Afghanistan Debate Too Late

Watching the Canadian Political Parties in Parliament debate Afghanistan (noted a lot of empty seats in the house ) on CPAC, and I come to the conclusion that for all the high and mighty moral rhetoric about the rights of the Afghan people, women's rights, the need for economic development, security of person and property, the need for reconstruction, the debate is three decades late.

This should have been the debate that happened when the Mujahedin guerrillas swept out of the hills, inspired by the Iranian Islamic reactionary coup, to overthrow the Soviet allied government. An independent government that provided for education, healthcare, women's rights, and economic development that was not based upon opium. All the reasons the Conservatives have given for being in Afghanistan now. Tch, tch.

She can remember the cinemas and the picnics in the sun. She can remember the packed cafes and the student parties and the libraries with their shelves heaving with books and the clean, modern hospitals with the calm, competent doctors that made her decide she wanted to be a doctor herself. 'They were the good times,' she says. 'When the Soviet Union was in control. Since then everything has been a long dark night.' The Observer | Special reports | The Afghan women who saw freedom ...


The centuries-old burka, variations of which have been worn in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Asia, has often been a symbol of the struggle between competing conservative and modernist factions in Afghanistan. During the Soviet regime in the 1980s, women were not obliged to wear it. They participated actively in public life in the cities: 50 percent of government workers, 70 percent of schoolteachers and 40 percent of doctors in Kabul were women. The rural areas were more conservative, but women moved about relatively freely as professionals, aid workers, and members of the community. Afghanistan/Stories from the field-About-face for Afghan women: to ...

But of course we forget that the reason the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan was thanks to CIA funding of their overthrow of the Soviet regime, under Reagans dirty war. And the millions paid for stinger missiles to the CIA saw an expotential growth in opium production in order to pay for those missiles. The Taliban and their ilk were the direct result of America's Cold War. Then the chickens came home to roost.


Now we are claiming that we are there to defend democracy and economic development, that was destroyed by the CIA and the Mujahedin. US Brought Grief To Afghan Women

The warlords and Mujahedin in Afghanistan do not want our help, and will overthrow whatever tenuous regime is in place within the next decade. Despite all the rhetoric about pluralism and democratic values the Karzai regime has, it is ruled by Sharia law, one that denies basic democratic rights of free speech, religion etc. as has been shown over the past few months.

Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan is considered a U.S. puppet by most Afghans. His authority outside Kabul is merely symbolic. Local control in the provinces is left to a mix of opium gangsters, former Taliban commanders and tribal elders. Mark Schneider, president of International Crisis Group has said, “It's not merely about drug money financing candidates. Drug lords are candidates.”Why are we in Afghanistan?

Had we really wanted to halt the Mujahedin and the Taliban and supported a pluralist civilization in Afghanistan we would have supported the Soviet 'invasion' , instead of supporting the American 'invasion' twenty years later.


More articles on Afghanistan


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Seal Hunt Debate

I cross posted my article Your Sealing Hunt Donation At Work at Vive Le Canada where a mighty debate has ensued in the comments column. Meanwhile I have received the following email which represents the unsung voices in this debate;

I read your article in Vive la Canada. Thank you for the support and your
recognition that these animal rights groups are taking advantage of the
visual senses to make a fraudulent living. We need the support of your
farming industry and labour groups across the country. It is time this
country eliminated influence from American organizations established to
destroy our livelihood and markets while lining their pockets.
This is also a conservation issue for our ground-fish species. Our fishery
has been destroyed and our shellfish is being undermined by European tariffs
and cheap labour in China. This must stop, we have to get control of our
primary food sector. We need to protect our economic sovereignty as well.


My Seal Hunt Articles


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Marx Was Right

Marx's reserve army of labour is about to go global

The eruption of the Indian and Chinese economies could shift the balance of power sharply in favour of capital in the rich world

At first glance, the eruption of China into the world economy seems to be just the latest example of Asian countries catching up with the leading industrial powers. China's export growth has been spectacular, but so was that of Japan and Korea in earlier decades.

What makes China (and India) fundamentally different, however, are their vast labour reserves. Total employment in China is estimated at around 750 million, or about one and a half times that of all the rich economies, and nearly 10 times the combined employment of Japan and Korea. About one half of China's employment is still in agriculture; together with tens of millions of urban underemployed, they constitute a reserve army of labour of quite unprecedented magnitude.

The effect of this reserve army has been to hold down wages. After nearly 25 years of rapid economic growth, wages in China's manufacturing sector are still only 3% of the US level; after similar periods of rapid expansion in Japan and Korea, wages were some 10 times as high.

It is not too far-fetched to imagine a long period of investment stagnation in the industrialised countries, with "emerging markets" being so much more profitable. This could bring intense pressure on jobs and working conditions in Britain and elsewhere. Even sectors where relocation was not possible, like retailing or education, would be flooded with job seekers. The bargaining chips would be in the hands of capital to a degree not seen since the industrial revolution. Fluctuations in labour's share being confined to the range of 65-75% could disappear too, with Marx's rising rate of exploitation re-emerging, a century and a half after he first predicted it.

Also See:

Capitalist Crisis

Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia

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Another Miracle on Ice

Jesus Christ on hockey skates! Well, not exactly. But a new theory suggests Christ was walking on ice, not water

Quick sign him up for the Oilers. They need a miracle on ice.



Also see: Judas the Obscure


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Victory in France

Proving once again that the only way to make change is through mass struggle/mass protest and the General Strike.

France scraps youth job law, bowing to mass unrest

If Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin had intended to weaken the power of trade unions by acting unilaterally and pushing the measure through Parliament without consulting union leaders, he made the mistake of his life. The unions come out of the crisis stronger than ever, while Villepin and Chirac, his longtime ally and friend, have been left with almost no political capital or credibility. If there are any unqualified winners in this drawn-out affair, it is the trade unions, whose leaders acted with unaccustomed unity and managed to bring millions of people into the streets against the CPE. Who won, who lost in French youth jobs crisis?

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The Vimy Myth

Today is the 89th Anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge during WWI. The battle that changed the war.

Edmonton has Le Academie de Vimy Ridge, a Junior Senior High School set up in partnership with Canada's military for Cadet education. Very nice, lots of military history on the walls of the school.

Vimy Ridge was the hill no-one could take during WWI. Until the Canadians took it using our engineering corp and artillary assault. It cost thousands of lives. But it was a major Canadian victory, and defined our relationship with the paternalistic British command. Unfortunately that relationship, one of being expendable colonial troops like the the Newfoundlanders,Australians and New Zealanders at Gallopoli, didn't really change as we were to find out at Dieppe during WWII.

The myth of Vimy Ridge is that it was Canada's military coming of age.

In reality our coming of age as a country with its own military was during the Boer War, in South Africa. Where we sent our first indpendent contingents of troops, which included the mustering of the Alberta based Lord Strathcona's Horse. Many of those involved were members of the NWMP. Showing that the NWMP/RCMP were not just a national police force but an Imperial Military force.

Canadians who participated in the South African War did so as volunteers in regiments funded by wealthy patrons or the British government.

Before Dawn has an excellent series of posts on the Boer War and Canadian involvement.

This too was an imperialist war, for the heart of Africa. A small irregular army of Dutch settlers and native Zulu fighters were able to defeat the greatest army of the day, it was the begining of the end of the British Empire. During the same period the American Empire was overtaking the British in importance, the Americans had invaded and conquered the Phillipines, Cuba and Puerto Rico during the Spanish American war.

The foundation of the Canadian Expeditionary Force was the creation of a soverign military unit of volunteers during WWI. But it was not the first volunteer army in Canada, that was created during the Boer War.

The CEF took Vimy Ridge and then were involved in the secret British attempt to invade Bolshevik Russia at the end of the war in Operation Archangel.

That assault resulted in the repression the Bolsheviks then unleashed on the left opposition and anarchists in Russia, using the invasion as the basis for claiming they were under attack from White Russians and Imperialists and that all opposition to the Bolsheviks would be considered counter revolutionary. It was on this basis that the Bolsheviks attacked the Worker Sailors Soviet at Kronstadt.
The Allies including the CEF were as responsible for the statist ending of the Russian Revolution, and the solidification of the Bolsheviks in State Power,
as was the signing of the Peace Treaty with Germany.


Also see:

WWI Xmas Mutiny

Christmas in the Trenches

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent

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Werner Patels Doesn't Like My Politics

The politically confused (provincial Liberal/federal Conservative/rabid anti-NDP) multipleblog personality Werner Patels is back with yet another blog. Another one. Sheesh. This guy just never gives up. Let's see that makes six blogs in one year, counting on my fingers. I may have missed one or three.

In one of his missives on his new homepage, not to be confused with another of his anonymous blogs, he defends everyone's right to be political, except yours truly.

Just like in politics, you have to stick to your principles. Don't pay any attention to ill-meaning or envious detractors. Those that criticize your ideas the loudest - and, particularly, those that want to deny you your right to express your ideas (such as a certain communist high-school janitor in Edmonton, who's been hounding and maligning me in his broken English, which is clearly not his first language) - disqualify themselves by the sheer vehemence of their "arguments".

Gee I thought I was principled. Now how could I deny anyone their right to express their ideas, what am I the ISP? Why to deny ones opinions is positively counter to my Libertarian principles. On the other hand I reserve the right to comment on the stupidity of ones opinions, which is more often than not in Herr Patels case.

Unless of course they aren't opinions but are threats to my person, my relatives, my work, my right to blog, etc., because of my opinions, in other words cyberstalking, which Herr Patels has done in the past.

Broken English. Wasn't that a hit comeback album by Marianne Faithful.

Do I detect a hint of classic Austrian racism here; 'broken English, not his first language,' janitor=immigrant. Nah......Herr Patels would never stoop to such stereotyping.

Welcome back Werner, ya still got nothing important to say.

This article was originally written in Esperanto and translated into broken English for the benefit of my readers.

Broken English Lyrics

Could have come through anytime,
Cold lonely, puritan
What are you fighting for ?
It’s not my security.

It’s just an old war,
Not even a cold war,
Don’t say it in russian,
Don’t say it in german.
Say it in broken english,
Say it in broken english.

Lose your father, your husband,
Your mother, your children.
What are you dying for ?
It’s not my reality.

It’s just an old war,
Not even a cold war,
Don’t say it in russian,
Don’t say it in german.
Say it in broken english,
Say it in broken english.




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