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pawns

Wednesday August 18, 2021

August 25, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday August 18, 2021

Russia and the U.S. share the blame for the terrible fate facing Afghan people

In the year 2000, five years after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, nobody elsewhere cared what happened in that landlocked, benighted country. It was ruled by angry rural fanatics who tormented the local people with their demented rules for proper “Islamic” behaviour, but it was not a military or diplomatic priority for anybody.

July 15, 2021

It is about to return to that isolated and isolationist existence. Neither then nor now do the Taliban even have a foreign policy. They are more like a franchise operation whose various elements share certain basic principles — e.g. foreigners, women and democracy are bad — but whose members are primarily focused on local issues and personal ambitions.

This is not the first time that the country has been in such a mess, and about the only useful thing that the current lot of foreign invaders can do on their way out is offer refuge abroad to as many as possible of the Afghans who trusted their promises. That will certainly not be more than 10 or 20 per cent of those who earned their protection.

The Russians and the Americans share the blame for this catastrophe. It’s hard to believe that an uninvaded Afghanistan could have peacefully evolved into a prosperous democratic society with equal rights for all, but “uninvaded” is the only condition in which it could conceivably have approached that goal.

There was the germ of such a locally-led modernization process in the overthrow of the king in 1973 and the proclamation of an Afghan republic. Other Muslim-majority states have made that transition successfully — Turkey did, for example, despite its current government — but the Afghan attempt did not prosper.

Violent resistance by traditional social and religious groups started at once, and the tottering new republican regime was overthrown in 1978 by a bloody military coup. The young officers who seized power were Marxists who imposed a radical reform program.

February 2, 2019

They gave women the vote and equal access to education, carried out land reforms, and even attacked the role of religion. By 1979, the Marxist regime was facing a massive revolt in conservative rural areas, and one faction asked for Soviet military help.

The moribund Communist leadership in Moscow agreed, and 100,000 Soviet troops entered the country. The subsequent war devastated the country for a decade — with much help from the United States.

“The day that the Soviets officially crossed the (Afghan) border, I wrote to president Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the U.S.S.R. its Vietnam War,” said former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. He immediately started sending money and weapons to the rural rebels who later became the Taliban.

It took 10 years, $40 billion of clandestine U.S. military aid, and around a million Afghan dead, but by 1989 the Taliban and their various Islamist rivals forced the Russians to pull out. Shortly afterwards the Soviet Union collapsed, and Brzezinski arrogantly but implausibly claimed credit for it.

“What is most important to the history of the world?” he asked. “The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” 

In reality, the Soviet Union was heading for collapse anyway, but the “stirred-up Muslims” turned out to be a fairly large problem.

The Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996 after a long all-against-all war between the various Islamist groups, and ruled most of the country badly and brutally for five years. Then an Arab Islamist called Osama bin Laden abused the hospitality of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar by launching the 9/11 attacks against the United States in 2001.

November 14, 2001

An American invasion was inevitable after 9/11 because some spectacular retaliation was politically necessary. That led to another 20 years of war: the Taliban against another set of foreigners who understood little about the country’s recent history and why it made local people profoundly mistrustful of “helpful” foreigners.

Even now Americans don’t realize how closely they have recapitulated the Soviet experience in the country. The ending that is now unfolding was foreordained from the start, although it has taken twice as long to arrive because the United States is much richer than Russia. Nevertheless, the aftermath will also be the same.

The various factions of the Taliban will split, mostly on ethnic lines, and another civil war of uncertain length will follow. The rule of the winners will be as cruel and arbitrary as it was last time. And the rest of the world will rapidly lose interest, because Afghanistan won’t pose a serious threat to anywhere else. (Gwynne Dyer – The Hamilton Spectator)  

 

Posted in: International Tagged: 2021-28, Afghanistan, chess, game, imperialism, pawns, Russia, superpower, Taliban, USA, USSA, war

Tuesday May 26, 2015

May 25, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator - Tuesday May 26, 2015 Wynne Government imposes back-to-work legislation on striking teachers The Ontario government will be tabling back-to-work legislation today for striking secondary school teachers, but since New Democrats won't be supporting it, students will be kept from class a few more days. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says her party won't support the Liberals' motion for unanimous consent to get it passed today, but the government could use its majority to pass it by Thursday. That would mean more than 70,000 students in the Sudbury-area Rainbow District, Peel Region and Durham Region, who have been kept from class for up to five weeks, would return to school on Friday at the earliest. The back-to-work legislation is being introduced after the Education Relations Commission ruled that strikes by high school teachers in three boards are putting students' school years in jeopardy. Education Minister Liz Sandals says she respects the collective bargaining process, but it's important to get kids back to class to complete their school years. While the striking secondary teachers in three boards are set to be legislated back to work, their central union said this weekend that talks with the provincial government have reached an impasse. The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation plans to apply to the provincial labour ministry for conciliation Ñ the teachers must first use the government third-party assistance to try to reach a contract before they can take provincewide strike action. The Ontario Labour Relations Board had also been set to rule on whether the three local strikes were illegal. This is the first round of negotiations under a new bargaining system the Liberal government introduced last year, separating the process into local and central talks. The school boards argued that the three local strikes were really on central issues such as class sizes. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday May 26, 2015

Wynne Government imposes back-to-work legislation on striking teachers

The Ontario government will be tabling back-to-work legislation today for striking secondary school teachers, but since New Democrats won’t be supporting it, students will be kept from class a few more days.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says her party won’t support the Liberals’ motion for unanimous consent to get it passed today, but the government could use its majority to pass it by Thursday.

That would mean more than 70,000 students in the Sudbury-area Rainbow District, Peel Region and Durham Region, who have been kept from class for up to five weeks, would return to school on Friday at the earliest.

The back-to-work legislation is being introduced after the Education Relations Commission ruled that strikes by high school teachers in three boards are putting students’ school years in jeopardy.

Education Minister Liz Sandals says she respects the collective bargaining process, but it’s important to get kids back to class to complete their school years.

While the striking secondary teachers in three boards are set to be legislated back to work, their central union said this weekend that talks with the provincial government have reached an impasse.

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation plans to apply to the provincial labour ministry for conciliation — the teachers must first use the government third-party assistance to try to reach a contract before they can take provincewide strike action.

The Ontario Labour Relations Board had also been set to rule on whether the three local strikes were illegal.

This is the first round of negotiations under a new bargaining system the Liberal government introduced last year, separating the process into local and central talks. The school boards argued that the three local strikes were really on central issues such as class sizes. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: back-to-work, chess, game, Kathleen Wynne, labour, legislation, Liz Sandals, Ontario, OSSTF, pawns, strike, teachers

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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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