Quote:Only Israel benefits

Are you for real?

Its not forever

The Semetic tribal warfare will continue untill the life blood of the region is pumped out into the coffers of Mammon.

nightbloom

This guy, reader 11722 or whatever digital code he's posting under this time has been plopping these messages - along with the news that some nefarious agency is going to stop the marketing and distribution of a book no one with half a brain would pay a plugged nickel for - for months.

Ignore it. Alternatively, check out the book for ten seconds and then ignore it.

I think it's just an algorithm programmed to respond to any posting with a few 'key' words in it.

Don't waste your effort. This is no Yehuda_Abraham.

Why is Canada there again?

As more and more information comes out of Afghanistan, I'm wondering why we are still there. Why is our country fighting for warlords and drug producers? It seems to me that these "warlords" and the opium production come from the same region of the country. I don't want any more Canadian soldiers to die so some warlord can protect his "crop."

In related news...

An interesting story from the UK Independent about a botched US kidnapping of two Iranian top brass security officials on an official visit to Iraq. Specifically this is the story of the raid in Arbil back in January (in the Kurdish area of Iraq) when the US kidnapped five Iranians who are still being held by the US. Of course the Americans being the Americans they kidnapped the wrong people. It is important to emphasize that this was not a secret Iranian mission. The targets of the kidnapping were in Iraq officially and met both the president of Iraq and the president of Kurdistan. At any rate, the article suggests that the seizure of the 15 British sailors was in retaliation for that earlier American action.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.ece

It would appear the Americans are doing their level best to flout international convention, and diplomatic procedure. Not to mention running roughshod over any attempt by their allies, the Kurds, to establish any form of diplomatic ties. The continued incompetence of the Bush Administration never ceases to amaze.

beyond the joke

anything comes from Afghanistan is sickening these days, around here it is referred to as "Barfghanistan" news!

Endless Middle East conflicts

Most Arabs trace their ancestry to Ishmael, Abraham's first son. According to the story in Genesis 16, an angel made a prediction about him: He will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility towards all his brothers."
(which traditionally has included his half brother Isaac). In any event, history has certainly confirmed this prophecy.

Chaos must reign before any order can be gained

The Civil War, from the perspective of many of these northern mujehedin, has never ended. It simply went into a long quiet 'cold war' phase. Along the way the Taliban came to power, then were toppled by outside forces ~ less need for these military leaders to denude their forces.

Now, with a new generation of troops to call upon (it takes 20-25 years of relative prosperity before enough new young men are available to take-up arms), the next phase of the civil war is growing.

Guess what, not only are Canadian troops going to be 'caught in the middle'; these forces are actually responsible for much of the 'separation of powers' and 'division of peoples' since those military forces have been used to 'do the dirty work' of the (current) Karzei Government.

From the Royalist perspective, we are worse than the former Communists, since the canadians are not only actively killing Afghanis (those whom we are told are 'insurgent' or 'taliban' or 'al queida' = told by the government agents, many of whom are 'former' warlords themselves) but also training new military forces to continue on the 'good works' after our departure ... which some of our current spokespersons are saying will be 20-25 years.

Funny that timing, eh?

Tell that to Ike ...

So what about George Washington?

What about Ulysses S. Grant?

What about Dwight D Eisenhower?

What about John F. Kennedy?

All whom did service in wars and then led their nation ...

These same attitudes and sentiments that these men had may very well be in the minds of these new 'leaders'.

They have faught for their cause, whether that cause was 'right' in our minds means nothing to them ...

Our continued interference will be the 'causus belli' of future conflict or harm directed our way.

A process more like what South Africa has gone through is what is needed here, not an extension of more force and arms.

Semper Idem
Vie et armis
Qui Bono?

Political boundaries

As far as rewarding military leaders politically, the comparison between Afghanistan and the U.S. is like comparing apples and oranges. The point, well made in the article, is that the incumbent Afghanistan politicians have a history of extreme violence.

Why should Canada be involved in Afghanistan? Why is this story important?

Stability is important. Canada is there to provide at least a modicum of stability. After all, who are the big losers when such stability erodes? Just imagine if your daughter had her leg blown off by a land mine when walking with her friends.

One journalistic note; please correct the grammar:

I applaud the Tyee for bringing us this independent report.

Riled up

Yes they certainly get "all riled up" when you steal their land and drop bombs and white phosphorus on `em now don`t "they".

A dolphin without a brain

Ah yes, yet again we witness dolphin using mythology to justify racism. Endless conflict has been a hallmark of christians as much, or more, than muslims, as Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama... etc bloody etc will attest.

My Prediction

Of course I'm no Angel...

My prediction: Abrahams first son died a couple of centuries ago.

Genesis 16

Dolphin wrote:

It must be true because it's so specific!

I like this version from the The Message much better:

He'll be a bucking bronco of a man,
a real fighter, fighting and being fought,
Always stirring up trouble,
always at odds with his family.

The reference to a bucking bronco clearly indicates that Ishmael will be an American mercenary cowboy who will funnel armaments into the East from his lucrative contracts with the military industrial complex in the West. Then he will kill everyone in his family. And it's all coming true!

Or this from the Darby translation:

And he will be a wild-ass of a man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell before the face of all his brethren.

Get out of my face, Ishmael! Just get out of my face!

OneVoiceMovement.org

It isn't the Israeli that are benifiting from all this war mongering, it is the banksters, industrialists and their duped apologists that benifit. (Though I still can't understand why the latter haven't woken up to the fact that they are being used by their greater brethern.) The Israelis are getting quite fed up with it.

Check out these video's made for the recent Davos Economic Summit by One Voice Movement. Then click on the logo to get to their main page where you can read the OV principles.

Sun Editorial

ov from yesterdays Vancouver Sun

Monday, April 2, 2007

THE NEWSPAPERS VIEW

Passover reaffirms that Jews will survive despite the evil surrounding them

This can`t be helpful.

Graveyard of armies

I rather enjoyed all the rebuttal posts, although I have no recollection of using mythology to make a point in the past. But I think Chris H has a good point. History has demonstrated repeatedly that Afghanistan is the graveyard of foreign armies. I think the NATO presence there now is as much about containing Iran as interdicting the Taliban. Afghanistan is just one of a string of countries bordering Iran with American military presence or active alliance (Turkey, Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iraq). Remaining in Afghanistan appears to be part of a larger strategic plan to deal with Iran and protect their oil supply.

canwest, eh

well there's a credible source of news. It would be nice if they presented a view from the eighty percent that aren't extremists.

What if NATO Leaves?

I'm curious what everyone thinks will happen in Afghanistan if Canadian and other NATO Troops leave. There has definitely been a human cost to our presence there, but won't there be a lot more death and suffering if we leave now (ie: before the Afghan government is able to defend and police it's territory)?

Death and Suffering con't.

As long as we have people believing in the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs" there will be death and suffering. It makes no difference if there are troops in Iraq, Afganistan or guarding the Northwest passage, the results will be the same. We have to turf the wealthy ruling class and their puppet politicians out of existence. War on drugs, what a farce! The US identified how to stop the trade in the main ingredient in crystal meth, yet they didn't because of what the pharma-lobby might think if we didn't have sudafed and other decongestants available over the counter. You can only buy a few packages here, but in Mexico you can buy it by the truck load. Voila! Crystal meth survives and society loses. The war on terror and this whole homeland security industry is a farce too. Just obscene transfers of public money to wealthy corporations and shareholders. You want to be treated like sheep then keep acting like sheep. The fact that the majority of the public don't get it and continue voting for the status quo, seals our fate as far as I'm concerned. Stupid humans, get the fuckoutoftheway and let the Dolphins take over. You're not worthy.

Murdock

Murdock
You forgot George Bush Senior, fighter pilot WWII
Blusnose
Lets not forget China now, they are worlds leaders in supplying small arms to everybody. The US would rather sell big bright shiny ships and other high tech toys that often don’t get to fire a shot in anger throughout their service lives. The Chinese are more the “Loonie store” of armaments, a $1,000,000 US will get you 5000 x AK-47/AKMs and ammo.

mythology is as mythology does

dolphin, mythology is the only thing your earlier post in this thread contains. You quote a work of fiction to justify your racism.

I would agree with you that the so-called war on terror is all about oil. The greed of the rather blatantly christian Bush Administration drives them into slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians for their dirty gold. And far from holding him back, Bush uses the delusion called christianity to justify mass murder. Tell me do you share in Bush's depravity because you share his delusion?

America Deceived

Just catching up, and wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes as I do so....

What a piece of trash that book is! It should have been dropped as a particularly execrable sample of bad writing. Reader12345 you need to stopo taking the stupid pills - they're working too well.

Read it on-line here....
http://books.iuniverse.com/viewbooks.asp?isbn=0595385230&page=1
...before the CIA or Dubya catches up with you! Wooo-wooo!

Mmmmphhh........ GUFFAWWWWW!!!

Murdock

I don't often find myself on the same side as you, but today you "told it like it is."

Bang on.

Dostum would definitely make

Dostum would definitely make a great PM.

I remember reading that his favourite way of punishing people he didn't like, or who offended him was to tie them to the tracks of tanks and then slowly start driving forward.

But he was on "our" side, so everything was forgiven. War crimes are only committed by "enemies".

Ed Deak.

Sacrifice

On the bright side, back when we had a population of under 15 million we lost more soldiers in a day fighting for a hill in France than we are ever going to lose in Afghanistan.

And Kaiser Bill wasn't even half as bad as the Taliban have proven themselves to be.

leadership

I read the same Ed...yup a real leader..."moving forward" as they say.

A little known film which was very good on the Russians in Afghanistan.. "The Tank" with Viggo Mortensen as a mujahadeen tracking A Soviet Tank which was lost in the Afghan outback after totally destroying a small village..and yes doing the " mujahadeen under the tracks thing" Definitely worth a look.

clo 3 you wrote, What if

clo 3 you wrote, What if NATO leaves?

I am even more concerned with what happens if NATO DOESN't leave! There'll be bloodshed too -- much of it on our heads -- and no-one knows WHOSE blood will be shed, or even whether there will be a difference.

clo 3 you wrote, What if

clo 3 you wrote, What if NATO leaves?

I am even more concerned with what happens if NATO DOESN't leave! There'll be bloodshed too -- much of it on our heads -- and no-one knows WHOSE blood will be shed, or even whether there will be a difference.

So, how long is NATO

So, how long is NATO supposed to stay there and how long will the warlords permitting its interference in their holy wars?

NATO's presence is a bad joke with the present numbers. As I wrote many times in the past, it would take 500,000 foot soldiers, spread and located in every village, for 20 years to make any difference.

Ed Deak.

Ed Deak

Even 20 years would only be half as long as we occupied every village in Germany after that little '39-'45 thing.

I didn't see Dolphin's quote

I didn't see Dolphin's quote that way - he was actually citing the collective mythology. I've discussed that biblical reference many times with Arab friends.

That's a pretty short list to warrant the phrase "endless conflict". We learned our lessons the hard way. The real pill in all the jam is the fact that - just when the world needs our hard-bought "lessons" the most - we find ourselves ideologically unable to articulate and argue for a cohesive, universal value-system to light the way.

The real failure here is Western enlightenment and liberalism... http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=752

"the Tank"

Bob:
I saw that film some years ago and was suitably impressed. Especially the scenery: A bit stark by our standards but still beautiful.
Invading armies have not been successful there so far but according to our commanders and politicians somehow this will be different -

doggone

Yes I was going to mention the scenery..it was remarkable wasn`t it? I think it is actually Morocco but I`m not absolutely sure about that.

nightbloom

Are you shopping that same tired stuff on every story?

The idea that the west and its practices are the sine qua non of moral behavior is just laughable, frankly.

And that's not just my verdict on Hari's indictment of Feminism, but on the exceedingly narrow and prejudiced impact of most everything he writes.
We've been over this before. Any journalist who starts an essay with this:

Quote:
the world has watched jihadist assassinations on the streets of Amsterdam, civilian slaughter in Madrid and on the London Underground, France’s car-and-vanities bonfire, and the global assault on Denmark after one of its newspapers dared to depict the Prophet Muhammad in a derogatory cartoon

and ignores the kind of accommodations and alliances and commonalities that are and have been made by the kind of multiculturalism that we have here in Canada has lost me from the start.

That's just another example of Terry Glavin style polemics masquerading as fair comment. It's one-sided demonizing of the 'other' while ignoring the myriad examples of fundamental compromises with the 'values' the West is supposedly meant to represent.

And certainly not just by liberals. At this particular point in the history of the world the arguments of two states, the US and Britain, about how prisoners are treated in, let's say for example Iran, is so hollow and false that you'd have to have a tin ear not to appreciate its complete dishonesty.

Spare me.

You like this stuff because it happens to coincide with your own jaundiced and largely uninformed view of history and the so-called decline of Liberal values.

It made no more sense when Spengler wrote about it and it was subsequently absorbed and reified by the Nazis in their own concept of the ‘German’ race as the least corrupt of Western agglomerations.

I'd set the US and its record of imprisonment and torture without due process against anything the infidels have done of late.

If the current Administration in the United States had had a clearer appreciation and understanding of humanistic liberal values and traditions they wouldn't have entertained the solipsistic idea that a democratic project at the point of a gun was going to remake the Middle East.

When are you guys going to take a little of your own advice and look to your own house as an example of frightful moral compromises?

YlaReina 1

Let me see here, the persons I mentioned were from the top of mind at the silly notion that military commanders in the past did not later lead their nations...

now you claim that these past persons were not extremely violent?
George Washington, while a militia Major was accused of killing a French Diplomat, while not technically true (so the history is written now ~ and as I will be the first to admit the history is written by the victors), one has to ask how much of the violence of the past that has been connected to each of these military commanders is also true or accurate.

Nelson Mandela may not have personally killed many, but in his name many did kill...do we blame Nelson Mandela? Do we blame Winnie?

In the end the right path was chosen in South Africa and another series of genocidal wars was avoided.

Why cannot something similar happen here?

~more to come~

YlaReina 2

Hmm, either you have not been paying much attention to matters military/geo-political in as far as Canada is involved (not a big deal as most of Canada is woefully misinformed about such things) or you are new to the country.

Why we are there:
In a nutshell 9-11 happened, then with the US 'cashing in' on the sympathy express, we joined a little US-backed and led operation called "ENDURING FREEDOM" that went into Afghanistan. PM Cretien made this decision, PM Martin 'dithered' about expanding or adjusting it, and PM Harper has gotten the commons permission to expand it without end...

here is a 'timeline'
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20050804/afghanistan_timeline_050804/20060807/

Why is it important?

The answers to this are numerous, but here are a few from my list:

1. The entire fighting force capability of the Canadian Forces is now 'committed' to battle positions in Afghanistan. A place notorious as a killing field of 'foreign' armies. Only the Golden Hordes of Gengis Khan and the conquering armies of Alexander the Great have ever come away from the place with anything that could possbly be called a 'gain' for their supporters and the obvious cost in lives that these paltry rewards are worth. More so the problem is how to get out? I still consider that every man, gun, tank, or truck sent there will not be coming home.

2. From a 'manpower' position, I as a Canadian, do not want these men coming home now. They have become like unto mercenaries and the little incident in the Quebec National Assembly will look like a picnic compared to what may happen once the boys 'come home' and find out how much they have been hosed by their own government and 'fellow' citizenry.
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-70-1308-7634-10/on_this_day/disasters_tragedies/lortie_gunman

3. The 'police action' or 'war fighting' that these Canadian troops have been doing in Afghanistan are very similar in character and nature to the deployments of the Soviet Union in the 1979-1989 time frame. The Soviets had a land supply route into the region, manpower and technical resources to call on that are 10-100 times more plentiful than that of Canada (or all of NATO is willing to commit) and the Soviets were BEATEN.
We are completely delusional if we think we can do any better using the same techniques and military approach!

There are many more but this should whet your appetite if you want more.

If ... the middle word in LIFE

clo3 wrote

The NATO force composition is a joke, only the Bulgarians and Poles are even coming close to the level of action that the ABC (American British Canadian) forces have done. The rest are holed up in the north with very (and I stress VERY) restrictive Rules of Engagement, restrictions that essentially cut them out from any real fighting. Like the Belgians were in Rwanda. So to use Canada or US or British as if they were a homgeneous force with the other NATO nations present in Afghanistan is a mistake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_engagement

The closest historical comparison I have been able to draw with the current Afghanistan situation is that of 10th Century Wales after the Norman Invasions.
During this time the 'church' held sway over personal life and Wales was getting support from catholic France and nearby independant Ireland, in its struggles with the Normans and their continued advance northwards.

The comparison I make because Canada with NATO is very much like the Catholic parts of France that were opposing the Normans just as the Afghanistani (Welsh) lands are resisting incursion or expansion from Pakistan.

The big difference here is that the entire region is just mountains, no real effective cropland areas and nothing much else to 'fight' over. It is the nature of 'march' regions that they are generally of little immediate value and tend to be completely land locked. They are complicated zones for fighting in, and mountainous terrain on the flanks of the Himalayas certainly qualifies as hard to fight in.

Why mention all of this?

Each mountain valley will be, potentially, emotionally, lingustically, mentally and spiritually different from any others near it. Meaning that each valley will have to be either connected somehow or conquered. Given the more than 2300 years of recorded history of the region, so far no one has figured out how to do either, nor is it likely to be done any time soon.

This means that the notion that there is any single Afghan government, nor that such a single entity could defend and police it's territory is simply put: crazy.

Sorry to break the news to you, but the death toll will come about whether we are there or not.

The only question is do we, the electors of our national government, whom ordered these young men to go there, then to take their marching orders from the Karzei government, want that blood on our (collective) hands?

To be brief and concise, the

To be brief and concise, the point is not that the West is in any way morally superior.

The challenge at hand is to articulate a universal value-system to guide civil society in the global era.

The obstacle to meeting this challenge is our inability to distinguish between net goods and net evils (oops, "badness"). All goods & bads are relativized. So even the no-brainers mentioned in the article I linked (like female genital mutilation) become obscured by the fog of relativism, and hence become to a certain extent normalized on a conceptual level.

Example, Western gender equality can no longer be asserted as a universal value (a "good"), because of its cultural specificity. Western religious pluralism cannot be asserted as a universal good because our history contains religious violence. Western multicultural tolerance cannot be asserted as a universal value because of the many lapses in the application of this ideal. A slaughter in France 500 years ago is the same as a marketplace bombing by jihadists yesterday.

Relativism of this sort means that, ultimately, there can be no common frames of reference to underpin dialogue. There can be no universalism (catholicity) to guide us in the future. This is a culturally dangerous place for us to be, because it creates a vaccuum where huge steps backwards are possible in the blink of an eye. How long did it take us to abolish ecclesiastical courts? Henry VIII fought that battle, and it took several centuries to continue working it out. We came so close to reversing those victories in Ontario, and it would have been such a subtle thing in the beginning. Don't think you can institute Sharia Law Courts within our imported minorities without creating a precedent. It might not have looked that way, but we were actually about to turn back the clock 500 years. The irony is that it was contituency-hungry liberals who lobbied for it.

The point is nightbloom

You believe liberal values are morally decadent and relativistic. The current debacle created by folks (neocons) who agree with that and who have been advancing a project of correcting what they see as wrong in other societies and cultures while practicing torture, imprisonment without trial and military “might makes right” hegemony in locations all around the world puts the lie to the whole game.

Nothing is more relativistic in its values than the Bush White House and they're the ones who claim to be carrying the moral torch of the West. Time to stop living in an imaginary past you think was created as a result of a 2000 year old struggle for values you think are being sacrificed to multiculturalism. 4/5ths of the world has never accepted the West's version of what's right and good and valuable anyway.

Most of them see rampant global capitalism and American exceptionalism as a bigger threat to peace order and good government than Sh'aria law . And I agree with them.

We in the west live in a huge goldfish bowl with mirrored surfaces on the inside. We can’t see outside and our view consists only of slightly distorted images of ourselves.

It is not our moral duty to sort out the sins of the world while ignoring how we’ve contributed and exacerbated the situation ourselves.

Time to wake up – we’re not solving anything in Afghanistan. I heard a former British Ambassador to the Afghans speaking about the mess we’re creating by allying ourselves with one set of thugs to battle another set on a province by province basis. This isn’t helping anything but the esprit de corps of careerists in the Canadian Armed Forces like Andrew Leslie.

Yet again with the relativity distraction

No nightbloom, the problem, as many many people have tried to point out to your hopelessly closed mind is that western civilization has a huge disconnect between what it practices and what it preaches.

The murders of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis is not due to some ancient slaughter, nor are the murders of millions of Vietnamese or millions of South Americans. They are all, in fact, due to that beacon of freedom and democracy the United States, and they've all happened very recently. In fact, there are many people still alive who lived through some of the most horrible slaughters western powers inflicted on each other during the two world wars, slaughters which occurred despite our precious values.

Unless and until western powers can acknowledge their rapacious and murderous behaviour in much of the rest of the world, all the talk of universal values is just a blatant lies pack of lies. In actual practice, those values are simply used as marketing PR to convince lazy idiots that yes in fact we are the "good guys". How possibly can anyone who has suffered abuse at the hands of western power place trust in those values, when it is clear from their very experience, that not only will those values be denied them, but what little they have will be taken from them by those pretending to promote those values.

Only small minded fools, entrenched in contextual blindness, can preach your nonsense of postmodern relativity where every cultural artifact has equal weight. No serious person, with a breadth of experience of the world takes such a position. You cling to that overblown notion precisely to avoid acknowledging the harm that takes place at the hands of western powers every day. You constantly ignore the simple facts of reality, and distract your self with idealized notions of universal values that your mythologized western society does not put into practice for most of humanity.

An openly practicing pedophile who actively preaches the evils of pedophilia would be rightly seen as a hypocrite and a monster. Other cultures see very clearly the hypocrisy of western powers, and experience daily the rapacious nature of western corporate power. It is the root of modern conflict.

And a Church espousing moral values

While its priests and religious have practiced and covered up for others who were practicing the worst kind of victimization themselves has no lessons to teach liberals about values.

Most of the fundamental progress that has come about in the West is a result of liberal and inclusive values that have allowed marginalized individuals and minorities to have a place at the table - something that hasn't come from neocons and certainly hasn't been led by the church. In fact, such institutions and individuals have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into whatever concessions to universal values of humanity and fair treatment that they have, from time to time acceded to. Just look at what has been happening in countless parishes and archdioceses in both Canada and the United States for the past two or three decades. Boston, New York and Los Angeles would be good places to start and after you’re done there take a quick trip to Ireland if you’re still not convinced.

James Burns - No one is

James Burns - No one is denying that a massive disconnect exists between values and practice throughout history. Human nature is perverse and exploitative. What can i say - unfortunately, that's a universal reality.

That doesn't invalidate the values & ideals.

We're still left with the problem that we're no longer capable of putting forward universal values to govern civil society....partially because the people on the vanguard who used to do this (classic liberals) are in a loathing cycle with regard to the origins of their own ideas.

We've fought all these battles before, from secular authority over the institutions of civil society, to the concept of citizenship over & above ties of blood, tribe and ethnicity...right down to the bodily integrity of little girls. These are net universal "goods" which cannot be relativised against the particularistic practices of tribe, sect and ethnicity.

Liberals have become unable to articulate these basic truths. So the liberal-Left loathes Western Civilization - tell us something we don't know. The fact remains that it is failing - totally failing - to advance a system of values to guide us into the globalized future.

The real truth is that neocons and Christianists

The real truth is that neocons and Christianists hate liberal institutions and their successes.

The curious thing to me is how many of those who've benefited from the inclusive and integrationist tendencies of humanist and enlightenment values would now - having achieved some nominal equality for themselves - shut the global door on those from other cultures who would try to do the same in their own homes.

Instead of assisting them our inclination appears to be to control, restrict and channel their development along lines that we find comfortable.

The big problem with the future is the animating force behind globalism itself - pure selfishness.

We need to have patience

Even if it was not right to initially invade Afghanistan and topple the Taliban regime, what’s done is done. The question we now have to ask ourselves is whether the best way to fix the situation we created in Afghanistan is to leave. Like it or not, the west has created many of the current problems in Afghanistan through centuries of interference and war and therefore has some obligation to fix it.

As it sits now, much of the country is relatively stable, with almost all of the fighting and conflict being in the southern provinces. There are also some reports that most of the insurgents fighting in the south are foreigners, not local Afghanis (http://www.crin.org/resources/infodetail.asp?id=12534). The approval of Karzai and the new government is still pretty high at 68% and most Afghans believe they are better now than under the Taliban (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/15/AR2006121501645.html).

Sure, things are not perfect in Afghanistan, but it takes time for a state to develop and for infrastructure to grow. If we are patient and stay there, there is a chance that Afghanistan could finally become a strong and stable country again. As a strong and stable country, they will be able to decide for themselves what kind of culture and society they want to have. If we pull out before the new state can protect and sustain itself, we will have continued the horrible legacy of western blunders in Afghanistan. They will not be able to decide their own fate, but will instead be open to more interference by other foreign nations, which may have no intention of ever allowing Afghanis to run their own society.

Humanist Liberal Values

Humanist liberal and socialist values have gotten collective cultures whatever of value we have today.

Neoliberal globalist values are threatening whatever progress we have made and if we don't solve the environmental crises that are enveloping the globe the effects of that blindness and selfishness will doom us all.

Something to consider G West

I can see why you would say that Christian institutions are opposed to liberal thought, but don't forget the contributions of Christians to liberal thought.

It was Christians who taught a lot of people to read near the end of the dark ages so that they could read the Bible. Also, many Universities and other schools have roots in the church and in Christendom. The Moral Conservatism of “Christianists” does not equal hatred for liberal institutions.

clo3

The term I used was 'Christianist' not Christian.

I think Christian principles and values are an important part of and contributor to liberal or socialist ideas.

Christianist is a reference to the fundamentalist branch of chiefly US Protestant Christianity (although it does have RC adherents as well).

The anglo-American conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan has probably offered the best short definition that I know of:

Hope that clears up where I'm coming from. I think that Islamists and Christianists more or less deserve each other. LOL

I rarely encounter someone so stuck

See all you can do is harp on the distraction.

Again nightbloom this is yet another rehashing of your relativity argument. You and your ilk mistake proper criticism of western powers as an inability to articulate values. You mistake attempting to engage in dialog as a willingness to place the values of those you are in dialog with on an equal footing or even above your own. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You also resolutely ignore reality and historical context. How can anyone trust blatant hypocrites? How can anyone place value in the values of those who abuse them?

Presently in western society, Greed trumps all other values. Greed is the definitive value of our culture. It has the most power, and people who follow it to its most logical conclusion are the wealthiest and most powerful in our society. Of course it is relabeled "maximizing profit" to give it a more palatable public appeal, but it is exactly the same thing.

Other values drive western behaviour, but greed overwhelms all of them. The Iraq war is the best current example of unrestrained greed. It is simply staggering idiocy, despite that giant mountain of unavoidable public practice on the part of the west, to suggest our problem is an inability to articulate values. Those here who criticize how the west behaves don't loath western culture, they loath the fact that we don't practice what we preach. They loath the simply disgusting levels of greed, and the horrors it inflicts on so many around the world.

The dialogue concerning

The dialogue concerning universal values has to consist of more than the self-mortifications and ritual self-flagellations of guilty Western liberals.

You and your "ilk" (your word) are still failing to put anything constructive forward. You've got your critique down pat, but what else do you have to say really?

Democratic representation. Judicial independence. Freedom and security of the person. Equality between men and women. Separation of Church and State. Emancipation from slavery. Emancipation from child labour. Meritocracy in government, the workplace, the schools. The West has fought all these battles. These are not imperialistic Western impositions. These are the sine qua non of a global civil society.

You can point to all the failures, and there have been many. But that doesn't moot the point that we are failing to articulate what we stand for, where we are going, and what our desired end state might look like.

Spectacular stupidity

Constructive? Stopping wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians is constructive. Stopping torture, the erosion of civil liberties, and the endless detention without charge is constructive. Stopping the trillions of dollars spent on weapons is constructive. Stopping the rape of the environment constructive. Stopping the exploitation of cheap wage-slave labor is constructive.

What kind fool could actually type out the notion that there is nothing constructive in those things? You're not interested in constructive solutions nighbloom, all you're capable of doing is regurgitating the marketing tropes of the neocons.

As for nuts and bolt policy, there is reams of it, you just choose to ignore it in favor of your oversimplified mythologized values. All you do is sit back and reify ideas, pretending that belief is tantamount to implementation. It's pathetic.

Movie

I read the same Ed...yup a real leader..."moving forward" as they say.
A little known film which was very good on the Russians in Afghanistan.. "The Tank" with Viggo Mortensen as a mujahadeen tracking A Soviet Tank which was lost in the Afghan outback after totally destroying a small village..and yes doing the " mujahadeen under the tracks thing" Definitely worth a look.

Actually it was the "The Beast" and if i recall, filmed in Israel, very well done, if graphic.

Colin - sounds like a really

Colin - sounds like a really good movie.

JB - I guess we're talking past each other (again). You've missed my point, but I haven't missed yours.

Oh, and I'm no "neocon". But cheers all the same.

Colin

Quite right.."The Beast"

also right about Israel as the filming location...I think.

I can't find the film listed anywhere

Although there is a film called the Beast that seems to be set out to debunk the Jesus myth.

Help

OH

I got some hits for Viggo Mortensen and Thomas the TANK engine.

gee, West

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_of_War

Hey I am sorry it wasn`t Viggo...sheesh..the last time I made a mistake was ..ahh 1958 or maybe 1959..what made me think it was Viggo? Anyway Jason Patric was one of the Russians..thats how I found this..actually a very good write up on the film.
Thomas the Tank Engine wasn`t in this one.

Thanks dude.

I just couldn't get Thomas to work on those Afghan rails - different guage I guess.

THanks bob - I'm gonna pick it up on the weekend.

errata

That's 'gauge'

April 8 2007

Another six dead Canadians in Afghanistan

Were they Canadian?

I had heard of six NATO troops but didn`t know they were Canadian.
I guess the rumoured "Spring Offensive" has begun.

That's the story bob

6 more dead canucks - and, I believe a couple more injured, one seriously.

6 dead

Sad day, but not unexpected, sooner or later the other side will get lucky or find a pattern to exploit. My understanding is that the area had a number of pinch points that could be used as ambush sites. Apparently one of the survivors was able to direct his comrades on how to treat him and stop the blood loss. He was blown out of the turret by the blast. The LAV III they were in has saved many lives, but if the bomb is big enough....

The “spring offensive” has been underway for awhile now, the Brits started it by securing the dam that has been a long term flashpoint, the Taliban tried to hold the area, but such tactics cost them dearly. If the dam gets back into operation it will be a major propaganda blow to the Taliban.

Two more dead yesterday

And 3 seriously wounded.

And the tanks, crew and spares that it cost more than $189 million to get to Afghanistan are useless in the heat.

You think pee wee will be accountable on that score?

Not a chance, now we're gonna lease air conditioned tanks from Europe.

Who's running this joke?

Kurt Vonnegut May Peace be upon Him

Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.

"As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it.

"As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

When you get out of bed each morning, with the roosters crowing, wouldn't you like to say. "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

And so on.