifices of the past for granted.
We feel that we deserve our freedoms and dreams, mainly because we've never been in a situation where these "given's" were threatened.


And let's be fair, the past two generations of the West have had no war to define them.
It's getting harder and harder to find veterans even from the Second World War. And if memroy serves me well, I think there's less than a dozen World War I veterans left in the whole of Canada.
So it's not surprising that we have no frame of reference here.

And personally, I find it frustrating to hear people talk in bold terms, such as, "I remember", "I appreciate all that was given for my generation", or "Life is precious; war is hell."

Just because we may take one day out of the year to reflect on all that we have and all that was lost, that doesn't mean we're not guilty of taking the other 364 days of the year for granted. We're all guilty of self-involvement.

Nobody can really claim that "they remember" something that they've never seen; noone can claim to be grateful for the great sacrifices of the past while they complain about the minor inconveniences of the modern West; and talking about war itself is something that should be reserved for people who know the realities of the world, not those who've seen a few too many war movies from the comfort of their homes.

All this talk almost makes you wanna join the army, doesn't it?

Then again, it makes me wanna take all the weapons in the world and hurl them into the sun. (Superman-style)

the following was found on a toronto subway car

To Whoever Finds This,

By the time you get through this first sentence you may find yourself compelled to throw this piece of paper back onto the ground and continue on with your own life. Nevertheless, something told you to pick up this dirty piece of paper in the first place. Because of this, I ask you to read on.

It's a beautiful world, they tell me. It's funny, though, because no one really believes it when they say it. We idolize the great truths: love, knowledge, and self-actualization. The problem is that we're too scared to face them when we are confronted with them. We don't want to be alone but when we encounter a stranger we feel the need to quicken our pace. Someone does something nice for us and all we can be is suspicious of their motives. There' poison in the Halloween candy. There's rape drug in your champagne tonight. There's a terrorist in your economics class. There's a gun in his pocket. He'll aim at you.

I am so fucking tired of being scared and ineffective. We can't blame ourselves, though. The question we really need to ask is how any intelligent Creator could have let us fall so far? Every animal has some sort of defense mechanism to help protect them (speed, strength, poison). So where is ours? Oh Right! We have intelligence; intelligence that fails us when we require it. What can I do here but curl up into the fetal position and surrender to terror: scream, cry, call for mother, stay in my room, wear a tinfoil helmet to protect my thoughts from aliens and brace for impact? The most fucked up thing about this is that we are truly scared of is being afraid: the nausea, the shiver up our spines, the breathlessness. Have you ever noticed that in every terror movie some stupid idiot of a woman falls when she's running away from the axe murderer? Well, stop making fun of her because that could be you. Then we have the audacity to name people heroes who don't revert into infancy in the face of danger.

I may be cynical. I may be a self-hating human being but, for the life of me, I can't be satisfied with this hypocrisy. We are scared to be loved, but also scared to commit. We hate dark alleys, but we like scary movies. We tell our kids everyone makes mistakes - nobody's perfect. Then we go out to the surgeon and get some Botox pumped into the creases in our foreheads because we're scared of not being perfect. We teach them to be giving and they come back to us wondering why the old lady swatted at them when they tried to help her cross the street. Try telling me that you aren't scared of the man sitting across from you on the train right now. Thank God there are all these other people around, right? But tell me that you wouldn't be scared to be alone with any ONE of those other people. I dare you to make eye contact with them. I dare you to say hello and observe the looks on their faces. I promise you that you'll find yourself looking at someone who is startled. Even afraid. Ask them how their day went but don't expect them to give you more than one word in return. Let's not lie. You would be scared too if you saw yourself staring at you from across the aisle or standing down a dark alley. Welcome to the human race, baby! Have you ever felt so welcomed?