We Will Not Go Down (Song For Gaza)

WE WILL NOT GO DOWN (Song for Gaza)
Composed by Michael Heart

A blinding flash of white light
Lit up the sky over Gaza tonight
People running for cover
Not knowing whether they’re dead or alive

They came with their tanks and their planes
With ravaging fiery flames
And nothing remains
Just a voice rising up in the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

Women and children alike
Murdered and massacred night after night
While the so-called leaders of countries afar
Debated on who’s wrong or right

But their powerless words were in vain
And the bombs fell down like acid rain
But through the tears and the blood and the pain
You can still hear that voice through the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

http://www.michaelheart.com

Justin Trudeau To Lead The Youth Revolution

 The eldest song of the great Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced today that he will be running in the Montreal riding of Papineau come the next federal election.   You can read about it here and listen to Justin himself here.

I bring this up because this reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend a few

weeks ago at University. We were sitting there having lunch and we reminisced about the good old Chretien days and how its so rare to have a charismatic leader in our country. I told him that charismatic leaders are indeed rare. They come in waves. Some get elected and some don’t. Its just the nature of politics in Canada. When I was at the leadership convention in Montreal last year, hearing Kennedy speak before the delegates, I thought to myself, “How could people NOT vote for him?” He wasn’t the most charismatic leader in the bunch but you could see that he had that potential to be one of Canada’s greats. Moreover, he was attempting to introduce elements of Human Security Theory into formal policy which got me more excited than a child on the last day of school.

But this is where Justin comes into play. The young, handsome, charismatic chap has the ability to rile up Canadians, young Canadians and young Liberals especially in a way that even Chretien could not do. I was of the opinion that Justin would be better off not joining politics and doing what he was doing now. I thought he could make more of a difference that way. But after he introduced Kennedy at the speeches in Montreal, watched how everyone from our delegates to the Dion guys, to the Finley camp, the Dryden people…all cheered wildly as Justin spoke. It was from that point on that my opinion changed.

My experience during the last leadership showed me that our people, young people, become more and more apathetic with every election. The young people in this country are losing faith in the power they hold in their hands. They are losing faith in politics. The change from liberalism to conservatism in this country has shown that young people, now more than ever, must mobilize to form a group to which candidates can campaign to. The continued tuition increase is a good example of how the apathy of young people is being taken advantage of. If young people can mobilize and fight for lower tuition, GST free text books and show politicians that young people can actually make a difference, than they are more likely to formulate policy that appeals to us.

 

But, in order to mobilize the young masses, we need a leader. And that is what Justin Trudeau is. He is a young, charismatic leader who is passionate about change, passionate about politics and passionate about Canada. He is the only person in the Liberal Party, and dare I say the country, who has the very real ability of mobilizing the masses and actually bringing back Canada to the way it once used to be. His passion for politics will rub off on young people. His charisma and charm will naturally allow it to happen. He is the face and the voice that will represent us. He is the single entity in the country that has the potential to bring about a revolution in this country that will unite it like no other leader has. Trudeau Ι united the country in 1982 when he repatriated the Constitution and brought forth the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But I believe Justin can do more. He is the face of our country. He is the face of young people. He is the face of change.

Assuming he will win the nomination and beat the Bloc guy in the riding, I think Justin will have an amazing political career. Someone who has no negative baggage to bring to the table, someone who has been fighting for social justice his entire life, someone who is passionate about politics and Canada, surely will act as a rolemodel for millions of young people across this country. With Justin in the picture, politics will once again be relevant in this country.

Vive le Canada!

The Tragedy of Our Reality.

I was watching an interview a few days ago that featured Tariq Ali, the great political activist who some would say is the most famous leftist in the world.  The interview prompted me to pick up one of his books on my bookshelf.  The book is called Conversations With Tariq Ali: Speaking of Empire And Resistance.The conversation is between Tariq Ali and David Barsamian.  I would like to present an excerpt from the book that I found particularly touching.

Barsamian comments on how parallels can be made between Pakistan and Israel in that both countries were created out of partition which have resulted in death, destruction and refugees. Tariq Ali responds:

The Israeli example is, of course, very well known because of great Palestinian voices like Mahmoud Darwish, Edward Said, and others. Here I would just like to say about Edward, whom I loved dearly – his greatest accomplishment was not his literary theory; it was the fact that Palestine because his cause, and he became the chronicler of a dispossessed nation, a people without a homeland. That’s what won him respect all over the world; he was the only real historian Palestine possessed who was not marked by the corruption and intrigues of Arafat or the other Palestinian leaders. He kept the cause of Palestine alive ad explained what had happened.

As far as the Indian partition is concerned, nearly two million people died – there is a big debate, is it one million or two million? – I say, “Look, I don’t know. Its just as bad.” I use the figure of nearly two million, because we know that the deaths of lots of poor people went unrecorded; they were buried in mass graves. Not a single monument marks the victims of partition: the Muslims, the Hindus and Sikhs who were killed in Bengal and the Punjab. Neither India nor Pakistan honored the victims.

One of the most moving poems written about partition was by and eighteen-year-old- Sikh girl who had to leave Lahore because it was now being partitioned. She saw the killings and burnings. And she wrote this great poem that evokes the memory of the Great Sufi poet Waris Shah, who wrote the epic Heer and Ranjha, which is still sung all over the Punjab in India and Pakistan. Shah, a seventeenth-century mystic poet, wrote about the love of a woman for a man and described the scream of the woman, Heer, forced into a marriage against her will – the first line of Waris Shah’s poem is, “As he mounted the wedding palanquin, she screamed.” That scream dominates Punjabi culture. This eighteen-year-old girl refers to that poem and says, “Waris Shah, when one woman screamed, you wrote hundreds of verses to commemorate her. Today, thousands and thousands of women are dying, corpses are floating down our rivers. Can’t we open a new book from your page to commemorate this and open the eyes of the people? Blood flows down the Chenab – one of the great rivers of the Punjab.” Other poets also described the the partition, as in Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s famous opening lines after partition in 1947: “This mottled dawn, this ugly dawn / This is not what we set out for when we started for independence.” The poets have commemorated it, but the historical memory of the tragedy has not been preserved.

He further goes on to say:

We were cut off from each other. You couldn’t go to India from Pakistan; it was just a tragedy. The borders were always sealed. When I was at Oxford, I made Indian friends; it was the first time I had met Hindus and Sikhs. And then, when I went to India for the first time in the early 1970s, people found out I was in town. I was invited to dinner every single night by Sikh families. The kids would tell me, “Our parents want to see you because they knew your parents.” Sumptuous meals would be prepared, and they would sit me down after dinner with a glass of whiskey in my hand and say, “Just talk about Lahore.” That was really moving.

You can find the interview with Tariq Ali that refered to above here, done by George Stroumboulopoulos of the CBC.

Vengence Is Not Justice

The trial and death of Saddam Hussien is nothing but a passion crime committed by Iraqi body politic and judiciary. I use the term passion crime purposely. I appears as though the Iraqi government seemed so determined to kill Saddam that they were willing to sacrifice justice inso that they felt that justice was indeed done. But this was clearly not the case.

Nobody is denying that Saddam was a brutal dictator that ran a virtual killing machine inside Iraq. Even the Sunni people in Iraq feared him. But here lies the problem: Iraq now claims to be a democracy. Iraq could have shown the world through the Trials of Saddam that despite what Hussien did during his rule, that even during a state of near chaos, the judiciary could try Saddam in a way that would truely achieve justice. Instead, they deviated from the law and rationality and appealed to their animal instincts and killed Saddam on the most holiest days of the Islamic Calender.

The many flaws of the trial are pretty much on record. Many human rights organiztions and justice rights organizations have put out reports condeming the trial. I won’t get into that right now. However, what I will get into is the way the execution was well…executed. One of the people that was present at the hanging claimed that he was very happy that the hanging was done with respect, abiding by all Islamic principles allowing for Saddam to die with some dignity. This was hardly the case. As that cell phone video clearly shows, it was anything but Islamic. Islam does not advocate the taunting of prisoner at is last moments. Islam certainly does not permit anyone to dance, cheer and celebrate around the dead body; another proof that animal instincts were at the heart of the Death of Saddam.

Sunni lawyers were forbidden to enter into the gallows to watch Saddam breath his last breath. Moreover, some of the Shias in the room changed the name of Mohammad Bakr al Sadr, as can be verified by the witnesses in the room and as well, the cell phone video. If one were to extrapolate this environment into the realm of reality in Iraq, there are many similarities. It shows that overall Iraqi society has, if not already, degenerated into chaos, similar to Saddam’s last minutes at his execution. It shows that Sunnis will be disenfranchised from Iraqi society for a very long time to come. And it shows that animal instincts are the reality that powering the machine that is the Iraqi democracy.

Once again people around the world have shown that so long as humans resort to their animal instincts, justice will never prevail. Rather, this shows how violently justice gets raped by vengence, helpless as it watches the dead eyes of that which robs it of everything she thought she was. For those that think justice was done on Eid, I say to them, it is because of people like you that justice has lost all its innocence.

…not bad considering its 1:35am and Im all drugged up because of my cold.

Saddam Dead

Saddam was hanged shortly before 03:00GMT…an article about this to come from me soon.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-12-30T030839Z_01_IBO034602_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml

Santa is a Communist

Children of the world…UNITE! Unite against this evil-do’er we call Jolly O’l Saint Nick. My friends, yes, it is true. Santa is a communist. Since the early days of the industrial revolution, Santa has been brazenly feeding his brand of Marxism to our innocent, young, capitalist minds. This must cease immidiately. That is why, Santa Claus must be exposed for what he really is: An evil Marxist Leninist that has successfully penetrated our society, hellbent on destroying the capitalist utopia we have struggled so hard to build.

The infamous “Ho Ho Ho” that is the very trademark of Santa Claus is actually the most simple of tools used to indoctrinate our children. “Ho Ho Ho” is actually a direct reference to Nguyễn Sinh Cung aka Hồ Chí Minh, the founder of the Viet Minh Independence Movement in 1941 who later became the leader of the one party communist republic nation-state in Vietnam in 1955. Just as Minh atempted to emulate Mao Zedong with his Land Reform Campagin, Santa has been busy redistributing wealth by handing out toys for free to those children that he deems to be “nice.” What exactly constitutes definintion of nice? We don’t really know. “Ho Ho Ho” is indeed the perfect peice of propaganda to instill in children that redistribution of property and wealth is in fact a good thing.

The trademark colours of Santa are red with a touch of white as an accent. Red, as well all know, is also the primary colour for the Рабоче-Крестьянская Красная Армия – Raboche-Krest’yanskaya Krasnaya Armiya better known as the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. First organized in 1918 by the Bolsheviks to fight the Civil war, it evolved into the army for the Soviet Union after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR was established in 1922. From the 1940s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was the largest army in the world. They adorned the colour Red so as to symbolize the blood shed by the working class in its struggle against capitalism.

It was on a wintery December that the man shown in the picture created the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police organization. Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky established the Cheka on December 20, 1917, 5 days before Christmas. The Cheka then went on to eventually evolve into what was known as the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, better known as the KGB. Among other things, the role of the KGB was to suppress any opinion and/or behavior that was deemed to be unorthodox. Furthermore, those that were seen as not falling into the right ideological line were monitored by the oganization and were delt with accordingly. Similarly, it is Santa that keeps tabs on children throughout the year, making sure they fall into the ideological line of Nicism and Goodism. The KGBesk role that Santa has played in the lives of our young children can clearly be heard by carolers all over the capitalist world with the song Santa Clause Is Coming To Town. The Bolshevik tone of this song is stronger than stench of Santa’s reindeer crapping over the winter snow:

You better watch out

You better not cry

Better not pout

I’m telling you why

Santa Claus is coming to town!

He’s making a list

And checking it twice;

Gonna find out Who’s naughty and nice

Santa Claus is coming to town!

He sees you when you’re sleeping

He knows when you’re awake

He knows if you’ve been bad or good

So be good for goodness sake!

Oh! You better watch out!

You better not cry

Better not pout

I’m telling you why

Santa Claus is coming to town!

Santa Claus is coming to town!

Its like hearing the sounds of the Red Army marching through the streets of Leningrad all over again. Santa not only knows the littlest details about our precious little Suzy, he has her blacklisted on this List that he carries around tracking everyone’s ideological leanings.

There are, however, efforts to monitor Santa durring the Christmas Season. The North American Aerospace Defense Command or NORAD is a military alliance between the United States of America and Canada which is responsible for protecting the sovereignty and defence of US and Canadian aerospace. One of the roles that NORAD has taken on is the monitoring and tracking of Santa Claus’s activities. Moreover, NORAD has developed a sophisticated system of radars, satillites, cameras and CF-18 fighter jets to track Santa during Christmas eve. In fact, the same satillites that are used to moniter missile launches aimed at the North American continent are used to track Santa’s sleigh by tracking Rudolph’s nose via infrared sensors. Just as Santa knows about our whereabouts, we know his as well. But this is not enough. The Santa tracking system is only activated on Christmas Eve when the threat level is at its peak. And Santa has never once been detained and held for question as to why he continues to violate the sovereignty and airspace of of almost every country in the world.

Fellow readers, it took us an entire century to defeat the global threat of communism…or so we thought. Communism has continued to overlook our society un-noticed. More and more of our fellow consumers are beinging to realize the truth about Santa Clause. Fellow readers, we must rise up and declare war on Santa Claus. Captialism and its inginuity is what drives the world and we must not let the threat of communism inturrupt the global economy. Responsibility first lies with the parents. It is through their grassroots efforts of educating their children that will give rise to the true intentions of this so called “saint.” Rise up and defeat Santa Claus. Protect Mother Capitalism!