David Crowe's Blog

Letter to the Globe and Mail

2008-01-07T14:45:00.001-08:00

The Globe and Mail is one of Canada’s leading newspapers. I fairly often submit letters but, no matter how restrained I am in my language, they rarely get printed. January 3rd was an exception but my letter on the futility and immorality of the Afghan war was heavily censored. Below you can see the text the Globe’s editors deleted in struck-through red and the words they added in underlined teal. The black text is in common to what I submitted and what was published.

I think that what was deleted or modified is a good indication of the limits on public discourse imposed by the mass media in Canada.

Dear Editors;

Jules Guitard is certainly right to note that we are in Aghanistan because of 9/11.

But is it morally right to avenge 3,000 deaths on September 11th by starting with a war that has killed thousands more Afghan civilians killed more civilians than this in its first month? To capture suspects and send them to a medieval jail system where they are more likely to be tortured than receive justice? To assist an ally, the US, that is known to use waterboarding and other forms of torture and that refuses to abide by the Geneva Conventions?

Is it effective to start a war in which the military has not achieved what should have been a police goal: arresting Bin Laden and his henchmen?

Is it right intelligent to always see those opposing us as the Taliban and not sometimes as just Afghanis fighting for the removal of the foreign invader from their land?

The war in Afghanistan has eroded Canada’s international reputation and has created more terrorism than it has eliminated. I would hope by now that more Canadians would be able to see that there are more effective international tools than war, despite the mad government of our southern neighbors being unable to focus on anything else.

- David Crowe

Letter to a Friend

2007-12-21T16:29:00.000-08:00

In response a friend who forwarded me a letter supposedly from Michigan State Professor Indrek Wichman who protested all the sins of muslims, ending by asking them all to go home to their ancestral lands.

Dear Friend;
I'm surprised that your professor didn't mention the rape of a 14 year old girl by US soldiers in Iraq, preceded by the murder of her entire family (the Haditha massacre). Nor the killing of an estimated one million people due to the war in Iraq caused by a fundamentalist Christian president, nor the displacement of millions more, nor the unwillingness of America to take more than a handful of the people they have displaced as refugees. Nor the eviction of Palestinians (a mixture of christians and muslims) from their lands by zionists in the 1940s so that the good Christians of Europe could salve their conscience for the atrocities of the nazis without any impact to themselves. I'm surprised he didn't mention the torture of mostly muslim men by US authorities in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and elsewhere, men who appear to have been innocent, as they are gradually now being released without charges by the Americans (a country run by a ruling elite of fundamentalist christians). He didn't mention how American psychologists (probably mostly white christians) are helping break muslim prisoners down by exploiting their sexual modesty (and in many other ways). Forcing them to masturbate in front of a woman, stacking them naked and taking pictures of them in positions they consider shameful. He didn't mention that the president of the United States has mentioned the possible use of nuclear weapons against a mostly muslim country (Iran) for the temerity to proceed with the enrichment of plutonium, which has peaceful purposes and which could not, at they rate they are doing it, result in a bomb in less than a decade. He didn't mention that the mostly christian nation of the USA, in conjunction with the Russians, has torn up all nuclear disarmament treaties, destroying the legacy of Reagan and Gorbachev and endangering the whole world. He didn't mention that the US doesn't want nuclear weapons in the middle east unless they're held by Israel or the not very stable country of Pakistan, but will attack Iraq or Iran just because America says they want weapons, not because they really want them, and certainly not because they have them. Your professor protests suicide bombings, and I agree with him. But he didn't protest the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians casualties caused by white, christian, imperialistic wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. He didn't protest the refusal of the US government to sign the land mine treaty. Nor did he protest the continued use of cluster bombs (which are like landmines delivered from the air) by the US and Israel (in civilian areas of Lebanon, for example). Nor did he protest the use of depleted uranium weapons and armor in places safely away from America where the fine radioactive dust caused by explosions leaves a legacy of cancer.

Your professor also failed to mention how America supported Saddam Hussein in his early days, perhaps to increase their influence in the area, and even help provide the materials needed to gas the Kurds. He didn't mention how America supported the islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan against the Russians. And how they supported the Taliban because they banned the cultivation of poppies. Your professor is, in a word, a complete hypocrite and, in a second word, racist to boot.

Christians should remember St. Matthew: "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in they brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

What is most distasteful is Christians who only see sins committed against Christians, Muslims who only see sins committed against Muslims and Jews who only see sins committed against Jews.

Letter to Nancy Pelosi

2007-11-05T08:18:00.000-08:00

Dear Rep. Pelosi;

As a Canadian I have been distressed by the United States' imperial ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq for quite some time, particularly the disaster in Iraq. Afghanistan called for a police action, not a war, and Iraq was completely illegal and criminal.

I have watched as my government stood silent as the American government slid into torture, illegal wars and surveillance of its own people, and nobody could do anything because of the out-of-touch Republican majority.

Then the Democracts got elected to a majority of congress and I thought the tables had turned finally. But now I realize that you are not willing to make the tough decision to turn off the funding taps until your out of control President is forced to come to heel and respect the wishes of the American people (and the desires of many other people around the world).

I would never want to interfere in the politics of another nation, but I just have to make my severe disappointment with you known.

Regards,
David Crowe
Calgary, Canada
(403) 289-6609

Another letter the Globe & Mail wouldn't print…

2007-04-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

The fundamental question about Afghanistan is whether Canadians would have supported a war to bring democracy out of the barrel of a gun without the events of 9/11 happening. But, instead of launching a police operation against Osama bin Laden and government officials who harboured him we supported the US when they opted for invasion and occupation without ever getting Osama despite thousands of civilian deaths and massive human rights violations.

It is darkly ironic that some of the people who support our troops staying in Afghanistan until the country submits to NATO's civilization efforts are also writing to support the torturing of captured terrorist suspects before they are even convicted of a crime. They forget that many of these people are probably innocent. In Canada we would not support torture even of convicted terrorists. This is a double standard which must have racism at its root.

Canadians need to put themselves in the shoes of the Aghanis. Imagine a powerful dark-skinned muslim nation was to invade Canada and, focusing on all our flaws (such as prostitution, alcohol abuse, gambling and drug abuse), impose a religious state and go around killing all white, christian voters who resisted (along with many civilians). Would we see young people who resisted as terrorists or freedom fighters? Would we not claim that it is up to Canadians to deal with our social and governance problems, not outsiders?

2007-01-12T15:33:00.000-08:00

The Toronto-based Globe & Mail doesn't post too many of the letters that I send. Too radical I suppose. I should take it as a compliment.

Here's the latest "too hot to handle", in response to a historian chastising the 'left' for not supporting the liberation of women in Afghanistan, liberation at the end of a NATO gun barrel...

Dear Editors

People opposed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq may be naive and idealistic at times, but we're not naive enough to believe that the war in Afghanistan was started to eliminate a mysogynistic and theocratic regime by an American regime that itself has notable mysogynistic and theocratic tendencies.

I cannot believe that Afghanistan would have been invaded without 9/11 or a similar provocation. The war was started as punishment for harbouring Bin Laden. Morals and ethics just made a good cover.

Imagine that Canada was invaded by a foreign power because of one of our moral failings, perhaps our disgraceful treatment of the environment. After the invaders slaughtered our government (because they refused to reform overnight) does anyone really think that Canadians would then welcome the 'rebuilding' of their shattered country especially if it was focussed on hunting down and killing the remnants of the current government (elected by only a minority of the population)? Even the NDP and Greens would surely be aghast.

For all their many failings the Taliban at least brought some measure of stability to their country. It might be naive for me to have hoped that the regime would have moderated over time as the stability allowed Afghanis to focus on higher values than mere survival, but it is twice as naive to believe that democracy and gender equality can be imposed by tanks, bombs and guns on a country where now, once again, mere survival has become the number one priority and the foreign armies are increasingly seen as foot soldiers of the American empire.

- David Crowe

2005-12-21T08:40:00.000-08:00

Nick Bennett has a blog which he uses to bash people like me who question the association between HIV and AIDS:
aidsmyth.blogspot.com

In it he claims that “I have never recieved [sic] funding from any pharmaceutical company that makes HIV antivirals.”

When I emailed and asked him about this he acknowledged that he had actually taken substantial sums of money from pharmaceutical companies, in the form of a subsidy covering his PhD studies. But this was from AstraZeneca, a company that does not make “HIV antivirals”.

People should know this. Does it bias his comments about the HIV/AIDS paradigm and the people who criticize it?

2005-12-21T08:24:00.000-08:00

This blog will mainly discuss my interest in HIV/AIDS, other supposedly infectious diseases (that really aren't) and various aspects of modern 'industrial' medicine.

Websites created by me that discuss these issues are:

Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society
David Crowe’s Personal Website
Justice for Eliza Jane Scovill (and her parents)
My book project - The Infectious Myth