Made in Pakistan – Scenes From 2009

An interesting film, albeit limited by its unrelenting focus on the middle class. But it was the Q&A that proved most illuminating about Pakistani society. Why was it only about Lahore, demanded one Islamabad questioner (irritated perhaps, by a gem of a putdown in the film that if one student had nothing positive to contribute in Lahore, he should leave and settle for an ordinary degree in Islamabad). Unfazed, the director, Nasir Khan, proffered a disarming excuse: that he had no money to travel. What could he do, he shrugged. Your average Taliban is 17, lean and married. He is 33, overweight, overworked and still unmarried. That got a laugh. Full article.

US steps up drone attacks, assassinations in AfPak “surge”

The Obama administration has sharply escalated the drone attacks, launching more than twice as many over the past year as the Bush administration carried out in its last year in office. The secretive nature of the CIA program is designed in large part to obscure the horrific toll in civilian lives inflicted through the firing of Hellfire missiles into Pakistani villages. As with virtually all of these attacks, the US media parroted unnamed intelligence officials in claiming that the victims of the latest missile strike were all “militants,” without any corroboration of who had been killed. The Lahore newspaper The News, citing figures supplied by Pakistani officials, reported in April that 687 civilians had been killed in approximately 60 drone strikes that had been carried out since January 2008. Given that fatality rate, with nearly 30 drone attacks having been launched since, the number of Pakistani civilians slaughtered in this fashion could easily have topped 1,000. Full article.

From Audre Lorde – Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Those of us who stand outside of this society’s conception of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference– those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older– know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.

Strategic Balochistan becomes a target in war against Taliban

US special forces have also been active along the border, in the tribal belt east of Balochistan. The source said US commando units had conducted four cross-border raids into Pakistan since 2003. Only one, in September 2008, was reported. The first three went undetected thanks to “constant reporting about American spies” in the tribal belt. The former Nato officer said: “There’s so much bullshit out there – the militants blame everything on American soldiers or spies or helicopters. So [when we did act] it was real easy to become part of the background noise.” Full article.

Landmines: Obama’s ultimate betrayal

My personal breaking point, after months of jaw-dropping astonishment at Obama’s betrayals, was his refusal almost alone of the world’s leaders to ban child-killing landmines and cluster bombs. His state department announced this shameful policy on Thanksgiving eve, as if to hide it from public notice Obama is continuing Bush’s policy of refusing to honour an international antipersonnel landmine ban – the Ottawa treaty – signed by 158 nations. It’s so cruel and pointless. Mostly the victims are the rural poor, many of them children of the same age as the president’s two daughters. They die from shock or blood loss far from any hospital; and the survivors suffer amputations and blinding. Full article.

The end of American exceptionalism

Thus the bewildering continuities between Obama’s policies and those of George Bush, his predecessor, emerge: the continued presence in Iraq – which is not close to “winding down” as the president described it, the deepening footprint in Afghanistan, the refusal to support treaties banning land mines and biological weapons, the continued use of private mercenaries, the ongoing detainee abuse at Guantanamo and Bagram prisons, and defence spending higher even than his Republican predecessor’s.These are not mistakes; they are inevitable policy choices in a system built on imperial dominance. And like empires past, they are justified by the use of rhetoric and arguments that exalt one’s own ideals while misrepresenting and denigrating those against whom the mistakes are committed. Full article.

A Lesson on Nonviolence for the President

Obama’s rejection of negotiations as a possible solution to terrorism also doesn’t square with the evidence. After analyzing hundreds of terrorist groups that have operated over the last 40 years, a RAND corporation study published last year concluded that military force is almost never successful at stopping terrorism. The vast majority of terrorist groups that ended during that period “were penetrated and eliminated by local police and intelligence agencies (40%), or they reached a peaceful political accommodation with their government (43%).” In other words, negotiation is clearly possible. Full article.

The fundamental unreliability of America’s media

greenwald on thomas-friedman-the-moron: The person who has spent weeks depicting Afghanistan as a “special needs baby” is now lecturing us about the “corrosive mind-set” of “infantilizing” Muslims. And the person who is now inveighing against seeing ourselves as “subjects” and Muslims as “objects” was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq on the ground that our invasion would “put Iraq on a more progressive path and stimulate some real change in an Arab world.” Full article.

Afghanistan Escalation Ramps Up Contractor Presence

Calling military contractor activity an “accountability free zone,” Scahill argues that Obama has “paid lip service to oversight and cracking down” while he’s actually expanding the use of contractors. “Without the draft, these wars wouldn’t be possible but for hiring these private contractors,” says Scahill. Watch video.

The Afghanistan strategy : The New Yorker

i usually like hendrik hertzberg. in this piece he is way too soft on obama. maybe coz he’s quite misguided about the war. what struck me however was his astute understanding of why obama is calling for an escalation. the reasons r purely political: “Withdrawal, beginning at once? The political and diplomatic damage to Obama would be severe: a probable Pentagon revolt; the anger of NATO allies who have risked their soldiers’ lives (and their leaders’ political standing) on our behalf; the near-certainty that a large-scale terrorist attack, whether or not it had anything to do with Afghanistan, would be met at home not with 9/11 solidarity but with savage, politically lethal scapegoating.” Full article.

How We Invaded Afghanistan

most interesting article. state machinations and outlandish geo-political strategies r not just “conspiracies” – they’re v real. we only have to look at history:

“I was the head of the KGB’s foreign counterintelligence branch when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Dec. 24, 1979. The fateful order to send our military into such difficult terrain was by no means a foregone conclusion. Before Soviet leaders made the final call, we wrung our hands, considered our options, and argued among ourselves. Here is the inside story of how that wrenching decision was made.” Full article.