Thursday, April 02, 2009

Our Soldiers are Dying For This?

We were told that the war in Afghanistan was being fought to end religious tyranny. We're fighting the Taliban. It's a worthwhile endeavour, all that bloodshed, because we're removing crazy religious dogmatists from power and supporting a moderate government that will protect innocent people from the Taliban.

So we put up with Karzai. So we sent our boys and girls. So we dropped bombs and shot people. So over a hundred of our people have died in this endeavour. So we spent money we can ill afford to spend.

And now?

And now the sham of democracy that is the "loya jirga" in Afghanistan is passing laws that enforce the same religious tyranny that we were supposedly there to prevent.

The whole facade is crumbling. We've never been fighting for democracy or freedom. We've spent decades supporting right wing dictators in foreign countries, calling it democracy and lying to the people.

This is only the latest lie: that we are in Afghanistan for anything other than self interest.

It's time to bring our soldiers home. Not one more person should have to spend one more minute in theatre, never mind be wounded or die, for this sham.

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Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Regarding Class Warfare: Eating the Poor

The next time some bunch of rich economist types start complaining that we can't tax rich people because it would "ruin the economy" and "de-incentivize wealth" and that it constitutes "class warfare", show them this.

Homeless woman jailed for being poor.

Her son was arrested and convicted, sentenced to juvenile hall. She was ordered to pay for his detention (?) out of her own pocket. Being unable to do this, she was held in contempt and sent to prison. When she got out, she was then fined for her own jail time.

Basically, we're one step closer to what the wealthy in America really want to do: feed the poor in to meat grinders and serve them with a side of foie gras.

But, oh, don't raise the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest people by 1%, because that would be class warfare.

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