Terror Suspect in Ottawa Court June 30, 2008

I am following the trial in Ottawa, Canada, of terrorist suspect Momin Khawaja. Mr. Khawaja has pleaded not guilty to seven terrorism connected charges related to an alleged plot to bomb sites in England. Court heard from prosecution witness Mohammed Babar who testified to sharing email messages with the accused about the latter's training. The witness said accused returned from a terrorist training camp in Pakistan excited at his experience firing Ak-47 assault rifles, machine guns and RPGs. "He said he had a chance to fire the RPG, the AK-47 and the light machine gun. He was excited and enjoyed it," Babar told court. Potential targets apparently included British pubs, nightclubs and train stations, Babar said.

Babar's testimony transported me back to my own training in Cuba in 1980: AK-47s, RPG grenade launchers, light and heavy machine guns. Except that I didn't enjoy my experience and hadn't planned on the training in the first place. Didn't like guns and violence then, don't like them now!

Google And Me: The Start of a Beautiful Friendship? July 02, 2008

When you Google ‘The Reluctant Guerrilla’ or ‘The Road Not Taken: Memoirs of a Reluctant Guerrilla’ now, my blog comes up with this entry from my first blog: “A used copy of my book… was being offered on Amazon.com…” Cool. There are also other references to my book on Google, most notably in Mitchell’s West Indian Bibliography, Bibliography of the Grenada Revolution, some academic text in German and a listing of my name and book title and what appears to be an ISBN in an entry from the Trinidad and Tobago Education ministry:

www.books.ai/9th/Del-Deq.htm
www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/page15.html
www.nalis.gov.tt/Education/351resources.html

I am trying to enjoy the whole writing and publishing experience. When the first edition was launched in Jamaica in 1985, I was in Montreal, where I wrote the book. At one point the publishers asked me “When are you coming to claim authorship?” This time I will be taking a kind of “damn the torpedoes” approach....In TRNT I said David Schwartz’s The Magic of Thinking Big was most influential in those last desperate days in Jamaica. It was my bible for positive thinking. I am now reading the author’s follow-up The Magic of Getting What You Want, published in 1983. I am also reading and re-reading Carolyn See’s Making A Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers. The book is a pep talk and is chock filled with useful suggestions for would-be writers. “Anything that you can do to pretend to be a writer - do it,” See says. Personal assistant? An entourage? Bodyguards? “Do you want lovers?” Aha, that’s a riot. Making A Literary Life is my new bible.

The Walk of Life! July 05, 2008

While I struggle to self-publish I have to pursue what the Dire Straits refer to as the Walk of Life. This week I was a team leader at the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) scoring exercise. Today, Saturday, I was painting scaffolds all day. These scaffolds will feature somewhere in some band’s concert soon. Meanwhile I just received a missive from Five Seventeen, my page layout genius about the Timeline in TRNT. Five doubles as editor and brings to my attention any problem he sees. Sometimes his email shakes me out of my doldrums….Caught Amy Winehouse in concert on TV: it was an impressive concert. She not a bad skanker: she looked and sounded good on Toots & the Maytals' “Monkey Man.” I was thinking about some of my favorite groups and artists and I figure I could categorize their oeuvre as ‘music for depressives.’ Leonard Cohen, Blood & Wine (‘Please Don’t Waste Me in The Ground’), Pink Floyd, The Cure and Coldplay to mention just the obvious and there is no blues on the list. I am not making a big deal about it.

The State of My Nation... July 14, 2008

Things seem to be looking up...
First I lucked into meeting another journalist who volunteered to edit the second edition of TRNT. Then, how about this for great luck? Two months ago I went on the web looking for someone or an outfit to lay out my book and happened on an entity called Five Seventeen. Five has been brilliant - not just laying out stuff, but doubling as researcher and editor. (Perhaps that's tripling). Of course as a graphic artist you expect them to know the difference between en and em dashes, but Five has provided top notch advice on use of quotes and arcane issues about copyrights.

Then, just yesterday, I received an email from a documentary producer interested in working on a doc based on TRNT. We have arranged a weekend meeting before the idea is pitched to a cinematographer who has worked with The Harder They Come. Which is cool because back in 1999 the writer/director of THTC, Perry Henzell was my guest at Concordia University. (I was the prez of the Graduate Students Association). We screened THTC and Henzell answered questions from the audience and I presented him with a GSA shirt. The high point: Lunch with Perry at McKibbins Irish Pub on Bishop Street in Montreal. I had also set a book signing for his book "Sweet Stuff," for him at Chapters. I have an autographed copy stashed.

I have long been a skeptic of horoscope, but what should I make of a prolonged spell of good, seemingly, on-the-mark ones recently? This one for example in today's Globe and Mail:

Aquarius....The sun energises your ruler Uranus today, making it easy for you to turn ideas into realities. It does not matter in the slightest what others say can and cannot be done -if you believe in what you are doing it will be a resounding success. You cannot lose.

The State of the (Music) Nation: A Lament

Quick, name the last great R&B album? It would have to be Stevie Wonder's 1976 Songs in the Key of Life. Before that I would suggest two albums that came out in 1971: Sly & the Family Stone's There's a Riot Going On and Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. Some may say: what about Prince's Purple Rain or Sign O' The Times or Al Green Let's Stay Together or I'm Still in Love With You. Okay it's subjective, but I begin by defining great R&B as the marriage between great music and great lyrics which is why I would rank Riot, What's Going On and Songs in the Key of Life as the last great R&B albums. Perhaps Bob Marley & the Wailers Exodus belongs in this elite group. Time rated it the best album of the 20th century.

Sly's fusion of R&B, soul, rock, funk and psychedelia with social and political commentary was ground-breaking and influenced a slew of artists and groups: Prince, Earth, Wind & Fire and Ohio Players. This was urban blues at its best.

What's Going On was a visionary and conceptual masterpiece with its broad lens focused on the environment ("...where did all the blue skies go?"), poverty, discrimination, corruption and drug abuse in songs such as Mercy Mercy Me and What's Going On.

One could argue that 1973's Innervisions was more socially conscious, but for my money Songs in the Key of Life was the more complete and greater album.

These three great albums were made more than thirty years ago and it has been uphill ever since. We have a lot of very good music: the stuff out of Philadelphia International, Luther Vandross, Anita Baker, Toni Braxton and Prince. But, now there is a dearth of good soul or R&B music. Destiny's Child? Ugh! Ironically, it was Philadelphia International which ushered in disco and was partially responsible for R&B's decline. Yep, disco killed the R&B star.

Where have you gone Smokey Robinson? A nation turns its bored and lonely eyes to you. Check out the lyrics to the next R&B hit, and don't even mention the music. I think it has to do with education or the lack of it: the drop-out rate in high schools in black communities everywhere - Britain, Canada, US or Caribbean is close to 40 per cent and lyrically black music has suffered because there isn't the competition - when Smokey was unable to produce hits for the Temptations, Motown turned to Norman Whitfield - among peers. There are no Smokey Robinsons, no Marvin Gayes or Stevie Wonders anymore. The well that produced those great artists and influenced other genres and artists like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones has gone dry.

The good thing is that all of that good music have been filed on my iPod and I can listen to Barbara Lewis' Hello Stranger and Baby I'm Yours or reminisce on Sly's If You Want Me to Stay.

A Loan Forgiveness Program to Fight Terrorism

Before the collapse of the world banking system I had this theory on one way the United States and others could counter terrorism. In some ways this theory seems simplistic but let me give it a go: member governments of the G-8 plus China could get together and offer to erase the debts of developing countries in return for peace, order and good government (POG).

The donors would define what they meant by POG. Recipient governments would be given a tick-box of progressive actions they could pursue: they would be allowed to improve health systems, develop employment and welfare programs and repair infrastructure. They couldn't create "make-work" projects, especially those politically-oriented ones. Fulfillment of the criteria would be adjudged over an extended period and loan forgiveness occurring progressively over a fixed period, say twenty years.

There are excellent reasons for such a program: poverty in developing countries poses the greatest terrorist threat. There are other benefits to loan forgiveness as well: the more stable these countries are you can bet the less illegal immigration - I was once an illegal immigrant myself - there would be, therefore relieving pressure on limited resources.

It would still be feasible but when the citizens in the developed countries are facing record unemployment themselves, it would not be politically palatable to be bailing out poorer countries. Another thing: since capitalism has been seen to fail, developing countries may want to consider reckless socialist alternatives. And why shouldn't they? The Americans, British, Irish, French and other governments are falling over themselves socializing their banking systems. Poor Milton Friedman must be turning over in his grave. And let's not forget that these poorer countries are feeling the impact of a crisis not of their making. What I fear will happen is this: developed countries will prefer the optics of cutting foreign aid and developing countries will be further squeezed. But a structured loan forgiveness program is the way to go.

Just a thought.

Check out Anthony Robbins Change Your Life Now

Hi,

I want you to take a look at: Anthony Robbins Change Your Life Now