Malalai Joya Expelled From Afghanistan Parliament

This is not top of the hour news, Ms. Malalai Joya's expulsion was a couple of days ago. I'm posting about the significance of this event.

They have used one of her recent comments during an interview as a justification for their move. In the interview, she expressed that the Afghan Parliament is worse than an animal stable whose many members are the murderers and enemies of Afghan people.

On May 21, 2007, with a gross majority, the Parliament dominated by warlords and drug-lords suspended Joya for three years and ordered the High Court to file a case against her. They also directed the Interior Ministry to restrict her movements to within the country. This means she is not allowed to travel outside Afghanistan.

From Human Rights Watch:

On May 22, a recorded version of Joya’s interview was shown during a session of parliament. Afterward, a majority of her colleagues found her guilty of violating article 70 of the Afghan legislature’s rules of procedure, which forbids lawmakers from criticizing one another. Joya’s specific crime was “insulting the institution of parliament.”


Human Rights Watch noted that members of parliament have regularly criticized each other, but no one else has been suspended.

“The article banning criticism of parliament is an unreasonable rule that violates the principle of free speech enshrined in international law and valued around the world,” said Adams. “The Afghan parliament should be setting an example by promoting and protecting free expression, not by stamping it out.”

Human Rights Watch urged the Afghan parliament to take steps to revise article 70 and ensure that elected representatives can speak freely without fear of suspension or lawsuits.

Just so we're clear here; these "Parliamentarians" who are oh-so-sensitive about the dignity of themselves and their institution called for Ms. Malalai Joya to be raped while she was an MP speaking in Parliament. If I have to point out the disgusting hypocrisy at work here, you probably vote for Stephen Harper and are incapable of grasping the monstrosity of this situation.

This article 70 is a pretty convenient little article. It can be ignored until it is useful, and then it can be applied to representatives of oppressed groups (oppressed by these very same parliamentarians) to give a patina of legality to their censorship and double-standards.

Speaking of double standards, KKKate at SDA has mentioned this shameful episode too. In KKKate's brainwashed, moronic eyes, the fact that she was merely expelled from the parliament, as opposed to being taken to a stadium and shot (a-la the Taliban) is supposedly a great thing.

Unfortunately for KKKate, as an astute observer ["Iberia"] points out, Malalai Joya has survived four assasination attempts against her, and she has had to pay for her own personal bodyguards, since the chilvarious warlord/Afghan MPs have refused to pay for her protection (not surprising since they're probably the assholes shooting at her).

No, she's just been threatened with rape and death, and she has survived four assassination attempts.

http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/awmnews/index.php?articleID=68

...but please go on and tell us about what a great democracy Afghanistan has become.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, after a short interruption (where one witless, ignorant clod "submitted" that Western Leftists were putting words into Malalai's mouth regarding her opposition to the present Afghan government) the "commentary" reverted back to shithead cries of "no negotiations with the Taliban" and all sanity verily hath fled.

But let's take the notion that women in Afghanistan are not forbidden from walking around outside now, and can even cast-off their burqhas, and even sit as members in parliament, and that this somehow justifies continued support for a brutal and corrupt puppet government and an imperialist occupation.

I mean, let's establish once again, that the Taliban is an byproduct of US-Saudi-Pakistani support for the anti-Soviet Mujahiddeen (an army of Islamic fundamentalists) and Saudi-Pakistani support for fundamentalist primary schools in the wake of IMF-mandated destruction of Pakistan's secular education system.

In other words, yes, the Taliban was an aberrantly misogynistic regime. Even by the standards of Afghanistan and the Northern Alliance warlords, the Taliban was worse. But they themselves were a product of Western interference. We have no right to crow about defeating the Taliban since we helped to create the fucking problem in the first place. Furthermore, we have no right to crow about defeating the Taliban since the government we've installed is hardly better and in fact worse (mass rapists) in some respects, than the Taliban.

And there's the thing, ... Malalai Joya, the women of Afghanistan, and anti-imperialists in the West are not to be told to fall on their knees in eternal gratitude for our creating a government that is "not-as-bad" and is in fact, plain terrible, by any sane evaluation.

Western democratic-capitalist politicians expect an awful lot for not being as obviously bad as Stalin or Mao. But we should always demand more from politicians than that they not be as bad as the worst mass-murderers on the planet!

And the fact of the matter is, it is because of the vigilance of bleeding-heart complainers like the libertarian left, the non-Soviet, non-Leninist, Marxists included, that our governments limit their mass murder to death squads in the peripheries, and to slow-starvation via IMF structural adjustment programs and via the laws of advanced capitalist market realities, as opposed to deliberate mass slaughter of tens of millions. (As I type these words, I have difficulty even granting them that when I consider history.)

It is because of bleeding-heart lefties that bush II and Harper do not go absolutely hog-wild with the slaughter on the level of Stalin and Mao, and NOT due to any traces of their own humanity or because of the concerns of the factually-morally blind, deluded "torture, execute first, ask questions later" scumbags who cheer them on.

It isn't democracy to be told that "the present government is not as bad as the worst possible option so shut up and do what you're told."

And I will always resist being ground-under by idiots whose grasp of the meaning of democracy is so limited that they actually believe rot like that.

Malalai Joya's travails are further arguments for why we must oppose this occupation, this insane war, and to remove governments such as bush II's, Harper's, or whatever craven Liberal government or Democratic Party government puts itself in their place.

The lion's share of the problems that we, and more importantly, that Malalai Joya, RAWA, and the women of Afghanistan, the people of Afghanistan, now face, can laid at the feet of the right-wing, pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist West. It is past time that they SHUT UP and let sensible people try to repair the damage they have made and rebuild their lives.

In other news, our own putrescent glob of corruption, Prime Minister Stephen Harper had a brainwave that he shared with the troops in Afghanistan:

"Canada's work in Afghanistan is not complete."

Duh, d'yah think Stevie??? The Kabul-Kandahar highway, built at premium rates by a foregin contractor, is now falling apart and has been converted to a toll road. (Afghans have plenty of money, so no prob.) There's still some farmers and their families who haven's starved to death. There's millions of Afghans to be bombed by NATO airplanes. There's millions of desperate refugees being forced back into that country that we haven't placed back on its feet after 5 years of occupation.

I don't have the stomach to read anymore of that lying puke's drivel.

First Places I heard about this travesty:


BreadnRoses

The Galloping Beaver

Creekside