afghanistan

Of course Washington decries the corruption in Afghanistan and calls it out as a major obstacle to its mission there. That is certainly rich points out Dilip Hiro in “The Great Afghan Corruption Scam: How Operation Enduring Freedom Mutated into Operation Enduring Corruption” since the United States, due to grotesque incompetence, amorality and graft itself, has been an enabler and participant in the colossal corruption in Afghanistan. Read below the fold...

Retiring Congressman Ron Paul, former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, comes done on the same side as many progressives on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. A recent post on his website, reiterates comments he made when was president about Gaza being nothing but a vast concentration camp.

It has never mattered to Paul which party was in power. His greatest appeal, especially among young supporters, is his ability to tell the unvarnished truth. He puts the blame for Gazan atrocities squarely where it belongs: with the US government, which is the main supplier of planes and bombs Israel uses to attack Palestinians. Read below the fold...

RE-POST from October 2009, FDL:

“6 Powerful Arguments Against War from Martin Luther King, Mark Twain, Ron Paul, Tom Engelhardt, The Brussels Tribunal, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”
libbyliberal Saturday October 31, 2009 1:53 am

I have a sense of doom that our President will escalate the war in the Middle East. It won’t be as much as General MacChrystal is asking. This strategy goes along with Obama’s modus operandi of cautious and thoughtful faux-deliberating that ultimately aligns in substance if not degree with the corporate and military status quo. From the very beginning of his term, Obama has seemed lost to the matrix of this status quo, while periodically extending some eloquent and promising rhetoric of change. Read below the fold...

There is a great post over at TomDispatch by Dilip Hiro on the US-Pakistan relationship. I say relationship, although Pakistan is often characterized as an "ally," because Pakistan is anything but an ally. The US does have allies, the NATO countries, Japan, and South Korea, and we are committed to their defense through formal treaties. But there is a whole other class of countries that are sloppily and/or deceptively referred to as allies. Read below the fold...

A long time ago I floated an idea in a blog that if the United States taught its soldiers basic American sign language for the deaf then when these soldiers entered the homelands of others to ALLEGEDLY help them, they could easily teach the distressed residents this useful, easy and elegant language and it would enhance communication and thereby reduce some of the massive stress evoked among all involved.

An additional BIG advantage would be that that one language would be flexible in all countries, as opposed to having the soldiers have to learn or not learn and endure the clumsy and often fatal consequences of not knowing enough of one challenging language and dialect after another with each deployment to another country. Read below the fold...

(519 Obama-dumping days until 2012 election-Hugh's Obama's Scandals List)

There is a shocking article this week in The New Yorker entitled “The Invisible Army” by Sarah Stillman.

Ms. Stillman begins by writing of two women in Fiji, Vinnie Tuiaga and Lydia Qeraniu, who are looking for work in 2007. They get recruited by a local firm called Meridian Services Agency which promises them both jobs in Dubai. You know Dubai. You have seen pictures of that opulent, exciting city I am sure. Read below the fold...

(554 Obama-dumping days until 2012 election-Hugh's Obama's Scandals List)

1. What country does the vast majority of terrorists in Afghanistan come from?

a) Afghanistan

b) Other

c) USA Read below the fold...

(567 Obama-dumping days until 2012 election-Hugh's Obama's Scandals List)

Sometimes I come across an electrifying article that inspires simultaneous dread, enlightenment and validation. An article providing that AHA moment, confirming my worst suspicions and connecting some troubling, global-big-picture dots. Dots-connecting that the pen-flashlight narrow, manipulatively selective, milli-second illuminations by Western corporate media don’t begin to help ordinary Americans or other Westerners achieve. Read below the fold...

Before Tahrir Square happened almost nobody predicted that President Hosni Mubarak would be forced out of office by a movement that didn't pick up a gun. Had President Barack Obama expected that outcome, he might have publicly backed Mubarak's departure before, rather than after, Mubarak stepped down.

Obama can be seen as overcompensating for that performance in Libya, but there he is placing faith in weapons. Anybody can do that. Egypt still has a long way to go on its path to a just society. But the question of whether Tunisian-Egyptian movements will find success elsewhere is the question of whether people can take the far more challenging step of placing trust in nonviolence. Read below the fold...

I'll be visiting my nation's longest war next week in Afghanistan, thanks to a wonderful organization called Voices for Creative Nonviolence which seeks to build friendship and understanding between countries. I'll be meeting with ordinary and prominent Afghans and reporting on what they think of their country's future -- often a more complex view than will fit into a television sound byte. Read below the fold...

From Afghanistan: We Support the People of Wisconsin and the World

We Afghans Are All Bouazizi
By Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers

Afghan youth are quietly encouraged by the Egyptian uprising because the people of Afghanistan want what the people of Egypt want.

We are all Bouazizi.

We want dignified livelihoods.

Dare any scientist prove to us that 30 years of wars and more to come will successfully bring us decent livelihoods? Dare any human being prove to us that mutual killings somehow bring men and women some measure of murderous dignity?

Aren’t any of you curious about whether there are any ‘stirrings of Middle East change’ in Afghanistan?” Read below the fold...

According to the Pentagon's lawyer, Martin Luther King Jr., if alive today, would view the US war on Afghanistan as both the act of a Good Samaritan and as necessary self-defense.

Jeh C. Johnson, the "Defense" Department's general counsel, said, on the one hand:

"I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack."

On the other hand, he also said this: Read below the fold...

Swanson has just published War Is A Lie.  This article originally appeared on TomDispatch.

To understand just how bad the 112th Congress, elected on November 2nd and taking office on January 3rd, is likely to be for peace on Earth, one has to understand how incredibly awful the 110th and 111th Congresses have been during the past four years and then measure the ways in which things are likely to become even worse.  Read below the fold...