This is the government our troops are fighting and dying for

A 23-year-old student journalist in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death for downloading and distributing a report that is critical of the oppressive treatment of women in some Islamic societies.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh (at right), who is a journalism student at Balkh University and a writer for Jahan-e Naw, was sentenced last October after downloading a report from a Farsi website that criticized Islamic fundamentalists who misrepresent statements in the Koran to justify the oppression of women. Kambaksh was arrested after someone filed a complaint against him. He is accused of blasphemy for distributing the report to other students and teachers at his school.

He was tried by a sharia court (which oversees Islamic religious law) and was not allowed legal representation, according to news reports. The Afghan Senate passed a motion this week supporting the sentence, according to the British newspaper The Independent.

The next Conservative MP who insinuates that Afghan war opponents don't care about protecting women's rights should be publically bombarded with copies of this story. The latest update is that the Afghan Senate has withdrawn their support for the death penalty in the face of international outcry. How many similar cases are happening without worldwide scrutiny?

A trifling matter of the will of the people

The Globe and Mail today has a predictably rapturous response to John Manley's predictably bellicose Afghanistan report.

Christie Blatchford actually reports getting weepy over it she loves it so much (They get it, they really get it.), while on the editorial page jowls quiver manfully in righteous approval for Manley's 'eloquent and impassioned case for extending Canada's combat mission in Afghanistan'.

The little matter of the Canadian people's overwhelming disapproval for the mission and the overwhelming desire for it to end immediately if not sooner is barely mentioned at all, and only in the context of the government's failure to explain it to us well enough. Is it perhaps condescending and patronizing to propose that the only reason we silly citizens don't overwhelmingly support rather than overwhelmingly oppose this mission is that we just don't get it? To even ask the question means you are a deeply un-serious person and should just leave these matters to the grownups to handle.

To the Globe and Mail the will of the people isn't even a factor in this decision apart from mild criticism of the government's failure to successfully sell us on it.

Then there's the insulting pantomine that Manley has set stern conditions of increased NATO troop support if we're going to stay. Manley's report is no blank check for the Prime Minister pontificates Brian Laghi. If NATO doesn't step up, we'll be on our way.

Of course then Lewis Mackenzie lets the mask slip a little by pointing out that the previously announced 3000 marines promised by US Defense Secratary Robert Gates (With some sneering at our troops efforts as an extra bonus) can easily be spun as meeting the tough new conditions Manley has stuck the PM with.

Meanwhile the Toronto Star points out that the report is just a stern call for more of the same.

Stay the course, so we don't have to

Shorter German government: "We have no intention of sending our troops into the meat grinder of Southern Afghanistan and we'd sure like Canada to keep their troops there so we don't face the embarrassment of having to refuse to do so."

Sunday Linkblast - July 22

• America's next disastrous military adventure
  Eric Margolis makes the case against going into Pakistan.
  
  
• George Washington: Soft on Terrorism
  Matt has a post comparing the current GOP field and the founding fathers.
  
  
• The weekly American editorial cartoons
  From Bob Geiger.
  
  
• Tammy Faye dies at 65
  No snark. No cheesy makeup jokes. She made a probably futile, but undeniably good-hearted effort to reconcile the evangelical Christian and gay communities and she died with class and dignity.
  
  
• Calgary paramedics prepare for a strike that the provincial government will probably block
  Think about how unhappy people who became EMTs to help the rest of us have to be to vote 99% in favor of strike action. The province starves municipalities of funding and then think they can simply forbid away the inevitable backlashes.
  
  
• We're all class warriors now
  All over the industrialized world anger against the rich and the globalization that benefits them at our expense is growing by leaps and bounds. Financial elites are baffled and increasingly frightened. Media elites try hard to ignore it.
  
  
• Lessons for Americans to learn from Iraq
  The standout: 'When the rest of the world thinks you're crazy, it's worth entertaining the possibility that they might be right.' I'd add this one from The Tyee: War is a failed paradigm that just doesn't work anymore.
  
  
• The Lonely Republican
  Profile of anti-Iraq war old school Libertarian candidate for President, Ron Paul.
  
  
• Scarily advanced bionic hand
  Amputees can use it to type, play piano, peel a banana... welcome to the future.
  
  
• Sunday Morning Hangover from Warren Ellis
  I'm halfway through his brilliant, disturbing, hilarious, grotesque and magical new novel Crooked Little Vein. Go buy it and read it - if you have a strong stomach and a sense of humor. If you don't, what are you doing here?

Canada's first casualty in Afghanistan was to American friendly fire

A US Army report has confirmed what has been suspected since last year: Canadian Pte. Robert Costall was shot in the back by US Special Forces during a fierce battle early on March 29, 2006.

The Canadian closed door Board of inquiry into the death of Robert Costall concluded last April and I blogged about it a few months later, but the details of the death of a Canadian soldier at American hands were subject to an American veto since then.

UPDATE: Pte Costall's family would like an apology.

And now we know where everybody really stands.

Ottawa — The House of Commons has overwhelmingly rejected an NDP motion calling for an immediate end to Canada's combat mission in Afghanistan.

Conservative, Liberal and Bloc Québécois MPs joined forces Monday to defeat the motion by a vote of 225 to 28.

So the Conservatives think that the American style 'tough' counter-insurgency combat mission is the right mission for Canada, that the whole business is going swimmingly and that it should be an open-ended commitment - winking at the 2009 deadline they hope a majority will allow them to ignore.

Oh and we have no responsibility to prisoners once we hand them over to the Afghans and caring about their human rights makes you a Taliban sympathizer, a racist for applying Canada's cultural beliefs about torture to the Afghans and probably a fag.

The Liberals and Bloc on the other hand, judging by their statements and their serious (?) attempt to make the 2009 end-date quasi-firm, think the combat mission in Afghanistan is now the wrong mission for Canada and that it's going badly, but that we should still leave our troops in this meat grinder for two more years.

Upon reflection, at least the Cons believe something, repugnant though it may be. Their position doesn't seem to be entirely a product of triangulation. They're vicious, stupid, lizard brain eatfuckkill level beliefs but at least they seem to form policy based on something other than political calculation.

This was your gut check, we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Hat tip to Accidental Deliberations

James Laxer on the Afghanistan vote

Hat-tip to Rambling Socialist

Like Josh I approached Laxer's posting on the Afghanistan vote with some trepidation - his big theme of late has seemed to be urging a more junior partner to the Liberals role for the NDP - see his Walrus piece.

Thankfully I underestimated him. He points out quite rightly that the Canadian public is far out ahead of the other parties on Afghanistan and that the NDPs vote was the only principled option.

Liberals play politics while Kandahar burns

So the Lieberal blogosphere is having the fits the shits and the blind staggers over the failure of their party's faux Afghan withdrawal motion, claiming the NDP have joined the Tories to keep us in Afghanistan forever.

The truth, not surprisingly, turns out to be quite different. Military analyst Stephen Staples acted as a go-between between the Libs and the NDP to try to work out a bill the NDP could support. (Hat tip to Blogging a Dead Horse) The Libs were more interested in a grandstand ploy to score points off the NDP - in fact they even had a backup plan if the NDP had chosen to support the bill at the last minute; If they were so serious about this motion why wasn't it a whipped vote and why were more than a dozen Lib MPs missing?

The real vote will be debated tomorrow.

Pte. Robert Costall and the waiting game

Pte. Robert Costall 22, died in a pitched firefight with Taleban forces on the night of March 29, 2006. Since then, how he died has been a closely guarded secret, which I blogged about here back in August. The Pentagon retains veto power over the results of first a Canadian and now an American Friendly Fire inquiry. The Pentagon observer even had the authority to keep Pte. Costall's family out of the Canadian inquiry.

The American friendly fire inquiry is finally done, more than a year since the incident occurred and the details are still secret. Was Pte. Costall killed by an insurgent? An American Special Forces member? Someone else?

Should the mannner of death for a Canadian soldier be information that is subject to the veto of a foriegn power?

Sunday Link Blast - Mar 4

• James Laxer on Afghanistan -
  I don't always agree with him, but he's always worth reading.
  
  
• The Vancouver Olympics claim the words 'winter', 'games' and 'medals' -
  They also want the number 2010, the poems of Rimbaud and the emotional state of ennui.
  
  
• Blogosphere, meet my friend Matthew, I'm sure you'll get along like a house on fire -
  Flames, screams, destruction...
  
  
• Imagine all the crap the Bushies have done we don't even know about -
  Interview with terrorism expert Ron Susskind.
  
  
• Signposts -
  Sudden little reminders that we are constantly being invaded by the future.
  
  
• The Governor and the Merck lobbyist -
  Drug Companies, even when they do right they do it wrong.
  
  
• Malalai Joya interviewed by PBS -
  "The U.S. is not concerned with the main cause behind terrorism in Afghanistan. That is why our people don't consider the U.S. as the "liberator" of our country. Even they have killed thousands of our innocent civilians during its so-called "war on terror" and continue to target civilians."
  
  
• A terrible thing to waste -
  Autistic genius brutalized in prison for terrorism against SUVs.