We'll "stand with Ukraine" till we don't

Remember when then PM Big Steve Harper used to remind the world on a regular basis that “Canadians are not the sort to cut and run” from war? That was after our top army boss had boasted about how we were going to run the Taliban, those murdering scumbags, out of Afghanistan. Canada cut and ran, and the murdering scumbags now run the place. I’m sure the rest of the world, to say nothing of the Afghans, remember the value of our promises. It's not just Canada. Bloomberg has a story up about the behind-the-scenes bickering in the EU. If Putin can drag this war out another six months, both EU and NATO will be riven with discord. That's good news for Putin. Not so good for the imbeciles in Washington who still believe that God's master plan requires them to be masters of the planet. Full scale dominance, here we come! Maybe it's time for a reality check.

The American way of forever war, circa 2021

The Nations of Virtue, led as always by the USA, have lost Afghanistan.

What happens now?

Right off the top, the most sycophantic of Uncle Sam's acolytes will join in calling for sanctions against the Taliban. Women and girls and human rights, and all that good stuff. 

The fact that the most vulnerable in Afghanistan, especially women and girls, will bear the brunt of sanctions is not a topic discussed in Western media.

The strategy of using sanctions to brutalise societies we can't defeat militarily has become standard operating procedure for the Nations of Virtue. Wreck a country, and when the locals push you out, clobber them with economic strangulation.

And if at all possible, keep arming and funding whatever rump opposition still opposes the victors. This is crucial for American interests, because when it comes to foreign policy, American interests are determined by the needs of the armaments industry and AIPAC.

Not a policy conducive to a bright future for America or anyone else, in my estimation.

 

Could Biden be worse than Trump?

The American cable news networks have rallied round the banner of American Exceptionalism. MSNBC still fobs most of the blame for the Afghanistan surrender onto Trump, although they're not as keen on Sleepy Joe as they were a week ago.

CNN seems undecided. Their man Joe ain't quite the man they thought he was. They're about 50/50 in assigning blame.

Fox, the semi-official mouthpiece of all things Republican, now has all the proof they need that Biden's been a dementia-riddled husk all along.

But all of them agree that this gigantic sloppy turd the Talibs just left on their exceptionalist carpet has ruined the reputation of the Exceptional Nation everywhere and for all time.

The greatest humiliation in US history

The bolder fringes of the punditocracy are drawing parallels between Saigon 1975 and Kabul 2021. Change up the background a bit, and helicopters departing the embassy roof looks like Kabul is turning out just as bad as Saigon.

They're wrong.

It's way worse than that.

America's technology advantage 75 years ago was awesome enough, but nothing near what it was in Afghanistan. 

The Viet Cong had semi-peer benefactors, Russia and China.

The Talibs have basically one benefactor, from the "shit-hole" part of the map; Pakistan.

And yet, America has thrown in the towel. Conceded defeat.

Lost.

Besides... they got bigger fish to fry. The People's Liberation Army is just spoiling for a fight, and they are a super-dooper threat to the American way of life. So we gotta let bygones be bygones, and not live in the past. Afghanistan would have turned out hunky-dory if the dumb-ass Afghans had been smart enough to figure out their best interests.

The Chinese are smarter, and they will for sure shower us with rose-petals when we lead them to freedom and democracy. Human rights too.

**********

Western media are up a stump on these developments. Blaming Trump is becoming a bit of a shabby gambit. 

The Indispensable Nation and the City on a Hill are up the same stump. Blinken blamed the Afghan people today for "their loss of freedom."

Neither Biden or Blinken or anyone else in America's ruling class is capable of seeing this from Afghanistan's perspective. America's withdrawal and surrender is not a loss of freedom.

It is victory over a foreign invader.

Greta's white privilege

Do you ever wonder how the social media icons of our day become social media icons?

Take Greta, for example. A Swedish teen, lacking in the social graces and allegedly smitten with ass burgers, is plucked from obscurity, and overnight becomes the go-to expert on climate change.

Or Malala, youngest Nobel laureate ever. 

And who remembers Little Bana, the Syrian wunderkind revealing to the world the predations of the evil dictator Assad on Twitter in a language she couldn't even speak!

I took a look at their Twitter feeds today. Greta leads the way with 5M followers. Malala is next with 1.9M. Little Bana has almost disappeared, reflecting the West's loss of interest in bringing democracy and human rights to that benighted land, with a mere few hundred thousand followers.

Doesn't look right to me. Say what you will about Bana and her stage-managing mother; at least they had to survive an actual war.

And say what you will about Malala and her stage-manager father; she got shot in the head by the Taliban before she got famous.

And Greta? Well, there's those ass burgers, and the stage-managing parents, and the joy-ride on the five million dollar sailboat... but what price has she paid?

Smells like white privilege to me.

Ontario vaccination boss deems covid tougher than Taliban

Retired General Rick Hillier, drafted in to spearhead Ontario's vaccine roll-out for the modest stipend of $20,000 per month, on top of his six-figure government pension, is struggling to deliver the goods.

But that's not his fault.

There's misinformation out there.

Sometimes, even disinformation!

As a general rule, Putin's minions are behind disinformation.

But praise the Lord, there's a new sheriff on the world stage!... well, actually it's more like the old sheriff is back. You'll recall the old sheriff fondly. Sheriff Joe.

The old Sheriff brought democracy and human rights to Ukraine, Libya, and Syria. 

And thanks to General Hillier, democracy and human rights also launched in Afghanistan. 

Looks like Hillier is still firing blanks.

Just hold on to your hat to see what the new old Sheriff is capable of!!!

Sally spins Afghanistan

Afghanistan under US occupation has been very very good for Sally Armstrong's career. Her writing about the country has vaulted her into the top ranks of "Afghanistan experts," those privileged voices entrusted to explain to us what's really going on over there. Her explanatory career has garnered her honorary degrees and an Order of Canada.

Ms. Armstrong has a lengthy feature in yesterday's Globe and Mail bemoaning the imminent US troop withdrawal. After 18 years of occupation, thousands of US lives lost, hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives lost, and a bill that runs into the trillions, Trump's ill-advised capitulation threatens all the gains made by women in Afghanistan!

I have no doubt at all that some Afghan women have prospered under the US occupation. Like the Toronto-born 27 year old Afghan woman who finds herself Communications Director for "elected" President Ashraf Ghani. Armstrong makes much of the fact that the "elected" President has been sidelined by the current negotiations between the US and the Taliban. The reason he is sidelined is because all concerned (ie the US, the Taliban, and everybody at that recent summit in Russia) are fully cognisant of the fact that Ghani is a US installed cipher, or "stooge," if you will.

Here's the lowdown on that 2014 election as reported in the New York Times. Not even a hint of voter fraud in Armstrong's numerous references to that election.

Reading Armstrong's story one gets the impression that the Taliban are an occupying power, and the US Marines are some sort of benevolent feminist militia in the country. No Sally; the Americans are the occupiers - "Taliban" is what we call the Afghans fighting to end the occupation.

One also gets the distinct impression that Afghan history started in 1996, the year Sally first began reporting from there. Afghanistan, or at least its women, have made great progress since the US invasion of 2001. And compared to 1996, that's probably true.

But Afghanistan did have a history before 1996. The Afghan refugees that my family sponsored to Canada were a part of that pre-Taliban history. Mom and Dad were both university professors in Kabul during that prehistoric era. Alas, the government of Afghanistan at the time was a little too chummy with the commies in Soviet Russia next door, so it became America's mission to rid Afghanistan of its secular government and support whatever warlords or religious nutters were willing to take it on.

If the status of women in Afghanistan was ever a concern for the Virtuous West, we should have left well enough alone from the get-go. Instead, we did all we could to destabilize that secular government, and eventually it was the Talibs who successfully filled the power vacuum.

Here's a different slant on the Afghanistan story, by Mathew Hoh, who first encountered the country as a US Marine.


My suggestion for a balanced news diet is that the reader engage both stories and then make up their own mind.

US war on Taliban totally over after drone strike kills leader!

For some reason that's a story that's getting lots of ink.

In spite of the fact that it's complete bullshit. How many times before has the US eliminated top Taliban leaders? Seems the US forces of righteousness have been rubbing out those Taliban leaders for what, ten or fifteen years by now?

But, just like the Energizer Bunny, those Taliban leaders keep on coming. Knock out one with a drone strike, and there's two more right there to take his place.

Far be it from me to suggest the US strategy is not working, but who can ignore the fact that the US strategy is not working?

Apparently the US high command has no problem whatsoever ignoring the fact that their strategy is not working. They just keep doing the same and doing the same and then doing the same again, and then feigning complete surprise when their strategy is not working!

Hey fellas!... it's not working and it's never worked! The towellers are just sick of having you in their countries!

Go home already!

Let them figure out their own shit!

Those wacky Mooslims

I was listening to Michael Enright's show on the CBC this morning. He had the anti-Muslim Muslim Hirsi Ali on for an interview that was recorded earlier in the week.

That's because certain death awaits Ali at every turn, due to a fatwa demanding her execution, issued by we're not quite sure who, but it gets her a lot of attention, and she has a new book out, so that's a good thing. Enright's interview was typical middle-of-the-road CBC pablum. While it was obvious he wasn't buying into the bullshit, he refrained from asking any inflammatory questions. That's how he managed to pass a 40 minute show about radical Islam without once alluding to the fact that it has been the West that created radical Islam, lock, stock, and double-barrels.

Take the Taliban for example. A bunch of fundamentalist hillbillies of no consequence, until the US of A found them useful in undermining the secular and relatively successful government in Kabul. Suddenly these fringe players found themselves on the receiving end of billions of dollars of American largesse. The results of that largesse continue to reverberate around the world today.

Momentarily given the spotlight in the movie "Charlie Wilson's War," America's midwifery role in birthing violent Jihadism has otherwise faced mass amnesia here. That's why Hirsi Ali can ramble on for forty minutes about how violent Islamic extremism is something that flows naturally out of the Koran.

If we allowed Appalachian white-trash snake-handlers to become the official voice of Christianity, and then funded them billions to make the world a better place, what would that look like?

Cuba - USA rapprochement; why now?

After all, the Yanks have had well over 50 years to set this right.

So why, after well over fifty years of missed opportunities, is this happening today?

My theory is that when some slow-burning back-burner story like this explodes, it's because the news gatekeepers are trying to take your eye off something else...

Like the EU striking Hamas off the terror list...

Like Islamist militants scoring hard in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Nigeria

Like the torture debate in America

Like the racism debate in America

Like the last round of concessions to the big banks

Like the bankruptcy of the USA

Like the fact that democracy in the USA has become a plaything of the .01%

Like the American elite's commitment to perpetual war

Like the rapidly disintegrating status quo around America's foster child in the Middle East...

When you think about it, there's never been a better time to make peace with Cuba!

There's a lot of stuff out there they want us to take our eyes off.

Fighting "terror" to empower women

The signal trope of the first barrage of bullshit intended to justify our unjustifiable onslaught on Afghanistan in 2001 went roughly like this; the Nations of Virtue are justified in this illegal war because we are liberating the women of Afghanistan. Yes, we are bringing light to the benighted and hope to over 50% of the population, so international law be damned; we've got the moral high ground.

In the 1990's my family sponsored an Afghan Muslim family into Canada as refugees. Both parents had once been university professors in Kabul. That was in the bad old days, the days when the shadow of the Evil Empire hung over Afghanistan, the dark days of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, when women voted and worked as university professors, a darkness which Washington spent some $40 billions to undermine and overthrow.

Our refugees were not fleeing the Najibullah regime; they were fleeing the US-installed Taliban. Yet when America and the gang of the virtuous displaced the Taliban... one of the main goals was to liberate Afghanistan's women!

Unfortunately, the warlords given the key to the country by the US invasion in 2001 were no more sympathetic to matters of women's rights than the Talibs. The golden age of women's empowerment in Afghanistan lived and died with the Democratic Republic.

But the trope lives on. Behind the scenes, the Nations of Virtue have at one time or another provisioned virtually every so-called terror group in the Middle East. The Iranian MEK was able to lobby its way off the terror list by paying vast sums to well-connected Washington insiders. Left-leaning Kurdish resistance groups were placed on the terror list due to Turkey paying vast sums to well-connected Washington lobbyists. In the rest of the world, this is called influence peddling. In America it's called lobbying, and it's as American as apple pie baked with genetically modified apples. (Which, by the way, are pretty much the only kind of apples you can find in America, thanks to the GMO lobby.)

Our Kurdish terrorists seem to be following the MEK out of the terror wilderness. Here's a compelling plea from a bona fide lefty begging for guns and money for those Kurds on our terror list. And just in time for Nov. 11, writer Ben Norton makes sure he throws the F word into the mix a few hundred times, just so you're clear on who the bad guys are.

Just like in 1939, we're fighting the Fascists, but even scarier Fascists than before!

We also have this timely story making the rounds; Israeli woman joins Kurds in fight against Islamic State. The Islamic State/ISIL/ISIS is only the most recent iteration of the evil other, created out of whole cloth by the Nations of Virtue, and now an existential threat to our very way of life.

The Gillian Rosenberg fable is the product of a lobbying campaign that has long stressed the egalitarian nature of Kurdish society. Among the vaunted Peshmerga fighters, the women punch above their weight. We rarely if ever run into a discussion of the tradition of FGM in Kurdish society, because that particular abomination is the sole province of the Islamic State evil-doers we're fighting.

We, the Nations of Virtue, are all about freedom and peace and the equality of women.

Therefore, if you care about the rights of women, you will whole-heartedly endorse the latest US war on Arabs who don't know enough to follow orders.

Malala takes on Boko Haram

Here's a story destined for major traction in Western media; Malala has showed up in Nigeria to advocate for the "bring back our girls" campaign.

Malala was always a theatrical prop used by her Western oriented parents to further their anti-Islamist agenda. When she survived a Taliban assassination attempt it was a dream come true.

Those parents were utterly shameless about using her to further their own agenda, which is what made her a Taliban target to begin with. This is a kid who was exploited by her parents to write anti-Taliban propaganda from the time she was ten years old.

Do ten year olds typically write their own thoughts?

But she eventually, thanks to her parents, caught that Taliban bullet, and the miracle that followed ensured her a place in the pantheon of anti-Taliban activists, which brought about a Nobel nomination and A-list brand recognition in the West.

She is now bringing her celebrity show to Nigeria.

She will succeed where Goodluck has failed.

Or not.

Malala obviously knows nothing about the legacy of institutional incompetence and corruption that has created Boko Haram. Yet she is trotted into Nigeria by her management team to advise the locals on what they should be doing to resolve the Chibok girls crisis.

If Goodluck can't figure out Nigeria, there's no way a 16 year old girl from Afghanistan will.

So much "news" BBC can hardly squeeze in latest war on Gaza

I turned on the BBC Word News at noon to get the latest on Operation Protective Edge.

But first I had to be updated on the latest crisis in Afghanistan. Seems Abdullah Abdullah isn't taking the "no" he got at the ballot box for an answer. Instead, he's doing exactly what John Kerry specifically ordered him not to do; declare victory and announce a rival government.

That shows the extent to which American prestige has plummeted among former vassals. In the case of failed-state Afghanistan, this is probably a moot point. Whoever emerges as the "winner" in the party politics we've forced on them will only be handing the country back to the Taliban after the last occupying forces leave.

Interesting news piece, but hardly the most important international story of the day.

Then we had a lengthy bit about the typhoon in Japan.

Then we had an even lengthier bit about the Brazil-Germany match, with reporters on location in both Brazil and Germany.

It was only after the commercial break that we got around to hearing news from Gaza, which wasn't so much "news" as it was separate interviews with Azzam Tamimi explaining why the escalation was Israel's fault, and Israeli ambassador to London Dan Taub explaining why the escalation was the fault of Hamas...

After which, I was no wiser than before.

But apparently there is a much-anticipated football match on this afternoon.

As Canadians cut and run from Afghanistan, top General admits Taliban still have "some influence"

When you read this, you realize that Maj-Gen Dean Milner is the kinda guy who is going places.

Nosiree, the Afghan adventure has not been an abject failure!

Nosiree, the Afghan adventure has been well worth every one of those 158 Canadian dead.

Just look at all those Afghan schoolgirls going to school!

The Major General's ruminations are beyond pathetic. The last time Afghan schoolgirls went to school in significant numbers was in the bad old days when Afghanistan was aligned with the Soviet Union.

That's when Afghan women were university professors and lawyers and cabinet ministers.

But we fixed that good.

It was the US who brought the neanderthal Talib fundamentalists to prominence.

Milner's comments need to be read against a background of previous proclamations from Canada's do-gooders.

It was General Hillier who got himself way offside with his uncouth remarks about killing those Taliban scumbags. To hear him talk, you'd think he and his ubermensch crew were gonna have those Talibs sorted out within weeks.

That was followed by numerous proclamations from Big Steve himself about how Canada does not cut and run etc.

All the while, the complacent Canadian media played a patriotic background role, cheering on the cheerleaders and celebrating kites and bicycle paths in Kabul.

Which brings us to the present moment.

The Major General in charge of Canada's retreat claims we have won a great victory.

But he acknowledges that the Taliban, Hillier's "murderers and scumbags," still have some influence.

Sorry Mr. Milner.

It's not that they have "some influence."

They won the war.

You lost.

US celebrates ten years of Pak drone strikes with more Pak drone strikes

Taliban warlord Mullah Nazir was sent to his reward today by a pair of Hellfire missiles fired from a US Predator drone.

According to US military sources this is a critical blow against the Taliban infrastructure in the so-called tribal areas of Waziristan.  According to Pakistani military sources it is nothing of the sort.  Nazir's group has honoured a truce with the Islamabad government since 2007 and confined it's activities to Afghanistan.

As for the argument that losing a leader incapacitates these groups, Pakistan media report that a replacement, Bawad Khan, was elected shortly after Nazir's funeral, which drew crowds estimated in the thousands.

While the US was busy making a martyr of Mullah Nazir, they also struck at one of his rival groups, killing a TTP commander in North Waziristan with the oh-so-clever "double-tap" strategy. According to Dawn, "the US targeted a vehicle with two missiles, then fired two more missiles when rescuers gathered at the site."

So it was a busy day for America's heroic drone wars in Pakistan's tribal areas. The success of these missions left a vacuum in Taliban leadership ranks that was measured in hours if not minutes.

And not that many folks in the tribal areas need a reminder, but it will have reinforced the belief that America is a nation of lawless barbarians and will no doubt bring many new recruits to the Taliban.

Ten militants killed.

A thousand more recruits for the Taliban.

The clash of civilizations

Malala Yousafzai is big news these days.

She is the 14 year old "child activist" who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in Pakistan. Her crime? Speaking out for the right of girls to get an education.

That is a story guaranteed to evoke revulsion across the Western world.

Which is why I wonder about the story. I am reminded of that equally revolting story about the Iraqi troops dumping babies out of incubators in Kuwait. That was another story designed to whip the West into a righteous frenzy of vengeance.

And it worked. The American public was overwhelmingly behind the first Gulf war.

More than twenty years later, the war parties need to ramp up support for a wider war on the Taliban. Who better to raise that support than a "child activist" brought low by a Taliban bullet?

There is utterly no evidence that the Nations of Virtue or our allies in the Towelistans have the slightest compunction about snuffing the life a child, be they a teen, pre-teen, or toddler, boy or girl. In fact, there is a vast archive of evidence to prove that we are absolutely indifferent to the children at the receiving end of our projectiles of democracy and missiles of peace.

They've never been anything other than collateral damage.

But let the Taliban execute a "child activist" and suddenly the lives of children become sacrosanct. There is a medivac jet idling on a runway in Islamabad to take the victim for advanced medical care in Dubai. Headlines around the world scream about the barbarity of our Taliban adversary.

It's all a little too convenient.

I'm betting that before long Malala will have made a full recovery, thanks to the miraculous interventions of Western medicine. She will be spirited out of Pakistan and make the rounds of the talk show circuit. She will be on Good Morning America and Ellen and Oprah and Piers Morgan before she becomes a regular on the dog-and-pony show of those internationally famous child activists, the Kielburger brothers.

And by God, we'll have to do something about those primitives over there in the Pakistani tribal lands before they try to kill another 14 year old.

Reuters reports Toweliban have quit negotiations with US over Afghanistan's future

And who can blame them?

The trigger was apparently Sargeant Bales' rampage. If that's true it means they stayed at the table throughout that Koran burning fiasco, which is nothing other than a huge gesture of goodwill on their part.

But I suppose enough is enough. There's a difference between burning books, even holy books, and slaughtering innocent civilians.

Negotiating with the US was always a bit iffy to begin with. After all, the Talibs are Afghans for the most part. It's their country.

Why should they be negotiating about what slice of the pie they're going to get when they know the whole thing is coming their way at the end of 2014?

Or sooner.

Execution-style slaying of US officers raises disturbing questions in Kabul

After ten years of occupation you'd think that the NATO forces would have made a little more progress in winning the hearts and minds of our Afghan allies.

Apparently not.

The execution-style murders of at least two senior American advisers inside the heavily-guarded Interior Ministry exposes the extent to which the NATO/ISAF mission has been an abject failure.

The Interior Ministry was considered secure because access to Afghans was virtually impossible except in the role of translators. In other words, there is no safe place in the country for members of the occupation forces.

This also exposes the sham charade of the "training" that we are supposedly doing over there. The Afghans quite obviously don't need training. They are amongst the most resourceful fighters and killers to be found anywhere. The "training" missions are merely a pretext for maintaining control over the country's armed forces and thereby keeping a nominally "friendly" government in power.

It's time to declare victory and get the rest of the troops out now.

Let the Taliban train their own. They're much better at it anyway, and they've already got the hearts and minds on their side.

France breaks ranks, abandons allies in Afghanistan

Now here's a bullshit story if ever I heard one:

The announcement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy that his troops would sharply accelerate their departure from Afghanistan cast a harsh light on potential cracks in the U.S.-led military coalition in the country.

Although the Obama administration and the NATO force sought to portray Friday's declaration in Paris as neither surprising nor unilateral, it marked not only an effective end to France's combat role in Afghanistan, but a breaking of Western ranks as an unpopular war drags into a second decade.

That's from the LA Times.

Why is it a non-story?

In the first place, Afghanistan is a done deal. We lost. We're negotiating with the Taliban right now at their new offices in Qatar. The only thing we're negotiating is how we make our retreat look good. It's about saving face, not for the Taliban, but for us.

In the second place, who is breaking ranks? The Canadians are out already. The "we don't cut and run" guys cut and ran way before the French. Obama has long ago announced America's timetable for withdrawal. Breaking ranks? I think the "ranks" are but a misty-eyed memory.

So forget about "potential cracks in the US-led military alliance."

That was toast long before Sarkozy smelled the coffee.

Political propaganda has no place in professional sport

It was hockey night in Kandahar this evening.

Before the Leafs- Rangers match we were treated to a parade of Canadian Forces folks doing camera takes with the loved ones they had left behind when they embarked on their duty to defend us from the towel-headed evil-doers over in Afghanistan.

Do they even know that as they are taking their bows at the Air Canada Centre the big dogs at NATO/ISTAF are negotiating a peace agreement with the very Taliban they've been fighting for ten years?

I love hockey. I used to play the game, at a very minor level. I have watched Hockey Night in Canada since the early 60's.

I am disgusted with how the people who run the game today are happy to sell out to political interests.

Hockey Night in Canada is a sure-fire audience. It consistently has among the highest ratings in Canadian television. That is just too juicy a market for our politicians to resist.

Almost 160 Canadians made the ultimate sacrifice in our Afghan adventure. Thousands suffered life-altering injuries. We are now negotiating "peace" with the very people we went over there to remove from power.

Sorry folks, that's a war we lost.

Which doesn't slow down the politicians who want to wring a few votes out of it.