Linkity-link: Feb 8th, 2008

A few more interesting links for perusal: today we have Pilger doing a deliciously snarky lambasting of the U.S. Presidential Elections, Prince Charles being the royal buffoon he is, and Lenin’s Tomb taking a gander at Canada’s involvement at Afghanistan. Enjoy!

The Danse Macabre Of Us-Style Democracy, (John Pilger, ZNet): John Pilger has written a fantastic lambasting of the “democracy” of the US Presidential Elections, arguing they inevitably reproduce the same elite opinion at the top levels of the government. In one particularily amusing quote, Pilger nails the feeling many of us get when we see the US political machine in operation:

What struck me, living and working in the United States, was that presidential campaigns were a parody, entertaining and often grotesque. They are a ritual danse macabre of flags, balloons and bullshit, designed to camouflage a venal system based on money power, human division and a culture of permanent war.

Thankfully, he does not get sucked into the illusion that is really any difference between the Democrats and Republicans; likely borne out of his experiences as a foreign correspondant covering the fallout, in human lives, of American Presidents invading any and every threat they can. And, of course, this year’s crop of candidates is no different:

Nothing has changed. Barack Obama is a glossy Uncle Tom who would bomb Pakistan. Hillary Clinton, another bomber, is anti-feminist. John McCain’s one distinction is that he has personally bombed a country. They all believe the US is not subject to the rules of human behaviour, because it is “a city upon a hill”, regardless that most of humanity sees it as a monumental bully which, since 1945, has overthrown 50 governments, many of them democracies, and bombed 30 nations, destroying millions of lives.

Every single American journalist who fails to report on the crimes perpatrated by their government should be measured against John Pilger, and every one of them would be found wanting.

Enviro-friendly Prince Charles opts for yacht over plane (cbc.ca): You know, in this world of crushing poverty for millions of people, where almost three billion people live on less than three dollars a day, it’s good to know there are ‘tribunes of the oppressed’ like Prince Chuckles that make the big sacrifices for the rest of us. Indeed, where would the world’s poor and working-class folks be without well-meaning, yet utterly parasitic, rich fops like him? </rant>

 

Canadian Tories cock up their war (redbedhead @ Lenin’s Tomb): For those of you outside my home-on-natives-land, you may be unawares of the stunning anti-imperialist resistance to the War on Terror™ (i.e. War on Poor Brown People with Resources We Want). It’s true! Canadians are erecting barricades in the streets of cities nation wide, with daily protests numbering in the thousands, and direct-action militants actively disrupting military logistics.

Or, at least that I dream about. Then I wake to reports like this, from the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan (is it just me, or does that ‘Independent Panel’ sound like someone in Ottawa is a little sensitive to charges the committee is less than impartial?). Essentially, our good friend John Manley, one of the most neoliberal chumps to fester away in Parliament, chaired a committee charged with deciding whether Canada being an imperialist power in Afghanistan was tickety-boo or not – oddly enough, as The Scott Ross discovered, it appears Mr. Manley appears to have cribbed the vast majority of his report from an article Manley wrote in October for Policy Options, leading those of us with functioning brains to question why no one taught Manley what plagiarism is.

Of course, there’s also the issue of the detainees, and of Canadian-backed Karzai thugs involved in torture, but you can read all about that at the link above (the comments are pretty good, too).