We take for granted in Canada that women & girls can go to school without being slaughtered or have permanently disfiguring acid getting thrown in their face simply for learning how to read & write. That is true bravery. One thing many people should remember that our troop’s mission is here twofold, first to provide security to most of the Afghan people who legitimately want progress in this country so they can make the necessary steps to achieve long term stability. I have seen only one coalition convoy in the streets of Kabul, yet we do provide support so Afghans have enough strength in their country so the children have the opportunity for an education. Secondly, our funds help rebuild Afghanistan & help the people here. Though the funds do not always get to where they are needed the most, which unfortunately is often the case in locations with excessive poverty, our successful endeavours do not seem to get the media coverage that they deserve. The Afghan people realize that we are not in this for the long haul (2014 is Karzai’s withdrawal date request) & that we will eventually leave Afghanistan leaving those who supported us completely vulnerable in what could amount to a death sentence should religious extremists take over again. Our memories are so short in the West we often forget that it is the Americans who helped put the oppressive Taliban in power but they haven’t forgotten that here in Afghanistan. The brutality of the Taliban government is well remembered, they have done ridiculously cruel things like kill a man for having no beard. They would feel men’s beards to see if they had been shaven & beat him if he had shaved or trimmed his beard. The beautiful Buddha statues at Bamiyan were destroyed. There were no games allowed, no music; women were made to wear berka’s (although many still do there is more that do not.) One can understand the Afghan’s confusion. In fact action star from my era Sylvester Stallone made a movie in the 80’s in which his notorious character ‘Rambo’ was on the side of the Taliban in the movie Rambo III. The founder of Aschiana, M. Yousef began Aschiana during the Mujahedeen rule. He...
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Life is a confused entanglement here. And ultimately it is all about survival. Many people may be hedging their bets that we will leave & so they want to be in favour of extremist groups so if they come back into power they will be in good standing. For people like at Aschiana that want legitimate change they are gambling that we will stand by the people of Afghanistan for the long haul and in fact they are risking their lives for it. If the Taliban were to come back into power they would have to leave Afghanistan or it would mean certain imprisonment or death simply for teaching girls. Many Afghan families and girls who refuse to give way to people who want to keep the country repressed. These children many of them girls that are risking their lives to learn it is staggering. Compared to their lives, mine is safe. At the end of the month I’m coming home, these people are mired in this for the foreseeable future. I saw Romeo D’Allaire speak last year & he pointed out that Canadians helped France in WW II for instance not because there is any benefit to us but because it was the right thing to do.. The group that I am working with, Aschiana is a very organized group for a smaller NGO. Literacy rates are very low in Afghanistan about 28% and only 12% for females: I marvel at the bravery that these people have in promoting education, something that we take for granted back home, literally risking their lives to teach children how to read & write. They do this despite the risk like the acid attack on girls walking to schools like what happened in Kandahar. At the risk of their schools being bombed by radical forces. Notwithstanding increasing threats from the radicals, enrolment in the Aschiana girls’ classes is rising. some brave Afghan teachers are actually using in her home to teach students. Aschiana works with street kids & war orphans in Kabul providing education for them & entry into schools. Although they have offices Throughout Afghanistan & are helping 5000 children there are 60 000 orphans in Kabul alone! This is their website...
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The flight to Kabul was full and the passengers were a split between westerners all of which were well built menacing looking security contractors & Afghans. Surprisingly the Afghan girls were quite made up & dressed quite provocatively, when they boarded in Frankfurt yet they almost all had headscarves & shawls on when they got off in Kabul. I did not get much sleep on my flight. I got moved to the exit row where it was nice to be able to stretch out & I was sat next to a guy from Kentucky Justin Smith a member of the US State department & the head of security at the US Embassy in Kabul. I interrogated the poor guy for what must have been a few hours getting as much information as I could glean from him before we landed. He said that he’d bet his pay cheque that almost all of the Afghans tickets onboard the flight were all paid with part of the $20 billion in corruption money that left Afghanistan last year. Justin was a really great guy & so helpful. I’ll contact him at the US Embassy later once I get settled. I haven’t contacted any Canadians or been to the Canadian embassy yet since I just arrived this morning. Flying in looking at the brown barren Afghan landscape it looked as if someone had pushed the Earth together creating the creases and folds in the brown earth that are the rugged mountains that are so characteristic of this country. Kabul sits in a bowl surrounded by barren yet rough mountains. The first thing that struck me was landing in Kabul was the thick brown haze of smog and dust that hung over the city. I initially asked Justin if there was a windstorm or something & he laughed & said that it was pretty typical of the air quality in Kabul. Apparently there are 3,000 people die from water & air pollution illnesses in Kabul every year & it is the biggest cause of natural death in this city of five million & the US airfield in Bagram is 45 kms away. I was exhausted after the long flight & chaos of getting into Kabul for the first time...
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Well I did it! I checked one more thing off life’s ‘to do’ list. Check out the video here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4U_XAaUEr4 When I was considering this endeavour I weighed my unquenchable thirst for adventure with my love of animals. I will say that there was no killing of the bulls in my part of the festivities. As a matter of fact I see it as a chance for the bulls to get even. The runners are not professional bullfighters & although some do arm themselves with a rolled up newspaper to distract the bull, most of us had nothing but our instincts & wits to avoid the bulls. The first thing that locals say, and I mean all locals, literally every single one that we spoke to was…’don’t do it, don’t run’. Traditional bullfighting here is not something that I would choose to witness or participate in. I felt what we did this morning was more for fun & as I mentioned evening the playing field in favour of the animals. Many runners are injured everyday three were hospitalized today & one was killed just last year. Bullfighting here is as pervasive in this culture as rodeo is in ours. Christie & I arrived here yesterday morning and walked the half hour that it took to get to Old Town Pamplona. Pamplona is a fully modern city of about 200 000 people located in the North of Spain in Basque country. The current city surrounds the Old Town which has the distinctive narrow streets & typical architecture that we have become accustomed to in Spain. We bought our obligatory San Fermin garb which consists of white pants, a white shirt with red sash & neckerchief. With the San Fermin festival the streets of old town Pamplona are crowded & drunkenly festive unlike anything I have ever seen and the World d Cup final with Spain hadn’t even began yet. The heat is sweltering here 34°C, even in the evening. We explored the area where the bulls will be running which was the main street Estafeta which also happens to be where the centre of the party is congregating. To be honest I am far too old for the intensity of the drunkenness & partying that...
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But the chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Haleakala–which means, translated, “the house of the sun.” We climbed a thousand feet up the side of this isolated colossus one afternoon; then camped, and next day climbed the remaining nine thousand feet, and anchored on the summit, where we built a fire and froze and roasted by turns, all night. With the first pallor of dawn we got up and saw things that were new to us. Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched Nature work her silent wonders. The sea was spread abroad on every hand, its tumbled surface seeming only wrinkled and dimpled in the distance. A broad valley below appeared like an ample checker-board, its velvety green sugar plantations alternating with dun squares of barrenness and groves of trees diminished to mossy tufts. Beyond the valley were mountains picturesquely grouped together; but bear in mind, we fancied that we were looking up at these things–not down. We seemed to sit in the bottom of a symmetrical bowl ten thousand feet deep, with the valley and the skirting sea lifted away into the sky above us! It was curious; and not only curious, but aggravating; for it was having our trouble all for nothing, to climb ten thousand feet toward heaven and then have to look up at our scenery. However, we had to be content with it and make the best of it; for, all we could do we could not coax our landscape down out of the clouds. Formerly, when I had read an article in which Poe treated of this singular fraud perpetrated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes, I had looked upon the matter as an invention of his own fancy. I have spoken of the outside view–but we had an inside one, too. That was the yawning dead crater, into which we now and then tumbled rocks, half as large as a barrel, from our perch, and saw them go careering down the almost perpendicular sides, bounding three hundred feet at a jump; kicking up cast-clouds wherever they struck; diminishing to our view as they sped farther into distance; growing invisible, finally, and only betraying their course by faint little puffs of dust; and...
Learn MoreCase for Israel by Alan Dershowitz Alan Dershowitz ‘s Case For Israel was emotionally not easy for me to read. I suspect as difficult as Jimmy Carter’s ‘Palestine Peace Not Apartheid’ was for Israel’s supporters to read. First of all, as you know I feel it is important to initially find common ground. Dershowitz at least initially presented the opposing side to the argument, whereas Carter (although I agree with him more) omits the Palestinians misgivings almost completely I agree that in retrospect the Palestinians may have been better off to be annexed by Syria, Egypt & Jordan all things currently considered. I was happy that Dershowitz agrees with the 2 state solution & I was also relieved to hear him say that it is only a matter of time before this occurs and anything that contravenes this is counterproductive. I also agree that Arafat should have taken the deal offered in 2000. Just like they should have stuck with the 1967 borders which were a far better deal than what they currently have; are fighting for, and would be lucky to have offered again. A portion of the book was obviously aimed at Dershowitz’s distain for Yassir Arafat since Arafat was still alive during the books writing. I have said this before, Arafat is dead, time to move on and let Yassir Arafat go. Israel is quite progressive in comparison to surrounding nations and has better gay & woman’s rights than any Arab nations that I am aware of. I agree Israel acts far superior to how the US would act if embroiled in a similar situation. I could not imagine how the United States or the United Kingdom would act if they were faced with what Israel is faced with on a daily basis. One simply has to look at how they currently react to relatively minor security breeches to imagine this scenario. Dershowitz quotes Mark Twain saying ‘there was much barren unpopulated land’, well duh! There was and still is! The population numbers would be inaccurate for many reasons least of which being the Bedouin’s nomadic lifestyle. This would make it inherently difficult to validate in any sort of accurate census. I get the point that both Jews and Muslims are...
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