Wiki-what-the-f*ck

The year still feels freshly minted in these first few weeks of January and in the spirit of confession, turning over new leaves etc. I am going to reveal something that, once I thought about it, I was somewhat ashamed of. Despite being a curious person and the fact that I'm studying JOURNALISM of all things, I have never visited the Wikileaks website. Until yesterday that is.

Of course I've been getting the highlight reel on the six o'clock news like the rest of the world and I would smirk in righteous satisfaction at all the "diplomatic embarrassment" these leaked cables and reports caused in the hushed hallways of power. But for some reason (and please don't ask me why) I was content to allow the news to filter and emphasize whatever aspects of this phenomena it decided to cover in its broadcasts or print on its pages.

In Canada it seemed the majority of the media scrutiny levelled at the Wikileak cables was focused on the mild trash-talking Canada received from American diplomats. Apparently we're "insecure" or something (insert sarcasm here). And if it wasn't our fleeting national embarrassment at the realization that the global community doesn't consider us a superpower *gasp* the media focus was on the allegations of sexual misconduct facing Julian Assange in Sweden. Precious little else made the news that I saw.

However after visiting the Wikileaks website I realized what has American DOD lawyers scrambling to find a loophole to lasso Assange with so they can drag him off to Gitmo and throw away the key.

Linked on the Wikileaks homepage is the video 'Collateral Murder' that was originally posted in April 2010. At the time of its release I was probably sweating through an iyengar yoga class somewhere in northern India. If this video made waves when it was released to the public it certainly didn't cause a ripple in South Asia. If this was splattered all over the front pages and was being blared from banks of TVs on every street corner please correct my ignorance.

But I was absolutely shocked that I'd never heard this revealing video referenced in any paper or newscast in the months since.

I watched the shortened version of the video with nothing short of horror.

The video shows two Apache gunships firing on a group of Iraqis in a Baghdadi suburb. It's true some of them look like they could be carrying guns but they're not shooting anyone or acting suspiciously, they in fact, appear to be simply hanging out. The Apaches open fire on the group and huge clouds of dust immediately obscure the scene from view. When it clears the devastation is total, even with the grainy quality of the film the blood splatters on the pavement are clearly visible.

One of the Apache gunners spots the sole surviving Iraqi attempting to crawl away. The man's progress is painfully slow and it is clear that he has been severely wounded.

Minutes later a van pulls up and several men attempt to move the wounded man inside. The gunners, pilots and ground command explode in a frenzy of chatter. "They are trying to retrieve the weapons!" they shout back and forth though no one on the ground takes a step towards the corpses scattered in the street several metres away.

The rescuers succeed in getting the wounded man into the vehicle but as they attempt to drive away the gunners receive authorization to fire. Dust engulfs the van and it crashes into a wall.

When ground troops arrive they discover that there are two children in the van, both wounded and one near death. The soldier who discovers them requests they be evacuated to a U.S. military hospital, shortly after his request is turned down. The children are to be taken to a nearby Iraqi hospital where the quality of care is sure to be lower.

Despite that it is heart-wrenching to watch a clearly wounded man and his rescuers be mowed down by heavy fire from above these events would probably have been forgotten. And they were forgotten.

Until Reuters started asking what had happened to their cameramen. It turns out that two of the men in that apparently menacing group of Iraqis were journalists and were carrying not guns, but cameras.

The wounded man inching his way along the pavement after the initial attack was Saeed Chamagh a Reuters photographer. His Reuters colleague, Namir Noor-Eldeen, was killed in the initial assault. As ground troops arrived on scene to secure the area one of their Humvees drove over Namir's body as it lay in the dust.

The internal U.S. military report on the incident named all the Iraqis killed as insurgents.

Now I'm not suggesting that Wikileaks is perfect, nothing is. They editorialize and their bias is very clear. But if you strip away the commentary and look at the hard images you're left with a chilling portrait of a war. The war in Iraq was founded on Colin Powell's deceptive report to the U.N. about the presence of WMDs and on fabricated ties between the Iraq and al-Qaeda. It begs the question, where does the deception end? And with unprovoked acts of violence such as the one depicted in 'Collateral Murder,' will the paranoid imaginings of the U.S. Department of Defence become a tragic self-fulfilling prophecy?

The release of the 'Collateral Murder' video changes nothing in the grand scheme of things but I would rather know than not know the truth, no matter how ugly and confusing it turns out to be.



On a lighter note, due to my abject poverty I've encountered another one of life's magical firsts; my first time visiting a food bank, yay! The university runs a community food room and I've included a picture of the haul I'm allowed to take home on a weekly basis. Due to the over-representation of soup and soup-like products in the food bank my salt intake (and no doubt my blood pressure) has gone through the roof. And since canned/packaged goods tend to be somewhat lacking in flavour it forces you to get a bit creative. Below is my version of egg-drop Mr. Noodles soup with peas. Sodium-licious!

My not so Masterful Cleanse

When I look back at 2010 I feel like the year tossed me around like a rag doll. The highs were high, but the lows were crushingly low. So to start the new year I've decided to do something I swore I never would. Something that I used to mock people for because it's so masochistic and unnatural ... I'M GOING ON A CLEANSE.

And not just any cleanse, the Master Cleanse! *ooooohhh* *aaaaaaaahhhh*

So the way this breaks down is that for 10 days, essentially, you don't eat. Every morning (or when I wake up) I mix a teaspoon of sea salt into a litre of hot water and drink her down. Over the course of the day I am allowed to drink a "lemonade" made of fresh squeezed lemon juice, organic maple syrup and cayenne pepper. And as a special treat before bed, organic peppermint tea.

I know that you're all salivating like junkyard dogs as you read my sumptuous menu for the next ten days. And I'm with you, this whole thing is absolutely absurd. I love food, I love the way it tastes, the texture, the preparation, hell, I even love grocery shopping.

So why am I doing this? After all the drama of the past year I want to put my best foot forward into this one. Discipline and patience have never been my strong suits but who is to say they cannot be learned; that we can't age like wine, that is become deeper and more complex.

So here we go!

DAY 1

Didn't really feel hungry all day like I expected to, though that might have something to do with the big family dinner the night before (and oh I hit that cheese tray hard!) and the enormous salad I scarfed down at 10 p.m. in a last minute sprint to empty my fridge. All my relatives winced when I told them about the salt water part but it's actually not that bad. If I close my eyes it almost tastes like bullion.

The "lemonade" however is almost cloyingly sweet and I had to chase it down with equal amounts of water. After drinking two litres of the stuff, it's just gross. I also put double the amount of cayenne in my tea today ... whoops! It gave me a bit of a kick that's for sure

I felt a bit headachy all day but otherwise not bad, but then again it's only day one.


DAY 2

Slept terribly with horrible vivid dreams of being robbed by junkies. In my dream I wander around with my empty wallet in my hand repeating "this can't be happening." Then I'm in an open cockpit helicopter trying to steer it through electrical wires and tree branches as it skims over a road crawling with traffic. There I am hauling on a joystick for dear life when I realize that someone else is steering. After I wake I still have the slight headache of the night before.

All the Master Cleanse websites promise that I will be "bursting with energy I never knew I had" after I complete my stint of 10 days without solid food. But the cleanse itself creates an almost paralytic lethargy.

I was feeling alright today until I walked to the library to grab some movies (when you're poor, you do what you have to). And even though it's only a few blocks I was absolutely exhausted when I returned home. I haven't gone to bed at 9:30 since I was in grade school.


DAY 3

Again with the bad dreams, this time it was a work nightmare. Anyone who has worked in food service knows that serving nightmares are highly traumatic. There was so much yelling, chaos, people coming and going without paying, no sections, no manager and then I forgot someone's pizza order!!! Bah, horrible. I keep sleeping longer and longer into the afternoon as well, not good since I have to get back on a "normal" schedule next week when classes restart.

I spent the day puttering around the house but since I've been sitting so much in the last three days (due to lack of energy) my lower back has begun to ache. With determination clenched between my teeth I managed to finally tackle the dishes which have been sitting, stacked, on my counter for four days waiting to be done.

Towards the late afternoon my blood sugar started to dip so I poured myself a pint glass of the Master Cleanse "lemonade." The liquid was so sweet that my tongue felt like it had been stung and I could feel that a fuzzy coating of sugar had coated my teeth.

Now I don't have a sweet tooth to start with. If I'm having an expensive, fancy-dancy meal out on the town (on someone else's dime obviously) when dessert rolls around I will always forgo the tiramisu and port - I'm a cheese plate and whiskey kind of girl.

The idea of drinking nothing but this stupidly sweet nectar for the next week was too much. And waking up every morning feeling like a tubercular invalid when really I'm in the prime of my life wasn't worth it. For what? To lose a few pounds and flush out the toxins from my already healthy and vegetarian diet? I don't THINK SO!

So I poured the rest of my tea down the drain and took myself out to a movie - WITH POPCORN. And as the glorious joyful feeling of being alive returned to me it became clear to me that life is punishing enough without creating false obstacles and hardship for myself. And anything which unnecessarily takes away my joie de vivre for a single day isn't worth it.

In the words of the Beatles; "Life I love you, all is groovy."

Cheers to a beautiful New Year!

If Cuba were a Feeling

The first thing that struck me as the plane descended through the fluffy whipped-cream clouds was the barrenness of the country below. Most of the land has been cleared for agriculture but lies fallow spreading out in acre after acre of monotonous grassland. Driving into Havana for the first time the buildings and streets are eerily empty. There are people, of course, but everything feels sparse. It's vaguely reminiscent of one of those zombie apocalypse movies where the protagonist wakes up out of a coma to find a shell of a world, with buildings and infrastructure, but no people. We pass a large stone structure built in a classical style with corinthian columns flanking the grand entrance, 'Hospital Central' is etched above the door. But as we drive by I see that the windows have no glass, they are dark lidless eyes into emptiness.




In the heart of the old city there are more Cubans, drawn by the scent of tourist dollars. Everywhere you turn is a salsa, rhumba or folk band serenading you (whether you will it or not) and passing around the hat. There is all kind of ridiculous Che Guevara paraphernalia for sale, wood carvings of sensuous female figures, maracas and poorly made fridge magnets. Shopkeepers half-heartedly call you to look at their wares as they sit in their door-frames, hardly stirring.

During all my time there I couldn't shake the feeling that there was an underlying sadness, or resignation, permeating the country. The small bursts of vibrancy that I saw were all staged for the benefit of the tourists, "LOOK! Look at our cheerful people, so full of life. They live for music and dancing! And they are so, SO happy you see YOU!!!"

The town of Remedios offered, what I felt, was a genuine look into the true nature of Cuba. The town is tiny with almost no tourist infrastructure and is off the well-worn path trod by the all-inclusive resort crowd. Every December 24th they have the festival of las Parrandas, the town divides into competing neighbourhoods who each build their own float over the course of the year and on the appointed day their efforts are set up in the central plaza. At night they will be lit up with hundreds of coloured lights and the barrios will battle by shooting off hundreds of firecrackers.



Naturally there were a few tourists there but this was a distinctly Cuban affair. And it bore no resemblance to the happy-go-lucky routine portrayed by those living off the scraps from the tourist table in Old Havana. There were no "authentically dressed" wandering bands of musicians, there were no women clad in the all white garb of Santaria offering to tell your fortune. The street vendors at las Parrandas fell into three categories; meat-on-a-bun (or plate), booze and assortments of trinkets that are hardly novel to any North American, things like hair elastics and cheap plastic toys.

I think it's safe to say that on festival days we all celebrate that which we cherish or desire most. As I live only blocks away from Toronto's Eaton Centre I feel confident saying that Canadian Christmas is an elevated celebration of "stuff." It's our culture. However in Cuba there is not the option to buy bushels of unnecessary gifts and an overabundance of cookies and/or chocolate.

As I sat smoking a cigarillo on a bench in Remedios' central plaza I watched the people around me. Families, groups of friends and overly amorous young couples talked and laughed. Almost everyone I saw was well on their way to getting completely and utterly WASTED! Now I know New Years in North America isn't any different but at las Parrandas there wasn't that bacchanalian rowdiness that characterizes our drinking holidays (St. Paddy's anyone?) it felt more ... serious. Like everyone was on a mission. If someone didn't have a double tall can of Bucanero Fuerte beer in their hands it was likely because there was a 26er of Havana Club hiding by their feet. Yes, yes, everyone was having a good time but there was this strange drive underlying it all, this need to for one day (via alcohol) forget.

The morning after las Parrandas I walked to the main plaza again to find a taxi. The side streets leading to the square were awash in human shit. Evidence that late into the night inhibition flew the coup.

I don't mean to sound down on Cuba. The generosity of spirit and voluntary kindness of some of those I met was overwhelming. Coming back from the beach on Christmas day my taxi driver wordlessly pulls over at the side of the road. He returns with a bulging bag of oranges and with a shy smile he offered me one.

Cuban art explodes with emotion and dynamism that is sorely absent on the streets of its cities and towns.

Cuba feels like a country that, many years ago, bravely toppled their tyrannical government and then heroically stood up to a nation that could have crushed it with a militaristic flick of the wrist. It is a country that now identifies itself so strongly with those acts and that time that evolution as a society has been impossible.

Over breakfast one morning, Damayi, the hostess of my casa in Old Havana spoke of how there is no opportunity for the young people, no motivation. She pursed her lips slightly as she spoke about her own son and that he moved to Mexico to make a better life. In her entire apartment there is only one picture, it's of her son, and as I scarfed down my morning eggs she brought the picture to the table for me to admire.

On the one hand I didn't see a single advertisement the entire time I was in Cuba, not one. But on the other hand, I also didn't see a single internet cafe, or even a computer for that matter that wasn't running on DOS (for those who remember what that is). It's true that Cuba is free from corporate meddling but how is that price being paid?

I found Cuba to be a country of beautiful, idealistic, sadness. The revolution served a great purpose but a purpose that is no longer there.