Here’s a quote for ya. George Bush, discussing his plan for Social Security:

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

Reminds one of a famous quote from Lenin:

“A lie told often enough becomes accepted truth.”

It’s been a raging controversy for days. On May 9, Newsweek magazine published a report that said that American guards had flushed a Qur’an down the toilet and also abused it, in order to distress Muslim prisoners held in Guantanomo Bay. This report used an anonymous military offical for the information. Subsequently, riots broke out in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world, leading to the deaths of several people.

After tremendous pressure from the US government, Newsweek retracted the allegation because they could no longer confirm it with their source. The Bush administration was all over it, criticizing Newsweek, suggesting that the media needed to be held “accountable” for what they said and implying that Newsweek had contributed to deaths. They pointed out that there were guidelines in place since 2003 for ensuring that the Qur’an was treated like “a delicate piece of art” and was not to be desecrated in anyway.

I find it interesting that the US government is appalled that anyone would believe a report about abusing the Qur’an, as though US soldiers have always behaved entirely properly. We’ve seen the pictures from Abu Ghraib. Is it really a leap to assert that people who are willing to stack people up in naked pyramids, attach electrodes to their hands while they stand on boxes, and even beat prisoners to death, probably wouldn’t think twice about flushing a Qur’an?

But there needs to be facts behind stories. As it turns out, for years reports have been coming out of Guantanomo (recently characterized by Amnesty International as a “gulag”) and other American prisons that the Qur’an is being abused and desecrated, including as an interrogation tactic. Last night, the Pentagon confirmed that it had substantiated five cases where the US military at Guantanomo “mishandled” the Qur’an. They claim it wasn’t flushed, just “mishandled”, and they also claim that reports from prisoners about the Qur’an being abused and being flushed are being made up by the prisoners, who are “not a benign group of people”.

As the US backtracks, it’s becoming increasingly clear that whether or not the specific incident Newsweek mentioned happened or not, the allegation they made was at least broadly true. As the truth emerges, something more troubling than a false news story (as Democracy Now! pointed out today, where is the controversy over the lies that really cost lives – WMD in Iraq, for example?) emerges too – the US government’s attempt to muzzle the media when what the media say does not suit their purpose.

Originally written Thursday, November 11, 2004

It’s interesting how certain beliefs that seem to be unrelated to each other are combined in very standard ways and adopted by distinct groups of people.

Let me explain. Think about the idea of conservatism. What issues come to mind?

Here are some I can think of off the top of my head:

– corporatism, unbridled capitalism, free markets
– anti-abortion
– in favour of the war in Iraq and the so-called War on Terror
– anti-gun control
– religious
– anti-gay rights

This is a broad range of issues that don’t all have strong connections. For example, conservatives are against abortion because they support what they call a “culture of life”, yet many support needless war, which is all about death. Conservatives support corporatism, capitalism and free markets, yet many are Christians, and Christ said that those who followed him should “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21).

Why is it that people accept beliefs (conservatism, liberalism) that cover just about every conceivable social and political issue, yet are often unrelated and even contradictory?

The issue of faith is especially important. Most people are religious, or at least claim to be, and there’s no doubt a significant number hold their faith as very important in their lives. The successful merging of faith, especially evangelical and born-again Christianity, with conservatism has become an enormous factor in US politics. The same has happened here in Canada although to a lesser degree.

For any revolution to be successful, it must encompass faith. The change that needs to take place in our society and across the globe cannot happen if religious people are left out. How can this challenge be met? What can be done to separate faith from conservatism?

The optimistic part is that the belief system held by religious conservatives really is self-contradictory. How does Jesus’ instruction to “turn the other cheek” when slapped reconcile with a policy of “pre-emptive” war? How can unrestrained corporatism be defended when Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”? (Mark 10:25)

(This optimism might be unfounded. Maybe a contradictory belief system is actually harder to change than a rational one.)

In a recent conversation I had with an insightful friend (that’s you, Luc), we talked about what could be done to break down barriers between groups of people. Most conservative Christians are strongly opposed to gay marriage and often gay rights in general. I think that for many, the root of this opposition (and hatred in some cases) is based on the primitive human fear of the Other.

Fear of the Other has driven human conflict since the dawn of mankind and that fear still drives international events today. One of the best-known ways to break this barrier is simple: make friends. When the Other becomes familiar and friendly, fear dissolves, taking hatred with it.

Would it be possible to create events that brought different groups of people together in an atmosphere that forced or fostered reliance, teamwork and eventually friendship between them? For example, a survivalist trip in the Northern wilderness. The event could be billed to church groups as a way to experience God’s creation, and to groups of gay activists as a way to get out of the city. ;) Create a stressful event – perhaps the “accidental” destruction of all of the canoes once the camping site had been reached – that forces the group of people to rely on each other.

Is this a recipe for disaster or could it see the outbreak of friendship among people who would not normally ever meet each other? (Perhaps it’s both – people finally break those barriers, then die of starvation.)

When Dorothy lived in Kansas, she experienced a very small world. Kansas is the middle of nowhere by anybody’s judgment, even a Kansan’s. But when a tornado swept her away to Oz, her world changed. She became close friends with people (well, an animal, a scarecrow and a robot) that she would not normally have ever met. They joined each other on the Yellow Brick Road and traveled with a common purpose.

I realize that this idea is not exactly ethical. But it’s just an idea, the product of a wacky brainstorm session. It’s probably not a good idea to mislead people into unexpected situations. But perhaps something similar could be accomplished in a different, better way. Maybe YOU can think of something. So why not leave a comment and let me know? I’d like to hear from you…

Bringing people together under false pretenses is wrong, even if in the end it would be better for everyone involved. It’s worrisome to think, though, that we may all be brought together because of some horrific catastrophe, like nuclear war and the ensuing nuclear winter, if we do not solve our differences. If that happens, we may wish we had tried every stupid idea we came up with to try and solve them.

Comment by Iliafer:

Thoughtful, nay, insightful, but here’s why your plan won’t work:

Quote:

“Would it be possible to create events that brought different groups of people together in an atmosphere that forced or fostered reliance, teamwork and eventually friendship between them? For example, a survivalist trip in the Northern wilderness. The event could be billed to church groups as a way to experience God’s creation, and to groups of gay activists as a way to get out of the city. ;) Create a stressful event – perhaps the “accidental” destruction of all of the canoes once the camping site had been reached – that forces the group of people to rely on each other.”

This won’t work, because one of the Christian conservatives will undoubtedly bring his hunting rifle on the trip to the great white north – our deer are bigger ;o) Then, when the canoes are taken away and the Christians and gays are forced to live in so-called “harmony”, the stress of the situation will surely cause one of the Christians to blow their stack, take the gun and shoot one or more mouthy gay person (because, gays tend to run off at the mouth ;o) j/k). No matter what, there will be power struggles (a la Lord of the Flies) and eventually someone’s gonna lose it. And, the conservatives will likely come out on top because they are the ones with the guns.

Sad, isn’t it?

Comment by Royboy:

Quote: ***This is a broad range of issues that don’t all have strong connections. For example, conservatives are against abortion because they support what they call a “culture of life”, yet many support needless war, which is all about death. Conservatives support corporatism, capitalism and free markets, yet many are Christians, and Christ said that those who followed him should “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21).***

“Needless war”, that’s editorial… hence the premise isn’t terribly well founded.

From a religious perspective war is entirely necessary to smite the “evildoers”. This is bolstered with the “me” culture of America where ppl are actually encouraged to buy large SUV’s to keep themselves (and families) safe at the expense of the smaller car they smash into. Meaning “take the fight over there instead of here”. It is this ethos that narrowly won the election for Bush despite transparent shortcomings in execution. (meaning I disagree with the conventional wisdom that values issues won Bush the election) That certainly shored up his core support and got them to the poles… but for the undecideds that put him over the top IMO.

Originally written Monday, March 21, 2005

Terri Schiavo is a woman living in Florida through the grace of medical technology who has been at the centre of a media firestorm for the last few days. She has been in a “persistent vegetative state” (as described by her doctors) for the last 15 years, after suffering severe brain damage due to a heart attack. She has no cognitive abilities as a result and will never recover.

Her husband has been fighting her parents in court, because he wants her feeding tube to be removed and they don’t (he says it’s what she would have wanted, they seem to be victims of wishful thinking and claim that she responds to them). He has won various court battles, right up to the state Supreme Court, but now Bush and the rest of the Republicans have taken up the issue because they claim they care about her. Perhaps they do, or perhaps a leaked Republican internal memo calling it a “great political issue” that can be used to stir up the pro-life religious right is more at the heart of their “concern”.

The controversy this is generating prompted a piece in the National Post called “Learning from Terri Schiavo”, written by Peter A. Singer, who is director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. In the piece, he recommends that people create a “living will”: instructions on what to do in situations where one is alive but is incapacitated to various degrees. You can actually download a living will template from the Centre, which contains all the information you need to create one.

I started thinking about this, and realized that there are certain things I would like to make clear in the event that I am seriously incapacitated for any reason, especially since various family members and friends could quite likely have some serious disagreements about what to do in that unfortunate event. This type of instruction is deeply personal and very private, and for that reason, I’ve decided to share it with you. Be warned that if you are upset or disturbed by frank discussions of (my) mortality this is not for you!

The template lists common medical conditions where others are called upon to make decisions about life-saving treatment. It lists mild, moderate and severe strokes; mild, moderate and severe dementia; permanent coma; terminal illness, etc. Then it lists the procedures that could be called upon to continue life: CPR, ventilator, dialysis, life-saving surgery, blood transfusion, life-saving antibiotics, tube feeding. It also outlines what living with a particular degree of illness would be.

For example, it says that if you were to have a mild stroke, you would have “mild paralysis on one side of the body. You could walk with a cane or walker. Meaningful conversations would be possible, but you might have trouble finding words.” And so on. A severe stroke means “you would have severe paralysis on one side of your body. You would be unable to walk, and would need to be in a chair or bed. You would not have meaningful conversations…you would need a feeding tube for nourishment.” Etc.

Instead of laboriously addressing each condition and each treatment, I’m going to give you the condensed version of what to do.

Anything that can be described as mild or moderate: if someone who has even half a clue looks at me and goes, “hmmm, that looks mild or moderate”, then dang it keep me plugged in! Don’t withhold my Cheerios just because I have a string of drool hanging from the left corner of my mouth. I may not be making much sense on the outside, but inside I’m swearing that if I ever get out of this high-chair I’m going to make you pay for that last head-pat and “gosh, doesn’t Adrian look darling today!”

Anything that can be described as severe: well, that all depends on what it is and on what it takes to keep me going. I’m not exactly sure why, but severe dementia does not seem like a compelling enough reason to me to say, withhold my food and water via feeding tube. After all, you don’t have any clue what’s going on inside my head – perhaps I’m floating through clouds and conversing with marigolds. Severe brain damage is another story. If I’m in a “persistent vegetative state” like Terri Schiavo for longer than a couple years or so and there’s no way I’m coming out of it, then it’s time for me to go. I want my friends and family to get on with their lives, not sit around my bed trying to find hints of communication in eye blinks or involuntary muscle twitches. In both cases, I would rather that extraordinary measures were not taken to keep me alive. Food and water is one thing, liver transplants are another – someone else could use that liver more than me, after all.

Permanent coma: According to the template, “you would be permanently unconscious…you would need to be in bed, and you would never regain consciousness.” This terminology seems slightly deceiving. It seems to me that you wouldn’t know if a coma was temporary until the person woke up, and until they do, you could claim that it was permanent. If you pull the plug too quickly, then you’d certainly be right that the coma was permanent, but I dislike that particular brand of certitude. For this reason, I respectfully request that you give me a few years to snap out of it, say five to seven years. And in the meantime, please be creative: I might wake up if you play some good beats, replace my usual water with a tasty rum & orange, spoon feed me streak (medium-rare please), etc. No, sex is not out of the question either, as necrophiliac as it may feel to you. (The word “you” is used very specifically in this last sentence, if you’re uncertain if I really mean you or not, then no, I don’t mean you. You know who you are. And aren’t.)

Terminal illness: keep me going, but please don’t drag it out. Just like you, I have to die sometime, and there’s no sense in prolonging life unreasonably. I would like to have proper and caring medical treatment but I do not expect or request exceptional treatment. And if anybody approaches you with a hare-brained scheme to, say, download my brain into a computer, or freeze me for revival in 2250 (just in case they need a decrepit, diseased North American for some reason), the answer is always yes.

After death: just because I’m already dead and can no longer influence proceedings, does not mean you can do whatever you want. Here are some quick pointers. Follow these or run the risk of haunting.

– No stuffy funeral home with worn carpets, strategically placed tissues and plastic flowers. No queues of somberly-dressed people. No obsequious funeral directors with their cans of niceties. Put me somewhere else please: someone’s house would be great, or maybe a classy establishment somewhere that has a liquor license. Perhaps inform people as they arrive that they can’t say anything just for the sake of saying it: they ought to either say something original, or just smile. Their presence is enough.
– No religion. I’m serious. No cross on the coffin, no cross on the grave. No priests, ministers, pastors, rabbis, imams, shamans or witchdoctors. No spouting a bunch of nonsense about me and where I am now (how on earth do THEY know?), where I’m going, what my life or death was supposed to mean, especially from people who don’t know me.
– Instead, a little happiness please. A little realization that this is all part of the great cycle of life. Some words from anyone who knew me that want to say something – in fact, encouragement of those people. Some drinking. In fact, a lot of drinking, if people are so inclined. Please, for safety reasons, no high kicks. If things get too stuffy, Levo is nominated to burst the bubble.

Comment from Alevo:

I still think we should stuff you. We can make your love wand particularly rigid for that special someone. If she moves on, at the very least, you’ll make a provocative coat rack. Which is more of a contribution than most can hope for in death.

Originally written Thursday, March 17, 2005

Last night, my good friend Wayne picked me up at my house and we went up to the Hamilton Gun Club, a local shooting range. Wayne has been enthusiastically telling me about how much fun he’s been having shooting trap and skeet with his two shotguns. He got his firearms license last year and bought his first gun a few months ago. I was curious to go, because I’ve never really been around guns, and I’ve never fired anything more powerful than an airgun. This was my opportunity to see what it was really all about.

The Hamilton Gun Club is a modest structure that looks like a large house, situated in a sprawling field on the outskirts of Hamilton. Colourful shotgun casings and chunks of clay litter the property. The inside of the club is utterly mundane – linoleum floors, cheerful overweight women cooking up roast beef in a large kitchen (dinner is included with the Night Shoot), and fold-up tables with a mix of Hamiltonians sitting around them. The crowd was mostly middle-aged men, with a few women shooters, and a few younger people as well, mostly in their twenties.

Wayne signed me in as a guest and we were ready to go. We went back to his truck to get the shotguns. He had already filled me in on some basic gun safety rules (the most important: don’t point the gun at anything you don’t plan to shoot), so after teaching me how to load it, use the safety, and eject the spent casings, we stuffed our pockets full of ammo and went off to shoot some trap.

Trap is where you stand behind a small concrete dugout, facing into a large field. Five people shoot at once. Each person has their own station where they fire five rounds, and then everybody rotates to the next station. You load the gun when it’s almost your turn to go, but you don’t cock it until it’s your turn and you’re ready to fire. Slamming the pump action forward and yelling “Pull!” – which is what you say when you want the operator to send out a clay, the little discs they use as targets – is a satisfying feeling. Because it’s a night shoot, they use white clays that shine brightly as they fling forwards in a long rising arc. “Snap!” I fired and missed. When you hit, the clay breaks up into a shower of fragments.

I say “snap!” to describe the sound the gun makes because that’s what it sounded like – a high-pitched pop. I had been expecting a loud boom and a significant kick, but it wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t realize that was because we were using trap-shooting rounds, which are light competition rounds designed simply to shoot clay. It wasn’t until we were shooting skeet with some younger guys, and one of them used a hunting round, that the gun really made noise – a loud “Boom!” with a big blue-white flash.

After shooting trap, we went in and ate a roast beef sandwich, prepared for us by one of the aforementioned women. A roast beef sandwich on white bread doused in gravy and some previously frozen mixed vegetables did the job of filling us up. Then we hooked up with a group of three young guys, two brothers and one of their friends, along with a girlfriend (I wasn’t quite sure whose girlfriend she was), to go shoot some skeet.

You shoot the same white clays in skeet, except that instead of flinging out from in front of you into the distance, they come from two towers on the right and left of you, and travel across your field of view instead of away from you. This is more difficult, since the lateral motion of the clay is so much greater. The other fun thing about skeet is the double rounds, where a clay is fired from each tower at about the same time. For that, you put two shells into the shotgun. “Shhh-click-load and fire, shhh-click-load and fire again!” Having to fire, then pump the shotgun and fire again immediately afterwards is a challenge. It’s exhilarating when you actually hit the second clay.

***

In my last blog post, I criticized the American military and the “justice” they apply to their soldiers. Wemi left a comment and said, “Is it hypocritical for someone to be radically against the American military/violence and then shoot guns at a range for pleasure?” [Edited].

One of the reasons I decided to go last night was to educate myself a bit more about guns, so that I could answer this type of question, and some other questions of my own. After all, guns are weapons that take thousands, maybe even millions, of lives each year. What is the connection between guns in the context I was in last night, at a shooting range, and guns used to murder, intimidate and oppress?

I think guns are what you could call a “dual-use technology”. This is a term used to describe a technology that can be used both for positive uses and negative, violent uses. Nuclear technology is a prime example: it can be used to generate power, or it can be used to create weapons of mass destruction. You could say that nuclear technology can be a tool or a weapon. Guns fall into the same two roles.

As tools, guns play an important role for many people that could hardly be replaced. In Northern Canada, guns are used as protection from dangerous animals such as bears while in the wilderness. Guns are used to hunt game, providing food for families and culling animals that are harming the ecosystem because of overpopulation (in the Hamilton area, deer that no longer have natural predators such as wolves are a prime example of that type of problem). Guns are also used in a sporting context, like at the shooting range, as a safe (safer than snowboarding, for example) and harmless hobby.

As weapons, guns also play an important role in our lives, whether we like it or not. We entrust our police officers with guarding the peace and protecting the innocent, and to do so we give them the use of deadly force. We protect our country against hostile invasion and attack with the same deadly weapons. It could be argued that if no guns existed at all, we could protect our country with bows and spears, medieval-style, although that type of thinking is pointless. Bows and spears have also taken their share of lives in their own deadly efficient way.

Being anti-war and opposed to unjust American military practices and learning how to use a gun is not a contradiction. As I’ve said, guns are tools used for various legitimate purposes in civilian life. When it comes to guns as weapons, used against people, I should point out that I am not a pacifist. I believe that violent resistance is a legitimate right against a violent oppressor. I believe that taking up arms against a hostile invader who threatens the safety of my family and friends is not just a right, it’s a duty. It’s a duty that many Canadians have answered, and died for, as they fought against the Hitler regime in World War II.

I think it is hypocritical to criticize guns used as tools to hunt game for food and for clothing, but at the same time to eat meat and wear leather. The automated violence that kills the turkeys, geese, chickens, sheep and cows that we eat every day and whose skin and feathers we use for clothes, boots, purses, pillows and cosmetics is no less a violent tool for killing than a gun. Lopping off a chicken’s head with a sharpened industrial blade is no different than lopping it off with a well-placed load of birdshot.

You could claim that by purchasing guns, you are supporting the same industry that manufactures them for the American military, where they are used unjustly, and you would probably be right. But if you feel that way, you ought to stop driving American cars, because their manufacturers also produce American tanks. You ought to stop flying on American planes, because their manufacturers also make American fighter jets. You ought to stop buying appliances made by General Electric, because they make the engines that power those fighter jets. Or you could just buy your guns from an Italian or German manufacturer and not worry about that at all.

Comment from wemi:

I understand however the personal choice of a driving a car or buying a toaster oven are not DIRECTLY contributing to the loss of so many lives, ie: gun violence that exists everwhere in the world!

Alevo:

More than anything, I think this debate illustrates the value of being an informed consumer. It is not the ownership of the item (in this case a gun) which facilitates or propogates a potentially violent application of its technology elsewhere – it is the support of a manufacturer who may contribute to activities you find unethical or problematic. Certain firearms manufacturers produce specific calibre guns which are clearly intended for taking human life, violence and intimidation. These are armour-piercing weapons, or large calibre, long-range weapons ( I say weapons here to highlight the difference – a gun is not, de facto, a weapon). Personally, I would avoid giving my money to a company that is involved in developing this form of firearm. It is a purchase decision I have the luxury of making. Wemi, for a good portion of people in the world – those who are not ensconed in the luxury of Western concrete – a gun is not a weapon. If you are familiar with our own provincial north, you will know this is the case. It is more of an issue that we ensure they are able, and want to make ethical purchasing decisions like you or I. Firearms manufacturers in the business of making weapons are big problem. Firearms manufacturers solely making safely operating, utilitarian calibre guns are not, in my opinion, contributing to gun violence.