Afghanistan Airstrike Kills 93. Enjoy The Air Show!

I was walking with my wife and daughter through Dufferin Grove Park earlier when, with an enormous boom, a fighter jet banked hard above us, then shot off down to the lake. Everybody looked up to see the plane and a woman walking her bike near us said: "In most countries we'd be running to hide from that plane."

When I got home and checked the news the truth of what she'd say struck home. Certainly there's some people in Kunduz, Afghanistan who are wishing that their relatives had run more quickly today because NATO dropped bombs killed 90+ people.

The story is that the Taliban hijacked a NATO jet fuel tanker, which then got stuck in the mud near a village. Villagers, all dirt poor, rushed out to siphon off some fuel from the truck. That's when NATO, called in by the German contingent in northern Afghanistan, dropped its payload.

Of course NATO feels bad and will look into it. They might even pay compensation to the families. But, if they hadn't been there it wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Ah, but we're there to bring democracy and freedom from the evil Taliban. Trouble is, the democracy is so utterly corrupt that even supporters of the occupation are embarassed by videos of Karzai supporters stuffing ballot boxes, reports of other boxes showing up full to polling stations, intimidation of monitors, etc.

And the Kunduz governor is hardly a progressive, having been allied with ultra-conservative Wahabbi followers, prior to shifting allegiances to a Tajik warlord named Daud, who is himself allied with Karzai running mate, Mohammed Fahim. As human rights watch described him:

“He is one of the most notorious warlords in the country, with the blood of many Afghans on his hands from the civil war.” In fact, the brutality of his party Jamiat-e-Islami during the infighting amongst the mujahideen, following the Soviet withdrawal, drove many Afghans to support the Taliban. And the province has itself been a bastion of corruption and narcotic production.

"In February 2004, [provincial police chief] Motaleb Beg was captured by ISAF and Afghan police in Kabul with 300 kilos of heroin. Both Motaleb Beg and the heroin were handed over to the Kabul police with instructions how to handle the case. The following day the heroin had disappeared." (Beg was replaced as police chief by the present governor's brother, recently killed by an IED).
It is no wonder that with these characters in power, backed by western jets and bombs, the insurgency has spread north to the previously peaceful province of Kunduz. This is a big problem for NATO and the US because Kunduz is key to NATO's Central Asian supply lines. Previously, NATO had shipped equipment, fuel, etc. through Pakistan but insurgents in that country kept blowing stuff up. The alternative was to get an agreement from the Russians to move the same equipment, etc. through Russian airspace and then overland from Tajikstan and Uzbekistan. According to a senior US official: "The concern is if we don't stunt the [Taliban] growth, it could cause problems with our northern distribution network."

Things may already be too late, as Gul Agha, head of Baghlan-i-Jadid's criminal investigation department describes it: "Before, [insurgents] moved in very small groups. Now they are moving in groups of 30 to 40, and they have a leader of each group. They have a [shadow] governor, district leaders and recruiters."

Of course, the main people who are suffering as NATO increases air strikes in the north of the country, are civilians. Just as has been the case in the south, with bombings of weddings, funerals, and the like. The longer we stay over there, the more civilian dead there are and the more that we are hated.

This weekend, while you're watching those F-15's flying over the Toronto shoreline with your kids, just think about how a kid in Afghanistan feels when they see those same planes flying overhead. For them it's not a weekend diversion, it's the possibility of death at the hands of their supposed liberators.

All Air Show All The Time

More Reasons To Hate The Air Show

As if a million didn't come to mind every time the planes buzz your house and rattle your windows - or wake your sleeping child, as they have been doing with my baby daughter all day. Here's a few more:

1) These "neato" airplanes cause death and deformity. The little girl in the photo is one of many suffering from deformities in Fallujah, Iraq, as a result of the US assault on that city, which included airplanes (whee, aren't they pretty?!) dropping chemical weapons everywhere.

2) Each of the new F-35 Lightnings - the new fighter jet - costs $80 million dollars and the Pentagon is buying 2,500 of them. That's $200 billion. It costs $400 to provide food, clothes, education and medicine to ten children in Mexico for a month. In other words, they could provide these things for a full year for 42 million Mexican children (Mexico has a total population of 109 million). In Africa, a child can be fed for 10¢/day. In other words, global poverty could be eliminated.

3) Climate change. The US Military is a massive greenhouse gas hog, burning 462 million gallons of fuel in 2005. The US military is amongst the world's largest contributor to global climate change. Think about the effects if the US invested that $200 billion into renewable energy!

I Hate The Air Show

I'm sitting here in my home office, trying to get work done and some assholes in fighter jets are buzzing over my house every ten minutes. As if there weren't enough reasons to hate imperialism.

Let's just put this into perspective. Over in Afghanistan, the daily experience of farmers and city dwellers alike is to experience low flying jets disrupting their lives as well. Unfortunately for them, it doesn't just make it difficult to get work done, they live in fear that the next airplane will drop a bomb on their wedding or on their house.

Back home, here in Canada, the jets are supposed to provide entertainment to us and our children (?!). We look at them up in the sky and they are proof of what a great nation we are - and how great are the nations of other key military powers, particularly the USA and Britain. The awe and pride with which we are meant to be filled by the sight of these multi-billion dollar monstrosities, evidence of how low on the evolutionary ladder we still are, are to most people on the planet a source of fear.

Whether they are in Somalia, the Sudan, Iraq or Afghanistan - the sight of F-series jets mean that children will soon be dead.

Frankly, spectacles of militarism like the air show deserve to be picketed and shut down. The money spent to fly these airborne thugs around the world should be spent on building hospitals, schools and providing food.

It's particularly odious that they use Labour Day weekend as an opportunity to promote nationalism of the worst, most violent kind. This is the opposite of international solidarity. The union movement is responsible for a significant amount of money going into CNE coffers every Labour Day, as their members march into the CNE grounds. Perhaps it's utopian but I'd love nothing more than to see the union movement demand an end to the Air Show or they will take their 20,000 members elsewhere.

In the meantime, I wish these asshole would stop buzzing my house - using my tax dollars!

Clinton Speech A Bust - Paid For By Tax Dollars

Clinton showed up to speak at a half-empty stadium in Toronto on Saturday. He was saved the embarrassment of facing 20 guys sweating in blue suits by the CNE dropping the price from $50 to $5. Clinton, who dropped more bombs on third world countries than G.W. Bush, told the sweaty, beer-drinking crowd that the world's poorer countries "the developing world still needs our help organizing functioning systems to alleviate poverty." I'm sure those bombs on Iraq helped them get their act together. And the Battle of Mogadishu, portrayed in Blackhawk Down, played a great role in creating the stable and prosperous Somalia we see today.

I can't help but think that almost anything would have been a better expenditure of the $3 million that the CNE received for this from Ottawa's stimulus fund (I'm sure there's some countries in the developing world that could have organized some "functioning systems", for instance). My guess is that the CNE lost a bundle on this boondoggle of warmed-over platitudes, when you take into account the money spent on massively promoting the event and paying Clinton his gold-plated fee to speak to a half-empty stadium: "Officials aren't saying how much Mr. Clinton will earn for the appearance, though his fee is typically around $175,000." No wonder he flew up here so quick from Ted Kennedy's funeral. I'm sure the speaking fee helped him work through his grief.

Clinton Needs Smaller Venue Thus Restoring My Hope That Humans Are Intelligent Beings

Who the hell would pay $50 to see Bill Clinton speak? This is the man who ended "welfare as we know it" in the USA by drastically cutting social assistance and won election with racist attacks on black "welfare queens". He interrupted his first campaign run to return to his state of Arkansas, in order to execute a black man who was seriously mentally impaired - in order to not seem soft on crime. He backed up his "hard" stance during his time as president by expanding the number of crimes punishable by death - including serious drug offences. I have a lot of respect for African-American author Toni Morrison but I have to say that her description of Bill Clinton in 1998 as "The first Black president" was about the dumbest thing I ever heard.

Clinton was also responsible for killing 800 Somalis in the Battle of Mogadishu, he ordered the bombing of a medicine factory in the Sudan, bombed Iraq relentlessly (and illegally) while enforcing child-killing sanctions, and, of course, he bombed Afghanistan - all of which played an important role in creating the anger that found an expression in 9/11.

That's why it warms my heart that the CNE had to scale back its plans to have Clinton speak in a 25,000 seat stadium and to drop the prices of the tickets for the smaller, 10,000 seat venue. Now, don't get me wrong, I think humanity still has some way to go if there's 10,000 fools in Toronto willing to shell out even $25 to see this racist, imperialist, ruling-class blowhard. But it's a start.