From : New Internationalist, October 2009 • Issue 426 Islamic fundamentalist militants are the enemies of Israel and Western governments, right? Think again. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed reports. Once upon a time, the CIA trained, financed and supported Osama bin Laden and his mujahidin networks in Afghanistan to repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After the end of [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Algeria, Banking, Big Oil, Bosnia, Chechnya, CIA, Dana Rohrabacher, Dick Cheney, Ed Dearborn, George W Bush, Graham Fuller, Hamas, Heinie Aderholt, Intelligence, Iraq War, Israel, Mujahideen, Mujahidin, Niaz Naik, Oil Pipelines, Oliver North, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, Richard Secord, Saudi Arabia, Taliban, Terrorism, Terrorism Funding
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Transcription of Arundhati Roy and Howard Zinn Lensic Performing Arts Center Santa Fe, New Mexico 18 September 2002 Howard Zinn: Well, thank you. [Applause]. This is a very nice crowd. [Laughter] Thank you Patrick Lannan for that introduction. I almost recognized myself. [Laughter] I’m here to introduce Arundhati Roy. I say this in hushed tones. Really, [...]
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Also tagged Andrew Card, Arundhati Roy, Augusto Pinochet, CAFTA, Chile, CIA, Corporatism, Free Market, George H W Bush, George W Bush, Globalization, Golda Meir, Hamas, Hamid Karzai, Hegemony, Henry Kissinger, Howard Zinn, IMF, Intifada, Iraq War, Israel, John Berger, Levi Eschol, Madeleine Albright, Menachem Begin, Militarism, NAFTA, Palestine, PLO, Richard Perle, Saddam Hussein, Salvador Allende, Victor Jara, War, Winston Churchill, World Bank, WTO, Yitzhak Shamir, Zionism
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President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy isn’t working. So said a parade of Afghanistan watchers during the flap over war commander General Stanley McChrystal’s firing. But what does that phrase, so often in the media these days, really mean? And if the strategy really isn’t working, just how can you tell? The answers to these questions raise even [...]
The Obama administration has awarded $220m (£146m) in new contracts to the military contractor formerly known as Blackwater to provide security in Afghanistan. This is despite accusations against the company of murder and indiscriminate killings of civilians in Iraq and investigations into alleged corruption and sanctions busting. The contracts have drawn stinging criticism in Congress [...]
Statusquobama | The Range: The Tucson Weeklys Old Pueblog | Tucson Weekly.
State Department officials struggled to explain Monday why they have awarded a new $120 million contract to a private security firm that was kicked out of Iraq four months ago amid charges that its personnel gunned down unarmed civilians. Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, was awarded an 18-month contract to provide security at [...]
Criminal investigators are examining allegations that Afghan security firms have been extorting as much as $4 million a week from contractors paid with U.S. tax dollars and then funneling the spoils to warlords and the Taliban. If the allegations are true, the U.S. would be unintentionally financing the enemy and undermining international efforts to stabilize [...]
via email comes this from Rep. Alan Grayson: In the New York Times for June 13th, the Pentagon proclaimed that Afghanistan holds almost one trillion lira – no, sorry, that’s one trillion dollars – in hitherto-unknown mineral wealth. Allow me to offer these revelations: (1) Paris Hilton actually is Albert Einstein, with a wig. Think about [...]
War Is Making You Poor Act – HR5353 : Rep. Grayson introduces a bill to cut separate funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and uses the money to eliminate federal income taxes on every American’s first $35,000 of income. Cosponsors of this bill include Ron Paul, Walter Jones, John Conyers, Lynn Woolsey, and Dennis [...]
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Also tagged Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich, Economy, Federal Debt, Federal Deficit, House, Iraq War, John Conyers, Lynn Woolsey, Pentagon, Ron Paul, Taxation, Walter Jones, War Spending
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Over the past five years, the U.S. government has spent a combined $80 billion on contractors to support its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that has U.S. military leaders concerned: On Friday, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan suggested that the coalition had become too dependent on private contractors to carry out its mission there effectively. [...]
The US military has confirmed the authenticity of newly released video showing US forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians. On Monday, the website WikiLeaks.org posted footage taken from a US military helicopter in July 2007 as it killed twelve people and wounded two children. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency, photographer [...]
Two months ago, U.S. Special Operations forces led an assault on what they claimed to be a militant hideout in Paktiya Province, Afghanistan. Three civilian women were killed in the raid, two of them pregnant, along with two civilian men. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force admitted later that the two men were non-combatants. As for [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union is publicizing its acquisition of a large volume of data relating to civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, which it has made available on its Web site. The files, obtained by Freedom of Information Act request, detail hundreds of cases in which families of the dead filed for compensation after their loved [...]
“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His comments came during a recent videoconference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties. [...]
Over the past several years, WikiLeaks — which aptly calls itself “the intelligence agency of the people” — has obtained and then published a wide array of secret, incriminating documents (similar to this CIA Report) that expose the activities of numerous governments and corporations. Among many others, they posted the Standard Operating Manual for Guantanamo, documents showing how corrupt [...]
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Also tagged AgitProp, Apathy, CIA, Corruption, David Petraeus, Democracy, Documents, FOIA, Glenn Greenwald, Information, Intelligence, Julian Assange, Manipulation, Pentagon, Perception Management, Propaganda, Public Opinion, Reform, Secrecy, Wikileaks, Women
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At least one in six service members is on some form of psychiatric drug. And many troops are taking more than one kind, mixing several pills in daily “cocktails” — for example, an antidepressant with an anti-psychotic to prevent nightmares, plus an anti-epileptic to reduce headaches — despite minimal clinical research testing such combinations. The drugs come [...]
Q: Why would U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan go out of their way to smear a journalist? A: Because he told the truth about a night raid that killed Afghan civilians, including pregnant women. Last week, I spoke with Afghanistan-based journalist Jerome Starkey about his reporting on special forces raids that killed civilians and [...]
America has spent more than $6 billion since 2002 in an effort to create an effective Afghan police force, buying weapons, building police academies, and hiring defense contractors to train the recruits—but the program has been a disaster. More than $322 million worth of invoices for police training were approved even though the funds were [...]
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Also tagged Accountability, Afghanistan, Audit, Blackwater, Contractors, Department of State, DynCorp, Education, Military, Police, Poverty, Training, Xe Services
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Imagine, for a moment, if Pentagon officials, supposedly toiling in our name, actually condescended to ask us for our thoughts. What do we think about global military strategy, garrisoning the planet, the ways in which our forces are structured, and how, where, and for what they should be deployed abroad? Sound crazy? Here in the U.S.A. [...]
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Also tagged Contractors, DOD, Economy, Homeless, Homeless Veterans, Homelessness, Housing, Iraq War, Jobs, Military, Military Spending, Pentagon, Poverty, Unemployment, VA, Veterans, Veterans Administration
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The Times report, written by Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti, has the character of a controlled release of information for the purpose of containing the damage to US covert operations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. It is not only the US military and intelligence agencies that are being protected, but the Times itself. According to the [...]
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Also tagged American Security Corporation, Assassinations, Black Ops, CIA, Contractors, Corporatism, Covert Ops, David Rohde, Eason Jordan, Espionage, Intelligence, International Media Ventures, Iran-Contra, Michael Furlong, Mike Taylor, Military, Oliver North, Pentagon, Robert Pelton, Special Operations
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The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c The Word – Afghanistan www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care reform On last night’s ‘Colbert Report,’ host Stephen Colbert chastised the media for ignoring the war in Afghanistan, satirically pointing out that the media was more concerned about Eric Massa’s sex life than the [...]
From Mark Perry at Foreign Policy: On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [...]
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Also tagged CENTCOM, David Petraeus, EUCOM, Gaza, Iraq War, Israel, JCS, Joe Biden, Michael Mullen, Middle East, Military, Palestinian Authority, Pentagon, Settlements, West Bank
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Aside from the underlying issues–such as that some if not most of the interrogators in question are contractors who were working for Mitchell and Jessen, the fact that their identities are obvious enough for hippie human rights lawyers to discover them, and the fact that (contrary to Gertz’ use of the word “terrorist” throughout) some [...]
The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan [...]
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Also tagged Al Qaeda, Balkans, CIA, Contractors, DOD, Intelligence, Iran-Contra, Iraq War, Michael Furlong, Pakistan, Pentagon, Psyops, Taliban
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Pain and death suffered by people become less important as time moves on, and that is significant when we come to think about the Iraq war, launched seven years ago this month. Already there is competition for the ear of future historians and there is an attempt under way to fix the record of the actual [...]
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