March 2006

Sidney Blumenthal
OpenDemocracy.net
March 3 2006

The delusions of heroism that trap George W Bush are reinforced by the culture of servility that surrounds him, says Sidney Blumenthal.

Republicans representative of their permanent establishment have recently and quietly sent emissaries to President Bush, like diplomats to a foreign ruler isolated in his forbidden city, to probe whether he could be persuaded to become politically flexible. These ambassadors were not connected to the elder Bush or his closest associate, former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, who was purged in 2005 from the president’s foreign intelligence advisory board and scorned by the current president.

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[...being, of course, a paraphrase of Lyndon Johnson's response to hearing Walter Cronkite declare the Vietname war "unwinnable" in Feb '68.

(Margaret-freaking-Wente, for cronk's sake!) ]

And we’re in Kandahar because?

By Margaret Wente
The Globe and Mail
March 2, 2006

We are in Kandahar in large measure because the previous government wanted to find a way to improve our relations with the Bush administration, and ponying up forces for a major deployment in Afghanistan was one way to show our bona fides.”

If you believe what you hear, the reason our forces are in Afghanistan is to help the suffering Afghan people. A little bit of reconstruction, some nation-building, a few photo ops with cute children — who could be against that? Trouble is, that’s not why we’re in Afghanistan. And there won’t be time for much of that stuff anyway. Our soldiers are going to be too busy dodging roadside bombs and hunting scumbags. There’s a war on, and we’re in it up to our necks.

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James Laxer
Special to Globe and Mail on-line

For centuries, the Afghans have shown an ornery tendency to throw out foreign invaders. And when, years from now, the people of the West decide to pull out of Afghanistan, withdrawal at that late date could leave an even more battered country and an even more tyrannical regime in its wake.”

Canada should pull its troops out of Afghanistan. The West’s mission there is no less a “march of folly,” to use historian Barbara Tuchman’s phrase about the U.S. war in Vietnam, than was the Soviet attempt to impose a regime in Afghanistan with its invasion in 1979.

That invasion was the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire. Sixty years earlier, in 1919, the British decided that their own imperial effort to dominate Afghanistan was doomed and withdrew to the other side of the Khyber Pass.

In our day, the United States is involved in an unwinnable struggle for hegemony in Iraq, Afghanistan and much of the rest of the Middle East and Central Asia. Canada should stand aside.

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Public network finally gets around to airing the miniseries it delayed until after the election

Ottawa (22 Feb. 2006) - The CBC is finally going to air Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, a two-part miniseries about the founder of Candian medicare on March 12 and 13.

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Grassy Narrows, Ontario- The Grassy Narrows First Nation today sent letters warning the chief executives of Weyerhaeuser (NYSE: WY) and Abitibi-Consolidated to

Tuesday, Feb 28, 2006

GRASSY NARROWS, Ont. (CP) - The Grassy Narrows First Nation is demanding that forestry companies Weyerhaeuser Co. Ltd. and Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. stop logging on its reserve or face a fierce campaign of international protest.

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Briarpatch magazine invites submissions for our June 2006 issue, Vol. 35, No. 4. The theme is “Resistance is Fertile: Sustainable Solutions for a Troubled Planet,” and submissions are due by Monday April 17, 2006.

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Editorial: Maclean’s magazine and the war on feminism

Men, Masculinity, & Feminism
by Jenn Ruddy
To what extent can (or should) men participate in the feminist movement?

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2006 Stapleford Lecture

NETTIE WIEBE

“Who’s Cooking the Food System? Globalization and Food Sovereignty”

Date: 23 March 2006
Time: 7:30 pm
Place: Campion Auditorium

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Daughters of Africa (DOA) invites you to an International Women’s Day Breakfast in solidarity with sisters in Africa who are working against HIV/AIDS and for equality and justice.

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