New Media

In light of polls that make me doubt whether many of my fellow Canadians truly understand what’s at stake in Afghanistan, I’d like to go over a few assumptions I have about my fellow citizens.

If you ask Canadians whether respect for human rights ought to be universal, everyone will agree.

If you ask them whether Canadians ought to care much about people who live beyond our borders, the vast majority will agree that we should (and the slim minority who oppose this can go rot).

If you ask them whether we should surrender to thugs who throw acid in the faces of schoolgirls, shoot humanitarian workers with automatic weapons, and use children as bomb delivery units, only a few cowardly and soulless Canucks would dare to say “aye” to that.

If you ask Canadians whether we should allow hundreds of thousands of people, or even millions, to fall victim to such thugs and the violence they bring, when as a rich and developed nation we have the capacity to stop this evil, I cannot believe that most would agree to that.

If you ask under what circumstances Canadians might use their military to fight such threats far beyond our borders, certainly most would agree that it must be a multilateral, international effort given sanction by the United Nations.

When it comes to Afghanistan, I think most Canadians support this mission. The pollsters just need to start asking the right questions.

I was given the opportunity to answer some questions for CNN on the issue of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan from the perspective of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee. The essence of my remarks: “We’re for a robust involvement, and if [Afghanistan] is going to get back on its feet after decades of war, it’s only going to do so with huge international involvement. So, more, not less.”

See the full story at In Canada, Afghanistan not ‘forgotten’

This rally by Toronto’s Pashtun community is an encouraging and inspiring effort by friends of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee and supporters of human rights in Afghanistan:

TORONTO – Pashtun-Canadians of Pakistan and Afghanistan origin are organizing an anti-Taliban rally to protest the ongoing massacre of Pashtun people in Northern Pakistan by the Taliban. In our first ever anti-Taliban rally in Canada we are protesting outside Queen’s Park to highlight the unreported “Genocide of 52 million Pashtuns” by the Taliban and militants.

The once peaceful and serene Swat Valley in northern Pakistan has now being transformed into another Afghanistan by the Taliban. While hundreds of innocent people have been beheaded and butchered, 300 educational institutions have been bombed and destroyed, people on ground perceive that the Pakistan ISI/military is supporting Taliban because of the infectivity of the operation and intentionally fanning extremist religious thought in the region. Out of the 1.7 million local population about 700,000 people have already forced to migrate to other areas by the war.

We want to educate and apprise fellow Canadians, the Canadian media and journalists of this unreported genocide by the Taliban, who are massacring Pashtuns in the name of Islam. We are urging Canadian newspapers and TV networks to send photographers, videographers and reporters to talk to hundreds of Pashtun women, children and men whose family members are being killed in Pakistan’s Pashtun areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Date: Sunday February 15, 2009 Time: 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Location: Ontario Legislative Building , Queen’s Park, Toronto.

For information call Inayat Khan Kakar (905) 277 2854 – (647) 895-6566
Canadian Pashtun Community 315 Elgin St N, Cambridge, ON, N1R 8C9

In 2008 Currents has garnered a steadily-growing readership for its coverage of a range of topics, from current events and politics to the environment social media and tech trends — all things that I have a deep interest in, even if I don’t always have the time to give each topic the attention it deserves every week. I’m grateful for all of your comments and looking forward to an even better 2009

Here’s are some of the highlights of the year gone by:

January. For no particular reason, I set out to become the most searchable Vancouver blogger and come pretty close to achieving it before setting off the Vancouver Blogger Nerd Fight, in which I choose not to run.

February: At Vancouver’s premier blogging conference, Northern Voice, I meet the guy who makes this blog possible.

March. One Thousand Stories, a documentary about my friend and gifted Vancouver-based writer Kevin Spenst‘s literary adventure wins the Paul and Ben Film Festival for best short film. Here’s an interview I did with Kevin after his victory.

April. On the political front, the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee starts enjoying some success in its goal of helping Canadians understand why we need to be involved in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, on the social media scene, Hummingbird604 (then known at the time as a Student of the Environment) provides a blog-inspiring mantra and social media consultant Monica Hamburg gives me a lesson in crowdsourcing.

May. I wander around the world-class UBC Museum of Anthropology and make a video. Also, some people do actually pay me to write for them, and I finally cobbled together some tips for copywriters on my WRITEIMAGE blog.

June. I write about the Great Firewall of China and ponder Vancouver’s success in creating a more environmentally sustainable transportation model.

July. I explore whether us bloggers can and should attempt to provide better web security for our readers when large corporations and public organizations are falling down on that job. Also, Omar Khadr gives me an ethical conundrum and a very bad headache.

August. My preference for more discrete breast-feeding habits for mothers in public spaces makes me a bit of a caveman. On the plus side, I’m told I can now pick my nose and scratch my scrotum in public with no social consequences. I have yet to test out this theory.

September. Dedicated and hard-hitting journalist and author Terry Glavin reminds us again why we must stick to the mission in Afghanistan and ignore the heckles of so-called “peaceniks” who would abandon millions of Afghans to the predations of murderous thugs.

October. A little teaser for the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays out on video outside a Vancouver liquor store. Also, I celebrate that it’s time for change in Obama’s adopted hometown (well, before he moved into the White House).

November. Vancouver’s new mayor Gregor Robertson takes on homelessness, just in time, before the cold weather really hits. I have a Super Cool Weekend in Vancouver. Jihadi terrorists bring tragedy to Mumbai, though getting a certain local blogger to express solidarity with the victims against the barbarians is a little like pulling teeth.

December. Currents wins a runner-up award for Best Politics Site or Blog from Miss604′s Best of 604 Awards after a hard, bare-knuckles blogging campaign. A cold winter snap descends on Vancouver. Meanwhile, there’s a political crisis in Ottawa. Vancouver’s indie media tries to work with the Olympics, sparked by Dave Olson and Raincity Studios’ open letter to VANOC, with some excellent commentary on the situation by the OlyBLOG. And just as the year is about to end, I protest for democracy and peace for the Israelis and Palestinians against a bunch of Canadians who don’t seem to really understand what it’s going to take for both sides to get there.

Those are the highlights. Looking forward to a great 2009.

Finally, it seems Canadians are winning the battle for hearts and minds on Afghanistan. We’ve already long since won that battle in the country where the actual fighting is taking place (Read the poll numbers Terry Glavin has collected here). Afghans want democracy, don’t want the Taliban and are desperate for international support to help bring these things about. But now it seems even my fellow Canucks are starting to get it. Some signs of progress:

A tireless worker and activist for women’s rights in Afghanistan, CASC member Lauryn Oates is profiled in the Globe and Mail this week as one of the Top 10 To Watch in 2009. An excerpt:

“Canadians seem so focused on the bad, and certainly that is compelling. But for some reason it doesn’t seem to sell to point out all the good things. Just in our small project, we’ve seen incredible changes.”

She said the Afghans she encounters, all ordinary, mostly rural people, are terrified at the prospect of a return to Taliban control.

In the past year, Ms. Oates said, Canadian Women for Women has helped build a new school for girls near Jalalabad from $75,000 raised entirely by Canadian donations.

Contrary to naysayers, Ms. Oates said, ordinary Afghans want international aid and intervention.

“People have this incredible resilience,” she said. “If they’re willing to go on, we have to be behind them. The least we can do is stand by them. This is not about charity or pity. I would never tolerate this in my country.

“I’ve learned how to be a human being there. There is such unbelievable hospitality and kindness, contrasted against such cruelty.”

And in the Georgia Straight blog, soldiers and UBC students Tylere Couture and Sverre Frisch, who have been on the ground in Afghanistan, demolish the foundation of stupidities mouthed by Langara professor Peter Prontzos and offer their own pragmatic assessment. An excerpt from their argument:

These groups have to be confronted with blunt force, the kind of force which requires large quantities of professional, coordinated, and well armed soldiers, not blue helmets under a peacekeeping mandate whose funding is being spent on social projects in Canada. Thus, there is no more a political solution to Afghanistan alone than there is a military solution to Afghanistan alone; the two have to be combined to provide the best possible outcome in Afghanistan.

Canada is in a war against thugs who throw acid in young women heading to school (CNN). It’s a war against psychotic nihilists who use children as remote-controlled suicide bombs (AP). We’re fighting fascists who, when the Taliban owned much of Afghanistan, turned the country into a 5-diamond hotel for international terrorists, while all resources went to subjugating and radicalizing the population.

That part of the world will never have a chance at freedom and a “normal” existence in the community of nations unless we win this fight. I’m glad to see more and more Canadians are on board. If you’d like to be a part of this movement in solidarity with Afghans, here’s your formal invitation to join the cause.

The media’s job is to inform the public. But when it comes to Afghanistan, there’s been so much disinformation this week that one begins to question motives.

Actually, the stories we’re reading aren’t the problem. It is the headlines which tend to mislead. A few examples:

Foreign troops cannot bring peace to Afghanistan: Canadian PM

Actually, what he said was that foreign troops ALONE cannot bring peace to Afghanistan — an important distinction. The headline would make it appear that Canadian PM Stephen Harper has made a dramatic about-face. Actually, it’s just a restating of a longstanding position that the Afghan National Army will ultimately have to bear the brunt of protecting Afghans from an insurgency that is likely to continue at least on the scale of similar conflicts in Columbia, the Phillipines or Israel.

Another headline, Commanders call for Taliban talks validates NDP position: Layton

Again, the commander in question, Brig.-Gen. Mark Carleton-Smith, simply repeated the longstanding mantra of the international effort in Afghanistan, that the Taliban can’t be beaten by force alone, but that hearts and minds must be won. Standard stuff. As for his remark that a negotiated settlement with the Taliban could be a pragmatic way forward, that’s not new either. The Afghan government has already negotiated the demobilization of thousands of Taliban fighters. The problem is that since no particular group of Taliban seems to speak for the whole insurgency, and negotiators have been murdered by the Taliban on several occasions, a wholesale peace negotiation likely isn’t in the offing in the near future.

The NDP’s position, as put eloquently by fellow Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee member Terry Glavin, is not at all what Carleton Smith is talking about:

And let’s not forget that the Taliban isn’t interested in negotiations, and they’ve made that clear, but still, Carleton-Smith quite reasonably hopes and expects that eventually, the Taliban leadership will be crushed to the point at which its only choice is to negotiate or die. Let’s also not forget that this is a prospect that isn’t even possible to contemplate under Layton’s approach, which requires that the Taliban’s international adversaries should first withdraw their troops, and then disarm themselves, and then return with some sort of list of demands.

It is particularly important that during a federal election, a leader of a mainstream Canadian political party like the NDP should be absolutely clear what his strategy means: unconditional surrender by the West to the international jihad, a Darfur-sized humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan and the retreat of Canada into fortress America for the foreseeable future. Is that what Canadians really want?

In any case, the Afghanistan issue is certain to affect the outcome of the Canadian election. Let’s hope Canadians are reading the full articles, not just the headlines.