Patrick O’Connor
WSWS

An injured Afghan child at the hospital in Farah province.
Photo: Abdul Malek/AP [From an earlier US massacre]

In the worst of several US air strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent days, up to 51 civilians were killed last Thursday in Afghanistan’s north-eastern Kunar province. General David Petraeus, the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, expressed the colonial-style hostility of the occupation force’s senior command toward the Afghan population, reportedly accusing local residents of burning their children to fake evidence of civilian casualties.

In a five-hour operation on the night of February 17, US Apache helicopters strafed a group of alleged Afghan insurgents with gunfire, rockets and Hellfire missiles. Surveillance drones guided the helicopter assault in the mountainous district of Ghaziabad, near the Pakistan border, and according to the Washington Post, bombs were dropped by at least one of the unmanned Predator aircraft. The attack was one of a number of recent US operations in the district, ordered as part of President Barack Obama’s broader escalation of the Af-Pak war.

Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, senior military spokesman in Kabul, stated that three dozen people were killed in the incident. He maintained they were all “suspected insurgents who had gathered to attack US and Afghan troops”. However, the remarks of one unnamed military official, cited by the Washington Post on Monday, made clear that American authorities had no knowledge of the identities of those killed. The official admitted that those targeted had been wearing civilian clothes.

Kunar Governor Said Fazlullah Wahidi contradicted Smith’s claims. He said: “According to our information 64 people were killed: 13 armed opposition, 22 women, 26 boys and 3 old men.” The governor sent a three-man “fact-finding team” to the area on Saturday, which returned with seven injured people suffering burns and shrapnel wounds, including a young man and woman and five boys and girls.

Read more »

Fred Reed
Fred on Everything

Date: The following is a somewhat amplified letter to a friend. I know I've said some of this before.

Jim,

Permit me respectfully to disagree about the potency of American intelligence agencies. It seems to me that they are clowns, incompetent at their assigned work but adept at causing grave problems for the United States. Their almost comic ineptitude lies hidden behind a veil of romantic secrecy a la James Bond. But look at their known record.

Your belief that a few jets and Marines would have changed the outcome in the Bay of Pigs rests on the characteristic inability of US intel to grasp how other people look at things. Cubans hated Batista, did not yet hate Castro to whatever extent they ever would, and the exiles used to invade the island were agents of the people Cubans hated most—that is, the rich property owners who fled Castro. The Americans, remember, had always supported Batista, as they had supported every ugly dictator in Latin America. America itself is detested throughout South America. No warm welcome was in the cards.

Americans still have no understanding of how other people work, and therefore of what they are likely to do. I remember that in Afghanistan the Pentagon was going to conquer Marjah and give it a “government in a box.” That is, the Afghans were going to fall in love with brutal invaders who destroyed most of their city. Fat fucking chance. Iraq would be a cakewalk? A friend of min--Jack McGeorge--on Blix’s team briefed Langley on WMD before the invasions of Iraq. I asked him whether the CIA really believed the cakewalk theory or were lying for political reasons. They really believed it, he said.

Read more »

Jerry White
WSWS

Demonstrations continued in the state capital of Wisconsin Tuesday against Governor Scott Walker’s budget-cutting proposal and attack on public employees. Protests inspired by the stand taken by Wisconsin workers also spread to other states across the country, including Indiana and Ohio.

In Indianapolis workers marched at the state capitol against Republican governor Mitch Daniels’ proposal to restrict bargaining by public school teachers. In Columbus, marchers denounced a bill that would prohibit collective bargaining for 42,000 state workers in addition to 19,500 workers in the state’s university and college system. (See “Columbus, Ohio rally against anti-worker legislation”) Protests also took place in Lansing, Michigan, Boston and other cities.

In New Jersey, Republican Governor Chris Christie announced a state budget Tuesday that would double a property tax rebate program only if lawmakers voted to require public workers pay 30 percent of their health care benefits, more than triple what they pay now.

In addition to draconian cuts in public and higher education, Medicaid and other services, Wisconsin’s Republican governor is demanding public employees sharply increase their contributions to health care and pension benefits, a move that would result in hundreds of dollars in lost wages each month.

The governor is also seeking to strip teachers, nurses, firefighters and other state and municipal employees of bargaining rights and bar negotiations on any issues except pay increases, which could not exceed a rise in the Consumer Price Index. The measure would also end automatic deduction of union dues and compel bargaining units to have a revote every year to maintain union representation.

In a 10-minute “Fireside Chat” Tuesday night, Walker reiterated his determination to press ahead and once again attempted to pit private sector workers against public employees by claiming public workers had not given up the type of wage and benefit concessions during the recession as workers in private industry.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

Ronald Reagan was right saying:

"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem."

His type governance, that is, and from administrations that followed, Democrats as ruthless as Republicans.

For decades, bipartisan consensus governed lawlessly, waging imperial wars, trashing human rights and civil liberty protections, unabashedly backing monied interests, letting them loot the federal treasury, fleecing working Americans, and targeting organized labor for destruction.

Washington is ground zero for government's assault. Outside the beltway, it's Wisconsin, but spreading fast to other states and cities. An unfair fight pits major media-supported federal, state and local governments allied with union bosses against American workers, largely on their own, relying on their grit and resourcefulness to survive in a very hostile environment.

Threatened are hard-won worker rights, including secure jobs, a living wage, essential benefits, and the right to bargain collectively with management to protect them. They're going, going, and soon gone unless mass grassroots activism saves them, what's so far absent. Wisconsin worker heroics are impressive, but not enough.

Much more is needed - there and across America, because workers in all states and communities are threatened, their rights being trashed and have been for decades, especially since the Carter administration drafted plans [that] Reagan implemented:

Firing over 11,000 PATCO workers, jailing its leaders, fining the union millions of dollars, and effectively busting it for monied interests. It was a shot across organized labor's bow, a clear message to Wall Street and other corporate favorites - supported by then AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland, one of many labor bosses who betrayed rank and file trust. They still do for their own self-interest. No wonder organized labor is a shadow of its former self, headed for extinction unless stopped.

Reagan's administration set the pattern. Union bosses conspired with management against their own membership. During bitter coal miner, steel worker, bus driver, airline worker, copper miner, auto worker, and meatpacking worker strikes, they denied rank and file support, assuring them defeat. At decade's end, trade unionism in America was decimated and kept declining since, heading for oblivion with little pressure to stop it.

Read more »