Shake Hands with the Devil - Romeo Dallair - Part 1 of 10

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 192

July 11, 2020

Book 55 - Shake Hands with the Devil
Roméo Dallaire
 Part 1 - pages 1-50 (e-book)
Reading Time - 60 minutes

I'm several decades behind in reading this book. I remember when the Rwandan Genocide was happening but I was busy with my own life and Rwanda was pretty far away. Heck, I thought Rwanda was somewhere up in the Gold Coast of Africa, the northwestern part somewhere, south of Morocco. So, if nothing, this book is bringing me up to speed on African geography. Rwanda is a tiny country in Central Africa, just south of Uganda, sandwiched between Tanzania, Burundi and the DRC (a.k.a. Zaire).

This is not an easy book to read. Knowing the outcome of the genocide, with a million killed in 100 days... it's hard to read of the systemic failures that led to those horrific events. And harder still to get that... at the heart of this humanitarian disaster lies systemic racism, on a national scale.

Dallaire made this one statement that stuck with me:

Engraved still in my brain is the judgement of a small group of bureaucrats who came to "assess" the situation in the first weeks of the genocide: "We will recommend to our government not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans".

Had they been white humans... I wonder if things would have gone differently.

Roméo Dallaire was a Canadian Brigadier-General who was given military command of the UN's Chapter 6 peace keeping mission to Rwanda. The goal was to help the country roll out the Arusha Accord, an agreement signed by all sides after several years of civil war. Dallaire wrote the book several years after the genocide. It was not an easy book to write and his ghost writer actually committed suicide before the book was finished. That should tell us something...

But, we start out easy enough... with an introduction...

Introduction to the 25th Anniversary Edition

Dallaire knows he isn't perfect and it sounds like he has tortured himself over what happened in Rwanda, second-guessing himself repeatedly. But as I continue through this book, I get the clear message that the fault for Rwanda lies higher up the food chain... with the United Nations and specifically with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: China, USA, France, UK and Russia.

Dallaire has mulled over the events and says we need to get to the essence of the genocide in order to keep it from happening again. We need to address the root of mass atrocities. We need to prevent conflict. That makes complete sense to me... it's treating the disease... not the symptoms. If all the UN does is run around the world treating the symptoms... we are going to get nowhere.

Dallaire hopes that this book will "help inspire people around the globe to rise above national interest and self-interest to recognize humanity for what it really is: a panolopy of human beings who, in their essence, are the same". Given what is happening in the US right now with #BlackLivesMatter... it would seem that we have still not even recognized it at a personal level, let alone a national level.

Dallaire's goal is to "tell the story of how the world abandoned millions of Rwandans and its small peacekeeping force". It's a story of betrayal, failure, naïveté, indifference, hatred, genocide, war, inhumanity and evil. In just 100 days, over 800,000 innocent Rwandan men, women and children were brutally murdered while the developed world, impassive and apparently unperturbed, sat back and watched the unfolding apocalypse or simply changed channels.

And... it would seem that the Holocaust and Cambodia and Rwanda taught us nothing, for Dallaire's fear is that the failure of humanity, as evidenced by the Rwandan genocide, could easily happen again. Dallaire pulls no punches and lays the blame for Rwanda squarely at the feet of the world powers. He wanted to tell the tale of how "the international community, through an inept UN mandate and what can only be described as indifference, self-interest and racism, aided and abetted these crimes against humanity--how we all helped create the mess that has murdered and displaced millions and destabilized the whole central African region." In particular, Dallaire lays the blame at the feet of the US, France and the UK who either watched what happened, pulled out their troops or didn't offer troops in the first place.

Finally... Dallaire reinforces what I, having read several chapters now, recognize--"What I have come to realize as the root of it all, however, is the fundamental indifference of the world community to the plight of seven to eight million black Africans in a tiny country that had no strategic or resource value to any world power." In the grand scheme of world power and politics, a tiny country with no strategic value, no resource value and no white human value... was dispensable.

Chapter 1- My Father Told me Three Things

The first chapter recounts Dallaire's upbringing, born into a military family who demonstrated a model of self-sacrifice. He attended military college but, as a francophone, struggled with a fair bit of discrimination. This was at the same time as the FLQ crisis in Quebec and French Canadians were viewed with a lot of suspicion in the military.

This was a fairly tame chapter and it helped me get a sense of who Dallaire was... of his background and what made him tick.

I have to admit, I am reading this book in the mornings as I don't think it would make for a restful sleep as part of my bedtime reading...

The Alchemist - Paolo Coelho - Part 4 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 191

July 10, 2020

Book 54 - The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho (1993)
 Part 4 - page 159-167
Reading Time - 15 minutes

Santiago and the Alchemist part ways and he is three hours away from the Pyramids. He arrives on a sand dune and see the Pyramids, falls to his knees and weeps. As his tears fall on the sand, he remembers what the Alchemist had told him: "wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure". Santiago starts digging. A couple of Arabs appear, beat him up and rob him of the gold that the Alchemist had given him at the Coptic Monastery. They want to know what he is digging for... and finally, Santiago tells them that he had a dream about a treasure. One the Arabs laughs and tells him that he had a dream too, on that exact spot, of a ruined church in Spain with a treasure buried at the base of a sycamore tree. The men then leave Santiago to marvel... he knows that church... that's where he had his dream about the Pyramids.

And so the story comes full circle. Santiago travels back to Spain, digs up the treasure and gets ready to head back to the oasis and his love, Fatima.

The question that I am left with, pragmatic me, is why couldn't Santiago have had the dream of a treasure buried in the church but... that wouldn't have generated much of a story! And, through his adventures, Santiago has become an adventurer, who has discovered the love of his life. He has learned much... and the excitement lies in the journey, not the destination.

Reading about Santiago and seeing his trials and tribulations as part of a grand adventure is a bit easier than doing the same with my own life! When you're in it... trials and tribulations seem a bit overwhelming... but Santiago had trust... and faith... and that is really what carried him through.

The Alchemist - Paolo Coelho - Part 3 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 190

July 9, 2020

Book 54 - The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho (1993)
 Part 3 - page 104-159
Reading Time - 60 minutes

Santiago is stuck at the oasis in the desert, waiting for the warring tribes to settle down. In the meantime, he has met the Alchemist, the one the Englishman was searching for. The Alchemist is less interested in the Englishman and his book knowledge but more interested in Santiago and his connection to the Soul of the World.

Santiago starts this section by warning the tribal chiefs at the oasis of an impending attack by the warring tribes. Such an attack would be a grave violation of the tribal code and the chiefs are skeptical but cut a deal with Santiago. If there is an attack, he'll get a piece of gold for every 10 enemies killed. If there is no attack... he will be killed. Luckily, Santiago read the omens correctly and the people of the oasis are saved.

The Alchemist teaches Santiago and then offers to lead him across the desert to the Pyramids. Santiago is told that "wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure". He is a bit torn because, while stuck at the oasis, he has met Fatima, a young woman who has captured his heart. He has been thinking about giving up the quest for the treasure and just settling down with Fatima, buying a herd of sheep and being content with life. The Alchemist tells him that the unfulfilled quest would eat away at him... and so... they head out into the desert.

Along the way, they are captured by one of the warring tribes and threatened with death for being spies. The Alchemist gives all of their gold, including Santiago's, to the tribal chief and then says that Santiago is a great magician who can turn himself into the wind. The chief wants to see that... and so Santiago has three days to prepare... Even though Santiago has no idea how he can turn himself into the wind, he communes with the Soul of the World, with the desert and the wind and the sun and the hand that controls it all and... the chiefs are convinced he is a great magician. The two are free to continue their journey and end up at a Coptic monastery. After using the Philosopher's Stone to turn some lead into gold, the Alchemist shares the gold with the monk, and with Santiago and then leaves Santiago to continue his journey alone.

There was one quote that spoke to me: "When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too." We don't live in isolation - everything that we think and do has an impact on the world around us - not just the people, but the actual world. Which makes me think that the flip side of that quote is also true: "When we become worse than we are, everything around us becomes worse too." We then have some serious choices to make. We don't live in isolation... we should know this by now during Covid-19. Our very breath can affect those around us... particularly if we are asymptomatic carriers. But even beyond that... if we live a life of love and compassion for our selves, for others, and for the world around us... we can make a difference and make the world a better place.

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho - Part 2 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 189

July 8, 2020

Book 54 - The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho (1993)
 Part 2 - page 48-104
Reading Time - 60 minutes

Santiago is working for the crystal merchant in Tangiers who has a dream of his own... to one day make the pilgrimage to Mecca. But... he is afraid to go because he doesn't want to grow... he likes the life that he has. And... in not going... he can continually dream of going. If he actually went to Mecca... then what?

As for our friend Santiago... he's been with the merchant for almost a year and has enough money saved up to buy twice the amount of sheep that he sold before he started this adventure. He could easily go back home and be twice as wealthy as before but he remembers Melchizedek... And so he continues his Personal Dream, joining a camel caravan to cross the desert. Along the way, he meets an English alchemist who is always reading a book... while Santiago learns to read the desert. They eventually reach an oasis and hunker down for a while due to tribal warfare in the surrounding region.

There were a few quotes that really struck me from this section of the book.

Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the Soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected and we are able to know everything because it is all written there".

I was going to say that this reminded me of the quote by Albert Einstein... but in looking for that quote, I discovered that the following was never said by Einstein but is a paraphrase of a guy named  Bob Samples who did his own individual analysis of Einstein.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Still... the quote does ring true... after the Enlightenment, we have became a very rational culture and have tossed intuition to the curb. The Alchemist is all about listening to the Soul of the World and trusting in the signs and omens that come our way. To do that, we need to trust our intuition...

Another quote:

We are afraid of losing what we have but fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.

I've been mulling the idea of loss for awhile... It is one of the things that is front and centre during this time of Covid-19. Losing jobs, routine, employment, money, health, connections... it's all there. And makes me think that we came onto this earth to experience that sense of loss. Because if we come from a place where there is no loss... how could we even comprehend that... only by the experience of it. Our entire lives are a form of loss or entropy... losing friends, family, health, wellness, eyesight, hearing. Growing old is not for the faint of heart... and yet... we need to remember that ultimately we/it are all one.

Which leads to the next quote... a short one... "everything, every thought has a soul"... Huh... We can barely comprehend that humans have souls. Now let's add in animals... that gets tricky right off the bat. But to think that plants, rocks, even created things, and thoughts, have souls... Just slightly mind-blowing... Although I do remember from Philosphy 101 - the idea that each object has a form and an essence. Not too far off from soul... But I guess in many ways, if we believe that everything is One... then why would a rock not have a soul? Or some connection to the Oneness... different from ours but legitimate in its own right? It might make our handling of the earth slightly different if we didn't always keep our superiority complex front and centre.

I think I could spend a lot more time mulling that over...

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho - Part 1 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 188

July 7, 2020

Book 54 - The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho (1993)
 Part 1 - page 1-47
Reading Time - 60 minutes

I've read this classic book a few times but always benefit from a re-reading. The book might not have changed, but I have changed, and I always get something new and different from it every time I read it.

The book is all about following your personal calling, legend, dream. Along the way, we come up against four main obstacles...

• As a child, we are told it is impossible
• We don't want to hurt those we love as we abandon our "regular" life for our dream
• A fear of defeat
• A fear of realizing the dream for which we have fought all our lives. If we reach our dream... then what?

We meet Santiago, a shepherd who lives quite a happy existence, leading his sheep around the meadows and mountains of Andalusia. He has this recurring dream of travelling to the Pyramids in Egypt and discovering a treasure. Interestingly, he had this dream in an abandoned church.. hint... that church will come up again later. Santiago doesn't expect much of life, hopes to meet the baker's daughter again when he passes through a certain town but, basically he is content. Except for that dream...

He then meets a man who says he is the King of Salem, Melchizedek. We learn from him about Personal Legends and the Soul of the World which is nourished by people's happiness. Melchizedek encourages Santiago to follow his personal dream, to realize his destiny. When you want something... all the universe conspires to make it happen. I would think the key factor there is... us actually wanting something... not just a shallow want. But a real, soul-deep, want that is rooted in the very depths of our being. But how many of us have that sort of a want? Because if we really want something that we don't have (like a treasure from the Pyramids) then we have to give up what we have become accustomed to (a shepherd in Andalusia). And how many of us really want to give up what we have, what we know, what we are comfortable with?

Well... Santiago really wants the treasure... so he sells his sheep, buys a ticket for Africa (Tangiers) and heads off on his quest. He reaches Tangiers and is promptly robbed of his gold. Santiago has a bit of a rethink of this adventure business... because it would be easy enough to turn tail and head home... He realizes that he can choose to see himself as the poor victim of a thief or as an adventurer in quest of treasure. I do have to say... if Santiago hadn't had any challenges on his quest, it would have made for a pretty boring story... All is not lost for Santiago talks himself into a job with a crystal merchant. From the merchant he learns how much money and time it would take to get to the Pyramids and... he's down in the dumps again. He figures he'll earn enough to head back to Spain and call it quits but... that isn't the end of the story...

I can totally sympathize with Santiago... it takes guts to turn the apple cart upside down and head off into the unknown. It's far safer to stay with what we know... even if it means that we have to give up our Personal Legend or dream or calling. We really don't want to be pulled through the keyhole of life... on the other hand, sometimes life pulls us through the keyhole anyhow... So why not at least know that we are headed in the direction of our Personal Dream while that's happening? I guess the other aspect of this is... how many of us know what our Personal Dream is? Maybe as kids we had a sense of it... but as we get older and more "sensible"... after adults convince us that dreams don't put food on our plates and roofs over our heads... our dream gets lost in the underbrush. Because as we get older, life gets more complicated. We have more responsibilities... more demands on our time... more things that we think are really, really important. Although... The Little Prince would tell us that adults are really out of touch with what is important. Sooo... kudos to Santiago for hearing and listening to his Personal Dream!

Demand the Impossible - Bill Ayers - Part 4 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 187

July 6, 2020

Book 53 - Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto
Bill Ayers (2016)
 Part 4 - page 146-200
Reading Time - 60 minutes

In this section, we examine Education, the Environment and the Conclusion. Right off the bat... I have to say I was appointed with the chapter on the Environment, it was the shortest chapter of the book and barely skimmed the surface. There was, for example, nothing on the Food Industry which, I think, could have been a whole separate chapter. It would demonstrate quite nicely the commercialisation of nutrition...

Let's start with some stats from education:

• Public Schools in the District of Columbia get $11,965/pupil
• A Private School in DC gets $37,750/pupil
• Student to Teacher ratio at public schools in DC - 13.32:1
• Student to Teacher ratio at private school in DC - 7.8:1

This chapter actually has a stronger "What if..." slant than some of the previous chapters. Ayers refers to Freedom Schools which engage students with their real life experiences and teach them to think for themselves by interrogating and engaging with the world. Compare that with the average urban public school where the goal is obedience, standardisation and conformity - i.e. control. Even in private schools, students who are smart, talented and driven end up anxious, timid and lost - unable to think for themselves. Education has been commodified and commercialised and likely needs to be completely rethought. My understanding is that the current education system was designed to train workers for corporations, for their factories. In which case, conformity and control would make sense. But the world has changed... is changing... will change. So perhaps education needs to be rethunk. This quote stuck with me:

Free people, including free teachers and free students, refuse obedience and conformity in favor of liberating dispositions of mind: initiative, questioning, courage, audacity, imagination, creativity, inventiveness, and empathy. These qualities cannot be delivered in top-down ways, but must be modeled and nourished, encouraged and defended, and mostly practiced again and again and again.

We then move on to the Envrionment and Ayers admits that there is evidence of cataclysmic climate change all around us - so easy to see and yet it is denied "in favour of magical thinking". Somehow technology will save us... or maybe, to quote a current politician - climate change will just "disappear". Ayers gets right into the heart of it by saying that climate change is denied because the solution would be to overthrow capitalism. Which makes sense. Capitalism is based on expansion - always searching for more, selling more, producing more, extracting more... we need to slow down. The Earth is finite... and there is no "more"...

Sooo... where does that leave us? Well... the American Dream, according to Ayers is "a deadly illusion". The US thinks it is an indispensable nation, that it has the good guys... which is purely naked narcissism. Ayers refers to a little snippet from the TV show, Newsroom... I had seen this before but lost the link... glad to have it again!

Martin Luther King got quite clear that just reforming society wasn't going to work, it needed a complete rebuild, if we were to combat racism, poverty and war.

Ayers has a few tips:

• I can't do everything. True. But, can I do anything? Anything at all, no matter how small? Yes. We can always do something.
  
• The Fire from Below is what will generate change - people agitating and organising and putting pressure on the politicians and corporations.
• Breaking free from the TINA trap - There is No Alternative. The world we live in is not necessarily the best of all possible worlds. What else could it be? Ayers suggests a world of socialism with participatory democracy and freedom.

Capitalism has no answers for us, nor for the crises we face. In many ways, it reminds me of a booster rocket that has pushed us high and far but... it is on its last gasp of fuel... and unless we eject it... the weight of it will drag us down.

Ayers suggests that we choose life, choose possibility, choose rebellion and choose revolution. And lest we think revolution means guns and war... gardening is a revolutionary act. Other countries do things differently... look at Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany... they all have something to teach about living life differently. Which reminds me of Michael's Moore's film, Where to Invade Next...

 but that would be a whole other blog...

Demand the Impossible - Bill Ayers - Part 3 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 186

July 5, 2020

Book 53 - Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto
Bill Ayers (2016)
 Part 3 - page 88-145
Reading Time - 60 minutes

This section of the book examines three concepts: Debt, Policing and Health Care. Given current events, all three topics are quite timely. Mind you, the entire book is quite timely!

First, let's talk about debt... here are a few numbers:

• Total outstanding student debt in 2013 - $1.2 trillion
• US credit card debt (2016) - $935.3 billion
• Household net worth lost during the Great Recession - $16.4 trillion

Not surprisingly, governments are put in place to hold things in trust for the common good, but over time, have sold that trust to private corporations - water, electricity, education, health care, prisons. And, generally speaking, those private corporations are not in the business of holding things in trust for the common good. They are in the business of making as much money as possible, a rather short-sighted approach that then leaves citizens and governments holding the bag. As Ayers notes, Big Business rides on the back of the taxpayers... and when things go wrong, Big Business comes to government looking for bailouts... which are paid for with the tax dollars of citizens.

There was one quote from Ayers which stuck with me: The US is "a permanent war economy, married to a prison society, with education and health care kicked to the curb and the abused and neglected paying the ticket". One anthropologist/anarchist/activist suggested cancelling all debt, moving to a 4 hour workday with 5 months of vacation... which would give us a chance to save the planet and reimagine labour. In a weird kind of way, Covid 19 has put a lot of things on hold, including the typical work pattern... although debt is still an issue. I have for a long time thought that the debt loads carried by the average North American keep us in a semi-permanent state of debt slavery. The average American has $38,000 of personal debt while the average Canadian carries $24,000 in personal debt (both those numbers exclude mortgages). Debt keeps the hamsters madly spinning on their "get-out-debt" wheel...

The next section in the book examines policing, and, as we currently see in the news, there is a growing cry to defund the police. Some numbers first:

• Percentage of city budget dedicated to police in Baltimore (2012) - 20%
• Percentage of city budget dedicated to police in Oakland - 40%
• Chicago had 28,567 civilian complaints about police misconduct from March 2011 to September 2015
• Only 2% of complaints result in a police officer receiving discipline.

It might come as now surprise, but most shootings by police are found to be "justified". But independent investigations, by journalists or private citizens, have found cover-up, corruption and murder. We see it in the news as well... the official police version is held up to justify the police actions. Until a video emerges which demonstrates the utter fabrication of the police version. If there is a video that is... The news is also bring forth stories of militarized police - police who are trained by the military and receive military equipment. All just an extension of a militarized society. Ayers notes that racial injustice and economic exploitation are correlated with a violent military system abroad and a colonial militarised police practice at home. Even after slavery was abolished, racism and white supremacy were alive and well in the police and government systems. But... Ayers expresses hope with the youth of today who are leading the way.

Finally, this section looks at health care. Some numbers:

• Out of 11 wealthy countries, the US ranks dead last in health system performance
• Out of 224 countries, the US ranks 43rd in average life expectancy
• Number of Black/White deaths per 1000 in the first month of life (2013): 7.46/3.34. That means Black children twice the death rate as White children

I learned a bit about the US health care system here... like the old (or current) Medicare is only for the elderly and disabled and is severely limited in what it provides. In general, Americans seem to be strongly averse to anything that even has a whiff of socialism about it. And universal health care would definitely reek to high heaven of socialism. The problem in America is capitalism... dollars are the standard of care. And the system is rife with corruption as well with doctors recommending tests that aren't required because they get a cut from the referral... not surprise there. Did you know the US is the only industrialised country where it is legal to advertise prescription drugs to the public? How did that happen? Who runs the country? Big Pharma? Ayers argues that the US system is deeply unequal and stacked against the elderly, the poor, women and those with mental health issues. In the US, 50% of bankruptcies are due to medical bills.

Which made me wonder... what about Obamacare? I thought that was a good thing?? Apparently not... it is still in the pockets of the health insurers and Big Pharma. Which is no surprise when you consider that the US has a corporate health industry which is designed to make money, not care for the individual. On page 141, Ayers compares the US system to his Canadian friend who had a "national insurance card" which covered dental, medical, drugs and vision. That might be a bit of a stretch. Here in Canada, we have provincial health cards which are recognized across the country but... generally do not include vision and dental. Still... a huge step above what the US has...

I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed in these three chapters. In his Introduction, Ayers had suggested that the "What if..." question could open up new possibilities... but that question isn't really being asked to the extent that it was in the first couple of chapters. Which means these later chapters are a bit unbalanced... a recitation of the state of affairs, but no real vision of what it could look like...