Afghanistan: Best Corrupt Election C$18 Billion Can Buy

Perhaps not many people remember the estimate from earlier this year that Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan will eventually cost a whopping $18 billion. That’s about $1,500 per household.
To put it in perspective, depending on estimates – whether it’s fully funded, full-time or part-time, etc. – a national daycare plan would cost between $5 billion and $17 billion. However, unlike military spending, much of which happens outside of the country, a daycare program would reap a multiplier effect – by providing domestic employment to childcare providers, by allowing more women to enter the labour force, etc. According to Childcare Canada: “The benefits from such a program would have provided about $2 in new benefits for every $1 in new government expenditure (costs would be shared in some way between the federal and provincial governments).”
But, it’s not about childcare vs warfare, say the Tories – it’s about keeping us and our children safe, stopping the growth of terrorism, etc. However, this begs the question: what is more likely to create recruits for terrorism: strategies which make people feel enraged, abused and oppressed – or actions that make them feel empowered, respected and free? Assuming that we’re not the only rational people on the planet, I’d say it is clearly the latter that will reduce the potential for terrorism.
Does Afghanistan meet that criteria?
By their own estimates, Afghanistan is a very corrupt place. The election that was supposed to confer legitimacy not only on the ostensible government of Afghanistan (ostensible because it doesn’t really have any power outside of Kabul). It was also supposed to confer credibility on the whole operation. It was a total flop, with growing reports of widespread and systematic ballot stuffing, intimidation, bribery – just the kind of thing you would expect in a Florida election under Jeb Bush.
Of course, it’s no surprise that incumbent presidential candidate Hamid Karzai’s methods tend towards the criminally dubious end of the spectrum. Look at who he’s surrounded himself with:
“In his bid for re-election, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has surrounded himself with checkered figures who could bring him votes: warlords suspected of war crimes, corruption and trafficking in the country’s lucrative poppy crop. But none is as influential as Marshal Fahim, his running mate, whose trajectory in and out of power, and American favor, says much about the struggle the United States has had in dealing with corruption in Afghanistan.”
But Karzai’s advisors and supporters, propped up through a system of bribery and racketeering, extend beyond warlords from the Northern Alliance. It includes his half-brother, who has been a lightning rod of criticism in recent years because of his alleged involvement in the heroin trade and also in fixing the present election.
And it hasn’t only been the Americans who have come to realize that the edifice that they have created, and which they are defending with blood and treasure is a corrupt, murderous one. Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan, it was revealed last year, pushed Hamid Karzai to dump the governor of Kandahar, where Canadian troops are stationed, because he was so corrupt.
Canadians need to ask themselves, as the corrupt regime of our making exposes itself and the occupation unravels – as even US and UK generals admit – is this fiasco really worth the cost of a national day care plan? Is it really worth the loss of lives in Afghanistan – to both Canadian troops and Afghan civilians? As the present recession ravages our jobs and economy, could we really not find a better way to spend $18 billion – more than half of what the Tories have pledged for stimulus measures? Surely, if we wanted to buy an election, we could have bought one for much cheaper. Apparently Jeb Bush only paid $4 million. That’s a much better price to end up with a corrupt president!

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.

The Money Behind Opponents of US Healthcare

This is a very sharp news video about the connections between opponents of US healthcare reform and the "health" industry, including insurance, hospitals, seniors' homes, etc. It's pretty devastating to both big mouth Republicans but also the bought-off weasels known as Blue Dog Democrats. Since the late Sen. Edward Kennedy was perhaps most famous politically for his championing of healthcare reform, this seemed a fitting tribute post.

Ever Wonder Why You’re Better Than Everyone Else?

“The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.”
- Oscar Wilde

My wife and I have a little joke we tell each other regularly. When we catch ourselves complaining about other people – whether specific people or people in general (the blind, stupid masses). One or both of us will finish the kvetch with the statement “because we’re better than everybody else.” Asking around, it turns out that this feeling is one that most people have. Don’t bother to deny it, you know it’s true. If we don’t support it explicitly (at least whispered to our nearest and dearest our in our inner monologues) then we support the idea implicitly, through your support of all sorts of repressive institutions.
Why do we support funding for the police? Surely we don’t think WE need to be policed. WE’RE not law-breakers, murderers and the like. It’s those other people out there. Why do we think that we don’t need a union in our workplace? Well, because unions destroy productivity and innovation. How is it that unions do this? Well, they prevent our boss from promoting people with real talent and instead, with unions, the people who get promoted or who keep their job do so on the basis of seniority. And we know that this just means lazy people. Not us, of course – WE’RE not lazy. It’s those other people who ruin it for everyone else.
As Sartre noted “Hell is other people.” I’m alright, Jack. What’s your problem? And that feeling must be widespread because according to a 2006 study, Americans have fewer close friends and confidantes now than they did twenty years ago. Surely the same thing likely applies to Canadians who are culturally very close to Americans, at least in English Canada.
“Researchers also found that the number of people who said they had no one with whom to discuss such matters more than doubled, to nearly 25 percent. The survey found that both family and non-family confidants dropped, with the loss greatest in non-family connections.”
A significant part in this growing isolation is the fact that we are working more hours now than we were 20 years ago. But this creates a reinforcing effect where our sense of distance from our fellow humans grows the less contact we have with them. And the more we feel disconnected from our fellow humans, the less contact we are likely to have with them. Of course, those with lower incomes and education levels are affected the most.
This dynamic is, of course, encouraged by our mass media, which specifically, regularly, and repeatedly undermines social empathy. We are treated to Cops, America’s Most Wanted, Crime Stoppers, and other “true crime” shows and segments that encourage us to fear our neighbours and, even better, to rat them out whenever possible. We have talk show hosts encouraging us to mock our neighbours’ troubles and worship celebrities. Radio has brought us “shock jocks” who are, let’s face it, just plain assholes and who make us laugh by being pricks to other people – because those people are never us. Reality shows teach us to envy, despise, laugh at, fear the people who are humiliating and abusing each other for the right to be the top banana and win the million dollars, or million dollar husband (who maybe turns out to be a murderer).
That these things exist and that we generate a significant sense of ourselves in opposition to the rest of the human race as a result of such cultural productions is horrifying. But these are all symptoms of a deeper social disease with which we are all infected.
To some, our sense of superiority over the rest of the species is proof that humanity is doomed with some original sin that cannot be overcome – greed, lust, covetousness. But this is to beg the question and to start with symptoms, while ascribing to them prime causes.
Marx makes note of this in his discussion of political economy in the 1844 Manuscripts. He has a lot of insightful things to say that still ring true. For Marx, he starts not from this or that value but from the fact of our basic material needs and how we satisfy them. He starts from nature and humans (who are a part of nature). What makes us human is that we act upon nature, transform it, mold it to meet our needs – food, clothing, housing, etc. He calls this conscious act of labour, to tranform the world to meet our needs, that thing which makes us human; it is our species-being.
But, Marx goes on, if that is what makes us human, what does it mean that we live in a world where we don’t control our labour, where we don’t produce freely according to our needs but instead according to the plan and desires of our employer.

“…he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned like the plague…”

He then continues with this very pithy and, frankly, visionary description of the roots of consumerism:

“The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions – eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment – while in his human functions, he is nothing more than animal.
“It is true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are also genuine human functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity, and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal.”

But, back to the point of this whole discussion, which was why we feel superior to our neighbours. According to Marx, if we are alienated from that thing which makes us human, then we are alienated from ourselves, our nature. If we are alienated from our selves then we are also alienated from our fellow humans, for the same reason.
Capitalism creates a situation where all confront all as alien, hostile beings. And this, of course, isn’t simply some abstract mental state, it has a real concrete manifestation through generalized competition. We fight over jobs. We fight to retain control of as many of our scarce financial resources as possible. The carpenter who we hire to fix our house faces us as a man who wants to get the most out of us that he can. We, on the other hand, want to pay the lowest possible price; we want to get the most out of him. And this general dynamic applies whether it is craftsman/businessman vs client or customer vs massive corporation. And, of course, it is so when, as workers, we confront our boss. The same dynamic prevails.
This historically specific – not natural – state of conflict and competition for (artificially) scarce resources becomes generalized throughout society as a state of perpetual antagonism. We feel like someone is always trying to rip us off (and they quite likely are, that’s the nature of scarcity). It causes us to feel not only defensive but also morally superior.
This is one of the key reasons why, for Marx, superceding capitalism is not something that can be announced or dictated from above. Workers, to overthrow capitalism or win a strike even, have to band together. They have to fuse their interest and recognize a common aim. In doing so they begin to overcome that dynamic that puts us at odds with one another. We must fight racism, sexism and homophobia, which increase competition between workers and leave all in a weaker, material, political and moral state. This growing class unity increasingly divides society into those camps that represent the fundamental division – humanity from their species-being, from control of their creative labour. The fact, as the study above demonstrated, that we have less friends now than 20 years ago, and probably feel less connected to our fellow humans, is a measure of how successful neo-liberalism has been in North America in ratcheting up competition between workers. We are working harder for less.
Knowing all this won’t in itself stop us from feeling superior. It’s a material-social problem that can only be solved with a material-social solution. But knowing it will provide us with one more reason to feel superior to all the ignoramuses who are laughing at their fellow workers being humiliated on TV talk shows.

Stephen Harper: Hypocrisy On Senate Appointments

This is fun. One more reason to say "what an asshole" every time you see him on TV.