U.S. Army Soldiers from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division medically extract teammates to safety during exercise Talisman Sabre at Shoalwater Bay Training Area, Australia, June 28, 2007. (Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Sandra M. Palumbo / US Navy)“Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their peoples in [...]
Clinton’s $33m Raid on Pakistan Shows That, In The End, Hypocrisy Will Win The Long View: Are the Pakistanis being so dastardly when they lock up a national who has helped in a murder? By Robert Fisk May 28, 2012 “The Independent” – La Clinton hath spoken. Thirty-three million smackers lopped [...]
NATO Airstrike Kills Six Afghan Children, Parents Afghan Govt. Announces Probe After Family Slain in Attack by Jason Ditz, May 27, 2012 Print This | Share This A Saturday evening NATO air strike against a village in Paktia Province, Afghanistan, has killed a family of eight, including six children. The strike is the latest [...]
Violence and Greeting Cards by Robert C. Koehler “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies . . .” My thanks to Medea Benjamin for her recent Common Dreams essay putting the spirit of Julia Ward Howe back into Mother’s Day. I’d forgotten about her 1870 proclamation of disarmament and call to the mothers of Planet Earth to [...]
Ties between the United States and Pakistan have been severely strained over the past year [Reuters] Pakistan has confirmed its president will attend a summit of NATO leaders this weekend in Chicago as negotiations with US to reopen supply lines into Afghanistan continues. Nadeem Hotiana, a Pakistani embassy spokesman in Washington, said on Tuesday that Asif Ali Zardari [...]
General John Allen could become the fourth US and Nato commander to leave Kabul early. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters Afghanistan is confident the US will stump up billions of extra dollars for its army and police on top of the main chunk of a $4.1bn (£2.6bn) annual budget that is expected to be sealed at a Nato summit [...]
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern says the US will not stop its assassination drone strikes due to its profits for arms makers, Press TV reports. link to voice recording. Very good listening http://presstv.com/detail/240022.html “These drone strikes create more terrorists. So, the war will keep going on and the question is who profits? [...]
The President’s Private War Andrew Napolitano on drone killings: ‘What monstrous nonsense all this is’ By Andrew Napolitano May 05, 2012 “Information Clearing House” – Did you know that the United States government is using drones to kill innocent people in Pakistan? Did you know that the Pakistani government has [...]
Why I Interrupted Obama’s Counterterrorism Adviser: Because the U.S. Keeps Killing Innocents Abroad “Mr. Brennan, will you speak out about the innocents killed by the U.S. in our drone strikes?,” asked Benjamin during a speech marking the anniversary of bin Laden’s death. May 2, 2012 | Photo Credit: AFP LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing [...]
Confessions of an angry young drone By Pepe Escobar PARIS – These are tumultuous times in Droneland. Some bewildered United States drones are actually mired in second thoughts about their god-given mission – as expressed in detail to author and blogger David Swanson. [1] They even founded their own awareness [...]
HURSDAY 26, APRIL 2012 Afghanistan, Pakistan and the post 9/11 war economy Dear all, The post 9/11 world has created a vibrant and highly profitable war economy. Countless corporations in the West and beyond saw a unique opportunity to support American designs in the “war on terror”. This has created [...]
White House Defends Drones Despite Civilian Deaths ‘Sometimes You Have to Take Life to Save Lives’ by Jason Ditz, April 29, 2012 Print This | Share This It’s no real secret that the Obama Administration’s ever escalating drone war has killed a massive lot [...]
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has once again expressed his concerns over the U.S. drone strikes in his country’s tribal regions. In a meeting with U.S. Special Envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Marc Grossman on Friday, Zardari said Pakistan has always maintained that U.S. drone attacks are highly “counter-productive” in the war against militants since [...]
Taliban reject safe passage agreed at trilateral moot * Spokesman says decision of trilateral forum a US tactic to make jihadis surrender By Imdad Hussain link http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012%5C04%5C29%5Cstory_29-4-2012_pg7_3 ISLAMABAD: Afghan Taliban on Saturday rejected the trilateral forum agreement in Islamabad to give a safe passage to terrorists willing to talk [...]
The Supposed Legality of Murder By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/supposed-legality-murder War is legal, but pointing out its illegality is not mistaken; it’s irrelevant and un-strategic. That’s the argument I’m hearing from a number of quarters. Chase Madar has a terrific new book on Bradley Manning in which he argues that [...]
A Game of Drones More Sharing ServicesShare|Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on email Precision-guided mythology masks a brutal truth. By Ximena Ortiz | April 27, 2012 America’s recent foreign policy has been enabled by a central idea: the United States does things differently. It wages wars differently. It suspends habeas [...]
Evidence in British Court Contradicts CIA Drone Claims By Chris Woods April 26, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — A major case in the British High Court has revealed fresh evidence of civilian deaths during a notorious CIA drone strike in Pakistan last year. Sworn witness testimonies reveal in graphic detail how the village [...]
PM Gilani, right, could be disqualified from holding public office, forcing early elections [EPA] Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Pakistani prime minister, has been convicted by the country’s Supreme Court of having committed contempt of court in a case that could see him thrown out of office. Gilani was sentenced to be detained in the court until the [...]
U.S. relents and grants Pakistani lawyer visa in time for International Drone Summit By davidswanson - Posted on 24 April 2012 From Code Pink, Reprieve, and Center for Constitutional Rights: After months of pressure from human rights activists, the U.S. government has granted Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar a visa to attend [...]
The recent decision by the Taliban and one of its allies to withdraw from peace talks with Washington underlines the train wreck the U.S. is headed for in Afghanistan. Indeed, for an administration touted as sophisticated and intelligent, virtually every decision the White House has made vis-à-vis Afghanistan has been a disaster. On Mar. 15 [...]
AfPak: Mutiny on the Bounty By Eric Walberg – CairoKabul was cast into chaos Sunday as the Taliban began their spring offensive with attacks on US, British, German and Russian embassies, NATO headquarters, Camp Eggers, a hotel, President Karzai’s palace compound and parliament. “These are coordinated attacks that went just [...]
Pakistan deports bin Laden’s family to Saudi Arabia By Tom Hussain / McClatchy Newspapers Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - Added 24 hours ago ISLAMABAD — On Wednesday, Pakistan was scheduled to deport the 14 members of Osama bin Laden’s family who had lived with him in a garrison town near Islamabad until U.S. forces killed [...]
The recent decision by the Taliban and one of its allies to withdraw from peace talks with Washington underlines the train wreck the U.S. is headed for in Afghanistan. Indeed, for an administration touted as sophisticated and intelligent, virtually every decision the White House has made, vis-a-vis Afghanistan, has been a disaster. On Mar. [...]
Dilip Hiro, How to Trump a Superpower Posted by Dilip Hiro at 9:03am, April 17, 2012. Chalk it up to the genuine strangeness of our second Afghan War. Americans, according to the latest polls, are turning against the conflict in ever greater numbers, yet it’s remarkable how little — beyond a few obvious, sensational events – they [...]
. Stop Obama’s Drone War in Pakistan by Matthew Rothschild The Pakistani government and its opposition parties have just come together in a rare show of unity to demand that the United States cease all drone attacks inside their country.As well they should The United States hasn’t declared war on Pakistan. The U.S. has no [...]
Pakistani Muslim women celebrating Eid al-Adhi in Lahore. Photograph: Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images New wave of well-off Pakistani women drawn to conservative Islam Wealthy, educated women are increasingly embracing the trend for religious inquiry and observance Jason Burke in Lahore guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 April 2012 19.06 BST Article history All the women working in the information technology division of the Bank [...]
Obama Administration Silencing Pakistani Drone-Strike Lawyer By Medea Benjamin April 09, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — When is the last time you heard from a civilian victim of the CIA’s secret drone strikes? Sure, most of them can’t speak because they’re deceased. But many leave behind bereaved and angry family [...]
(Credit: Salon) For a few years now this page has consistently warned about the murder machines that are proliferating at the moment. They fit into what Orwell described so well in 1984. First they alleviate the need for a great deal of hand to hand combat and can fill the dual purpose of murdering the enemy and [...]
Ground Zero in New York City. (Photo: Karen Blumberg / Flickr)The endless war on terror in South Asia – with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, India, France, Germany, Spain, all players - must seem like a senseless maze to the people forced to live with daily random violence in this region. In [...]
Obama Told Pakistan: US ‘Not Ready’ to Stop Drone Strikes ‘No Flexibility’ In Talks by Jason Ditz, March 29, 2012 | Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum The highly anticipated meeting between President Obama and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani, potentially the last one before Gilani is [...]
Taliban warn lawmakers over restoration of NATO supplies * Say will target every MP who supports restoration * Advise drivers of supply trucks to quit job to avoid consequences PESHAWAR: The Pakistani Taliban on Sunday threatened to attack lawmakers if they voted in support of resuming supplies for NATO troops in [...]
An investgation last year found that both Pakistan and the US bore responsibility for the incident [GALLO/GETTY] The US military does not intend to charge or discipline its officers who were involved in a deadly NATO airstrike on a Pakistani border post last November, a newspaper report from the US suggests. The New York Times reported on Sunday [...]
Western countries scramble for Afghan exits By Fozil Mashrab TASHKENT, Uzbekistan – As international forces prepare for withdrawal from Afghanistan, Western countries are already in talks with Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors to bring their troops and military equipment back home. The Pakistani route and the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) running through [...]
The Pakistani parliament house in Islamabad. Photograph: Anjum Naveed/AP Pakistani MPs say US drone strikes must end before relations improve Parliamentary committee draws up tough recommendations as basis of new partnership with US after months of tension Missile attacks by unmanned US aircraft on militants in Pakistan‘s tribal areas must come to an end before Islamabad [...]
The Pakistani parliament house in Islamabad. Photograph: Anjum Naveed/AP Pakistani MPs say US drone strikes must end before relations improve Parliamentary committee draws up tough recommendations as basis of new partnership with US after months of tension Jon Boone in Islamabad guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 March 2012 11.25 GMT Article history Missile attacks by unmanned US aircraft on [...]
ASSOCIATED PRESS This page has been saying for some time that the use of drones will be a complete scourge and murderous monstrosity perpetuated by military murderers and elite arms manufacturers. Nothing has happened to put the slightest dent in this view. Drones enable a push button war to be conducted with minimal losses to [...]
War, Pipelineistan-style Pepe Escobar United States Secretary of State Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton’s message to Pakistan was stark; try to go ahead with the IP (Iran-Pakistan) gas pipeline, and we’re going to take you out financially. Islamabad, its economy in tatters, living in power-cut land, and desperate for energy, tried [...]
A Tale of Two Tales What Real World?By Fred Reed March 16, 2012 “Information Clearing House” —As I listen to American fury against uncoöperative Afghans, to Congress furiously denouncing Pakistan for anemic aid in conducting the current wars, I sometimes wonder whether the US is playing with a full deck. The [...]
New From The American Empire Project We Meant Well How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People by Peter Van Buren From a State Department insider, the first book recounting our misguided efforts to rebuild Iraq—a shocking and rollicking true-life cross between Catch-22 and The Ugly American Read [...]
The US has troops stationed on Jolo island, but until now they have maintained an ‘advisory’ role [GALLO/GETTY] This article is the fifth in a series by Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, a former Pakistani high commissioner to the UK, exploring how a litany of volatile centre/periphery conflicts with deep historical roots were interpreted after 9/11 in [...]
How to Leave Guantánamo: By Means of a Plea Deal or In A Coffin by Andy Worthington, March 2, 2012 Guantánamo briefly emerged from the shadows on Wednesday, February 29, when Majid Khan, a Pakistani national described as one of 14 “high-value detainees” when he arrived at Guantánamo in September 2006, after three [...]
The Ghost and the Machine by Kathy Kelly with research by the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Fazillah, age 25, lives in Maidan Shar, the central city of Afghanistan’s Wardak province. She married about six years ago, and gave birth to a son, Aymal, who just turned five without a father. Fazillah [...]
In a way the following article deals with a lot of matters that concern not just the US. The central theme is expressed as an “image problem”. Unfortunately the US and other lappdog toadies like Australia share the same problem. The real question is whether it can be so simply classified as [...]
Report: Half a Million Afghans Flee Fighting but Head to Starvation and Death ‘Fleeing war, finding misery’ documents harsh effects continued fighting brings to Afghan families – Common Dreams staff Fighting in Afghanistan has left half a million Afghans displaced and on the brink of starvation or death, according to a new report [...]
USAID’s FY 2013 budget released; Pakistan to receive $ 2.4 billion Washington: (Tuesday, February 14, 2012) The President’s FY 2013 Budget for the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) strengthens U.S. national security, advances America’s economic interests, and elevates America’s global leadership through diplomacy and development. It supports [...]
How the CIA‘s fake aid projects put real humanitarian workers at risk in Pakistan By Rob Crilly World Last updated: February 16th, 2012 22 Comments Comment on this article A fake vaccination programme was used to track Bin Laden (Photo: AP) You don’t need to be a cynic of US overseas aid to know that cash is generally [...]
Andrew Bacevich, Uncle Sam, Global Gangster Posted by Andrew Bacevich at 8:13am, February 19, 2012. If all goes as planned, it will be the happiest of wartimes in the U.S.A. Only the best of news, the killing of the baddest of the evildoers, will ever filter back to our world. After all, American [...]
Current negotiations are excluding Afghans: Is it time for an Afghan national referendum? http://warisacrime.org/content/current-negotiations-are-excluding-afghans-it-time-afghan-national-referendum By the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers The people of the world are questioning the lazy and fearful presumption that a few human beings are better than the vast majority; why should the 1% unjustly hoard unequal Wealth, Power [...]
US Steps Outside the Law as the War on Terror Drones On The use of unmanned aircraft belies America’s rhetoric about its values. By Justin Randle January 24, 2012 “SMH” — The CIA recently launched its first drone attack of 2012. Three people in North Waziristan were [...]
In the wake of the cross-border strike, Pakistan shut down a US air base in Balochistan and halted NATO supplies [AFP] Pakistan’s army has rejected a US military report that claimed that NATO cross-border air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani troops in November were regrettable but justified. In a detailed report released on Monday, Pakistan’s [...]
