MacKay Lies

Overheard on CPAC Politics Live coverage of today's press conference with Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay and the Foreign Affairs Minister of Russia.

Peter MacKay told reporters that our Troops were in Afghanistan "because parliament voted on them going".

Oh really when was that?

Chretien agreed to send troops as PM without a debate or vote in the house. The Conservatives called for a non-binding debate, but Chretien dismissed it with the same "support our troops don't be divisive" rhetoric now being used by the Harpocrites.Commons vote could undermine Afghan mission, says MacKay

Or perhaps Peter was referring to the Russian parliament, the Duma, maybe they voted to send troops to Afghanistan but the Canadian Duma, er parliament didn't.

But it looks like it may turn into another Russian style debacle too, cause now when asked by a reporter if we could be there for ten, yes ten years, Mackay couldn't answer!Troops could stay longer in Afghanistan

So who will decide if we are at War since we are no longer peacekeeping?

The democratically elected representatives of the people of Canada? Heck no. Generals will determine Afghan stay: MacKay


Also see my other posts on Afghanistan

And for a Left View from the Middle East see:Islam And Class War

Also see: Support Our PeaceMakers
While folks are all verklempt about our Troops, pacifist activists with the Christian PeaceMakers Team remain hostages in Iraq and our government has done nothing about it.

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The Iraq War & Archaeology

I found this interesting site which is tracking the looting of ancient treasures in Iraq. As Iraq was once ancient Babylon and later Mesopotamia with its Euprates and Tigras rivers was the literal crossroads of all ancient civilizations and cultures. It is the source of all peoples of the historical bible. Its historical and archeaological importance is lost in the tragedy which has been the legacy of twenty years of war.

The Iraq War & Archaeology An Archaeos, Inc., Documentation and Information Project Dr. Francis Deblauwe, Director & Editor Dr. David Nelson Gimbel, Co-Director Prof. Dr. Gebhard Selz, Co-Director IW&A is a joint project of Archaeos, Inc., and the Institut für Orientalistik of the Universität Wien (Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Vienna, Austria) *

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Terry Glavin Loses It

Poor Terry Glavin has been bitten with the war mongering bug that historically plagues social democrats. He is defending the Canadian Military police operation in Afghanistan.

He was understandably distraught over the attack on Trevor Greene social activist and journalist who had joined the military and was seriously injured yesterday in an axe attack.

Being a fellow journalist and Vancouverite and 'progressive' social democrat Terry is right to be outraged.

But his outrage is misdirected. Instead of opposing the war that has possibly gotten his friend killed, in classic social democratic fashion he defends imperialism and Canadian military actions in support of Imperialism in the region.

Human compassion is the key to solidarity, and I too share a solidarity with our women and men in harms way. They are after all volunteers and workers, who have to follow orders. Orders given not by the people of Canada or its parliment but by the PMO.

Which may explain why with our all volunteer armed forces the DND are advertising heavily in the Maritimes, the traditional base of our Armed forces due to high unemployment. The working classes are employed to kill for the ruling class. But we will have no debate over it!

However Terry goes on to slag me in particular and the Anti-War left in general in a language that I mistook for his being a Blogging Tory with such trite and inflammatory comments as; Canada's Anti-war left says it knows what's best for the people there,

No one I know suggests we know what's best for the Afghan people, we too support their right to self government. Exactly why we say Troops Out Now. And while Terry tries to prove the Afghan peoples support of our troops by polling the real facts say otherwise; see my State Terrorism.

Kandahar is an open zone a porous region where tribesmen, Taliban, Afghanis and Pakistanis know no borders. It is an area of Warrior Tribal chieftains, and internecine battles. It is not Paris. Heck its not even Calcutta.

It is a historic war zone going back hundreds of years. It is the source of opium production, home of the ancient smuggling routes for Lapis Lazuli and other precious stones and hashish. It is the wild west . And I doubt very much that pollsters went out there and polled anybody. Or they too would have ended up hostages or dead. As I posted yesterday;

Quetta, the capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, lies about 200 kilometres southeast of Kandahar, across a porous border. Many of my fellow countrymen have made the journey here. In fact, some sections of the city seem to be populated almost entirely by Taleban who fled after the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Over the last year, Kandahar has seen an alarming rise in suicide bombings and attacks on troops and government installations. In the past three months alone, there have been more than 20 acts of violence, leaving dozens dead, hundreds wounded, and an entire province terrorised. Quetta provides a ready supply of young men prepared to wreak havoc in Afghanistan.

This region is neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan it is the autonomous tribal provinces that even the Pakistan military fears to enter.

Afghanistan was the Hobbesian state that was kosher for interference by its neighbouring countries so that each could secure itself against the fallout of its endemic internal chaos. In Pakistan today thanks to decades of jihad that kept the borders as porous as possible — many regions resemble Afghanistan.

It will not become civilized because our volunteer working class army protects the new ruling class visiting from the safety of their greenzone in Kabul.

And even Kabul is not safe, which last weeks prison insurrection showed, as did King George II's secret very secure visit to Karzai's palace and the US Airforce base last week. He did not tour free and democratic Afghanistan because there is no such a creature.

As I have said before; Afghanistan is the model of American Nation Building, invade, put in a puppet regime, leave. Let the chips fall where they may and some one else can clean it up.

Karzai, the former Unocal Oil Director for the region, was hand picked by the U.S. and the first action of nation building was the creation of a Presidential State not a representative parliamentary democracy, not a consituent assembly, but the election of the CEO of the new Afghanistan colony of the U.S.

Two years later there are finally parlimentary elections, but like the intervening cabinet style government and now this one, it is an assembly of rogues and War Lords. In fact without the repressive Northern clans of War Lords the U.S. would not have been able to drive the Taliban, the Northern Warlords historic enemy, out of Kabul.

And here is the irony both the left and the right at the time noted this fact. It was an unholy alliance between the U.S., CIA and the Northern Warlords.

The Wall Street Journal and The Workers Vanguard Agree: Both Capitalists and Communists Conclude Afghanistan Better Off Under Soviets Than Northern Alliance

And while there was much propagandizing over how the American invasion was going to free women from oppression in Afghanistan the new State like the old State is still persecuting publications that promote even a minwomen'sf womens rights.

So Terry undaunted goes on to say;

Some civil war: On one side, an alliance of vicious brigands, gangsters, and theocratic fascists who command the dedicated support of only two per cent of the Afghan population, and on the other side, 93 per cent of the Afghan people who support the countryÂ’s newly constituted, democratically-elected government. The trouble with the pseuds is that even with those odds, they donÂ’t have the guts to back the winning side, the peopleÂ’s side, which also happens to be the side CanadaÂ’s soldiers are on.

Ah a winning side. What is that excatly? Why it is legalized brigands, gangsters, and theocratic fascists who were elected versus their opponents. The Karzai government is a sham. It has a cabinet which is brokered between warlords who retain their fuedal power in their provinces. It has no control over the opium production going on in these provinces, persecution of women, of the press, etc.

It has a constitution and democracy on paper but in reality it is still not a real peoples democracy. It is a Hobbesian State. It was just a stop on Americas way to its original goal; Iraq.

This is my position as a Libertarian Communist on the Left.

Terry is a social democrat, an ideologue like his predecesors; who were willing to support Imperialist War despite their previous opposition against it.

And like them he is the true psuedo-leftist, when it comes to opposing war it's about foreign wars but not wars our own troops are engaged in.

But who will fight for the Afghanistan State if we leave? Why thanks to globalization and capitalist privatization the Karzai government can do what the US and UK have been doing; hire mercenaries, err sorry private contractors.This is after all a war for private capitalist interests; oil, pipelines and opium.

Also see my other posts on Afghanistan

And for a Left View from the Middle East see:Islam And Class War

Also see: Support Our PeaceMakers
While folks are all verklempt about our Troops, pacifist activists with the Christian PeaceMakers Team remain hostages in Iraq and our government has done nothing about it.

See my comment on a previous blog posting by Terry; Left, Right and Liberty

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Paper Wars

An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on the success of the Globe and Mail with surging circulation, online and for its print edition. Beating even the American newspaper numbers.

Now what I found interesting is their chart of the Toronto Papers, which they include the National Pest, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and the Toronto Sun.





It appears that the every declining and money losing National Pest is finally catching up to the Sun. In which case they should not have hired the has been blogger and Liberal/Zionist apologist; Warren Kinsella as a columnist ,but put in page 3 girls to match their real competition, ideologically and circulation wise.

Nice thing about the Pest is that in terms of capitalism it is bleeding the Aspers CanWest operations dry. Every other member paper iand even it's TV stations in Canada has to pay for the joy of supporting the National Pest in its efforts to be the daily National Review for Canada.

And note that the first Editor in Chief of the Pest was Alberta Report Alumni Ken Whyte. Who is now editor for Macleans. Every publication that has Whyte as an editor has ended up on the chopping block. The Pests demise is just a matter of time once the poor corpre realizes its dead. And with Whyte's ability to turn everything he touches to shit, err to an Alberta Report Doppelganger, well Macleans demise should not be too far away.

When Mr. Black was running the Post, he viewed it as a vehicle for gaining a voice in Canadian politics and appeared willing to spend heavily to win a following. Courting the Globe's upscale readers, the Post launched such features as a book section, a society page and columns by well-known writers. As a result, even stalwart Globe advertisers flirted with the new paper.
On the first day the Post published, in October 1998, high-end menswear retailer Harry Rosen, a longtime Globe advertiser, launched a campaign in the Post featuring the paper's editor in chief, Kenneth Whyte, wearing a three-piece Harry Rosen suit. But the Post lost millions in its first three years. And after CanWest bought it, the new owners slashed staff and gutted popular sections in an effort to break even. When readers abandoned the slimmed-down paper, CanWest brought back some sections but is still working on stemming losses, a company spokesman says. Harry Rosen now places most of its ads in the Globe, says Larry Rosen, chief executive of the closely held Toronto company.

A tip o the blog to Paul Wells for this.


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He Will Fight To The Death

Our wonderful wacko King Ralph has picked another fight he can't win and he knows it. Just like he was going to fight to the death to oppose Same Sex Marriage....didn't happen. Fight to the death not to recognize Sexual Orientation in the Alberta Individual Rights Act.....didn't happen. Fight to the death opposing Federal Firearms Registry.....didn't happen. But he sure as heck spent lots of taxpayers money on expensive futile court cases. And he blustered and blathered and got lots of press. He talked tough and that was about as tough as it got. Talk

And now he will fight to the death for his Third Way.....yeah right.....As Sheila Copps says in her column today;

On the contrary, the bigger the fight Klein could pick with Ottawa, the better his chances of rolling to successive victories in a virtual one-party province. Fed-bashing works. The Parti Quebecois have known that for years. But their anti-Canada positions on just about everything pale in comparison with the untouchable Klein formula. Klein has regularly coasted to victory by picking phony fights with Ottawa Carbon tax? We will fight it to the death. Global warming? Another ruse by those damn Easterners to hurt the Alberta economy. Klein could give lessons to the separatists. But he has a history of picking fights he cannot win.

Hey Sheila agrees with me. Nice to see. Well what does Klein have that Ottawa and Quebec and Ontario doesn't? A War Chest. Cut payments to Alberta for violating the Canada Health Act and he just rolls on and does it anyways cause of a $14 Billion dollar surplus. What are they gonna do? Its been done before. Klein has done it. Refused to accept the CHA and paid the fines.

So does that mean he will win his fight? Nope cause he has alienated his rank and file, his backbenchers and his cabinet. This is his fight alone. And Rod Love is gone. So there are no breaks on the drunk with power. He will spend what he has to shadow boxing and then capituate as he has before. He is all bellow and bluster. Sigh just can't wait till the door slaps him on the ass as he leaves. And that sigh was from the Conservative party not from me.



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Dumb Review of Tim Hortons TV AD

Macleans must be paying big coin per word cause this here is a review of a Tim Hortons commercial. A commercial for christ sakes. Not a movie, not a TV show, not the Olympics but a Tim Hortons coffee ad that ran during the Olympics.

A Tip o the blog to Asian Wild Rose who said about this review; "Wow.. I’ve never seen such a review for a 30 second commercial. This is longer than some full movie reviews I’ve seen."

Clearly Macleans is desperate for filler articles and the author Tony Keller is deseperate to make big bucks with his quasi academic deconstruction of popular culture. But of course you know I still will find flaws with it..... Of course its my vocation. Though I don't make the big bucks this guy does.....Forget Hockey Dad: Meet Anti Hockey Grandpa

At first viewing, it's a heartwarming tale of fathers, sons, immigrants and hockey. Does it get any more Canadian? Watching it, you probably choked up a bit. But after seeing it for the fifth or 43rd time, you may have started to wonder: what kind of a dad hates hockey so much, and loves his little boy so little, that he refuses to go to his son's games -- though he did once or twice sneak a peek through the Zamboni tunnel, keeping his visits a secret, as if the rink were a crack house

Ah duh Mr. Keller the reason he missed the games was like most immigrants he was working two jobs so he could buy the kid the really expensive equipment he needed to play hockey. And if Anti-Hockey dad was pissed that was probably why, he wanted the kid to play soccer it was cheaper. But this is Canada and we play hockey not soccer. And it costs thousands to outfit and pay for rink time. Come to think of it he probably had three jobs.

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Seal Editorial

Uh Oh, I find myself agreeing with The Toronto Sun : EDITORIAL: Let’s hear it for the seal And while they mention cows and chickens I would like to remind us that the wolf population is hunted and endangered and so are Grizzlies. While there are millions of seals the Grizzly population in Alberta is under 1000 and wolves range in the few thousands. These are the species that need cute cuddly celeberaties to defend them. Seals don't.

It appears that he Alberta Government has finally come to its senses and ended the Grizzly massacre for three years. Not fair game No thanks to Paul McCarthy of course or to the Environmental opportunists attacking the seal hunt.

Grizzlies out of hunters' sights for at least three years
But in making the decision, Sustainable Resource Development Minister David Coutts stopped short of declaring the grizzly bear a threatened species.

Oh duh give it a break already what does less than 600 bears mean that they are only in danger if they are hunted. What about cars and trains? Which kill far more bears every year.

Also see:

Cry Wolf Redux

Cry Wolf!

Alberta Sacrifices Wildlife for Profit

Americans Hunt Canadians

Seal Hunt Protest Cancelled

Green Opportunism: The Anti-Sealing Lobby

Arctic Meltdown

Beauty and the Beast

Green Party Seal Hunt Flippers

Save Our Grizzly Bears

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And Then They Built An Ark

Hey Noah where did you say you parked that Ark? Scientists confirm historic massive flood, caused by climate change 8,200 years ago.

Which could explain the biblical myth of Noahs Ark and of course that other popular myth, the sinking of Atlantis.

The American 19th Century radical reformer, left wing Republican and Greenback activist , novelist and science fiction writer; Ingatius Donnelly popularized the idea of Atlantis after Platos short dissertation on it. Atlantis remains one of humanities most popular visions of a lost civilisation.

He also wrote Ragnarok, the Age of Fire and Gravel (1883), in which he proposed that a comet hit the earth in prehistoric times and destroyed a high civilization.

Well while I would not call the dinosaurs a high civilization, we have now found evidence that a comet hit the earth and caused their demise.

Love these radicals who go off on some other tangent, and while their social reforms become common place their wilder ideas are what get remembered.

But now with this computer model of a historic flood Donnelly's Diffusionist theory of Atlantis once again gains some credence.

And of course it gives an idea of what is coming as the polar ice caps, north and south, melt.

Ignatius Loyola Donnelly

(1831-1901)
Minnesota

Lawyer, politician, author, publisher, novelist, poet

Ignatius Donnelly was born in Philadelphia on November 3, 1831. "He graduated from the High School of Philadelphia at the age of nineteen, with high honors, and immediately commenced the study of law. He was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1853, and immediately commenced practice in that city . . . ." ["Hon. Ignatius Donnelly," in W.J. Arnold (ed.), The Poets and Poetry of Minnesota 151-161 (Chicago: S.P. Rounds, Books and Job Printers, 1964)]

Donnelly moved to Minnesota in 1857 and two years later was elected lieutenant governor (1860-1863). He was elected to Congress and served from 1863 to 1869). He served in the Minnesota Legislature various terms: 1874-78, 1887, 1891-93, and 1897. He died in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 1, 1901; interment in Calvary Cemetery, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Ignatius Donnelly
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Ignatius Donnelly
Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography
(New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889)
(James Grant Wilson & John Fiske eds.)(6 vols.)

Prophets and Psychics: Ignatius Donnelly

Ignatius Donnelly

Ignatius Donnelly and the End of the World

At Shakespeare’s Grave
(Ignatius Donnelly Loq.)
A Poem by Irving Browne, another lawyer-poet
dedicated to Ignatius Donnelly

Poetry

Ignatius Donnelly, The Mourner's Vision, a Poem (Philadelphia: [s.n.], 1850)

Writings

Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (New York: Harper, 1882) (New York: Harper, modern rev. ed., 1949; Egerton Sykes ed.) (New York: Dover Publications, 1976) (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981) [on-line text; edition unstated]

_____________, Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel (New York: D. Appleton, 1883) (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1883) (New York: University Books, 1970)

_____________, The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cipher in the So-called Shakespeare Plays (Chicago: R. S. Peale & Co., 1888)

_____________, Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: F.J. Schulte & Co., 1890) (pseud. Edmund Boisgilbert) (Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1894) (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960; Walter B. Rideout ed.)

_____________, Doctor Huguet: A Novel (Chicago: F.J. Schulte & Co., 1891) (pseud. Edmund Boisgilbert)

_____________, The Golden Bottle, or, The story of Ephraim Benezet of Kansas (New York: D.D. Merrill Co., 1892)

_____________, The American People's Money (Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1895) (Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, 1976)

_____________, The Cipher in the Plays, and on the Tombstone (Minneapolis: Verulam Pub. Co., 1899)

Bibliography

Martin Ridge, Ignatius Donnelly: Portrait of a Politician (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) (Borealis Book, 1991)

Larry Richard Peterson, Ignatius Donnelly: A Psychohistorical Study in Moral Development Psychology (New York: Arno Press, 1982)

David D. Anderson, Ignatius Donnelly (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980)

Oscar M. Sullivan, North Star Sage: The Story of Ignatius Donnelly (New York: Vantage Press, 1953)

Everett W. Fish, Donnelliana: An Appendix to "Caesar's Column:" Excerpts from the Wit, Wisdom, Poetry and Eloquence of Ignatius Donnelly Selected and Collated, with a Biography (Chicago: F.J. Schulte & Co., 1892)

William D. O'Connor, Mr. Donnelly's Reviewers (Chicago: Belford, Clarke and Co., 1889)

Bibliography: Articles

Ralph Harmon, Ignatius Donnelly and his Faded Metropolis, Minnesota History (September, 1936)

John D. Hicks, The Political Career of Ignatius Donnelly, 8 Mississippi Valley Historical Review 80-132 (June-September 1921)

Research Resources

Ignatius Donnelly Papers
Minnesota Historical Society
St. Paul, Minnesota

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Paul Avirch Anarchist Historian RIP

Paul Avrich was a great Anarchist and historian and his work Anarchist Voices along with Jessie Kornbluths, IWW Anthology are key works in the revival of the Anarchist movement in North America in the 1970's.

They were our tableu rasa on which we reformed and began to revive the traditions of Anarchism and Anarch0-Syndicalism in those heady days of the Movement against War and Capitalism.

His passing is only of the mortal body, his work and his contribution to our heritage of revolt and resistance will continue.

His work in translating Russian anarchist texts revealed works to us that had been the sources of liberatory theory for Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

Paul will be missed by his friends and our anarchist community. But his work will feed new generations with the hopeful ideal of anarchism.

Paul Avrich 1931-2006
by KSL - Kate Sharpley Library Wednesday, Mar 1 2006, 6:52pm

a historian who listened to anarchist voices

All the collective members of the Kate Sharpley Library are all saddened by the death of Paul Avrich. We offer this obituary not merely as a mark of respect, but to attempt to place his huge contribution to the study of the history of anarchism into context: "He allowed anarchist voices, missing from history, to speak for themselves, with a minimal of authorial judgement or intervention, and much of what we know about the history of anarchism in America is due to the work of this one man."

Paul Avrich 1931-2006.
The death of Paul Avrich has taken from anarchism its finest historian. More than that the study of history has also lost one of its finest proponents because Avrich was also a great historian. If his work brought to life those who shared "the beautiful ideal" it was because he used his considerable talents to treat his subjects with respect, thus avoiding the glib condescension that characterized much of what constituted "anarchist history" in the academy. Avrich's work reflected his skills as a linguist, the absolute importance he placed on primary sources and his perseverance in finding them, an ability to sustain long, and sometimes fruitless periods of research and a writing style that enabled him to encapsulate his findings in a readable and engaging manner. Central to all of this was a consistent and rigorous insistence on accuracy. He went further, looked deeper and reflected more pertinently than others. He allowed anarchist voices, missing from history, to speak for themselves, with a minimal of authorial judgement or intervention, and much of what we know about the history of anarchism in America is due to the work of this one man.


Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Keeping Anarchism Alive: In Remembrance of Professor Paul Avrich

Radical historian, Paul Avrich, died last week. He was 74. Paul Avrich was born in New York City on August 4, 1931. He was a noted historian and professor who authored many books on anarchist history, including books on the Haymarket Riot, the Modern School Movement, the Russian Revolution and a collection of oral interviews with American anarchists titled Anarchist Voices. Avrich was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize several times and in 1984 he won the Philip Taft Labor History Award.

Avrich received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1952 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1961. Avrich taught at Queens College of the City University of New York and at Columbia University. He was a Guggenheim fellow at Columbia University in 1967-68 and a National Endowment for the Humanities senior fellow in 1972-73.

Avrich published his dissertation on “The Russian Revolution and the Factory Committees” at Columbia University in 1961. In 1967 Avrich published his first book on the history of anarchism, The Russian Anarchists. He went on to publish many more books on anarchist history, including The Haymarket Tragedy in 1984 and Sacco and Vanzetti in 1991. Writing about Avrich’s book Kronstadt 1921 for the New York Review of Books, Alasdair MacIntyre observed that “[Avrich] gives us the closest examination of all the available evidence that we are likely to have for some time and he uses his evidence to construct a narrative that, in its most brilliant passages, matches the power of Deutscher’s The Prophet Armed and Moshe Lewin’s Lenin’s Last Struggle.”

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State Terrorism

All terrorism is State terrorism against the people. As this headline shows. Bush urges Pakistan to boost terror effort There are no terrorists of or for the people. They are authoritarian movements, fascists, using asymetrical forms of warfare seeking to seize state power.

I guess that headline is a boo-boo they must have meant anti-terrorism....but then again....VIEW: Religion and politics — Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

The military government therefore used coercion against the Al Qaeda-type hard-line Islamic elements in a selective manner that enabled it to maintain a working relationship with the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) that supported the Taliban, sympathised with Al Qaeda and opposed Pakistan’s participation in global efforts against terrorism. The MMA joined hands with the Musharraf government for passing the 17th constitutional amendment that legitimised most of the changes made by the Musharraf regime in the 1973 constitution. The cordial interaction between the two ran aground when President Musharraf refused to quit as army chief on December 31, 2004.

And let's not forget the porous border between Pakistan and Afhganistan, the so called tribal areas which were the source of CIA missles for drugs exchanges during the anti-Soviet jihad. The area iswhere Canadian troops are currently; Kandahar. Where the Taleban Train

Quetta, the capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, lies about 200 kilometres southeast of Kandahar, across a porous border. Many of my fellow countrymen have made the journey here. In fact, some sections of the city seem to be populated almost entirely by Taleban who fled after the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Over the last year, Kandahar has seen an alarming rise in suicide bombings and attacks on troops and government installations. In the past three months alone, there have been more than 20 acts of violence, leaving dozens dead, hundreds wounded, and an entire province terrorised. Quetta provides a ready supply of young men prepared to wreak havoc in Afghanistan, local observers tell me. There are eight major madrassas or Muslim religious schools in Quetta, each with over 1,000 students or "taleban" in the original sense of the word. In addition, there are hundreds of private madrassas, some with just 100 students, often occupying unmarked, rented houses.
It is these private schools that are a major source of the fighters who are now carrying out insurgent operations inside Kandahar, according to these observers.

Another reason to say a pox on both your houses, Canadian Troops Out Now!

Afghan villagers won't say who axe-wielding attacker of Canadian was

Afghanistan was the “Hobbesian” state that was kosher for interference by its neighbouring countries so that each could secure itself against the fallout of its endemic internal chaos. In Pakistan today — thanks to decades of jihad that kept the borders as porous as possible — many regions resemble Afghanistan. There is practically no writ of the state in most of Balochistan and most of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Foreign raiders may attack this territory to get at the elements that bother them, just as we went into Afghanistan looking for strategic depth. What is unforgivable is the lack of information — and the possible withholding of it — at the crucial moment when the politicians are in denial and the Musharraf government is on the defensive. *

More on Afghanistan



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