Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran....Mali Next?

Unionist wrote:

That was 7 months before the NDP convention called for an immediate and safe withdrawal of troops. We can do better than that this time. We can be the voices that call on the NDP to correct its course - rather than those who cheer and find excuses as it swirls headfirst down the toilet.

And now the official opposition NDP has oversight on any possible future government shananigans in Mali, something the Liberals refused to offer the effective opposition NDP in 2005 when they demanded that Paul Martin stand up in Canada's Parliament and explain in detail to Canadians what exactly Canada's "new role" would be in spelling off/relieving U.S. troops in Kandahar Province of Afghanistan.

Ottawa announces $13-million for Mali, but no military aid

And in case you were wondering what the diff is between Afghanistan and Mali, it's about 2500 or so Canadian troops volunteered by the Liberals to free-up U.S. troops joining Uncle Sam in Iraq. If this was a federal Liberal Government of Canada with ReformaTories in opposition, they'd be tripping over one another to volunteer Canadian troops to the gendarmerie's cause.

Um, did I miss the discussion where Unionist became an apologist for the Taliban or something?

clambake wrote:

Um, did I miss the discussion where Unionist became an apologist for the Taliban or something?

He neglects to give NATO credit for turning their backs on the Afghan "civil war"/carnage from 1992 to '95 when his U.S.A., Saudi and Pakistani backed [s]mercenary proxies[/s] freedom fighters tore the country apart from stern to stem. It was a glorious time when western backed warlords and drug barons Hekmatyar, Rabbini etc were shovelled billions of dollars in aid and weapons to destroy Kabul and Jalalabad, and create millions of refugees.

Yes it was a glorious time when the likes of Ali Mohammed,  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and a host of 9/11 terrorists all fought for the CIA in Afghanistan.  That was when Allah was on the side of free markets and western style neoliberal democracy.

According to Unionist's posts and comments of Christmas past, none of that happened. They were all gallant and brave ordinary Afghans who fought the Sovs and Marxist PDPA government using nothing but muskets and slingshots. They fought for democracy and principles not cash money or the right to run guns and drugs for years on end. 

When pressed they'll tell you that the "freedom fighters" were definitely not Egyptians, Pakistani or Afghan drug barons and warlords propped-up by the west. No, they were ordinary Afghans without political affiliation or money ties to the west whatsoever. And therecertainly werent any mercenaries from 40 countries dropped into Afghanistan, like they were dropped into 1990s Bosnia and now Libya and Syria and Africa. Afghan Arabs? You'll find none in their closets. You know what they say about people with squeeky clean closets...

Recent history isn't all that important to certain babblers you'll find. I think they get their information from reputable sources in lapdog newz media.

And remember, the NDP are always-always to blame for whatever France does, or what the U.S. Military dictatorship and its corrupt stooges in Ottawa wielding phony-majority power are instructed to by their bosses in Warshington. And you'll discover that "conspiracy theory" is code for the unspeakable truth. The Liberal Party of Canada didn't fully appreciate Leslie Hughes for merely questioning a few findings of the U.S. Military dictatorship's 9/11 Commission cover-up, and you'll find youll receive a cold, steely gazed welcome for that kind of antiestablishmentarian talk around here.  ;-)

The glasnost is half full.

NDPP wrote:

Canadian Troops Drawn Into Mali's War, Despite What Prime Minister Stephen Harper Says: Walkom

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/01/30/canadian_troops_drawn_into...

"Now Canadian commandos are involved in a war the government says we're not waging..."

The Star wrote:

Meanwhile, who exactly are we fighting in Mali? The usual government line is that the rebels are Islamic militants set on turning Mali into a terrorist base. But as reports from the ground demonstrate, the reality is far more complicated.

There are at least four different armed rebel groups operating in the country’s north. The National Movement for the Liberation of Azwad, a Tuareg separatist group, claims it holds the town of Kidal. It used to be allied with the Islamist Ansar Dine.

Now, according to AP, the separatists say they want to work with the French against some (but not all) Islamists. But they say they will still fight Mali’s army which, according to reports from Reuters, is said to be busy executing those who look Tuareg in towns liberated by the French.

Ansar Dine, meanwhile, has fractured into two groups, one of which is more pro-Tuareg than the other. Both factions distinguish themselves from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or AQIM.

And AQIM, according to Niger’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Bazoum has — until recently — been working hand in glove with Mali’s government.

In November, Bazoum told the foreign affairs commission of France’s National Assembly that Mali’s former president, deposed last year by the army, had given AQIM free rein in the north in exchange for a share of the terror group’s lucrative kidnapping revenues.

Obviously this is far too nuanced for mere MP's to get their heads around.  The party brain trust is right. The NDP could never talk like this reporter from the Star it would make them appear far to radical for us dumb Canucks.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

NDPP wrote:

Canadian Troops Drawn Into Mali's War, Despite What Prime Minister Stephen Harper Says: Walkom

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/01/30/canadian_troops_drawn_into...

And [color=red]AQIM[/color], according to Niger’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Bazoum has — until recently — been working [color=red]hand in glove with Mali’s government.[/color]

In November, Bazoum told the foreign affairs commission of France’s National Assembly that Mali’s former president, deposed last year by the army, had given [color=red]AQIM free rein in the north[/color] in exchange for a share of the terror group’s lucrative kidnapping revenues.

Obviously this is far too nuanced for mere MP's to get their heads around.  The party brain trust is right. The NDP could never talk like this reporter from the Star it would make them appear far to radical for us dumb Canucks.

Of course, the Gladio Gang aided and abetted AQIPakistan-Afghanistan, AQIBosnia, AQIMacedonia, AQIChina, AQIChechnya-Dagestan-Kyrghyzstan, AQIIraq, AQILibya, AQISyria, and now AQIMali.  What else is new?

Who is going to stand up in Parliament and argue that the Gladio Gang are supporting right wing fundamentalist-terrorists around the world?

How did the NDP and lefties fare during the last cold war?

I vote we we should send Kropotkin, Unionist and NDPP to Parliament as independents and let them spill the beans on Gladio terror. They will have their hands full if they ever are elected in any riding.

Average Canadians don't know this stuff nor do they care about the cold war much less a colder war.

Canadians do have priorities and, typically, they are:

1. Health care

2. employment

3. Education

4. the environment

5. etcetera with foreign policy somewhere down the list.

I'm afraid your bad electoral system doesn't prioritize colder war Gladio.

And besides, all this Al CIA'duh news is normally ignored by most babblers in the 9/11 Gladio threads never mind the moral phony majority still voting in fraudulent FPTP elections. Why are we so interested in the subject now? Does it only matter when the NDP can be fitted-up as convenient scapegoats for NATO terror? Most people and very many  babblers were sucked into believing Elvis bin Laden orchestrated 9/11 not AQILangley.

[size=8]-crickets-[/size]

I still roll my eyes everytime I see that word "gladio". Sounds like something out of a garden or nursery. Or short for gladiolis. As soon as I see it used, I move to the next post.

I'd like to see Rabble.ca as a news organization spare a little effort toward holding the official opposition party to account for the positions it has taken in recent years.  We could do with fewer trained seals in the media, and in the commentariat for that matter, slapping their flippers together.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Your right Fidel Canadian soldiers in Africa killing indigenous rebels is not something we should talk about or look at.  It is irrelevant to everyone except the people we kill.  For the sake of the NDP the Tuareg people should never be mentioned. Their lives are not important especially when compared to important issues like reducing waiting lists for surgery or ATM fees for Canadian consumers.  Yes we must all consider the greater good.

You missed the part about our corrupt stooges aiding and abetting Mali's government working hand in glove with Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups.   It was there in your TorStar link. What do you think about that? That's not what the CBC is reporting - our colonial troops are there to purge the invisible army of darkness not help them. Will it have legs with Canadian voters who, like Boom Boom, tend to roll their eyes at thoughts of the Gladio Gang being so despicably evil? The Gladiolas Gang are not that evil, are they? Tell us why you want the NDP to embroil themselves in a colder war nonsense when we can beat them on the basics alone. The Harper colonial administrativeship of Canada is totally beatable without dividing and conquering ourselves and dragging everyone down to their level - the Gladio gutter level that is. Do you for a minute believe the NDP has the political wherewithal to stop necolonization of Africa?  Whose side are you on anyway?

If you and Unionist and NDPP are too chickenshit to go to Parliament Hill yourselves and yell foul on Canadian troops fighting Al CIA'duh and affiliated terrorists in Mali, then why don't you all just sit down and relax? Quit bothering us with your colder war baloney fcs.

There have been too many cuts to education and health care funding by Ottawa. There are too many women and children in Canada iving in poverty to succumb to this kind of colder war nonsense. A lot of those Canadians don't know the real history of Gladio terrorism. But that shouldnt stop them from achieving social democracy in their own backyard. There are more Canadians than just us counting on the NDP to get it done in Ottawa.

Unionist wrote:

Fidel wrote:

If you and Unionist and NDPP are too chickenshit to go to Parliament Hill yourselves and yell foul on Canadian troops fighting Al CIA'duh and affiliated terrorists in Mali, then why don't you all sit down and STFU? Quit bothering us with your colder war baloney fcs.

Ok, I can comprehend comradely criticism, but carnivorous carping can't continue! Cut it out, cook it, can it!

We've been censored in the Leslie Hughes thread where we truthers have attempted to counter the pro Dubya government's anti-Semitic smear job of one billion Muslims since 9/11. And now you're telling us to shut up and simply chime-in with laying all blame squarely on the NDP's shoulders for this colder war nonsense.

How many times will they be allowed to hide behind the "Al Qa'eda" bogeyman to justify marching troops into oil and resource-rich sovereign countries Nazi Germany style?

If you want the NDP to speak out against this colder war nonsense, you'll have to find some corurageous friends with the balls and ovaries to speak out against the very anti-Semitic  and ongoing smear job of Islamists and Arabs since 9/11. You'll find no one here to back you up except the truthers. Fuhget about moderators, though. They are down with the pro Dumbya guvmint's anti-Semitic smear job of a billion Muslims without actually prosectuting anyone for 9/11 in a legit court of law.

<a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/chaos-in-mali-is-a-risk-to-us-all/article7967257/">The Gob'NPail</a> wrote:

It would be morally sound, and in Canada’s self-interest, to offer more logistical support to France’s offensive [u]against al-Qaeda-linked militants in Mali.[/u]

The Harper government has extended the tour of a C-17 heavy-lift transport plane shuttling equipment from France to Mali but says it won’t join combat operations there. France has the only Western military force in combat zones, along with the undisciplined Malian army and some badly equipped and insufficiently trained West African contingents.

The Harper toadies are helping the gendarmerie to ferret out Al CIA'duh in Mali. All those who believe there is an invisible army of darkness, say Aye-aye-, Uncle Sam, may we have another. It's what our colonial administrators tell their bosses in Warshington daily.

Here in NS we have a scaled down version of what a Wellington St. NDP government might look like, in the form of Darrell Dexter. It's not all bad mind you. Public sector unionized workers have been given a reprieve from having their jobs outsourced, now that the NSNDP's merged services initiative has been put on ice for the time being, what with an election call anticipated sometime this year. And the cuts to education and health have miraculously stopped as well for the time being. We're all grateful for this, but at the same time our cynicism where the political establishment is concerned keeps being validated at every turn it seems, because anyone with two political clues to rub together knows full well that this reprieve is of a transitory nature. All that to say, we don't have to practice hypocrisy ourselves to get a feel for it. We can witness politics as its put into effect by the three stooges of contemporary politics in this country, or when we've suffered enough agitation from that, we can come here to be sedated by comrade Fidel's bromides.

Okay I understand it now.  The NDP has no power over foreign affairs nor the Canadian economy but we should all work our butts off to get them elected because they are going to ________.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plPyJdXKIY

Play on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KL9mRus19o

For what it's worth, there are two gay men who are rather happy with the Mali intervention.

I dunno - we give them everything - women's rights, LGBT rights, education, microcredit loans, provincial reconstruction teams, elections with many parties and secret ballots, stock exchanges, free markets ... And still they're not happy! They want Sharia law... or whatever... go figure!!

What do the [s]Quebecers[/s] [s]Afghans[/s] Tuareg want???

Doug wrote:

For what it's worth, there are two gay men who are rather happy with the Mali intervention.

Good for those two men who were saved.  For what its worth here is what the government side is responsible for.  Mali is just another country where we are there to steal resources while professing our Responsibility to Protect innocent people.  Strange that people never need protecting from a government that is compliant to Western interests no matter how bad their human rights record is.

R2P is hypocrisy on the grandest scale and has been for centuries. Islamist killers hurting their own people require intervention but not Western backed killers.  I suppose that is just the burden put on us progressive Westerners.  Poor us the white man's burden lies heavily on our shoulders

Quote:

It is estimated that between 20,000 and 40,000 children work in Mali’s artisanal gold mining sector. Many of them start working as young as six years old. These children are subjected to some of the worst forms of child labor, leading to injury, exposure to toxic chemicals, and even death. They dig shafts and work underground, pull up, carry and crush the ore, and pan it for gold. Many children suffer serious pain in their heads, necks, arms, or backs, and risk long-term spinal injury from carrying heavy weights and from enduring repetitive motion. Children have sustained injuries from falling rocks and sharp tools, and have fallen into shafts.  In addition, they risk grave injury when working in unstable shafts, which sometimes collapse.

Child miners are also exposed to mercury, a highly toxic substance, when they mix gold with mercury and then burn the amalgam to separate out the gold. Mercury attacks the central nervous system and is particularly harmful to children. Child laborers risk mercury poisoning, which results in a range of neurological conditions, including tremors, coordination problems, vision impairment, headaches, memory loss, and concentration problems. The toxic effects of mercury are not immediately noticeable, but develop over time: it is hard to detect for people who are not medical experts. Most adult and child artisanal miners are unaware of the grave health risks connected with the use of mercury.

The majority of child laborers lives with and work alongside their parents who send their children into mining work to increase the family income. Most parents are artisanal miners themselves, and are paid little for the gold they mine, while traders and some local government officials make considerable profit from it. However, some children also live or work with other people—relatives, acquaintances, or strangers, and are economically exploited by them. A significant proportion of child laborers are migrants, coming from different parts of Mali or from neighboring countries, such as Burkina Faso and Guinea. Some of them may be victims of trafficking. Young girls in artisanal mining areas are also sometimes victims of sexual exploitation and abuse.

http://www.hrw.org/node/103090/section/3

Chomsky wrote:

A third principle is that virtually every use of force in international affairs has been justified in terms of R2P, including the worst monsters. Just to illustrate, in his scholarly study of "humanitarian intervention," Sean Murphy cites only three examples between the Kellogg-Briand pact and the UN Charter: Japan's attack on Manchuria, Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler's occupation of parts of Czechoslovakia, all accompanied by lofty rhetoric about the solemn responsibility to protect the suffering populations, and factual justifications. The basic pattern continues to the present.

The historical record is worth recalling when we hear R2P or its cousin described as an "emerging norm" in international affairs. They have been considered a norm as far back as we want to go. The founding of this country is an example. In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was granted its Charter by the King, stating that rescuing the natives from their bitter pagan fate is "the principal end of this plantation." The Great Seal of the Colony depicts an Indian saying "Come Over and Help Us." The English colonists were thus fulfilling their responsibility to protect as they proceeded to "extirpate" and "exterminate" the natives, in their words, "and for their own good, their honored successors explained. In 1630, John Winthrop delivered his famous sermon depicting the new nation "ordained by God" as "a city on a hill," inspirational rhetoric that is regularly invoked to this day to justify any crime as at worst a "deviation" from the noble mission of responsibility to protect.

http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20090723.htm

Mali’s Tuareg-Uranium Conspiracy

I remember Rumsfeld telling the world that Saddam had his mitts on yellow birthday cake or some such.

Then it was Al Qaeda holed-up in concrete bunkers Dr No style with generals and captains and a whole chain of command ready to attack America. lol-worthy.

Tuaregs  just want independence, but now they've supposedly been infiltrated by the all-purpose invisible army of darkness which does not now nor has it ever existed. Tuaregs, Al CIA'da, what's the diff, really?