"Because he hates stephen harper/Canada!!!" (The two are interchangeable to a Blithering Idiot, ... I mean Blogging Tory.)
And the request from CF for new boots to help them wade through the blood and fecal matter on the floors of Afghan penal institutions?
"Um, that would be a totally irrelevant point."
All-righty then.
"And why should Canada be responsible for what one government does with its prisoners?"
You mean the government we arm, fund, protect? That one?
"Even if WE gave them the prisoners, it's not our responsibility!"
Sorta like handing someone's kids over to a pedophile? Or French Jews over to the Nazis?
It's difficult at first to grasp the depravity and the cowardice of these vermin. There used to be a time when people would be embarrassed for saying such stupid, evil nonsense.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Conservatives are Scum: Part 7,049
Richard Colvin finally got to speak. The Constipated Party of Canada is going with: "If you didn't actually see it, then nothing happened, and you're making shit up because, well, we don't know." The malingering crowd of "conservative" internet activists are out in force trying to down-play war crimes.
But there's something lovely that I hope the non-vermin in Parliament remember: War crimes are illegal. And when you do stuff that is illegal, you're supposed to go to jail.
We've sent innocent people off to be tortured. I can imagine the gerbil-on-a-wheel thought processes of idiots like Rick Hillier: "US-Americans treat Arabs and Muslims like the scum they are. Things like "the rule of law" and keeping track of your prisoners are for faggots!"
Gahh. I wish I could say something more substantial about this gigantic evil.
In other news, the "conservatives" are sending out pamphlets accusing the Liberal Party of anti-Semitism. A new low for a party that hits new lows every fucking hour.
But there's something lovely that I hope the non-vermin in Parliament remember: War crimes are illegal. And when you do stuff that is illegal, you're supposed to go to jail.
We've sent innocent people off to be tortured. I can imagine the gerbil-on-a-wheel thought processes of idiots like Rick Hillier: "US-Americans treat Arabs and Muslims like the scum they are. Things like "the rule of law" and keeping track of your prisoners are for faggots!"
Gahh. I wish I could say something more substantial about this gigantic evil.
In other news, the "conservatives" are sending out pamphlets accusing the Liberal Party of anti-Semitism. A new low for a party that hits new lows every fucking hour.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Removed "Canada-Afghanistan Blog" from blog-roll.
I should have listend to myself.
After the latest slime from Brian Platt and his Moronic Messiah Terry Glavin, about the heroic Malalai Joya (essentially she's just a silly girl to these he-man super-democrats) and further nitwittery by Platt at his stupid blog, I've decided to remove his link. I don't even bother to check in on Glavin's "transmonsterrattus" (or whatever) anymore.
Here's the nitwittery - Platt went to Joya's book talk and related it thusly:
Is that, or is that not whining about being censored? About how Joya's supporters won't tolerate free debate or being challenged? I responded:
Remarkably, Brian chose to delete my post. He then launched into an amazing explosion of blithering:
Yes Brian. I'm sure you did. In your own mind. It's to be expected though. The witless turd was completely wrong about what would happen to the Shiite "rape your wife free" law. He's been wrong about Afghanistan from the very beginning. Why shouldn't he launch into incoherent babbling when called on his hypocrisy?
Reading the latest Harper's Magazine. There's a story "The Master of Spin Boldak" about Abdul Razik, a drug warlord who is the local commander of the Afghan border police in the town of Spin Boldak. Near the end of the article, the author (Matthieu Aikins) writes:
This is the sort of snake-pit that our brilliant leaders have committed us to. This is why our country is committing war-crimes. In order to continue to fund and arm murderers and druglords. These idiots continue to crow after 8 years of miserable failure and they have the nerve to criticize Malalai Joya? There's nothing to be gained by keeping on top of what the deluded nut-bars are saying. At least in the way that I hoped there might be.
I'm glad I didn't waste my time reading right-wing blogs, or Canadian government websites, touting all the fantastic accomplishments we've made in Afghanistan.I'm busy enough as it is, so I tend to focus on the people who've almost always been right (and when wrong, at least had their hearts in the right place).Because, if I'd been reading pro-war stuff, I'd have been having useless debates with myself and others since 2001. And here it is, 2008, and Afghanistan is still a mess. If I'd been reading pro-war shit, I'd have been wasting precious minutes hearing from Rick Hillier, Stephen Harper, KKKate McMillan, etc., about how the Taliban is in its "last throes" for the past several years, when the fact that we're still there and insurgency is growing, kinda puts that delusion to rest. The fact that the fighting continues and the insurgency grows makes me trust this guy more than the previously mentioned imbeciles.I'm glad that I don't have the time of day for absolute fucking morons. It saves so much time.
After the latest slime from Brian Platt and his Moronic Messiah Terry Glavin, about the heroic Malalai Joya (essentially she's just a silly girl to these he-man super-democrats) and further nitwittery by Platt at his stupid blog, I've decided to remove his link. I don't even bother to check in on Glavin's "transmonsterrattus" (or whatever) anymore.
Here's the nitwittery - Platt went to Joya's book talk and related it thusly:
In fact, at the presentation she was asked what would prevent the Taliban from taking over after a NATO/UN withdrawal. Instead of answering the question, she proceeded into a long speech about how terrible the situation is right now. So I put up my hand and demanded she answer the question. This led to a long, angry exchange between the two of us that lasted about 10 minutes, at which point I was told to shut up by the "antiwar" organizers of the event.
Is that, or is that not whining about being censored? About how Joya's supporters won't tolerate free debate or being challenged? I responded:
Brian, Do you have the intellectual consistency to acknowledge that you tell people to "shut-up" regularly here at your blog? Do you have the intellectual consistency to understand that you can't piss and moan when Joya's supporters tell you to shut-up after a ten minute argument at a public event when other people want to speak? Or are you just going to be the same old total boob that you always are and delete my post? That would be pretty special though, you have to admit. Responding to the revelation of your hypocrisy by yet another example of your hypocrisy.
Remarkably, Brian chose to delete my post. He then launched into an amazing explosion of blithering:
One more comment, to anyone following this story: anyone who was at the presentation would surely admit that I wasn't "monopolizing" any time at all, which is what Dawg claims at his blog. For every 10 seconds that I spoke, Joya spoke for 2 or 3 minutes.My intervention also came after an hour of Joya speaking and taking embarrassingly soft questions from her adoring fans.I also am making no claims about free speech, so ignore that straw man accusation. I got heckled from the back of the room, that's all. I've done my share of heckling in the past.As anyone at the presentation would also acknowledge, I got my point across just fine.
Yes Brian. I'm sure you did. In your own mind. It's to be expected though. The witless turd was completely wrong about what would happen to the Shiite "rape your wife free" law. He's been wrong about Afghanistan from the very beginning. Why shouldn't he launch into incoherent babbling when called on his hypocrisy?
Reading the latest Harper's Magazine. There's a story "The Master of Spin Boldak" about Abdul Razik, a drug warlord who is the local commander of the Afghan border police in the town of Spin Boldak. Near the end of the article, the author (Matthieu Aikins) writes:
Razik’s clandestine smuggling operations have spilled over into the allied fight against the Taliban, thereby bolstering the widely held perception that the ISAF and the central government are favoring certain tribes and marginalizing others. Soon after he assumed power at the border, Razik began to feud with elements of the Noorzai tribe, particularly the Sultanzai, a rival smuggling clan spread between Spin Boldak and Chaman. One notorious incident took place during the summer of 2006 in Panjwaii District, a volatile area just west of Kandahar city. A predominantly Noorzai district, Panjwaii is a lush river valley crisscrossed by thick orchards and mud-walled compounds, and it provides an excellent springboard for attacks on Kandahar city. During the course of the summer, Taliban fighters had infiltrated the valley, and eventually the district governor, an Achakzai, called in Abdul Razik’s border force.
What followed was a debacle. The Noorzais, fearing their tribal enemies, rose up and joined forces with the Taliban. Razik and his men responded to the unexpected resistance with brutality. “They were killing women and children,” said Ustaz Abdul Halim, a Noorzai and former mujahideen commander who lives in Kandahar city. “After that, everyone was with the Taliban.”
Capitalizing on the tribal dynamics, the Taliban installed a Noorzai, Mullah Rauf Lang, as their commander in Panjwaii District. Later that fall, newly arrived Canadian troops in the area would launch Operation Medusa, a large-scale assault that killed hundreds of fighters and scores of civilians in weeks of close combat and withering bombardments. Today, the area remains one of
the most violent in Kandahar Province—the Canadians suffer many of their casualties there and have recently abandoned two untenable forward operating bases in the area—and anti-government sentiments still run high.
This is the sort of snake-pit that our brilliant leaders have committed us to. This is why our country is committing war-crimes. In order to continue to fund and arm murderers and druglords. These idiots continue to crow after 8 years of miserable failure and they have the nerve to criticize Malalai Joya? There's nothing to be gained by keeping on top of what the deluded nut-bars are saying. At least in the way that I hoped there might be.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
thwap is inspired ...
stone d and dru-u-u-unk is more like it.
anyway, he doesn't want to trash the rotten socialism that has made capitalism look bad (same way Stalinism made capitalism look good!) any more than he has to, but the reaction to this video:
to whit:
Gave me pause.
There's something about the freedom in the West. The sort of thing that the faggots and the artists and the feminists have produced, and not the knuckle-dragging imbeciles of the blogging tories, produce.
And there's the whole historical set o' circumstances that makes my mother tongue of English, the LINGUA FRANCA of humanity right now. Y'know, the same language that "The Sweet" is using.
anyway, he doesn't want to trash the rotten socialism that has made capitalism look bad (same way Stalinism made capitalism look good!) any more than he has to, but the reaction to this video:
to whit:
I used to listen to this band via short-receiver radio from behind the iron curtain back in 70s.
Back then I did not speak English and the words were a mystery to me... After 30+ years and with English well understood this band still rocks!!!
Gave me pause.
There's something about the freedom in the West. The sort of thing that the faggots and the artists and the feminists have produced, and not the knuckle-dragging imbeciles of the blogging tories, produce.
And there's the whole historical set o' circumstances that makes my mother tongue of English, the LINGUA FRANCA of humanity right now. Y'know, the same language that "The Sweet" is using.
More on Contrasting 1929 With Today
Earlier, I brought up some differences between 1929 (the year the Great Depression began) and today. Among those differences there is the more timely use of counter-cyclical fiscal policy, the continued easing of monetary policy, a larger public sector and, even if I didn't mention it last time I'll mention it now, greater income support programs (unemployment insurance, general welfare assistance) relative to what we had in 1929.
All of these things have worked to prevent us from having slipped into a downward economic spiral as happened between 1929 and 1932 (the worst year of the Great Depression). Obviously though, we're not out of the woods yet. Unemployment (especially in the USA) continues to rise, along with bankruptcies and foreclosures. Supposedly the big bust in commercial real-estate is still to hit. Some economists have said that employment is a "lagging indicator" meaning that it takes a while for unemployment to rise in tandem with a financial meltdown and credit crunch and then it takes a while for employment to rise after the financial and credit crises have been resolved.
The problem with that analysis is that there doesn't appear to be any indication that there's going to be any sector producing good, stable employment for large numbers of people anytime soon. We're going to be mired in an even more dismal labour market than we've had since 1990, and this time the "credit" (re: DEBT) that sustained the expansion of household consumption is tapped-out.
So, are we still headed for economic Armageddon?
Perhaps. Here's the thing. It might be possible for us to limp along like this as a society for a number of years. The factors I mentioned earlier still have a lot of life in them, especially government counter-cyclical spending. All of the weeping and wailing about exploding deficits is misinformed, dangerously simplistic nonsense. Crooks and Liars had an interesting graph that serves once again to dispel all this deficit hysteria we've been conditioned to feel but which should have been forever dispelled by Linda McQuaig's bestseller: Shooting the Hippo.
We are not in any sort of danger of hitting a "deficit wall." Neither is the United States. We aren't today and we weren't in 1993 when Paul Martin and Jean Chretien were slashing billions in needed public services while simultaneously giving away billions in tax-cuts to the wealthy and the corporations.
Even after years of bush II's tax-cuts and deficits, and Obama's stimulus spending, the USA's debt-to-GDP ratio is still under 60 percent. I once read somewhere that the "debt-wall" that a nation crashes into and then becomes unable to borrow anymore money is hit at a debt-to-GDP ratio of 80 percent, but this is bullshit. Japan has a debt-to-GDP ratio of almost 120% and it's in no danger. The simple fact of the matter is that a Canadian household with an income of $100,000 and with no other outstanding loans or credit card debt except for a $300,000 mortgage has a debt-to-householdGDP ratio of 300 percent. And when a couple making 100 g's a year buy a $300,000 house, nobody shows up screaming at them for burdening their kids with a crippling level of debt.
The point is, Canada, the USA, the whole industrialized world, can limp along at this anaemic level of economic growth for years to come with no danger of ever hitting a "debt wall." Of course, elites will continue to propagate the easily-demolished claim that all of these necessary deficits (for insufficient counter-cyclical spending on construction projects and military spending AND for continued financial sector bail-outs) are going to require belt-tightening and social welfare cuts, education cuts, etc., in order to prevent us from going completely bankrupt, and that brings me back to the central problem.
We COULD still have an economic collapse because the causes of the 2008 collapse are still with us, and under the deluded policies of our elites, becoming even greater. There is simply nothing in the real economy that points towards sustainable economic growth. The last few years of the bush II bubble were built on deficit spending (with USA military spending being about the only thing that "benefited" ordinary US-Americans) and a real-estate/financial bubble built on massive fraud.
The wars continue, but the real-estate bubble has collapsed. We now have a stock-market bubble based on the US Federal Reserves expansion of the money supply, which is unsustainable. Meanwhile, the elites have completely failed to learn their lesson and instead of directing some of the wealth back into households to spend in the real economy, or to prevent homelessness and bankruptcies from exploding, are insanely trying to squeeze yet more blood from ordinary people's bodies. They're laying people off, in both the public and the private sectors, and calling in debts.
The way I see it, most all of us go through life hoping for the best. Thinking "it's going to be okay" when for the vast majority of us, it doesn't end okay. We all die and most of us die painfully and in fear. Very few of us get the uplifting "good death" drifting painlessly off to the big sleep after having shared our last affections for our loved ones gathered 'round. We all say "it's going to be okay" simply to get through day to day.
It's the same with elites. They imagine "it's going to be okay" while they continue to plunder and reinforce the patterns that almost did them in the last time. For them, this has not been so bad. In the USA, the tax-payers rescued them and instead of unemployment they're getting $21 billion dollars in bonuses. Rather than see the trauma of the working class as a problem, they see it as an opportunity. Manufacturing is a good environment for trade unions. It's awesome when manufacturing jobs go to dictatorships in the global South, because it destroys the union movement in the home countries where you can't just shoot union leaders like you can in Indonesia or Colombia. Using the deficit as an excuse to slash the public sector is another way to destroy those pesky union movements. Get everybody working in low-paying, uncertain service sector jobs and the whole working class can be tamed into submissiveness. Overburdened with debt and with no job security, you can ask anything you want from them. And, "it's going to be alright" because, well, it just will.
Who cares that these people will be less capable of sustaining the consumption levels that were totally unrealasitic (but for expanding credit-card debt and an imaginary rise in real-estate wealth) for the past twenty years? Who cares that this continued shovelling of taxpayer dollars relies on an economy that hasn't yet gone completely down the toilet?
Well, they should care. Because it might be impossible to sustain this nightmarish policy, even on it's own terms. To speak nothing of the possibility of a democratic revolt as the injustice of this system is stripped naked for all to see, as elites resort to such blatant theft to sustain themselves.
And this all ignores the reality that we're headed for an environmental catastrophe that requires we direct the bulk of our resources and talents to something other than propping-up a bunch of insular, selfish pricks in the banking and investment industries.
That's enough for today.
All of these things have worked to prevent us from having slipped into a downward economic spiral as happened between 1929 and 1932 (the worst year of the Great Depression). Obviously though, we're not out of the woods yet. Unemployment (especially in the USA) continues to rise, along with bankruptcies and foreclosures. Supposedly the big bust in commercial real-estate is still to hit. Some economists have said that employment is a "lagging indicator" meaning that it takes a while for unemployment to rise in tandem with a financial meltdown and credit crunch and then it takes a while for employment to rise after the financial and credit crises have been resolved.
The problem with that analysis is that there doesn't appear to be any indication that there's going to be any sector producing good, stable employment for large numbers of people anytime soon. We're going to be mired in an even more dismal labour market than we've had since 1990, and this time the "credit" (re: DEBT) that sustained the expansion of household consumption is tapped-out.
So, are we still headed for economic Armageddon?
Perhaps. Here's the thing. It might be possible for us to limp along like this as a society for a number of years. The factors I mentioned earlier still have a lot of life in them, especially government counter-cyclical spending. All of the weeping and wailing about exploding deficits is misinformed, dangerously simplistic nonsense. Crooks and Liars had an interesting graph that serves once again to dispel all this deficit hysteria we've been conditioned to feel but which should have been forever dispelled by Linda McQuaig's bestseller: Shooting the Hippo.
We are not in any sort of danger of hitting a "deficit wall." Neither is the United States. We aren't today and we weren't in 1993 when Paul Martin and Jean Chretien were slashing billions in needed public services while simultaneously giving away billions in tax-cuts to the wealthy and the corporations.
Even after years of bush II's tax-cuts and deficits, and Obama's stimulus spending, the USA's debt-to-GDP ratio is still under 60 percent. I once read somewhere that the "debt-wall" that a nation crashes into and then becomes unable to borrow anymore money is hit at a debt-to-GDP ratio of 80 percent, but this is bullshit. Japan has a debt-to-GDP ratio of almost 120% and it's in no danger. The simple fact of the matter is that a Canadian household with an income of $100,000 and with no other outstanding loans or credit card debt except for a $300,000 mortgage has a debt-to-householdGDP ratio of 300 percent. And when a couple making 100 g's a year buy a $300,000 house, nobody shows up screaming at them for burdening their kids with a crippling level of debt.
The point is, Canada, the USA, the whole industrialized world, can limp along at this anaemic level of economic growth for years to come with no danger of ever hitting a "debt wall." Of course, elites will continue to propagate the easily-demolished claim that all of these necessary deficits (for insufficient counter-cyclical spending on construction projects and military spending AND for continued financial sector bail-outs) are going to require belt-tightening and social welfare cuts, education cuts, etc., in order to prevent us from going completely bankrupt, and that brings me back to the central problem.
We COULD still have an economic collapse because the causes of the 2008 collapse are still with us, and under the deluded policies of our elites, becoming even greater. There is simply nothing in the real economy that points towards sustainable economic growth. The last few years of the bush II bubble were built on deficit spending (with USA military spending being about the only thing that "benefited" ordinary US-Americans) and a real-estate/financial bubble built on massive fraud.
The wars continue, but the real-estate bubble has collapsed. We now have a stock-market bubble based on the US Federal Reserves expansion of the money supply, which is unsustainable. Meanwhile, the elites have completely failed to learn their lesson and instead of directing some of the wealth back into households to spend in the real economy, or to prevent homelessness and bankruptcies from exploding, are insanely trying to squeeze yet more blood from ordinary people's bodies. They're laying people off, in both the public and the private sectors, and calling in debts.
The way I see it, most all of us go through life hoping for the best. Thinking "it's going to be okay" when for the vast majority of us, it doesn't end okay. We all die and most of us die painfully and in fear. Very few of us get the uplifting "good death" drifting painlessly off to the big sleep after having shared our last affections for our loved ones gathered 'round. We all say "it's going to be okay" simply to get through day to day.
It's the same with elites. They imagine "it's going to be okay" while they continue to plunder and reinforce the patterns that almost did them in the last time. For them, this has not been so bad. In the USA, the tax-payers rescued them and instead of unemployment they're getting $21 billion dollars in bonuses. Rather than see the trauma of the working class as a problem, they see it as an opportunity. Manufacturing is a good environment for trade unions. It's awesome when manufacturing jobs go to dictatorships in the global South, because it destroys the union movement in the home countries where you can't just shoot union leaders like you can in Indonesia or Colombia. Using the deficit as an excuse to slash the public sector is another way to destroy those pesky union movements. Get everybody working in low-paying, uncertain service sector jobs and the whole working class can be tamed into submissiveness. Overburdened with debt and with no job security, you can ask anything you want from them. And, "it's going to be alright" because, well, it just will.
Who cares that these people will be less capable of sustaining the consumption levels that were totally unrealasitic (but for expanding credit-card debt and an imaginary rise in real-estate wealth) for the past twenty years? Who cares that this continued shovelling of taxpayer dollars relies on an economy that hasn't yet gone completely down the toilet?
Well, they should care. Because it might be impossible to sustain this nightmarish policy, even on it's own terms. To speak nothing of the possibility of a democratic revolt as the injustice of this system is stripped naked for all to see, as elites resort to such blatant theft to sustain themselves.
And this all ignores the reality that we're headed for an environmental catastrophe that requires we direct the bulk of our resources and talents to something other than propping-up a bunch of insular, selfish pricks in the banking and investment industries.
That's enough for today.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Economists as Priests
It's not an original idea, but here's some of my thoughts:
Priests deliver an unrealistic code of ethics and say that divergence from this code will bring disaster and adherence to the code will bring happiness and success n' life. There's enough commonsense in this ethical code ("do not kill," "don't be a drunkard," "don't have promiscuous sex with all and sundry") that people can fool themselves into believing the whole dog's breakfast makes sense in a vague sorta way. Until the inanities and ridiculousness are just too apparent or personally inconvenient ("don't wear wool and cotton," "don't ever have a lustful thought," "give all your money to the church and walk the earth preaching the word o' God").
If you follow all the priest's instructions, you'll be fine. Except it's impossible to follow them all. ("Oh no! I had a lustful thought!") But even if you could follow everything to the letter ("Marge everything is a sin. Have you ever sat down and read this thing? (holds up the bible) -Technically we're not allowed to go to the bathroom. ") it's impossible that everything is going to work out. Because shit happens. And because we all die. And there's no evidence that we go to a better place and our just rewards after we die. Not even after centuries of people looking for evidence. At the end it all rests on faith. And if you do what the religion asks and things go disastrously for you here on Earth, well, maybe God's got a sick bet with Satan and they're both testing your faith.
So for capitalist economics: There aren't supposed to be any regulations or government interventions, except to defend property and enforce contracts. But once you have a government strong enough to do those things, it's impossible to believe that wealthy people won't try to co-opt it to their own purposes. We're supposed to live within our means, only the economy is 70% based on consumer spending that has to grow every year. But there must be no deficit spending, ... except when that benefits the powerful, then their moral standards accept reality.
Mainstream economists who bleat about corruption, moral hazards, market distortions, etc., ... are to business people, like the priest who yammers about unrealistic moral codes (whilst downloading kiddie-porn 'natch) is to the men in the community who openly reject them whenever these codes become too unrealistic.
Priests deliver an unrealistic code of ethics and say that divergence from this code will bring disaster and adherence to the code will bring happiness and success n' life. There's enough commonsense in this ethical code ("do not kill," "don't be a drunkard," "don't have promiscuous sex with all and sundry") that people can fool themselves into believing the whole dog's breakfast makes sense in a vague sorta way. Until the inanities and ridiculousness are just too apparent or personally inconvenient ("don't wear wool and cotton," "don't ever have a lustful thought," "give all your money to the church and walk the earth preaching the word o' God").
If you follow all the priest's instructions, you'll be fine. Except it's impossible to follow them all. ("Oh no! I had a lustful thought!") But even if you could follow everything to the letter ("Marge everything is a sin. Have you ever sat down and read this thing? (holds up the bible) -Technically we're not allowed to go to the bathroom. ") it's impossible that everything is going to work out. Because shit happens. And because we all die. And there's no evidence that we go to a better place and our just rewards after we die. Not even after centuries of people looking for evidence. At the end it all rests on faith. And if you do what the religion asks and things go disastrously for you here on Earth, well, maybe God's got a sick bet with Satan and they're both testing your faith.
So for capitalist economics: There aren't supposed to be any regulations or government interventions, except to defend property and enforce contracts. But once you have a government strong enough to do those things, it's impossible to believe that wealthy people won't try to co-opt it to their own purposes. We're supposed to live within our means, only the economy is 70% based on consumer spending that has to grow every year. But there must be no deficit spending, ... except when that benefits the powerful, then their moral standards accept reality.
Mainstream economists who bleat about corruption, moral hazards, market distortions, etc., ... are to business people, like the priest who yammers about unrealistic moral codes (whilst downloading kiddie-porn 'natch) is to the men in the community who openly reject them whenever these codes become too unrealistic.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Meet General Karl W. Eikenberry
From Patrick Cockbourn at CounterPunch.Org, we get a blistering criticism of the Afghan government, including my first hearing of retired general Karl W. Eikenberry:
It's not the case that I've discovered the intelligence of a military man only because I happen to agree with the core of what he says. The reason that I think this is important is that the opinion of such a man ought to count with the fuckheads, liars and fools who have been telling us, year after year, for EIGHT FUCKING YEARS, that "we're winning" in Afghanistan, as things get progressively worse.
In other news, I hope to get to Toronto on Wednesday, November 18th, to see Malalai Joya on her book tour for A Woman Among Warlords. I can't resist pointing out (perhaps not for the first time) that pro-war asshole Terry Glavin likes to rest on his first-hand knowledge of Afghanistan while indulging in his deluded rants, and he uses this experience as if it nullifies the fact that he's been totally wrong-headed, advocating continued Canadian killing and dying for a thoroughly corrupt, discredited puppet government. At the same time that he crows about his visiting Afghanistan, he denigrates Malalai Joya's condemnation of the NATO debacle.
What is it, what simple mental block is it, that causes an otherwise intelligent man to such depths of buffoonery, hypocrisy and delusion?
In a leaked cable to Washington sent last week, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Gen Karl W. Eikenberry, argues that it would be a mistake to send reinforcements until the government of President Hamid Karzai demonstrates that it will act against corruption and mismanagement.
General Eikenberry knows what he is talking about because he has long experience of Afghanistan. A recently retired three star general, he was responsible for training the Afghan security forces from 2002 to 2003 and was top US commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007.
It's not the case that I've discovered the intelligence of a military man only because I happen to agree with the core of what he says. The reason that I think this is important is that the opinion of such a man ought to count with the fuckheads, liars and fools who have been telling us, year after year, for EIGHT FUCKING YEARS, that "we're winning" in Afghanistan, as things get progressively worse.
In other news, I hope to get to Toronto on Wednesday, November 18th, to see Malalai Joya on her book tour for A Woman Among Warlords. I can't resist pointing out (perhaps not for the first time) that pro-war asshole Terry Glavin likes to rest on his first-hand knowledge of Afghanistan while indulging in his deluded rants, and he uses this experience as if it nullifies the fact that he's been totally wrong-headed, advocating continued Canadian killing and dying for a thoroughly corrupt, discredited puppet government. At the same time that he crows about his visiting Afghanistan, he denigrates Malalai Joya's condemnation of the NATO debacle.
What is it, what simple mental block is it, that causes an otherwise intelligent man to such depths of buffoonery, hypocrisy and delusion?
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