my letter on the war in afghanistan and pakistan published in its entirety in city newspaper!!!
On the eighth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, when a strategy shift is on President Obama’s table, it is essential to increase the pressure for constructive non-military solutions to stabilize Afghanistan and strengthen Pakistan’s fragile democracy. Read complete letter.
The real question is why are we there at all? What do our efforts now have to do with the original authorization of the use of force? We are no longer dealing with anything or anyone involved in the attacks of 9/11. At this point we are only strengthening the resolve and the ranks of our enemies. We have nothing left to win. We are only there to save face, and in the end we will not even be able to do that. Full article.
New rule: families of suspected militants are fair game.
“Youssef Zahri was originally arrested on 28 April 2008. There is no doubt that his arrest was connected with his brother’s activities as a member of Hamas. Based on evidence from thi…s most recent case and numerous past events, it has become evidently clear that Egyptian security forces have been using torture in a systematic manner. Despite on-going condemnation from human rights NGOs and the international community, Egyptian security forces continue to use torture on a large-scale with total impunity.” Full article.
Pakistan’s Army says it is “determined” to launch an invasion of the region some time soon, a move which the US has been pressuring them to take for years. But many civilians decided they weren’t going to wait.
With plenty of advanced warning and examples in Bajaur, Khyber and Malakand of the disastrous affect military offensives have on the civilian population, people have been fleeing since May. Now at least 200,000 South Waziristan civilians, an estimated 40% of the agency’s population, have already fled to cities in the nearby Northwest Frontier Province, principally Tank and Dera Ismail Khan. Full article.
‘Again people have started coming out of the area because of the fear of an army operation,’ Amir Latif, chief administrative official in Tank district, told AFP. ‘We have started registering them and giving them help,’ Hameedullah Khan, a senior government official in Dera Ismail Khan, said that his district had registered about 8,300 families — up to 60,000 people — with the rest taking sanctuary in Tank and elsewhere.
An anti-Taliban offensive in northwest Swat valley earlier this year forced nearly two million people from their homes, creating a massive humanitarian crisis. Most have since returned home. Full article.
great presentation by a member of the israeli committee against house demolitions at the flying squirrel in rochester yesterday. check out their website.
oct 13, 2009
went to the hearings at rochester city council today. the subject: police brutality on oct 7th 2009, the 8th anniversary of the afghan war, when a peaceful protest was violently attacked by police in the city of rochester.
some 25 people spoke. about 2 minutes each. the speakers were well organized, most kept to their allotted time. the speeches were rousing, eloquent, from the heart. there was a strong sense of community – the room was full, there was thunderous applause, and a sense of “we are all in this together.”
in the speeches, there was frequent emphasis on racism within the ranks of the rochester police dept. many felt that the media attention given to this particular incident was a sad testimony to this fact. someone compared the police force to a hammer that’s used to hitting black nails. the reason why we were even having these hearings was because this time some white nails had got hit. the first person to be arrested at the protest was a black student, an onlooker who had just joined the march.
a woman talked about a “thirst for blood” – american soldiers brutalizing others around the world and the police brutalizing us here at home.
people described the attacks on protesters – a young woman’s face was shoved into a lamp post and she started bleeding from the mouth. other people’s faces were bashed into the ground. it felt like a police state.
dawn zuppelli, an indymedia journalist who captured most of the footage that exposed police violence after her colleague was wrestled to the ground and arrested for filming, spoke eloquently about how the mainstream media were notoriously missing from the scene but found it convenient to criticize the “quality” of indymedia’s video evidence. the media were criticized for simply repeating the police line without any investigation or any effort to incorporate the other side of the story.
two black men spoke about the constant fear their community has to live with in the city. one of them said he was speaking out but was in mortal dread of the backlash this could mean for him and his family. a war veteran talked about how he had been sent to war to uphold the u.s. constitution but the police had failed to do that same thing on october 7th. a teacher’s voice shook as she explained how after this incident she had lost her trust in the system.
SDS’s jake allen reiterated the protest’s three demands: getting out of afghanistan, redirecting funds away from the war and into domestic priorities like education, and demilitarizing city schools (aggressive military recruitment found in city schools is simply missing from suburban school districts like brighton and pittsford). he said that it was clear that the power of love and community was possible – “we are that power.”
a mother who had taken part in the protest carrying her baby on her back, said that being in the street was not, in and of itself, an act of violence. similarly, upholding the law should not automatically imply an act of violence. someone said: “what is worse? war or the lack of a permit?”
charges were also made that the police were spying on an SDS meeting on october 8th, video taping participants and noting down number plates.
people decried the police’s racism and disdain for civil rights. they said that they would wait and watch. the city council was urged to take action against police brutality, find out who ordered it, and drop all charges against those who were arrested.
As the fighting drags on from one year to the next, the engagement of US forces in armed nation-building projects in distant lands will become the new normalcy. Americans of all ages will come to accept war as a perpetual condition, as young Americans already do. That “keeping Americans safe’’ obliges the United States to seek, maintain, and exploit unambiguous military supremacy will become utterly uncontroversial. Full article.
In an unannounced move, President Barack Obama is dispatching an additional 13,000 US troops to Afghanistan beyond the 21,000 he announced publicly in March, The Washington Post reported. Full article.
The government says most attacks in the country — including four big ones over the past week that killed more than 100 people — are plotted in South Waziristan, the main bastion of al-Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban and their allies. Full article.
matthis chiroux is an american hero.
most excellent!
Dr. Sima Samar, the physician and activist who survived a fatwa in Afghanistan, is the woman doing the kinds of things Obama is talking about – which is why she deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Full article.
The National Equality March – the birth of a new civil rights movement for LGBT people in the U.S.
Time Magazine: 200,000 Attend The Gay March: Will a New Generation’s Protests Be Heard? Full article.
something worth checking out.
