Vancouver 2010: It's Not Over Yet!

Brian McKeever isn't done yet.

This year, when the talented Canadian skier qualified to compete in the men's 50-kilometer cross-country race at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, he made headlines. However, there were only four spots available for five Canadian competitors, so coach Inge Braten had to make the difficult decision to leave him off the start list, reserving him as an alternate.

What distinguished McKeever from the rest of the competitors is the fact that he is legally blind.

Though crushed, McKeever kept his spirits up. "I understand the decision," he said, through tears. "Our boys are racing so fast. They've deserved everything they've gotten. I stand behind them 100 per cent."

Still, McKeever has a lot to be proud of. He is the first athlete ever to qualify for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Paralympic Games, first held in 1960 in Rome, are an event for athletes with physical disabilities. Since 1988, the Paralympics have been held in the same cities and venues as the Olympic games, and from 2012 onwards, all host cities will be contracted to organize and oversee both competitions.

This year, the Paralympics will be held in Vancouver and Whistler from March 12 to March 21. Athletes from around the world with disabilities such as cerebral palsy, visual impairment, spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, amputations, and congenital limb deformities will compete in a series of events ranging from alpine skiing to sledge hockey.

Watching these athletes compete provides not only inspiration and hope, but also vivid, visual lessons on how to turn those hopes and dreams into real action. Whether you're a sports fan or not, this blatant shattering of the notions of success and limitations many of us have grown to accept is a refreshing jolt to both the heart and the mind.

Although they train just as hard and often overcome much bigger challenges than Olympic athletes, Paralympic athletes haven't yet gotten the kind coverage they are due.

This year, that could change. In the United States, NBC Sports and Universal Sports have signed on to broadcast the Games, which will be sponsored by GE. In Canada, the Paralympics will get 50 more hours of television coverage than they did in Turin 2006, a marked improvement.

Two years ago, my brother Zameer (a Toronto-based singer/songwriter who I play with) and I had the honor of meeting Canadian Paralympic sledge hockey players Brad Bowden and Paul Rosen, who brought home a gold medal for the team in 2006. Brad, who had also scored a second gold medal in wheelchair basketball that year, was born with sacral agenesis, a congenital spinal abnormality that has resulted in severe deformities in his lower limbs. Paul, the team's goalie, had one of his legs amputated following complications from a serious leg injury during a hockey game when he was young.

Zameer had written a song called Win or Defeat, about challenging conventional notions of success and defining it for ourselves, something he'd been struggling with as an independent artist, and was looking for ideas for a music video. When we came across the incredible, moving stories of these athletes, it clicked as the perfect vehicle to demonstrate the concept of the song. So we teamed up with Brad and Paul to make the first music video ever to feature real Paralympic athletes in action. The song, produced by five-time Grammy winner Steve Thompson, subsequently went into rotation on Canada's MuchMusic, and we're proud to have done our small part in introducing these remarkable athletes to many Canadians who hadn't come across them before.

Next week, Brian McKeever, Brad Bowden, and Paul Rosen will be back in Vancouver to keep the Paralympic flame going, and bring their awesome talent to a larger television and streaming internet audience than ever before. Stephen Colbert, are you listening?

As awareness about the Games grows, these athletes and their peers will continue to inspire and motivate more and more of us to challenge ourselves and reset our boundaries, while teaching us how to turn our dreams into reality.

The Games start Friday, March 12. Don't forget to tune in.

Is The United States Gearing Up To Go Into Pakistan?

In 2007, Barack Obama attracted controversy during his campaign by declaring that if elected, he would be willing to go into Pakistan if there is "actionable intelligence about high-value targets" in the country, and if the Pakistani government "won't act" against them.

During her three-day visit to Pakistan this week, Hillary Clinton seemed to indicate that those two criteria may now have been fulfilled.

On actionable intelligence about high-value targets, Clinton seemed confident that Al Qaeda's leadership is present in Pakistan: "Al Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002...it is just a fact that Al Qaeda had sought refuge in Pakistan after the US and our allies went after them because of the attack on 9/11...Our best information is that Al Qaeda leadership is somewhere in Pakistan."

On unwillingness to act, she suggested that Pakistani officials know where these terrorists are, but are hesitant to go after them: "I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to. Maybe they're not gettable. I don't know."

Even while commending Pakistan's military efforts in Swat and South Waziristan, she said that it was "not sufficient".

Meanwhile, President Obama has been "dithering" (as Dick Cheney put it) on a decision about how many more troops to send to Afghanistan, if any.

He may be listening closely to his vice president. Newsweek's recent cover story on Joe Biden started off highlighting the veep's concerns about resources and strategy in the region: "So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?"

The question is a good one, and Biden's observations are shared by others, notably National Security Adviser Retd. Gen. James Jones, who said of Afghanistan earlier this month: "The Al Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."

On Friday, the White House stood behind Clinton's blunt comments, calling them "completely appropriate".

While it may be too early to tell whether Obama will follow through on his 2007 campaign pledge, it does seem like his administration is setting the stage.

Are Evolution-Deniers any Different from Holocaust-Deniers, Birthers, or Truthers?

Could Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who again reaffirmed his belief last week that the Holocaust was a myth, land his own show on Fox News? Going by Richard Dawkins' new book The Greatest Show on Earth, out now in the US and Canada, it may not be such a long shot.

In the first chapter of the book -- which aims to present the evidence for evolution in its totality -- Dawkins unapologetically lumps evolution-deniers and Holocaust-deniers together, and illustrates his point as follows:

"Imagine you are a teacher of recent history, and your lessons on 20th-century Europe are boycotted, heckled or otherwise disrupted by well-organised, well-financed and politically muscular groups of Holocaust-deniers...

Holocaust deniers really exist. They are vocal, superficially plausible and adept at seeming learned. They are supported by the president of at least one currently powerful state, and they include at least one bishop of the Roman Catholic Church.

Imagine that, as a teacher of European history, you are continually faced with belligerent demands to 'teach the controversy', and to give 'equal time' to the 'alternative theory' that the Holocaust never happened but was invented by a bunch of Zionist fabricators.

...Fashionably relativist intellectuals chime in to insist that there is no absolute truth: whether the Holocaust happened is a matter of personal belief; all points of view are equally valid and should be equally 'respected'."

Based on Dawkins' argument, people like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the Jewish Ben Stein -- who made the anti-evolution documentary Expelled -- are in the same boat as those who say that the Holocaust, which like evolution is a historical reality with overwhelming evidence supporting it, should be treated as a debatable issue in a history class.

It has been a busy time for deniers of history. Birthers who deny that Barack Obama is US-born, and truthers who insist that 9/11 was a government conspiracy, are getting louder. Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad is in New York this week for the UN General Assembly's annual meeting, amid protests against his most recent statements about the Holocaust.

And actor Kirk Cameron is ready for the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species on November 24. In a new YouTube video, Cameron announces his plan to distribute 50,000 free copies of Darwin's book to university students -- but with a catch. The books will have a 50 page introduction written by Ray Comfort, aka the "Banana Guy", who is famous for using a banana as an argument against evolution. In the introduction, Comfort writes about Hitler (who was, interestingly, a Christian) having an "undeniable" connection to the theory of evolution, claiming that Darwin's "racism" inspired him.

Also in the crossfire this year is Creation, the new film starring Paul Bettany as a young Charles Darwin who struggles with his faith following the death of his 10-year-old daughter. The movie has yet to find a distributor in the United States, due to the "controversy" surrounding the subject matter.



But if evolution is still a controversy with two legitimate sides to it, why isn't the Holocaust? In a way, Dawkins' assertion doesn't go far enough. While Holocaust deniers simply deny historical evidence, evolution deniers blind themselves to much more: between the disciplines of physics, archeology, paleontology, molecular genetics, botany, cosmology, and geology, there is a mountain of evidence -- more than there is for the Holocaust -- supporting evolution.

I wonder how Ben Stein would reconcile this. Would he hear out Ahmadinejad on the Holocaust the way Glenn Beck heard Stein out on his anti-evolution film? Fair and balanced, anyone?