Chetter's Blog

Erik Prince multi-millionaire and right-wing christian republican running one of the world’s largest mercenaries army in Iraq and Afghanistan along with Prince’s company is an overwhelming rise of privatized warfare an issue that was under my radar until I discovered Blackwater. Jeremy Scahill investigates deeper into the rise and continual thrive of Blackwater only that hardly any of the information is his own. Blackwater is more of an encyclopedia source for information on Blackwater, it would be much better suited if it was a huge left-wing democratic Wikipedia page with links that brought you write to the article in its entirety. This information has been available in the media for years why it was under most people’s radar is a mystery. When reading this book it did offer concessions of both sides but Jeremy mainly pointed out the details of Blackwater’s weaknesses like Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday and other civilian casualties at the hand of Blackwater Mercenaries.

Blackwater is not the only type of military forces that have mistreated Iraq’s citizens, right here in Canada there is continual debate about the torture of Afghan detainees stemming back all the way to 2005 under the Paul Martin Liberal government. I still remember very vividly the United States armies mistreatment of war prisoners, all the pictures scattered over the internet of prisoners stripped and thrown into a pile of other naked prisoners. Mistreatment of prisoners and civilians is not all the private warfare mercenaries fault many national defense armies mistreat the detainees, prisoners, and civilians with little capital punishment and accountability which should be far more shocking than private warfare scandals.

Blackwater exposes the workings of the corporate company Blackwater USA but in the movie Shadow Company it focuses on the complete documentation on private military contractors and exposes not just these private companies but the evolution of how small private military firms like Blackwater turned into multi-million dollar corporations. Shadow Company also follows British contractors on a very personal level. When I was watching the film I got a real sense that these contractors only take up the role because they have left the military and have no other skills to use so they use this for a quick buck. I had a real shiver when watching the film when for no reason the contractors open fired on civilian vehicles while driving in an armored vehicle simply just because they could. The mercenaries know that they are not subject to any law and with the increase of private companies the Middle East is starting to look more like a classic cowboy paradise with no laws, accountability, just guns and cash.

A mercenary is a contractor that does not fight for a country, does not fight for a purpose, but collects the dollar when the fighting is all said and done. I am all for private enterprising but there has to be limits upon which corporations can act. If corporations specifically Blackwater do not stand by societal ethics and natural laws of society then we need to look at the mercenaries themselves and teach them a lesson in natural law. If the Blackwater contractors have any sense of natural law they would uphold to the values of human life while still continuing the pursuit of wealth. I have the right to pursue wealth in any way that I can and I have no problem with private warfare companies doing the same. Where there is a demand these companies bring in the supply and there is a market made for private security. Let the forces of supply and demand do their work but let the supply be subject to natural law and the accountability for their actions when they are not just in all places and at all times.

Blackwater is a great book of sources but the author was very one-sided in his approach. I had a difficult time in trying to find fair balanced quotations and sources. The reporting in the book that was done by Jeremy himself the information was based on pure opinion and it was hard to differentiate what was fact and opinion even with the cited sources. During one point of the book it really began to feel like Jeremy was started to cite his opinion and discontent about the war, “The Iraq war is bad and as such, everything associated with that war is bad too,” that is not journalism that is pure opinion. Sections of this book really started to make me doubt the sources and the context in which the sources were used but I was able to get past that. Blackwater is an informative read, it is filled with exposure to the private warfare world and the huge Blackwater war machine mercenary army that is gaining more political power with the intensity of the war on terrorism. With the plan for Iraqi troop pullout in sight it is important to give Blackwater a lot of attention and a read to fully understand the history of the war on terror and the continual thrive of the private warfare industry and the effect it will have on in the future of war.

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No matter how I live life optimism and pessimism are shaped from experiences and the environment and how I perceive my worldview. In today’s society it is never enough no matter what we do, there is a push for perfection among all of society. It is most hard hit on students, the marks determine our future lifestyles, jobs, and careers. I have to work hard or else no one would want me, a very harsh reality from experience. My experiences define how I examine my life.  An optimistic view would to be find that life is a journey to help others, while pessimistic view would to believe that life is a series of challenges and to overcome all the hardships. William Blake in both chimney sweepers shows how innocence can be an optimistic in theory but in the real experience a more pessimistic view is prevalent. During the romantic time period poem and art was a reaction against the the enlightenment thinkers which, thought rational thinking and reason was the primary source for legitimacy and authority. William Blake in the Chimney Sweeper shows how optimism can hold innocence while experience brings out the pessimism in the human soul.

Chimney sweeper in songs of innocence has an optimistic take on life and is a journey of overcoming death, betrayal, and can be seen as exposure to the horrible conditions for the upper class to see in a hope to lobby for a better quality working conditions directed toward the class of rising child labourers. The deaths of his fellow sweepers does not face the chimney sweeper for that he feels he will go on to the better place of heaven were he will be a son of God and not have to work anymore. The chimney sweeper is very innocent in thought, a very young age and is forced to work but it is for the better, all the chimney sweeper has to do is do his duty here on earth and his reward will come later on in heaven when he dies.

In Chimney sweeper the songs of experience Blake has a very dismal pessimistic view on life which reflects into a protest against the working conditions and life at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Blake illustrates that the only thing to look forward to is death. His parents go to church and tell him to be happy just to simply get through this life and die and look forward to the afterlife. Blake clearly demonstrates in the last stanza that the church makes light on the horrific lives that the people are enduring. On the outside the child is showing that he is happy but deep down  his work has crippled him on the inside and blames his state of misery on his parents and God, the priest and king.

Taken together the chimney sweeper demonstrates my outlook of optimism and pessimism changes from the innocence of the sweeper to his very reality and life that he has endured from his experiences as a chimney sweeper and is clearly illustrated by the colours black and white. The colour of white so hopeful, praising, free-willed, spirited and pure. Black the colour of shame, hopelessness, doubt, and the reality of being trapped in the enclosure of a chimney until death. “Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare, you know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.” The innocence and purity of the child’s soul is represented by the white hair and with it gone Tom can be hopeful that the soot or the sweeping does not damage his optimism on his life, duty, and his afterlife. When the sweepers meet their ultimate demise they are put in black coffins only to be released white naked and pure again to be the sons and daughters of God. In the song of experience the sweeper finds what life is really made out to be as he stands covered in black, a small speck in the white snow, shows how the world’s sin against child labour are only a small black speck which can not be understood, and is hardly seen by the rest of the world, which is why blake wrote the poem to open they eyes to the world for what is really happening.

Experiences determine as to what it means to be a human, as I continue to try to find out who I really am it is greatly founded on the experiences throughout life but during grade ten and eleven they have shaped  most of my beliefs and values. The core beliefs like hard work, dedication, and persistentence are what keeps me going even when it gets tofeel  like I am thrown to the ground and kicked in the face. The very values that have gotten me this far, just like the chimney sweeper are the values that bring me down the most, the feeling that I am not wanted and the very negative aspect of what life is. Even as I write this post I am going to be obliged to hand it in because no matter how hard I work on it and no matter how much time I spend on it I am going to hate it regardless of what everyone else thinks. When I think about the future and the what it holds my mind is a very optimistic attitude but just as blake has demonstrated in his songs of experience chimney sweeper the belief of pessimism is one that I hold more closely to myself than I do with optimism. I view life as a series of overcoming challenges, it is not a negative view I feel more powered and motivated to do the best I can and to work hard and continue on no matter what, just as the chimney sweeper keeps on his duty no matter how hard it is because the reward is at the destination of our journeys.

Romanticism: Art and Literature

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Like every coin there are two sides to every person a public and private self. It is a sense of responsibility for people to not let these these two versions form into one. I find myself with a struggle to show the people in public the person I am but in private the search of meaning and my role in this world and my place within it. It is a very protected part of one’s self and even under the most extreme circumstances at all costs we try to protect this private self cause it is the only thing that we have that no one else can take away from us. It can only be exposed which that in itself loses our ability to have a sense of ourselves.

The darker side of human nature is to manipulate the minds of their true and best friends, for their own gain or for the gain of others whether it is helping a friend or not. I find it is much easier to deal with problems in isolation, solidarity and long periods of thought provoking sessions. It is only these periods of isolation that allow us to see what is wrong with ourselves and allow us to critically come up with solutions or a “where do I go from here” plan that keeps us on track. I have several friends when I can tell that something is wrong all they ever say is “Being alone is what I want. It’s the only way that I feel safe inside the darkness that is me must try and heal when sadness is in the eyes distance is the best friend.”  

There are few circumstances I would take into acccount to do such a thing for my friends parents. The only way I could try to find out what is wrong is if there was clear intent to cause harm to oneself or cause harm to another. If I saw my friend on a ledge I would do everything to stop them rather than sit back and watch them fall.  I expect the courage from my friend to come and talk to me if they feel hopeless and cannot help themselves. It is so difficult to try and feel for a close friend because I will never see my friends whole life, and I can never try my friends life.

I would feel so intrusive if I was requested to find out what is happening in my friends life, if it were to be justified I would feel I was doing a lot more good to my friend than harm. I also feel it would be part of the parents’ responsibility to find out why their child is acting strangely. They could very well be the solution or part of the problem as to why their child is acting strangely. It is human nature for an offspring to feel compelled to have a relationship with thier mother and father as they are the giver and keeper of life to the offspring. When one’s world falls to pieces, they feel that someone will still be there to pick them up.

Honesty, there are no shades of grey only the truth as it can be. With honesty towards a friend comes with the actions of honor which are the choices that I make that reflect who I truly am. By being straight and telling my friend up front what I am doing that is the only way to show that I am truly a friend and not against him or a servant to his parents. How are we suppose to help the ones that we love when we can not even tell them that we are helping them to begin with?

The greatest fulfillment is having a concrete relationship with others, one in which both persons are able to meet their psychological needs. Our needs of fulfillment, sense of worth, belonging and just the fact that someone who cares. The fact that someone who cares is one of the most important needs. The recurring question I have about society is always why is it so hard to find someone who cares about you, when it is easy enough to find someone who looks down upon you? The need of belonging and caring is what we all get out of relationships with one another.

The darkest side of human nature is that at some point we always feel that all hope is gone and all freedom is lost. We all need a reason to believe in something to control our fear, pick ourselves up when we feel down. The feelings that we need to be alone and away from it all is another part of the darker side of human nature. If God calls all of us to love one another and care for each other then why do we feel the need to be away from the ones that we love the most at times. Behaviour that most of us see as strange when we find another in that state but behaviour that is the norm when we find ourselves in the same situation, the greatest fear of human nature is the mysteries that surround it.

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Everyone human being has the right to life and dignity. God gave all individuals the right to ethical treatment, all individuals at birth have the right to life, speech and expression, and freedom. God made humans in the likeness and image of himself. God does not take the life away from the good, evil or even the wicked. Fate does not allow unruly and corrupt  tyrants  to kill, torture and rape an entire nation of life and dignity, we do. Society allows this because we are afraid of the violence and the measures that low life individuals will drop to. Murderers, drug users and abusers try to deprive us of our dignity and life. All these problems can be solved b solving one problem and the only problem with society is society itself. I am afraid of all people, it bothers street runners, high school drop outs, people that have chosen to live by survival rather than find justice in our communities. Just thinking about what people think of me makes me spiral to conformity. Seeing people choose to live their life like this makes me uneasy as these people are unpredictable, driven by anger and hate, and use substance and violence to deal with their life problems. Living in this town I have come to see the love, the hate and the world and community we choose to make with it. Few wave this flag of hatred but were the ones who allowed them to make it.

Everyday a new person is born into this world as it all falls apart. There is evil in the world because individuals create it. Everywhere I look the beauty of our god given rights of life and dignity are being destroyed and wasted in front of my eyes. I hear the hate in words, all the words that make me hurt. These words take all that  I stand for and contest my beliefs and challenge my faith. It shouldn’t be this way, I have the freedom to express my dignity as do all individuals not just in the community but in the world.  I don’t always stand up in what I believe in, there have been many times were my faith has been contested by hating words, I always seem to crack under crowds of people and pressure.  It takes so many things for me to have a good day but takes only one thing to have a bad day. Just one little comment I take offense to ruins my day.  What keeps me going is that all individuals with myself included all have a life and a soul to call our own. I have a conscience, a passion for absolute moral justice. Justice that is right all places in all times. Justice for people who waste their dignity, this justice can not be challenged, it is designed for the greater good that I want to see society become.

I have a choice as do all other individuals, I can fight for my dignity, my values that define me, and what I preserve most is my faith in God and the dignity of human life. In a time where millions fall only a few choose to make it through the hurt, pain, and misery of life. I can see that good men only come in few, I hope one day to be one of these few. Being a Christian is to be one of the few good people that follow the morals of what is fair and just. I am a believer in a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.  Instead the evil fall victim to the low life dignity of leeching off of other’s to live, or crawl over other’s backs through drive and ambition to reach the top of ambition’s ladder. Once atop  after being helped there by other’s the individual turns their back and ascends to the top. Justice is blind, moral, fair and justice is for all.

As long as there are people in this world there will be evil. What tangled webs will these people weave, when they practice to deceive? I use the web because the people that waste their lives are like spider’s they spin a web of filth and try to capture other’s into. The spider then consumes the person before they even realize they had a choice in life. I wonder with all the evil in the world and so few good people in society to fight, how will we ever take down the flag of hatred few have created and raise one of absolute social justice? We allow evil in the world, God does not create it, he gives us life and dignity and the rest is up to us to decide what to do with it. How many heroes does evil kill a day? How many weapon’s does it create, and how many lives does it devastate?

When writing this I think about all the days in my life where I could have done something more to help those that will senselessly  die in gang wars, die from poverty, sickness and addiction. There are days when I feel I should have helped other’s more. It starts with good men, changing society, being the change that they want to see. I want to be the change in the world that I want to see. The only real threat to society is ourselves. I want to change a society to one that respects people’s dignity and human life. It will take all individuals starting with myself, all good men, all good women to resist the easy life of falling into a world of crime and hatred where evil exists and spurs into controlling other’s lives. It will take all good people to bring this society to the endless destiny that Jesus’ teachings have created for all humans. I can get there and so can all individuals. Do unto other’s as we would have them do unto us, life and dignity is our gift from God, what we do with it is our gift to God. There is no such thing as fate, only what I make.

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This caused a conflict between the Pharisees and Jesus because one group believed that they were more worthy than other groups of people. Jesus was teaching all people were made in the likeness and image of God, this would have created conflict as Jesus wanted for all people to do unto others as they would have them do unto you. Seeing people as unclean and clean would have stirred emotions in Jesus and his followers as this was going against Jesus and his followers’ teachings’.

Today we have people that act like Pharisees and we have people that follow the teachings of Jesus, over two thousand years after Jesus’ death and we still have the same groups of conflict. The people that are prostitutes lepers, mentally ill and poor did not choose that for their way of life, they were forced into it to meet their basic needs. These are the people that are down in the world they look up at the Pharisees and they say “Save us,” the Pharisees look down and whisper “No.” The follower’s of Jesus are the people that want to help other people that are down in lower class of life, they run the food banks, soup kitchens, and are volunteers that try to make lower social classes have another path in life.

With all the economics that have evolved since the industrial revolution, with the classes of people that have all the money that they could ever want we still have people that class other’s as unclean. Everyone talks about how humankind has evolved towards a goal for a better world whether it be with technology, government, social organizations, or even people that recycle we still have a divide between Pharisees and follower’s today. In my mind the world has not come up with a solution since two thousand years ago for this conflict but it has only changed forms. These forms are not only in modern social classes but in forms of other nations seeing other countries as only developing and not developed. Countries and leader’s only look what is in the best interest for their country and their people and most importantly for their economy. It  will take a second coming of Jesus for all of us to realize that we have become Pharisees and we need to all become followers of Jesus.

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To see what God thinks about us, we have to first look at us and see what we think of ourselves. Jesus claimed that all people were created in the image and likeness of God. What is the image and likeness of God? Is it that we have an immortal and indestructible soul? Is it that we are called as Christians to help and love one another?

God thinks of us as only strengths and strengths that need to be improved. That is what God thinks about us as he does for every human. How I think about myself is not how God thinks of me. I can not think of many strengths or many activities that I am remotely good at. What I can think of is an endless lists of fears, and on that lists follows an infinite amount of things and activities that I fail at or can not do very well at all.

God looks at us by the root of our soul. God sees past all the physical features like race, size, everything that is physical does not matter to God. What really matter’s to God is how you shape your soul and how we act to one another. He sees how are souls are used, what we are is a gift from God but what we become is our gift to God He sees the souls that are wasted and instead of his teachings he sees his creations filled with sorrow, hopelessness, and anger. God thinks of us as all as his image as people but with different souls. I do not know if there is such thing as a good soul and a bad soul, God looks at our souls and sees if they are on the right path or following the teachings of Christ.

What I found that I am good at is pointing my weaknesses out, and hiding my strengths and I am more rapt with the concept of possible failure, than I am with absolute success. I can not with the life of me point out hardly any of my successes, but I sure can point out every failure, or imagine every possible failure that can come about. I want to become a decent person, believes in an honest paycheck for an honest day of work. I want to grow up to be a success, anything other than that to me is failure, but God sees it as a gift, and he thinks about all of us, equal in the humans, gives the gift of life to us, and what we do with our lives is our gift to him.

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I believe I am becoming a hard working individual. An individual that only expects the best from myself, but also is very disappointed and defeated when I do not meet the expectations. I am not sure what it is that I want to become, but I do want to start becoming a better individual in education and in the work world. A better more knowledgeable person.A person that can imagine what I want to become and what I have to start becoming to get there. I want to start becoming what I want to become early in my life, so for the rest of my life I can continue becoming the person I want to be and die to show what person I became.

What do I want to become? There are several paths that I have thought about taking the journey towards. I always had the thought of broadcasting, but it is expensive and in the long run several people have told me it is long hours and no money. There is no certain or definite path for that there is for me to take or dive straight into after high school.

There is just no future that I have planned for myself. The only real strengths that I possess are my language courses, social and English beyond that I really don’t have anything else, and there is especially no hope for me for anything with math or numbers involved or any other kind of courses. I always believed that it is not what you become but what are you becoming.

Becoming is the life struggle. Everything up to the point of become is a struggle. The one day when I become is the day that I die, because that is the day that I become one with God. Everything about becoming is a struggle. Becoming the best student or even a good student is a tremendous struggle. The struggle to pay attention to every teacher in every class for every minute of the day to absorb every detail and every piece of information. It’s a struggle beyond school to post secondary, a struggle to find a career, a struggle to support a family. The final struggle to my death hopefully not for a long time but that is a struggle to fight against. With each struggle there s a struggle to get out of the struggle.

It goes something like this, there is a hard life for every silver spoon, there is a touch of grey for every shade of blue, that is the way that I see life if there was nothing wrong then there would be nothing right. There is always something wrong in life that is sucking me down under, all there is to do is to pull yourself back on top of things and keep moving on. When I become one with God, everything that I will ever do will become everything that I have ever done. What I want to do is take each day a little bit more happier that the day before. Do a good deed more often than just when I really have to. I want to live the ideal life, finish school, retire after a successful career, raise a family and have a stable enjoyable life. I want to do all of these things so that when I become one with God, they will be everything that I have ever done.

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Everyday when you wake up the day becomes your obstacle. Even when you think you have no obstacles, there is always an obstacle weighing in on your life, time. Time before your life comes to a close as the day does, because each day finished is a day closer to death. Without the final hurdle of death before you spiritually ascend to heaven life would have no meaning. Everyday there is a challenge whether it is at school like an assignment quiz or test. These are small hurdles for me to overcome to reach the next goal and then to the next one and so on.

All of life is a challenge for something to conquer and overcome. There is always an obstacle that stands in our way. Death is a major one that can hinder our spirits and drive in ambition. It hurts the most when the death falls upon the people that helped us over these hurdles and give us ambition and teachings to never give up in life. To have ambition and to have the drive to continue no matter what is something that no one can take away from me. It is something acquired in the human spirit it is nothing materialistic. No one can take away the determination that I uphold, it is mine it is an identity.

I get put down and sometimes my spirit or my character and beliefs are beaten, this is only a test to see if I can overcome and preserver even through the harshest conditions. Life gives me tons of challenges to thin people, the ones that overcome them and live the life that they wanted to accomplish, other’s do not overcome all their challenges and they become suppressed from moving forward. It’s what makes people successful and other’s to take the easy way out and just give up. In my life I hope to accomplish everything I set out to do because in the the end everything I will ever do will become everything that I have ever done.

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what-a-shame

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