Pulling the rug out: Pseudo-development in Karzai's Afghanistan
The perfect Neo-Colonial state of the 21st century. Part two.
Welcome to the "new" Afghanistan, and please, ladies and gentlemen proceed up these golden stairways. The forms taken by pseudo-development in Kabul are many and grotesque: construction of luxury hotels (photo above of elevator in the new Kabul City Center), shopping malls and ostentatious "corrupto-mansions," grinding poverty amidst opulence, pervasive insecurity, lock-down and deserted streets at night, an opium and foreign monies-financed consumption boom, pervasive corruption, alcohol and prostitutes for the foreign clientele, and the long list of "Kabul's finest" - foreign ex-pats, a bloated NGO-community, carpetbaggers and hangers-on of all stripes, money disbursers, neo-colonial administrators, opportunists, imported Chinese and Soviet Republic prostitutes, imported Thai masseuses in the Mustafa Hotel, bribed politicians and local power brokers, facilitators, beauticians (of the city planner or aesthetician types), members of the development establishment, do-gooders, mercenaries, fortune-hunters, enforcers, etc.
In this section, I shall address six inter-related aspects of Kabul's pseudo-development: (1). Opulence amidst destitution; (2). The absence of genuine governance in a culture of impunity; (3). Corruption; (4). Life in the ex-pat community; (5). Evidence of decadence -- alcohol and prostitution in Karzai's Kabul; and (6) The climate of generalized insecurity. Naturally, no aggregate data exists on these matters and so I shall rely upon scattered first-hand reports that form a coherent whole.
The perfect Neo-Colonial state of the 21st century. Part one.
Argument: Four years after the U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan, the true meaning of the U.S occupation 
is revealing itself. Afghanistan represents merely a space that is to be kept empty. Western powers have no interest in either buying from or selling to the blighted nation. The impoverished Afghan civilian population is as irrelevant as is the nation's economic development. But the space represented by Afghanistan in a volatile region of geo-political import, is to be kept vacant from all hostile forces. The country is situated at the center of a resurgent Islamic world, close to a rising China (and India) and the restive ex-Soviet Asian republics, and adjacent to oil-rich states.
The only populated centers of any real concern are a few islands of grotesque capitalist imaginary reality -- foremost Kabul -- needed to project the image of an existing central government, an image further promoted by Karzai's frequent international junkets. In such islands of affluence amidst a sea of poverty, a sufficient density of foreign ex-pats, a bloated NGO-community, carpetbaggers and hangers-on of all stripes, money disbursers, neo-colonial administrators, opportunists, bribed local power brokers, facilitators, beauticians (of the city planner or aesthetician types), members of the development establishment, do-gooders, enforcers, etc., warrants the presence of Western businesses. These include foreign bank branches, luxury hotels (Serena Kabul, Hyatt Regency of Kabul), shopping malls (the Roshan Plaza, the Kabul City Centre mall), import houses (Toyota selling its popular Land Cruiser), image makers (J. Walter Thompson), and the ubiquitous Coca-Cola1.
Trickle-Up Economics and Westernization in Karzai's Afghanistan
The evidence of class exclusion and westernization abound in the island called Kabul, the mayoralty of U.S.-anointed and DynCorp-protected Hamid Karzai.1 
Liberation and civilization arrive through acts of westernized consumption and also participation in U.S.-modeled, organized and protected "elections," a topic explored elsewhere by others. The distinctive element of the Karzai reconstruction project – to use the memorable phrase of Ross Perot – involves a "giant sucking sound" meaning here transferring income upward in the social structure, e.g., trickle-up, well-lubricated by drug and foreign monies. The obscene, sickening spectacle of an import-dependent consumption boom in Kabul coexists with deep impoverishment and destitution, the whole sordid mess "protected" by close to 20,000 foreign troops.
Ironically, the lovable and selfless Shmoos ultimately brought misery to humankind because people with a limitless supply of self-sacrificing Shmoos stopped working and society began to break down.Seen at first as a boon to humankind, they were ultimately hunted down and exterminated by the U.S. government to preserve the status quo.The Trouble with Tribbles on Star Trek, the loveable tribbles are modeled on Shmoo's. As is the edibled beast that wants to be eaten in Douglas Adams the Restaurant At the End of the Universe.
| By Helen Briggs BBC News science reporter |
 Laonastes is about the size of a red squirrel. (Image: Mark A Klingler). |
A squirrel-like rodent discovered in Laos is the sole survivor of a group that otherwise died out 11 million years ago, according to fossil data.
The animal made headlines in 2005 when it was hailed as the only new family of living mammals to be found in 30 years.
But scientists now believe it is a "living fossil", the relic of a group of prehistoric rodents once widespread in South East Asia and Japan.
Back from the dead: Living fossil identifiedPerhaps the best known example of the Lazarus effect is the coelacanth, a lobe-finned fish discovered off the coast of South Africa that scientists thought died out at least 65 million years ago.
Most examples of the Lazarus effect in mammals, though, only go back 10,000 years or so.
"It is an amazing discovery and it's the coelacanth of rodents," said study coauthor Mary Dawson of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. "It's the first time in the study of mammals that scientists have found a living fossil of a group that's thought to be extinct for roughly 11 million years. That's quite a gap. Previous mammals had a gap of only a few thousand to just over a million years."
Laonastes is currently in the process of being officially reclassified in the Diatomyidae family.
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Annie Zirin
Leftwing Generals: the Dark Side of Liberal Imperialism
A Left that opposes the occupation of Iraq but accepts the overall war on terror will find itself inevitably on the side of supporting other wars and other occupations.
Fighting "terrorism"-imperialism's cover story
Noam Chomsky recently argued,
The fact of the matter is that there is no War on Terror. It's a minor consideration. So invading Iraq and taking control of the world's energy resources was way more important than the threat of terror. The U.S. invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources, mostly untapped, and it's right in the heart of the world's energy system. Which means that if the U.S. manages to control Iraq, it extends enormously its strategic power, what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls its critical leverage over Europe and Asia.3 In 2004, John Kerry ran a campaign based on the slogan that the war in Iraq was "distracting" the U.S. from its ability to fight the "global war on terror." This became a slogan that a section of the liberal-left was more than happy to adopt as its own. Because the unspoken aim of liberals and many leaders of antiwar organizations in 2006 is to elect a Democratic Congress in November, we have seen the consolidation of liberal critics of the Bush administration behind Democratic talking points. Unfortunately, in 2006, history appears to be repeating itself.
Liberal imperialism
We can hardly be surprised that a section of liberals continues to take their marching orders from the Democratic Party. There has always been a wing of American liberalism that has fully supported the project of U.S. imperialism, and their class interests find expression in the Democratic Party. These were the Cold War liberals that backed and helped prosecute the McCarthyite witch-hunts on communists and who were the architects of the Vietnam War. These were the liberals who supported Bill Clinton's "humanitarian" wars in the 1990s, and who saw economic sanctions on Iraq as an alternative to war. "The task of liberal realists," notes John Pilger, "is to ensure that western imperialism is interpreted as crisis management, rather than the cause of crisis and its escalation. By never recognizing western state terrorism, their complicity is assured."11
The Left in the U.S. needs to put forward an antiwar opposition on an entirely different basis. We must reject the idea that the U.S. has the moral authority to fight terrorism, when it is the leading cause of terror in the world. We must stand for the self-determination the people of Iraq, Iran, Palestine, and people around the world. We must reject Islamophobia and defend the Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S. who have been the victims of political persecution since September 11. We have to consistently and clearly expose the real imperialist interests behind the war on terror, as well as the history of U.S. imperialism, in order to build a stronger and wider foundation for our movement, and show how working-class people in the United States pay the price of the war on terror. The antiwar movement needs to remain independent, both in its political views and its organizing, from the Democratic Party that wants to strengthen U.S. imperialism, not to end it. The antiwar movement cannot oppose the occupation in Iraq while giving the U.S. a pass to wreak havoc elsewhere in the name of fighting the war on terror.
Be Careful What You Wish for
Business always speculates on how much better it would be if government would just get out of the way and let free enterprise do its thing. It longs for some mythical time in the past when the businessman was on his own and things worked out fine. It sure hopes not. For it is the biggest user and beneficiary of public facilities like the courts, education, fire services, hospitals, infrastructure, the military, and the police. Not only does business rely on these resources, its employees and customers do too. Also, business utters nary a word when the government goes to bat for it by enacting favorable legislation and signing trade deals with foreign countries. It knows who hold the keys to power, and spares no effort to ingratiate itself with these movers and shakers, as well as to find as many backers as it can to represent its interests in the government.
It is not always a bad thing that Hong Kong’s economy is not as free as advertised. Its public facilities and regulations help ensure stability in the city and make it a livable and investable place. That is how a strong community is built. Hong Kong still suffers from crowdedness, pollution, stress, and a widening rich-poor gap, but its public sector, while not without fault, has succeeded more than it has failed. Even as Hong Kong’s business sector continues to preach the advantages of the “free market,” it is silently thankful for (just to name a few) its affordable public healthcare, which releases it from straining its resources to provide its employees with basic health coverage like employers in the U.S., and for its public safety measures, which spare it the expense of having to hire high-priced private security contractors to protect its assets à la post-Katrina New Orleans.
If Hong Kong was chosen as the site of the last WTO conference because it appeared to practice free trade and free market economics better than anyone else, then that makes sense. Free trade talks and deals are mostly razzle-dazzle anyway, as those players who can afford to flout the terms of any agreement do so with near impunity. Insiders and those at the short end of these pacts know better. Markets and trade are never free. Someone reaps the rewards, someone pays for the rewards, and someone certainly pays for its consequences.
If the closest thing to a truly free market is what you seek, then Hong Kong is not it. That place, according to one journalist, would more likely be Somalia. But there is no invisible hand at work in Somalia. If anything is invisible, it would be a functional national government, which has not been seen since 1991 (hence, no government regulations), as well as foreign aid (thus, no strings attached). Private enterprise exists in Somalia, and some of it works quite well given the circumstances. But even those in the private sector await the return of a working central government, which can help ensure stability and provide the framework for a smoother operation of society. Until then, rules are made by word of mouth and usually enforced at the point of a gun (the visible fist).
Any chance that the next WTO conference will be held in Mogadishu?
Heh, heh not likely eh. Recently some liberaltarians have been singing, or ringing, the praises of the free market in Somalia. Seriously, they have the largest cell/mobile phone system in the world. All set up amongst freely competing capitalists and their private armies, it make's the free (booty) marketers over at the Von Mises Institute drool. Unfortunately such anarchic capitalism is based on the primitive accumulation of capital, in otherwords brigandism and piracy. Gee just like the foundation of Hong Kong as the distribution centre of Opium into China, in the 19th Century.
Unfortunately the current minarchist capitalist free for all in Somalia while successful in producing a mobile phone business has not solved the problem of the current drought affecting the Horn of Africa. In fact the free market brigands and pirates have been detrimental to the attempts by the UN to get food to the starving masses.
Conflict and lawlessness in the Horn of Africa are making it far harder to get aid to those who need it. In particular, Somalia's pirates and warlords are disrupting shipping routes and delaying food deliveries.
The biggest security problems are in Somalia, which has had no central government for 15 years.
Even in the best of times in Somalia, when there's plenty of rain, warlords often wage battles. But in a time of drought, specialists warn that the stresses of survival will further unravel local power structures, creating new opportunities for havoc from freelance bandits, militias, and perhaps Islamic extremists aligned with Al Qaeda.
''Somalia has been an extraordinarily difficult country for the last 15 years," Christian Balslev Olesen, UNICEF's Somalia representative, said in an interview in Nairobi. ''We've had flooding, drought, conflict, war, and general insecurity. But we haven't seen anything like this drought for the past 25 years. . . . The worst scenario is that we might be going into huge drought with some kind of high-scale conflict. And bringing food into a security situation like Somalia for 2 million people is going to be a nightmare."
Last year, pirates hijacked two World Food Program ships carrying donated food. US Navy ships now patrol off the coast, but most shipping companies have refused to deliver to ports in Somalia. That means it takes up to a week longer for each shipment of food to come from the port in Mombasa, Kenya, and then be trucked to south and central Somalia
A woman and a girl stood in a field outside Wajid, Somalia, that has not produced a crop of sorghum, a grassy grain that is one of the foundations of the Somali diet, in two years. (John Donnelly/ Globe Staff)
Somalia is an excellent example of Anarcho-Capitalism in action. That is the theory that all state services could be privatized, including having private armies and police forces. Well that's Somalia. Look there for the future of this flawed ideology.
You see capitalism needs a State to function properly, as does business. Without the State, capitalism returns to its original state; fuedalism in decay. As Yemen has shown as well as Somalia.
Today, Yemen itself is on a dagger's edge, precariously balanced between forces of modernization and the pull of powerful traditionalists. In the West, Yemen may be best known for its recent history of tribal kidnappings of tourists, the 2000 al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole, and the ubiquitous chewing of khat, a mildly narcotic leaf. But the government has helped roll up several al Qaeda cells and, at least until a recent prison break, generally allayed western fears that terrorists would find sanctuary in the large tracts of lawless, tribal lands.
In deep denial. These days, though, Yemen is facing its own crisis, the result of deepening poverty and a government in denial about the depth of reforms needed to survive. In the past year, the United States and the World Bank have slashed their modest aid programs to Yemen, increasingly fed up with a bureaucracy that is one of the most corrupt in the world. "Yemen is teetering on the edge of failed statehood," warns one U.S. official. "It will either become a Somalia or get serious about transforming." For a nation awash in guns and crisscrossed by well-worn smuggling routes, the threat is grave.
And the capitalist state is not just any kind of government, it is a specific kind of government that regulates the market in favour of stability for the creation of monopolies. As the history of Hong Kong and of course British and American capitalism shows. This is the history that the right wing of course has always revised, whether it is the Heritage Foudation or the Von Mises Institute.
For as Herr Dr. Marx said the history of the world is the history of class struggle which the right has interpreted as the history of the world is the history of people clashing with the state. Which is only partially true, for in this assessment of the world, they forget people have developed self-government and that the masses revolutionary struggles have not been just over what kind of government should exist, but how the social relations of society should function.
In other words its not enough to just Smash the State in a fuedalistic society or a capitalist one. It is essential to change the means of production and distribution. The apologists for capitalism, see Somalia as a free market. It maybe, but it is not a self governing market, it is far from a society of Liberty, Equality and Solidarity.
File this story under the headline;Depleted uranium measured in British atmosphere from battlefields in the Middle East
by Leuren Moret
"Did the use of uranium weapons in Gulf War II result in contamination of Europe? Evidence from the measurements of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston, Berkshire, U.K.," shows such contamination, reported the Sunday Times Online, in a shocking scientific study authored by British scientists Dr. Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan.
The highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in Britain were transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia. Of special significance were those from the Tora Bora bombing in Afghanistan in 2001 and the "shock and awe" bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003.
Out of concern for the public, the official British government air monitoring facility, known as the Atomic Weapons Establishment, at Aldermaston, was established years ago to measure radioactive emissions from British nuclear power plants and atomic weapons facilities.
The British government facility was taken over three years ago by Halliburton, which refused at first to release air monitoring data to Dr. Busby, as required by law.
The fact that the air monitoring data was circulated by Halliburton AWE to the Defense Procurement Agency implies that it was considered to be relevant and that Dr. Busby was stonewalled because Halliburton AWE clearly recognized that it was a serious enough matter to justify a government interpretation of the results and official decisions had to be made about what the data would show and its political implications for the military.
In a similar circumstance, in 1992, Major Doug Rokke, the director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Cleanup Project after Gulf War I, was ordered by a U.S. Army general officer to write a no-bid contract, "Depleted Uranium, Contaminated Equipment and Facilities Recovery Plan Outline," describing the procedures for cleaning up Kuwait, including depleted uranium, for Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.
