I always like to write about Thomas Paine, because we have the same hometown. That’s not the only reason. Actually, the only reason is because he said and wrote such interesting things—and because, I think, Paine believed in individual freedom for all. Not just, as American Founding Father John Jay put it, for those who owned the land. And straight up, the fact that Tom and I have the same birth town doesn’t matter at all. I haven’t been back there in forty-odd years, and nobody knew when I left. And that hurts. I’ll be okay. A tissue, please.

Again from Staughton Lynd:

If I have to choose, I side with internationalism rather than any form of patriotism…

The form of internationalism that I have identified and which I celebrate…is the idea that “My country is the world.”

It’s an old idea. Somebody said “Ubi libertas, ibi patria” (Where there is liberty, there is my country). But I think of [internationalism] beginning with [Thomas] Paine.

He was born in Great Britain and came to Philadelphia just before the American Revolution.

His first two articles condemned slavery.

Talk about courage, and progressiveness.

Then he published the booklet Common Sense, a bestseller that helped to bring about independence [from Britain].

Talk about feeling the pulse of a people for freedom, so-called, and putting it into the right, inspiring words, while under duress. Do you ever get the feeling your own blogs or poems or music are not having quite as profound an effect?

After the Revolutionary War he went back to Great Britain and wrote The Rights of Man.

Talk about crazy courage or a death wish—back to the land of the Power whose overthrow he preached.

Threatened with trial and imprisonment for sedition Paine fled to revolutionary France, where he was imprisoned and very nearly guillotined for opposing the execution of the King.

Talk about truly believing in freedom—against the “revolution’s” thirst to chop off the head of the King. Lord knows that the King (most any King), given half a chance or reason, would have taken Tom Paine’s head, and probably thrown in torture.

In a second volume of The Rights of Man, Paine declared that “My country is the world.”

The only possible conclusion of such an insightful man, patriotism (or even nationalism) being the last refuge of scoundrels. In short, the process of freedom—the work, the creativity, the joy, the solidarity, the individuality, the courage—must be forever pursued, protected, fought for.

And compare Thomas Paine’s ways to Argentine Che Guevera’s ways, who tried to help bring revolution to other countries, Cuba, Angola, Bolivia et cetera. Undoubtedly Guevera has been a massive inspiration to the long-oppressed in South and Central America and beyond. He was still, nonetheless and evidently, quite prone to summary executions without conversation, let alone trial.

Historical moments produce different people, and different people produce different historical moments—and we’re all living by somebody’s decisions.

Pete

I’ve been reading Wobblies and Zapatistas (Staughton Lynd with Andrej Grubacic), and getting a lot out of it. I just want to quote some thought-provoking ideas from the mouth of Lynd:

The conclusion that the American Revolution fails to offer what Thoreau called “firm bottom and rocks in place” becomes even stronger when one considers slavery. The American Revolution had the possibility of abolishing slavery.

The Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia in the same month (May 1787) that the Brisith anti-slavery held its first meeting in London.

Even before that, in 1775 The Philadelphia Abolition society is founded by Anthony Benezet, with the objective to protect freed and escaped slaves [For the record, Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave]. The Philadelphia Abolitionist society’s first president was none other than Ben Franklin.

But in this country, “my country,” the revolutionary leadership failed to act. Even George Washington, the single such leader who provided in his will for the freedom of his slaves, tried to use the United States Customs Service to kidnap Ona Judge, a favorite house slave of his wife, who had escaped to New Hampshire…

He goes onto say:

And there are other persons and incidents in the history of this country with which I profoundly identify. I believe that among United States presidents Lincoln was in a class by himself, and that his Second Inaugural Address is the most praiseworthy public document in United States history.

That’s the speech in which Lincoln asserted that if every drop of blood drawn by the lash [the slave master whip] had to be repaid by a drop of blood drawn with the sword [in the Civil War], still must it be said as it was said of old that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

So I don’t hold with an internationalism that rejects everything American.

According to a film called 500 Years Later (Owen ‘Alik Shahadah), Lincoln also said:

“I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people.”

The Dakota Wars were also being fought at the same time as the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln—the Great Emancipator—allowed the largest mass execution in American history after commuting 264 death sentences. On December 26, 1862, hung from one large scaffold, 39 Sioux Indian prisoners were executed en masse.

Would it have happened if they were white? Maybe if they were fighting for worker solidarity, but I’m not sure how else.

Lincoln also said:

The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds.

It sounds like the OBU, One Big Union.

And this from Lincoln, which is worth a reread, considering how much its sentiment flies in the face of industry and industrialists:

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Oh to be a politician—or a human, for that matter—not to mention the historical moment. Beliefs change, people change, but the troubles just keep carrying on…

Lots of love to you—and we shall overcome,

Pete

[Director Neill] Blomkamp catches [District 9's] frantic activity with all the raw authenticity of a documentary, egged on by the rhythmic drive of Clinton Shorter’s magnificent score.
—Hollywood Reporter

I just think it’s the greatest thing ever when my talented and artistic friends get a bigger break in their career. Why?

Not just because people are now saying they’re great (although that’s good too). But I already knew they were great. And it’s not just because our government has a pretty deep disdain for the Arts—in a sense barely understanding what ‘the Arts’ really are, or how intrinsic and invaluable they are to the quality of human experience.

No, the reason is this: because achieving ’success’, crossing that sort of imaginary line, profoundly increases the possibility of doing more and more creative projects that they really want to do—and in the process get paid a decent wage for their talent, skill, experience and hard work. Other than the stress that comes with that opportunity, it’s a beautiful thing. Hell, even the stress can be productive.

So I’m thrilled for my friend Clinton Shorter. Clint composed the fantastic, pulsating and simultaneously lyrical musical score for the critically-acclaimed, blockbuster hit District 9.

And not only that, he’s a wonderful and humble fella.

And not only that, his wife Andréa is also talented and terrific. It’s just a great package. If they were a film, it’d be big.

I got to share with them the experience of the Vancouver opening—or at least the theatrical opening. It was a blissful thing to be in a downtown theatre, packed in the middle of the afternoon, with Clint’s music pounding the film on.

The score is rhythmic, soulful, tense, original, crossing cultures and styles—and essential to maximizing the film’s tension. Clint talks about the initial stages in an interview here. An excerpt:

I spent about 3 weeks experimenting with every African instrument I could think of. Neill was really pushing me to keep it African but the percussion and mallet instruments from the southern part of the continent weren’t sounding big and dark enough for him. Most of the rhythms from the south weren’t aggressive enough either so it was quite a task to maintain an African feel but give the film the darkness and edge it required.

In the end we settled on using African male vocals with some percussion from the region but took some serious liberties with everything else. Once all that was sorted out it was a blast scoring the film.

So is the film—a blast, that is—and it’s blasting towards $150 million at the box office.

Here’s the opening cut from the soundtrack. It shifts from a powerfully rhythmic, tension-inducing beginning to that haunting Morricone-type lyricism that all blew our minds in The Mission. That takes a lot of skill.

A CREATIVE LIVING

If you like the score—and you should, man—don’t download the soundtrack for free: buy it on, say, iTunes. That’s how the guy makes a living, and he’s spent years here in Vancouver doing beautiful scores for limited and more-than-limited budgets.

See, Moby gives some of his music away for free, but maybe that’s in part because he’s already made his millions (maybe not).

And I give my music away for free for personal use, at least for now, but that’s because I never will make millions—unless of course the dollar collapses like the German mark in the Weimar Republic back in the ’20s. And the chance of that happening again is only about 98%. I’m also administratively disadvantaged, which is the absence of a certain lobe in the brain critical for dealing with life’s externalities, like accounting, legal-speak and writing grant applications.

But, man, artists have to make a living. Some massive Hollywood deals notwithstanding, artists as a group are chronically underpaid and under-represented. Yet in my experience they’re also so often unstoppably generous with their time and talent. I’ve seen this with film and music projects—sometimes my own—over and over again…

CANADIAN FILMS

Speaking of Vancouver, over forty people involved in District 9 (mostly visual effects) studied at the Vancouver Film School—including the writer Terri Tatchell and the director (and writer), Neill Blomkamp (okay, Neill’s South African, but he’s Canadian at least in spirit). Christ, even if he’s not, we could use him, so I’ll write he’s Canadian anyway.

And speaking of Vancouver, and film in Canada et cetera, and given all the Canadians who worked on the film, should District 9 qualify as a Canadian film? This is an interesting question, one that Clint and I spoke about at length the other night.

Well, actually, what we really spoke about is what should qualify as a Canadian film, period.

This is an important question to the industry’s profile, because people tend to think Canada hasn’t produced all that many great films. But the fact is, Canadians have directed, produced, acted in and composed a lot of fantastic films. They’re just not generally considered Canadian films, for questionable reasons—and thus the great wealth of Canadian film talent remains insufficiently celebrated. That’s true, otherwise I surely would have won at least a couple of Oscars. Okay, not Oscars—not anything—but don’t forget Facing Ali is playing in Vancouver October 8th and 9th at the VIFF.

But enough said until some more is said. This is enough: Clinton Shorter, Composer, District 9. That’s a beautiful sound.

Pete

A friend of mine with Doctors without Borders (Medecins sans Frontieres) is in Pakistan as we speak—evidently a very unsafe place to be.

But speaking of Doctors without Borders, there is a beautiful graphic novel called The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors without Borders. It is about a photographer—Didier Lefèvre—who was in Afghanistan taking photos, for MSF, during the hell unfolding at just past the midway point (1986) of the USSR invasion. The story is told through photographs and animation.

Didier, the photographer and main person, is talking to one of the doctors, Juliette, who tells him about the nature of the head-to-to dress code for women in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where it’s called a chadri. The chadri, I believe, includes the netting across the eyes, and is the same, roughly, as the burqa. I can’t say for sure if what Juliette is saying is historically factual, or just a casual observation, but anyway, on pages 144-145:

First of all, the chadri is essentially an urban phenomenon. In a small village, everyone’s related, so you don’t need to cover yourself. Plus a chadri’s expensive. Even if she wanted one, a peasant woman couldn’t afford it.

Then you have to understand that the chadri is something pretty recent. It’s only about a century old. Before that, a lot of women in the cities would never set foot outside their house, not in a lifetime…

In a big city, a woman is bound to bump into strangers. That’s why the introduction of the chadri gave them greater autonomy and freedom. At last they were able to leave their homes.

In any case, people make it into an exaggerated and idiotic symbol. The real priorities for women are access to health care, to education, to work, and to the legal system. Not clothes…

At the moment [the war against the invading USSR army], it’s a real tool [the chadri] of resistance. A lot of women are carrying weapons under their chadri. In the big cities, women are taking part in the resistance, actively and fiercely.

Who could guess so much—or who couldn’t guess so much—goes on under our clothes? That’s about it. Just food for thought, with something up your sleeve, but don’t get your knickers in a twist. Is it all in our jeans?

Check this amazing graphic novel out here.

Here’s to seeing ourselves in the other, our joys, despairs and longings—and the need for solidarity with those who have less, and so much less, and even some who have more.

Lots of love,

Pete

As we enter our centennial year [1967] we are still a young nation, very much in the formative stages. Our national condition is still flexible enough that we can make almost anything we wish of our nation. No other country is in a better position than Canada to go ahead with the evolution of a national purpose devoted to all that is good and noble and excellent in the human spirit.
—Nobel prize winner and Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson

The Canadian government in international affairs is somewhat known for its so-called compassionate instincts, willingness to negotiate, and courage to follow its own path etc. Well, for the latter, it seems clear that Prime Minister Harper followed George Bush’s policies closely, at least in terms of often disastrous neo-liberal economics (where, by definition, shareholder rights come before human rights) and, say, the War on Drugs (where Harm Reduction is “an abomination” and drug lords get massively rich and armed). But where does Canada stand historically?

It depends who you ask. But Yves Engler, a former junior hockey player turned author and activist (we may be the only two, and he’s at a level beyond me) has written a book pointing out some ignored ideas that may not make the average Canadian comfortable. I haven’t checked all of his ideas factually, but they are food for thought as one tries to navigate this world, and Canada, trying to decide where and how to stand with integrity.

For years I have heard, for example, that draft-dodger-loving Canada made more business money off the Vietnam war, per capita, than any other country in the world, other than the US (selling parts for weapons, largely). It’s a surprise, huh?

Some of this can be sussed out, evidently, in Victor Levant’s Quiet Complicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War, 1986, or Claire Culhane’s, Why Is Canada In Vietnam? The Truth about our Foreign Aid, from 1972.

From an article about Yves:

When it comes to the country providing aid its “major function…is [as] a tool of geopolitics,” Engler said.

The top destinations for Canadian aid are currently Afghanistan and Haiti, he said. As well, Iraq was among the top three [aid receiving countries] from 2004-2007, Engler said. All three countries have had Canadian and American troops “invade or occupy and suppress the population in one way or another,” he said.

“It’s the intervention equals aid principle. Or more prudently: where the U. S. kills, Canada provides aid.”

With David Letterman doing a different Top Ten shtick—like Top Ten Things Britney Spears Would Do If She Was President—here are Yves’ Top Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Canadian Foreign Policy:

The Top 10 things you don’t know about Canadian foreign policy

10. On dozens of occasions since 1915 Canadian gunboats have been deployed to the Caribbean and Central America.

9. Canada has been the fifth or sixth-largest contributor to the U.S. war in Iraq.

8. Ottawa asked London for its Caribbean colonies after World War I.

7. Days after the elected President Salvador Allende was overthrown, Canada’s ambassador to Chile called victims of dictator Augusto Pinochet’s repression the “riff-raff of the Latin American Left.”

6. In a number of countries Canadian “aid” has been used to rewrite mining codes to the benefit of Canadian mining companies [our labour history is equally painful, right back to the hammering of the miners in the strike of 1901, and before, in snowy Rossland, the town in which I was raised for a few years—and yet knew and heard nothing about the miner's bitter struggles].

5. Canada had between 250 and 450 nuclear-armed fighter jets based in Europe in the 1960s.

4. Washington did not press Ottawa to break relations with post-revolution Cuba because it wanted Canada to spy on the island.

3. Throughout Pierre Trudeau’s time in office and before, Canadian companies were heavily invested in apartheid South Africa.

2. Canada helped depose Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, one of Africa’s first independence leaders, who was then killed.

1. Many commentators, including the world’s leading intellectual, Noam Chomsky, consider Lester Pearson a war criminal [I think, according to Engler, for supporting U. S. counter-insurgency efforts in Vietnam, where war crimes, at least under the Geneva Convention, were committed].

Do your own research. It could be surprising. And painful. And depressing. And enlightening. Strange how life works.

Lots of love and knowledge to you,

Pete

It’s known to many now that, unsurprisingly, Goldman Sachs (one of the grand bailout winners) was President Obama’s #1 campaign donor. #1 (must read, simple article here).

In case you’re wondering who the great lobbyists on the Hill are these days, take a guess at Big Oil—and other environmental disasters—who have wracked up profits in the last few years literally greater than any other entrepreneurial venture in history. They’re so powerful, they even get the protectionism of an all-out military invasion in Iraq, which sends 4.7 million Iraqis fleeing from their homes under desperate, terrorized conditions.

Anyway, is global warming real? Yes. The cause known? Some of the causes appear to be known, yes, and appear to be us. So we’re making massive, essential efforts at developing and using renewable energies, right? Well, we need to fight harder!

This from the Environmental Law Institute:

The research demonstrates that the federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Fossil fuels benefited from approximately $72 billion over the seven-year period, while subsidies for renewable fuels totaled only $29 billion. More than half the subsidies for renewables—$16.8 billion—are attributable to corn-based ethanol, the climate effects of which are hotly disputed. Of the fossil fuel subsidies, $70.2 billion went to traditional sources—such as coal and oil—and $2.3 billion went to carbon capture and storage, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. Thus, energy subsidies highly favored energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases over sources that would decrease our climate footprint.

I would truly suggest, encourage, plea for letters, emails, phone calls to your Congressperson and the President’s office. Seriously. It’s a start anyway—and cut down where you can in this oil driven world.

From the actual report:

Applying a conservative approach, explained in further detail below, ELI found that

• The vast majority of federal subsidies for fossil fuels and renewable energy supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases when used as fuel.

• The federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Subsidies to fossil fuels—a mature, developed industry that has enjoyed government support for many years—totaled approximately $72 billion over the study period, representing a direct cost to taxpayers.

• Subsidies for renewable fuels, a relatively young and developing industry, totaled $29 billion over the same period.

• Subsidies to fossil fuels generally increased over the study period (though they decreased in 2008), while funding for renewables increased but saw a precipitous drop in 2006-07 (though they increased in 2008).

• Most of the largest subsidies to fossil fuels were written into the U.S. Tax Code as permanent provisions. By comparison, many subsidies for renewables are time-limited initiatives implemented through energy bills, with expiration dates that limit their usefulness to the renewables industry.

• The vast majority of subsidy dollars to fossil fuels can be attributed to just a handful of tax breaks, such as the Foreign Tax Credit ($15.3 billion) and the Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels ($14.1 billion). The largest of these, the Foreign Tax Credit, applies to the overseas production of oil through an obscure provision of the Tax Code, which allows energy companies to claim a tax credit for payments that would normally receive less-beneficial tax treatment.

• Almost half of the subsidies for renewables are attributable to corn-based ethanol, the use of which, while decreasing American reliance on foreign oil, raises considerable questions about effects on climate.

Keep trying to change, trying to be active, trying to feel part of community, democracy, love,

pete

The Tao Te Ching was, they say, written by Lao Tsu some 2500 years ago, in China—about the time of Buddha in India. I read it a lot when I was younger, and when I pick it up now, it still fills me with renewed sighs of thinking things are what they are, and I have to bend and flow and keep on—on the way to trying to understand who I am. What is this crazy experience of being? Of loving? Of serving? Of desiring?

Anyway, check out this third stanza from the 57th verse (of 81 short verses). If only Lao Tsu was alive today. Heck maybe he is, with a big fat head full of nectar, amrita, with the immortal stream of life (that’s why Lao Tsu statues are an old man with a staff and a big head, particularly up top—full of wisdom and the nectar of immortality). It is said, ‘One who has an abundance of Te is like a newborn child.’ And newborns, clearly, have fat heads—even to their mothers.

In the world: The more rules and restrictions there are
the poorer the people will be [using less of their own intelligence to seek community, becoming cut off from and distrustful of each other instead]
The people: The more ’sharp weapons’ they have,
the more disordered the state and the clans will be [state controlled, ethnic warfare—people making millions off selling 'sharp weapons']
Men: The more clever and skillful they are.
the more weird things will start to happen [have you watched the news lately? Climate change debates? Political campaigning?].

Just about says it all, doesn’t it: from Homeland Security to countless unnecessary fines, taxes and regulations for being (and ignoring so many others—like we should be regulating/fining/stopping the poisoning of children with fast food and corn syrup in everything (that also batters the environment); like regulating the indexed and massive pensions of judges, politicians etc; for making certain drugs illegal—thus a means by which to get unbelievably rich and violent—while allowing war weapons of massive destruction to be utterly legal, proliferate and often tax-subsidized.

But then the Tao—which loosely translated, means The Way (perhaps the Way of moving, living within the rhythms and rules of nature and causing as little damage as possible—offers these kinds of sweet thoughts.

From verse 56:

Those who understand are not talkers [oh well]
talkers don’t understand

Close your eyes
shut your doors

Dampen the passion
untie the tangles
make the flashing things harmonious
make the dust merge together
This is called the mysterious Merging

Yes:
You cannot get close
you cannot stay away
you cannot help It
you cannot harm It
you cannot treasure It
you cannot look down on It.

Yes:
It is the Treasure of the World

I can’t tell you what that means, but I feel myself come to balance upon reading it—a namaste, if you will—and will you?—a balancing of the lefts and rights, at the heart region. The flame is lit. This is good.

Sending tons of love,

Pete

Of course, like the nature and nurture argument, and I realize it is neither one nor the other. And anyway, in the end nurture is nature. Nonetheless, this comes out of my research on work and labour lately…

“I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.”
—Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, suffragist, statesman, writer and escaped slave

A few weeks ago I watched a PBS documentary called Slavery and the Making of America. Programs on human behaviour so awful—the behaviour, not the program—always break my heart. At the same time, it was really interesting to re-learn that at the early part of the 1600s, slavery wasn’t really on the books of the colonies, and black and white indentured servants were roughly the same in status—which, granted, was low. From a PBS webpage:

The transformation from indentured servitude (servants contracted to work for a set amount of time) to racial slavery didn’t happen overnight. There are no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia’s history.

Then in 1640, three indentured servants of farmer Hugh Gwyn ran away together to Maryland, only to be captured and brought back before the Virginia courts in Jamestown.

Two of the runaways were white, one was black. All three were sentenced to thirty lashes, very severe at the time.

Beyond that, the two white runaways were sentenced to four year extensions to their indentured servitude. In contrast, the black servant, John Punch, was given for the identical crime indentured servitude for life, to “…serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere.” In short, he had been sentenced to slavery.

Marvin Dulaney put it this way:

Now there’s no law that says that John Punch had to have been enslaved for life but it was clear that 1640 is sort of the turning point [Massachusetts legalized slavery in 1641]. The beginning of the point where Africans are gonna be treated differently as opposed to whites who are indentured servants.

And continuing from PBS:

It wasn’t until 1661 that a reference to slavery entered into Virginia law, and this law was directed at white servants—at those who ran away with a black servant [I've also read that Virginia legalized slavery in 1660]. The following year, the colony went one step further by stating that children born would be bonded or free according to the status of the mother.

The transformation had begun, but it wouldn’t be until the Slave Codes of 1705 that the status of African Americans would be sealed.

I wasn’t all that aware that there was a transition period away from a sort of equality amongst indentured servants, regardless of colour. Then I was reading from a book called Wobblies and Zapatistas, where historian, lawyer and activist Staughton Lynd comments (in conversation with Andrej Grubacic) on racism and slavery at this time, adding to the story.

As to the origin of racism I forced [my] students to confront Shakespeare’s play “Othello.” Whiteness theory ["who counts as white depends on what is at stake"] would suggest that Anglo Americans have always been racist, and simply brought their racism with them from England to the New World. Then how do you explain the play [Othello] that was produced in London at almost the same moment that the first permanent English colony (Jamestown, founded in 1607) came into existence in Virgina?

“Othello,” a story about a black man (“the Moor”) married to a white woman, contains plenty of racism. It is voiced by Iago, the play’s villain. He taunts Desdemona’s father with a crude reference to Othello and Desdemona making “the beast with two backs,” and with the suggestion that now, even now, Othello the black ram was “tupping” Brabanto’s white ewe.

But this ugliness is swept away by the most beautiful love poetry in the English language [from Othello]…

So if Englishmen could imagine such a love between a black person and a white at the time they began to settle the thirteen colonies, whence came slavery and racism?

I suggested the answer [that ideology follows economics]: from a fall in the price of tobacco. The economic event, in the mid-1600s, made it imperative for Virginia tobacco planters to find a cheaper source of labor. They found it in Africa and in making American slavery last forever.

All over the globe today, slavery is utterly and obviously related to maximizing profits at the expense of another human being (modern-day abolitionist Kevin Bales suggests there are 27 million slaves in the world today, more than at any time in history).

Until about 1660, black and white laborers in Virginia were treated in roughly the same way as indentured servants. They feasted together, ran away together, and intermarried.

Interestingly, in the early days of South Africa (1650s), the Dutch Afrikaners also intermarried with Black Africans, and it was legal, and the “Cape coloured” became a new ethnic group—in what, under the Afrikaners, would become the unconscionable and brutally violent apartheid South Africa.

I wrote about it here, and suggested the increased divisions in South African society possibly came about at least in part as a result of ongoing violence, often from outside sources (the first African war for freedom from colonial rule came out of ‘white’ South Africa, against the British).

Whatever the reasons, both South African apartheid and American slavery didn’t begin exactly as one might have guessed: with fundamentally stratified race relations based on some sort of natural law belief. They devolved at least to a degree into abominable hells for reasons that are vital yet nearly impossible to fully understand, or unravel.

Life, information, open-mindedness, constantly shatters assumptions. People and societies are confusing and inconceivable. But why are we racist? What makes us racist? What makes us classist? What institutions/conditions diminish these instincts? Clearly, economic stress, greed and physical violence cause vast amounts of havoc and ugliness. Be fair. Be generous. Be kind.

Lots of love,

Pete

The BC Liberals, so-called, are pushing for massive cuts to the Arts. Actually, sort of unbelievable cuts to the Arts, like nowhere else in Canada. According to the Tyee:

The numbers are remarkable—a decline in core funding over two years of more than 88 per cent, from $19.5 million down to $2.25 million, according to the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture service plan released after the budget update on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, NDP culture critic Spencer Herbert figured that when cuts to gaming funding are included there is a 92 per cent overall cut over the same period, from $47.8 million in 2008-09 down to $3.7 million in 2010-11.

I’m in no position to figure out what the real numbers are, if those are correct. But the mentality of a government that has limited issue going massively over budget on, say, the Olympics, yet no problem cutting an already not particularly large budget for the Arts, is highly disconcerting, if not surprising.

Anyway, if anyone wishes to send a letter to their MLA or to the Premier’s office, I have no idea what good those things do, but I wrote a letter to both. If you feel inclined to protest, feel free to cut and paste and manipulate (not using my name!) from the letter below.

E-mail to Premier Campbell is premier@gov.bc.ca

THE LETTER

Dear Premier Campbell

I just want to pass along how appalled I am by the Liberal government’s massive suggested cuts to the arts. They reflect, on the part of a government who has spent countless hundreds of millions over budget for the Olympics, an ignorance towards the power of the Arts to the community both in spirit and financially. The Arts are remarkably wide-ranging, reaching into countless sectors, and boost the economy in myriad ways; transport, food, construction, and thousands of jobs in production itself. It is the Arts that, for most normal human beings, make living worthwhile.

As Margaret Atwood wrote:

[Creativity] is an age-long and normal human characteristic: All children are born creative. It’s the lack of any appreciation of these activities that is not ordinary. Mr. Harper has demonstrated that he has no knowledge of, or respect for, the capacities and interests of “ordinary people” [who are creative and believe in the Arts]. He’s the “niche interest.” Not us.

To hear a disdain of the Arts from the Harper government is distressing and unfortunate enough. I fear the Liberal government is of the same mentality, regardless of their Liberal moniker.

I ask with all my belief in the voice of the people, that you withdraw these draconian cuts to the Arts, and start considering the spirit that truly makes a community, a province, worth living in.

***

By the way, when I say the “government has spent…” I of course understand that the government has actually spent zero. The tax-payer has spent this money.

Actually, that’s an active use of the verb. Something more precise might be “the tax-payer has had this money spent for them by the government.” I am generally against the government doing much of this, but while we have a government that spends billions of tax-payer dollars on things I don’t believe in, doesn’t keep to budget promises, and has a hatred for massively humane things like ‘harm reduction’ (okay, maybe hatred would better off describe the Harper government and ‘harm reduction’), I believe we should not cut from the Arts.

As for my fellow tax-paying sisters and brothers, and even those who are not, I send big creative vibes and love—and may you be exercising your creativity, the spirit of who you are, in ways that benefit you and those around you,

Pete

I just watched a documentary called Aftermath: The Remnants of War. It is based on an award-winning book by Donovan Webster, directed by Daniel Sekulich—and powerful. In short, it tells of how—for reasons of contamination, unexploded munitions, psychological trauma—when a war officially ends, it still continues. France, Russia (Stalingrad), Vietnam and Bosnia, in that order, are the areas focused upon.

A 56 minute version of the film can be seen on the wonderful NFB site here.

Being a total nerd, I took notes as I often do. I was filled with sadness but not surprised by the brutal aftermaths of war in Bosnia, the dioxin poison in Vietnam and the death toll in fields near and in Stalingrad (because I had heard about these ‘remnants’ before). But the ongoing affect of unexploded munitions in France from World War I was a real surprise. I had no idea.

For the record, My great uncle Bernard Ashmole spent 19 months in the trenches of France, and survived. I met him once, when he was in his 90s.

These were my notes from the documentary.

FRANCE

In the forests of Verdun, France, ten months of combat in 1916 killed 700,000 people. Demineurs today are, literally, de-miners, removing the munitions still there—in the fields, lawns, gardens—that did not explode.

In France since 1945, 20,000,000 shells have been gathered. Over 600 demineurs have died, because the bombs can still explode—“the deadly artifacts of French and German genius.”

About one in eight shells failed to explode in WWI, inert for nearly a century now, waiting for the demineurs.

Today, 16 teams of demineurs (about 140 people) clear the countryside of explosives in France from Verdun to the shores of Normandy. In the Lorraine region, they uncover, on average in the last few years, 80 tons of munitions.

One of the demineurs said, shocked himself:

“In some places 2 tons have been dropped per square metre [just over 3 feet by 3 feet]. Two tons of munitions per square metre! Can you imagine? It’s crazy!”

The French government gets more than 11,000 calls per year from civilians who have found these munitions/weapons—bombs, mortars, empty cases or grenades etc—in their backyard, garden, nearby or wherever.

Farmers’ machinery accidentally detonate thousands of bombs and shells.

“In 1991 alone, 36 farmers were killed by these forgotten weapons. Since then the government has stopped releasing casualty figures.”

Forget about anthrax for a moment, although human nature clearly continues to be human nature. It turns out the most dangerous munition finds are aging chemical weapons, leaking gas shells—which are “toxic and incendiary.”

Demineurs then bury these weapons in huge entrenchments, and detonate them—bombs that landed over 90 years ago—when horse drawn carriages were the main modes of transport—but can still maim and kill today.

At the current pace it has been estimated that “all of France will be fully cleared, and safe, in 700 years.”

At the end of the film, in the post-script, it was written:

“In France, 12,000 people were evacuated from their homes because of leaking gas shells.”

STALINGRAD

The remains of about 1.8 million—800,000 Germans and 1 million Russians—were simply left in piles where they died, frozen, to rot. Why were they left? For the simple reason, with the clean up of Stalingrad, there were not enough people available to do anything.

VIETNAM

From the narration:

“The aftermath of the Vietnam War seems to funnel from a single cause. Throughout the 1960s, American aircraft fanned out across Southern Vietnam, showering the forest with over 70,000,000 litres of herbicides, the most common of which was code-named Agent Orange, a toxic drizzle that destroyed plant life within a number of hours.”

Dioxins spread through the food chain, in the water and in the soil.

Dr Lee Kow Di (sp) heads the Agent Orange Victim Fund: “It’s not only a humanitarian issue but also one of human rights.

From the narration:

“The Vietnamese believe that more than half a million children have been affected by chemical residues left over from the war. All across the country there is anger at the American government about this issue. Thousands of US veterans now receive compensation for illnesses linked to dioxin. But so far Washington has refused to compensate the Vietnamese claiming more research is needed. Yet American lab studies have already linked dioxin to cancer, blood disease and birth defects…Scientists have concluded that this country [Vietnam] has the largest contamination of dioxin in the world.”

BOSNIA

“In Sarajevo, ten thousand people died in the longest siege in modern history.”

From the narration:

“Since 1992, land mines have killed over 4,000 people in Bosnia, three quarters of them civilians. And the UN estimates there are still over a million mines buried throughout the country.”

The remnants of war indeed. Over a hundred million people were killed by war in the last century. May you experience only, or mostly, peace.

Remember to love, and remember that people—sisters and brothers—are working to repair and restore these damaged lands, and damaged people. Who knows what the future will bring? Why not more hope, more love, more compassion, and less war?

Pete