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The Big Lie of Afghanistan
In 2005, I was the youngest person elected to the new Afghan parliament. Women like me, running for office, were held up as an example of how the war in Afghanistan had liberated women. But this democracy was a facade, and the so-called liberation a big lie.
On behalf of the long-suffering people of my country, I offer my heartfelt condolences to all in the UK who have lost their loved ones on the soil of Afghanistan. We share the grief of the mothers, fathers, wives, sons and daughters of the fallen. It is my view that these British casualties, like the many thousands of Afghan civilian dead, are victims of the unjust policies that the Nato countries have pursued under the leadership of the US government.
Almost eight years after the Taliban regime was toppled, our hopes for a truly democratic and independent Afghanistan have been betrayed by the continued domination of fundamentalists and by a brutal occupation that ultimately serves only American strategic interests in the region.
You must understand that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban. Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s.
For expressing my views I have been expelled from my seat in parliament, and I have survived numerous assassination attempts. The fact that I was kicked out of office while brutal warlords enjoyed immunity from prosecution for their crimes should tell you all you need to know about the "democracy" backed by Nato troops.
In the constitution it forbids those guilty of war crimes from running for high office. Yet Karzai has named two notorious warlords, Fahim and Khalili, as his running mates for the upcoming presidential election. Under the shadow of warlordism, corruption and occupation, this vote will have no legitimacy, and once again it seems the real choice will be made behind closed doors in the White House. As we say in Afghanistan, "the same donkey with a new saddle".
So far, Obama has pursued the same policy as Bush in Afghanistan. Sending more troops and expanding the war into Pakistan will only add fuel to the fire. Like many other Afghans, I risked my life during the dark years of Taliban rule to teach at underground schools for girls. Today the situation of women is as bad as ever. Victims of abuse and rape find no justice because the judiciary is dominated by fundamentalists. A growing number of women, seeing no way out of the suffering in their lives, have taken to suicide by self-immolation.
This week, US vice-president Joe Biden asserted that "more loss of life [is] inevitable" in Afghanistan, and that the ongoing occupation is in the "national interests" of both the US and the UK.
I have a different message to the people of Britain. I don't believe it is in your interests to see more young people sent off to war, and to have more of your taxpayers' money going to fund an occupation that keeps a gang of corrupt warlords and drug lords in power in Kabul.
What's more, I don't believe it is inevitable that this bloodshed continues forever. Some say that if foreign troops leave Afghanistan will descend into civil war. But what about the civil war and catastrophe of today? The longer this occupation continues, the worse the civil war will be.
The Afghan people want peace, and history teaches that we always reject occupation and foreign domination. We want a helping hand through international solidarity, but we know that values like human rights must be fought for and won by Afghans themselves.
I know there are millions of British people who want to see an end to this conflict as soon as possible. Together we can raise our voice for peace and justice.
- Posted in
55 Comments so far
Show AllCan anyone find this in any of the mainstream corporate American newspapers?
That would be as likely as finding something similar written during the 80's being printed in Pravda or Izvestia. Sure there's a difference between state owned media and media that owns the state, but I'll be damned if I can see it.
Ah yes, Pravda (truth) and Izvestia (news). Pravda is still out there and told the truth during the Georgia war last year. Times have changed. Getting some truth about what is going on in Honduras from our propaganda rags like CNN and Fox (and all the rest of them) is damned near impossible. It seems that silence is the tactic de jour. Everytime Hillary opens here big mouth (it's almost as big as Biden's) she sends that "We are the bad ass empire" innuendo. It's so transparent.
Holy biscuits! Pravda told the truth about something?!?!?
In the days of the ussr, in kitchen talk, they said that you could only find news in pravda, and truth in isvestia (if you could decipher the propaganda from the statements). Of course the ruskies had the advantage, they knew that the media was full of shit.
Back in the U.S.A.R., you don't know how lucky you are!
No, Tel Aviv won't let Murdoch print the truth.
Murdoch tried to print a truth?
And do not forget we are in Afghanistan under the false flag/premise of 9/11 and it is very likely Bin Laden has been dead since December 2001. ICH dated 7/24/09 if the link gets disappeared.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23127.htm
Obama's favorite war is a lie, just like Obama himself? What surprise.
This should be engraved across Arianna Huffington's web site heading. Too bad she is so compromised. What can one think of a person who claims to be proud of her Greek heritage but hangs on to the surname of a man she divorced more than ten years ago?
What a contrast with the lady Joya.
Arianna is a phony like Obama and her accent. Money and fame are more important.
Like Obama, she pretends to be a neo-con or liberal whenever it's convenient, she was married to an anti-gay homosexual Republican but then turned Democrat when she thought no one was watching. Not a real human-being.
Malalai Joya speaks the truth; unfortunately,just like in the U.S.A., she is up against the crime family in Afghanistan and their puppet regime of the U.S. crime family and the MIC, but having said that, you have to admire this very brave womens honesty and courage.
Thank you Malalai:
Your honest and straightforward description of the effects of US-controlled military and foreign policy on your nation is worth more than a million words generated by our politicians, media pundits and opinion-makers.
Unfortunately, the US is dominated by a financial, insurance, banking, "defense" contractor, and oil company oligarchy.
The oligarchy, unfortunately, needs your land to keep and gain access to Central Asia's oil production.
Remember, the US had previously been the land that Native peoples and, later, Mexicans lived on. Through a ruthless policy of genocide, broken treaties, and unprovoked warfare, the US elite stole what wasn't their's.
Many of the non-elite went along with these policies because of the constant propaganda and the new lands allowed some the temporary ownership of a farm, ranch or craftshop. But, as I said, they were temporary.
But now US citizens have been herded into the corral pen of manual and intellectual helplessness.
They don't know how think analytically or logically, they don't know how to make or grow anything, and they are constantly entertained by a lowest-common-denominator commercial/celebrity culture that numbs their cognitive and emotional abilities.
So, we, like you, live under the pretense of a democracy. We have masters that have firmly placed most of us under their control; however, their methods of control depend more on the carrot.
Unfortunately for you, your masters -the ones supported by the US oligarchs- rely on the stick. Your nation is too impoverished to do anything else. After your warlords and politicians steal what they can, there is nothing left for anyone else.
You are one of the brave ones in a world where many live without thought, feeling or bravery.
"Unfortunately, the US is dominated by a financial, insurance, banking, "defense" contractor, and oil company oligarchy."
Exactly. We the people don't count in the USA....
And to think we thought we would be different from other countries.
But nevertheless, this fine lady's words are a balm to our broken hearts.
So far, Obama has pursued the same policy as Bush in Afghanistan.
The American Death Machine must be fed and it is always ravenously hungry. Fortunately, for the American Death Machine, there is an abundance of food in Afghanistan. And like the savage animal that it is, it will eat and eat and eat itself into oblivion, just as it did in Vietnam. President Obimbo will tell you that you're way off base if you characterize the United States as nothing more than a self-interested empire. He will tell you there is a "special fate" for the United States. He's right. To eat yourself to death is a fate reserved for dunces.
[To eat yourself to death is a fate reserved for dunces.]
And it's one with a rich history. Consider the fate of the Spanish Empire, in the 1500s it was the richest and most powerful state in the world. Stuffed full of gold plundered from the Americas it launched expensive war after war, sure it took them a century or so to lose all that they had. But the end result is the same, wars are never profitable. In the end you pay far more than you could ever gain by fighting continuously. It's a lesson that will be learned in the states, but it will be learned far too late for it to do any good for the people who live there, or the victims of their wars.
Good one! Gluttons never learn.
As the reasons for the carnage
Cut their meat and lick the gravy
We oil the jaws of the war machine
And feed it with our babies
- Iron Maiden, "Two Minutes to Midnight"
She is absolutely bang on correct. History has shown that when Afghanistan left to its own devices, while there might be bloodshed and strife, the country eventually stabilizes.
It is during the periods of Stability that the fundamentalists lose their influence. As the people are able to earn decent livings and live peaceful lives, they turn their back on fundamentalists.
Civil wars tend to exhaust themselves. The people on BOTH sides get tired of the killing and both sides recognize that true prosperity comes about through peace. They recognize that no one side can truly WIN.
What foreign powers like to do is prop up one side against the other so as to perpetuate the strife.
They come in as "friends" and say...."Dont make peace with them. WE can help you WIN this thing" which leads to the strife continuing.
If one want an example of this carried beyond a Civil war one need only look at WW1. The british were about ready to call for a peace in 1916. This would have ended that war and saved millions of more lives.
Instead they were convinced by a group of people that they could still "WIN". All they had to do was hold out until America entered the war.
Last night on The Military Channel I watched a 3 part history of war narrated by the late Walter Cronkite, which confirmed a couple delusions that grab hold of political leadership war after war. 1 is the 90 day rule: Lincoln had his first enlistees sign up for ninety days, certain that the larger Union army would make quick work of those silly sountherners -- wrong. Same as President Bush Junior and his advisers were wrong to think we could sweep on into Iraq and prevail quickly because of our superior power underpinned with God's Chosen Nation goodness -- wrong.
The other is the efficacy of heavy bombing to spook the enemy into a "shock and awe" surrender. Didn't work for Napoleon at Waterloo, didn't work for the English and French at the battle of Sommme in 1916 when, for the first time in history, over a million artillery shells were sent over to "soften up" the Germans so a big charge could be made. Wrong! When the Allies went "over the top" there were still plenty of German machine gunners left alive to slaughter them with machine guns. Didn't work with the Germans despite convention bombing of Hamburg and Dresden that created destruction close to A-bomb levels, didn't work with the Japanese till we used nuke and took it to a whole new level, didn't work with the North Vietnamese who took all the "carpet bombing" we could dish out and still came on ahead to kick our asses.
"Shock and Awe" didn't really work in Iraq. People didn't come forward saying, "Ok, OK, we get it; we're no match for you; we surrender; please don't blow us up any more; here are the flowers we're here to strew at your feet."
If the bomb believers think they can use bombs to keep Iran and Korea from become nuclear military threats ... well, from what I've seen of past history, I doubt it and think the results will only worsen things in an already rapidly worsening world.
In the age of land empires, Afghanistan was a strategic crossroad for the conquering armies of antiquity.
Nobody was really interested in Afghanistan since it had no agricultural or mineral resources.
While the mountains were a pain in the ass, the people of the steppes were a bigger pain in the ass.
In the age of "discovery", Afghanistan was just too far from the ocean. Colonial possessions were carved out around Afghanistan - Afghanistan was the leftovers of empire - much like Ethiopia.
This was just fine with the Afghans who really did not care for the smelly Christians from Europe.
Afghanistan did not become important until the Russians were twarted by the CIA in Iran. Afghanistan, while a pain in the ass, was the best way to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.
This became even more urgent when Turkey became part of NATO and Nassar was eliminated.
The Russians got their asses handed to them; just like the British and any other armies that strayed from the highway.
So ...WTF ... Why are we there?
To liberate the female population from Taliban oppression
To chase a once CIA financed Saudi with a dialysis machine
No ... We need to control the oil of Central Asia. We also need to stop the Iran - Pakistan - India gas pipeline that runs through the Chinese built port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean. And with control of "Pipelinestan" comes the control of the Iran - Pakistan - China pipeline.
Unfortunately the pipeline runs through Helmund Province which grows 75% of Afghanistan's poppy. Rather than relocate the pipeline...we can blow up villages and control the whole pie.
Let's make it a crudade to "liberate" Afghanistan from thousands of years of independence.
Oh BTW...there is a legal opium market where Afghans could sell their crop.. There is a tremendous and growing shortage of analgesics in developing countries (i.e.Africa)
But that would cut back the CIA profit used to finance world dominance.
So ...Are we really into building democracies and drinking tea with Karsai and friends?
Do you really trust Hillary to tell the truth...much less the masterful liar residing in the White House?
Succinct, factual and pointed.
Thank you.
I'm positive that our military will be stalled out just like the Russians and, after we are practically broke, our leaders will realize that they bit off more than they could chew. They never learn.
We are already broke and fighting this conflict (can't call it war) with borrowed money. In an ideal world, the rich guys would fight each other and leave our young people alone to pursue their lives.
Kitty,
You are right. Our illustrious, progressive Senators Leahy and Sanders from here in Vermont continue to vote for more war (they just love that General dynamics machine gun factory in Burlington) while they talk about green jobs and a green future. Sickening.
One of the best analyses I've seen in a long time. For the price of all of this we could develop enough alternative energy within North America to keep the continent supplied with power for the next several hundred years.
There are simple but highly refined in execution solar technologies that do not require solar cells. These are simple but highly polished and flawlessly finished solar tracking mirror systems focusing intense sunlight on pipes containing high pressure liquids that efficiently transfer heat to a water/steam driven electric turbine. It has been estimated that if 20% of the desert area of New Mexico or of Arizona were to be covered with such plants, this would be sufficient to provide enough electric power for all of the United States. But the sun doesn't shine at night. So what? We have and can develop more efficient battery storage systems. Every new home could have one built in. Existing homes can be retrofitted. It is not rocket science. Besides, the wind is constantly blowing somewhere. In the southwest I passed a "wind farm" that was literally several miles long and at least three rows deep. There had to be hundreds of windmills. These two "low" technologies alone could have been well enough established to make this country energy independant for the cost of the Iraq war alone. Money spent on these systems would have provided thousands, or millions, of jobs, and we'd have solid infrastructure standing after the expense. War and militarism simply eat up precious resources (money and people) with no return of anything tangible. Well, I suppose an oil pipeline is tangible, but again at what expense compared to other uses of resources?
Of course all of this does not count the political influence and economic influence of existing companies and technologies like coal and oil and gas, which gets us right back to your spot on alanysis of why we "need" to be at war and/or garrisoned all across Asia in order to "contain" certain other political and economic powers and "control" natural resources. There is no need to nor is there any way to "control" the sun and the wind, but they can be, compared to the costs of war, easily and cheaply harnessed.
The "great game" must end and sanity must take over at some point. Or maybe not.
And to show you how the oil pigs gamed us and the whole world from Standard Oil of New Jersey on down, get this:
The city of Cleveland erected wind generators in 1888! (not a typo). Within a few years they had several of them generating electrical power for the city. Google Cleveland wind power 1888 if you find this hard to fathom. Think of all the wars that would NOT have been fought. The word demonic should be replaced with Rockefellic. It was NEVER about energy resources for America. It was ALWAYS about wealth for the oil bastards. The enormity of their crime is so monstrous that it boggles the mind. Think of where wind electrical generator technology would be today if the oil bastards had not stifled it. Did you know they systematically replaced electric trains with diesel and city electric trollies with bus companies? It wasn't haphazard at all. They bribed and coerced city councils and railroads all for almighty oil.
http://energybible.com/wind_energy/index.html
"Wind energy has been a tradition in the United States going back to the 1800's and in Europe back to the 12th century. Many of our cherished images of the great plains and western United States are replete with images of windmills being used to irrigate and pump water. The use of windmills for generating electricity began in Cleveland in 1888 and by 1908 there were 72 windmills being used to create electricity."
This article makes too much sense.
The even bigger lie (bigger at least in the sense of potential global consequences) has been "mission creep" as related to NATO and its original raison d'être. To whatever extent it results in destroying the NATO alliance's cohesion the geopolitical implications are enormous, especially if considered in conjunction with some recent SCO-BRIC discussions.
Whether all of that is viewed as good or bad is a matter of perspective, of course, but the potential global instability appears likely to become quite uncomfortable.
Do not expect to hear this on National Public Radio, otherwise known as National Propaganda Radio in the U.S. With their remarkable access (for ex., NPR reporter Anne Garrels is married to ex-CIA agent J. Vinton Lawrence and numerous NPR reporters had "embedded" with U.S. military units) these reporters should have no trouble locating Malalai Joya. Nevertheless, a search for her name on the NPR website produces ZERO hits. The voices that the people of the U.S. and the planet need to hear are systematically censured by corporate media, among which NPR is included due to its 18% corporate funding, funding which has come from sources such as Clear Channel Communications, Starbucks and Wal-Mart Stores and with a board which has included the likes of John A. Herrmann, Jr. of J.P. Morgan Securities.
~~David Brookbank -- "Hasta donde debemos practicar las verdades?"
Curiously, three days after The Guardian and Common Dreams.org published this article about Malalai Joya and I made my comment pointing out NRP's failure to ever cover Malalai Joya, NPR did suddenly publish an Associated Press article which gave scant coverage to this prominent and internationally known Afghan female politician in a July 29, 2009 AP article about Afghan women campaigning for office in Burkas. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111347093 To be clear, this was not an NPR broadcast or print article and the ability to comment on the article closed quickly.
This AP article -- which constitutes NPR's first ever reference to Malalai Joya -- run three days after The Guardian and Common Dreams covered in details her views conveniently makes no mention of her forceful position rejecting the U.S./NATO occupation of Afghanistan. Again, remember that Malalai Joya is not just any Afghan woman. She has received various international awards. She was the subject of a movie, Enemies of Happiness, described on the Vital Voice website as (quote) a documentary film about Joya’s life which was premiered at SILVERDOCS and Human Rights Watch film festivals. Directed by Eva Mulvad, this powerful film follows the course of the 2003 campaign process and Joya’s subsequent election to Afghanistan’s parliament in 2005 as the youngest and one of the 68 female parliamentarians after the overthrow of the Taliban. (end quote)
On the day before NPR finally provided via the AP this scant coverage to Malalai Joya, The Independent ran a detailed story covering her and her defiant stance against imperialism. That story was reprinted at the website of RAWA (Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan) at http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/07/28/malalai-joya-the-woman-who-will-not-be-silenced.html
Further justification for those who refer to NPR as National Propaganda Radio.
The Afghan war is just one more indicator that US society is in an advanced stage of corruption. Indeed, since 1946 the military has been utilized for profit only. The US Treasury long ago became a cash cow for what "Ike" identified as the military industrial complex. A genuine democracy may have prevented these outcomes, but a democratic society founded on slavery and genocide has arguably never been genuine.
donbrennan July 26th, 2009 5:25 pm, "...since 1946 the military has been utilized for profit only."
Smedley Darlington Butler (retired General) had a few things to say about our "boys in uniform" and the uses of our "Armed Forces" and he went back to the Philippines (1893). I 'spec that with just a bit of inquiry you could easily surmise that any of our "armed forces" back to the Dutch in Manahata in 1609 who put those indigenous people's heads on pikes as a "pre-emptive attack" to forestall a larger threat those indigenous people posed by their very existence. Then they took the land and started slave plantations - because NOTHING builds WEALTH like forced human labor, and with that Wealth comes POWER, and with the exercise of that Power they build the private law called PRIVILEGE to which all richfilth animals aspire like a tropism in a toxic killer flower, and America was born...and so it will die...tropisms operating in a crucible of horrific entropy. You are not engaging nastic movements...
Peace.
Not to mention westward land speculation and its military assistance, both before and after the colonial revolt against "imperial tyranny."
When lawyers and politicians win an election they have a secret code, they do not sqeal on each other.
"It's my turn to steal".
It has become obvious that Obama is of that code.
During H. Clinton's campaign to be the Democrat's presidential candidate, she declared that the elected President of Venezuela was a dictator. This wasn't a one time remark. She stated this as her position several times during her run.
This fact more than any other demonstrates that she follows a neo-con foreign policy agenda. It explains her recent description of Zelaya's temporary entrance into Honduras as reckless.
I presume if there was a widespread anti-Castro uprising in Cuba, she wouldn't define the leadership of that uprising as reckless.
Of course, those in charge of running a global network of military bases, naval stations, client states and dependencies -in other words, an empire- must resort to double standards, historical ignorance and moralistic amorality when defining a foreign policy situation.
"We want a helping hand through international solidarity"
We all want International solidarity WITHOUT STRINGS ATTACHED.
But US elites notoriously attaches strings to every crumb of solidarity they extend, transparent strings few people can see, to restrict the people's choice, erode value, and destroy opportunity. For foreigners, even worst.
Authors can explicitly name Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries that extend true international solidarity WITHOUT strings attached.
Meanwhile the US elites' karmic bomerang is coming back around to them. The world is far more aware today of the strings racket than ever before and US elites are frantic. This is why the Demoks consolidated with the Repuks over in the extreme right gutter. This is why the US dollar is collapsing. The evil empire "is in its last throes, if you will", and not a day too soon.
As sad and embarrassed as I am to be a citizen of this country that has turned Afghanistan into a living hell, I have to suggest that Malalai is simply venting, with no real expectations. For to expect that GB or the UASSA are going to address the criminals that currently control the Afghan government is as ridiculous to expect our Congressional criminals to sentence themselves. Is the Afghan government any worse than our own? Of course, in obvious ways it is; bit if one looks a little deeper at how our Congress is selling out mainstream Americans (the poor were left behind decades ago), I don't see much difference. As our country continues its meltdown, I believe you will see more and more state control and internment of Americans by the US military; even as Cheney had tried to push as VP/ Obama? Don't give him so much credit. Though perhaps not the moronic pawn that Bush was, he is in his position only because they wanted him there. I DO believe that it is possible that he was naive in this ambitions, and that he is still very uninformed about a lot. But even if he IS informed. What then? He can't even get a Dem. Senate to give him a health care package, FGS! Impotent? Not entirely. A threat to the Empire? If he becomes a threat, he'll receive the JFK treatment. Remember what happened when Jimmy Carter entered the White house in his cowboy boots and idealism? His own Congress squished him like an ant; and remolded him into their image.
I have been a big fan of Malali Joya since I first saw the video where she is standing up and denouncing the warlords, rapists, and murderers who are in Karzai's government- and also sitting there all around her until they could not stand it anymore and threw her out. She never sleeps 2 nights in he same place because of the death threats. But she will not shut up because she is speaking the truth for the women of Afghanistan.
why can't we get leaders like her?
Quoting from the excellent article, "I have a different message to the people of Britain. I don't believe it is in your interests to see more young people sent off to war, and to have more of your taxpayers' money going to fund an occupation that keeps a gang of corrupt warlords and drug lords in power in Kabul".
The following video recording of July 14th and around 22 minutes in length for the words of a captured U.S. soldier in Afghanistan is certainly fitting for reflection regarding the above words quoted from Malalai Joya's article, as well as for the whole of it.
The soldier is or was a U.S. air infantryman, 23 years of age, and is evidently well treated by his captors, who you can easily guess the identity(ies) of.
The following article provides three embedded video clips for the full recording, and a few paragraphs of text.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=56295
The direct links for the three clips are the following, for parts 1, 2 and 3, respectively.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THmerXtKiqA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSrSJUTEWCs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Att-tlZPcZs
It definitely seems authentic, as well as honest on the part of both parties involved in the recording. The soldier provides enough information we evidently should hear or learn about from US soldiers possessing first hand knowledge of what's really going on there, in this war (of aggression). And this US soldier might be safer to never return to the US after what he says in this video recording. Why? He'll evidently be treated better by his captors than he would be by the U.S. ruling "elites" after what he's now helped to make available to the public.
If he's right, that is, accurate, enough anyway, about how and what the U.S. is actually doing in Afghanistan, then people should hear or learn of it from a soldier's words.
I downloaded the three clips just in case they become disappeared from Youtube, but wouldn't know this until trying to view them again some ... months, say, from now. They'll be backed up for my own personal copy though.
I don't think we've learned our lessons from Vietnam. More than Iraq, Afghanistan will be our next Vietnam and Obama is already guarenteeing himself to be the next LBJ on it. For all the gasbrain talk on family values in this country, the same preachers have the nerve to look the other way when it comes to Afghanistan. In the US, respect for female politicians is close to zip unless she's a sellout and part of the old boys' club like Palin and Rice. Afghanistan is no different. The US will never understand Afghanistan until the costs of bombing it out and occupying final heat their heads. God knows when that will happen !
"like Palin and Rice", yes, but also like (Hillary) Clinton; very. It's why she prostitutes herself, politically, for Empire.
"Of course" (why does it always have to be ugly of courses?) the male politicians also do that, prostitute themselves politically, but she, Clinton, is on the public stage considerably more than we get or find from (I believe) most, if not all, members of the Congress and Senate, as well as from some members of the White House Admin.
They all, except for the honest, ... members of the political offices, prostitute themselves for Big Finance, MIC, and so on. Truly [evil].
The "family values" talk in the U.S. is gasbrain and mostly a smokescreen; very little real sincerity. Relatively speaking, anyway.
the swath of earth from eastern africa to western russia is where the world's oil/gas fuels are concentrated...
oil/gas fuels are the simplest... most concentrated... easiest to extract... process... deliver... and process... on a worldwide scale... of ANY fuel source... or... best bang for the buck...
there is a worldwide infrastructure in place to extract... process... deliver... and process... on a worldwide scale... oil/gas fuels...
the entire industrialized world's living... food... health... consumer goods... and related infrastructures are built on oil/gas fuels...
since 1850... 1900... certainly since the early 1900's... EVERY infrastructure... and interdependency of infrastructures worldwide... depends on CHEAP oil and gas...
so... control... of... the swath of earth... where oil and gas fuels are concentrated... is as Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard... laid out... "For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... "
let's do a thought experiment... it's 5:00AM in new york... you're the ceo of exxon mobile... what are you thinking as bloomberg / cnn / cnbc drones in the background... financial times and wall street journal just delivered to your door...
what are you thinking?
global warming? nope. not unless it affects quarterly earnings.
renewable energy? nope. not unless it affects quarterly earnings.
military runaway spending? nope. not unless it affects quarterly earnings.
civilian casualties? nope. not unless it affects quarterly earnings.
anything at all that doesn't relate to quarterly earnings, stockholder value and your total compensation? NOPE. none of the above.
turning around 150 years of unbridled industrialization built on cheap oil/gas won't change anytime soon... until we kill each other trying to get it... or kill ourselves off using it...
Although not as important to the US as to China/India is the water sources in the Himalayas, etc. So while the US/UK fights over oil resources there is the issue of control of water resources in Eurasia that complicates the geopolitical posturing of the various players in the region.
"We have a record of conquest, colonization and expansion unequaled by any people in the Nineteenth century. We are not about to be curbed now."
[ Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot 1898, ]
Fitting quotation, and it should be updated.
F.e.,
""We have a record of conquest, colonization and expansion unequaled by any people in history of mankind, and we're still not about to be curbed now."
[The ghost of Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot 1898; speaking from beyond the grave in 2009]"
http://tinyurl.com/ovn7u5
People should not use URL redirection like with websites such as tinyurl.com, because users don't know what the links redirect to. Always post direct links; it's the very best policy.
I'll never use redirectors like tinyurl.com, and making it worse, you didn't give any indication of what the link redirects to. We could call that posting blindly; sort of.
This woman, Malalai Joya, is the best thing that could ever happen to Afghanistan, and to the West, as well. She understands that, even though she is strong enough to participate in the real struggle on the ground in Afghanistan, the real war is waged on media platforms in the international scene. And here her biggest strength becomes obvious, which is her charisma. The first time I heard of Malalai Joya a few months back was on a picture together with an American soldier who is refusing service. They looked like genuine friends and like a nice bunch of people to meet sometime in a neighborhood cafe. It is this ability of Malalai to connect with ordinary people from all over the world that will prove her to be a formidable asset in the resistance against empire.
Empire relies on the sort of colonial mentality that many people in the West still have towards the third world: to view the people of poor countries as 'subjects' for whom plans can be drawn up in boardrooms on the other side of the world and who can be 'rationalized' away as if they are not really people. Malalai shows that even though she is a hardened fighter, she is also a human being with dreams and aspirations that everybody can connect to. She shows that there is life underneath the Burqa, and she will open many people's eyes
She will do the same to Obama and for Afghanistan as what Cindy Sheehan did to Bush and for Iraq. Don't underestimate the power and influence that Cindy Sheehan had: she broke Bush's back and turned him into a helpless redneck president and I predict that Malalai will do the same to Obama.
Watch this space !
I learned so much more by just reading the responses on this article... Best community of intellectual, well written and compelling discussions I have ever come across (compared to other news sites). Thanks everyone for your researched responses.
This article is important. I hope it will inspire many to protest the continuing U.S. occupation and exploitation of Afghanistan and its people. Since Obama made his intentions in the region clear, many leftists have grown silent on the issue. In the same way religious people overlook the crimes of their religion--for fear of tarnishing their dearly-held illusions about the past and the future--Obama's proponents have overlooked his. As it is always in our best interests for realism to reign, let us hope for more enlightening articles like this.