3 Responses to “Bug Girl’s Pubic Lice”

1. knarlyknight Says:
   September 14th, 2008 at 12:02 am

   Ok, Bug Girl has some good posts. I’d forgoten those mosquito zappers were worse than useless because they only kill about 0.02% mosquitoes & biting flies and the rest of the dead are actually beneficial insects to the ecosystems. Throw out your zapper if you got one.

   In the spirit of anything but the lies and creepiness of Silly Sarah, here is an excellent analysis of Afghanistan: w3 . cdndailydigest.blogspot.com/

   From: “Michael Watkins”

   > From: Ron Thornton
   > Prior to the fall of 2001, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Let
   > us just say that life was severely restricted and sports fans,
   > entertainers, and women did not do well under their control.
   > This has changed under the present regime.

   1. Lets be clear – the Taliban are not foreign fighters; they are
   a group of nationalists from the Pushtun tribe, a tribe which
   makes up almost one half of all Afghans. Thanks to the decisions
   of foreign powers, a great many Pushtun live on either side of
   the Afghan / Pakistan border… family divided by a line they do
   not respect as they’ve lived there many generations longer than
   the invisible line.

   2. The “Taliban” were originally nationalists bent on taking back
   their country from the remnants left after the Soviets departed.
   Afghanistan at the time was essentially in anarchy, with ruling
   communists left in power as their Red masters left. Women were in
   far worse situations under these dogs than under the Taliban.

   3. The Taliban took over, imposed their brand of Islamic law,
   shut down the opium trade, stopped the institutional rape of
   women. Yes, their version of society doesn’t resemble what you or
   I might like to see.

   But neither does what most Afghan women live under today. The
   plight of women in the country is not the panacea that we might
   like to pretend from our comfy homes. Burkas have not
   disappeared; the old ways die hard. In many areas of the country
   abuse of women is actually up over when the Taliban were in
   control, as hard as that is to swallow. We must be careful what
   we wish for… the transitions can be very uncomfortable indeed.

   > In all probability, those gains would be reversed if the forces
   > supporting that government withdraws and the government falls.

   Some things would revert. The Taliban would most certainly seek
   to reclaim control over the country.

   But some of them already are in the official government – former
   warlords and Talib are in Karzai’s government and courts.
   Remember, these are the people of the region. Virtually one in
   two are from their tribe. Not all share the same governance
   objective but many share great gobs of cultural and religious
   doctorine.

   > Should this government fall, what would be the consequences to
   > them and to us?

   1. To them? They’d get their country back, the foreign occupiers
   would be gone. The people of Afghanistan would be left to work
   things out on their own.

   2. To us? The most immediate impacts:

   a) opium trade would dry up again, removing a large stream of
   revenue from militants. The Taliban would have their own
   self-interest in seeing this happen as it would remove renegade
   war lords from the picture in challenging them.

   b) our military spending would fall, our casualties drop to
   non-war norms.

   >If the void is _*not filled*_ by those who hate our customs and
   >norms (including those freedoms we hold dear),

   The Afghans and Taliban ar one in the same from a cultural and
   religious perspective. Sure.. no doubt there are many who want to
   see more western-style freedom. I’d like to see less of Stephen
   Harper myself. People will do whatever they can within the bounds
   of their system to effect change.

   It is not our role to impose our way of life on others. For one,
   it doesn’t work. The indigenous people of the area have to
   largely do that on their own.

   > who have no problems with fostering and supporting within their
   > own borders those who would again make attacks on our shores,

   Fact: The Taliban were not behind 9/11. That Bin Laden was is an
   issue; certainly the Taliban ought to have turned him over. They
   had made certain overtures to do so, under conditions and to an
   international court. Bush didn’t want that; would get in his way
   to ship troops there and to Iraq if bin Laden was sitting in the
   Hauge.

   Yes, the Taliban allowed bin Laden safe harbour, and while that
   seems wrong to us, it was something of a rational decision from
   their perspective as a political force in their country. Bin
   Laden had something of a cult hero status due to his efforts
   during the Soviet invasion (and other bin Laden activities no
   doubt); shipping him off to the Americans would have caused the
   Taliban serious political problems and potentially lost them
   control of the country.

   They miscalculated, probably assuming that Bush’s main goal was
   the capture and trial of bin Laden which in their eyes meant
   pushing for an international court destination for bin Laden
   would eventually work. Like Saddam Hussein, they blew it, because
   they could not fathom how much Bush wanted to push for a large
   regional conflict.

   The Taliban are not equal to al Qaeda… and al Qaeda is a
   relatively small handful of people, nothing like the never ending
   foe which Bush et al propagandize. Bin Laden himself has not
   published an original new video in over four years; he is likely
   dead or severly disfigured or otherwise handicapped.

   > who won’t enforce a way of life most of us would find totally
   > repugnant,

   The U.S. had no problem dealing with the “repugnant” Taliban
   leadership. The Taliban were in negotations with both Clinton and Bush
   administrations to build oil pipelines; negotiations stopped failed in
   2001 prior to 9/11. The U.S. had paid millions of dollars to the
   Taliban over many years to a) fund their fight against communist
   remnants and b) grease the wheels for pipeline deals… anything
   to keep Iran out of the regional energy sphere of influence.

   > then let us bring these
   > Canadian boys and girls home today.

   Great idea. We are fighting a war which can not possibly be won.
   Imagine fighting a war where 1/2 of the country is a potential
   combatant on one side (and other tribes have their own issues
   with the foreign occupiers too). They have the advantage of
   numbers of people and converts to their cause – every new family
   we devastate with “collateral damage” becomes a potential new
   source of supply of fighters… for generations.

   The only way through to a “victory” will be through political
   means.

   Eventually the Taliban will sense the tide is turning their way
   and they’ll do things like deliver aid to local peoples to ensure
   they are on their side, not “ours”. In other areas of the world
   the occupying force (that would be us) would be faced with a
   choice: attack those accepting aid from the Taliban to serve as a
   deterrent. Will we do that? I should hope not.

   No, it seems very likely that the Taliban will set up benevolent
   organizations and work on the same strategy we are – winning
   hearts and minds – rather than using fear and terror and
   reprisal. They merely need to detect the tipping point. It
   sometimes seems from reports that in some areas they are reaching
   that point.

   Remember, Peter “I am not the merger candidate” MacKay says we
   don’t negotiate with terrorists. With people like MacKay in
   charge (?) I’ve no doubt we’ll go far too far without recognizing
   the game has been changed under our feet.

   Despise them all we want, the Taliban can’t rightly be called
   terrorists. Militant nationalists yes, and yes they use terrorist
   techniques, but to dismiss them as mere terrorists is to
   critically overlook their actual claim to the area.

   > If the void is to be filled by those who do very
   > much want to do us harm, then please explain your thoughts on what should
   > be our exit strategy and what we might expect to be the consequences of
   > our retreat.

   The consequences will largely be political at home, as the
   Canadian people wake up to the realization that we should have
   exited when it was clear the police action we first were involved
   in – locating and capturing bin Laden – was never going to be
   completed.

   Thus we’ve spent billions, years of distraction, and real lives –
   not just our almost 100 but the thousands of Afghans killed at
   our hands and those of our “allies” — for no, real, lasting,
   gain.

   The Afghan’s will carry on. Pakistan will need to do something
   about its border relations – they’ve been instigators for years
   in problems at the border, because they too have lots of Pushtun
   in their population too, in that area. These are issues a foreign
   invasion force can not hope to deal with.

   Perhaps a peacekeeping and negotiating force might.

   Propaganda and our own inability to walk a mile in the shoes of
   others has conspired to keep most of us woefully underinformed of
   the realities in Afghanistan. We can’t thrust our own way of life
   onto all peoples of the world and hope to actually understand how
   things work elsewhere, and how best to move forward. Oftentimes
   we’ll have to let the locals work it out on their own.

   Afghanistan is not and never has been a strategic threat to us or
   the United States. A very small group of people in a couple of
   camps in the country were a threat. They appear to be gone. Our
   beef truly is not with Afghanistan.

   The very best thing we could do there is push hard for a
   political solution, allow all sides to come out from behind their
   bunkers and sort out how to run the country *their* way, while
   also guaranteeing that we’ll find some way of doing trade with
   them.

   And trade is a real problem. We can’t leave these troubled areas
   of the world without a legitimate way of earning an income, yet
   through our trade arrangements we do exactly that and then
   complain when in the lawlessness of their land they turn to
   profitable opium.

   Maybe it means ticking off all the potato farmers in Canada and
   the U.S… and buying Afghan potatoes and other produce at very
   fair rates so they can rebuild their nation on their own terms.

   We could pay off our own farmers to produce something else for
   far less than we spend on the military.

   Actually the very best thing we could do is stop accepting the
   simplistic political narrative being pushed out at us. Look at
   Sara Palin in the U.S. – she clearly knows very little about
   foreign affairs and is being briefed in a hurry using nothing but
   Republican talking points.

   I’m sure we’ve all had the experience where we’ve gone too far
   out on a ledge, spouting some doctrine, and feeling uncomfortable
   because we don’t know the actual facts on the ground. I find it
   remarkable in this day and age that with all our media prowess we
   can have a public which is so ill-informed on so many subjects of
   great importance to us and the world.

   We don’t really deserve the democracy we have, for we turn the
   keys over to politicians that willingly co-opt the truth simply because
   they know they can get away with it.

   We, the pubilc, need to step up to the plate and take this stuff
   much more seriously or we’ll end up worse off than the Pushtun
   under the Taliban. We might have fancy cars and such but we won’t
   have freedom or real democracy.

2. knarlyknight Says:
   September 14th, 2008 at 12:04 am

   whooops, didn’t mean to post the whole thing…

3. Steve Says:
   September 19th, 2008 at 2:15 pm

   Except Bug Girl lied! She didn’t have lice in her mailbox because there were no lice!!!!!11one

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