In the documentary Helvetica, incensed graphic designer Michael Bierut hilariously critiques ads from old copies of Life Magazine. He attacks the verbosity and shrill insistence of early 1950s Coke ads prior to the introduction of Helvetica then flips admiringly to a minimalist ad set in the new font. Here again is a reminder of how design and material delivery can influence the content of a message. Just as I’m not likely to meet many wedding invitations written in a ransom-note font, I can’t imagine reading a romantic novel on an e-book.

Given both historical precedent and the exponential rate of media evolution, eventually I will do much of my reading on some kind of e-reader. Novels didn’t exist without industrialization (i.e., the printing press). With the hindsight of history, it’s easy for us to dismiss as naive the seventeenth-century book collectors who vowed never to own that cheap, ghastly and faddish new thing—the printed book. Today, newspapers already feel so last century, with their slaughter of trees for a day’s worth of programming which is pushed at crowds indiscriminately, not pulled selectively by readers. But then here I am, preferring my tales of head and heart on paper, not any kind of screen. If I can see the relationship between literacy and democracy with the technological shift from handwritten to printed books, what holds me back from doing the same with digitization, that next step in media evolution?

The answer lies in the nature of the novel itself.

Medieval literature was laboriously copied by hand. With this material preference for brevity, the author of medieval literature worked long before the writing advice “Show; don’t tell.” Medieval quests were written with bald declarations like, “He was very afraid.” Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human goes so far as to say that a few centuries after the medieval romance, Shakespeare essentially invented the three-dimensional character. With their self-investigative soliloquies and their observation by an audience, if not other characters, Shakespeare’s characters are formed within their stories, not before them. (I know, I know: here come the parchment-and-quill hate mail from the medievalists). But these were plays: as with today’s noisy, ad-saturated cinema, you had to see them in a crowd, and on their schedule, not yours.

The novel—which you can read on your own schedule—is the child of poetry and drama, and like most children it displays inherited traits from both parents. Like the hand-copied medieval manuscript, the novel is read in private, not viewed in public like a play. But the novel also carries the play’s gene for evolving action and characters-in-flux. In The Art of the Novel, Milan Kundera admits, “As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: What is the self? How can the self be grasped?

It’s one of those fundamental questions on which the novel, as novel, is based.” In love stories like Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s Version or Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood or Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, characters find out who they are— and are simultaneously revealed to the reader—as they find out who they love. If that’s the content I’m looking for, I want the nakedness, tactility and privacy of a paper book, not the proprietariness and gadgetry of an e-reader.

There’s a tactile nakedness and independence to the book well-suited to the expansions and confessions I want from literature. I still have the copy of Louis de Bernières’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin that I read a decade ago on the Greek island of Cephallonia, where the novel is set. I’d rather pass a romantic partner that copy, not an e-file.

After all, for the past 400 years, literature has combined abstract words with the subtle physicality of paper books. That subtlety presents a challenge. In From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction, American fiction writer and creative writing professor Robert Olen Butler notes that literature is unique amongst the arts for not being inherently sensuous. Abstract and symbolic writing does not have the emphatic physicality of theatre, visual art or music. Books have to make the most of what they’ve got: If a romantic novel and I are going to undress each other, I want to feel each page unfurl. And I want to be able to read it in the bath.

I haven’t been to a party before where they served pie, have you? But I guess that’s a silly question because of course you’d know the hosts, so you’ve probably— Anyway, it’s very good pie. It takes creative people to come up with a snack idea like that.

I said to Appollonia—that’s who I came with—“Would you have thought of giving out pie?” And she said, “Nope.” But of course Appollonia is not creative like you and me. Which she wouldn’t mind me saying, by the way. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Now me, I’ve got my chapbook. But put an equation in front of me and do you think I’d know how to solve it? Give me a break! I am a words person whereas Appollonia is a numbers person, which is a skill so many of us writers and publishers haven’t mastered. On the other hand, Appollonia is not a big reader. She has a subscription to Chatelaine, if that tells you anything. She also watches a lot of television. Let’s just say she has her shows.

By saying that, I am not saying Appollonia is a bad person. Far from it. She is kind, and holds a special place in her heart for society’s cast-offs. There are just some things she doesn’t understand—will never understand—because she is Appollonia, and she is a different person from you and me. A good person, certainly. But a different person. Let’s just say she is mainstream, and leave it at that. I mean, she’s one of my good friends, and I know her and she would not think the label “mainstream” was a negative thing.

Do you remember earlier, when “Panama” came on? She said to me, “Who sings this, again?” And I said, “It doesn’t matter, Appollonia—they’re playing it ironically.” But she started bopping her head to it anyway. That’s just the way she is. And she says the funniest things! What was it she said the other day—she’s no poet but she just comes out with the greatest turns of phrase. Oh, I remember. She was talking about her work—she works in an office, as in permanently—and she was explaining how she’d stood up to her boss about switching the complimentary coffee milk from two percent to one percent. Now, I’m sorry, but if you’re putting it in your coffee, you cannot tell the difference between one percent and two percent, it’s impossible. If you’re drinking the milk on its own, then maybe. But otherwise not in a million years. And these people were up in arms about it! So they had a meeting and Appollonia called for a vote for two percent, which she knew was the consensus, but none of her co-workers backed her up so it was just her against the boss. And do you know what she said to me at the end of her anecdote? She said, “They hung me out to frigging hang myself.” Isn’t that wonderful?

I asked her once for permission to write a poem about her work life. Because it is so unpoetic, there’s actually an irony at work there—ha!—that’s worth writing about. And Appollonia said to me, “Sure, what the hell. Immortalize me.” Isn’t that perfect? The things she comes out with.

Between you and me? Appollonia has lived a terrible life.

Her parents were gypsies, which is bad enough, but while at least most gypsies are known for their flair for performance, Appollonia’s gypsy parents were bookkeepers. And I’m not talking librarians, which would’ve been something, right? So, you know, they moved around a lot. Up until she started kindergarten, Appollonia was uprooted I can’t even tell you how many times. Over and over again, suffice it to say.

But she is not a complainer. Never has been. I met her in Grade 1, we were in the same class, and the other kids would throw blocks at her and she wouldn’t say boo. That’s what first intrigued me about her, actually. She also has that voice—you must know her voice, where it always sounds like she’s about to burst into tears, like “Huhhh, huhhh, huhhhn,” all the time, but she’s not, it’s just the way she sounds.

So we became friends. I’d make up the games and she’d just go along with whatever. And I would tell her stories on our walks home from school—I was a storyteller even then. Appollonia of course enjoyed being entertained. Our friendship grew and grew. Then we lost touch for about 20 years. She went her way and I went mine, and isn’t that the way it goes, though, so often. With friends.

I bet you can guess how we found each other again! The thing of it is, I only really got on there in the first place to promote my chapbook. You must do that with your press too, I’m sure. Anyway, do you know what Appollonia said, when she got in touch with me? She said, “This Internet thing is the wave of the future!” I know. Adorable.

The funny thing was, I didn’t remember her at first. Her name rang a bell, but it was such a long time ago. So I looked through her friends list to see if I recognized anyone, and of course I saw you, and so many of the other guests here, and I thought, What a small, small world we live in.

Soon after that we met up for lunch and got reacquainted. I took her to that place, what’s that place called. You know, the restaurant that’s loud, with the salad they make from things that fall out of trees? Anyway, that’s where we went. And it all came rushing back to us. Grade school. Playing. Our story-time walks. And I told Appollonia about my chapbook and she said—if you can believe it—“What’s a chapbook?” Oh dear. So I explained it to her, and she was thrilled for me and asked me could she buy it in the bookstores, and I said no, she could only buy it directly from me. Poor thing, she has no idea how it all works.

She doesn’t know anything about the “scene,” either, but I guess why would she? Just because she knows all these people through— How does she know all these people? She’s really kept that to herself. Although she’s never even heard of sp@cebar, which is amazing to me. To be that out of touch with what’s going on in the world. You put out his last flipbook, didn’t you? She said to me, “Well, what does he do?” And I said, “He engages with the absence of sound. He communicates his poetry through gestures and facial expressions.” And she said—now, you’ll get a real kick out of this—“Isn’t that what a mime clown does?” I said to her, “Appollonia, sp@cebar is not a mime clown. He is a soundless poet.” She really doesn’t have a clue. I mean, I’ve never seen one of his performances, but at least I know. You know?

Appollonia is an accountant now, and she’s married to a man named Bob who’s in one of the trades, I can’t remember which, and they’ve talked about children and they just bought a condo, but not a loft condo, it’s one of those postage-stamp cookie-cutter high-rise ones, which she is going to have a very hard time selling, but still, it’s property and you’ve got to believe that owning any property in the city is an achievement these days. I said that to her too, and she said, “Do you really think it’ll be hard to sell?” I said, “Appollonia, none of us has a crystal ball.” Well, maybe some of us do. Appollonia’s parents might! But anyway, I said she should be proud of her accomplishments.

And she’s going to be a mother someday! Which is the last thing I’d want to be, but who am I to judge? The second-last thing I’d want to be is a homeowner. The Appollonias of the world are welcome to it. I explained to her that renting is the way to go if you’re an artist, and I told her, “Appollonia, you are so lucky you’re not a creative person. You are so free!” And do you know what she said to me? She said, “Well yeah, it’s true, I guess I am pretty lucky that way. None of those pesky thought bubbles overhead to weigh down my empty noggin!” I’m telling you, she says things like that all the time! It’s hilarious. But of course also very sad.

The thing about me is, I think about other people. Other people are always at the forefront of my mind. And I worry about Appollonia, I really do. She’s a bit of a loner, so she’s not the best with crowds, which is why I said I’d come with her tonight and keep her company. Okay, I’ll come clean and admit that there are people at this party who I would like to meet, of course there’s that. But really I am here for Appollonia.

I wasn’t even going to come over here but Appollonia said I should. One of her favourite sayings is, “Why not go out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit is.” Priceless, I know. That’s what she said to me earlier, when I happened to mention that it might be nice to talk to you about my chapbook and about poetry in general. So here I am.

There are people who might say to me, “What are you doing with a person like Appollonia?” And I would say to those people, “Hold on, back up, please. Appollonia is my friend. Don’t tell me what she’s like—I know what she’s like. But she is my friend who I care for very deeply.” That’s what I would say.

You know, I’m so glad I met you, you’re so easy to talk with. And you’re enjoying the pie too, I see! Oh, I’m sorry. Strudel. And here I thought it was pie all this time. Now isn’t that funny, because I’m normally very observant. I can even show you right here in my chapbook, it has all these observations I make every day, transformed into verse. I’ve got this acrostic series on yearning, let me just find that page… You do? No, no, of course, I know how it goes. You’ve got people you need to—sure. It’s a party! I really should be getting back to Appollonia, anyway, she’s starting to look pretty lonely over there. You mean that’s where you were— Well, perfect, the three of us, then! Oh. Really? No, sure, I understand completely, I don’t mind at all. I was just on my way to the bathroom, anyway. Where is the bathroom, do you know? Of course you’d know. Could you please just point me in the right direction before you— You don’t know? Well, that’s fine. I’ll find my way there eventually.

“Invasion” introduces readers to Columbus’ “discovering” and Christianizing the Americas, his seeing the generosity of the indigenous population as a weakness. “Assimilation” delves into the effort to create worker-consumers out of First Nations populations, the introduction of European-style housing, the Indian Act and residential schools, and ultimately the creation of a dependency in the aborignal community on state funding.

But the heart and soul of the book is its last and longest chapter, “Resistance,” in which Hill moves away from talking about the “they” and focuses on the “we” of his own First Nations identity. He chronicles the Inca Insurgency, Chile’s Manchupe, the Oka Crisis and the Zapatistas, moving right through to the struggle at Ontario’s Six Nations in recent years. It is here that Hill’s own involvement in indigenous movements becomes strong research material, translating into plain ingestible anecdotes of often ill-told or ignored histories.

The book’s plain-spokenness seems at first too stark, but its simplicity keeps it accessible and engaging. Ultimately, 500 Years of Resistance succeeds as a bold primer on colonialism and its haunting legacy today.

One of Pivot Legal Society's Red Tents on the streets of Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Photo by The Blackbird.

The five-ring circus has rolled out of Vancouver, but the tents are still up. Hundreds of red tents, which became as much a symbol of our 2010 Games as those maple leaf mittens, won’t be coming down until we get our housing legacy. That’s the pledge of Pivot Legal Society, the non-profit legal advocacy organization that launched the campaign as some 350,000 visitors descended on Vancouver in February to soak up the so-called first socially sustainable Olympics.

The Red Tent campaign was pitched in response to the predicted shortage of shelter beds in the city during the Games and the failure of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and its government partners to deliver on promises related to housing and civil liberties. The distinctive tents bear the statement, “Housing is a Right. This tent is protected by Section 7 of the Charter”—the right to life, liberty and security of person. They will be popping up in urban centres across the country as Pivot expands its action, which was inspired by a landmark constitutional case: last December, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the right of homeless people to set up temporary shelters on public property when they have nowhere else to go. The campaign will continue until, Pivot says, the ultimate Olympic legacy is realized: A funded national housing strategy. Canada is the only G8 country without one. In April 2009, NDP MP Libby Davies (Vancouver East) stepped up to the podium with a private member’s bill to push for adequate, accessible and affordable housing for all Canadians, but the Conservatives didn’t support the initiative. There were Olympic dreams that Vancouver would set a golden example of how to tackle homelessness, but when the road to the Games got bumpy, promises were torched. Let’s look at what happened.

During the bid stage in 2002, a coalition of environmental and social activists and academics formed the Games-neutral Impact on Community Coalition with “the purpose of maximizing the opportunities presented by the Games and mitigating the potentially negative impacts on Vancouver’s inner-city neighbourhoods.” The IOCC successfully pushed for a referendum on the Games, and together with the bid committee and its government partners, developed the Inner-City Inclusive Commitment Statement (PDF), a set of promises that was incorporated into Vancouver’s bid book and was considered binding.

The statement addresses 14 areas—including civil liberties and public safety, housing, and input into decision-making—and makes 37 specific promises. It’s been touted as an unprecedented pledge by a mega-event host city to work with low-income communities and promote social sustainability, but it materialized into little more than public relations puffery.

While the city boasted about hiring binners to collect bottles and cans left around town (meeting a commitment under employment and training) and VANOC proudly made 100,000 event tickets available for $25 each (ticking off the box next to affordable Games events), housing and civil liberties promises were glossed over.

After a quarter of Vancouverites cited homelessness as their greatest concern in a 2006 poll, ignoring the housing crisis was a Quatchi-sized gaffe. Worst of all, it broke the promise that no one would be made homeless as a result of the Olympics.

According to the Metro Vancouver Homeless Count, the number of homeless people in Vancouver increased by 135 percent from 670 in 2002 to 1,576 in 2008. The tally is believed to greatly underestimate the reality, given the difficultly in tracking down and interviewing the homeless, and housing advocates estimated there were between 4,000 and 6,000 homeless during the Olympics. (There were an estimated 5,500 athletes and officials.)

There was a promise that no one would be involuntarily displaced, evicted or face unreasonable increases in rent due to the Games. But according to the IOCC, approximately 1,300 low-income single room occupancies (SROs)—many contained in old hotels on East Hastings and considered the last option before homelessness—have been lost since the bid was won and the city is not following its own policy to replace rooms at a one-to-one rate. The city defends its record, making another promise that from 2003 to the end of 2012 it will have nearly 2,000 additional non-market units built, compared to a loss of over 1,400 units. However, these numbers don’t take into consideration rent increases that have made SROs unaffordable for low-income residents, nor does it account for rooms held vacant by landlords. Further, the city counts provincially owned rooms as new social housing, when they are newly social, but not new accommodations.

Before the Games, condos were outpacing social housing in the Downtown Eastside at a rate of three to one, and SRO residents were being booted out of their homes as landlords renovated so they could raise rents and make room for Olympic visitors. The IOCC went so far as to file a human rights complaint with the United Nations in July 2009 (PDF), saying hundreds of renters could be evicted prior to the Olympics because of loopholes in tenancy legislations, which allows for these “renovictions.”

An early version of the Inner-City Inclusive Commitment to provide affordable housing proposed by the city of Vancouver included a three-tier housing model at the Olympic Village: market price, moderate income and core-need. However, when a new city council was elected in 2005, one of its first moves was to play Monopoly with the model and commit only 25 percent of the units to “affordable housing,” and of those 252 units, between 30 and 50 percent for core-need individuals. In February 2009, the city reported that the cost of affordable housing at the village had risen from $65 million in 2006 to $110 million. And as of print time, housing advocates feared the plan would be axed completely (the city said a final decision was yet to be made).

Since they failed on the housing front, in a desperate attempt to clean up the streets before the Games, the B.C. Liberals pushed through the controversial Assistance to Shelter Act in November. Dubbed the “Olympic Kidnapping Act,” the law gives police the power to haul homeless people off the streets, pile them into paddy wagons and deposit them at shelters when there’s an extreme weather alert, which can occur in Vancouver when the temperature hovers around zero and there’s heavy rainfall (read: winter in the city). After activists rallied against the act—housing experts came forward to denounce it and Pivot said it was prepared to challenge its constitutionality in court—the chief of the Vancouver police said his officers will only use “minimal, non-forceful touching” to persuade people to accept a lift to a shelter, and will back off if they are met with resistance.

Another Inner-City Inclusive commitment was to commit to a “timely public consultation that is accessible to inner-city neighbourhoods before any security legislation or regulations are finalized,” but the community only became aware of the draconian act when a document leaked, and hasn’t been involved in any meaningful consultations.

In a last desperate attempt to quell negative media attention, BC Housing and the city teamed up to intercept international journalists at the edge of the Downtown Eastside, before they could get to the gritty stretch. They set up an information centre, Downtown Eastside Connect, at the shiny new Woodward’s site, where they shared their “successes” in tackling homelessness, including the building of social housing on 14 city-owned sites. There’s no mention of the fact that construction of these sites was delayed and not one was ready in time for the Games. The cost of the propaganda kiosk: $150,000.

Inevitably, foreign journalists found their way to the Downtown Eastside and wondered how the world’s first “socially sustainable” Games could look like this: Human wreckage, open drug use, prostitution, crumbling buildings. And a legacy of red tents instead of homes.

How could all of these promises be broken? There was no budget to implement the recommendations, including no funding for an independent watchdog; there was no enforcement mechanism and a lack of accountability; many of the goals were not measurable and the statements were wishywashy and open for interpretation. But perhaps that was the point: Get Vancouverites behind the bid with promises of social sustainability, and then hope we forget about it when the circus comes to town.

Globe and Mail Afghanistan correspondent Graeme Smith. Illustration by Peter Mitchell.

Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang was the first Canadian journalist to die covering the conflict in Afghanistan. She was killed on December 30, 2009. Her death brought to mind the dangers faced there not just by the military but by the media as well. From September 2005 to February 2009, Globe and Mail reporter Graeme Smith, now 30, did 16 tours in Afghanistan, each one lasting seven weeks on average. We spoke to him in Toronto where he’s working on a book about his experiences in the troubled country.

This: You were there a lot.

Graeme Smith: The line I use in my bios is that I spent more time in southern Afghanistan than any other Western journalist during those years. I volunteered [to do the numerous tours] not realizing that nobody in their right mind does that.

This: Why?

Smith: It’s pretty intense. I came out of those stints exhausted and dusty and tired and sometimes sort of shaken. After almost a year back in Canada I feel almost human again.

This: What was it like when you first arrived?

Smith: It was fairly benign in September 2005. I drove down the highway from Kabul to Kandahar in a civilian vehicle. I didn’t even bother to put on my disguise—Afghan clothing. The only security advice my local staff gave me was “please avoid wandering the streets at night.”

This: But that changed.

Smith: The following year it became too dangerous to drive in a car. The Taliban and the bandits had started setting up checkpoints on the highway. When I travelled by bus I dressed up like a tribesman with a big long beard and an Afghan outfit and I didn’t speak at all because we didn’t want the other passengers to know that I was a foreigner in case the bus was stopped and searched. Probably most importantly, I changed the way that I walked. Afghans told me I walked like a foreigner with my arms swinging and a purposeful stride. Kandaharis saunter, often with their hands behind their back in a thoughtful, professorial pose.

This: What was a low point for you?

Smith: I had a very hard spring in 2007. Three masked gunmen kicked in the door of the Globe and Mail’s little office in Kandahar City and searched the place and beat up the cook, who was the only guy there. That was the spring when I did the interviews with the Afghan detainees [who had been transferred by Canada to jails where they were tortured] and also when I was with some British troops and we got into a very nasty ambush, to a point where the troops wanted to give me a gun. It was a frightening time. I decided then I couldn’t spend my career in Afghanistan. I couldn’t invest that much emotionally in a place that was so unpleasant.

This: But you kept going back.

Smith: Yeah. It was like a book you couldn’t put down. You always wanted to turn the page and see what happened next.

This: What was the fascination?

Smith: It felt like a place that was drastically underserved by the world’s media. Reporters Without Borders has called southern Afghanistan a “black hole.” A lot was happening and very little was getting reported. I still feel my reporting just scratched the surface of what was going on.

This: How dangerous did it become for you?

Smith: I made it dangerous for myself in the end. My last story was about General Mohammed Daud Daud, the deputy minister of the interior with special responsibility for counter narcotics. I accused [him] of being a drug dealer. I then fled the country. By the time he read the article and went to find me and my translators, I was safely on a beach in the Caribbean.

This: Any memories that haunt you?

Smith: A lot of things. A couple of times, I got bits of charred human flesh stuck in the treads of my shoes as I was covering suicide bombings. That always bothered me. More broadly, I’m haunted by the failure of the world’s most powerful armies, and the wealthiest countries in the history of human civilization, as they attempted to improve conditions in a backwater state in the mountains of South Asia.

On Monday, November 3, 2008, while on patrol in Afghanistan, near the village of Wech Baghtu in the district of Shah Wali Kot in Kandahar province, international and Afghan pro-government troops came under fire from insurgents. The ground troops called in “close air support,” military aircraft that bombard enemy positions—in this particular case, as in most in Afghanistan, U.S. Air Force and Navy jets armed with GPS and laser-guided munitions.

The following day, the U.S. Air Force Print News reported that they dropped several 300-kilogram bombs “onto a building where anti-Afghan forces were hunkered down and firing at coalition forces near Kandahar. The mission was confirmed a success.”

Approximately 24 hours after the bombing, while most of the world was focussed on election day in the U.S., bombing victims began arriving at the radically under-resourced Mirwais hospital roughly 100 kilometres away in Kandahar City. That was when the story was picked up by Jessica Leeder and Alex Strick van Linschoten for the Globe and Mail. Villagers claimed the assault hit a wedding party—which according to local tradition separates women and men for most of the day. Later the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that although pro-government sources “claimed that insurgents used villagers’ houses to attack the patrol and had infiltrated the wedding-party compound that was bombed…. eyewitnesses and victims interviewed by UNAMA … strongly denied the presence of any insurgents at the wedding party.”

After the attacks, victims reported, international troops took pictures of the carnage, which intimidated and delayed them. Days later, reporting from the hospital for Al Jazeera English, David Chater interviewed Khowrea Horay, a hospitalized 16-year-old, who said: “We ran into the garden when the bombing started, but they bombed us there as well. I suddenly realized my foot was in small pieces. I saw my cousin lying dead next to me, the bodies of my relatives all around me. The Americans … saw us. They realized we were women.

They even shone lights on us, but they kept bombing and their soldiers were firing on us.”

Disturbingly, Shah Wali Kot was the second wedding bombing of 2008. Early on July 6, a wedding in Nangarhar province was beginning according to custom with the entire family of the groom escorting the bride from her home to meet the groom at his. While crossing a mountain pass, at least three bombs were dropped on the procession. Despite initial claims to the contrary by U.S. forces, no insurgents and approximately 35 children, nine women, and three men—all civilians—were killed in the attack. On August 22 a bombing strike hit a memorial service in the province of Herat. U.S. forces initially claimed that between five and seven civilians died in that incident, but later video footage seemed to verify local claims that some 90 villagers were killed. Six weeks after the memorial bombing, the U.S. concluded that 33 civilians had died; UNAMA put the toll at 92 civilians, including 62 children.

Soon after Herat, the then commander of international forces in Afghanistan, U.S. General David McKiernan, issued a “tactical directive” to his troops, which amounted to repeating existing orders—notably the requirement to avoid killing civilians whenever possible. Two months later the Kandahar wedding was bombed.

Maimed and left in the blast rubble to mourn at least 37 killed (locals put the death toll at 90), most of them women and children, we may guess what the people of Shah Wali Kot feel about our war in their country, but it is clear that alleging insurgent responsibility, delaying acknowledgment, and understating the number of people killed by airstrikes are tactics aimed at winning our hearts and minds, not theirs.

Such death from above, as alarming as it is, involves all pro-government forces, including Canadian forces. The tactic shows every sign of being a fixture of NATO’s Afghanistan strategy for years to come, and whatever role they play there after 2011—the withdrawal date our government has pledged to keep— Canadian forces will continue to be involved in it.

Virtually nobody believes that the surge in U.S. troops in Afghanistan begun by President George W. Bush, and twice super-sized by President Barack Obama, will lead to a military victory. The insurgents will continue to use “asymmetrical tactics,” or what we used to call guerrilla warfare back when the West was encouraging insurgents to use them—successfully—against Soviet troops in the 1980s.

Because NATO troops must be spread thinly, they often face ambush, and so depend on air superiority— thus far unchallenged—for combat support. Even doubling the number of troops on the ground would do little more than double the number of targets for insurgents. Virtually everyone was in agreement with the commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, Dutch General Mart de Kruif, early in spring 2009, when he warned that “a significant spike” in violence would follow the first part of the surge. However, the General’s prediction that it would be “planting the seeds” for “a significant increase in the security situation across southern Afghanistan next year” is not panning out. On average, NATO airstrikes killed a civilian every day during 2009, admittedly an improvement over 2008 when the average was more than 10 per week, but civilian deaths rose 14 percent overall in 2009, and pro-government forces were responsible for a full quarter of them. During the Iraq surge and counterinsurgency reorientation in 2007—the model currently being implemented in Afghanistan—both civilian deaths caused by pro-government forces overall and those caused specifically by airstrikes spiked radically, so it is unlikely that civilian deaths will decrease in Afghanistan anytime soon.

The problem is that while commanders know airstrikes kill Afghan civilians, the mission is impossible without close air support. A declassified Pentagon report on a May 4, 2009, bombing in Farah province that killed 86 civilians (according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission) determined the strikes happened despite the fact commanders could not “confirm the presence or absence of civilians” in the targeted village buildings, and this “inability” was “inconsistent with the U.S. Government’s objective of providing security and safety for the Afghan people.”

The implication is that in cases of such an inability, bombs ought not to be dropped. In fact, on July 2, 2009, the new commander of international forces in Afghanistan, U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, issued yet another tactical directive to international troops in Afghanistan, calling for a “cultural shift”: “Commanders must weigh the gain of using … [close air support] against the cost of civilian casualties…. The use of air-to-ground munitions … against residential compounds is only authorized under very limited and prescribed conditions.” This is but one element in the massive reorientation McChrystal is calling for. Charged with turning the mission around, he is attempting to change it from an anti-insurgency to a counterinsurgency operation, which requires winning the support of the population as much as killing Taliban. The stakes are high. In his August 2009 report, written eight years into the war, McChrystal wrote: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the … next 12 months … risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” However, in the case of the Farah bombing (again, according to the declassified report), the ground force commander concluded that a particular group of individuals “presented an imminent threat to his force.” It is inconceivable in such a case, where an “imminent threat” to pro-government troops is perceived, that the possibility of harming civilians would override the decision to call in an airstrike. Whenever troops are in perceived danger, close air support will continue to be used whether or not the presence of civilians can be confirmed, resulting inevitably in civilian deaths.

On December 5, 2001, while President Bush was signing into effect a law to make every December 7 a day to honour the fallen of Pearl Harbor, Hamid Karzai, now Afghanistan’s president, “and a few dozen Afghan fighters, along with U.S. Special Forces advisers, were in a village called Shah Wali Kot”—the capital of the district by the same name. According to a sympathetic book on Karzai, written by Nick B. Mills, who was granted extensive interviews with the new Afghan President during the fall of 2005, Karzai was almost killed by a 900-kilogram satellite-guided bomb that morning, dropped by U.S. forces. Among the many casualties, five of Karzai’s most experienced men and three U.S. servicemen were killed—the first U.S. soldiers to be killed in combat during the war. Initial coverage of this friendly-fire incident that almost killed Karzai himself was severely censored to manage perceptions at home. While Karzai, sitting blood-spattered amongst the rubble, received phone calls confirming the Taliban’s surrender and naming him Afghanistan’s interim president, the Pentagon and U.S. military officials near Kandahar prevented journalists from reporting the incident. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists: “Journalists from 11 U.S. news organizations,” including CBS News, CNN, Newsweek, and The New York Times, “were confined to a warehouse while injured soldiers were transferred to the base for treatment. That night, the journalists were pulled out of Afghanistan altogether.” From the beginning, close air support, its seemingly unavoidable and murderous consequences, and the urge to manage its public perception, have been essential features of this war.

Shah Wali Kot itself, with a population estimated at less than 40,000, is one of the districts with which the Canadian mission has struggled. The district, under Canadian jurisdiction for more than four years, is a microcosm of Afghanistan as a whole, with which the entire international mission has struggled for more than eight years. In late 2006, when the focus on Iraq still eclipsed Afghanistan, Sam Kiley, a correspondent for PBS’s Frontline World, travelled to NATO’s forward operating base (FOB) Martello, a formidable outpost built by Canadians earlier that year, to make a documentary called Afghanistan: The Other War. FOB Martello is located near the main road that connects Kandahar City to Tarin Kot in the province of Uruzgan to the north. Travelling from Kandahar City to FOB Martello—a distance of not much more than 200 kilometres—the road runs near the district capital of Shah Wali Kot, past the Arghandab River reservoir behind the Dahla Dam (the restoration of which is one of Canada’s major development projects in the area), by the village of Wech Baghtu, to the tiny village of El Bak (where FOB Martello is located), and then out of both Shah Wali Kot district and Kandahar province toward Tarin Kot in Uruzgan. Kiley’s reporting provides a rare candid look at the 120 Canadian troops stationed at FOB Martello. Their attempts to fight the insurgency, and especially to win the hearts and minds of the 30 families of El Bak, continually come up short, and usually because of very minor obstacles—for example, the inability to come up with what would be a few tens of dollars worth of sparkplugs in Canada. Along with soldiers’ blogs, Kevin Patterson and Jane Warren’s Outside the Wire, a collection of first-hand accounts by Canadians on the ground in Afghanistan, illustrates the same frustrating difficulty over and over again: asymmetrical war in an impoverished region makes mountains of molehills.

On April 22, 2006, four Canadian soldiers were killed near the Gumbad Platoon House, a Canadian outpost on another road running north from Kandahar City through Shah Wali Kot. That day General Rick Hillier talked with reporters about Canadian efforts to establish footholds in the area: “Shah Wali Kot is the area for a significant period of time, without question. The locals are absolutely ecstatic … that we are there,” he said. “Things are actually changing on the ground.”

Changeability became the dominant characteristic of the Canadian presence there: Within months, the new Gumbad outpost had been abandoned because Canadian troops were needed nearer to Kandahar City. While Kiley was still filming at FOB Martello, the troops were ordered to pull out there, too, in order to move closer to Kandahar City, abandoning the people of El Bak to the insurgents who very likely would punish them for working with the Canadians in the first place. Almost as quickly as they began, Canadian efforts to secure Shah Wali Kot, as well as other regions of Kandahar province, were largely abandoned in order to deal with formidable insurgent offensives closer to Kandahar City. According to the Globe and Mail’s Graeme Smith, a detailed U.S. security assessment made available to the newspaper in July 2008 concluded that Shah Wali Kot had fallen back under Taliban control.

In early 2008, Canadian forces began moving up the road in the direction of El Bak again to put together the hundreds of massive squat cement slabs called Texas Barriers for a new FOB about 70 kilometres north of Kandahar City. FOB Frontenac, nicknamed “FOB Fabulous,” apparently for its scenery and food, is located near the Dahla dam in order to provide security for the $50-million Canadian signature development project: repairing the massive, decaying dam facility. Recommended by the January 2008 report of the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan, chaired by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley, “signature” projects are supposed to be genuine development projects that double as great symbols that ramp up the message that Canada really is in Afghanistan to help—the hope being this will win hearts and minds in a war zone. The three-year Dahla project was announced in June 2008 just as FOB Frontenac was completed. The main prize at Dahla is not electricity, but rather an extensive irrigation system with the potential to quench fertile but thirsty land in the Shah Wali Kot, Daman, Arghandab, and Panjwaii districts, as well as Kandahar City itself, serving 80 percent of the population of Kandahar province. Ongoing silting in the reservoir has reduced its capacity by perhaps 30 percent, the valves and gates that manage water-flow are no longer working, much of the canal system downstream requires restoration work, and there have been years of drought. The quantity of water in the reservoir and the control and delivery of its outflow have been so reduced the reservoir now irrigates well under half the territory it could reach. The goal seems to be to have the system back up and running by the 2011 end-date for the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan.

Another dam being restored by NATO about 100 kilometres west of Dahla is the Kajaki dam on the Helmand river—a project which has faced serious insurgency attacks. Back in June 2008, when the Dahla project was announced, reported predictions were mixed about whether or not it would attract insurgent activity. During the first few months of 2009, before the prime minister’s surprise visit, five Canadians were killed and 14 injured in the area, presumably working on or near the dam or travelling to and from the FOB: on January 7, Trooper Brian Richard Good was killed (with three other soldiers wounded); on March 8, Trooper Marc Diab was killed (four wounded); on March 20, Troopers Corey Joseph Hayes and Jack Bouthillier were killed (three wounded); and on April 13, Trooper Karine Blais was killed (four wounded).

In each of these cases, as well as the incident that killed the four soldiers near Gumbad in 2006, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) did the killing. Because IEDs may be both concealed in the road when no troops are around, and remotely detonated, insurgents can use them to inflict significant losses without risking direct combat with technologically superior pro-government forces. To grasp the essential role of IEDs in Afghanistan it helps to look at the asymmetrical situation abstractly: (a) the insurgency meets superior progovernment forces on the ground, and is outmatched; (b) the insurgency adapts by avoiding direct combat and by adopting hit-and-run, ambush tactics; (c) pro-government forces respond with close air support, making guerrilla tactics much more dangerous, and so less effective; (d) the insurgency adapts by devoting resources to IED attacks. In the U.S. Marine Corps’ September 2005 manual Improvised Explosive Device Defeat, it is acknowledged that IEDs are a weapon of choice for insurgents in asymmetrical warfare. The intervention of “technologically superior forces” in a region is likely to be met with “adaptive approaches,” such as IED use, which “in selected niche areas” may “achieve equality or even overmatch” superior forces. Manufacturing, planting, targeting and detonating scores of IEDs, and evading technologically advanced counter-IED measures, is no easy matter, but increasingly it is the tactic of choice for insurgents in Afghanistan for whom combat against technologically superior forces and the death they hurl down from above is uselessly suicidal. Death from below the road surface, according to Canada’s counter-IED task force established in June 2007, is now “the single largest threat to [Canadian Forces] personnel in Afghanistan.”

Canadian troops have almost every technological advantage over Afghan insurgents, from portable high-trajectory smart-artillery cannons that can hit precise targets 40 kilometres away to the ability to call in U.S. airstrikes. U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has told journalists that “between 40 and 45 percent of the close-air-support missions … are flown in support of our allies and partners,” so while it is a U.S. plane dropping the bomb, it is often Canadian troops selecting the targets. Virtually all pro-government forces in the country have been using, and will continue to use, the close air support largely provided by the U.S. military; without it, they would be sitting ducks. Despite the fact that Canadian Defence Ministry officials call IED attacks “cowardly,” the insurgent response to advanced weapons systems and close air support will not be to “stand and fight”— which would be absurd. The response will be, and is, the IED.

One of the reasons that motivated Pentagon insider Daniel Ellsberg to leak in 1971 the massive secret documentary record of U.S. policies in Vietnam, was that although the senior administration knew an indefinite commitment of U.S. air support was required in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon talked publicly about winning and ending the conflict. These days, Ellsberg points out, the official spin on the war in “Vietnamistan” is similarly troubling.

The pattern of hit-and-run guerrilla attacks met by overwhelming aerial bombardment, leading to improvised roadside bombs, is bound to repeat indefinitely. While Canada’s Afghan mission is currently slated to end in 2011, virtually every analyst expects some kind of Canadian military presence long after. One possible scenario is that Canada reduces its ground troop commitment and takes to the skies, turning from a force that calls in airstrikes to one that flies them—as it did in the 1999 NATO bombing campaign in the former Yugoslavia. For example, in a March 26, 2009, National Post story, Matthew Fisher and Mike Blanchfield wrote: “Canada’s combat forces are slated to leave Afghanistan sometime in 2011. It is widely expected that they will be replaced by a smaller force that may include helicopters, police and army trainers, a provincial reconstruction team and, Canada’s fighter pilot community hopes, CF18 Hornet attack aircraft.” Indeed, according to the director of the international air campaign in Afghanistan, who happens to be the Canadian Gen. Duff Sullivan, who has a long and distinguished career as a fighter pilot and commander (including the Yugoslavia campaign), and who was called the “air czar” by the former commander of international forces in Afghanistan, there are requests from mission headquarters in Afghanistan to bring in Canada’s Hornets before 2011. There is also lobbying at home to “send in the Hornets,” as former chief of defense staff and retired general Paul Mason urged in an Ottawa Citizen op-ed in January.

This year, the Canadian Air Force is due to complete a C$2.1 billion, two-stage, mega-upgrade program for the fleet of Hornets, and a short Department of National Defence video on the Canadian Army website, entitled “Close Air Support: A service to ground troops,” has Maj. Scott Greenough explain: “Certainly … the Canadian fighter force … has turned its training emphasis onto close air support in the event that we would deploy to Kandahar, let’s say, in Afghanistan to support the troops on the ground with close air support … It’s become a huge part of the fighter force training element … Close air support is basically our training emphasis right now.” Is Canada preparing to replace its ground troop contingent in Afghanistan with CF-18 Hornets? It is still too soon to tell, but preparations have been made. Whether or not Canada plays a role in Afghanistan after 2011, security will remain a mission priority. Because security in Afghanistan will depend on close air support for the foreseeable future, Canada would therefore continue to be involved in the murder of Afghan civilians after 2011.

In a famous interview from January 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said “we knowingly increased the probability” that the U.S.S.R. would invade Afghanistan, which “had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap.

“The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the U.S.S.R. its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”

For the foreseeable future, Canada is going to be in Afghanistan trying to evade IEDs and either calling in close air support missions or flying them. Whether the threat is airstrikes from above, or improvised explosive devices from below, the “Afghan trap” has lured in a new set of victims.

So this past June, Finkel teamed up with some change-hungry Albertans and created the Democratic Renewal Project. Its goal is “to provide Albertans with a united progressive alternative government to the Conservative dynasty.” Here’s its plan:

1. Form a united alternative: Says Finkel, “We need to create the sense that there is a real contest in Alberta, and that can only happen if the centre-left parties, whose current policies are virtually indistinguishable even if their political cultures are different, form a united alternative.” But this doesn’t mean a new party. Instead, the DRP wants the existing Alberta Liberal Party and NDP to cooperate to get fed-up Albertans to the polls by promoting such common topics as greater social justice, diversifying the economy, and environmental sustainability, under a “United Alternative” banner.

2. Get proportional representation: The DRP believes that ditching the province’s current past-the-post electoral system is vital to ditching the Tories. But, says Finkel, since the Conservatives would never agree to a referendum on the topic, the switch would have to be pushed through the Legislature by the United Alternative, once it had enough seats.

3. Adopt a non-compete policy: To get those seats, the DRP is calling for the Liberals and the NDP to run only one centre-left candidate per riding. Had this been done in 2008, at least an additional 12 left-centre candidates would have been elected, more than doubling the progressive presence.

4. Get the Liberals & NDP on board: Of course, for any of this to happen, the provincial Liberals and NDP need to agree to it. Finkel says Liberal leader David Swann already supports the DRP and that “there are many individuals in both parties that recognize that we cannot go on like this, with two centre-left parties battling each other and allowing the Tories an automatic victory.”

The evidence in favour of safe-injection sites is overwhelming, but the federal government appears determined to shut Insite down.

Despite ongoing efforts by the Harper government to shut it down, Insite, the Vancouver-based supervised-injection site, is alive and thriving, with over 10,000 registered users and around 800 daily visitors. To Mark Townsend, an Insite representative, it’s a success story that needs to be replicated in other cities.

Established in 2003 as a scientific research project to help marginalized populations struggling with addiction, mental illness, and HIV/AIDS in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside, Insite operates under a constitutional exemption from federal drug laws and is the only legal supervised-injection site in North America.

Since its inception, Insite has been subject to rigorous, independent third-party research that has lead to highly positive articles in publications ranging from the New England Journal of Medicine [PDF] to The Lancet [PDF]. Results have been nearly unanimous: Insite improves health access for the highest-risk users, reduces costs to the health care system, decreases crime, and improves neighbourhoods.

For Townsend, it is a testament to the narrow-minded, ideology-driven policies of the Harper government that it is still trying to have the courts rule Insite a violation of federal criminal drug law.

The latest round of court battles started in May 2008, after the B.C. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision—that it would be a violation of the charter rights to life, liberty, and security of person for addicts not to have access to harm reduction in the form of a safe-injection site. It is this ruling that the federal government is currently appealing; there is no word yet on when a decision will be made. [UPDATE: The B.C. Court of Appeal dismissed the challenge on January 15, 2010; the government indicated it would appeal to the Supreme Court.]

Townsend is hopeful, though, that Insite will survive both its current battle in the B.C. Appeal Court and the inevitable future showdown in the federal Supreme Court. Still, in light of the government’s intransigence, Townsend insists that what is needed now is more action from Insite’s supporters: the best way to fight for the future of safe-injection sites is, where appropriate, to set up more.

“People need to stop talking, get off their asses, and actually do something,” he says with frustration, remembering how Insite immediately transformed Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside for the better.

Haitians awaiting relif supplies in Port au Prince, January 15, 2010.

The earthquake that devastated Haiti on the afternoon of January 12, 2010, viscerally illustrated the need for responsible, long-term, sustainable development. For many thousands of Haitians, poverty must be considered the true cause of death. The cost to Haiti in human lives is beyond measure, but the quake also destroyed the rotted foundations of the Haitian government and threatened its already fragile civil society. As the full horror of the disaster began to trickle out and the death toll rose to an estimated 200,000, aid agencies, governments, and ordinary citizens collectively pledged millions of dollars to support relief efforts.

Canadians can take some small comfort in knowing that we responded far out of proportion to our size and population: in absolute dollar terms, Canada’s total pledge of US$131 million is second only to the United States, and we gave more per capita than any other country. Following that outpouring of compassion and hard cash, it seems cranky to complain that it’s not enough. But it’s not.

Haiti was a disaster area long before the quake hit. This was simply the catastrophic climax of a centuries-long story of colonial oppression, financial exploitation, political meddling, and humanitarian neglect. From France’s astonishing 150 million-franc charge for its slave colony’s independence, to the murderous homegrown government of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, to the 2004 coup—the 32nd coup in 200 years—that ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti has suffered near-continuous calamity, much of it inflicted by outsiders—though there was plenty self-manufactured, too.

The world’s late-breaking compassion for the people of Haiti is still valuable. But the fact that it apparently takes the wholesale destruction of a country to grab any significant attention is a shame. It’s easy to open your heart and your wallet when the headlines are screaming. But the day-to-day truth is that Canada is nowhere close to meeting its long-standing target of contributing 0.7 percent of GDP to aid. We currently lag around halfway to that goal, which was first set by Prime Minister Lester Pearson in 1969, renewed by a unanimous parliamentary vote in 2005, and has never once been met.

It’s currently trendy to dismiss international aid as condescending and ineffective, a waste of effort that props up dictators or kills entrepreneurial spirit or both—an idea that free marketeers have diligently worked at circulating. But the real waste is spending money to pick up the pieces after a disaster, rather than investing for the long term in projects that strengthen infrastructure, stabilize governments, and improve living conditions, allowing societies to better withstand sudden shocks. Haiti needs our help more than ever now. But the rich nations ought to be haunted by the thousands whose lives would have been improved—perhaps even saved—if we had fulfilled our pledges years ago.

One green eye
followed my footsteps
thru the parking lot.

I caught it in
a rusted hand,
surprised by my blinking palm.

plucked it dryly,
placed it in the ashtray
so I wouldn’t squish it on
the steering wheel.

It blinked disapproval
at the music squirping
from the speakers

“You’re pretty,
for an eyeball,”
I said, sliding the ashtray shut,
“but it’s my damned
car.”

I’d like to tell you
that I drove it home,
opened some wine,
sliced some brie and
some pear,

discussed mutual affections
for Schwitters, Acker, and Grieg;

debated art and its role
in modern life;

I’d like to tell you
that, in spite of
all scientific and biological
limitations, we managed
to experience explosive
sexual congress,

and that,
yes,
we are expecting
offspring any day now.

I’d like to tell you
that my life’s purpose
was found inside
one little green
eyeball.

Truth is, though
I forgot about it.
It shrivelled and dried out
in my car’s ashtray.

I only saw it again
a year later,
looking for spare toll nickels.
It looked like a
cross between a jalapeno pepper
and those weird styrofoamy
shrimp chips you get
from Thai restaurants.

A simple fragile night,
blown
blinking ever into dust.

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Alone. Broke
in a damp room.
Spiders encroach on
niceties of
visitor cats.

Rationing out salt
and frozen foods
per days left in this
pretty, quiet town

The stew you gave me
ziplocked and labelled
“lamb stew, May 08”

I heated it up in a saucepan
and added salt.

Thank you
for thinking of me.

Verne Good lives in Toronto, where she writes poetry, and does sound and light design for theatre. Her poems have appeared in Rampike and Peter O’Toole: A Magazine of One-Line Poems.