Omar Khadr

Omar Khadr was mistreated at Guantanamo, and US and Canadian agents were involved. Now Khadr is sitll at Guantanamo, and the Canadian Supreme Court has said Canadian agents had violated his rights. However the court did not say that the Canadian government had to ask the US to return Khadr to Canada, as other countries have done.

UN report on detention

A report on detention and other countries' complicity in the global US program has been released by the UN.

Obama increase nuke funding

He says it's to work towards disarmament but it remains to be seen.

US missile defense in Gulf

The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, placing special ships off the Iranian coast and antimissile systems in at least four Arab countries, according to administration and military officials.
Military officials said that the countries that accepted the defense systems were Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. They said the Kuwaitis had agreed to take the defensive weapons to supplement older, less capable models it has had for years. Saudi Arabia and Israel have long had similar equipment of their own.
This plan was started under Bush.

Iran sanctions

The Senate has voted a bill of sanctions on Iran. Sahimi says it will hurt ordinary Iranians.

The NYT is again calling for sanctions, but is concerned that the bill voted by the Senate (and the House) will hurt ordinary Iranians.

The WP says Obama should adopt a strategy of dealing with the opposition instead of dealing with the regime.

Opium in Burma

According to a new report, opium cultivation is increasing in Myanmar in areas controlled by the government or allied groups. This is contrary to UNODC's findings, which neglect to mention this as they work with the government.

The PWO report's findings are consistent with SHAN claims that the spread of opium poppy cultivation is directly related to the spread of government-backed and -trained militias in the area. According to SHAN editor Sai Khuensai Jaiyen, a long-time observer of the narcotics trade in Myanmar, Shan State areas that have fallen from insurgent to government control have seen a marked increase in the opium production.

"The situation now is not unlike the Ka Kwe Yay time," said Sai Khuensai, referring to the historical period between 1963 and 1972 when government-recognized militia groups were allowed to trade in opium in exchange for fighting against various rebel groups then active in the Shan State.

Because many of the militia groups were more interested in the narcotics trade than fighting and eventually struck their own deals with rebels, the program was disbanded. By then, the program had spawned several now notorious druglords, including former Mong Tai Army leader Khun Sa and narcotics trafficker-turned-businessman and regime confidante Lo Hsing Han.

Guantanamo

There are 192 detainees left at Guantanamo: 50 will be held indefinitely by the Obama administration; about 100+ are eligible for release but it could take a while as the Yemen bomber story has led Obama to slow down releases; and 35 are eligible for trial (either in civilian or military courts).

This article is good on this story:

The prison camp has held about 770 prisoners since it opened eight years ago, according to statistics provided by an administration official, who agreed to detail the review only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. As of Thursday, the Pentagon was holding 192 foreign captives at Guantanamo across a range of prison camps, including seven in a special segregation site for those whom federal judges have ordered to be released.

Nearly 580 have been released over the years, according to the official. "More than 530" of those were released during the administration of President George W. Bush, the official said.

Like Bush, Obama has invoked Congress' authority to wage war and take prisoners after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as legal justification for holding the 50. A key distinction: The Obama administration has embraced federal court review — called habeas corpus — to examine the intelligence agencies' justification for holding the men, while the Bush administration fought the right of Guantanamo detainees to sue for their freedom, twice to the U.S. Supreme Court, and lost.

A related piece accusing Pelosi of knowing about waterboarding under Bush and not doing anything to block it.

US targets its own citizens to kill

Greenwald discusses the US policy of having a target hit list of US citizens to assassinate around the world.

Germany allies with dictatorships

Germany is seeking business deals with Gulf dictatorships, partly also to "contain" Iran.

Landmines

Landmines in Afghanistan have killed or injured 12,000 between 1999 and 2008, the highest number in the world. But the agency responsible for demining is under funded. Donors will therefore need to give more.

Afghanistan prison

Anand Gopal on how US troops capture people in Afghanistan and bring them to Bagram or to the Black Jail.

US in Colombia

Article about the war on drugs pretext used in Colombia by the US to control natural resources against indigenous people, notably oil.

Militarized aid in Afghanistan

Too much aid for Afghanistan is being channelled through foreign militaries who try to win over ordinary Afghans with "quick fixes" instead of tackling the root causes of poverty, aid groups said on Wednesday.

Under political pressure to produce results, countries with troops in Afghanistan were funnelling more of their money through military projects that showed little evidence of improving security and in some cases put the lives of Afghans at risk, the aid groups said.

In a report released on Wednesday, British charity Oxfam and seven other foreign aid groups called on international leaders attending a conference on the war-torn country in London on Thursday to change the way they carried out development.

The report calls on foreign countries with troops in Afghanistan to establish a plan to gradually phase out military Provincial Reconstruction Teams and focus instead on providing security and reforming the Afghan security forces.

PRTs carry out reconstruction projects and are made up of joint civil-military personnel. They have been criticised in the past for blurring the lines between military and humanitarian efforts.

Some quotes from the report that can be found here:

-While it costs approximately $1 million a year to support the deployment of one US soldier in Afghanistan, an average of just $93 in development aid has been spent per Afghan per year over the past seven years.

-The US alone has spent $227 billion on military operations in Afghanistan since 2001, while all donors together have spent less than 10% of this amount on development aid.

-Development projects implemented with military money or through military-dominated structures aim to achieve fast results but are often poorly executed, inappropriate and do not have sufficient community involvement to make them sustainable. There is little evidence this approach is generating stability and, in some cases, military involvement in development activities is, paradoxically, putting Afghan lives further at risk as these projects quickly become targeted by anti-government elements.

-The militarized aid approach focuses not on alleviating poverty but on winning the loyalty of Afghans through the provision of aid.

-Another practice that is putting civilians at risk is the use of aid as an incentive to extract
information. US commanders are authorized to offer rewards “paid in cash or in the form of
like-kind benefits such as food, local amenities, necessities, vehicles or communal rewards”
to individuals who they believe can provide valuable intelligence. Offering food and other
aid in exchange for information in a country where a third of the population is at risk of
hunger is not only unethical, it puts Afghans in potential danger of being targeted by antigovernment groups.

Chilcot

Guardian editorial on Iraq War and the fact that Blair has been told by many lawyers that the war would be illegal.

Shawcross

William Shawcross argues the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Guantanamo

Guantanamo now has only 192 detainees.
At least 38 countries have accepted more than 570 Guantanamo Bay detainees since 2002.

Dostum is back!

Dostum is back in government, which the West/US doesn't like. But reportedly, US troops were likely present during his massacre in 2001 and Bush refused to investigate the massacre for years. Dostum was on the CIA payroll at the time of the massacre.

Chemical Ali execution

Patrick Cockburn on the execution of Chemical Ali.

Obama cuts on welfare, but not on military spending

Obama will announce budget cuts this week:

The initiative holds political risks as well as potential benefits. Because Mr. Obama plans to exempt military spending while leaving many popular domestic programs vulnerable, his move is certain to further anger liberals in his party and senior Democrats in Congress, who are already upset by the possible collapse of health care legislation and the troop buildup in Afghanistan, among other things.

As always in US politics, welfare spending takes the cut, but military spending is preserved.

Iraq elections

In the 2005 elections in Iraq, Sunnis boycotted the elections, resulting in the overwhelming victory of the Iran-backed United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), a coalition of seven Shi'ite parties that included the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), al-Dawa and the Sadrists. Maliki wants to make sure that the results of 2005 are repeated in 2010 and he will resort to unorthodox means, like banning his adversaries from running for power, to achieve that result. Otherwise, his days in the premiership are clearly numbered.

Disqualified Sunni politicians are frantically looking for regional allies to back their claims, but it might be advisable for them look within Iraq for potential Shi'ite allies who share a desire to bring down Maliki. Potential allies are two hopefuls for the premiership: vice president and head of the SIIC, Adel Abdul Mehdi, and former prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mehdi has had his eyes set on the premiership since 2006, but was famously defeated by a single vote within the UIA.

Jaafari was ejected from power that same year, accused by many of being responsible for the sectarian unrest after the February 2006 bombing of a holy Shi'ite shrine in the mixed town of Samarrah. Both are heavyweights within the Shi'ite community; the powerful business elites back Mehdi while Jaafari is supported by influential clerics such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Drones

Drone strikes have increased in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In 2008, there were reportedly between 27 and 36 U.S. drone attacks as part of the CIA’s covert war in Pakistan. In 2009, there were 45 to 53 such strikes. In the first 18 days of January 2010, there had already been 11 of them.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force has instituted a much publicized decrease in piloted air strikes to cut down on civilian casualties as part of Afghan War commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy. At the same time, however, UAS attacks have increased to record levels.

Indefinite detention at Guantanamo

A Task Force has recommended to hold indefinitely without trial 47 prisoners at Guantanamo.

Blackwater in Pakistan

Blackwater in Pakistan, working in counterterrorism operations among other things.

One quarter of US grain to cars instead of 300 million people

One-quarter of all the maize and other grain crops grown in the US now ends up as biofuel in cars rather than being used to feed people, according to new analysis which suggests that the biofuel revolution launched by former President George Bush in 2007 is impacting on world food supplies.

The 2009 figures from the US Department of Agriculture shows ethanol production rising to record levels driven by farm subsidies and laws which require vehicles to use increasing amounts of biofuels.

"The grain grown to produce fuel in the US [in 2009] was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels," said Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington thinktank ithat conducted the analysis.

Berlin

Berlin and artists.

Depleted uranium in Iraq

Iraq polluted by depleted uranium among other things, due to US use of them.

Israel drones in Afghanistan

Israel has provided drones to 5 countries to operate in Afghanistan: Germany, Canada, Australia, France and Spain. It seems the drones are for intelligence gathering and reconnaissance.

Drone strikes

In 2009 the US launched 44 drone strikes that killed 700 people and so far in 2010 11 strikes killed 90 people.

Guantanamo and Bagram

Obama's Justice Department decided that 50 detainees would be held at Guantanamo indefinitely.

And one on Bagram's list of detainees.
This one on Bagram says that Obama's government is still holding much information about Bagram detainees.

Neo liberalism in Egypt

Article on the bad consequences of neoliberal policies enacted by Egypt since the 1970s when Sadat came to power.

Chemical Ali trial

Chemical Ali was sentenced to death; he was responsible for the chemical attack on Halabja that killed 5,000 Kurds and for the deaths of 100,000 other Kurds.

Haiti

This article is on the holder of Haiti's debt:
The largest multilateral holders of Haiti's debt are the Inter-American Development Bank ($447 million), the IMF ($165 million, plus $100 million in new lending), the World Bank's International Development Association ($39 million) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development ($13 million). The largest bilateral loans are held by Venezuela ($295 million--hello, Chavez!?) and Taiwan ($92 million).

Mark Weisbrot has a good article on US intervention in Haiti.

Another by Seumas Milne.

Torture and Bagram

Article about torture in Afghanistan here.

There is still a Black Site run by the US military as part of Bagram prison as reported by the NYT and the WP.

Torture

Matthew Alexander describes that the revised interrogation guidelines for the US still include a few things that can lead to forms of torture.

Civilian occupation

The US will keep thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan for years, as part of a plan to make those countries better.

Guantanamo

Article on Guantanamo one year after Obama promised to close it.

Tobacco companies twist EU legislation

Article here.

Afghanistan corruption

A new UNODC report talks about corruption in Afghanistan. Press release here and report here.

Afghan surge could worsen humanitarian situation

Humanitarian aid organizations say the surge could escalate problems on the humanitarian side of things in Afghanistan.

Haiti

Dangl on Haiti's debt and militarization of the US intervention.

FARC-Al Qaeda "connection"

Some accusations recently of a link between the FARC, Venezuela and Al Qaeda to ship drugs to Africa and then to Europe. Some people call it FARQaeda.
A summary article is here.
There have been reports that AQ is transporting drugs in West Africa to make money, and that some of that drug may come from the FARC.

Haiti

Some more articles on Haiti, by Quigley.

Karzai cabinet

The Afghan Parliament rejected quite a few of Karzai's cabinet nominees once again. But Zarar Ahmad Moqbel was appointed counter-narcotics chief even though he headed the Interior Ministry and was known for corruption. The appointment dismayed western diplomats.

Haiti

A few articles on Haiti:

Quigley on what the US should do.

Patrick Cockburn on US responsibility in Haiti's disaster.

Haiti

Article on Haiti's history from The Guardian.

Another article on the recent US actions in Haiti that prevented the government from being operational.

And another one on the recent history from Counterpunch.

And another one pasted from the same author:

Analysis: Ashley Smith

Natural and unnatural disasters
Ashley Smith describes the conditions that transformed the hurricanes that struck Haiti into mass killers.

September 23, 2008


Much of Haiti was devastated by the 2008 hurricanes (Radio Nederland)
A SUCCESSION of storms struck Haiti in August and early September, bringing devastation to the cities and countryside. First, Tropical Storm Fay swept the island, and then came Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike.

Haiti has the worst poverty in the Western Hemisphere, with over 80 percent of the country's people surviving on under $2 a day. Its peasant majority survives on subsistence agriculture, while the urban poor scrabble together income through day laboring, working in the small sweatshop sector, and hawking whatever they can find.

Haiti's desperate population made headlines across the world when it rioted from Les Cayes to Port-au-Prince in April against the runaway cost of imported food.

The hurricanes devastated the already impoverished masses. They wrecked whole cities, submerging them under 12 feet of water and mud, from Gonaives on the coast to Hinche and Mirebalais in the central plateau. They killed 1,000 people and drove over 1 million out of a population of 8 million into homelessness.

In Gonaives, the flooding displaced 80 percent of the city's 300,000 people. The flooding has swept human and animal feces into the water, and could easily lead to epidemics of cholera and kill thousands more people.

With the infrastructure of roads and ports severely damaged by the storms, the UN has struggled to get relief supplies to starving and dehydrated people. It has only been able to feed 298,000 people. In several instances, the UN convoys ran out of supplies and turned their guns on enraged people.

Now, with the country's agricultural heartlands completely destroyed and livestock drowned by torrential flooding, the food crisis will grow even more severe. In Les Cayes, on August 25, angry Haitians again threw up barricades to protest the continuing high food costs.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHILE THE media covered the catastrophe, few reporters drew connections to the political and economic conditions that caused it. The devastation wrought by the storms isn't the result of natural causes, but of imperial intervention in the politics and economics of Haiti for the last several hundred years.

The contrast with Cuba, which wrested itself free from U.S. dominion, proves the point. Cuba was hit with many of the same storms as Haiti, but because it has a state sector that has invested in strategies like mass evacuation plans and infrastructure to support them, it lost almost no one in the storms.

The U.S., on the other hand, has collaborated with Haiti's morally repugnant elite to subject the country to neoliberal economic plans that have for decades denied their state the ability to address their dilapidated infrastructure, horrible deforestation and poverty.

As a result, storms that other countries survive with relatively little damage turn into mass killers in Haiti. The storms drop their rain, the deforested soil is unable to absorb it, and giant torrents gather in mountain rivers, wash away fields, and descend onto whole cities as deadly floods. As recently as 2004, Tropical Storm Jeanne killed over 3,000 and submerged Gonaives under a several feet of water.

Haiti's deforestation began with French colonialism in the 18th century, when the French cleared huge areas of forest to build large slave plantations.

After the Haitian slave revolution won independence in 1804, the world's most powerful nations, led by France and the U.S., imposed an embargo. The new government was only recognized after it agreed to pay reparations to France for winning its freedom. This crippled Haiti with poverty conditions that have been the source of devastating social and environmental problems ever since.

With no other path to economic development possible, poor peasants divided plantations into small plots of land that they farmed for subsistence. As crop yields declined, peasants turned to chopping down forests to make charcoal to sell to other poor people for cooking fuel.

In the 20th century, the U.S. support for the infamous Duvalier dictatorship that ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1986 accelerated the deforestation. The regime robbed the country and kept the peasants poor, failing to address the growing agricultural crisis, which in turn intensified the drive of farmers to plunder the forest to make a living.

"In 1950, about 25 percent of Haiti's 10,700 square miles was covered with forest," the Miami Herald reported. "By 1987, it was down to 10 percent. By 1994, 4 percent. Now, foreign and Haitian scientists find only 1.4 percent of the Maryland-sized nation is forested." France and the U.S. thus denuded the country that was once a tropical rainforest, setting the stage for killer storms.

In the 1980s, masses of Haitians rose up to drive the Duvaliers from power, and later elected reformer Jean-Bertrand Aristide to be president on a platform of land reform, aid to peasants, reforestation and increased wages and union rights for sweatshop workers. The U.S. backed a coup that drove Aristide from power in 1991.

Eventually, Washington restored the elected president in 1994, but on the condition that he implement the U.S. neoliberal plan--which Aristide for the most part did, undermining his hoped-for reforms. Eventually, the U.S. grew impatient with Aristide's lack of total subservience and imposed an embargo that strangled the country, driving peasants even deeper into poverty.

Finally, in 2004, Washington collaborated with the nation's ruling class and backed death squads to topple the government, kidnapped and deported Aristide, orchestrated a UN occupation of the country and installed the puppet government of Gerard Latortue to continue its neoliberal plans.

Latortue's brief regime was utterly corrupt, as he and his cronies pocketed hoards of money that the U.S. and other powers poured into the country when they ended their embargo. The regime accomplished the complete destruction of the mild reforms Aristide had implemented.

So the pattern of impoverishment, deforestation and degradation of the country's infrastructure accelerated. Unsurprisingly, when Jeanne struck Gonaives in 2004, the regime failed to respond as an entire city drowned.

Finally, in the 2006 elections, the Haitian masses voted in longtime Aristide ally Réne Préval as president on a mild reformist platform. But Préval has been a weak figure, who has collaborated with U.S. neoliberal plans and failed to address the growing social crisis in the country.

Moreover, the food riots brought down his prime minister, Jacques-Edouard Alexis, in April, leaving the country without an effective government until September 5. Only then did the Haitian Senate finally select Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis as the new prime minister. But with neither the will nor the resources to mount a relief effort, the Haitian state has been nearly irrelevant in the crisis.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IN REALITY, the actual power in Haiti has been the UN occupation. Under Brazilian leadership, the UN forces have protected the rich and collaborated with, or turned a blind eye to, right-wing death squads terrorizing supporters of Aristide and his Lavalas Party. They have utterly failed to address the poverty, wrecked infrastructure and massive deforestation that lead to recent "natural disasters."

They have also completely failed to prepare for or respond to the storms. They had ample time since Hurricane Jeanne destroyed Gonaives in 2004 to build levees to protect that city. They did not. They could have invested in rebuilding the infrastructure of the country and hire unemployed Haitians in the process. They did not. They could have helped with reforestation or improving the country's agricultural self-sufficiency. They did not.

Instead, they have merely policed a social catastrophe, and in so doing have committed the normal crimes, and in some cases extreme crimes, characteristic of all police forces. As Dan Beeton writes in NACLA, "The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (Minustah), which began its mission in June 2004, has been marred by scandals of killings, rape and other violence by its troops almost since it began."

Amid this hurricane crisis, the UN has done very little to meet the crying needs of the Haitian people. They have promised $108 million of emergency aid, but report "only 2 percent of the...flash appeal has so far been donated."

The UN occupation has proven to be not a humanitarian effort but a vehicle for imperialism and neoliberalism--the very cause of the unnatural disasters we have witnessed this August and September. Various NGOs have attempted to fill the vacuum, but they can only provide band-aids to life-threatening wounds.

The U.S. government's response to this latest crisis has been barbaric. A country that squandered $3 trillion on destroying Iraq has stood by and watched Haiti's agony and done next to nothing.

The U.S. has only allocated $30 million for disaster relief. Thankfully, the U.S. government has temporarily suspended deportations of undocumented Haitian immigrants back to their country, but it refuses to grant them Temporary Protected Status, which allows immigrants from countries experiencing armed conflict or environmental disasters to stay and work in the U.S.

Despite its own abandonment of neoliberalism and newfound love of state intervention to rescue its own rulers' banks and businesses, the U.S. continues to push neoliberal plans for Haiti.

As a result, the U.S. continues to create the conditions for future unnatural disasters, a terrifying thought given that the hurricane season has only just begun. The U.S. didn't cause the storms, but it created the conditions that turned them into mass killers.

The U.S. government has the blood of countless Haitians on its hands. It owes billions of dollars in reparations to Haitians, which they could use to address this crisis and to rebuild society however they see fit. The hope for accomplishing these goals lies not in the U.S. government or in the UN.

Immediately people can give to organizations that actually provide services in Haiti like longtime Haiti solidarity activist Paul Farmer's health care organization Partners in Health (pih.org) or the Lambi Fund of Haiti (lambifund.org) which channels funds into community-based institutions for sustainable development. Give to help.

To build up the society to prevent future unnatural disasters, the Haitian masses struggles will have to unite with a regional and worldwide struggle against neoliberalism and imperialism. Only such an international struggle can win reparations and political space for Haitians to raise themselves from poverty, invest in their infrastructure and reforest their countryside. Only then can we end these abominable and unnatural disasters.

Afghan poll

An article interviewing a few Afghan specialists who are critical of the ABC/BBC poll released recently. They confirm the doubts raised by Juan Cole. One reason is that the people who organize the survey come mostly from urban areas and are connected perhaps indirectly to the government, so there's a heavy pro-government bias in the polls.

UN in Congo and Somalia

Critical article on the United Nations.

Obama Guantanamo

Article by Frida Berrigan.

Over 2,400 civilians dead in Afghanistan in 2009

70% of them are killed by the Taliban and 25% by US/NATO/pro-government.

NATO had last week given much smaller figures, not surprisingly, and saying the Taliban accounted for about 80% of the casualties:
NATO, which also tracks civilian deaths, said that international forces caused 190 civilian deaths last year and wounded 344 noncombatants. In contrast, NATO reported that insurgents were responsible for 1,011 civilian deaths and that militants wounded 2,407.

Somali pirates vs. Western pirates

Somali pirates are keeping the Western fishing companies away from depleting their fish stocks, as they were doing before.

Dilip Hiro on Iran

Dilip Hiro argues that Iran 2010 is not Iran 1979.
Also he says that if the West were to push for more sanctions, this will only hurt the Iranian opposition movement:
Were the Western powers, for instance, to succeed in ratcheting up economic sanctions against Tehran through the United Nations Security Council, the opposition would undoubtedly cease its protests and cooperate with the Ahmadinejad administration to face a common national threat under the banner of patriotism.

Turkey in the Middle East

Turkey is pushing for more influence in the Arab world. A good summary here.

US war against Karzai

Bhadrakumar has a very good article on the "US war against Karzai" in which he argues that the US had installed Karzai thinking he would be a good puppet but as he turned out to be more independent-minded, the US has been trying to remove him from power and replace him with a more pliable guy (Ashraf Ghani)
So he explains the anti-Karzai cabinet Parliament vote last week by saying that those members of parliaments like to do the US bidding if they're offered favors/political support by the US:
"Afghan politicians, including "warlords", are mesmerized by the Midas touch Washington gives to their lives overnight if only they sing the American tune. Thus, parliament turned down Karzai's cabinet nominees, except for those who were known as America's nominees.
The US-funded media in Pashtu and Dari have gone to town gleefully projecting the "shameful defeat" of Karzai. Western media went overboard. There is no shred of evidence that Afghans are so naive as to overlook the US muscle-play behind their parliament's decision."

" What is the US's grievance about Karzai? Essentially, it boils down to a single point. The New York Times in an editorial narrated the US demand: "He [Karzai] also should work hard to find a place for Ashraf Ghani, former finance minister and World Bank official who is well regarded internationally. He [Ghani] has sensible ideas about developing a national strategy for improving governance and for adopting transparent criteria for choosing credible people for government jobs. He could bring credibility and competence to a government short on both.""

"The US risks finding itself in a political quagmire. The Afghan parliamentarians that the US-driven elections in 2005 catapulted onto the center stage have completed their term. Karzai insists that fresh parliamentary elections be held as scheduled in May. The US, on the other hand, is petrified that the election may reflect the rising curve of popular mood against foreign occupation. Another debilitating phase of political skullduggery is probably commencing in Kabul. Karzai seems determined to "Afghanize" the parliamentary elections. "

CIA in Afghanistan

Article on the CIA's activities and reach in Afghanistan:
And don't imagine that we're only talking about a base or two. In the single most substantive post-blast report on the CIA, Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times wrote that the agency has "an archipelago of firebases in southern and eastern Afghanistan", most built in the last year. An archipelago? Imagine that. And it's also reported that even more of them are in the works.

With this goes another bit of information that the Wall Street Journal seems to have been the first to drop into its reports. While you've heard about President Barack Obama's surge in American troops and possibly even State Department personnel in Afghanistan, you've undoubtedly heard little or nothing about a CIA surge in the region, and yet the Journal's reporters tell us that agency personnel will increase by 20-25% in the surge months. By the time the CIA is fully bulked up with all its agents, paramilitaries and private contractors in place, Afghanistan will represent, according to Julian Barnes of the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest "stations" in agency history.

For years, American author and professor Chalmers Johnson, himself a former CIA consultant, has referred to the agency as "the president's private army". Today, that moniker seems truer than ever. While the civilian CIA has always had a paramilitary component, known as the Special Activities Division, the unit was generally relatively small and dormant. Instead, military personnel like the army's special forces or indigenous troops carried out the majority of the CIA's combat missions.

After the 9/11 attacks, however, George W Bush empowered the agency to hunt down, kidnap and assassinate suspected al-Qaeda operatives, and the CIA's traditional specialties of spycraft and intelligence analysis took a distinct back seat to Special Activities Division operations, as its agents set up a global gulag of ghost prisons, conducted interrogations by torture, and then added those missile-armed drone and assassination programs.

At about the same time, reports were emerging that Blackwater/Xe was providing security, arming drones, and "perform[ing] some of the agency's most important assignments" at secret bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It also emerged that the CIA had paid contractors from Blackwater to take part in a covert assassination program in Afghanistan.

Yemen resources

Pepe Escobar writes about the oil resources of Yemen and its strategic location in the Persian Gulf.

Banks

Dean Baker on how the government helps banks.

Yemen history

An article here.

New Afghan opinion poll

A new BBC poll of Afghan opinion has been released. The poll is an annual one that has been conducted for a few years now.
This year it seems the Afghans are more favorable to the presence of US/NATO troops and even to Obama's surge. This is surprising since the trend over the past years was toward an increase in opposition toward US/NATO troops.
Juan Cole is skeptical of the poll because he says that given the deteriorating security situation in Pashtun areas, the poll is more likely to represent the views of the non-Pashtun population, who are more supportive of US troops as they have gained from the removal of the Taliban and are not targeted by NATO airstrikes etc.

Iran nuclear

Article on the fact that the West prevents Iran from offering better medical services (isotopes) to its sick.

Iran nuclear

Gareth Porter argues that the Iranian strategy of tunnels is to signal to the West that a military airstrike would not be effective.

British adjusted Iraq propaganda to US claims

Another news showing how Europeans are often the US' lieutenants:

Fresh evidence has emerged that Tony Blair's discredited Iraqi arms dossier was "sexed up" on the instructions of Alastair Campbell, his communications chief, to fit with claims from the US administration that were known to be false.

The pre-invasion dossier's worst-case estimate of how long it would take Iraq to acquire a nuclear weapon was shortened in response to a George Bush speech.

As Campbell prepares to appear before the Iraq inquiry on Tuesday, new evidence reveals the extent to which – on his instructions – those drafting the notorious dossier colluded with the US administration to make exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

Karzai's cabinet

Hamid Karzai has offered the main responsibility for fighting Afghanistan's narcotics industry to a sacked former interior minister who was widely accused of corruption and incompetence during his time in government.

In a move which is likely to infuriate the British, who lobbied hard for his dismissal from his former job running the country's police, Zarar Ahmed Moqbel has been named as one of 16 candidates for posts in Karzai's next cabinet.

International pressure to sack Moqbel grew at the end of 2008 when it was belatedly realised that rampant corruption in the police was helping to drive Afghans into the hands of the Taliban.

During his tenure the ministry became infamous for selling senior police positions. Provincial police chiefs would then make a return on their investments by extorting bribes from civilians and protecting narcotics and kidnap gangs.

Despite pressure from the US and the UK it took months for Karzai to dismiss Moqbel, who is supported by a powerful network in Parwan province. He was eventually forced out in favour of technocrat Hanif Atmar.

Olivier Roy on terrorists

He makes the point that "The threat comes not from some soil that can be invaded or occupied, but from within the globalized Web in which we are all today entangled." In short individuals across the world who don't have all their roots in Muslim countries just decide to go on a mission, often while in a Western country.

Karzai's cabinet

An article says that Karzai presented a new nominee to Parliament who is an affiliate of Hekmatyar.
Another article says that Ismail Khan and 3 Dostum supporters have been removed.

0.5 million $ per Canadian soldier in Afghanistan

Article here.

The costs don't include salaries, and the total costs to maintain the slightly fewer than 3,000 soldiers there was $1.5 billion in 2009.

UK paid $2 million to Afghan warlord to get OBL

Article here.
This happened in 2001; the the UK-backed warlord, Haji Zaman Gamsurek, went on to agree a ceasefire with al-Qaeda instead!

Cockburn on Yemen

Patrick Cockburn says that the US and UK, by allying with Yemen's government, will strengthen AQ because the government is unpopular and the population will associate the US and UK to it and AQ will capitalize on this to get more support, even though they are not strong per se.

Palestinian non violent action

Good article saying there have been nonviolent movements in Palestine for decades, but many of those people are shot dead by Israelis, and we never hear about them.

Yemen

Stephen Zunes on Yemen:
He says Yemen's militants are a consequence partly of past US intervention as many are back form Iraq:

Currently, hardcore al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen — many of whom are foreigners — probably number no more than 200. But they are joined by roughly 2,000 battle-hardened Yemeni militants who have served time in Iraq fighting U.S. occupation forces. The swelling of al-Qaeda's ranks by veterans of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Iraqi insurgency has led to the rise of a substantially larger and more extreme generation of fighters, who have ended the uneasy truce between Islamic militants and the Yemeni government.

Opponents of the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq correctly predicted that the inevitable insurgency would create a new generation of radical jihadists, comparable to the one that emerged following the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the Bush administration and its congressional supporters — including then-senators Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton — believed that a U.S. takeover of Iraq was more important than avoiding the risk of creating of a hotbed of anti-American terrorism. Ironically, President Obama is relying on Biden and Clinton — as well as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, another supporter of the U.S. invasion and occupation — to help us get out of this mess they helped create.

Also:
Thousands of Yemenis participated in the U.S.-supported anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan during the 1980s, becoming radicalized by the experience and developing links with Osama bin Laden, a Saudi whose father comes from a Yemeni family.

China in Afghanistan

China has limited itself to economic involvement in Afghanistan, but nothing military or armed.

Yemen

Excellent article on Yemen by Asia Times online's Bhadrakumar.

Summary: You cannot fight China without occupying Yemen.

And Israel will infiltrate Yemen too, if it hasn't already done so.

Jordanian bomber

The Jordanian bomber in Afghanistan was very upset with the Gaza attack in 2009 and being a doctor he wanted to go to Gaza to help; he had a clinic in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan.

Juan Cole on January 10 has an excellent post showing how the Jordanian bomber is the result of US overseas intervention: he was upset with Gaza attack, joined the TTP (who in some part are the result of radicalization in Pakistan from the 1980s when Reagan encouraged that), and he reacted against US drone strikes, in addition to being upset by the Iraq War.
Juan Cole sums it up:
What is fascinating is the way al-Balawi's grievances tie together the Iraq War, the ongoing Gaza atrocity, and the Western military presence in the Pushtun regions-- the geography of the Bush 'war on terror' was inscribed on his tortured mind.

Afghan Parliament

The Afghan parliament rejected 17 of Karzai's proposed cabinet members; 13 of those were the proteges of ethnic bloc leaders like Dostum that Karzai had to give them in exchange for votes in the election; the 4 others were regular members.

Nigerian bomber

The Nigerian bomber joined Al Qaeda in London!

So why not bomb and attack the UK?

Bagram and Guantanamo

Article on a US court refusal to extend to Bagram the right of detainees to challenge their detention (habeas corpus right).

Indeed, in 2008 the US Supreme Court granted detainees at Guantanamo the right of habeas corpus, and now progressives are trying to extend it to Bagram. Judge Bates had then used that decision to suggest in April 2008 that detainees at Bagram would also have the right of habeas corpus. More precisely, he referred only to detainees at Bagram who were not Afghans and who had not been captured in Afghanistan--in other words, he referred only to a minority of detainees at Bagram, but nevertheless, his judgment was significant.

But then the Obama administration went against that: indeed, the Justice Department argues that Bates's ruling is flawed because Bagram is in "a highly active war zone," and dealing with federal court proceedings would hamper the war effort and complicate diplomatic relations with the Afghan government, federal attorneys wrote in court papers. Such concerns do not exist in Cuba, they say.
They are also wondering if then habeas corpus rights would need to be extended to detainees at all US military bases overseas.

Another article here:

In April 2009, Judge John D. Bates ruled that Maqaleh and two other petitioners in the case, Amin al-Bakri and Redha al-Najar, have a constitutional right to petition U.S. courts for a writ of habeas corpus.

Judge Bates’ decision was based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which established that detainees held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo had a constitutional right to file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts.

But before any of the Bagram detainees could have his day in court, the Barack Obama administration appealed Judge Bates’ decision, arguing that none of the 600 detainees at Bagram have any rights under U.S. law.

As the organization representing the Bagram detainees, the IJNetwork has called on the Obama administration to end the practices of rendition, torture, and indefinite detention and provide fundamental human rights to all individuals held in U.S. custody – including at Bagram.

Though President Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo, the Department of Justice continues to defend the George W. Bush administration’s position that individuals held at other U.S.-run military facilities have no legal rights.

"The fundamental question at issue in these cases is whether the United States government can seize individuals from peaceful countries anywhere in the world and imprison them without charge indefinitely, based solely on the location of the prison facility where the government decides to detain them," Foster said.

She added, "The position of the Obama administration is that it can do so, as long as it uses Bagram, instead of Guantanamo, as its legal black hole. This is an extreme position – and one that allows the president to do exactly what the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional in the Guantanamo cases."

Torture

David Cole on the torture of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was dispatched to Syria by US authorities for one year where he was tortured even though he was innocent. US courts have recently rejected his attempts to sue the US government.
He also makes the important point that US courts have accepted trials and suits by foreigners against foreigners for crimes committed abroad, but this is not acceptable for US officials:
The usual reluctance to have a US court pass judgment on overseas conduct not involving any American citizens was overcome by the fact that the prohibition on torture is universal. Since that decision, US courts have adjudicated human rights claims involving brutality in Burma, South Africa, Yugoslavia, Nigeria, Mexico, the Philippines, Argentina, and many other nations. The Supreme Court upheld the practice in 2004. Yet according to the Second Circuit, the same sorts of claims are too sensitive to permit adjudication when brought against US officials.

The notion that domestic courts can hold another country's torturers accountable is not an American anomaly, as the Italian case illustrates. International law recognizes a principle of "universal jurisdiction," which holds that torturers can be held to account anywhere. Applying that principle, a Spanish judge in 1998 issued an arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity, including torture. Great Britain's highest court, the Law Lords, ruled that the warrant could be enforced to extradite Pinochet from England to stand trial. (In the end, Pinochet was returned to Chile on medical grounds, but was then indicted there.) The same Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, is currently investigating whether criminal charges should be leveled against the Bush administration lawyers responsible for authorizing torture at Guantánamo—John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Jay Bybee, William Haynes, and Douglas Feith. The torture they authorized was inflicted on several Spanish citizens at Guantánamo, causing terrorist charges against them in Spain, also prosecuted by Garzón, to be dismissed.

The principle of universal jurisdiction recognizes that if a country is responsibly pursuing accountability for its own wrongs, a foreign court should defer to the domestic process. In his speech at the National Archives on May 21, 2009, President Obama insisted that the Justice Department and the courts "can work through and punish any violations of our laws or miscarriages of justice." Cases like Arar's belie his confidence, as does the Justice Department's failure even to investigate the lawyers who authorized the CIA and the military to engage in torture and disappearances as a means of getting suspects to talk. If we fail to carry out this responsibility, other nations, using principles that the US did much to develop, may take up the charge.

Blackwater

Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater in Afghanistan.

Afghan environmental degradation

Afghan environmental degradation aused by the war.

Al Qaeda and southerners in Yemen

Separatists in southern Yemen and Al Qaeda could end up uniting against the Yemeni government if the US pushes for more armed actions against Al Qaeda in Yemen and the Yemen government uses this opportunity to attack separatists. Separatists and Al Qaeda could unite to face a common enemy:

Any melding of the Southern Movement and al-Qaeda is far from established, he said. But that could change if the U.S.-backed war deepens without Washington pressuring Saleh to stop repression in the south. Angry southerners, meanwhile, have accused the government and the United States of killing a few dozen civilians in an airstrike last month. Yemeni officials say they killed militants and their relatives.

"It will change the sympathies if they have a common enemy in the United States," Wilcke said. "Al-Qaeda will become more of an ally. This is exactly what we don't want to get into."

CIA base bombing and drones

Al Qaeda said the CIA base bombing in Afghanistan was retaliation for drone attacks over Pakistan.
Although the Afghan Taliban, and then the Pakistani Taliban have also said they were responsible. The Pakistani Taliban said the bombing was in retaliation for drone strikes.

Iran nuclear tunnels

William Broad and the NYT continue their propaganda campaign: now the story is that Iran has a network of tunnels where nuclear activities can take place!

Juan Cole has an excellent post on January 7th on the nuclear question in Iran.

Asian energy grid

Excellent article in Asia Times online on the latest pipeline and energy deals and their implications for geoeconomics and geopolitics.

Hmong in Thailand and Laos

An article about the repatriation of Hmong from Thailand to Laos. The Hmong were CIA allies during the Vietnam war, so one would think the US would defend them, but the US has adopted a low key stance because it doesn't want to upset Laos, over which it wants to gain influence to counterbalance China's influence in South east Asia.

US intelligence

An article on intelligence reform saying that reforms by Bush were cumbersome etc.

Blackwater trial

Some wonder if the US prosecutors that sued Blackwater and failed did not fail on purpose as they had been warned repeatedly by the US government that the way they were building their case was not legal.

Here is an Democracy Now interview with a lawyer:

Scott Horton: And specifically what they did is they took statements that were taken by the Department of State against a grant of immunity; that is, the government investigators told the guards, “Give us your statement, be candid, be complete, and we promise you we won’t use your statement for any criminal charges against you.” But the Justice Department prosecutors took those statements and in fact used them. They used them before the grand jury. They used them to build their entire case. And they did this notwithstanding warnings from senior lawyers in the Justice Department that this was improper and could lead to dismissal of the case. It almost looks like the Justice Department prosecutors here wanted to sabotage their own case. It was so outrageous.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that’s possible?

SCOTT HORTON: I think it is possible. Specifically in this case, there were briefings that occurred on Capitol Hill early on in which senior officials of the Justice Department told congressional investigators, staffers and congressmen that essentially they didn’t want to bring the case. In fact, one of the congressmen who was present at these briefings told me they were behaving like defense lawyers putting together a case to defend the Blackwater employees, not to prosecute them. And I think we see the evidence of that copiously in Judge Urbina’s opinion.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Jawad, talking about what happened to his wife and his son, as they were gunned down in Nisoor Square by the Blackwater operatives. Now the case against them has been dismissed. Scott Horton, can another case be brought against them?

SCOTT HORTON: Absolutely. In fact, this decision puts the US in breach of its treaty obligations to prosecute this case, which was an absolute international law obligation. Now, this case was being prosecuted in US court because of an order that was issued by the US occupation authorities that granted these people immunity from Iraqi criminal prosecution and accountability.

And I think the rule of international law is quite well settled. If the US cannot, for technical reasons—that’s this ruling here, it is purely technical, has nothing to do with the merits of the case—if the US cannot, for technical reasons, prosecute the case, the US is really obligated to waive the immunity under that order and surrender these individuals to the Iraqi authorities for prosecution, probably with an agreement as to what charges will be brought and an agreement that any prison term they were sentenced to could be served in the United States.

In addition to that, there’s also the possibility, that was alluded to in the setup here, for a civil action, and civil claims on behalf of the families of the victims are already pending in US courts. And the Iraqi government has now announced it’s going to directly support those claims.

SCOTT HORTON: Well, that’s right. In fact, I would note that one of the statements the Iraqi government made in response to this was that even though Blackwater was no longer formally a contractor in Iraq, they found that many of the Blackwater employees had simply recontracted with the new contractors there, so they were still in place. And the Iraqi government said that’s completely unacceptable.

Well, the problem is that the US has not changed its pattern of heavy reliance on private security contractors. If anything, we’re actually seeing that reliance increase in connection with the operations in Afghanistan. And in fact, there are only a handful of qualified and authorized service providers. So Blackwater, almost by definition, is going to continue to hold a large part of these contracts as they’re awarded, not with—this is notwithstanding promises that were made by Hillary Clinton, when she was running for president, to terminate the Blackwater contracts. I mean, now she is Secretary of State, and Blackwater is still the principal security contractor to the State Department.

Yemen and Russia

Even though the US wants to get more influence over Yemen, Yemen gets most of its weapons from Russia, and also China, not from the US.

FARC and Al Qaeda on cocaine

An article says that FARC and AlQaeda are collaborating to ship cocaine to Europe.

Iran nuclear forgeries

Porter continues his investigation of leaked supposedly incriminating documents about nuclear Iran.

Genocide in Gaza?

Article asking the question here.

Pakistan and Haqqani

An article on Pakistan's dilemma in abiding by US wishes of going after the Haqqani network, which Pakistan could keep as an ally for the present and future.

Turkey's Kurds

Article on the opening on Turkey's part towards its minorities like the Kurds.

NATO kills children in Afghanistan

More on Afghan children killed by NATO forces.

Afghan refugees and IDPs

There are still about 2.5 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan or Iran, in addition to about 400,000 internally displaced people, for a total of about 3 million.

Avnery on Gaza blockade

Uri Avnery discusses the blockade on Gaza and why Egypt is collaborating. His main point is that because Egypt's government/Mubarak is weak today in the Arab world, it needs to abide by the wishes of the US and Israel. In other words, because the Mubarak regime is weak, it needs to hold on to on last remaining source of power: US and Israeli patronage.

Student protests in Afghanistan against US/NATO

Article here.

Japan US bases

An article on Japan-US relations and the military bases issues.

Walden Bello on Gaz Freedom March

Arguing that we must leave behind the "all or nothing" approach that passes for progressive politics and sometimes be more pragmatic.

Fisk on Israel/Palestine comparison wiht Northern Ireland

Excerpt:
English rulers in the 17th century suspected – quite rightly – that Spain was lending spiritual and material support to Irish insurgents, just as Israel today believes, correctly, that Iran is giving spiritual and material support to Hamas and, outside "Palestine", to Hizballah. For the Pope of Rome, read Pope Khamenei of Tehran. On many occasions, acts of "terrorism" against the Protestants emerged from landless Catholic tenants who were allowed to work for those who had seized their property. So, later Protestant "settlements" were surrounded by vast defensive walls, angled with watch-towers and ramparts and gun positions. The city of Derry has walls above the Catholic Bogside every bit as ferocious as the Israeli wall that now cuts into yet more Arab land.

US/Obama kill 700 civilians with drones in 2009

700 civilians were killed by drones in Pakistan in 2009 alone according to the Pakistani authorities.

Yemen

An article by the FBI agent who was in charge of the case of the USS Cole bombing in earlier years.

Iran nuclear

A propaganda article from the NYT on Iran nevertheless makes the important point that the US has been conducting covert operations against Iran's nuclear program:

Another possible problem for Iran is the Western sabotage efforts. In January, The New York Times reported that President Bush had ordered a broad covert program against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including efforts to undermine electrical and computer systems that keep the nuclear program running. The Obama administration has been silent about the progress of that program, one of the most heavily classified of the United States government.

NAFTA

NAFTA references here.

Gitmo detainees in Yemen

Former Guantanamo detainees are involved in the Al Qaeda group in Yemen.