Firstly that creating a modern society by brute force certainly didn't work first time round, if wikipedia is at all accurate. Apparently :
Once in power, the PDPA implemented a socialist agenda. It moved to replacing traditional and islamic sharia laws with secular ones. Men were now not obliged to wear beards, women to wear a burqa, and mosques were placed off limits. It carried out an ambitious land reform, waiving farmers' debts countrywide and abolishing usury - intended to release the poorer farmers from debt bondage.
At the time, infant mortality was 269 per thousand, average life expectancy just 35 years and about 90% of the population were illiterate. Free emergency medical care was introduced. A mass literacy campaign was begun, 5000 unemployed university graduates being recruited as teachers. By the end of 1979, 600 new schools had been built, many of them in rural areas, and up to 500,000 adult Afghans were attending basic literacy classes (another 500,000 had enrolled but dropped out). Working hours were reduced, low-paid workers were given higher wages and trade unions were legalised for the first time in Afghanistan's history.
In late 1978, Nur Mohammad Taraki, President of the Revolutionary Council of Afghanistan, promulgated Decree #7 which aimed at a transformation of the marriage institution by attacking its traditional monetary basis and promoting equality between men and women.
The government also made a number of other decrees on women’s rights, banning forced marriages, giving state recognition of women’s right to vote, and introducing women to political life. Women took leadership positions in the regime and fought social conservatives and islamic extremists on various issues. A prominent example was Anahita Ratebzad, who was a major Marxist leader and a member of the Revolutionary Council. Ratebzad wrote the famous New Kabul Times editorial (May 28, 1978) which declared: “Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country .... Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention.”
A programme to warm any Guardianista's heart, and even Laban's pretty keen on a lot of it. Not sure what that 'mosques off limits' bit meant though. How did they go about overcoming political opposition ? Oh. I see. Even unity might think twice about this - wouldn't he ?
The destruction of Afghanistan's former ruling elite had begun immediately after the seizure of power. Execution (Parcham leaders later claimed at least 11,000 during the Taraki/Amin period), flight into exile, and later the devastation of Kabul itself would literally remove the great majority of the some 100,000 who had come to form Afghanistan's elite and middle class. Their loss almost completely broke the continuity of Afghanistan's leadership, political institutions and their social foundation...
The Khalq leadership proved incapable of filling this vacuum. Its brutal and clumsy attempts to introduce radical changes in control over agricultural land holding and credit, rural social relations, marriage and family arrangements, and education led to scattered protests and uprisings among all major communities in the Afghan countryside. Taraki and Amin left a legacy of turmoil and resentment which gravely compromised later Marxist attempts to win popular acceptance.
The human rights violations of the Khalq extended beyond the educated elite. Between April 1978 and the Soviet invasion of December 1979, Afghan Communists executed an estimated 27,000 political prisoners at Pul-i-Charki prison six miles east of Kabul. Many of the victims were village mullahs and headmen who were obstructing the modernization and secularization of the intensely religious Afghan countryside. The Khalq leadership introduced to Afghanistan the "knock on the door in the middle of the night", previously little known in that country, where the central government usually lacked the power to enforce its will beyond Kabul.
Well, it worked for Stalin, didn't it ? But the Russian people were accustomed over centuries to autocratic despotism. The Afghan tradition was one of heavily armed local autonomy. Results - teachers and doctors were shot, schools and clinics burned, power lines brought down. Heroic Man 1, Economic Man 0 (n.b. - that doesn't mean I think it's heroic to shoot teachers and doctors).
So repression on a pretty hefty scale - and by their own people - didn't work. The Allies aren't capable of that kind of represssion, not would I want them to be. So that's out. Trouble is, the Afghans - especially the Pashtun - look on non-violent persuasion as weakness. And they don't like infidels. And they're great fighters. With some nasty lines in the mutilation and torture department. As I say, it's like trying to introduce democracy to 14th century England.
The other thing. In the comments, 'Revolution Harry' pointed out to 'gradualist Laban' that while Reagan and Thatcher certainly armed the mujahideen fighters, the whole thing was kicked off by Jimmy Carter.
On July 3, 1979, US President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order authorizing the CIA to conduct covert propaganda operations against the communist regime.What's particularly striking is that Zbigniew Brzezinski isn't some forgotten Cold Warrior of the past - far from it. He's apparently one of Barack Obama's closest advisers.
Carter advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting U.S. policy, which, unbeknownst even to the mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled:
We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap...The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.
Additionally, on July 3, 1979, U.S. President Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan. As a part of the Central Intelligence Agency program Operation Cyclone, the massive arming of Afghanistan's mujahideen was started.
11 comments:
'Gradual Laban' you'll be pleased to know that the 'revolution' I'd like to see is one that is achieved without violence of any sorts. From all the research I've done in recent months the inescapable conclusion is that we are in the middle of a revolution as we speak so perhaps my 'name' should be counter-revolution Harry.
Characters as (seemingly) politically diverse as Gordon Brown, Barack Obama, George Bush, Michail Gorbachev, David Rockefeller and H. G. Wells have all spoken of a New World Order and a World Government.
“… it would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government …”
David Rockefeller in Baden-Baden, Germany 1991.
This gives you something of an insight into the nature of the mainstream media.
Organisations such as the Fabians, the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations are all dedicated to world government. A system of global control that removes national boundaries. Sound familiar?
"The CFR is the American Branch of a society which originated in England, and which believes that national boundaries should be obliterated, and a one-world rule established."
From the book "Tragedy & Hope" by the late Carroll Quigley (Bill Clinton’s mentor), Professor of History at Georgetown University and member of the CFR.
We have all been programmed (mind controlled) to dismiss the idea of conspiracies. If by any chance you get over that hurdle and start to do some investigation you'd be shocked to the core at what's really going on.
"The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists."
J. Edgar Hoover
Harry - What I find telling was this...
When Tony Blair needed the Labour conference to back him over Iraq, who turned and had the brothers & sisters eating out of his hand? Why Bill Clinton. Next thing you know Tony had the vote he needed.
Nice of Bill to turn up at conference and help out his pal Tony and by extension his pal GWB.
Anon,
You're quite right and I should have mentioned Bill Clinton as another who has called for a New World Order.
With only a little research it becomes clear the end game is a world government, army, financial system and, it seems, religion. Quite how they hope to achieve the latter is beyond me at the moment. However I can't help noticing that multimillionaire property magnate, Fabian socialist, Bilderberger and ex-Labour prime minister Tony Blair now has his own Faith Foundation.
The political system that's been chosen for us appears to be a blend of international socialism (Marxism) and global capitalism (using the hegelian dialectic). If you'd like to know what that will be like follow the route of the West's manufacturing base all the way to China.
After a trip to China David Rockefeller wrote this in the New York Times in 1973:
"One is impressed immediately by the sense of national harmony.... Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution it has obviously succeeded... in fostering high morale and community purpose. General social and economic progress is no less impressive....The enormous social advances of China have benefited greatly from the singleness of ideology and purpose.... The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao's leadership is one of the most important and successful in history."
Socialism for the masses and global capitalism for the elite few.
I think you're being a bit harsh on 14th Century England.
They did at least have the idea of due process and consultation. And the Church did a better job of what you might call "quality control" of ecclesiastical appointments than it's usually given credit for.
Dear Revolution Harry,
Well, it's on the US dollar blls, isn't it, NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM...
Carroll Quigley is often taken as providing a professional scholarly justification for the "conspiracist" claims made by many "amateur" historians and commentators over the years. Claims are made that his book cut too close to the bone, and was quickly withdrawn: certainly my copy's a reprint, perhaps pirated, from a US "rightist" group.
There's another leading mainstream academic, James H. Billington, whose "Fire in the Minds of Men"(1980) similarly underwrites and validates the classic conspiracy theorists.
Quigley examines international banking, Cecil Rhodes, the Round Tables and "foundations" and concerns like the CFR, while Billington looks at Freemasonry,the Carbonari, Illuminism and all sorts of revolutionary cadres.
Here's a snapshot of Quigley's aims in writing the book: it comes from Wikipedia, but it's in my edition of Quigley all right: "There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known"
A careful reading of both these writers should convince any rational person that the pioneering "conspiracy theorist" of the 20's and 30's, Nesta Webster, was on to something:e.g,
If you want to trace the origin of the phrase "The United States of Europe" or the first time that IRA leaders were invited to tea at !0, Downing St., you should look up her "The Surrender of an Empire"(1931).
The article about her in Wikipedia is apparently designed to make you think that no decent person could read her, but persevere and don't be afraid. As is made fairly plain, she was not above reproach, but she actually had no connection with the book "The [secret] cause of World Unrest" which Wikipedia goes to town on, and she successfully sued the publishers of Speight's "Life of Hilaire Belloc" for allowing the old boy's mistaken statement that she WAS, to stand.
Look also at her "Secet Societies and Subversive Movements". Try also Prof. Antony Sutton's works: he exposed "Skull and Bones" plus much matter about devious Wall Street doings. Wikipedia is MUCH better on him than on Webster. But DON'T, DON'T anybody fall for the "Inverted" or "Black" conspiracy theories of people like David Icke, which are purely designed. with or without their author's knowledge, to subvert and make ridiculous the "classic" conspiracy theory.
Part of my beef with these buggers, if indeed they are colluding in this, is that it will be for nothing in the end, it will fail horribly.
The EU has the stated aim of bringing peace, harmony, economic progress and other assorted bollocks. It falls short of these, or never had anything to do with them in the first place. But of course its real aim is to sideline democracy and dismantle the nation state and put world straddling statesmen in charge. Think of such political colossi as Mandelson and Chris Patten. Clearly its unstated aims are also doomed to fail as well.
I still prefer cockup to conspiracy. Our leaders aren't competent at anything else they do - why should they make competent conspirators ?
Occam's Razor. All our woes can be accounted for when you look at the disastrous cultural changes in the second half of the 20th century.
Well yes, Laban...but it's not our LEADERS who do the conspiring (how do you stand on the Bilderberg Conferences?) but the shadowy folk who might be manipulating them. Come on: your many, many postings, certainly seem to produce a general effect of a gathering drift, an increasingly strong tendency DOWNWARDS. Why not upwards? because,as you know, there is some anti-human tendency at work. Well, look at your motto
at the top of all this!
Perhaps our leaders represent the terrestrial bureauocracy of Hell: and although Hell is divided against itself (the first sins of pride and disobedience setting the tone for all its subsequent actions) it can still, through them, make things extremely nasty for the hunman race. Doesn't there seem to be some directed intelligence, some evil will, at work?
You seem to have attracted a bunch of conspiracy nutters to your blog. Don't forget the lizards, guys!
A sane and timely post appeared on Harry's Place yesterday.
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order”.
David Rockefeller
"Mark my words," (Joe) Biden (Obama's vice president) told donors at a Seattle fund-raiser Sunday night. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. "Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. "And he's going to need help . . . to stand with him. Because it's not going to be apparent initially; it's not going to be apparent that we're right."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10212008/news/politics/joe_doh_puts_o_in_crisis_mode_134547.htm
Laban, do you prefer the cock up theory because you've investigated the wealth of evidence that a conspiracy exists and don't agree with it or because you don't want to believe it?
Anon 6.14, I, for one, didn't forget the reptiles. The evidence for conspiracy does not rely on their existence and as such they're not worth mentioning. One thing's for sure though neither you or I know if they really exist.
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/10/20/02677.html
Sane? Lol.
The lizards are part of David Icke's "inverted" conspiracy theory: he claims that the Royals et al. are really all pterodactyls from some sort of Lovecraftian universe under our own, and that every now and then, after a masonic orgy, they have to go into the woods and strip down to their scales for relief. FACT:I mean, Icke really does say this.
So of course, there can't be any conspiracies, because Icke is so obviously a fruitcake and a liar.
It's like this: anyone who DID Google Nesta Webster will have come up with the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion".
This is a forgery: the plot-for-world-domination it's claimed to represent does not exist: the document itself was maliciously contrived by members of the old Tsarist police.
Ergo, this conspiracy theory cannot represent reality.
BUT various editions of the book begin to appear all over the world: people begin to check the claims made therein, they begin to interpret their contemporary political scene by the light of the book, they are apparently able to validate some of its statements, they start networking globally to combat whatever financial and geopolitical arrangements that the book recommends:it is placed on political set-book lists, and eventually there develops a global movement, acting in many places in secret, whose object is to defeat whichever group of people may be presumed to be acting on its tenets.
Hey Presto, now you have a REAL global conspiracy!
The Judeao-Masonic-Illuminist plot apparently outlined in the book is now replace by the ANTI-Judaeo-Masonic-Illuminist plot!
So conspiracies can exist!
As I said before, if our leaders are all extemporising wildly, how comes it that their efforts all seem to tend to the same direction? IS there some sort of control being exerted?
On a more mundane note, it may be worth remembering that "conspiracy" is a matter for the law at times.
I mentioned 1605 earlier - Either there was Catholic plot to destroy King and Parliament, or there was a state plot to destroy Catholics. In this context it doesn't matter which: but a major conspiracy undoubtably existed, so important that its effects are still felt.
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