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It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Harper tells troops that despite dissent, Canada's staying in ...
Canada.com, Canada -1 hour ago
Prime Minister Stephen Harper chats with Canadian troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Sunday. (CP/Tom Hanson). KANDAHAR, Afghanistan ...
Harper goes to war zoneCanada.com
HARPER'S SURPRISE AFGHAN VISITGlobe and Mail
Harper visits troops in AfghanistanToronto Star Calgary Sun -CBC News -all 115 related » Harper vows Canada will not ‘run away at the first sign of ...
Globe and Mail, Canada -3 hours ago
Kandahar, Afghanistan — Prime Minister Stephen Harper served up a healthy portion of praise and support for Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan on Monday ...
Harper admits jittersOttawa Sun
Barely out of warm-ups, PM heads to a hot zoneGlobe and Mail all 3 related »
Gee I thought International Terrorism was rooted in Iraq, the reason the Americans gave for going to war, after WMD and Saddam is a dictator. Since the invasion the Bushies have been saying the exact same thing about Iraq, better to fight Terrorism there than in America. They already have to fight armed gangs suffering from poverty and inequality in East LA.Harper told reporters accompanying him that the Canadian force in the country serves the national interest because:
- International terrorism is rooted in the country. "It was in Afghanistan that Sept. 11 started."
- The country is a major source of narcotics, which have a terrible impact on Canada.
- It shows Canada providing international leadership and humanitarian aid.
Perhaps if the Americans had not opposed the Russians who were helping the pre- Taliban government fight off the religious fruitcakes and warlords we would not have such a mess there now. Unfortunately human rights is only an issue of convenience for countries like the U.S., to use when it fits their bigger purpose, or to ignore when it does not.
Afghanistan today is certainly no shining example of human rights. To claim protecting human rights as a policy of the occupation of Afghanistan is certainly a joke. Sources report that for women outside of Kabul things may be worse now than under the Taliban. Religious laws still receive official sanction in some areas, and blasphemy is still a crime.
Harper said "the debate over deployment is over," no matter what surveys of public opinion may suggest.That's it Harper has Declared War and there is no debate. War always the time for serious debate He is being a muscular and masculine politician, something he always wanted to be to get over his policy wonk nerdishness. Harper Will Make Canada Masculine Again Beware of the nerd who gains power.
Canada is fighting for freedom and democracy, but some of our Afghan allies have proven every bit as bloodthirsty as the Taliban, which once formed the de facto government and had dealings with the U.S. right up until the summer of 2001.
The rap sheet of the United Front/Northern Alliance includes mass murder of PoWs, the killing and rape of civilians, religious persecution and the use of child soldiers.
These allies proved remarkably unreliable, most notably during the alleged escape in 2001 of Osama bin Laden.
The best-case scenario goal is to turn over more of the country's security to many of these same people.
Coloured fingers are nice, but when cutthroats and drug runners empowered by the U.S. invasion are the end result, surely our country's deployment is up for at least debate.
Canadians should also know whether the prisoners taken by our troops are turned over to U.S. jailers who've been known to batter captives to death from Baghdad to Bagram.
Canada's elite JTF2 commandos have worked closely with and under U.S. command.
If You Can't Trust Your Bank, Who Can You Trust?
Shortly after I wrote yesterday's story about Citibank's confirmation that a third-party company it does business with had been breached, causing the bank to block PIN-based transactions for customers in Canada, Russia, and the U.K., I started to hear from the people directly affected by the mess this latest data faux pas caused.
Trade Minister David Emerson is in an apparent conflict as Canada's lead negotiator in the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber trade dispute because he still has a financial stake in forestry giant Canfor Corp., according to a complaint sent yesterday to Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro. The formal complaint, filed by Liberal trade critic Dominic LeBlanc and provided to CanWest News Service, is based on Mr. Emerson's $167,000 annual pension he receives from a company that could benefit enormously if the ongoing dispute is resolved. As a cabinet minister, Mr. Emerson will earn $213,000 a year.
Emerson earns a paltry $380,000 a year in Salary and Pension. As the commercial says Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun.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.