Two New Suits

My big thing this evening was trying on my two new suits, with the whole rest of the shebang, meaning: Shirt, tie, tie-clip, shoes n' socks.

What does this have to do with anything dear reader? Absolutely nothing. Except I'll be ready for the job interviews.

How Can We Expect Change When We Don't Propose Anything?

That's it. That's my post. The question in the title. If we realize that we can't "tweak" our present system, and reform it into something sane, then why don't we spend much more time describing the root and branch transformations that are needed and how we are to get there?

Why?

Blog Housekeeping

My brain is too tired and I'm too busy to come up with anything original today. I thought that I'd instead mention two things that I'm doing with the blog-roll.
1. The dude/dudette who posts at "The Cylinder" will be posting mainly at "filasteen" these days, so "filasteen" has been added to the blogroll.
2. Hat-tip to Patrick "Asshole" Ross for having a link to "Canada-Afghanistan Blog." This guy/gal's blog is in support of Canada's "mission" in Afghanistan, ... a position that I find indefensible. However, the guy/gal seems like a decent, intelligent person, so I intend to find out how anyone with half a brain could still support something so compromised after seven years of failure. I'll be perusing (sp? care?) it for the next little while anyway.

Sorry there's nothing profound or entertaining today.

What's that smell?

Smells like chlorine from the pool. But I've been nowhere near a pool. It does kinda have a summery feel to it. Or, a "just back from the recreation centre" feel at least.
My mind is not focused today. I'm tired and depressed.

Why they're failing in Afghanistan

It's an article called "The Afghan Scam" and while it's about the corruption in the US rebuilding effort in Afghanistan, the impact of this blatant, arrogant, cynical criminality cannot fail to have had a negative influence on Canada's "mission" there.

It's hard to overstate the magnitude of the failure of American reconstruction in Afghanistan. While the U.S. has occupied the country -- for seven years and counting -- and efficiently set up a network of bases and prisons, it has yet to restore to Kabul, the capital, a mud brick city slightly more populous than Houston, a single one of the public services its citizens used to enjoy. When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s, they modernized the education system and built power plants, dams, factories, and apartment blocs, still the most coveted in the country. If, in the last seven years, George W. Bush did not get the lights back on in the capital, or the water flowing, or dispose of the sewage or trash, how can we assume Barack Obama will do any better with the corrupt system he's about to inherit?
Between 2002 and 2008, the U.S. pledged $10.4 billion dollars in "development" (reconstruction) aid to Afghanistan, but actually delivered only $5 billion of that amount. Considering that the U.S. is spending $36 billion a year on the war in Afghanistan and about $8 billion a month on the war in Iraq, that $5 billion in development aid looks paltry indeed. But keep in mind that, in a country as poor as Afghanistan, a little well spent money can make a big difference.
The problem is not simply that the Bush administration skimped on aid, but that it handed it over to for-profit contractors. Privatization, as is now abundantly clear, enriches only the privateers and serves only their private interests.

Again, the continued growth of the insurgency, the growing instability, the continued lack of development, ... whatever strands of gold that the deluded want to find amongst the dross of our failed mission are simply not enough to reverse the prevailing pattern.

Too Busy to Blog

But since when has that ever stopped me??? Oh, yeah, ... plenty of times.

Ah well, ... what's the big story today on the CBC?

Something about how Barack Obama will issue an executive order for the closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

I recall this story. Supposedly it's a "challenge" to close it right away, because some of the inmates are so dangerous, crafty and Islamic, that they haven't even been charged with any crimes. They're also capable of smashing out of cells in your typical "super-max" detention centre in the USA (though why they haven't obliterated the plastic hand-cuffs and tent prisons at Guantanamo with their mystical Muslim powers of evil remains an inscrutable mystery) and USians are shitting their pants at the idea of the most evil men ever born being brought to US soil.

What sheer stupidity.

No Longer on Vacation in India

I don't have so much jet-lag, as I didn't sleep from the morning of January 9th, to the 18-hour flight starting on 2:30 am on the 10th, until 8pm in the evening in Canada. I'm a little tired though.

The blog will be more active after today. I notice that I still have Indian alphabets on my tool-bar.

I also notice that Canada's "mission" in Afghanistan turns out to be the same disaster it's been for the past seven years. Therefore, it is still true that I saved a lot of time by basically ignoring all the crapola spewed by right-wing war enthusiasts over the years. They were wrong in 2001 and they continue to be murderously stupidly wrong in 2009.

I also can't fail to note the significance of Ontario's have-not status after decades of de-industrialization and public sector spending cuts. All those lost manufacturing jobs were not replaced by sexy, high-paying jobs in information services, ... this comes as a surprise to nobody but liberal and "conservative" nitwits.