Canada must withdraw from ‘inhumane’ war: Taliban spokesman

A Taliban spokesman is urging Canadians to pressure their government to pull its troops out of war-torn Afghanistan.

In an interview with CBC News, Qari Yousef Ahmadi said Canadians are involved in the war only because the United States influenced them to join.

“I ask the Canadian people to ask their government to stop their destructive and inhumane mission and withdraw your troops,” said Ahmadi, speaking on his cellphone from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan.

“Our war will continue as long as your occupation forces are in our land.”

Ahmadi, considered by Western media outlets to be a legitimate representative of the Taliban central council, said the Taliban will continue to fight occupation forces until they are driven out of the country, just as the Afghan mujahedeen resistance continued to fight Russian troops until they withdrew in the 1980s.

Ahmadi said if the public knew the truth about the Afghan war, they would be horrified.

He said NATO countries are hiding the true number of casualties they’ve had since the mission began in 2001.

Killing more civilians

He also argued that while NATO accuses the Taliban of killing more civilians than soldiers with their suicide bombing, the United States is killing even more civilians when it bombs villages and towns.

“I invite you to contact these people in the villages; you can find out for yourself,” he said.

Independent Canadian military analyst Sunil Ram said some of Ahmadi’s points are not completely off base. Ram said independent studies show that the American military has underestimated the number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded.

Ram said Canada’s tally of dead soldiers is accurate — a total of 85 soldiers have been killed since Canada first sent troops to Afghanistan in February, 2002.

But Ram noted that the number of wounded has never been made clear.

He also agrees that the U.S. has done widespread bombings during the mission.

“The Americans will come in and flatten a village,” he said. “It’s standard tactic.”

Eradication of poppies ’secondary’

Ahmadi also touched on the Afghan drug trade in his interview with CBC News, denying the allegations that the Taliban are funded by profits from poppy crops and the heroin trade.

He said that while the Taliban are against the drug trade, because they are Islamic, the organization is not focused on eradicating Afghanistan’s numerous poppy fields.

“Our priority is to expel the foreign soldiers who have invaded our countries,” he said. “At the moment, eradication of the poppies is a secondary issue.”

A Talking Books panel gets into an intense debate on Human Smoke, Nicholson Baker’s new book about WW II

People often refer to the Allied response in WW II when talking about “just” wars. American author Nicholson Baker sees things in a very different light, arguing that the world would have done better to pay heed to mid-century pacifists.

In Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (Simon & Schuster), Baker takes direct aim at the assumption that the British and Americans acted without self-interest in countering Hitler’s aggression.

To create his unconventional history, Baker drew on articles, speeches, memoirs, letters and other historical documents of the time, culminating in the moment that the U.S. entered the war. He uses this “collage” of sources to bolster his claims that Roosevelt and Churchill were bigoted warmongers, compelled more by arms sales than by the desire to stop Hitler.

Best known as a novelist, Baker also focuses on the efforts of pacifists of the time, from the famous Gandhi to the lesser-known, including American Jeanette Rankin. The first woman elected to the American House of Representatives, she voted against declaring war on Germany, saying “I want to stand by my country. But I cannot vote for war. I vote no.” Later, she added, “I felt that the first time the first woman had a chance to say no to war, she should say it.”

Baker’s controversial re-examination of this pivotal time has sparked many strong reactions, including a heated debate in a recent episode of CBC Radio’s Talking Books.

Panelists Tom Jokinen, Antanas Sileika and Lynne Van Luven disagree about the quality of the writing in Human Smoke, as well as the validity of Baker’s interpretations. Find out why one panelist gets a stomachache just looking at this book, while another thinks it’s beautifully researched.

Listen to host Ian Brown and his guests talk about Human Smoke here:

http://www.cbc.ca/wordsatlarge/blog/2008/06/a_talking_books_panel_gets_int_1.html

Manley concerned Afghan panel recommendations not being met

The chair of the panel that examined Canada’s mission in Afghanistan told CBC News in an exclusive interview that he is concerned the federal government may not be acting on key recommendations more than four months after his report was tabled.

In its final report presented in January, the panel headed by former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley criticized Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government for being too close-mouthed in its communications strategy for the Afghan mission.

The panel also said the effectiveness of Canada’s military and civilian activities in Afghanistan and the progress of Afghan security and government must be tracked.

But in an interview with the CBC senior correspondent Brian Stewart that aired Thursday, Manley said the Canadian government has not helped public understanding of the mission or of the many complex issues surrounding it.

“It certainly concerns me if we are not getting the information out to Canadians,” said Manley, who, along with the other members of the panel, visited Afghanistan for 10 days in November.

“The Canadian focus is less and less on what the troops are doing, what we should be doing and in fact, whether our report is being implemented.”

In March, the Conservatives, with support from the Liberals, passed a motion that would keep Canadian soldiers in Kandahar until 2011.

The motion was contingent on two recommendations of the Manley report: that NATO allies provide 1,000 extra troops to help the Canadian effort and that Ottawa secure access to unmanned surveillance drones and large helicopters to transport Canadian troops around the region.

But details of the Afghan mission are still subject to tight information control by the Prime Minister’s Office, while key departments, such as Foreign Affairs and the Canadian International Development Agency, remain media averse.

During his interview, Manley said the concerns raised by the panel surrounding what the government reveals about the mission are serious enough to threaten the mission’s overall success.

“Our report included a large assessment of how things were going, and it was not a glowing assessment,” Manley said. “In fact, I think we were pretty clear that if things didn’t change, the whole effort in Afghanistan was in real peril of being lost.”

The five-member panel also said Canada must place greater emphasis on diplomacy and reconstruction, and the Canadian military focus must shift gradually from combat to training Afghan national security forces.

Government working on ’signposts of progress’

A special cabinet subcommittee has been set up to co-ordinate Canada’s efforts, as recommended by the Manley report.

Senior government officials insist the cabinet is very focused on Afghanistan, while sources say task forces within Foreign Affairs and CIDA are working to unveil a series of “signposts of progress” on the mission, perhaps as soon as mid-June, the CBC’s Stewart said.

But Roland Paris, associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s Centre for International Policy Studies, told CBC News that despite the urgent need for more information on the Afghan mission, there has been “no significant change” in the level of transparency or detailed reporting from the Canadian government.

“What we’ve been lacking is a very specific set of goals and clear benchmarks that we can use to evaluate whether or not we are making progress toward these goals,” Paris told CBC News.

He added there is “much more detailed, much more unvarnished reporting” on the mission in Iraq than the mission in Afghanistan.

Earlier this year, International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda said the government would increase the number of briefings it offers reporters on the Afghan mission in an attempt to be more open about what is happening there.

“Our goal is to better inform Canadians about Canada’s activities on the ground,” she told reporters at a press conference in February.

But Oda also suggested the media was at fault for government’s difficulty in communicating the Canadian mission’s good news stories.

Japan allows military use of space

CBC News
Reversing a nearly 40-year-old ban, Japan’s parliament voted on Wednesday to allow the nation’s space programs to be used for national defence.

The country’ upper house of parliament approved the legislation with a 221 to 14 vote, seconding an earlier approval by the lower house and lifting a ban on the military use of space in place since 1969.

The law gives Japan’s military greater freedom to develop advanced spy satellites for intelligence and allows the country to pursue a joint missile defence shield with the United States.

The law requires that space programs be used for defence only and that they “contribute to establish a safe society, remove various threats to life of the people and ensure peace and safety of international society, as well as the national security of our country.”

Under the new measure, Japan’s defence minister will join a special task force responsible for overseeing Japan’s future space projects.

Japan is prohibited from offensive war by its U.S.-drafted 1947 constitution. But the country has begun to relax its controls on the military, upgrading the Defence Agency to ministry status last year.

Its space program has also been historically focused on peaceful endeavours such as research and communications. Japan launched its first satellite in 1970 and has achieved several major scientific coups in space, including launching a probe that collected samples from an asteroid.

But starting with the launch of its first spy satellite in 2003, Japan has been increasing its presence in space, partly in response to a perceived nuclear threat from Communist North Korea.

It has since launched three other intelligence-gathering satellites.

Fallon Resigns As Mideast Military Chief

“The top U.S. military commander for the Middle East resigned Tuesday amid speculation about a rift over U.S. policy in Iran,” the AP reports.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Adm. William J. Fallon had asked for permission to retire and that Gates agreed. Gates said the decision, effective March 31, was entirely Fallon’s and that Gates believed it was “the right thing to do.”
Fallon was the subject of an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed him as opposed to President Bush’s Iran policy. It described Fallon as a lone voice against taking military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

Fallon, who is traveling in Iraq, issued a statement through his U.S. headquarters in Tampa, Fla.

“Recent press reports suggesting a disconnect between my views and the president’s policy objectives have become a distraction at a critical time and hamper efforts in the Centcom region,” Fallon said.

“And although I don’t believe there have ever been any differences about the objectives of our policy in the Central Command area of responsibility, the simple perception that there is makes it difficult for me to effectively serve America’s interests there,” Fallon added.

Gates described as “ridiculous” any notion that Fallon’s departure signals the United States is planning to go to war with Iran. And he said “there is a misperception” that Fallon disagrees with the administration’s approach to Iran.

“I don’t think there were differences at all,” Gates added.

10 steps to fascism… PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE watch (45mins.)

A lecture by Naomie Wolf, author of “End of America, A letter of Warning for a Young Patriot” at the University of Washington. She has carefully studied the political and social environments that led to the ‘installment’ of totalitarian regimes in the 20th Century (Stalin, Mussollini, Polpot, Hitler and numerous other ’smaller’ dictators) and concludes that there is a blue print of 10 characteristics that each of these regimes has followed. All 10 of these characteristics were present in the lead up to all of the totalitarian regimes, and all 10 are currently present in America right now… YOU are NEEDED to save democracy in America. Action needs to be taken immediately.

Students: A challenge for you

This guy is dead on…

Change

World wide peaceful revolution is needed urgently because the power of evil is defeating the might of GOOD.- Global warming-war-terrorism-world hunger-poverty-AIDS- Greed-Corporate immorality- Imperialism/Domination- gang violence- Increasing levels of depression- Increasing levels of stress and pressure-decreasing levels of mental health-40 hour work week- decrease in our connection to natureThe potential of humanity is the goodness, so why are our actions so blatantly contradictory to what is really GOOD? We need a drastic change in our hearts, a change in our minds, and a serious change in our attitude and actions if the goodness can prevail…. you are the solution! Change…..  Do it for yourself, do it for the world, do it for the ‘goodness’. Love, it really is the answer….Peace,D