Category Archives: Thoughts

Consider, Federal

Afganistan Mission

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This is a reply to the mission statement column in the Abbotsford Post of August 27 which has been reproduced for purposes of clarity below my commentary.

The Glaring Omission in Mr. Taylor’s August 28, 2007 mission statement is any Afghanistan mission statement demonstrating that this is a War worth fighting and not merely “a war of politicians and politics”.

The Valium of self-delusion Mr. Taylor speaks of would appear to have been administered to himself.

Afghanistan was not who attacked the US on 9/11 but terrorists. Being in Afghanistan, helping the US to pursue its anti-drug policies in wiping out the opium crop (from which heroin is made) upon which Afghani farmers depend for cash to live on and killing innocent civilians, does nothing but create enemies and more terrorists.

Fools rush in where wise men know better than to tread.

If we are unwilling to treat our addicts and help them into recovery, insisting on pursuing a foolish policy of ignoring capitalism and market forces via reducing demand through addiction recovery, there is no need to compound the foolishness by creating enemies – the farmers will be happy to sell their crop to us and don’t care if we then destroy it.

Wise men know that a terrorist in Afghanistan is not a threat to us in Canada – until someone bankrolls the terrorists thus allowing them to travel from Afghanistan to Canada, hide within Canada preparing their strike and providing the materials needed to commit terrorist atrocities.

Wise men know you go for those who bankroll the terrorists.

But Saudi Arabia is a friend of the Bush family and the US government; is extremely wealthy and generous to their friends; and controls the Saudi oil fields. Afghanistan is poor, unable to buy friends and influence.

He is correct on one point and both right and wrong on another. He is correct that the troops deserve our support and while correct that a firm withdrawal date should not be set, his implication that we should condemn our troops to an indefinite stay, suffering bleeding to death from a thousand cuts is criminal and flawed.

The bitter pill our troops must swallow is that they were betrayed by their government. Worse is the fact that this betrayal was perpetrated on them by a minority Government – the minority Conservative government who, while able to send our forces into harms way, had no ethical or moral right to commit out dedicated forces personnel to shedding their blood and lives in a purposeless and unjust war.

As the words of John Stewart Mills quoted by Mr. Taylor make clear – “war is an ugly thing” and if we are to be “willing to fight” and ask our forces to shed their blood, it must be a “moral” cause “more important than personal safety” and “worth war”.

The Balkan’s ethnic cleansing was. The Sudan with its genocide would be. Foolishness, political opportunism and cronyism are not.

A War of Politics and Politicians is not a war worth our nation’s treasure and blood, it is an ugly thing we should never have been involved in and that ethics demand we disengage from.

It’s a war, politicians

So Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe and Liberal Party of Canada leader Stéphane Dion are threatening to bring down the federal government and provoke a general election if Prime Minister Stephen Harper doesn’t give a firmdate for withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan.

I wonder who they asked about that?

Not the members of Mission’s adopted regiment, the Royal Westminsters (the ‘Westies’) I bet. Anybody who has met these young men and women at events in Mission or at Master Corporal Bason’s funeral has heard a very different story. Many of these fine young people have signed up for the task force TF1-08 which means they, as militia citizen soldiers, have volunteered for service in Afghanistan.

Our young soldiers understand something these two self-interested political parties do not.This is not totally surprising since the Liberals cold bloodedly gutted our armed forces and the Bloc represents that portion of Quebec society that has always regarded defending our country as a purely Anglo task.

What our soldiers understand is that this is a war. It is not a peacekeeping operation or a police action, it is a war. On 9/11 our closest ally was attacked. Anybody who believes that attack was just on the U.S. and that Canada is safe is not just wearing rose-coloured spectacles but is also suffering an overdose of the Valium of self-delusion.

Imagine, as a soldier, being told, “your country expects you to lay your life on the line for a set of ideals. But after 2009 these ideals will cease to be important and everbody can come home.”

It is a novel concept – go to war but, first, declare an end date. Wars aren’t like that, they last until you win or lose.Thank Heaven for the young soldiers of the Westies and those and of the legendary Van Doos currently in Afghanistan.

They are ready to defend our country and they also believe that in bringing freedom to a people previously mired in a totalitarian, despotic and cruel medieval theocracy they are serving Canadian ideals. The Canadian Armed Forces are, sadly, used to being over tasked and ill-equipped. They can accept that they are being sent to war in secondhand German tanks, which are replacing a previous generation of secondhand German tanks, or in armoured vehicles whose armour is about as effective as that on an ice-cream truck. But, it is a much more bitter pill to swallow to know that they are effectively being betrayed by their own government.

Yes, war is terrible and the death of any young soldier is an enormous human tragedy. But it is worth remembering that the casualty rate we are suffering in Afghanistan is lower than the murder rate in Toronto.

So when the Westies are next in Mission – after the parade Nov. 11 in the Legion – consider dropping by and shaking their hands. Hopefully that will convince them that those for whom they are fight worth fighting for.

Above all, remember the words of John Stuart Mill: “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

Consider, Homeless, Municipal

Emerging Abbotsford Police State?

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I was leaving the Dragon Fort eatery the other day when I paused to observe an Abbotsford Police Department (APD) officer in an unmarked car stealthily wielding a camera. Looking around to see what or who was being so slyly photographed I recognized the subject of his attention as a new arrival in town.

There was something deeply unsettling about the image of an APD officer in an unmarked car surreptitiously taking photos of someone merely standing on the sidewalk.

One can understand police thinking in this matter: new face, tattooed and standing around in “that area” of the city. But understanding is not authorization agreement to or approval of this behaviour. The thought of the APD secretly photographing us is chilling, bringing to mind the behaviours of the secret police of the old communist state apparatuses and other despotic regimes.

One is left pondering the implications of this behaviour; wrestling with the morality of spying on citizens and wondering about the legality of secretly photographing any citizen.

Charter of Rights and Freedoms, privacy laws and requirements that the police obtain warrants would appear, from the behaviour of the APD, not to protect citizens from clandestine police spying in Abbotsford.

How many other pictures have the APD taken? Just how many secret police files on citizens does the APD maintain and exactly what is the purpose or use of these secret police files?

These questions and other problematic APD conduct underscores how essential it is we put in place and exercise citizen oversight and control of the APD before we find ourselves living in an Orwellian police state, living the novel 1984 with Big Brother watching our every move, seeking to control us and our thoughts.

Hmmm

Immutable Laws of Weirdness?

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I found myself pondering the possible existence of a universal law of Weirdness or The Weird, along the lines of the law of gravity. If in the same way that a planet has mass and attracts passing asteroids to itself, does Weirdness have a pseudo-mass such that at a certain level of Weirdness it begins to attract any nearby Weirdness, thereby increasing the Weirdness in a given area or in a person’s life?

These days I will admit that my headspace has always contained a certain amount of Wyrd, that my world view could/can be considered from slightly to a great deal skewed.

For many years my mental illness together with the effect of being an adult child of alcoholism caused me to hide and suppress my idiosyncratic thought processes and off-beat way of seeing or thinking about the universe around me. With all the negative connotations, the stigma, associated with the words mental illness I certainly did not want mental illness linked in any manner to me. Growing up with an alcoholic parent is all about keeping secrets and you are as sick as your secrets.

You become fixated on appearing, being normal. You stuff any problems or issues until their mass reaches the point that it collapses in on itself becoming a black hole that devours your life. Perchance black hole, while colourful, is not quite accurate in that there is no escape from a black hole, while there is escape into recovery from mental illness and the ‘isms of being an adult child of alcoholism.

Escape is not easy requiring years of effort and a willingness to face your true self, to do the work needed to change the way you think about yourself and the universe around you.

As part of the recovery process I became comfortable in my own skin and instead of denying the writer, the words inside of me, my Chi, I set them free. In setting them free I set free a part of me I had locked up, setting ME free. With that freedom came not only acceptance of the fact my head can be a Weird place to dwell, but I came to treasure that Weirdness and the little spark of madness that is an essential part of ME.

This train of thought arose as I found myself holding a digital video camera, zoomed in on a piece of paper hand towel that was full of crap, zooming out and panning over to the SCN correspondent so he could comment on the philosophical, ethical and societal implications inherent in the existence of this crappy piece of paper towel.

No, no metaphor; I mean full of crap literally – as in someone had used it as toilet paper.

You are correct this scenario was just a little Weird. Hence my contemplating whether Weirdness has some bizarre sort of pseudo-mass that could attract more Weirdness into my vicinity and life. I began to wonder if in accepting, even treasuring, the Weird in my head and sharing my thoughts through writing had resulted in a pseudo-mass of sufficient magnitude that it had begun to pull this kind of Weirdness into my life.

The whole chain of fate(?) began innocently enough over a cup of coffee at a coffee house. Hmmmm, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that this chain of events began as a result of events I had observed and that had set my mind to wondering and my fingers to typing about the conduct of the Abbotsford Police Department (APD) in terms of Orwellian Big Brother-ism and a police state. I emailed this article off to Something Cool News, leading to an exchange of email that led to a phone conversation that resulted in the conversation over coffee.

The conversation began about some of the unacceptable behaviours the APD has been increasingly engaging in with respect to the homeless and this behaviour’s expansion even into negative treatment of youth members of a local church for daring to “encourage” the homeless by giving out sandwiches. As interesting conversations tend to do this conversation ranged outwards into broader discussion of homelessness and the uncaring treatment of the homeless and others in need in Abbotsford.

At some point in this wide-ranging discussion the correspondent spoke of his chance observation earlier in the day in Abbotsford of paper towelling that had been used as toilet paper by someone forced to use the great outdoors as a washroom. We passed on by this conversation point to talk of other improper APD behaviours and City Hall’s love of paying lip service to the epidemic of homelessness and poverty on the streets of Abbotsford while actually doing nothing to address these grave social problems.

We left the coffee house to shoot the video report on the observations of APD behaviour and the thoughts and concerns that the observed APD behaviour raised in my mind. When we had finished the video report the SCN correspondent returned to his observation of the soiled paper towelling and what it said about Abbotsford. Thus it was I found myself following him to the site of the paper towel sighting to help him make a video record and commentary.

I found myself on video putting context and comment into this pile of crappy paper towelling. Pointing out that in Abbotsford washrooms are for “Customer Use Only”; or that there are “No Public Washrooms” in stores; that the keys to the locked washrooms of gas stations are not handed to the homeless; that while at the Clearbrook Library branch the washrooms are not locked, at the downtown MSA Library branch beside Jubilee Park the washrooms are locked and accessible only with a key.

Thus it is that the homeless are forced to either hold it in indefinitely or urinate and defecate outdoors like animals. Perhaps, even less than animals considering that just the day before I had seen a business truck whose business was cleaning up after people’s dogs.

I touched briefly upon what this says about Abbotsford, particularly in light of the (false) pride so many take in all the churches in Abbotsford and how very “Christian” Abbotsford is. This led to reflecting on the question of just how Christian it is that a community with all the wealth and resources of Abbotsford does not find the homeless situation intolerable and take the necessary steps to end homelessness and address poverty in Abbotsford.

When we had finished taping the commentary on the paper towelling and the treatment of the homeless in Abbotsford, I could not resist taking advantage of having a conversational associate to bounce a somewhat heretical train of thought off of.

It occurred to me that despite their claims to be Christians many, if not most, of those who name themselves as Christians behave in a totally Un-Christian manner. They appear totally willing to sacrifice the homeless and the poor in order that they not be required to put forth effort or even worse – money – in simple Christian charity.

Given that blasphemy is defined as: profane or contemptuous speech, writing or action concerning God. Are not all those who label themselves Christian but behave in the most Un-Christian of ways, committing contemptuous actions concerning God? Are not their actions in showing disrespect and contempt for the golden rule, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the admonition to love your fellow man and so forth, profane?

Do they not then Blaspheme?

Does it not follow that rather than being the most Christian of communities, that through their actions these self-labelled “Christians” in fact cause Abbotsford to be the most Blasphemous of Communities?

So there we were in between the two parts of the video commentary on the implications contained within these soiled paper towels, debating whether, in their inactions and uncaring indifference to the homeless the smugly superior Christian community does blaspheme? After a moment for both of us to reflect on that question we concluded: How could it not be blasphemy?

I then found myself holding a digital video camera, zoomed in on a piece of paper hand towel that was full of crap, zooming out and panning over to the SCN correspondent so he could make a comment on the philosophical, ethical and societal implications inherent in the existence of this crappy piece of paper towel.

As we shook hands and parted company I found myself reflecting on just how much and often the Weird enters into my life. This is only to be expected if there is a universal law of Weirdness along the lines of the law of gravity. The Implication being that I can expect increasing amounts of the Weird in my life as the increasing pseudo-mass of the Weird around me attracts more and more Weirdness.

There is no point in worrying about an immutable law of the universe regarding which I can do nothing. Besides it should fill my life with creativity, interesting challenges, and passion and prove to be downright fun.

Consider, Provincial

Election Reform

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While I agree with the essence of Mr. Bucholtz’s assertion that election reform is needed; I must dispute his premise that Single Transferable Vote is the reform the electorate should be demanding in making their votes count.

Mr. Bucholtz’s statement: “I am a strong believer in improving democracy, as opposed to just taking an apathetic approach to it” includes two problematic assumptions.

That STV is an improvement to democracy is debatable since STV and alternative reform proposals add complexity to elections. I am also uncomfortable with the assumption that nonparticipation and nonvoting are the result of apathy. It may well be that people currently feel no cadidate represents their views and positions.

I heard and hear far to may people who are not voting for policies but are holding their noses voting for “the least objectionable” outcome.

We should be pursuing a course of electoral reform to put the power back into the hands of the people, keeping reform simple. Thus I advocate adding one simple choice to every ballot cast at every level of governance in Canada – NONE OF THE ABOVE.

Democracy is defined as: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

Power is only vested in the people in an electoral system that offers them a choice to exercise their vote for agents of their choosing. One could well argue that currently we are not a democracy since we are offered a limited number of bad choices made by others from which to choose our agents.

With one simple bold reform we can return the power back to the people, reclaiming it from politicians, political parties and the “powers that be”. In any electoral area where “none of the above” receives the most votes none of the candidates or parties are permitted to run in the next round of election.

The election process is repeated until such time as a candidate is judged and found to be worthy of exercising the voters will and power.

I will not claim this will be a neat process. In fact I truly hope that the votes held under this reform are incredibly messy and require several rounds of voting.

Fundamentally voters will be able to insist on being offered good candidates. The second (and any other needed) round should, with the elimination of party politics and politicians, be extremely lively offering opportunities and choices for a most eclectic offering of candidates.

We should also get the re-introduction of debate on issues, problem solving, policies, leadership and other positive outcomes. The new system should ensure the opportunity for many, if not a majority, of independents, new faces, new ideas, the evolution of new alliances and parties.

Yes it will be a little chaotic at first but as the author Alan Dean Foster wrote: “Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.”

BE BOLD, embrace change, Carpe Diem.

Consider, Homeless

Kevin Ellis – one year AD

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Kevin Ellis was one of the unknown and faceless people that are only referred to as “homeless”. But when he died July 18th, he became a figurehead for the way those in his situation are treated. In this case, it seems he was treated poorly and shown the dark side of humanity in his final days. In the end, it seems he had only two allies – a fellow homeless man and a complete stranger.

So began an article published here on SCN (something cool news) July 31, 2006. Kevin Ellis was a homeless man suffering from a respiratory illness but was sent home from the Abbotsford Hospital and died a short time after. Indeed, only two people seemed to really pay attention to his passing – a woman who happened to see him while he was at the hospital and one of his fellow homeless friends, James Breckenridge.

We asked several of Abbottsford’s homeless last week if they feel that the local hospital was treating them better and most said no. One man told us that he had been in a car accident but when he went to the hospital, he was kicked out because he had drugs in his system. Another woman made a similar complaint, claiming a needed operation was never given because of her history of drug abuse.

While these complaints were not independently verified, they do paint a picture of Abbotsford’s streets that looks very similar to one painted a year ago. To get a more in-depth perspective on the issue, we asked James Breckenridge to comment on how things have changed in the year since Kevin Ellis’ death, if indeed they have changed at all.

Remembering Kevin Ellis – By James Breckenridge

In the year since Kevin has passed, things have definitely have not gotten better. They may have gotten somewhat worse due to the increased numbers of homeless, especially new faces, on the streets of Abbotsford.

More people = more visits = more incidents = more strain = less tolerance. I continue to hear about bad treatment from hospital staff and they continue to try to ship people to the shelter who are in an altered state of consciousness.

Kevin was in so much pain those last weeks, days of his life that he wanted to die. I know he spoke of this to me and other of his friends so I have no doubt that he welcomed death as an end to an intolerable level of physical, emotional and spiritual pain.

When I think of Kevin I hope he has found peace.

I am not sure if I am infuriated, incredibly saddened or some combination of both because the system, we as a society, as the human race failed Kevin in so many ways. From the abused child to the homeless addict devalued and treated as less than an animal by society, the medical system and the social welfare system.

Kevin was not a saint; he was a wounded human being who turned to drugs to escape the pain. Unfortunately there is no real escape from that kind of pain until you deal with the wounds and what it was that inflicted the pain. It is why I believe we need to change how we think of and deliver the support needed for the far to many others like Kevin to find peace in life rather than finding peace only in the oblivion of death.

Kevin’s death did not bring great change, was for society at large just the death of another disposable life, an unremarkable death of another drug addict. On the other hand there was the woman who had seen Kevin’s treatment at the hospital and wrote a letter to the local papers on what she had seen. There is no doubt that his treatment and death had an effect on her and we have no way of telling what or who her words in the paper affected.

Like a pebble dropped into a still body of water, sending ripples out, there is an affect but we cannot judge just what or who a given ripple may impinge on