RANT: MY, MY! HOW CLEVER!

 

I WAS LISTENING RECENTLY to a recording of Martin Luther King’s remarkable speech “Beyond Vietnam” which he made at the Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, where he lays out, in no uncertain terms, his opposition to the war, and how the three scourges of racism, materialism and militarism, must be defeated if democracy and democratic societies are to survive:

 

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” (MLK, “Beyond Vietnam”)

 

HE SPOKE THOSE WORDS exactly one year to the day before he would be assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a rally in support of that city’s striking sanitation workers. Today, almost fifty-five years after King made his address before the packed congregation gathered at the iconic church overlooking the Hudson River, it doesn’t seem as if we—Americans, Canadians, all of us—have heeded his warnings. RECENTLY, we’ve all been transfixed by the fighting in Ukraine, almost grateful the conflict has given us something to think about besides viruses and lockdowns. But the scourge of militarism, what writer Chris Hedges calls “a fatal disease”, has infected the body politic of western nations to an extent I think would have shocked MLK were he alive today.

 

THE LEVEL of jingoistic drum-beating that’s erupted across much of Europe, and the acrimony and bile that has characterized most diplomatic exchanges between Russia and the collective West haven’t been seen since the darkest days of the Cold War.  DAILY, we are bombarded with disturbing footage of cities levelled, neighbourhoods destroyed, factories and farms in ruins, and we hear reports of war crimes (on both sides), as well as insistent demands for more weapons, more soldiers, and equipment. On our screens, we are shown colourful maps displaying the “evolving” front lines of troop movements, “hot” zones and “cleared” areas; projected daily wins and losses* and, of course, the death-counts of soldiers and civilians, along with endless other statistics, war plan analysis, and  politicians endlessly spewing cant—all obscured by the fog of war, all leaving us unsure of any outcome when it is accompanied by chill winds that augur neither peace nor compromise any time soon in those breaking fields, cities and borderlands of Eastern Europe.

WE HAVE BEEN TOLD we must pick a side. To choose. To stand in solidarity¹ with…. But there is really only one side—ours. We are not meant to ask how this all came to pass, how it got to this point, and which decisions, whose orders, and what vested interests were finally to trigger Russia’s February 24^th invasion of Ukraine. Instead, we are asked to accept caricatures of “good guys” and “bad guys”, along with political analysis that is often cartoon-ish, and would be laughable if events in that war-torn country weren’t so bloody and so awful for so many.

IN HIS SPEECH, MLK pleads for compassion and understanding of “the enemy”; here he refers to the Viet Cong and communist-ruled North Vietnam:

 

“Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view, we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”

 

SADLY, TODAY there is little by way of the compassion and understanding that King spoke of. His call to seek those common truths that all of us share as human beings and not be led by the temporary estrangements that divide us, has mostly gone unheeded.  He says: “The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.” "For the world," he goes on, “demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning.” [He was speaking of the Vietnam war—but really, any war, all wars.]

 

But, make no mistake, Russia did invade Ukraine—illegally—despite its claim of justification under Article 51 of the UN charter which allows aggression against another country whereby:

 

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” (United Nations Charter, Chapter VII)

 

THE INITIATIVE was theirs. It is a grey legal area Russia has entered with its 21 February recognition of the self-proclaimed breakaway states of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia formally recognized the two eastern Ukraine regions as legitimate states and quickly moved to forge formal treaty ties and security pacts with the new republics that Moscow says legitimizes its decision to send peacekeepers into the Donbas under the guise of “collective self-defence”. This came after months of Russian military manoeuvres and the massing of troops along its border with Ukraine and battle group deployments within Russia’s ally, neighbouring Belarus.

 

PERHAPS SOMEDAY the legality of Russia’s invasion will be formally adjudicated by international legal bodies and the United Nations, but for now it’s clear that Russia invaded Ukraine under a flimsy pretext, and as the current situation stands, four months into the “special operations” campaign, most of the Donbas and a significant portion of the Black Sea coast to Crimea is under Russian control. Yet, Kiev remains defiant and there is little talk of peace negotiations as of this writing.

 

SO: RUSSIA IS BAD; Ukraine is good; the United States and its Western allies stand securely on the right side of history. Right? But, only if the decades-long record of bad faith negotiations, broken promises and the deliberate ratcheting-up of tensions with Russia by the collective West, is ignored. Granted, Russia is the aggressor here, but is its aggression without antecedents? Was this war an unprovoked, mad  grab for land and resources by its would-be Peter-the-Great president, Vladimir Putin? I would argue it is not without significant precedents and that the war was provoked, to a large extent, by the actions of the West, and that conquering land and resources was not the main goal in Putin’s war plans. Russia’s rationale (but not justification) for its invasion of Ukraine is summarized in an excellent ScheerPost article by Bryce Greene. He does a much better job that I can describing malfeasance on the part of the United States and its allies, and how they ignored and downplayed Moscow’s legitimate security concerns for years, while NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, pushed ever-eastward toward Russian borders, resulting, now, in  war between quasi-NATO Ukraine and a frustrated and dangerously provoked Russia. (Such an outcome was desired by the United States and done in order to weaken Russia, and bring about regime change there.)

Again, Russia is in the wrong, here. It invaded Ukraine and has wrecked havoc and destruction throughout its eastern borderlands. But does that mean we in the West are automatically in the right? Are we the good guys with white hats? Greene’s article provides a more nuanced view of the situation.

 

AS MLK SAID of the Viet Cong rebels in South Vietnam, against whom America would mass an army of nearly 500,000 troops by 1967:

“Surely, we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely, we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely, we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.”

And PRESIDENT TRUMP’S rash 2019 decision to tear up the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty, further destabilized the delicate balance of peace in Europe, but this time with the added horror of the potential for nuclear engagement, if the United States and NATO are foolish enough to establish forward bases  equipped with nuclear warhead-capable missile systems near Russia's borders. Promoting a PROXY WAR in Ukraine and hoping the conflict will become Russia's second Afghanistan is a dangerous, reckless policy. 

 

INSTEAD of supplying Ukraine with bombs and missiles, we should be sending humanitarian aid and demanding our governments promote a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Our failure to do so speaks to a spiritual malaise found throughout the collective West and a growing nihilism that bodes ill for all of us. As Martin Luther King warned in “Beyond Vietnam”: “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now.” Truer words have never been spoken. Then. Or now.

 

Cheers, Jake.

_____________________________

  

* At this toxic gaming table, add the wild card of a wider war, one that comes with the possibility of nuclear conflict—something I had not thought to see in my lifetime.

 

^1. The only side we should be standing with is on the side of the Ukrainian people, whose suffering we witness daily. And for the soldiers, of both armies, who are killed and wounded in a war that should never have happened, led by leaders who should never have been allowed to lead.       

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE!

 

 

QUOTES: JULIAN ASSANGE

 

 

RANT: HELLO THERE!

 “If you think this Universe is bad,

you should see some of the others.”
― Philip K. Dick

 

              

ON EARTH, I LIVE AT COORDINATES: 44.3894° N, 79.6903° W, in case there’s room onboard the mother ship for one more earthling who wants to get off planet before it flips over into a cocked hat and explodes! BUT, while I'm waiting to get my interstellar ship's boarding pass, I may as well continue describing my terrestrial abode as best I can--to keep some kind of record in case anyone, alien or human, might be interested. So...

THE CITY where I live has a temperature range between summers of sweaty, but not a bleached-bones-in-the-sand warm, down to wintertime sessions of butt-numbing cold; the latter giving us some bragging rights, despite our not being up to the deep-freeze standard Winnipeg folk constantly crow about it. (“Oh, but it’s a dry cold, dearie.”)

 

WEATHER ASIDE, my little burgh and its hinterlands are well-situated in the temperate zone of the world, and knock on wood that climate change doesn’t creep  north and turn us into a sultry “sub-tropical” region. We’re fine just the way we are! Same goes for our plants and animals, and our forests. Trees, as we all know, are beings with great wisdom, though we acknowledge the fact less often these days. Trees teach us many things, but we’re such slow learners it usually takes a lifetime or more to understand what they’re trying to tell us. We learn from them a little bit at a time, and often the truths they impart itch like splinters, irritating us until we worry them out with one tool or another. At other times they smack us in the face like flailing branches in a windstorm, making our eyes water and ears ring with the obviousness of it all. 

 

Truths often hurt, and such is the price we pay for knowledge. Pain is a lesson we learn so we can experience, or just notice, the softer joys, those easy, life-affirming truths, that fall like leaves at our feet, or so the old oak tree out back keeps telling me. (Eventually, I'll learn.) TREES are infinitely patient beings; they have to be when dealing with creatures like us.

RETURNING TO MY MAIN POINT: If the climate starts to change and it begins warming things up too much, and if our trees and grasses, birds and animals all decide to up-root and move north, then, in the future, we’ll be schooled (if we’re even eligible to enrol by that point) in a brand new college run by a faculty of young teacher-trees, mostly assistant profs, who are recent migrants and will probably be as discombobulated and uncertain of their curriculum as their wide-eyed students. That means, dear reader, we’ll need all the HELP we can get.

 

BUT THE TEACHERS we once listened to (I’m thinking here of the human kind), whose sage advice now seems a little less wise, with many having fallen from their podiums in disgrace or dotage while others have stepped down, frustrated  by the stubborn insistence most students have these days to learn only the lessons that are convenient to them. And as a consequence, all of us are left with smaller bucketfuls to draw from the wisdom well.

 

SO, WE NEED TO GET OUR SMARTS wherever we can, whether we spend lifetimes closeted in secret libraries or by imbibing whatever it is our court jesters and fools (who neither jest nor are foolish) smoke or drink, in the hope we can learn at the feet of those outcasts and crazies who know about alienation, and who know how and why they were made alien. Their drum beats call us away from lives of insipid consumerism, mindless entertainment and all the distractions modern-day society has to offer. It's a society where we have become mere "batteries”, a power source used to turn the gears and pulleys of the bloated, capitalist machine that dominates and is destroying our world....

 

A COUPLE OF NIGHTS AGO, I streamed an excellent "Viking epic" film called The Northman. ¹  Set in 9th century "Hrafnsey" (a fictional island in the North Sea), as well as in "Rus" (today's Ukraine), and in Iceland, it is the story of a young prince who flees his home after his father, the king, is murdered by his uncle and his mother is taken prisoner. The young man swears to the gods he will return and avenge his father's murder and his mother's defilement. And, if this sounds familiar, it should, because it's based on an 11th century Old Norse legend that tells the story of a young young prince of Denmark named "Amleth" as he struggles to fulfill a pledge of bloody revenge. This folktale is said to be the "ur-text" Shakespeare used when writing his play, Hamlet, several centuries later. I don't think I'm giving away too much in revealing that Amleth succeeds in his quest for revenge, dying at the same time as he lops off his uncle's head in a climatic sword fight scene set amid the flowing lava streams of Iceland's Hekla volcano. 

WHAT I FOUND MOST ENGAGING was the film's deft depiction of the visions and magical beings Amleth encounters on his quest to right the wrong done his father.² In the film, there are signs and omens, witches, shamans, gods and goddesses that exist as part of daily life in the Northman's world. They are as real and influential as any tribal leader, as practical as a crafts-person; their proclamations and revelations are necessary and attended to in the same manner that laws governing society are acknowledged and obeyed. 

IT SHOULD BE NOTED there are degrees of mystical experiences, from superficial ones like changes in the weather portending future events (though they may very well be omens), or ceremonies like secret, male initiation rites where the young Amleth is made to howl like a wolf, wear wolf skins and dance ecstatically so that he may emerge from the shaman's hut and be acknowledged as a man of the tribe. IIRC, he has a vision of running through the woods as a wolf. But, these public or social visions, as we may call them, pale in comparison to the personal ones he experiences after he regains his path, and begins his hero's quest to avenge his father's murder.

 

TIME PASSES AND AN OLDER Amleth has come to the point in his life where he must fulfill his promise of revenge or fall from the path, and here we see him begin to meet and talk with supernatural beings while he dreams or when drugged during shamanistic rituals, or else during 'chance' encounters in unfamilar landscapes (where it is not chance so much as fate that guides him.) In other words, the mystical or spiritual realm is seen as part of the fabric of Amleth's culture, ever-present, not always apparent, yet always there informing and shaping how people live their lives, how their societies operate, how they view their physical bodies, for instance, or what death and dying mean for them. 

THERE IS AN INTERESTING SCENE in the latter part of the film where Amleth gives up his quest for revenge, taking flight from his uncle's men on a ship bound for the Orkney Islands with his lover, Olga. He is ready to break the solemn vow he made to the gods (who don't take kindly to renegers, BTW.) But, just as the ship leaves port, Amleth has a vision of twin babies that will be born to Olga. They are his children and heirs, and when he realizes they will never be safe as long as his uncle lives, he jumps overboard, returning to Iceland and  his fate.

THIS SCENE is additionally interesting because, it represents a 'transition zone' between two world-views (or two worlds), between the Dark Age and the later Middle Ages, between paganism and Christianity. Olga, a witch and a pagan, holding animistic world views wears, among other ritual jewellery, a Christian cross. Thus, she may be considered to embody both the pagan past and Christian future, while Amleth will remain with the old gods to finish his bloody task of revenge, killing not only his uncle but also his mother, half brother, and most of his uncle's retainers. His reward for keeping his promise to the gods, as he dies, is to be allowed past the gates of Valhalla, carried by a Valkyrie riding a winged horse.

DEAR READER, I KNOW I SEEM TO HAVE VEERED from my own path since the start of this post, but bear with me just a bit more, and I'll tie it all up in a pretty bow (or perhaps a knot.)

THE NEXT MORNING after I'd watched The Northman, with its cinematic world full of omens and hidden realms, gods and final judgments still fresh in my mind, I went for a walk along the lake shore. It was a brisk day, breezy but not cold, with a bright sun and clear sky. The lake was brilliant blue with only a few  whitecaps sculpting its surface. On the final leg of my route, the path nearest the lake dips below a ridge that hides, for a while,  the lakeside park and city; it's a little gully, no more. As I was entering the depression, I noticed at the bottom a figure some fifty feet or so ahead of me. Initially, I couldn't make out whether it was a man or woman, young or old. It seemed to be bobbing up and down in some sort of bulky garment that disguised its form. It's movements were jerky and, at first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me (it wouldn't be the first time!) and that it might be a loose collection of plastic bags or sheets of newspaper animated by gusts of wind into shapes that would in a moment collapse on the pavement. As I drew nearer, I realized it was indeed someone  dressed in a long cloak of some sort, like a rain slicker, only the hood seemed more rigid and helmet-like. Their arms (and hands, as far as I could tell) were also covered in material of a similar colour. They were bobbing up and down and from side to side, and  in their hand was a small leafy branch which they were using to sweep the sidewalk, picking up pieces of debris as they went: bits of plastic, twigs, leaves, buttons, papers, dead crayfish (seagulls catch them in the shallows and leave bits of them behind after they've  eaten their innards), anything you might imagine deposited on a lake shore, blown in, or washed down from nearby city streets.

THE FIGURE placed some of their finds in a small pile beside them and the rest into what appeared to be a child's wagon or baby carriage. I couldn't tell their sex or age, dressed as they were in their strange, cape-like garb because their face was hidden in the folds of their hood. 

Of course, I thought: it's obviously a homeless person with mental problems, one of those poor unfortunates, cast off from mainstream society, etc., etc. I hadn't any money on me to toss onto their wagon and debated whether I should say "hello" as I passed by, but rationalized that I might disturb them or, worse, energize them into making eye contact and striking up a conversation! (Yikes!) As I mulled over my options in the few seconds  before I came alongside the still-stooping and sweeping figure, they shifted around exposing the other side of their cloak. As if their garment wasn't bizarre enough, the other side was a different colour! Left was different from right (or at least it was a lighter shade). 

 

I WAS SURPRISED, to say the least. Their getup reminded  of the cartoon character, "Two-Face", who had one side of his face horribly scarred but the other was untouched, or old posters advertising the "half man-half woman" that freak shows have as an attraction. As well, the alien, "Lokai", came to mind, a character from an old Star Trek TV show who had dual-coloured skin. By this time, I decided not to say anything, and passed them by to go on to complete my walk.

    "Lokai"

I returned to my car in the parking lot to read for a while and sip a cup of coffee. I mulled over my lost opportunity to interact with the "light-dark man" as I dubbed him: I should have had some coins in my pocket to help them out. Where was my pluck, for heaven's sake? Who's the anti-social one, here? I should have at least said hello, and so on. I sat in my car, comfortably bemused, while I watched four young men get out of their car and head toward the footpath. One of them turned around revealing he was wearing a coverall that was white on his left side and black on his right! That was two, strangely garbed, light-dark, court-jester types appearing to me in a very short a period of time! The group disappeared around the corner of a building, and I thought then  that I was definitely being reminded of something, though I'm still not sure what, exactly. 

End of story....

 

WHAT IF I was meant to speak with the being I passed on the lake shore? What if they were a shaman? They were a jester figure, with their two-tone clothing, certainly they were someone beyond the pale of everyday society. Were they a witch? Was I being cursed? Or, were they a guide, sweeping clear the path I walked? Who knows?

WE WILL NEED TO LEARN FROM MANY people in our lives, from even the most outrageous outliers among us. No longer can we can  rely on many of the tried-and-true teachings of yore, with their fast-approaching sell-by dates. What, or who, we meet along the way might make all the difference. But meet (and greet) them we must.

Cheers, Jake.

* CANADIAN GEOGRAPHERS call this region the “Great Lakes-St. Lawrence” forest zone, which is in between the “Boreal” forest’s strata to the north and “Deciduous” to the south. It contains predominately “hardwood forests, featuring species such as maple, oak, yellow birch, white and red pine. Coniferous trees such as white pine, red pine, hemlock, and white cedar, commonly mix with deciduous broad-leaved species, such as yellow birch, sugar and red maples, basswood, and red oak.”

And that’s atop glacier-scraped bedrock of ancient Ordovician sedimentary rock leaving behind deposits of alluvial soils suitable for a mixed forest cover but has less scope for intensive agriculture (when compared to the richer alluvium deposits and the intensive agricultural practised in southern Ontario.)

 

¹ Once more, I thought I was going to write about the shit-sandwich being made out of Ukraine, over there in Europe, what with carving it up and slathering slices of it onto thick crusts of angry bread that we’re being forced to swallow, piece by piece. But I got side-tracked and ended up here with Amleth and company, and contemporary shamans. Sorry about that. Next time: war, nuclear war, NATO, surveillance state antics, WEF f@ckers, love, hate, and the whole damn thing! (Jake)

 

2 THE TALE OF AMLETH certainly belongs to the genre of Revenge Tragedy, and rightly or wrongly, however we may feel about Amleth's blood-soaked career as a "Berserker" and his subsequent acts of familial murder, he nevertheless remains faithful to his gods, and is rewarded for his fealty. Interestingly, Olga, aboard ship bound for the Orkneys, leaving Iceland and Amleth behind, speaks rousingly to the sailors in an almost transcendent oratory, as if she has a vision of a future for her and her unborn twin children as warrior-leaders in the Viking empire to come. I don't recall any actual depictions of her future in the film, like those we see with Amleth (his final vision, as he is dying, of the gates of Valhalla opening, for example), and it is just the strength of her convictions, and her words, whereby her prophesy is made. Again, this may represent a change from an animistic world-view (of gods and visions) to a Christian one (of deeds and creeds), or again, in a historical sense, from the Dark Ages into the the Middle Ages.

 

AND FOR A FINAL TOUCH OF IRONY: It was interesting to learn the name “Amleth” comes from the Icelandic Amlóði, meaning “fool” or “simpleton”. I've never thought of Hamlet as a clown figure before, but NTITAI, he was kind of full of himself and a real drama queen at times and, let's face it, he had his head up his ass for most of the play. Time for a rethink!

 

 

    Amleth Entering Valhalla [Screen grab]

 

 

 

                      FREE JULIAN ASSANGE!