As US and Other Wealthy Nations Slash Aid, UN Warns of “Silent Tsunami of Hunger” in Global Food Crisis
French troops were killed after Italy hushed up ‘bribes’ to Taleban
When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents in what had seemed a relatively peaceful area, the French public were horrified.
Their revulsion increased with the news that many of the dead soldiers had been mutilated — and with the publication of photographs showing the militants triumphantly sporting their victims’ flak jackets and weapons. The French had been in charge of the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, for only a month, taking over from the Italians; it was one of the biggest single losses of life by Nato forces in Afghanistan.
What the grieving nation did not know was that in the months before the French soldiers arrived in mid-2008, the Italian secret service had been paying tens of thousands of dollars to Taleban commanders and local warlords to keep the area quiet, The Times has learnt. The clandestine payments, whose existence was hidden from the incoming French forces, were disclosed by Western military officials.
US intelligence officials were flabbergasted when they found out through intercepted telephone conversations that the Italians had also been buying off militants, notably in Herat province in the far west. In June 2008, several weeks before the ambush, the US Ambassador in Rome made a démarche, or diplomatic protest, to the Berlusconi Government over allegations concerning the tactic.
However, a number of high-ranking officers in Nato have told The Times that payments were subsequently discovered to have been made in the Sarobi area as well.
Western officials say that because the French knew nothing of the payments they made a catastrophically incorrect threat assessment.
“One cannot be too doctrinaire about these things,” a senior Nato officer in Kabul said. “It might well make sense to buy off local groups and use non-violence to keep violence down. But it is madness to do so and not inform your allies.”
On August 18, a month after the Italian force departed, a lightly armed French patrol moved into the mountains north of Sarobi town, in the district of the same name, 65km (40 miles) east of Kabul. They had little reason to suspect that they were walking into the costliest battle for the French in a quarter of a century.
Operating in an arc of territory north and east of the Afghan capital, the French apparently believed that they were serving in a relatively benign district. The Italians they had replaced in July had suffered only one combat death in the previous year. For months the Nato headquarters in Kabul had praised Italian reconstruction projects under way around Sarobi. When an estimated 170 insurgents ambushed the force in the Uzbin Valley the upshot was a disaster. “They took us by surprise,” one French troop commander said after the attack.
A Nato post-operations assessment would sharply criticise the French force for its lack of preparation. “They went in with two platoons [approximately 60 men],” said one senior Nato officer. “They had no heavy weapons, no pre-arranged air support, no artillery support and not enough radios.”
Had it not been for the chance presence of some US special forces in the area who were able to call in air support for them, they would have been in an even worse situation. “The French were carrying just two medium machine guns and 100 rounds of ammunition per man. They were asking for trouble and the insurgents managed to get among them.”
A force from the 8th Marine Parachute Regiment took an hour and a half to reach the French over the mountains. “We couldn’t see the enemy and we didn’t know how many of them there were,” said another French officer. “After 20 minutes we started coming under fire from the rear. We were surrounded.”
The force was trapped until airstrikes forced the insurgents to retreat the next morning. By then ten French soldiers were dead and 21 injured.
The French public were appalled when it emerged that many of the dead had been mutilated by the insurgents— a mixed force including Taleban members and fighters from Hizb e-Islami.
Bolton suggests nuclear attack on Iran
( Attack : next, Counter Attack )
Russia: We’ll Nuke ‘Aggressors’ First
Russia is weighing changes to its military doctrine that would allow for a “preventive” nuclear strike against its enemies — even those armed only with conventional weapons. The news comes just as American diplomats are trying to get Russia to cut down its nuclear stockpile, and put the squeeze on Iran’s suspect nuclear program.
In an interview published today inIzvestia, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council, said the new doctrine offers “different options to allow the use of nuclear weapons, depending on a certain situation and intentions of a would-be enemy. In critical national security situations, one should also not exclude a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor.”
What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to repel conventionally armed attackers, “not only in large-scale, but also in a regional and even a local war.”
The Russian Federation is considering the “first strike” option as part of a larger overhaul of military doctrine. The new doctrine, which is supposed to be presented to President Dmitry Medvedev later this year, is supposed to provide “flexible and timely” responses to national security threats.
The United States and Russia may prepping to negotiate a new strategic arms reduction treaty after President Obama declared a “reset” in relations between Moscow and Russia. But Patrushev, apparently, didn’t get the memo. In the interview, he takes a swipe at the United States and NATO, saying that the alliance “continues to press for the admission of new members to NATO, the military activities of the bloc are intensifying, and U.S. strategic forces are conducting intensive exercises to improve the management of strategic nuclear weapons.”
In other words, Moscow is holding to a hard line, precisely at a time when Washington is trying to play nice. The administration wants the Kremlin’s help — to pressure Iran, to revive the arms-control process — but the bear still needs to brandish nukes.
( Apparently there is a reading comprehension problem here. NATO continues to press membership for countries surrounding Russia - and missile sites for 'strategic response'. Russia continues to say, 'Thanks, but; No way, No how. Forget about it!
You do recall Putin's note to the West that an attack on Iran would be regarded in the same fashion as an attack on Russia itself, I trust ?
The end of the Cold War is merely an unsubstantiated rumour. )
Fearsome Words?
A Suppressed Talk on the Israel/Palestine Conflict
Here is the alleged farago of cant, conspiracy theory and hate - unaltered since before the attacks. Readers may judge for themselves whether the allegations have merit.
* * *
Nationalism and the Israel-Palestine Conflict
For a brief period in the 1970s I worked in the Vancouver used book trade. I got to know a legend among booksellers - Bill Hoffer. Bill was a skilled purveyor of Canadian first editions and a great bluffer. Once I found him in earnest and extended conversation with one of 'his' authors; later I asked Bill whether the guy's stuff was any good. "I don't read it," said Bill, "I just sell it.".
Bill told me that the secret of the used book business was 'gaining moral ascendency' over the customers (whom he called 'civilians'). This meant making them feel like you were more knowledgeable about and more committed to whatever they were interested in. Intimidate the customer a bit, and your business flourishes.
The Israelis gained moral ascendancy long ago; some reputed people called 'the Arabs' never had it. This involved more than PR skills. It also involved terrible confusions about nationalism. They're the secret weapon of the Zionists and the secret weakness of 'the Arabs'.
Zionist ideology has always departed from a question: every people has its state; why not the Jews? A 'no' answer would tie you to that evil of evils, antisemitism. The rights of 'the Jewish people' meant Israel had a morally titanic 'right to exist'. It meant that the relentless expansion of Jewish settlement was, far from a mortal threat to the non-Jewish inhabitants of the area, the mere completion of the long Jewish Odyssey. It was just part of the long journey home.
As for the Palestinians, they described themselves as Arabs. This sounded like they *had* a home; it was the whole Arab world. If their 'Arab brothers' would not take them in, well, that was no fault of the Zionists. So if the Palestinians were squeezed ever further into unlivable enclaves, it was the Arabs who were to blame. The Arabs would rather dispute a tiny strip of their vast possessions than grant the Jews their little homeland.
These claims - we're just a people like any other, we just want to go home - are the last bastion of lsrael's crumbling moral stature. It is hard to imagine a more inappropriate public relations ploy. Israel's rhetoric of peoples and homelands constitute a rejection of everything we ought to have learned from the Nazi era. The confusions that sustain them not only raise racial crusading to a moral imperative; in other ways they bring unjust disrepute and demoralization on the entire so-called Arab world.
If we cannot see the harm in talk of peoples and homelands, it is because our obsession with antisemitism has blinded us to the true origins of Nazi ideology. Before the Nazis, antisemitism was prevalent all over Western Europe. There were ugly incidents, one or two outrageous miscarriages of justice, but no genocide and nothing remotely resembling the peasant pogroms of Russia and the Ukraine. As for Germany, my Jewish parents, born and raised there, staunchly maintained that it was the least antisemitic country in all of pre-Nazi Europe. Why then is the Nazi genocide attributed to antisemitism, which clearly was necessary but not sufficient to produce it? And what about the aspects of Nazi ethnic cleansing that antisemitism can't possibly explain - the genocide against the gypsies and the planned extermination of thirty million Slavs, many of whom died as 'subhumans' in inhuman prison camps?
There was an ideology sufficient to drive all those atrocities. It fairly stares us in the face. It was not devised by Hitler, but by 19th Century Romantics - poets and pseudo-historians from Scandinavia across Central Europe and down into the Italian Peninsula and the Balkans. It was not the Nazis, but Woodrow Wilson who made it a fixture of contemporary politics. This was the ideology of ethnic nationalism.
Before proceeding let me forestall a predictable objection. I intend to trace the ravages of ethnic nationalism, not by any means to make Zionists into Nazis. It is entirely unnecessary to take this false step, which would obscure rather than clarify the repellent aspects of Zionism. The offspring of ethnic nationalism are a nasty brood, but of course the Nazis were in a league of their own.
Wilson legitimized this atrocious doctrine during the peace negotiations that ended the First World War. Wilson's own secretary of state, Robert Lansing, anticipated its consequences all too accurately:
"The more I think about the President's declaration as to the right
of 'self-determination,' the more convinced I am of the danger of
putting such ideas into the minds of certain races. It is bound to be the basis of impossible demands on the Peace Congress and create trouble in many lands.
"What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians,
and the nationalists among the Boers? Will it not breed discontent,
disorder, and rebellion? Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and
Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it? How can it
be harmonized with Zionism, to which the President is practically committed?
"The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until too late to check those who attempt to put the principle in force. What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered! What misery it will cause!"
For his prescience Lansing incurred Wilson's disfavour and was forced to resign. He seemed a fussy old spoilsport, unwilling to grant peoples their rights - peoples, or, as he puts it in the language of his era, races. Could he not see the progressive implications of Wilson's doctrine? Did he not understand that the self-determination of peoples - races, ethnic groups - was a sacred human right?
Well, one person did, the person who wrote:
"If the race is in danger of being oppressed or even exterminated the question of legality is only of secondary importance. The established power may in such a case employ only those means which are recognized as 'legal'. yet the instinct of self-preservation on the part of the oppressed will always justify, to the highest degree, the employment of all possible resources.
"Only on the recognition of this principle was it possible for those
struggles to be carried through, of which history furnishes magnificent examples in abundance, against foreign bondage or oppression at home.
"Human rights are above the rights of the State."
Ah, human rights, which belong not only to individuals but to 'peoples'. This champion of human rights was Adolf Hitler, writing in Mein Kampf.
................
So a miracle appears among us. The very ideology of homelands and peoples under whose auspices the Jews were all but exterminated has become the sustaining ideology of Israel, a state devoted to Jewish ethnic sovereignty. This is why we always hear that Israel - not Israelis - has a right to exist. What matters are not the citizens of a state, but the state itself, the totemic icon of 'the Jewish people'. The fatal confusion that legitimized ethnic nationalism at the Paris Peace Conference now legitimizes Israel itself. When Zionists suggest that the French and Germans have a right to their states, they conveniently forget that this means the *inhabitants* of France and Germany, not those of some French or German *ancestry*, not a 'people' in the sense of an ethnic group. (The world was outraged when it suspected that Britain's 'patrial' immigration laws were designed to favor those of ethnically British ancestry.) But 'the Jewish people' have a right to their state, and this is supposed to be some lofty ideal. Why? Because ethnic nationalism has taken on the cloak of civic nationalism, and we are too stupid to notice. Had ethnic nationalism not shed a single drop of blood, we should still be ashamed for crediting its mystique of peoples, historical wrongs, collective vices and virtues, ineluctable destinies. Abstractions and myths that could not even gain entrance to a university's ivory towers flow daily from the lips of supposedly practical people.
* * *
Nationalism and the Israel-Palestine ConflictFor a brief period in the 1970s I worked in the Vancouver used book trade. I got to know a legend among booksellers - Bill Hoffer. Bill was a skilled purveyor of Canadian first editions and a great bluffer. Once I found him in earnest and extended conversation with one of 'his' authors; later I asked Bill whether the guy's stuff was any good. "I don't read it," said Bill, "I just sell it.".
Bill told me that the secret of the used book business was 'gaining moral ascendency' over the customers (whom he called 'civilians'). This meant making them feel like you were more knowledgeable about and more committed to whatever they were interested in. Intimidate the customer a bit, and your business flourishes.
The Israelis gained moral ascendancy long ago; some reputed people called 'the Arabs' never had it. This involved more than PR skills. It also involved terrible confusions about nationalism. They're the secret weapon of the Zionists and the secret weakness of 'the Arabs'.
Zionist ideology has always departed from a question: every people has its state; why not the Jews? A 'no' answer would tie you to that evil of evils, antisemitism. The rights of 'the Jewish people' meant Israel had a morally titanic 'right to exist'. It meant that the relentless expansion of Jewish settlement was, far from a mortal threat to the non-Jewish inhabitants of the area, the mere completion of the long Jewish Odyssey. It was just part of the long journey home.
As for the Palestinians, they described themselves as Arabs. This sounded like they *had* a home; it was the whole Arab world. If their 'Arab brothers' would not take them in, well, that was no fault of the Zionists. So if the Palestinians were squeezed ever further into unlivable enclaves, it was the Arabs who were to blame. The Arabs would rather dispute a tiny strip of their vast possessions than grant the Jews their little homeland.
These claims - we're just a people like any other, we just want to go home - are the last bastion of lsrael's crumbling moral stature. It is hard to imagine a more inappropriate public relations ploy. Israel's rhetoric of peoples and homelands constitute a rejection of everything we ought to have learned from the Nazi era. The confusions that sustain them not only raise racial crusading to a moral imperative; in other ways they bring unjust disrepute and demoralization on the entire so-called Arab world.
If we cannot see the harm in talk of peoples and homelands, it is because our obsession with antisemitism has blinded us to the true origins of Nazi ideology. Before the Nazis, antisemitism was prevalent all over Western Europe. There were ugly incidents, one or two outrageous miscarriages of justice, but no genocide and nothing remotely resembling the peasant pogroms of Russia and the Ukraine. As for Germany, my Jewish parents, born and raised there, staunchly maintained that it was the least antisemitic country in all of pre-Nazi Europe. Why then is the Nazi genocide attributed to antisemitism, which clearly was necessary but not sufficient to produce it? And what about the aspects of Nazi ethnic cleansing that antisemitism can't possibly explain - the genocide against the gypsies and the planned extermination of thirty million Slavs, many of whom died as 'subhumans' in inhuman prison camps?
There was an ideology sufficient to drive all those atrocities. It fairly stares us in the face. It was not devised by Hitler, but by 19th Century Romantics - poets and pseudo-historians from Scandinavia across Central Europe and down into the Italian Peninsula and the Balkans. It was not the Nazis, but Woodrow Wilson who made it a fixture of contemporary politics. This was the ideology of ethnic nationalism.
Before proceeding let me forestall a predictable objection. I intend to trace the ravages of ethnic nationalism, not by any means to make Zionists into Nazis. It is entirely unnecessary to take this false step, which would obscure rather than clarify the repellent aspects of Zionism. The offspring of ethnic nationalism are a nasty brood, but of course the Nazis were in a league of their own.
Wilson legitimized this atrocious doctrine during the peace negotiations that ended the First World War. Wilson's own secretary of state, Robert Lansing, anticipated its consequences all too accurately:
"The more I think about the President's declaration as to the rightFor his prescience Lansing incurred Wilson's disfavour and was forced to resign. He seemed a fussy old spoilsport, unwilling to grant peoples their rights - peoples, or, as he puts it in the language of his era, races. Could he not see the progressive implications of Wilson's doctrine? Did he not understand that the self-determination of peoples - races, ethnic groups - was a sacred human right?
of 'self-determination,' the more convinced I am of the danger of
putting such ideas into the minds of certain races. It is bound to be the basis of impossible demands on the Peace Congress and create trouble in many lands.
"What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians,
and the nationalists among the Boers? Will it not breed discontent,
disorder, and rebellion? Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and
Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it? How can it
be harmonized with Zionism, to which the President is practically committed?
"The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until too late to check those who attempt to put the principle in force. What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered! What misery it will cause!"
Well, one person did, the person who wrote:
"If the race is in danger of being oppressed or even exterminated the question of legality is only of secondary importance. The established power may in such a case employ only those means which are recognized as 'legal'. yet the instinct of self-preservation on the part of the oppressed will always justify, to the highest degree, the employment of all possible resources.Ah, human rights, which belong not only to individuals but to 'peoples'. This champion of human rights was Adolf Hitler, writing in Mein Kampf.
"Only on the recognition of this principle was it possible for those
struggles to be carried through, of which history furnishes magnificent examples in abundance, against foreign bondage or oppression at home.
"Human rights are above the rights of the State."
................
So a miracle appears among us. The very ideology of homelands and peoples under whose auspices the Jews were all but exterminated has become the sustaining ideology of Israel, a state devoted to Jewish ethnic sovereignty. This is why we always hear that Israel - not Israelis - has a right to exist. What matters are not the citizens of a state, but the state itself, the totemic icon of 'the Jewish people'. The fatal confusion that legitimized ethnic nationalism at the Paris Peace Conference now legitimizes Israel itself. When Zionists suggest that the French and Germans have a right to their states, they conveniently forget that this means the *inhabitants* of France and Germany, not those of some French or German *ancestry*, not a 'people' in the sense of an ethnic group. (The world was outraged when it suspected that Britain's 'patrial' immigration laws were designed to favor those of ethnically British ancestry.) But 'the Jewish people' have a right to their state, and this is supposed to be some lofty ideal. Why? Because ethnic nationalism has taken on the cloak of civic nationalism, and we are too stupid to notice. Had ethnic nationalism not shed a single drop of blood, we should still be ashamed for crediting its mystique of peoples, historical wrongs, collective vices and virtues, ineluctable destinies. Abstractions and myths that could not even gain entrance to a university's ivory towers flow daily from the lips of supposedly practical people.
Rush Delivery for Mother of All Bunker Busters
Tentative Inspection Program Would Allow Russia to Visit U.S. Nuclear Sites
( Given the above, wouldn't you consider this part of US false representations of 'We Are Peaceful!' ? )
Photos of Military Deaths in Afghanistan Banned
( Mustn't alert the American people that the natural consequence of war is mutual destruction and loss.)
Pics: Afghanistan’s Beautiful, Horrible War
slideshow ( didn't resolve in Chrome )
Fighting the Taliban
What, Exactly, is Being Fought in Afghanistan?
With US and NATO commanders on the battlefield of Afghanistan calling for more troops, how best to defeat the Taliban is being hotly debated by Washington’s policy-makers and their media pundits. Yet, nowhere are the types of questions posed by Arundhati Roy (the acclaimed Indian novelist and social activist) on a recent visit to Pakistan to be heard in the mainstream US discourse. Clarifying the purpose of her trip during an address at the Karachi Press Club, she stated, “I’m here to understand what you mean when you say Taliban…Do you mean a militant? Do you mean an ideology? Exactly what is it that is being fought?”
The reason that such questions are not frequently addressed in the US mainstream seems patently clear. The answers require one to move beyond the atrocities of ‘9/11’ and such pat ideas as the ‘threat’ posed the ‘civilized world’ by the Taliban/al-Qaida ‘militant’ and their ‘ideology,’ as well as the ‘human rights’ and ‘anti-woman’ abuses they perpetrate in their ‘Muslim’ homelands. In fact, Roy’s questions require the respondent to first and foremost recall that precursors to the Taliban - groups and leaders with similar ideologies and methods, including Usama bin Laden – were wholehearted supported by the US, with Saudi Arabian and Pakistani assistance, during the 1980’s, when fighting the USSR and its Afghani ally, the Najibullah regime. Of course, acknowledging that the Taliban-style ‘militant’ was an ally and his ‘ideology’ was considered an asset, not to be fought but nurtured and supported, is no great revelation. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged exactly this in an appearance before the House Appropriations Committee in late April, 2009. She stated:
Regarding the extent of support, Washington insiders do not mention that the Taliban’s “harsh form of oppression on women and others,” which everyone from Madeleine Albright to Hillary Clinton have argued provides cause for war, is not a concern when relations with ‘Wahhabi’ Saudi Arabia are pursued, and was not a concern when the US’ closest ally in the region, President (General) Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, promulgated a version of ‘Islamic Law’ whose intellectual roots were identical to those of Saudi Arabia and the Taliban, as evinced by such ‘anti-woman’ legislation as the removal of all images of women from public spaces (including TV), and such ‘human rights’ violations as public flogging. Zia ul-Haq’s regime entirely changed the complexion of Pakistani society, bringing the religio-political parties that would later instruct the Taliban on ‘Islam’ – that is, the Jama’at-i Ulama-i Islam - firmly into the political arena and leading to an entire generation raised under the impression that at least the social aspects of Taliban-style ‘ideology’ represents the ‘true’ face of ‘Islamic Law,’ whether they stand for or against it.
As for the duration of US support for the ‘militant’ and his ‘ideology,’ not even the USSR’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 stemmed activity. In fact, just as the USSR’s withdrawal did not mean an end to its support for the ‘communist’ regime it had left behind, the US found reason to continue supporting the Taliban-style forces arrayed against the Najibullah regime. This was accomplished by continuing to work through Pakistan with Saudi Arabian aid in the support of a coalition of seven Taliban-style outfits, known as the ‘Afghan Interim Government.’ This proxy war did not end until 1992, after the US and the USSR concluded a deal to stop providing military and financial aid to the Afghan Interim Government and the Najibullah regime, respectively. The collapse of the USSR itself only sealed the deal and, consequently, the fate of Najibullah regime; the latter fell by early 1992 and the Afghan Interim Government, held together by the common enemy of Najibullah, soon followed.The fall of Najibullah, however, did not end US entanglement with the Taliban-style ‘militant’ and his ‘ideology’ in Afghanistan, despite Hillary Clinton’s so often repeated claims. Rather, the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1992, signalled an emphasis on ties with the ‘Northern Alliance’ – itself a band of Taliban-style groups, sprinkled with regional ‘warlords,’ known for their drug running and human rights abuses. This relationship was actually initiated by Clinton’s predecessor, George Bush (Sr.), in 1989, with the appointment of a UScharge d’affair for the Northern Alliance, at the very moment that the charge d’affair for Afghanistan as a whole was withdrawn and the US embassy in Kabul closed. In other words, the US now joined Russia, Pakistan, India, Iran and Saudi Arabia in backing one of the other of the Taliban-style militants and warlords vying for control of Afghanistan, the result of which was the destruction of major cities like Kabul and most of the country’s infrastructure, as well as the continued killing, rape and torture of thousands more civilians. Meanwhile, the official attitude of the US and its NATO allies, who today wage war in the name of ‘human rights’ and ‘women’s emancipation,’ was aptly captured in the following line from a London Times article published in the moment: “The world has no business in that country’s tribal disputes and blood feuds.”
The reason that such questions are not frequently addressed in the US mainstream seems patently clear. The answers require one to move beyond the atrocities of ‘9/11’ and such pat ideas as the ‘threat’ posed the ‘civilized world’ by the Taliban/al-Qaida ‘militant’ and their ‘ideology,’ as well as the ‘human rights’ and ‘anti-woman’ abuses they perpetrate in their ‘Muslim’ homelands. In fact, Roy’s questions require the respondent to first and foremost recall that precursors to the Taliban - groups and leaders with similar ideologies and methods, including Usama bin Laden – were wholehearted supported by the US, with Saudi Arabian and Pakistani assistance, during the 1980’s, when fighting the USSR and its Afghani ally, the Najibullah regime. Of course, acknowledging that the Taliban-style ‘militant’ was an ally and his ‘ideology’ was considered an asset, not to be fought but nurtured and supported, is no great revelation. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged exactly this in an appearance before the House Appropriations Committee in late April, 2009. She stated:
“Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union. They invaded Afghanistan… and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work… and it was President Reagan in partnership with Congress led by Democrats who said you know what it sounds like a pretty good idea… let’s deal with the ISI and the Pakistan military and let’s go recruit these mujahideen. And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahhabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union. And guess what … they (Soviets) retreated … they lost billions of dollars and it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. So there is a very strong argument which is… it wasn’t a bad investment in terms of Soviet Union but let’s be careful with what we sow… because we will harvest.”What Clinton neglected to mention, however, and Congress avoided asking, is the full extent and duration of that support, as well as the actual date and circumstances under which the ally was reassessed as an enemy, leaving the impression that the US withdrew after the USSR was defeated in 1989, only to return after the atrocious ‘harvest’ of ‘9/11.’
Regarding the extent of support, Washington insiders do not mention that the Taliban’s “harsh form of oppression on women and others,” which everyone from Madeleine Albright to Hillary Clinton have argued provides cause for war, is not a concern when relations with ‘Wahhabi’ Saudi Arabia are pursued, and was not a concern when the US’ closest ally in the region, President (General) Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, promulgated a version of ‘Islamic Law’ whose intellectual roots were identical to those of Saudi Arabia and the Taliban, as evinced by such ‘anti-woman’ legislation as the removal of all images of women from public spaces (including TV), and such ‘human rights’ violations as public flogging. Zia ul-Haq’s regime entirely changed the complexion of Pakistani society, bringing the religio-political parties that would later instruct the Taliban on ‘Islam’ – that is, the Jama’at-i Ulama-i Islam - firmly into the political arena and leading to an entire generation raised under the impression that at least the social aspects of Taliban-style ‘ideology’ represents the ‘true’ face of ‘Islamic Law,’ whether they stand for or against it.
As for the duration of US support for the ‘militant’ and his ‘ideology,’ not even the USSR’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 stemmed activity. In fact, just as the USSR’s withdrawal did not mean an end to its support for the ‘communist’ regime it had left behind, the US found reason to continue supporting the Taliban-style forces arrayed against the Najibullah regime. This was accomplished by continuing to work through Pakistan with Saudi Arabian aid in the support of a coalition of seven Taliban-style outfits, known as the ‘Afghan Interim Government.’ This proxy war did not end until 1992, after the US and the USSR concluded a deal to stop providing military and financial aid to the Afghan Interim Government and the Najibullah regime, respectively. The collapse of the USSR itself only sealed the deal and, consequently, the fate of Najibullah regime; the latter fell by early 1992 and the Afghan Interim Government, held together by the common enemy of Najibullah, soon followed.The fall of Najibullah, however, did not end US entanglement with the Taliban-style ‘militant’ and his ‘ideology’ in Afghanistan, despite Hillary Clinton’s so often repeated claims. Rather, the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1992, signalled an emphasis on ties with the ‘Northern Alliance’ – itself a band of Taliban-style groups, sprinkled with regional ‘warlords,’ known for their drug running and human rights abuses. This relationship was actually initiated by Clinton’s predecessor, George Bush (Sr.), in 1989, with the appointment of a UScharge d’affair for the Northern Alliance, at the very moment that the charge d’affair for Afghanistan as a whole was withdrawn and the US embassy in Kabul closed. In other words, the US now joined Russia, Pakistan, India, Iran and Saudi Arabia in backing one of the other of the Taliban-style militants and warlords vying for control of Afghanistan, the result of which was the destruction of major cities like Kabul and most of the country’s infrastructure, as well as the continued killing, rape and torture of thousands more civilians. Meanwhile, the official attitude of the US and its NATO allies, who today wage war in the name of ‘human rights’ and ‘women’s emancipation,’ was aptly captured in the following line from a London Times article published in the moment: “The world has no business in that country’s tribal disputes and blood feuds.”
Hawks Play Up the Taliban's Ties to Al Qaeda
"The Taliban Openly Derided Al Qaeda"
U.S. national security officials, concerned that President Barack Obama might be abandoning the strategy of full-fledged counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, are claiming new intelligence assessments suggesting that al Qaeda would be allowed to return to Afghanistan in the event of a Taliban victory.
But two former senior intelligence analysts who have long followed the issue of al Qaeda's involvement in Afghanistan question the alleged new intelligence assessments. They say that the Taliban leadership still blames Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda for their loss of power after 9/11 and that the Taliban-al Qaeda cooperation is much narrower today than it was during the period of Taliban rule.
The nature of the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban has been a central issue in the White House discussions on Afghanistan strategy that began last month, according to both White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones.
One of the arguments for an alternative to the present counterinsurgency strategy by officials, including aides to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, is that the Taliban wouldn't allow al Qaeda to reestablish bases inside Afghanistan, The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 5. The reasoning behind the argument, according to the report, is that the Taliban realises that its previous alliance with al Qaeda had caused it to lose power after the Sep. 11 attacks.
But two former senior intelligence analysts who have long followed the issue of al Qaeda's involvement in Afghanistan question the alleged new intelligence assessments. They say that the Taliban leadership still blames Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda for their loss of power after 9/11 and that the Taliban-al Qaeda cooperation is much narrower today than it was during the period of Taliban rule.
The nature of the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban has been a central issue in the White House discussions on Afghanistan strategy that began last month, according to both White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones.
One of the arguments for an alternative to the present counterinsurgency strategy by officials, including aides to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, is that the Taliban wouldn't allow al Qaeda to reestablish bases inside Afghanistan, The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 5. The reasoning behind the argument, according to the report, is that the Taliban realises that its previous alliance with al Qaeda had caused it to lose power after the Sep. 11 attacks.
Officials in national security organs that are committed to the counterinsurgency strategy have now pushed back against the officials who they see as undermining the war policy....
John McCreary, formerly a senior analyst at the Defence Intelligence Agency, wrote last week on NightWatch, an online news analysis service, that the history of Taliban-al Qaeda relations suggests a very different conclusion. After being ousted from power in 2001, he wrote, the Taliban "openly derided the Arabs of al Qaida and blamed them for the Taliban's misfortunes".
The Taliban leaders "vowed never to allow the foreigners – especially the haughty, insensitive Arabs – back into Afghanistan," wrote McCreary. "In December 2001, [Mullah Mohammad] Omar was ridiculed in public by his own commanders for inviting the 'Arabs' and other foreigners, which led to their flight to Pakistan."
McCreary concluded, "The premise that Afghanistan would become an al Qaida safe haven under any future government is alarmist and bespeaks a lack of understanding of the Pashtuns on this issue and a superficial knowledge of recent Afghan history."
The Taliban leaders "vowed never to allow the foreigners – especially the haughty, insensitive Arabs – back into Afghanistan," wrote McCreary. "In December 2001, [Mullah Mohammad] Omar was ridiculed in public by his own commanders for inviting the 'Arabs' and other foreigners, which led to their flight to Pakistan."
McCreary concluded, "The premise that Afghanistan would become an al Qaida safe haven under any future government is alarmist and bespeaks a lack of understanding of the Pashtuns on this issue and a superficial knowledge of recent Afghan history."
( You don't have to look far for files on the topic : Uranium : Mining and 'Depleted' )
MoD equipment plan 'unaffordable'
The way the Ministry of Defence buys equipment is "unaffordable", with an estimated budget overrun of £35bn, a report has said.
The review, commissioned by the MoD, said too many types of equipment were being ordered for too large a range of tasks at too high a specification.
It found programmes are, on average, five years late into service and cost an extra £300m as a result
Commandos Field Test ‘Plasma Knife’
Plasma Knife cuts through flesh with a “blade” of glowing ionized gas. But rather than being a weapon, the Plasma Knife is a surgical instrument that could save lives.
Judge closes Blackwater trial to public
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Report: UN concluded Zelaya removal legal; Update: UN says was just a consultant opinion
Bear in mind that Hondudario ran this in an editorial, at least as far as I can tell. Nothing else has hit the wires about a UN determination in this crisis. The UN’s DPA has a website, but does not have anything at all on the Honduran stand-off.
If this turns out to be true, though, it would come as a shock and embarrassment to the White House. The Law Library of Congress has already reached the same conclusion, a development which the Obama administration has ignored, and which most of the media have studiously avoided mentioning.
“Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War”: Groundbreaking Journalist Mark Danner on Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and Torture
Award-winning journalist, writer and professor Mark Danner has just released a new collection of dispatches about Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and the use of torture in the US war on terror. It’s called Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War. We speak to Danner about torture in the so-called war on terror and his career of chronicling US-backed human rights abuses abroad.
One of the group’s co-founders, Deborah Burlingame, told Politico that the website would also feature the Bush administration’s memos so people can, quote, “read the memos on enhanced interrogation instead of reading them through the lens of the media where they’re called [quote] ‘Torture memos’ when, actually, they’re lawyers talking about an anti-torture statute and how not to violate it.”
Well, back in what’s been called the "reality-based community,” civil liberties advocates have criticized Holder for not taking the probe far enough and only investigating cases where interrogators went beyond the limits prescribed in the so-called torture memos.
President Obama has repeatedly said he will uphold the law but wants to look forward and not backward. Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nationlast month, Obama said he would not interfere with the Justice Department investigation.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I have said consistently that I want to look forward and not backward when it comes to some of the problems that occurred under the previous administration or when it came to interrogations. I don’t want witch hunts taking place. I’ve also said, though that the Attorney General has a job to uphold the law.
AMY GOODMAN: But the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond, announced late last month that he was pulling Republican staff off the committee’s own probe into CIA interrogation and detention policies. The move appeared to be a response to the Attorney General’s decision to launch the Justice Department investigation.
AMY GOODMAN: The title, Stripping Bare the Body?
MARK DANNER: Well, that came from something that a former Haitian president said, Leslie Manigat, who was briefly president after the fall of Duvalier and was overthrown in a coup. And he talked about the fact that political violence strips bare the social body, the better to place the stethoscope and hear what’s really going on beneath the skin. And his point, I think, in general, was if you look at a society convulsed by violence, whether it’s a coup d’état, a revolution, a war, it is a way to see inside it to understand the different social forces that make it tick and that, during times of peace, very often tend to be invisible.
And the book is about really those moments of nudity, as he called them, when you can look inside, whether it’s Haiti itself, the Balkans during the wars of the mid-’90s, the Iraq war, the war on terror in which we’re looking at our own society, whether it’s through provisions that the Bush administration put in place to deal with terrorism or the decisions that the Obama administration has made in its aftermath not to pursue certain legal recourses. And all of these are, in President Manigat’s phrase, moments of nudity in which we can actually look at societies and try to understand what makes them tick politically. And that’s what the book’s about.
Harry Reid abdicates his leadership role
For Insurers, a Question of Trust (and Antitrust)
Democrats Try to Hit the Insurance Industry Where it Hurts
Stagnant Prices Prevent Social Security Increase
( Increases are designed to realign SS with prices anyway, are they not ? )
Public Opinion in Mexico on U.S. Immigration: Zogby Poll Examines Attitudes
69 percent of people in Mexico felt that the Mexican government should represent the interests of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) in the United States.
( Pigs might fly! )
Virtual Fence, Real Disaster
( Somewhere along the road to deciding WHAT to do, one supposedly considers what CAN be done. Whatever happened to Analysis Informs Policy ? )
Iron Eagle: Robo-Copter Gets a Synth-Rock Soundtrack
Despite politics, borders and export-control laws, there’s one thing that unites defense contractors around the globe: a love of cheesy, mid-tempo synth-rock.
Israeli firm Steadicopter is unveiling its Black Eagle 50 robotic helicopter at this week’s Israel Defense International Army & Police exhibition. (Well, sorta: The company actually started showing off the robo-copter to the defense trade press several months ago.) But never mind that. The company also has also a promo that’s a marvelous candidate for the Iron Eagles, our collection of awesomely bad videos of the military-industrial complex
DefPro has a rundown of China’s UAV programs. Many of them appear to be knock-offs of U.S. drones. The Xianglong (”Sour Dragon”) is shaped like the American Global Hawk, and is supposed to fly almost as high: 60,000 feet. The Yilong looks awfully like one of those Predators the U.S. is now flying over Pakistan.
“China’s copycat tradition goes back to the 1960s,” Defense News notes. “Recovered U.S. AQM-34N Firebee drones lost over China and North Vietnam led to the production of the WZ-5 Chang Hong, which ironically may have seen service during China’s 1979 invasion of Vietnam.”Not all of the Chinese drone projects are rip-offs, however. As DefPro observes…
The “Dark Sword” is an unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) concept which was displayed as a model at the 2006 Zhuhai air show. It is obviously designed for high manoeuvrability at supersonic speeds, having a flat, triangular shape with an additional large wing area and swing canards…
At the Zhuhai air show, a staff member called the aircraft the “future of Chinese unmanned combat aviation”, emphasising its projected ability to evade enemy radar and to engage in air-to-air combat.
( Control of resources is a concern of G2 : oil shortage hobbled Germany in WW II for instance. Among all the hoopla about Energy resources, somebody seems to have missed the significance of Mineral resources. China controls 90% of the rare earths market : and has gobs of US $$$ to spend. That means computer tech hardware is something they own. )
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