Call to Arms

I can no longer hide.  I’m at war.  From the moment I came into this world, kicking and screaming like a geological upheaval made breath and skin, I WAS BORN TO STRUGGLE.

Eleven years ago I first heard the call to arms: I was fourteen years old, a boy, too young to fight, but humanity’s need for soldiers was great and my summons was clear.  IN THAT MOMENT I knew my childhood days were done.  My family was no longer my family; my home was no longer my home: I entered into war as a newborn enters the world: My second birth burning my weak and childlike skin, shaping it into something new.  I CHANGED - like steel from the furnace I was shaped, hammered, and sharpened until age-old lies split before me like a chopping block splits under an axe blade.  Innocence withered and died as the scales fell from my dark eyes.

Bad Dreams

All this pain, divided and alone, we stand apart like so many battered monoliths on a featureless plain under threatening stormy skies.  It reminds my tortured brain of a dream that terrified me as a child and haunts my memories to this day.

I would see three prisoners: a man, a woman, and a child – all one family – and each of them in turn would be locked in their cells with walls of concrete and steel sealing them away from their incarcerated loved ones.

I can only remember the look on the man’s face – the deepest expression of pain I have ever witnessed, as though his world was disintegrating around him.  The look of a man trapped in hell, guilty and alone.

I couldn’t see the guards except for their hands as they went to each cell, looked into the faces of their terrified prisoners, and said to each of them two terrifying words “no light”.

What followed was always the same: the guard would reach through the bars and blindfold the prisoner within, plunging each of their rapidly contracting worlds into darkness.  Confined, blinded, and alone.

For two decades I have feared those images.  Images no young boy should rightfully have dreamt.  Already the nature of the society I was entering was coming clear through dark whisperings and the peculiar feeling that something just wasn’t right.

Nightmares always lingered on the very edges of my vision, as if daring me to build a force, a love, defiant enough to free those people.

My fight had just begun.

The Living Citadel

“Troops in desperate straits know no fear. Where there is no escape, they stand firm; when they have entered deep, they persist; when they see no hope, they fight.”
- Sun-Tzu, The Art of War, pp 74

As I stand now my back is pressed against a wall and before me a panorama opens before my eyes: I see soldiers, American, Canadian, British, French, German – all the countries of the NATO alliance backed by Israelis, Ethiopians, Colombians, Mexicans, Filipinos, soldiers and security forces from every continent and behind them all I see their leaders – Bush, Cheney, Olmert, Netanyahu, Karzai, Zardari, Singh, Brown, Sarkozy, McCain, Obama, looking out I think I see even Donald Rumsfeld chuckling away off in a corner.

The Reasons Why: My Radical Politics

To begin with, let me first say a few things about the human race, humankind – now I think it is pretty obvious that we are a social species, we like to do things in groups, we like to socialize, we work together, fall in love, share our thoughts – it’s what we do and we do it in a place called “society”.

Guards, Part IV: "Veritas"

As the testimony continued and as the evidence was produced, the “Judicator” and the other black-clad man remained stone-faced and silent, displaying no emotion. When at last it ended, the man said “People of the commune, citizens of humanity, your testimony has been heard and the crimes of this man have been laid before our eyes this day – your judgement is clear and now here is ours.”

Guards, Part III:"The Trial"

The warlord's heart sank as he did as he was told, dropping to both knees on the hard-packed earth. A flood of questions poured through his mind: who were these people? Agents of the UN, an armed NGO, that was unheard of! Entering the country and getting past all of bureaucracy and corruption and then proceeding to train helpless villagers how to fight and defend themselves against his militia, impossible! Foreigners in these parts only ever engaged in useless aid efforts for the peasants or contacted his militia if they wanted to take part in illegal diamond trades – so what was this all about? How could he have become so helpless?
The two black-clad strangers, dressed almost identically, now stood on either side of him as the villagers gathered around. Even the women and children began to appear, some of the women, like the strange black-clad woman, with guns in their hands. Women with guns?! To Rambo’s mind this too seemed impossible and yet here it was.

Guards, Part II: "The Encounter"

Rambo’s amazement quickly turned to anger: these villagers had defied him, defied him to the point of armed resistance and killing his own fighters – an example, a brutal example had to be made of them, and he could not let this challenge stand. “Kill them all!” he bellowed to his men, who needed no encouragement. He followed closely behind as they plunged through the ring of blazing huts and into an open space beyond, taking pleasure in treading on the dead bodies of several unlucky village defenders. Expecting to run into a last ditch group of defenders he brought up his magnum, but stopped dead in his tracks along with his men when he saw that the place was deserted.