The Perils of Holding on to History

 History is fascinating, tragic and inspiring. It’s an interesting thing to discuss with the like minded and has the side benefit of also teaching geography.

What history can also do is be used to pass on hatred’s and blood feuds from generation to generation. The Germans did this, the Ottoman Turks did that, the Japanese did more of that etc, it goes on and on. 

Rather than a way to learn from the errors and formative stories of the past, a distorted version of it is used often by governments and parents to pass hatred’s and grievances from one generation to the next. As if it’s a way of keeping that old smouldering flame of bitterness going for infinite generations to come. 

When one day we learn that we cannot  blame future generations for the sins both real and perceived of generations past, we will all be much better off. 

“The sins of the father are visited upon the son”, was not meant as template on how to operate. It was maybe meant rather as a warning that humans cannot easily forgive and forget. And maybe most of all… Learn.

The Great Korean Quandary & Willie E Coyoteíng our Way to War

It is doubtful that for all their bluster the North Korean leadership really wants a war with the United States and its southern neighbour. Leader, Kim Jong-un is more accustomed to cognac than combat and knows that any war with the United States will only end in the destruction of his regime and likely the death of him and much of his family

North Korea is a family business and for over the past two decades that business has been intimidation and extortion. Any war with the West would liquidate the family holdings. That being said there is no guarantee they won't go a nuclear or missile test too far and force a response from the United States, Japan or South Korea. An errant missile landing in a Japanese city or a near miss off the US mainland could be all it takes to force a response.

Donald Trump's tough talk has received a lot of reaction from a largely unsympathetic press in the West, but to be fair Trump was handed a time bomb by his past three predecessors who either ignored or were too preoccupied to squarely face the North Korean threat. In the 1990's then President Bill Clinton openly contemplated a strike on the North if they proceeded with a nuclear weapons program; but decided a war at that time would cost too many US Military and South Korean civilian casualties to justify the risk. Instead they paid off the north with billions of dollars, and, to no one's surprise North Korea called Clinton's bluff and went ahead with their nuclear program anyway.

There are no good options in this for either side. Kim Jong-un, is many things, but not crazy. He knows that a war will end his family dynasty/business and he's seen what happened to dictators who were deposed in Libya and Iraq. He has no desire to be the next Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein. A nuclear arsenal in his mind is his safeguard against such a fate. 

The question in the near future is can any American President, be they Donald Trump or his successor tolerate a nuclear armed North Korea that has the ability to successfully target the continental United States. My guess is probably not; and were it not for the very real risk of a larger nuclear conflict with China, United States, Japan and South Korea would be more actively beating the war drum.

It's the great Korean Quandary, no one wants war, but the longer things carry on down the current path it seems that everyone will get something that nobody wants. One test too far, or a botched missile launch that goes astray, and like the hapless character in the old Looney Tunes cartoons, we are one misstep away from Willie E Coyoteíng our way to war. 

Canadians and the World Cup - No Thanks!

When will Canada have a team in the World Cup... Well the way it's going in Brazil and shaping up in Qatar, hopefully never.

Even in soccer crazy Brazil support for the games is luke-warm at best, what with forced evictions of poor people at gunpoint off what scant land they have, displacement of aboriginals for "jungle stadiums" a virtual human-rights free zone around the city and the occasional mysterious dead body in the streets, there is not a world sporting event more dirty, more corrupt and with more blood on it's hands than the FIFA World Cup, better to never dirty ourselves with this.

Of course Canadians by and large will disagree, most - particularly in the Toronto area,, no matter how long they've been here seem to still consider themselves the nationality of their parents or grandparents, and will cheer for teams from countries many have never even been to.

As for me, if I did cheer for a team it would be the Americans or any sub-Saharan African team. Because while yes hockey, basketball and football have had their occasional ugly racist incidents, none of them can even come close to the racism and xenophobia displayed by the fans of European soccer teams.

Teams from England, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and unfortunately Poland seem to have proudly among their legions of fans large batches of skin heads, fascists, racists and neo-nazi's that seem to make the worst hockey or baseball fan seem like Gandhi in comparison. Every European soccer riot contains within it a significant racist/fascist component, but hey no reason why a Canadian two generations disconnected not to cheer for them right - wrong!

Torontonians would and - have - booed their own national anthem if a visiting team - particularly Italy is playing a Canadian team, this after over 7,000 Canadians died fighting to free that country.

World Cup of Corruption? No thanks, Go Team USA, Go Ghana (or any African Team) otherwise The World Cup has become a slime hole of sleaze, inequity and even blood that we would be best to avoid.

U2, PBS and Thoughts on Redemption

What does an old PBS debate between a Rabbi and an Imam on the nature of man's interaction with God have to do with a U2 song? Well initially nothing... 

Browsing on the GO Train through a well worn Canadian Armed Forces issue New Testament and Psalms I came across Psalm 39, entitled 'Confessions of a Suffering Man'. It is a piece in the great Old Testament fashion about a man that does everything right but still fails. It beautifully reflects the unique Jewish tradition of getting mad at The Creator and demanding justice, an end to or an explanation of man's collective or individual suffering.

The debate with the Imam centered around suffering and why would a just, loving and all powerful God allow it. As the two went back and forth arguments whirling around concepts of man’s free will and God’s bigger plan and how suffering, injustice and war play into that, the Imam stated to the Rabbi to the effect of “as a Jew you don’t get mad at God”. To which the Rabbi immediately retorted “sir, the Jewish people have a great history of getting mad at God”, then discussed psalms like the above Psalm 39.

For U2 fans, you'll know that what follows next is Psalm 40, or perhaps better known by some as just '40' the last song on their third album 'War'. After the lament of the man who did everything right but still couldn't get a break comes 40, a tale of redemption of making your footsteps firm and being lifted from the 'miry clay'.

That sums up life, and the hope people of all faiths try to cling to;  that you can do everything right and still fail, but in the end you can be redeemed. There is a reason that after 39 comes 40.

Music vs Movies

Since the dawn of time when people told stories around campfires or made paintings on cave walls we humans seem to have a need to tell stories and a desire to let our imagination escape from whatever our day to day reality is. Music has always been with us in one form or another and the primal bang of a drum still affects even the most stoic of us in one way or another. Movies or the idea of motion pictures was made possible by technology but evolved from tribal rituals, stories told at gatherings, to Community Theater and later what we now see projected on a screen. Sound and stories acted out for our entertainment have always been with us in one form or another.

Now you can love movies and you can love music, it's not a matter of one or the other, but which moves you more? People often identify music with a particular era or time in their lives and movies give us a cultural frame of reference and a means of escape for a couple of hours; but which art form allows you to turn your brain off and makes the outside world disappear for however briefly? For me it's music. 

I love the idea of an individual or a group of individuals working together, developing their craft and producing sounds from their voice or their instruments that connect straight to you and take your mind off whatever has been going on that day, or can move or inspire you to action. Surely no movie has ever brought about as global a reaction as say Band Aid's 'Do They Know it's Christmas' did in 1984/85. A song that inspired USA for Africa's 'We Are the World' and Northern Light's 'Tears are Not Enough', as well as hugely popular twin benefit concerts in London and Philadelphia. 

That being said movies can have a longevity that few 20th century songs have, the popularity of films such as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and The Ten Commandments remains enduring to this day and is passed down from grandparents to parents and our own children. It would be unfair to compare film to the ongoing although limited appeal still of classical composers such as Bach and Beethoven however classic cinema's arguable historic equivalent - the plays of William Shakespeare do remain popular (although in a limited way) to this day. 

My main issue with movies is that I have trouble turning off my brain. Music allows me to do that, film engages me negatively and disturbs me more often than not. So much so that I rarely ever go to the movies and one day should make a trivia board game called "John Hasn't Seen It". I like silly comedies, such as the old Woody Allen films like Banana's or Play it Again Sam, I enjoy the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films and a few other silly ones, as well as a few classic westerns and older World War 2 films but that is pretty much it. I find that modern films have become ultra graphic relying on special effects and shock rather than acting and storytelling; movies as well have become less historically accurate, wanting to 'take an alternate' point of view deviating even more than they used to from what actually happened in the event they are portraying. 

Movies also initiate in me the impulse to wonder "what kind of person wrote this crap". Now that goes for music too, there is a lot more garbage than good stuff out there, fair to say. However most music is not mindlessly violent and lyrics still rely on metaphor (however crass) rather than being in your face. Anyone seeing the John Ford classic The Searchers would remember the scene where John Wayne's character Ethan looks into the burned out house where his brother's family were killed. The horror of what he saw was vividly portrayed by the expression in John Wayne's character's face, without saying a word he said everything you needed to know. Few actors and fewer directors would use such subtly today; instead you'd be treated to a graphic panorama of corpse's and gore just only for the purposes of a 'shock' moment, a director who’s never seen such a bloody scene in real life wanting to be ‘realistic’.

I cannot seem to get my head around what prompts people to sit down and write much of what we see on the screen and am still further mystified by why people view it as entertainment. Even a film like Star Wars - and I admit this is more an issue with my failure to turn off my imagination than anything else – the scene when the two storm-troopers go onto the Millennium Falcon to search it and are shot and killed by presumably Han Solo and Luke Sky-walker, how come there were no marks are their armour, would not stripping the bodies of their uniform been a hugely traumatic experience - especially for Luke seeing what would have been two dead young faces frozen in fear and pain, being stripped naked then having their clothing (likely with pictures of loved ones inside) caused both of them to throw up over themselves and break down. Now I know any time I've watched interview or spoken with soldiers who have examined and searched enemy dead in real life, it was hugely traumatizing and moving, most had to stop the camera's to collect themselves. But in Star Wars or other movies it's as routine as going to the store for a jug of milk. Also what happened to the bodies of the two storm-troopers, were they rotting on the Falcon for days or were they coldly jettisoned in space, was there a brief ceremony for them the way soldiers in real life pay respects? Why would we find something like this entertaining?

You see now how my brain thinks, why I just don't bother going to movies, and can't get my head around them. Probably just a John thing but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

As far as music goes, there are certain artists, certain voices and combinations of instruments that allow me to turn my mind off, that put whatever else went on that day out of my head and fill it with something I can't even explain. Loud of soft, fast or slow music seems to connect with me, with the human soul in a way no other art form can. Yes movies can make you laugh or cry, but can they bring you out of your seat and dance? Nobody has a party and puts on a movie, they instead turn up the tunes, open a few drinks and enjoy themselves. 

That is another thing in music's favour for me. Although you certainly can enjoy movies alone or with others, they're essentially not an interactive medium, you sit and watch. You may talk about it after but interacting during it takes away from the experience. Music on the other hand can be a foreground thing, as in watching a band or listening to the radio or can be a background thing enhancing the mood at a get together, with certain songs bringing back mutual recollections. 

Both movies and music are cultural touchstones that reflect where society is at the time in it's thinking and it's values but to me, If I had to choose between never seeing a movie again, or never hearing another song, I'd give up movies over music. That being said I'm glad we have both – I just have my own preference. 

Palm Sunday & Paris 1942

Today is Palm Sunday the day Jesus returned triumphantly to Jerusalem riding a donkey down streets lined with hopeful crowds waving palm fronds in welcome. Many believing they were witnessing the coming of a Messiah who at the very least would free them from Roman occupation. Within a week much of the crowd would turn against him, his followers would be divided, he would be betrayed, executed and rise again.

It’s a familiar story, but you can’t fully understand it without understanding what was going on in the Jerusalem of the day. What was it like to live under occupation and why did so many, so willingly cooperate with their Roman occupiers. Occupation by a foreign power is something North Americans don’t generally worry about and have little to no experience of, but if we cross the ocean to Europe there is much we can learn from relatively recent and seemingly unrelated events such as the Nazi occupation of Europe in the early 1940’s.

Just as we grew up with the Easter story, most of us have some knowledge of the events of the Second World War and mythically heroic tales of resistance to Nazi rule. If not from literature then from films and carried on by Hollywood into a later era in similarly themed movies like Red Dawn. The truth though is far more sinister, like those conspiring in the background against Jesus there was far more complexity and subtly to the reactions of Parisians to German occupation in we’ll say 1942.

Occupation tears the fabric of a people apart. Loving families betray each other; a father in law that adores the man who married his daughter would often willingly turn him in to the Romans or Gestapo knowing his loving son-in-law would face torture and certain death just in order to save his daughter and grandchildren from punishment. Otherwise faithful wives in destitute households prostituted themselves to German officers and Roman Legionaries to make ends meet. Likewise with the education system now overseen by the conquerors children unwittingly told on their parents for suspected subversive activities resulting in a late night knock on a door and disappearance to a concentration camp. Fear, desperation and humiliation could and often did tear even the tightest bonds of family and friendship apart. Just as Judas swore he would never betray his Lord (and probably meant it at some level) friends and families that swore undying love broke apart under the strains of fear and coercion.

Where you could not trust your family and friends a member of the resistance often had to turn to the lowest rungs of society for trust and safety. The smuggler or dealer who knew the back alleys and hidden trails, the fraudsters and forgers who could create false papers to guarantee safe passage; occupation jumbles up the pieces of society and soon the doctors, teachers, lawyers, and magistrates who choose to resist find themselves dependent for survival on the very segments of society that would have once avoided and shunned.

Yes in both eras there was resistance; Barabbas was a Jewish resistance leader released as a good will gesture by Roman governor Pontius Pilate and considered a Zealot a religious based group fighting Roman authority. Although not documented in the Gospels there were undoubtedly other resistance groups ranging from faith based ones to ordinary bandits who likely as is often the case fought each other as fiercely as they did the Romans. As in Nazi occupied Paris betrayal was the norm and fear your day to day companion.

Today we romanticize the French resistance but it too was divided. There were groups based on ideology; communist resistance groups, socialist ones, ones who wanted to re-establish the previous order and even Royalists who saw an opportunity to return France to a pre revolution monarchy. Initially primarily made up of former French soldiers who escaped surrender then later ordinary French men and women joined; they fought the Germans, but rarely in open battle (as that would certainly result in their destruction) and like their ancient brethren in occupied Judea the French resistance groups fought each other at times as hard as they fought the Nazis, each side jockeying for an advantage when their eventual liberation came about.

And yes many under occupation join forces with their oppressors. The Romans employed locally recruited Jewish forces – notably under King Herod – as front line forces to battle the resistance just as many French – particularly in the autonomous ‘Vichy’ south joined and fought alongside the Germans. It is worth noting that the first American ground forces killed in any number in the fight against the Nazis came during the Operation Torch landings in North Africa where American troops landing in Morocco and Algiers first came under fire from French Vichy forces. Once again allies fighting nominal allies before gaining on the real foe.

Paris and Jerusalem had very different endings; Canadian, American and British forces landed in Normandy, France on D-Day June 6^th, 1944 and began the liberation of Europe. Paris was declared and open city and the German commander ignoring orders from Hitler to destroy the capital withdrew with scattered resistance from an organization called the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). In Judea, the resistance grew, place names like Masada became legend in the Jewish faith and the Romans destroyed the Holy Temple. Eventually Rome fell and Jerusalem it seemed waited for another occupier to come along.

Throughout all this something changed, a small scattered and afraid group of followers of an executed Jewish mystic grew a collective backbone. A new faith later named after its inspiration called Christianity grew, it’s followers suffered torture, jail, persecution and execution, and yet they did not so much as throw off the shackles of occupation but rise above them. A believe grew that regardless of who he was you could love your neighbor, that we were important, we are loved as individuals and there is something better waiting for us after this world. That a loving God would give up his own son to the end that all that believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life. That is the light that came out of the dark of occupation. Out of a world where friend turns against friend, of families divided, of suffering, cruelty and injustice that we are worthy, we are loved and better days lay ahead.

Justin Bieber, Fame & Media

Sudden riches and fame are not a natural state and as humans we often just don't handle it well. Whether you are a young person like a Justin Bieber going off the rails or a middle aged lottery winner who blows their winnings in a few years, without proper guidance and support, the end is often a bad one.

That so that being said as much as I cannot stand Bieber, I do have to admit that I'm quite sure if I got that rich and that famous at his age (be honest, think of how you were in your teens or early 20's) I have no doubt I would say and do some stupid ass things as well. I just wouldn't have the frame of reference to deal with what fame brought on and would lack the defenses to deal with what suddenly sprung up around me. I don't think many of us would. Even respected artists today such as say a David Bowie had their period of self-destructive idiocy.

Whether we like their music or not - and I certainly don't like Bieber's - I don't find it surprising when given so much money and adoration that quickly a young solo "artist" would go so completely off the rails. However what I can't seem to get is why we pay so much attention to them.

Don't blame the media, they are ratings driven and deliver what people want, or at least what people tune in to watch. If everyone watching TMZ or Inside Edition suddenly stopped tuning in and started watching 60 Minutes, CBC's Marketplace, or the Discovery Channel, and then wrote to complain to their local news broadcaster every time they aired a Justin Bieber story then programmers would adapt. Putting it all on "media" removes any individual responsibility for their own choices, in effect saying; “I can’t help it, they made me sit and watch it”

The problem is we have become too cynical and too far removed from the decision making process to even try to effect it. Many people talk about "mainstream media" as if it was some out there interplanetary Supreme Being, and rarely if ever attempt to interact with it.

From my own recent experience twice I have written in to member of "the media" over issues I had with their reporting, one was a writer for The Toronto Star, the other was a CBC correspondent. In both cases I received back a reply acknowledging the mistake I pointed out and in the case of The Star, the columnist actually printed the correction in his next column. My feedback mattered and so will yours. Don’t believe me, ask A&E about their decision making processes regarding their response and retraction of it in reference to published quotes of a certain Duck Dynasty cast member.

So Justin Bieber - well he's acting like a lot of people would in his situation but if we didn't pay as much attention to it, then it wouldn't be in our faces so much, and maybe, just maybe he'll go away.