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Don't forget to check out the mailbag for other interesting stuff.
Monday July 28, 2008
Bless the Beasts and the Children
For in this world they have no voice,They have no choice
Lyrics: Carpenters
Audio: Piano
1)
Another "mistake" in Afghanistan ... 2) Fearing our young ... 3) Chasing
the Bogeyman ... 4) Pakistan playing nice with Bush & Co.
1) Another "mistake" in Afghanistan
Canadian troops kill 2 children after car nears convoy
A
gunner in a light-armoured vehicle pulled the trigger on a
25-millimetre cannon after the driver of a car ignored repeated signals
to keep a safe distance, officials said.
Petie MacKay says there'll be an investigation, but he also says that earlier probes into similar civilian deaths had always absolved the soldiers involved.
No kidding. I suppose it also absolves all the people who support invading other people's countries just because we can.
From the Canadian Press:
Human Rights Watch says at least 300 Afghan civilians were mistakenly
killed by the NATO coalition last year, and thousands are believed to
have died since 2001.
Well, pipelines are important.
I'm
sure there are any number of "rag-head" haters who would tell me this is
a dumb question, but does it ever occur to the military to try
something a bit less than heavy artillery when their roadblocks are
misinterpreted?
I mean, instead of a bloody cannon, what about
first shooting out the tires, or lobbing a light explosive of some
sort, that makes plenty of noise, into the middle of the road, or a
smoke bomb to impair visibility, or some other unmistakable signal that
not being militarily trained (thank gawd) I wouldn't be able to think
of, but they might if they cared to. That would cause an innocent
driver to pull over to avoid endangering his passengers.
Not that I don't think getting out of the war would be a better idea.
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2) Fearing our young
[Kingston, Ontario] Crime rate drops 11.7%
Acting chief [Bob Napier] plays down stats
... Napier wants more resources, and he knows that the new crime stats
may undercut political will to give the department more money...
Salaries, wages and benefits account for nearly 90 per cent of police
spending... Napier said falling crime rates don't alter the opinion of
police administrators that they need more bodies....
Jamie Swift, author and longtime social justice campaigner:
"The
more that the public sector concentrates on social programs when it
comes to crime prevention and the less that we constantly talk about
the need for more policing, the better off we'll be." Social programs
and interventions address poverty, a root cause of crime, he said,
while police budgets trade on fear.
Yep. Maintaining
the power of the institutions, not the public's best interests, is a common
goal, and fear is the motivator of choice. If there's anything we need to
cultivate in this life, it's fearlessness. If we don't, democracy will
eventually not even be a memory.
Ever watch a caged animal, how
vicious they can be simply because of a fear response? That's us if we
let fear get the best of us. Miserable and mean. Totally lacking in empathy and compassion.
Like Harper. Canada's crime rate is the lowest in 25 years.
The only problem is that youth crime has gone up by 3%, but instead of
pouring money into the social programs that would help our youth,
especially already traumatised immigrant youth, he talks about getting "tough".
Nobody
wants to realize that the war culture being burned into the brains of
the young at every turn, in movies, in games, on TV, constantly in the
news, tells them that guns solve problems.
And corruption at all
levels of government and law enforcement, not to mention turning the
dysfunctional lives of celebrities into a source of entertainment,
seriously deprives kids of constructive role models.
Harper's
hoping to last long enough at the helm to see privatized, for-profit
prisons, and lots of young offenders to fill them, just like in the US
- tossed in with older, hardened criminals. That works nicely to
encourage recidivism, which drives profits even highter.
=====================
3) Chasing the Bogeyman
Al Qaeda near defeat, on defensive: CIA chief
Hayden
said capturing or killing bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, remains a top priority, although he noted the difficulties
in finding them in the remote region where the U.S. military is
officially forbidden to operate, the Post reported.
Now see, this is why Porter Goss didn't last long as CIA chief. He wasn't anywhere near as good at playacting. Remember Goss's gaffe when Bush said the US was still hunting for OBL?
The neat thing about pretending there's an ogre network is that when they say it's gone they won't be fibbing.
===================
4) Playing nice with Bush & Co.
Bush hails Pakistan as strong ally
Yet
hours later, Gilani suggested that if a missile strike on Monday had
been orchestrated by the U.S., that would be a violation of Pakistan's
sovereignty... Asked whether the relationship between the United States
and Pakistan is tense, Perino said: "I think that we are much more on
the same page than some people would like to paint."
Gee,
I've been painting that page since day one. Pakistan has always been
good buddies with the Bush administration. Cute the way Bush doesn't
omit to describe Pakistan as a "democracy" so that we shouldn't guess
he doesn't give a dam whether they are or not, so long as they help
keep the fable of the "war on terror" alive, and those "insurgents"
pouring into Afghanistan, because this is one war the "defence"
industry wants to keep going for a long, long time.
Pakistan's president Musharraf came to power in a military coup, and the only difference (and all that was asked of him by the US) is that he took off the uniform. And Gillani was appointed by him to be Prime Minister.
Here's a view from inside Islamabad:
Govt following Musharraf’s policies to pound Islamists: Khalid Khawaja
... prisoners in the Cells no 1, 2 and 3 were only being punished just
because of being Muslim and acting upon Islamic theology strictly...
Benazir’s murder were also behind the bars in the Cell no 1 and at the
other hand Government wanted to handover the case of her assassination
to UN, which proved that people jailed in that case were just innocent.
The people who actually did it were professionals who will never be jailed. Bhutto posed a danger to Musharraf, and she was veering from the script the US wrote for her. There were others within her party, including her own spouse, who would be more compliant.
yayacanada
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