And to top it all off, he did sing 'If I had a Rocket Launcher ...'

Bruce Cockburn recently went to visit his brother, who's a doctor with the Canadian Armed Forces expeditionary force in Afghanistan. He also entertained troops at a forward operating base there. (cbc.ca) The folk festival crowd at Rabble (rabble.ca) aren't impressed.

Happy Anniversary

Tomorrow, members of the Making Peace Vigil celebrate (or perhaps mourn is a better word?) the second anniversary of their weekly protest against violence and injustice. For two years, they've met every Thursday at the north end of the Scarth Street Mall to hand out fliers championing a host of worthwhile causes from an end to war in Afghanistan, to halting the global arms trade to embracing environmental sustainability. If you're downtown tomorrow from noon to 12:30 p.m. stop by and show your support. You might even score a piece of birthday cake. (World Peace Association)

The Second Battle of Ypres, Fox News and the Battle For Canada

(picture courtesy Archives of Ontario)

When the German army made its first use of poison gas on the Western Front in the First World War, they launched it at Ypres, a sector held by two classes of troops they felt were inferior -- Africans in the French colonial forces, and Canadians. When the Germans launched their first attack with chlorine gas at Gravenfastel, Belgium on 22 April 1915, about six thousand French and French colonial troops died within 10 minutes, and a four mile gap opened in the Allied line of battle (Wikipedia), where the 1st Canadian Division were in the middle.It was up to them to restore the line until the British Second Army could come up with more troops and artillery to plug the line.

By the second day, the Canadian troops had come up with an unorthodox way of inventing their own gas masks. They urinated onto their handkerchiefs and tied them around their mouths and noses in order to block the poisonous gas. Crude and ineffective, the Canadians used these improvisational defenses to block the German advance, at a horrendous cost: of the 10,000 strong division, more than six thousand were casualties, and 2,000 were dead. (About.com) How they did this, with inadequate equipment such as the Ross rifle and the Oliver webkit, is beyond my ability to comprehend (Trenches on The Web).

What does this have to do with today? Well, I have a major problem with Canadian involvement in Afghanistan. It's illustrated here (Planet S). The problem is, though, that Canadian soldiers are increasingly asked to do the impossible, and will almost certainly be cast into the dustbin of society by the very same right-wing mushwits who sent them off to war in the first place.

It's no surprise we see gomers such as these clowns (YouTube) -- who couldn't survive the first hour of boot camp be it in the Canadian armed forces or the U.S. -- waxing poetical about our military capabilities. 118 Canadian troops have died in Afghanistan since 2002 -- four are killed in combat the week these guys start telling us how to run our military -- and this is the thanks we get.

Even worse, many Canadian right wing bloggers believe they should show more solidarity to Fox (the propaganda arm of the Republican Party) than to the Canadian armed forces. (Dr. Roy's Thoughts). So much for 'supporting the troops.'

In the end, I call for a decidedly Canadian method of protest. It would be in tribute to the veterans of Ypres, and to our armed forces. Whenever we encounter Fox News gasbags or their right-wing apologists in Canada, we should immediately bring out a cotton handkerchief (Kleenex won't do, it's too light), urinate on it, and hold it over our noses.

If you have better way to tell those idiots to p**s off, I'd like to know about it.

Oh yeah, SaskBoy (Abandoned Stuff by SaskBoy). What he said.

EDITED: a couple of additions. Courtesy Warren Kinsella's commenters, a couple of U.S. military bloggers would like to wipe the walls with those Faux News twits, here (BlackFive) and here (This Ain't Hell).

As well, one of those clowns had a gig at Edmonton's Yuk-Yuk's canceled on him. (Edmonton Journal).

Who's arming the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Hmmmm ....

Thanks to Crooks and Liars

How We Lost Afghanistan

One of my favourite blogs, The Galloping Beaver, has an ex-military man as one of its authors. This gives the blog's coverage of Canadian military matters an added level of detail that you don't get from Canadian media, who cover our Afghanistan military adventure the way Don Cherry talks about the Leafs on Coach's Corner.

Well, the sad fact is that we aren't losing the war in Afghanistan: we've already lost.

Read it and weep.

Another blog, Rolling Back the Tide of Extremism, One Post At A Time, tells the same story. It's not a nice story.

All the boosterism, wearing red on Fridays, and yellow ribbons isn't going to change a thing militarily: Afghanistan is where empires go to die. It happened to Alexander the Great, it happened to Genghis Khan, it happened to the British Army twice, and it happened to the former Soviet Union. And it will happen to NATO. In fact, it's already happened.