Category: politics

Afghanistan – A Petition to Take Action Against the War – video, produced by CODEPINK, featuring the words of Democratic Congress member Barbara Lee, the only lawmaker in either chamber of Congress to vote against the resolution authorizing the use of force in the so-called war on terror.

Al-Zeidi said: “At the time that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on television that he could not sleep without being reassured on my fate, I was being tortured in the worst ways, beaten with electric cables and iron bars.”

He said his guards had also used simulated drowning – the technique of water-boarding used by the Americans on suspects arrested over the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Full article.

They were polite, George said, and asked why he studied Arabic, why he’d been in the Middle East, whether anyone had ever asked him to join a terrorist group, whether he was “Islamic,” whether he’d joined any Islamic or Communist (yes, Communist) groups on campus. Full article.

barsamian is one of the few people in the WORLD who can talk about pakistan and afghanistan intelligently. a must see.

brilliant interview with norman solomon, who just came back from afghanistan and talks clearly and calmly about the reality of the war. pls educate yourself, pls watch.

Interview with Norman Solomon, Institute for Public Accuracy, Exec. Dir.

At first light last Friday, in the Chardarah district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, the villagers gathered around the twisted wreckage of two fuel tankers that had been hit by a Nato airstrike. They picked their way through a heap of almost a hundred charred bodies and mangled limbs which were mixed with ash, mud and the melted plastic of jerry cans, looking for their brothers, sons and cousins. They called out their names but received no answers. By this time, everyone was dead. Full article.

Brian Lenzo and Ream Kidane recently returned from Gaza, where they went with the Viva Palestina convoy. Join them for a presentation and slide show at the Museum for Kids Art (90 Webster Ave, Rochester, NY) this evening (Sept 9, 2009) at 7:00 pm.

Here may be the single strangest fact of our American world: that at least three administrations — Ronald Reagan’s, George W. Bush’s, and now Barack Obama’s — drew the U.S. “defense” perimeter at the Hindu Kush; that is, in the rugged, mountainous lands of Afghanistan. Put another way, while Americans argue feverishly and angrily over what kind of money, if any, to put into health care, or decaying infrastructure, or other key places of need, until recently just about no one in the mainstream raised a peep about the fact that, for nearly eight years (not to say much of the last three decades), we’ve been pouring billions of dollars, American military know-how, and American lives into a black hole in Afghanistan that is, at least in significant part, of our own creation. Full article.

Echoing now is a speech from Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967. If we replace the word “Vietnam” with “Afghanistan,” the gist of his message is with us in the autumn of 2009:

“Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a chil…d of God and brother to the suffering poor of Afghanistan. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Afghanistan. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.” Full article.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft may face personal liability for the decisions that led to the detention of an American citizen as a material witness after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal appeals court panel ruled on Friday. In the decision, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, was sharply critical of the Bush administration’s practice of holding people it suspected of terrorism without charges, as material witnesses. “We find this to be repugnant to the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history,” said the opinion, written by Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. Full article.

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan – A U.S. jet dropped 500-pound bombs on two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban before dawn Friday, triggering a huge explosion that Afghan officials said killed more than 70 people, including insurgents and some civilians who had swarmed around the vehicles to siphon off fuel. Full article.

The same Blackwater is now getting ready to replicate its Iraqi tactics in Pakistan and some of its operatives are already believed to be in action in Peshawar and its environs. The word has gone out that the Americans are keen to buy Peshawar’s lone 5-star hotel in order to accommodate the likes of Blackwater in luxury for special operations within Pakistan and beyond, in Afghanistan, of course.

The State Department has obviously drawn no lessons from its skewed Iraqi operations and seems willing to retry them in Pakistan. One shudders to think of the fallout of a lethal confrontation between the rogues of Blackwater, running berserk across the troubled North West Frontier Region just as they did in Iraq, and the trigger-happy Pakistani Taliban to whom these provocative aliens would be like red rag to an enraged bull. Full article.

If there’s any idea worth rethinking these days, it’s the idea that our needs are best met through “voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges.” Full article.

Helmand Refugee Camp in Afghanistan: “Basics like food arrive at the camp only sporadically, Khan said. Donations come from Afghan businessmen. The government of Afghanistan does very little. The United Nations doesn’t help. Neither does th…e U.S. government. You could say that the last time Guljumma and her father had meaningful contact with the U.S. government was when it bombed them.” Full article.