Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

For the last two weeks, a 15,000-strong army of NATO, British and American forces has been carrying out military operations in a small are i.e. Marjah which is located in Nad Ali district. A number of jet bombers of the enemy including unmanned drones and 60 gunship helicopters are taking part in the operations. In addition to this, the enemy have brought to the battle field their huge and most advanced tanks by the name of Abraham and Shifton, which approximately weigh 65 tons. But despite the preparations, boasts and propaganda stunts, the enemy have not been able to make any headway against a small group of Mujahideen who are not more than 1000 armed men and their weapons are no match with those of the enemy. But still the sacrificing and committed Mujahideen have bravely blocked the invaders’ way successfully.

Skilled snipers have put shock and awe into the ranks of the enemy. The Mujahideen have blown up 53 tanks; shot down two unmanned drones and one helicopter besides killing tens of soldiers. An Afghan honor-loving woman made history by shooting soldiers pointblank in the bazaar. She revived the memory of Malalai of the past and proved by her heroic act, that still there are many sisters-in-arms of Malalai in this land. If we count the crews in the tanks which have been destroyed, we can easily conclude that the enemy losses are more than one hundred soldiers.

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Stephen M. Walt

When I got out of the shower this morning, my wife was waking up to NPR. Her first comment to me was this: “I never thought I would hear an NPR reporter say those words.” What had she just heard? A report that the Obama administration was “under fire” for defending the rights of terrorist suspects.

She wasn’t complaining about NPR’s coverage, mind you, she was commenting on the bizarre situation where anyone -- let alone a president and his administration -- could be “under fire” for defending a core principle of the American justice system. The Founding Fathers would be spinning in their graves, about as fast as a nuclear centrifuge. They understood the dangers of giving executives arbitrary authority to arrest, detain, coerce, and try suspects (i.e., those whom authorities think might have committed a crime but whose guilt has not yet been determined). So suspects -- all suspects -- are accorded certain legal rights.

I’m not a lawyer and so I don’t normally weigh in on legal issues, including the continuing debate over torture, the use of civilian vs. military tribunals to try suspected terrorists, and the other aspects of post-9/11 policy. As a matter of policy, however, the case for abandoning our normal criminal justice procedures strikes me as laughably weak.

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Chris Floyd

"But really, Barack Obama's vaunted "Nobel Peace Surge" in Afghanistan is churning out collateral damage at such a clip that Stan should probably just go ahead and schedule a regular "Oops" conference on, say, every Friday, so he can dole out a one-stop dollop of crocodile tears for all the week's atrocities. He's a busy man, after all; it takes a lot of time and energy to lead the forces of HELL."

The humanitarian march of civilization goes on, and on, and on, and on...

A NATO helicopter airstrike on Sunday against what international troops believed to be a group of insurgents ended up killing as many as 27 civilians in the worst such case since at least September, Afghan officials said Monday...

The attack was carried out by United States Special Forces helicopters that were patrolling the area hunting for insurgents who had escaped the NATO offensive in the Marja area, about 150 miles away, according to Gen. Abdul Hameed, an Afghan National Army commander in Dehrawood, which is part of Oruzgan Province. General Hameed, interviewed by telephone, said there had been no request from any ground forces to carry out an attack...

Zemarai Bashary, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the victims were all civilians who were attacked by air while traveling in two Land Cruisers and a pickup truck, which carried 42 people in all...

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David Kerans

Recent revelations concerning the shakiness of the finances of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain have sent shock waves far beyond the financial community, and alerted wide sections of the world public to the reality that the financial crisis begun in 2008 is far from over, and could be entering a new phase. Wherever they may begin, defaults on sovereign debt would rock ships of state, and send losses spiraling out beyond their borders to the many sources of their funding. State services and public order might suffer on a broad scale, with cascading consequences for economies and for citizens’ quality of life.

Alas, discerning analysts have spotted these cascading consequences already in motion across much of the US, as state and municipal governments begin to struggle with epic and seemingly intractable budget shortfalls (1). By one count, at least seven large US states (holding 35% of the population) are in more financial peril than any of the aforementioned European nations (2). Little noticed amid the headlines regarding Greece and the EU, the investment community has even begun placing bets on a US federal government debt default down the road. The implication of this sentiment is clear. It suspects not merely that the US faces daunting economic problems, but that the country is incapable of solving them.

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Colin Woodard

The shadow of a worker falls on a wall at a Hungarian steel in the
northeastern city of Miskolc. Heavy industries across Eastern
Europe, once beacons of planned economies, survived the collapse
of communism 20 years ago but may not live to see the end of the
current economic crisis. (Photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters.)

Hit hard by the global downturn, Europe’s former Soviet-bloc countries are suffering from rising unemployment and poverty; some officials question the post-Communist drive to privatize and deregulate.

OLOMOUC, Czech Republic – Before the worldwide financial crash, things were looking up for this medieval university town, 170 miles east of Prague. Local manufacturing sales were up, unemployment was down, and the local soccer team ranked as a European powerhouse.

But the Great Recession has battered the export-driven Czech economy, and the pain has trickled down to Olomouc’s graffiti-plagued streets. Layoffs of thousands in the textile and machinery industries have driven local unemployment to 11.3 percent, nearly three points above the national average. And soccer club Sigma Olomouc is making news not for beating its rivals, but for the local hooligans who keep beating up visiting Scottish fans in tear gas-assisted assaults.

The global economic crisis has hit Central and Eastern Europe especially hard, less than a decade since the former Soviet satellite countries and newly independent Baltic States emerged from their long and painful transition to a free market system and attained European Union membership.

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Stephen Lendman

[During a press conference held by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, actors demonstrate the Israeli Shin Bet torture method known as "Banana b'kiseh," where a detainee with hands and feet cuffed is painfully stretched, in the shape of a banana, over a chair by his jailer.]

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI - stoptorture.org) "believes that torture and ill-treatment of any kind and under all circumstances is incompatible with the moral values of democracy and the rule of law." Yet it's systematically practiced by the Israeli Police, General Security Service (GSS), Israeli Prison Service (IPS), and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

In December 2009, PCATI published its latest report titled, "Accountability Denied: The Absence of Investigation and Punishment of Torture in Israel," explaining "the many layers of immunity that protect" the guilty, specifically the GSS, the focus of this report.

Immunity insures that GSS interrogation torture and abuse complaints never become criminal investigations, indictments, or legal hearings. Israel's State Attorney and Attorney General assure it "under a systemic legal cloak" giving torturers "unrestricted protection."

Since 2001, victims submitted over 600 torture complaints to authorities. None were investigated - "the first step" before indictments, prosecutions, and convictions. As a result, GSS interrogators have blanket immunity to operate freely "behind closed doors (making) torture an institutionalized method of interrogation in Israel, enjoying the full backing of the legal system." As in America, torture is official Israeli policy.

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Mehdi Hasan

Advocates of torture on the left and the right cling to the myth of the ticking bomb.

"You are going to tell me what I want to know - it's just a matter of how much you want it to hurt." So says Jack Bauer, the fictional Counter-Terrorist Unit agent in the award-winning TV show 24. Over the past eight seasons, dead-eyed Bauer has beaten, stabbed, shot, suffocated, drugged, hooded and electrocuted an assortment of dark-skinned, bearded baddies in order to make them "talk" and stop one terrorist attack after another.

I have my own confession to make. I adore Jack Bauer. Like millions of fellow fans, I can't help but be in awe of him. Why? He's a man of action, a hero who will do anything it takes to save lives. In the words of one liberal commentator, "men want to be him, and women want to be there to hand him the electrical cord".

However, in my saner moments, I'm able to distinguish fact from fiction. For example, the "ticking bomb" scenario - of an evil terrorist in our custody who possesses critical knowledge of a time bomb about to explode and kill thousands - has no basis in reality, although it appears on 24 with unnerving frequency. "Within the context of our show, which is a fantastical show to begin with, the torture is a dramatic device to show you how desperate a situation is," acknowledges Kiefer Sutherland, the actor and noted Hollywood liberal, who plays Bauer.

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Ellen Brown

While bank bailouts fatten Wall Street, states continue to battle the credit crisis. In the search for innovative solutions, some political candidates are proposing that states generate their own credit by setting up their own banks.

State budgets for 2010 face the largest shortfalls on record, totaling $194 billion or 28 percent of state budgets; and 2011 is expected to be worse. Unemployment has already officially hit 10 percent, and many economists expect it to rise higher. Continued high unemployment will keep state income tax receipts at low levels and increase demand for Medicaid and other essential services states provide. The existing alternatives are spending cuts or tax increases, but both will just serve to make the downturn deeper. When states cut spending, they lay off employees, cancel contracts with vendors, eliminate or lower payments to businesses and nonprofit organizations that provide direct services, and cut benefit payments to individuals. The result is a reduction in overall demand. Tax increases also remove demand, by reducing the amount of money people have to spend.

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Anthony Watts

Anthropogenic climate change now is in serious doubt. -Hence the shrill
voice of hitmen working for climate orthodoxy. (Editor/AWIP)

There has never been a time at WUWT that I’ve used the word “slimy” in a headline. This is a special case. I thought of about a half dozen words I could have used and finally decided on this one. I chose it because of precedence in a similar situation where Steve McIntyre wrote his rebuttal to a similar piece of amateur journalism entitled Slimed by Bagpuss the Cat Reporter.

Last week, the Guardian invited me to participate in their new online story forum. They were seeking the input from climate sceptics on issues they were writing about. They especially wanted my input. I said I’d consider it, but was a bit hesitant given the Guardian’s reporting history. But, after some discussion with one of the reporters, it seemed like a genuine attempt at outreach. I suggested that if they really wanted to make a gesture that would make people take notice, they should consider banning the use of the word “denier” from climate discourse in their newspaper. Nobody I know of in the sceptic community denies that the earth has gotten warmer in the past century. I surely don’t. But we do question the measured magnitude, the cause, and the scientific methods.

Now, any progress that has been made in outreach by the Guardian has been dashed by the most despicably stupid newspaper article I’ve ever seen about climate skeptics. The Guardian for some reason thought it would be a good idea to print it while at the same time trying to reach across the aisle to climate skeptics for ideas. Needless to say, they’ve horribly botched that gesture with the printing of this article.

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Stephen Lendman

Distinguished historian, scholar and activist Gabriel Kolko studied "the nature and purpose of (American) power (since) the 1870s," calling it "violen(t), racis(t), repressi(ve) at home and abroad (and) cultural(ly) mendaci(ous)." It's been the same since inception, historian Howard Zinn calling colonial America:

"a class society from the beginning. America started off as a society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston, and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to" portray a benevolent nation. We weren't then. We're not now.

We waged war against Native Americans, African-Americans, ordinary Americans, the poor, disadvantaged and women. Since inception, we committed "genocide," according to Zinn: "brutally and purposefully....by our rulers in the name of progress, (who then buried ugly truths) in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth."

At home, profit over human lives and welfare took millions of working American lives. Abroad it was far worse, the result of direct or proxy wars, death squads, torture, occupations, alliances with despots, and neglect. Against indigenous and black Americans, it was worst of all. More on that below.

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Nick Turse & Tom Engelhardt

Once is an anomaly; twice is the beginning of a pattern. Right now, we’re seeing the same sequence of events for the second time in less than a decade, and it looks like the signature American way of war in our time is coming into focus.

In 2003, when the Bush administration invaded Iraq, the Pentagon already had on its drawing boards plans for building a series of permanent mega-bases in that country. (They were charmingly called “enduring camps.”) Once Baghdad fell and it turned out that, Saddam Hussein or no, the U.S. was going to have to fight rather than settle in and let the good times roll, hundreds of micro-bases were added to the mega ones -- 106 of them by 2005, more than 300 in all. Then, in 2005, Washington decided to trade in its embassy in one of Saddam’s old palaces for something a little spiffier. In its place, on a 104-acre plot by the Tigris River in the middle of Baghdad, for at least three-quarters of a billion dollars after cost overruns, it built the largest, most expensive embassy on the planet. It was planned for a staff of 1,000 “diplomats” with all the accoutrements of the good life and plenty of hired help. (Even now, despite much discussion about “ending” the American role in Iraq, further plans are reportedly being made for the embassy’s staff to double.) This was clearly to be U.S. mission control for the Greater Middle East.

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Edwin Black

Believe it or not, the Nazis' murder of Jews, communists and gypsies using gas chambers was actually an American idea.

As the San Francisco Chronicle wrote in 2003:

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Jason Godesky
Toby's People

Israeli bulldozer detroys water canal built on Palestinian land.

The stated rationale for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon was nonsense. Ostensibly, Israel invaded Lebanon because Hizb’allah captured two IDF soldiers that violated the Lebanese border.1 Later reports in Western media were changed so that Hizb’allah was entering Israel in an unprovoked attack; this is the generally understood scenario in the West, though it conflicts with the original reports and Lebanese police. Hizb’allah asked for a prisoner exchange—like the exchanges Israel has engaged in before2—but instead, Israel’s Kadima PM Ehud Olmert promised a “very painful and far-reaching response.” Israel’s army chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, said the war would “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years.”

Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, said, “Of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared. In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board.”3 Western commentators have tried to turn the issue into one of Israel’s self-defence from Hizb’allah, but prior to 12 July 2006, Hizb’allah rockets had killed a total of 6 Israeli civilians since 20004—including one struck by a falling anti-aircraft round fired at an Israeli jet violating Lebanese air space, while another “civilian” was in fact an IDF officer.5 By comparison, at least four Lebanese civilians were killed by IDF or SLA fighters just during the withdrawal from southern Lebanon, 22-23 May 2000.6 In 34 days of fighting, Hizb’allah killed 108 IDF soldiers and wounded 9, while some 4,000 Katyusha rocket attacks killed 41 Israeli civilians. In the same timespan, the IDF has claimed over 400 Hizb’allah fighters dead, and 1,130 Lebanese civilians killed, 3,600 wounded, and a million displaced.7

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Christopher King

No comment from NATO chief

Christopher King expresses the hope that the fall of the Dutch government over participation in the US-led aggression in Afghanistan could be the start of a trend that will see Europe regain its independence from the USA.

Hopefully the split in the Dutch parliament on withdrawal from Afghanistan is a sign that Europe is beginning to recognize who the real terrorists are. The true situation is so different from the media’s portrayal that the general public finds it difficult, perhaps impossible, to contemplate. I wonder how much Europe’s politicians understand. The situation is truly desperate – not for Afghanistan but for Europe.

The Israeli-American axis’s policy is 100 per cent lies and deception. Since the purpose of NATO is supposed to be the protection of Europe, it is remarkable that we never hear from its chief. I don’t mean Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary-general who our media always calls the “NATO head”. He is nothing of the sort. Rasmussen is the ex-prime minister of Denmark who has no power whatsoever. He is the mouthpiece for the real head of NATO.

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Chris Floyd

This is the lesson that the United States government -- the government of the historic progressive, Barack Obama -- taught the children of America today:

"Children, the law is nothing but a rag smeared with blood and shit.
"It is only for suckers, rubes and losers.

"Claw your way to the top -- by any means necessary -- and the law can never touch you. "This is the American way."

Yes, as the Washington Post reports, the United States government announced today that there will be no penalties whatsoever for the lawyers who were ordered by their superiors, George Bush and Dick Cheney, to write memos "justifying" the tortures that Bush and Cheney wanted to unleash upon captives held indefinitely without charges, without evidence, without trial, without rights.

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