By David Swanson, Dec. 15, 2010 For all the talk of strategic counterinsurgency that oozes out of Washington, and all the manuals explaining that 80% of our investment in a nation-building operation should be civilian, we’ve been investing about 3%…
Category: International
$52bn of American aid and still Afghans are dying of starvation
A beggar in Kabul; as winter approaches, half of Afghans may not get enough to eat, the US Famine Early Warning Systems Network says. Photo: Getty By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, Dec. 13, 2010 The most extraordinary failure of the…
The Russians did better … so why did they lose?
US Now in Afghanistan Longer Than Soviets By Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch, Dec. 8, 2010 US forces have now stayed longer in Afghanistan than the Soviet army during Moscow’s ill-fated intervention. The US military late last month exceeded the nine years…
Oceans of blood and profits for the mongers of war
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, Nov. 30, 2010 Since there are now three conflicts in the greater Middle East; Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel/”Palestine” and maybe another Lebanese war in the offing, it might be a good idea to take a look…
Happy as a hangman
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig, Dec. 6, 2010 Innocence, as defined by law, makes us complicit with the crimes of the state. To do nothing, to be judged by the state as an innocent, is to be guilty. It is to…
Afghanistan: Women remain prisoners
KABUL, 2 December 2010 (IRIN) – Zarghoona* has completed her three-month sentence at a prison in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan, but she is not allowed home because no male relative has shown up to guarantee that she will not run…
The National Security State and the Assassination of JFK
The CIA, the Pentagon, and the ‘Peace President’ by Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research, Nov. 23, 2010 Just 47 years ago, on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. This marked the turning of the…
Chomsky: Threat of war with Iran is real
Paul Jay interviews Noam Chomsky on the expansion of post-WW 2 power and the recent signs of it’s decline: America can no longer force countries to do its bidding, as evidenced by growing independence in South America, and Turkish-Brazilian initiatives…
A Cry From Argentina: ‘Close Guantanamo’
By Amy Goodman, Truthdig, Nov. 16, 2010 “Gitmo is going to remain open for the foreseeable future,” said an unnamed White House official to The Washington Post this week. For guidance on the notorious U.S. Navy base in Cuba, President…
Factory, coal mine show connections matter most in Afghan business
By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers, Nov. 14, 2010 KARKAR COAL MINE, Afghanistan — Shovel-wielding miners in rags and plastic shoes, some with the protruding ribs and work-ravaged pallor of labor camp prisoners, toil deep inside this remote northern mountain,…