Friday, 20 April 2018

REAL HEROES

Much is made of any braindead celebrity who contributes a few pennies to  charities, or who goes somewhere there are " underprivileged" living conditions. The real heroes are the ones out there every day, calling out the powers that be on all of the injustice in this fucked up world, without any thought of self or publicity for their own selfish reasons. Read about one now :
Michael Slate Interviews Ann Wright on the 2018 Gaza Freedom Flotilla:

“I see what's happening and my humanity says I have to speak out”

April 16, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The following is an interview with peace activist Ann Wright, aired on March 13, 2018, on The Michael Slate Show on KPFK Pacifica radio. The entire interview can be heard at themichaelslateshow.com. The Michael Slate Showairs every Friday at 10 am Pacific Time on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. The show can be streamed live here and people can listen to or download archived shows here.
Revolution/revcom.us features interviews from The Michael Slate Show to acquaint our readers with the views of significant figures in art, theatre, music and literature, science, sport, and politics. The views expressed by those interviewed are, of course, their own; and they are not responsible for the views published elsewhere by Revolution/revcom.us.
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Michael Slate: I am really pleased to welcome back to the show Ann Wright. Ann is a retired U.S. Army colonel and a former U.S. diplomat who resigned from the U.S. government in 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq. Ann is a deeply committed peace activist and she became active in Palestinian solidarity issues after visiting Gaza in 2009 after the 27-day Israeli war on Gaza. Ann has sailed on three of the more than two dozen Gaza Flotillas including the more recent 2016 Women’s Boat carrying humanitarian aid and construction materials to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Ann is going to talk with us now about what’s going on with the new Gaza Flotilla scheduled for sometime this summer. Ann, welcome back to the show.
Ann Wright: Thank you Michael! It’s a pleasure to be with you.
Michael Slate: Let’s get into this. What is the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and the upcoming 2018 Gaza Flotilla?
Ann Wright: Well, we are going to have a flotilla. Last year we had two boats—one of them just didn’t work as we were taking off from Spain so we ended up with one boat, the Women’s Boat to Gaza. This time we’ll have four and two of them will be starting out in Scandinavia because part of this is to have educational events all the way to Gaza, all through Europe so that we can continue to talk to people about the horrific, horrific conditions in Gaza and mobilize support for Palestinians. By the year 2020, only two years from now, the World Health Organization says that Gaza will become uninhabitable because of the lack of water, the lack of electricity, the sewage problems that are going on there. The blockade of Gaza has just been horrific for those people, those two million people in there. So we sail to educate people about what’s happening and to let the Palestinians in Gaza know that we’re not forgetting them, that we are going to sail boats and hopefully we’ll be able to get in there.
Michael Slate: Now this year it looks like you’re planning on a bigger kind of outreach where people and boats are coming from a lot of different directions on the way to Gaza. And there is even one grouping of boats that are going up rivers through Europe and then coming out and meeting up with the other people off of the Gaza shore. Let’s talk about that.
Ann Wright: Sure, we hope to have four boats, that’s what we’re planning on, and two of them will come down the waterways from Scandinavia going through Central Europe, through the waterways, rivers, canals. They’re shallow draft boats as one would expect but that really gives us the opportunity to reach more people that live along the waters, the rivers and canals. And then we’ll have two boats that will be going on the outside of Europe, going in the Atlantic Ocean and then making port visits on Atlantic ports in Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, France, Spain and then coming on in to the Mediterranean where the two boats will meet up eventually and then head to Gaza.
Michael Slate: Can you give people a sense of the horrendous conditions facing the people in Gaza? A lot of people only know what they see on the news, but they don’t really know, for example that, as you pointed out, it will be uninhabitable in less than two years. People need to really know about the conditions the people in Gaza are facing.
Ann Wright: Yes, since 2007, now 11 years ago, the Israelis put a blockade, a land and sea blockade around Gaza—which is only 20 miles long and 5 miles wide. The southern border abuts Egypt but the other three borders are totally controlled by the state of Israel as an occupying power so they are the ones that have the authority to stop anything coming in there. This includes food. In fact several years ago one of their ministers of health was quoted as saying, “We’ve put the people of Gaza on a diet. We’re only letting in a certain number of caloric quantities for each person and we’re lowering those quantities.” Right now, less than 4 hours of electricity are coming in per day. The Israelis control all of the electricity that comes into Gaza. It controls all of the water. It controls all of the telephones. It really has Gaza in a squeeze.
And on the naval side, the ocean side, the Mediterranean side, there is a port in Gaza City and 40 years ago the people in Gaza were able to export products and import products but for the last 40 years the Israelis have refused to allow international boats to come in. Although, in 2008 there were two little boats that came in carrying 44 internationals and that then took out some Palestinians that needed health care and some students that had scholarships and couldn’t get out. But really, since late 2008 there have been no international ships that have been allowed to get in. The Israeli Navy has been very brutal in stopping these boats. If you remember in 2010 they stopped our six boats. I was on one of them. The Mavi Marmara is the one where they used lethal force and killed nine people, executed them, unarmed civilians on a ship in international waters and they executed nine people and another person subsequently died from his injuries from his bullets. They wounded over 50 more on the Mavi Marmara. Every one of our boats, including two cargo ships was boarded forcefully. People were tasered, they were beaten up, windows blown out with percussion grenades. And then we were all arrested, taken against our will to a country we didn’t want to go to, Israel, and put in prison, then deported with a 10 year deportation so that now we cannot go into Israel, therefore we cannot go into the West Bank. They keep the boats, they steal the boats and this is larceny on the high seas. This is piracy, what they have been doing is piracy.
We sail to bring attention to what’s happening in Gaza though. That’s our purpose. We don’t want people to forget that they (the people in Gaza) are living in an open-air prison!
Michael Slate: There is an important difference between what's going on this year and what has been going on in the past. Let's talk about the theme this year, because it's not so much that you're trying to get into Gaza, but you're actually making a statement with the boats and the way that they're coming in, and what they're highlighting is the life, or the killing of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Ann Wright: Well, that's right. Can you imagine living in this tiny little place? It's one of the most densely populated places in the world. Two million people live in this tiny, tiny little area. They have no real control over their lives. Israel can turn off all the electricity any time they want to. They have 24-hour-a-day drones over Gaza. Any time they want to they can push a button and blow up a car that they say, well there was somebody in there that was going to threaten the state of Israel. But when you look at it, the numbers of innocent people who are killed in all these attacks are horrendous.
And right now, with the third Friday of the Great Return March, where Palestinians are non-violently approaching a fence that is set off by 1,000 feet of their own territory, which the Israelis have claimed is the buffer zone. But it's Palestinian territory where there should be agricultural products. But Israel has said, if you come in here we'll shoot you—rather than putting a border on their own land—use their own land if they want to have a border area.
But no, they put up a free fire zone, a kill on sight zone, and they have remote controlled machine guns that are set up so they can cover all of that territory. In fact a couple of years ago, it was a women's military unit that were the machine gun killers. They sit in air-conditioned rooms and watch videos of the area, just kind of like a drone pilot, and then they see someone—and they can do facial recognition. They know every single person there is in Gaza, because they know every building. They know every telephone there because it's an Israeli telephone exchange. So they just kill at will.
It's a horrific situation. The statistics are that half the kids in Gaza are having emotional problems—I would say it would be like 95% of the kids in Gaza—because of the horrific oppression that every single day you don't know whether your house is going to be blown up, or if you have a car it's going to be blown up, or what's going to happen. Because you hear these assassin drones above you. I've been there several times, like eight times, and you hear this hum-mmm-mmm-mmm. And you may not even be able to see it up above you, but you can hear this thing, and then all of a sudden, a flash, and that Hellfire rocket comes down and blows up a building.
Michael Slate: When I'm listening to you, it really does emphasize that there's a genocidal thing going on against the Palestinian people. People are just being wantonly killed. The Palestinian people are human and demanding that the world recognize that. Is that a big part of what's motivating folks like yourself to go to Gaza on this ship?
Ann Wright: Indeed it is. And in fact, our campaigns over the years, several of them have been named “Stay Human.” You stay human as an international thing; I see what's happening and my humanity says I have to speak out. I have to do something to bring world attention to what's happening to the Palestinians. And for the Palestinians to be non-violent in the face of the violence against them. Of course, there are some militant groups that have fired rockets into Israel, that's for sure. But look at the massive, massive Israeli military forces used against essentially an unarmed civilian population, how the Israelis kill at will, and are trying, as your earlier speaker said, trying to get the conditions so bad that people will be forced to leave because they cannot have any clean water, they can't have clean air. The concentration of fecal material in the air in Gaza is one of the highest in the world because the sewage plant is always the first facility that Israel goes after and blows up. And then they won't let spare parts come in to get it fixed. So, raw sewage is everywhere, and it dries, so the fecal material is in the air. And then the waters where fishermen, to try to get some protein for the people of Gaza, are forced to stay within, it varies from three to five miles offshore, having to fish in this polluted water because the Israelis have boats out there that will blow them up, kill the fishermen if they come out any further to try to get in cleaner water.
It is a horrific, terrible, nasty situation. The Israeli government is really conducting slow genocide on the people of Gaza.
Michael Slate: Can you tell people how they can get involved?
Ann Wright: The boats will sail from mid-May, and then be coming through Europe all through May. If you go online, we have a Facebook 2018 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, US Section. We've got information there. Or if you go on NationBuilder, 2018 Gaza Flotilla, we've got lots of information there. So the ability of people to make monetary contributions is great. Writing about what you feel about Gaza is important. And if you happen to be in Europe any time during the summer and want to help out and be on a ground crew and even possibly on one of the legs of this massive voyage, get in touch with us through NationBuilder and we'll talk to you about perhaps helping us out in Europe.
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Thursday, 19 April 2018

# 1 TERRORIST

When it comes to using or supplying chemical weapons , there is no one who can even come close to the u.s.a. Trump continues to flaunt his ignorance ( or perhaps outright deception ) when he tries to call out others for doing what the amerikkkans have been doing for years. The article below is extremely illuminating for exposing the hypocrisy of the u.s. regime.
Middle East History 101:

Trump Condemns Iran, Russia for Being Associated with Mass Murder, Supporting Brutal Tyrants... Yeah, but Who’s No. 1?

April 16, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Friday night, in justifying the illegitimate U.S., British, and French attack on Syria, Trump warned Syria’s sponsors:
To Iran and to Russia I ask: What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children? The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. No nation can succeed in the long run by supporting rogue states, brutal tyrants and murderous dictators.
The murder of innocent men, women, and children?! Supporting brutal tyrants and murderous dictators?! If you came in late and didn’t know who was speaking, you might have assumed someone was presenting a history of America’s actions in the Middle East over the last 70 years!
Russia and Iran are, no question, reactionary, bloodstained oppressors who no one should support. But when it comes to mass murder and backing ruthless tyrants, it’s “USA, USA, USA,” number one!

70 Years of Mass Murder and Supporting Brutal Tyrants

Trump spoke as if the U.S. would never think of committing any of the horrendous crimes he accused Syria of carrying out and Iran and Russia of supporting.
Yet for the last 70 years, from one end of the greater Middle East to another, that’s precisely what America has done. In the last two decades alone, it has carried out or backed massacres of innocent men, women, and children in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya.
The U.S. has funded, armed, and backed Israel’s ongoing, genocidal ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and its wars of aggression, from Israel’s founding in 1948 to today. America helped fuel the reactionary seven-year slaughter in Syria and has supplied the bombs for Saudi Arabia’s ongoing, genocidal war in Yemen. The U.S. has installed “murderous dictators” and CIA lackeys in Iran, Egypt, and Jordan, and backed them in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and beyond. It has threatened, intervened, blockaded, and bombed one country after another.
The U.S. rulers claim all these atrocities are carried out for the “greater good” of protecting or liberating suffering people. They’re lying. These ruthless crimes have been carried out to maintain and enforce American domination of the Middle East, a key cog in a ruthless global empire based on exploiting and oppressing literally hundreds of millions around the world.

American Carnage: Four Million and Counting, in Iraq Alone!

It would take volumes to chronicle every crime and atrocity the U.S. and its allies have carried out in the Middle East since the end of World War 2. But what the U.S. has done in Iraq alone makes Assad’s slaughters pale in comparison.
Add up the 3,000 to 5,000 members and supporters of the Iraqi Communist Party murdered in the 1963 CIA-backed Baath Party coup. The 105,000 Iraqis killed in the U.S.-fueled 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. The 100,000 and more during or immediately after the U.S.’s 1991 Desert Storm invasion. The estimated 1.2 million Iraqis, including 500,000 children, who died from starvation or disease during the 1990s due to U.S. sanctions and destruction of Iraq’s electrical and water systems. Then, add in the astronomical number of Iraqis who’ve been killed or died as a result of America’s 2003 invasion, occupation, and ongoing bombing: 2.4 million, according to the most accurate studies available! That comes to a conservative estimate of the blood of four million Iraqis on U.S. hands—and millions more whose lives have been shattered in countless ways.
When are these figures ever reported in the U.S. media? Very, very rarely, because they might call into question the relentlessly promoted myth that America is a force for good in the world. That it may make “mistakes,” but it doesn’t deliberately commit crimes and atrocities on a massive scale.

Mass Chemical Warfare, American Style

Trump self-righteously justified attacking Syria in the name of upholding the global ban on using chemical weapons—because, he declared, they’re “uniquely dangerous, not only because they inflict gruesome suffering, but because even small amounts can unleash widespread devastation.”
Chemical weapons are a gruesome horror, but even if Assad has carried out all the chemical assaults he’s accused of, his crimes would still be a shadow of the chemical horrors the U.S. facilitated, supplied, and directed during the Iran-Iraq war.
At the time, the vampire imperialists ruling the U.S. wanted to make sure Iraq didn’t lose. So the U.S. and its European allies supplied Hussein with the makings of chemical and biological weapons. One report detailed 70 shipments of biological agents from the U.S. to Iraq, including anthrax, botulism, and E. coli bacillus. The U.S. sent Iraq chemicals needed for nerve gas. These death merchants also supplied the tools, equipment, helicopters, and shells to make and deliver them. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officers secretly provided detailed intelligence to Iraq to guide and “calibrate” its mustard gas attacks on Iranian ground troops. The toll of those suffering agonizing deaths and injuries: between 50,000 and 100,000, including many civilians, according to Iranian estimates.
After the war, Saddam used those same chemical weapons with horrendous effect on Iraq’s Kurds, massacring as many as 60,000 people, including as many as 5,000 in one gas attack at Halabja, according to an Iraq scholar. A DIA officer told the New York Times that the Pentagon “wasn’t so horrified by Iraq’s use of gas. It was just another way of killing people—whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn’t make any difference.”
Again, America’s toll in Iraq is but one example of the death and suffering it has inflicted—and continues to inflict—across the Middle East and beyond.
That includes continuing to use banned or deadly chemical and antipersonnel weapons. The U.S. fired depleted uranium shells in the 1991 Persian Gulf War that sickened thousands of Iraqis for years after. In 2004 during its siege of Fallujah under General “Mad Dog” Mattis (now Trump’s secretary of defense), the U.S. rained down cluster bombs, which explode into hundreds of antipersonnel bomblets that children can unsuspectingly pick up, and dropped white phosphorous—a chemical firebomb that can melt skin and burn right down to the bone. And today the U.S. and Britain are supplying Saudi Arabia with cluster bombs that murder and maim “innocent men, women and children” in Yemen.

Trump/Pence—Threatening Mass Murder on a Global Scale

As barbaric and horrendous as America’s Middle East toll has been, the Trump/Pence regime is poised and driven to take its crimes to a whole new level, a level that could imperil millions in the region, and possibly lead to a catastrophic global confrontation, one that could go nuclear.
Trump has already uncritically praised and supported murdering tyrants like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey. He’s hailing and arming the medieval beheaders ruling Saudi Arabia. He’s removed restraints on U.S. bombing campaigns in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan—and civilian casualties are skyrocketing. He’s vilified Muslims and refugees, targeting and threatening hundreds of millions around the world. And now he and his war cabinet have Iran and North Korea in their gunsights.
Come to grips with this history. Face this potentially existential danger represented by the Trump/Pence regime. Break with the notion that America is a force for good in the world and start resisting its crimes!

Stop Thinking Like Americans, Start Thinking About Humanity!

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Wednesday, 18 April 2018

TRUTH DOESN'T LIVE HERE

When it comes to foreign policy, the kkkanadian media rarely, if ever, offers any real criticism. Everyone accepts the official line that the military is there to "help", and not in any actual combat role. Lies and more lies. What the fuck are they really doing in Haiti and Afghanistan ?
JUNE 16, 2017 · 11:27

The lies told to justify Canadian foreign policy

Lies, distortions and self-serving obfuscations are to be expected when political and business leaders discuss far away places.
In a recent Toronto Star column Rick Salutin observed that “foreign policy is a truth-free, fact-free zone. When leaders speak on domestic issues, citizens at least have points of reference to check them against. On foreign affairs they blather freely.”
Salutin vividly captures an important dynamic of political life. What do most Canadians know about our government’s actions in Afghanistan or Haiti? Most of us have never been to those countries and don’t know anyone living there, from there or even who’ve been there. We are heavily dependent on media and politicians’ portrayals. But, as I detail in A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Exploitation, international correspondents generally take their cue from the foreign policy establishment or diplomats in the field.
Journalists are prepared to criticize governments and corporations to a certain extent on “domestic” issues, but the spirit of “challenging power” largely disappears regarding foreign policy. One reason is that nationalism remains an important media frame and the dominant media often promotes an “our team” worldview.
Another explanation is the web of state and corporate generated ideas institutes, which I review in A Propaganda System, that shape the international discussion. In a forthcoming second volume I look at the Canadian Left’s contribution to confusing the public about international policies.
The state/corporate nexus operates largely unchallenged in the Global South because there is little in terms of a countervailing force. Instead of criticizing the geo-strategic and corporate interests overwhelmingly driving foreign policy decisions, the social democratic NDP has often supported them and contributed to Canadians’ confusion about this country’s international affairs. The NDP endorsed bombing Serbia and Libya and in recent years they’ve supported military spending, Western policy in the Ukraine and the dispossession of Palestinians. The NDP has largely aligned with the foreign policy establishment or those, as long time NDP MP Libby Davies put it, who believe a “Time Magazine version” of international affairs.
Closely tied to the NDP, labour unions’ relative indifference to challenging foreign policy is another reason why politicians can “blather freely” on international affairs. On many domestic issues organized labour represents a countervailing force to the corporate agenda or state policies. While dwarfed by corporate Canada, unions have significant capacities. They generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual dues and fund or participate in a wide range of socially progressive initiatives such as the Canadian Health Coalition, Canadian Council for Refugees and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. But, unions rarely extend their broader (class) vision of society to international affairs. In fact, sometimes they endorse unjust international policies.
To the extent that politicians’ “blathering” is restrained it is largely by other countries. The recent political conflict in the Ukraine provides an example. Canadian politicians have aggressively promoted a simplistic, self-serving, narrative that has dominated the media-sphere. But, there is a source of power countering this perspective. Moscow financed/controlled media such as RT, Sputnik and others have offered a corrective to the Western line. A comparatively wealthy and powerful state, Russia’s diplomats have also publicly challenged the Canadian media’s one-sided portrayal.
An important, if rarely mentioned, rule of foreign policy is the more impoverished a nation, the greater the gap is likely to be between what Canadian officials say and do. The primary explanation for the gap between what’s said and done is that power generally defines what is considered reality. So, the bigger the power imbalance between Canada and another country the greater Ottawa’s ability to distort their activities.
Haiti provides a stark example. In 2004 Ottawa helped overthrow Haiti’s elected government and then supported an installed regime that killed thousands. Officially, however, Ottawa was “helping” the beleaguered country as part of the “Friends of Haiti” group. And the bill for undermining Haitian democracy, including the salaries of top coup government officials and the training of repressive cops, was largely paid out of Canada’s “aid” to the country.
A stark power imbalance between Ottawa and Port-au-Prince helps explain the gulf between Canadian government claims and reality in Haiti. Describing the country at the time of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s ouster, former Globe and Mailforeign editor Paul Knox observed, “obviously, in the poorest country of the Americas, the government is going to have fewer resources at its disposal to mount a PR exercise or offensive if it feels itself besieged.”
With a $300 US million total budget for a country of eight million, the Haitian government had limited means to explain their perspective to the world either directly or through international journalists. On the other hand, the Washington-Paris-Ottawa coup triumvirate had great capacity to propagate their perspective (at the time the Canadian International Development Agency and Foreign Affairs each spent 10 times the entire Haitian budget and the Department of National Defence 60 times). The large Canadian embassy in Port-au-Prince worked to influence Canadian reporters in the country and their efforts were supplanted by the Haiti desks at CIDA and Foreign Affairs as well as the two ministries’ communications departments and Canadian military officials.
While an imbalance in communications resources partly explains the coverage, there is also a powerful ideological component. The media’s biased coverage of Haiti cannot be divorced from ‘righteous Canada’ assumptions widely held among the intelligentsia. As quoted in an MA thesis titled “Covering the coup: Canadian news reporting, journalists, and sources in the 2004 Haiti crisis”, CBC reporter Neil McDonald told researcher Isabel McDonald the Canadian government was “one of the most authoritative sources on conflict resolution in the world.”
According to Isabel McDonald’s summary, the prominent correspondent also said, “it was crazy to imagine Canada would be involved in a coup” and that “Canadian values were incompatible with extreme inequality or race-based hegemony”, which Ottawa’s policies clearly exacerbated in Haiti. (Neil Macdonald also said his most trusted sources for background information in Haiti came from Canadian diplomatic circles, notably CIDA where his cousins worked. The CBC reporter also said he consulted the Canadian ambassador in Port-au-Prince to determine the most credible human rights advocate in Haiti. Ambassador Kenneth Cook directed him to Pierre Espérance, a coup backer who fabricated a “massacre” used to justify imprisoning the constitutional prime minister and interior minister. When pressed for physical evidence Espérance actually said the 50 bodies “might have been eaten by wild dogs.”)
The Canadian Council on Africa provides another example of the rhetoric that results from vast power imbalances and paternalist assumptions. Run by Canadian corporations operating on the continent, the council said it “focuses on the future of the African economy and the positive role that Canada can play meeting some of the challenges in Africa.”
Similar to the Canadian Council on Africa, the Canadian American Business Council, Canada China Business Council and Canada-UK Chamber of Commerce also seek to advance members’ profit-making potential. But, the other lobby groups don’t claim humanitarian objectives. The primary difference between the Canadian Council on Africa and the other regional lobby organizations is the power imbalance between Canada/the West and African countries, as well as the anti-African paternalism that dominates Canadian political culture. A group of Canadian corporations claiming their aim was to meet the social challenges of the US or UK would sound bizarre and if they said as much about China they would be considered seditious. (Ironically the US-, Britain- and China-focused lobby groups can better claim the aid mantle since foreign investment generally has greater social spinoffs in more independent/better regulated countries.) But, paternalist assumptions are so strong — and Africans’ capacity to assert themselves within Canadian political culture so limited — that a lobby group largely representing corporations that displace impoverished communities to extract natural resources is, according to the Canadian Council on Africa’s previous mission statement, “committed to the economic development of a modern and competitive Africa.”
To counter the “fact free zone” individuals need to educate themselves on international issues, by seeking alternative sources of information. More important, we should strengthen internationalist social movements and left media consciously seeking to restrict politicians’ ability to “blather freely”
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Tuesday, 17 April 2018

PEACEKEEPING IS A LIE

And here's one from 2006 about kkkanada's alleged peacekeeping role in Afghanistan.

Canada/NATO Invasion of Afghanistan Sows Destruction and Misery

By Roger Annis and Ian Beeching
Global Research, October 09, 2006
Socialist Voice 9 October 2006
Region: , 
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A few months following the launch of the Canada-led NATO invasion of southern Afghanistan in late 2005, the newly elected Prime Minister of Canada told assembled Canadian soldiers in Kandahar that the goal of the foreign occupation of Afghanistan was to “create a democratic, prosperous, modern country that can be a model in this part of the world.”
An October 6 editorial in the Globe and Mail national daily says the military defeat of the “Taliban” is “a superfluous sideshow to the real Canadian mission of painting schools and drilling wells.”
The reality in Afghanistan puts the lie to these stated goals. Occupation forces have brought widespread death, misery and destruction to the country. The invasion and occupation of southern Afghanistan is degenerating into a military and political debacle for the four countries engaged — Canada, Britain, the U.S. and Holland.
Senlis Council report On September 5, 2006, the Senlis Council, a prominent think tank based in Britain, released a comprehensive report on the U.S./NATO occupation of Afghanistan. It says,
“Five years of international presence in the country aimed at increasing the living standards of the Afghan population have failed to make any measured improvements in the accessibility and quality of health and educational services in most of Afghanistan, beyond the confines of Kabul.”
The report was compiled by a large number of researchers based in Afghanistan and it reveals a country living a social and humanitarian disaster.
“Despite promises from the U.S.-led international community guaranteeing to provide the resources and assistance necessary for its reconstruction and development needs, Afghanistan’s people are starving to death. Afghanistan continues to rank at the bottom of most poverty indicators, and the situation of women and children is particularly grave. One in four children born in Afghanistan cannot expect to live beyond the age of five, and certain provinces of the country lay claim to the worst maternal mortality rates ever recorded in the world”
According to Senlis, more than 70% of the Afghan population is chronically malnourished, while less than a quarter has access to safe drinking water.
Human loss, social destruction The United Nations Development Program reports similar catastrophic conditions. It says the average life expectancy for the people of Afghanistan is 44 years, at least 20 years lower than in neighbouring Central Asian countries.
According to the United Nations Human Rights Commission on Refugees, Afghanistan had 2.9 million refugees in 2005. That number is growing as a result of foreign military operations.
The occupiers like to point to the region surrounding the capital city Kabul as proof of their accomplishments and good will. But progress there is as elusive as in Iraq’s capital city, Baghdad. Open sewers line the streets. Rent for an intact home is too expensive for ordinary Afghans, forcing many to live in dilapidated and structurally unsound buildings. Residents of Kabul receive, at best, four hours of electricity a day.
Prison conditions in Afghanistan are reportedly worse than the horrors that came to light in the prisons of Iraq. According to a May 12 article in the Globe and Mail, six thousand prisoners were crowded into Afghanistan’s 34 prisons at that time, a tenfold increase from the numbers incarcerated at the time of the fall of the Taliban-led government in 2001.
“As the Afghan court system expands, the prison population is rising sharply. Yet the jails are falling apart,” the article explains.
A February 2005 story in the UK Guardian reported widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse by U.S. forces against Afghan prisoners, including torture, taking ‘trophy photographs’ of detainees, and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation.
Earlier this year, Canada announced that it does not apply the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan. It hands prisoners over to the existing prison system, thereby making Canadian soldiers accomplices to war crimes.
Failure to reconstruct Canada and NATO are failing to rebuild infrastructure with their “Provincial Reconstruction Teams.” According to Senlis:
“there is a large and increasing gap between the massive international expenditure on security in Afghanistan, and the limited nation-building achievements…. This security-focused spending indicates that right from 2001, the priorities of the U.S.-led international community for Afghanistan were not in line with those of the Afghan population. Rather … the international community has prioritized physical, military-focused security over the relief of Afghans’ extreme poverty and economic instability.”
Guillaume Fournier, Afghanistan Country Manager for the Senlis Council, told CBC Radio One in September, “The biggest hindrance to reconstruction is the weekly bombing of civilians.”
According to World Bank estimates, Afghanistan needs $27.5 billion to rebuild its shattered social and physical infrastructure. But according to Senlis, Afghanistan received only $7.3 billion between 2002 and 2006, while NATO military spending was $82.5 billion during that time.
A September 23 Canwest News Service article, entitled “Reconstruction in Baby Steps,” described the reality of Canadian reconstruction efforts in Kandahar province. A Canadian military officer said that resources are lacking and reconstruction is still a “work in progress.” “I don’t have a squadron’s worth of engineers here. I don’t have troops that go out with equipment and build things and build bridges.”
The September 26 Globe and Mail reports that an ambulance donated by Canada for use by the medical center in the Panjwaii agricultural district west of Kandahar city four months ago is instead being used by local police and government administrators. Two doctors in the medical center told the reporter they are not keen to work with NATO-organized medical clinics because of the deep resentment of the population towards the occupiers.
Similar failure surrounds the British presence, according to the September 9 Economist magazine. Citing one example, it wrote, “British troops in Helmand (a neighbouring province to Kandahar), who have $36 million to spend this year, have built the odd bridge and market stall…”
If the failure of “reconstruction” in Afghanistan is little known in Canada, one reason is the concerted efforts by authorities to hide it. An article by Geoffrey York in the June 3 Globe and Mail described the rules for journalists working in Afghanistan who choose to “embed” with Canadian forces.
“The restrictions warned sternly that I could be ejected from the military base if I spent ‘an inordinate amount of time’ covering non-military activity. The Department of National Defence doesn’t want the embedded reporters to write much about refugees, schools, health care or electricity – all the basic realities of life for Afghans.”
Warmaking trumps “reconstruction” In early September, the 2,300 Canadian troops in Kandahar launched a massive ground assault in Panjwaii district, code-named “Operation Medusa” and backed by U.S. troops and airpower. Residents were warned in advance of the offensive to leave their homes and villages.
The assault was declared a huge success several weeks later. “More than one thousand” enemy fighters were said to be killed. But reporters saw few bodies of resistance fighters.
Canadian and NATO authorities admitted that fighters had staged an orderly retreat and appealed for more troops into the area. Canada quickly dispatched several hundred more soldiers, and for the first time it will be deploying tanks. Deadly attacks on Canadian and other NATO forces resumed within days of the “victory.”
Meanwhile, some 20,000 residents were made homeless after their homes, villages and crops were destroyed in the fighting. Winter is approaching and they face an uncertain future.
The September 11 Globe and Mail reported on the use of the chemical weapon white phosphorous during “Operation Medusa.” The banned weapon is now routinely used against Afghan fighters and to destroy agricultural plantings. The chemical severely burns human flesh upon contact.
Deepening resistance U.S./NATO officials say they are surprised by the scope and success of the resistance to their latest offensives. “The fighting is extraordinarily intense,” said the commander of British forces in Afghanistan. “The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq.”
But the reasons for deepening resistance are not difficult to understand. The Senlis report states:
“During the past five years, there have been some limited achievements in Afghanistan…. Yet these visible achievements, frequently lauded in the West, mask the [Afghan government’s] lack of independence and the growing irrelevance of the Afghan government to the Afghan people.”
The Afghan puppet government and its police and army forces are deeply resented by much of the population for their corruption and abuse. Looting and wanton destruction by foreign and puppet forces routinely follow in the wake of their military operations.
On May 29, a popular uprising occurred in the streets of Kabul following yet another in a long line of civilian deaths caused by reckless driving of a U.S. military convoy. Protesters marched on the presidential palace chanting “Death to America.” The protest was brutally suppressed, with Agence France-Presse reporting at least 14 protesters killed.
Canadian soldiers have killed civilians, including children, during patrols in Kandahar. Scores of civilians were killed during the recent “Operation Medusa” bloodletting.
“For 30 years, we’ve had this problem,” Abdul Zahir told a Globe and Mail reporter in June while caring for three injured relatives in a crowded hospital in Kandahar. “Foreign troops come here and start fights.”
The death toll of Afghans is so bad that even the puppet president Hamid Karzai has spoken out. In late June, during an earlier U.S./Canada/NATO offensive in southern Afghanistan, he declared, “It is not acceptable that in all this fighting, Afghans are dying. In the last three to four weeks, 500 to 600 Afghans were killed.”
The poppy eradication program pursued by occupation forces is another major reason for growing disaffection and is sharply criticized by the Senlis Council. Farmers receive no alternative support when their poppy plantings are destroyed.
Support for occupation eroding at home The Canadian government is losing support at home for its warmaking abroad, according to recent polls. An EKOS Research/Toronto Star poll in mid-September shows 48 percent opposed to Canada’s part in the war in Afghanistan and only 38 percent in favour.
Candidates for the leadership of the opposition Liberal Party are feeling the heat of shifting public opinion. Most now say they oppose the Canadian offensive operations in Kandahar. (The party initiated the Kandahar offensive last year while still in government.)
A major foreign policy report by the Canadian Senate that was issued on October 5 decries the absence of “reconstruction” projects in Afghanistan. “If we don’t get aid in there, then we won’t win militarily, ” said the chairman of the committee that produced the report.
NDP convention delegates vote for “troops out” Another sign of growing antiwar opinion was the vote by delegates at the national convention of the New Democratic Party in early September to demand a withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan. The resolution calls for “the safe and immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan”.
The vote was a striking victory for antiwar forces and will help broaden support for antiwar protests.
Unfortunately, the resolution also provides justification for continuing Canadian military intervention in poor and underdeveloped countries, including Afghanistan, by advocating what it calls “peace building.” It says the party should “support the continuation of development assistance to Afghanistan and democratic peace building in that country so that reconstruction efforts and good governance are achieved.”
“Democratic peace building” is code language for continued violations of the sovereignty of the Afghan people. The same language served as justification for the invasion of Haiti in 2004 and overthrow of its popular government by Canada, the U.S. and France.
Leaders of the NDP have taken their distance from the “troops out” section of the resolution. Party leader Jack Layton told CBC Radio news on September 24 that he favours a continued military presence by Canada in Afghanistan. He said he wants an end to the current combat operations in Kandahar but a continuation of “peace-building.”
The party’s foreign affairs critic in Parliament, Alexa McDonough, wrote a newspaper column on September 17 that criticized the Canadian-led offensive in Kandahar but made no reference to a withdrawal of Canadian troops, from either Kandahar or anywhere else in Afghanistan.
Canada out of Afghanistan The Canadian government and its NATO allies have accomplished nothing for Afghans. They are propping up a reactionary and illegitimate government that has little popular support, have killed thousands of Afghans, and have destroyed crucial infrastructure and food production.
A column in the October 3 Globe and Mail by U.S. journalist Sarah Chayes underscored the dilemma of the occupation forces. She described the Afghanistan government of Harmid Karzai as, “a government devoured by corruption.” It, “seems just as hostile to [the people’s] legitimate interests as the Taliban are.”
Chayes has no solution to this problem because she staunchly defends a continued presence of Canada and NATO in Afghanistan, and those forces in turn support and defend the very government that she so harshly condemns.
The occupation forces are deeply hostile to the social and economic aspirations of Afghanistan’s poor majority. They are in Afghanistan to foster pipeline deals that will deliver oil from Central Asia to seaports and earn billions of dollars in profits for Canadian and other foreign oil companies. They are transforming Afghanistan into a military base to attack patriotic forces throughout Asia and the Middle East and to pressure and threaten China and Iran.
October 28 day of antiwar action A cross-Canada day of protest against the war has been called by the Canadian Peace Alliance on October 28. The call is supported by growing numbers of political, social, student and religious organizations, including the Canadian Labour Congress, many local and regional trade unions, and the Canadian Islamic Congress.
People from across Canada will come into the streets on that day to demand the unconditional withdrawal of Canadian forces from Afghanistan.
In so doing, we will be joining with those in Afghanistan who are resisting the pillage and destruction of their country and who want democratic government and meaningful programs to improve living standards and rebuild the shattered country.
These protests will strengthen the struggle for justice and peace at home, including the fight to reverse the vast cuts to social programs recently announced by the Conservative Party government and the campaigns to end the abuses of democratic rights that led to the torture ordeal of Maher Arar and the indefinite detentions of political prisoners.
For more information on the October 28 day of protest, visit the Canadian Peace Alliance website at:
The Senlis Council report quoted in this article is available online at http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/publications/014_publication/
SOCIALIST VOICE is edited by Roger Annis and John Riddell. Readers are encouraged to forward or distribute it as widely as possible. Comments, criticisms and suggestions are always welcome. Our email address is socialistvoice@sympatico.ca
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