Drugs Afghanistan

Peter Dale Scott has a good article on drugs in Afghanistan, in particular about money laundering.

US doesn't care about terrorist threats

NYT editorial saying that many recommendations of the 9/11 commission have not yet been implemented, showing that the US government doesn't really care about the terrorist threat.

Israel threatens Iran with nuclear missiles

Three German-built Israeli submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles are to be deployed in the Gulf near the Iranian coastline.

The first has been sent in response to Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, a political and military organisation in Lebanon, could hit sites in Israel, including air bases and missile launchers.

The submarines of Flotilla 7 — Dolphin, Tekuma and Leviathan — have visited the Gulf before. But the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels.

North Korea nuclear

Gordon Prather on how Bush pushed North Korea towards nuclear activities.

Korea

Good radio interview with John Feffer on the South-North Korean incident.

Afghanistan civil society and Malalai Joya

Good article on the state of civil society in Afghanistan, including NGOs, political parties, etc.

Also an interview with Malalai Joya, who gives her views about a civil war if NATO leaves, and the possible presence of UN troops after a withdrawal.

NPT summit

The US signed the NPT declaration calling for a NWFZ in the Middle East but then said it regretted it. The reason is that the declaration singles out Israel.
Also, there was an agreement on some steps for nuclear disarmament, but due to opposition from NWS, that didn't go very far.

Iran swap nuclear

Good editorial saying that Obama first endorsed negotiations to conclude a swap deal as shown in a letter he sent to Brazil, but then reneged when the deal was concluded. So Obama is not serious in solving the Iran crisis.

Bush goes to war for economic growth

Nestor Kirchner, former president of Argentina, revealed in an interview with Oliver Stone for his film "South of the Border" that Bush told him that it was a good thing to go to war to revitalize the US economy:

Habeas corpus

Glen Greenwald on habeas corpus and the latest win by a Guantanamo detainee.

NPT Review conference

The conference is almost over and here are some of the sticking points.

An article here.

Iran swap nuclear deal

To what extent did Obama support the swap deal and then opposed it? Apparently Obama had sent a letter to Brazil and Turkey saying it wold welcome the deal but then flipped flopped and opposed it once it was reached. Some articles here and here and the letter is here.

Obama flip flopping

Dilip Hiro on Obama's flip flop on Afghanistan:

Karzai the Menace Becomes Karzai the Indispensable

On assuming the presidency, Obama made no secret of his dislike for his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai. To circumvent his central government’s pervasive corruption, senior American officials came up with the idea of dealing directly with Afghan provincial and district governors. In the presidential election of August 2009, their preference for Abdullah Abdullah, a serious rival to Karzai, was widely known.

When Karzai resorted to massive vote rigging to ensure his reelection and turned a deaf ear to Washington’s exhortations to clean up his administration, Obama decided to use a stick to bring Washington’s latest client regime in line. In a dramatic gesture, he undertook an air journey of 26 hours -- from Washington to Kabul -- over the last weekend in March to deliver a 26-minute lecture to Karzai on the corruption and administrative ineptitude of his government. The Afghan leader had few options but to listen in stony silence.

When, however, Karzai read a news story in which an unnamed senior American military official suggested that his younger half-brother, Ahmed Wali, the power broker in the southern province of Kandahar, deserved to be put on the Pentagon’s current list of drug barons to be killed or captured, his patience snapped.

An incensed Afghan president responded by claiming that the U.S. was deliberately intensifying and widening the war in Afghanistan in order to stay in the region and dominate it. He added that, if Washington’s pressure continued, he might join the Taliban. (He had, in fact, been a significant fundraiser for the Taliban after they captured Kabul in September 1996.)

Obama reacted as he had done in the past. When facing a serious challenge, he retreated. From being a stick wielder he morphed into a carrier of carrots during a Karzai visit to Washington early this month (that, in March, administration officials were threatening to postpone indefinitely).

The high point of the wooing of Karzai -- worthy of being included in a modern version of Alice in Wonderland -- was a dinner Vice-President Joe Biden gave for the Afghan dignitary at his residence. At the very least Karzai must have been bemused. In February, Biden had staged a dramatic walk-out halfway through a dinner at the Afghan president’s palace after Karzai denied that his government was corrupt or that, if it was, he was at fault.

Despite the Obama administration’s “red carpet treatment” and “charm offensive,” Karzai was boldly honest at a joint press conference with Obama when he described Iran as “our bother country, our friend.”

India vs maoists

Maoists have tapped into tribals' resentment at being marginalized in India, and the Indian government is waging a war against Maoists: the real reason is to clear them and tribals of lands rich in minerals so that corporations can go exploit those minerals.

US expands covert activities

The US is expanding its covert activities in the Middle East.

The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents.

The seven-page directive appears to authorize specific operations in Iran, most likely to gather intelligence about the country’s nuclear program or identify dissident groups that might be useful for a future military offensive.

China Iran sanctions

China and Russia diluted the sanctions draft on Iran:

Russia and China were in the position to make demands - and they did, as the New York

Times reported: Among the many compromises that the United States accepted to get China and Russia to back new sanctions against Iran was an agreement to limit any reference to the bank - or Iran's entire energy sector, for that matter - to the introductory paragraphs rather than the sanctions themselves, according to American officials and other diplomats, yielding a weaker resolution than the United States would have liked.

Basically the article argues that China (and Russia) agreed to sanctions but diluted them a lot, so China's commercial interests wit Iran will not really be impeded.

Uribe's brother led paramilitaries

Uribe's brother, Santiago Uribe, led paramilitaries in the 1990s according to Juan Carlos Meneses, a former police major.

Israel nuclear weapons

New documents reveal that Israel has offered nuclear weapons to South Africa.

Iran nuclear sanctions

The last-minute dealmaking needed to secure Russian support for new U.N. sanctions against Iran became clearer Friday when the Obama administration revealed it had ended sanctions against four Russian entities involved in illicit weapons trade with Iran and Syria since 1999.

U.S. officials also acknowledged that a loophole slipped into the language of the draft Security Council resolution on Iran would exempt a Russian-Iranian missile deal from a proposed ban of major arms sales to the Islamic republic.

And an article on China's contribution to Iran's military production.

Missile defense

An analysis showing the flaws in the US missile defense project.

Habeas corpus overturned in Bagram

A US judge overturned the previous ruling by Judge Bates that detainees held at Bagram and brought there from a third country had habeas corpus rights.

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post on this.

China-Pakistan nuclear deal

China will sell two nuclear reactors to Pakistan, a fallout from the Indo-US nuclear deal signed in 2008.

Drug war Russia NATO

Russia wants NATO and the US to be more aggressive in its war on drugs in Afghanistan. But some analysts say that this is just because Russia wants to have a pretext to get more involved in Central Asia under the pretext that there is a drugs problem to be solved:

But a few Russian experts say the Kremlin is hyping the drug issue as a pretext for becoming more assertive in Central Asia.

"The Russian state drug service tends to overestimate drug consumption in Russia; there is no independent confirmation," says Andrei Sol­da­tov, editor of Agentura.ru, an on­line journal about security issues. "All of a sudden we hear a lot of declarations about how the threat is dire, and growing, and something has to be done. But it looks to me like conven­ient political theater, and I find it very difficult to trust all these claims."

Iran nuclear swap

Gareth Porter on the origins of the swap idea, proposed initially by Gary Samore to provide fuel rods for the Bushehr reactor.

Iran nuclear arms race

The "crisis" over Iran is used by Western governments and dictatorships in the Middle East to justify buying weapons (sold to them by the West).

NAM not happy with sanctions on Iran

The Turks and Brazilians are of course mightily annoyed, but so are many NAM countries who see this week's sequence of events as yet one more example of P5 arrogance.

Gaza war report

A new report by HRW on Gaza war documenting Israeli destruction of civilian property:

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report last week backing Goldstone’s investigation despite Israeli claims that its forces only destroyed civilian property when armed Palestinian groups were using the facilities.

HRW’s 116-page report, “I Lost Everything: Israel’s Unlawful Destruction of Property in the Gaza Conflict,” documents 12 separate cases during Operation Cast Lead in which Israeli forces extensively destroyed civilian property, including homes, factories, farms, and greenhouses, in areas under their control without any lawful military purpose.

The report is here.

Drone strikes

Pakistanis don't like US drones strikes, which have been used against them, but also in other countries (Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan).

Iran nuclear

The NYT calls for sanctions on Iran adn is unhappy with the swap deal.
Trita Parsi has a good analysis of the deal and sanctions.
Jason Ditz has a detailed analysis of Iran's uranium stocks.

US Sudan Darfur

Funk and Fake have a great article on US policy towards Sudan, which in public is pretty much bitching on Sudan for not respecting human rights, but in fact there has been for a long time collaboration with Khartoum.
At the moment, because allying openly with Khartoum is bad PR and anyway China is already well implemented, the US is trying to forge an alliance with the south, which should become independent in January 2011 through a referendum.

Iran nuclear deal reply

The US can't stand diplomacy so it announced it now has a deal for a fourth round of sanctions.

Klare on BP oil disaster

Michael Klare's article on the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

US backs militias in Afghanistan

An article here on the US strategy of arming militias in villages against the Taliban. The problem is that some of those militias commit themselves human rights abuses. A very good video report showing how the US is backing militias that commit crimes and abuses in Kandahar, and the accompanying article:

Although the US and coalition officially condemn any form of "militias", insisting they work only with groups that are approved and licensed by the Afghan government, in reality many of the gunmen who "belong" to the powerful warlord clans of the city have been enlisted for help by Nato.

Armed militias may be found as guards at coalition gates or as guards that protect Nato supply convoys, in the guise of interpreters and other staff at coalition bases, and as special units attached to coalition special forces and intelligence teams.

According to those I interviewed, most of the power held by the militia leaders stems not from their links to the Afghan government but from the hundreds of millions of pounds of contracts awarded by the military and Western civilian agencies which these men conspire to monopolise.

Karzai peace plan with Taliban

Karzai has a plan for reconciliation with the Taliban and other insurgents. The plan's main points are as follows:
Top Taliban leaders are offered safe passage into exile and their names would be dropped from the United Nations sanction list if they sever their "links with al-Qaida." Fighters who lay down their weapons will not face prosecution and will be protected from persecution. With the help of comprehensive job programs, the former Taliban militants are to be trained to work developing the national highway system and on infrastructure projects, or as members of a civil emergency response unit to provide relief in natural disasters such as floods or landslides.
But instead of negotiating directly with the leaders, the Americans prefer, at least for the time being, to "reintegrate" only foot soldiers and local leaders. They prefer to negotiate with Taliban chiefs from a position of strength that would be achieved, at the soonest, after the summer offensive in Kandahar.

"The Afghan Taliban no longer insist to govern, but they want to negotiate directly with the Americans. The puppet Karzai must go, the Western military must withdraw, sharia must be implemented and a shura with representatives from across the country led by Mullah Omar must be convened," Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) told SPIEGEL, describing the prerequisites for a cease-fire.

Gul, 73, is a dyed-in-the-wool Islamist. During the 1990s, he was one of the men who helped build the Taliban -- and he is still close to them.

Nevertheless, a delegation of Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami, led by his son-in-law Baheer, made an initial peace offer to Karzai in March. In a 15-page program, which SPIEGEL has also obtained, the group calls for the "complete withdrawal" of Western troups within six months, starting in July 2010, as well as new elections and the release of all political prisoners.

In exchange, they are offering a cease-fire and the breaking-off of ties with al-Qaida fighters. Now the possibility is being discussed of Hekmatyar going into exile in Saudi Arabia for a few years and Baheer being appointed as a minister in Karzai's cabinet.

Global NATO

A new report led by Madeleine Albright urges NATO to expand its operations to catch terrorists among other things.

Iran nuclear deal

A good LA Times article on the swap deal. And one in the WSJ with good details on comparing the October deal with this one, and saying that the accord raised fears in the West as they're worried that their sanctions won't go through. And a summary one here.
The Washington Post is opposed to the nuclear deal and favors sanctions, the LA Times is skeptical and kind of negative. The White House doesn't like it either.

See also Kaveh Afrasiabi about the fact that Turkey's role in the deal positions it well to act as a bridge between the Middle East and the EU, and might be important for Turkey to join the EU.

Pirates

How should we try the pirates in the Gulf?

China Iran

China is being lobbied by the US via Saudi Arabia to convince China to back Iran sanctions and that SA could provide China with oil. But China is building its ties to Iran:

In fact, it appears that China is digging in to protect its vital interests in Iran. Incidentally, China reportedly opened a missile plant in Iran in March 2010, the latest in a series of expanding military ties between Beijing and Tehran. China also increased exports of gasoline to Iran in an effort to ease pressure on Tehran amid US efforts to target Iran's domestic gasoline industry through sanctions.

Also, SA does have its own interests for building ties with China, namely, finding new outlets for its oil and cultivating an alliance with China, which has some power over Iran, whose nuclear rise in the region threatens SA.

Afghanistan

The Taliban are rising, and since 2009, groups that are different from them (eg Hekmatyar) have also been active in fighting NATO in the North and East, but they are often labeled Taliban nevertheless. In the FATA in Pakistan, militants are diverging.

Iran nuclear swap

Articles on the just announced Iranian nuclear swap in Turkey. In the LA Times, Juan Cole also has a good short summary, the actual agreement, an article that says:
The main difference between the deal Iran has just agreed to and the U.N.-drafted version, AP reports, is that if Iran does not receive the fuel rods for its medical research reactor within a year, Turkey will be required to "quickly and unconditionally" return the uranium to Iran. Iran had feared that under the initial U.N. deal, if a swap fell through, its uranium stock could be seized permanently. If the West is operating in good faith, then this difference between the agreements shouldn't matter.

Furthermore, Iran dropped an earlier demand for the fuel exchange to happen in stages and is now willing to ship abroad its nuclear material in a single batch. It also dropped an insistence that the exchange happen inside Iran as well as a request to receive the fuel rods right away.

"There is no ground left for more sanctions or pressure," Turkey's Foreign Minister said.

Also, the role of rising powers Turkey and Brazil, which are emerging powers and also assert more and mode independence from Washington.

Importantly, the US tried to discourage the deal, since of course if diplomacy works, that invalidates Washington's militaristic approach. A few hours later, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned Davutoglu and sought to discourage the Turkey-Brazil initiative. A state department spokesman said she had warned him that any summit in Tehran would be just a ploy, "an attempt to stop Security Council action without actually taking steps to address international concerns about its nuclear programme". Clinton, however, may not have been on the same political page as the White House. As she was speaking in Washington, Turkish officials in Ankara were telling journalists at an off-the-record briefing that they had received quiet encouragement from President Obama to press ahead with their mediating effort. This may have been a planned divergence of official American opinion designed to pressure Iran; just as possibly, it reflects Clinton's continuing isolation from the inner-circle of American foreign policymaking on crucial world issues.

Medical marijuana

Article on the growth of medical marijuana in California.

Black jail afghanistan

Another article on the black jail in Afghanistan with good details.

Afghanistan drugs

A critique of UNODC's focus on the Taliban-drugs nexus but neglect of government involvement in drugs.

Black jail Afghanistan

Scahill has a few details on who runs the Black jail in Afghanistan.

Business resists Iran sanctions

More resistance to Iran sanctions on the part of American business, this time insurers.

EU Ashton Iran

Article on Ashton and the EU's hard line on Iran and its nuclear program.

UK troops and alcohol

The same study as yesterday on alcohol and British troops.

Boeing and Exxon oppose Iran sanctions

Because it would cut business for them with Iran.

And so is the US Chamber of Commerce, also against sanctions.

War on AIDS faltering

Donations from the United States and other wealthy countries have leveled off while the number of people infected with H.I.V., the AIDS virus, grows by a million a year. By one informed estimate, only $14 billion will be available of some $27 billion needed this year to fight the disease in the developing world. Fewer than 4 million of the 14 million people infected with the AIDS virus are getting drug treatment — far short of the goal of universal access set by the United States and others.
Now, instead of a sharp increase in donations, as once planned, the administration proposes only a slight increase in bilateral financing and a modest reduction in its multilateral contribution.

Afghan army

ICG report on the problems that plague the Afghan national army:

Vanunu sentenced to three months

Vanunu was sentenced to 3 months.

China US competition in the Middle East

Article on China's pushes in the Middle East and its relation with Arab countries and Israel.

China US competition in the Middle East

Article on China's pushes in the Middle East and its relation with Arab countries and Israel.

British troops alcohol

British troops abuse alcohol in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mexico drug war

Article on Mexico's drug war and the US.

Red Cross tells of 2nd jail at Bagram

Article here.
It's not something new though.
And abuses by US troops at the jail have been reported. So Obama's ban on torture is not true.

US in Pakistan drones

Jeremy Scahill has a good article summarizing Pakistan's war in the tribal areas and the US contributions to it. In short:
The point here is that there is every indication that the air war is going to intensify in Pakistan on two fronts. The US drone campaign appears to be escalating and the Pakistani military is building up, modernizing and elevating the lethality of its air force thanks to US training and the approval of military hardware sales.

Kristof

Kristof thinks that Pakistanis are upset with the US because they don't have many schools, as opposed to Bangladesh. He endorses drones over Pakistan though.

Hersh: US executes prisoners in Afghanistan

Article and video here: battlefield executions are done by US troops in Afghanistan.

Pentagon contracts to Iran-friendly companies

The Pentagon has signed about $900 million in contracts with foreign companies that do business with Iran.

UK hawkish on Iran, Israel

The new British FM, William Hague, is hawkish on Israel and Iran and the nuclear question.

Afghanistan rape of men

Interesting article about two young men who were raped by other men in a village in retribution for having had sex with two young women.

Canada torture Afghanistan

A new poll says a majority of Canadians believe that torture happened to transferred detainees and that high officials should be sacked.

Afghanistan drugs

Good quote from an official at the Afghan Ministry of Finance:
“We all eat corruption and drug money, albeit in different quantities,” said an official in the Finance Ministry who preferred anonymity.

Obama's drug policy

Obama released this morning his drug policy. Ethan Nadelmann has a good analysis:

Yet 64% of their budget - virtually the same as under the Bush Administration and its predecessors - focuses on largely futile interdiction efforts as well as arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating extraordinary numbers of people. Only 36% is earmarked for demand reduction - and even that proportion is inflated because the ONDCP "budget" no longer includes costs such as the $2 billion expended annually to incarcerate people who violate federal drug laws.

Achcar on arab holocaust

Article here on Arab views of the holocaust.

US funds warlords in Afghanistan

The US government is facing fresh questions on its oversight of war funding amid mounting evidence that a $2.16bn trucking contract is enriching Afghan warlords linked to the controversial half-brother of President Hamid Karzai.

As the Afghan president arrives in Washington, congressional investigators are looking into whether millions of taxpayers' dollars are being paid to militia commanders to protect convoys ferrying supplies through Kandahar province, where US troops are preparing an offensive.

Also, the US is trying to empower local leaders by shifting money to them as opposed to the Karzai central government.

Black jail at Bagram

The Red Cross stated there is a second jail at Bagram (in addition to the main jail), referred to as the black jail, which is used by the US.

GAO report on Israel nuclear

The GAO released a formerly classified report on Israel and the US on nuclear issues. It is about the investigation of the diversion of nuclear weapons materials from the US to Israel.

Opiate use in Afghanistan

What is known is that the number of drug users has increased from 920,000 in 2005 to over 1.5 million, according to Zalmai Afzali, the spokesman for the Ministry of Counter-Narcotics (MCN) in Afghanistan. A quarter of those users are thought to be women and children. Afzali stated that Afghanistan could become the world’s top drug-using nation per capita if current trends continue.
Those who are injecting drug users face the additional risk of HIV-infection through the sharing of contaminated syringes. “Drug addiction and HIV/AIDS are, together, Afghanistan’s silent tsunami,” declared Tariq Suliman, director of the Nejat’s rehabilitation center to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs. There are about 40 treatment centers for addicts dispersed throughout the country but most are small, poorly staffed and under-resourced.

US troops drug use Afghanistan

Fox News says there could have been a jump in US military use of opiates in Afghanistan (although urianalysis in Afghanistan doesn't confirm that).

Bush wiretapped El Baradei

An old 2004 article which says Bush spied on El Baradei when it was seeking to prevent him from staying on as IAEA director.
That strategy worked once before when the administration orchestrated the 2002 removal of Jose M. Bustani, who ran the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a U.N. organization based in The Hague. Bustani drew the administration's ire when he tried to involve his organization in the search for suspected chemical weapons in Iraq.
The administration canvassed the organization's board and then forced a narrow vote for his ouster. A successor was found three months later, and there was little diplomatic fallout from the administration's maneuver, mostly because the OPCW has a fairly low profile and its members wanted to avoid being drawn into the diplomatic row leading up to the Iraq war.

Iran sanctions business

The US Chamber of Commerce is reluctant to slap sanctions on Iran.

Brazil nuclear bomb

Is Brazil seeking a nuclear bomb? This Spiegel article makes interesting points, and the different treatment reserved for Brazil compared to Iran by the West is telling. (There's also another article here on the possible future nuclear powers.)

Even during his election campaign, Lula criticized the NPT, calling it unfair and obsolete. Although Brazil did not withdraw from the treaty, it demonstratively tightened working conditions for inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA). The situation became tense in April 2004, when the IAEA was denied unlimited access to a newly built enrichment facility in Resende, near Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian government also made it clear that it did not intend to sign the additional protocol to the NPT, which would have required it to open previously undeclared facilities to inspection.

Why all this secrecy? What is there to hide in the development of small reactors to power submarines, systems that several countries have had for decades? The answer is as simple as it is unsettling: Brazil is probably also developing something else in the plants it has declared as production facilities for nuclear submarines: nuclear weapons. Vice President José Alencar offered a reason when he openly advocated Brazil's acquisition of nuclear weapons in September 2009. For a country with a 15,000-kilometer border and rich offshore oil reserves, Alencar says, these weapons would not only be an important tool of "deterrence," but would also give Brazil the means to increase its importance on the international stage. When it was pointed out that Brazil had signed the NPT, Alencar reacted calmly, saying it was "a matter that was open to negotiation."

How exactly could Brazil go about building nuclear weapons? The answer, unfortunately, is that it would be relatively easy. A precondition for the legal construction of small reactors for submarine engines is that nuclear material regulated by the IAEA is approved. But because Brazil designates its production facilities for nuclear submarine construction as restricted military areas, the IAEA inspectors are no longer given access. In other words, once the legally supplied enriched uranium has passed through the gate of the plant where nuclear submarines are being built, it can be used for any purpose, including the production of nuclear weapons. And because almost all nuclear submarines are operated with highly enriched uranium, which also happens to be weapons grade uranium, Brazil can easily justify producing highly enriched nuclear fuel.

Terrorism muslim causes

Article on muslim terrorism in the US, arguing the US foreign policy produces a lot of terrorism.

Obama drug war policies

Obama says rhetorically that he's not conducting a war on drugs anymore, but in practice it's often the same. For instance he has stuck to Plan Colombia policies in Colombia.
There have been a few possible changes proposed though, such as a slight shift in funding towards prevention and treatment and away from enforcement.

Mexico drug war and human rights

Laura Carlsen on human rights violations that have increased under the drug war:
Human rights violations in Mexico have been on the rise in the last few years, with a sixfold increase in complaints against the armed forces since it launched the drug war. Civilian deaths have increased in the context of drug war militarization. The nation faces a crisis of confidence in the government’s ability — or willingness — to provide even the most basic human security.

US nuclear Hiroshima

From Asia Times online: (but I'm not sure he reaches that 500,000 Hiroshimas number)
In addition, to the active stockpile of 5,113 warheads, there are somewhere around 8,000 to 9,000 "obsoleted" nuclear weapons - weapons that will not be kept in good repair, but will be dismantled eventually and their 30 tons or so of weapons grade metal recovered; and another 38 tons of military plutonium that has never been fabricated into a weapon.

That's perhaps 10,000 megatons' worth of nuclear metal.

For comparison purposes, Little Boy - the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima - was calculated to have a destructive power of less than 18 kilotons.

In other words, the United States has enough weapons-grade metal for 25,000 warheads - or 500,000 Hiroshimas.

Secret Blackwater tape

A tape was obtained of a conference given by Erik Prince, the Blackwater founder.

A detailed article by Jeremy Scahill is here. It talks about Blackwater's involvement in Afghanistan and its construction of forward operating bases there, as well as its counter-narcotics operations: it has 200 staff working on anti-drugs operations.

Taliban drones Afghanistan GAO report

Karzai has a plan to negotiate with the Taliban, which would give them a chance to live in exile if they lay down their weapons. There are also plans made to offer economic incentives and jobs for Taliban fighters to quit the insurgency.

Also, drone attacks have been given authorization to expand under Bush and this policy has been continued by Obama. Essentially it transformed the program from targeted killings to broader attacks.

The GAO just issued a report questioning the success of Obama's strategy in Afghanistan. It says Taliban attacks and civilian deaths have increased in recent months: The report noted that Taliban-initiated attacks in Afghanistan rose 75 percent between 2008 and 2009 and that civilian casualties rose 72 percent between last September and March, compared with the comparable period a year earlier.
The actual report is here.
Some points:
-Since Obama announced his surge, about 16,000 troops have arrived in Afghanistan, compared to 200 civilians. Priority: military.
-Insurgent attacks have increased, and their attacks have always (since 2001) targeted primarily foreign troops, and much less so Afghan forces. There is a nice graph that shows this in the report:
Ex: total attacks against coalition forces between September 2009 and March 2010 increased by about 83 percent in comparison to the same period last year, while attacks against civilians rose by about 72 percent. Total attacks against the ANSF increased by about 17 percent over the same period.

Iran propaganda

Sahimi has a good article on the history of scares against Iran: it's been claimed so many times that Iran would get the bomb in a few years. But under the Shah Iran had the intention of building weapons and this did not generate much hysteria.

44% millionaires in Congress

Article says that 44% of Congress members are millionaires.

Iran statement at NPT conference

Statement of Iran in full at the NPT conference in New York.

Afghanistan survey

A new survey on Afghanistan is quite interesting. Basically, the operation in Marjah seems not to have won hearts and minds, on the contrary, it has led to increased resentment against NATO among locals. The operation is estimated to have produced about 30,000 refugees.
67% of the Afghans interviewed by ICOS believe that the military operation was “bad for the Afghan people”.
The Pentagon gave a testimony which asserted the situation was contrary, in a clear propaganda effort. The testimony is here.
The survey confirms trends already apparent: NATO night raids, etc. are killing civilians and angering the population. But also, Afghans don't like either the Taliban or NATO.
67% of the Afghans interviewed opposed a strong NATO presence in their province, and 71% say that foreign forces should leave Afghanistan entirely. This balances an earlier opinion report that had led to more rosy conclusions because it couldn't reach some parts of the country where the insurgency was active (BBC poll).
Lack of substantial progress in the fight against the Taliban is also reflected by the fact that 67% of Afghans interviewed doubted that NATO could ultimately prevail over the insurgency. 14% of respondents were unequivocal in their conviction that the international community and volunteered the Afghan government would “never” succeed.
At the same time, 67% of interviewed Afghans say that international and government forces should conduct a military operation against insurgents in Kandahar. This may come as a surprise, given the overall negative assessment of the impact of the Operation Moshtarak.
Yet the underlying positive message is the desire of the Afghans to be rid of the Taliban‟s presence and violence: what they do not want, however, is to bear the type of unmitigated impact of the fighting between the insurgents and NATO forces that they and their families are experiencing. Maybe RAWA and Joya are right then?
61% of those interviewed by ICOS stated that the operation has made them feel more negative about the presence and activities of foreign forces.

The Afghans interviewed strongly support a process of dialogue with the Taliban, with 74% approving of negotiations. Combined to the fact that people don't like the Taliban, this suggests that they're just tired of the fighting.

Al Qaeda Taliban

Report on the evolving relationship since 2001 between Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Mexico drug war

Article quoting Clive Crook:
“How much misery can a policy cause before it is acknowledged as a failure and reversed? The U.S. ‘war on drugs’ suggests there is no upper limit,” writes Financial Times columnist Clive Crook. “The country’s implacable blend of prohibition and punitive criminal justice is wrong headed in every way: immoral in principle, since it prosecutes victimless crimes, and in practice a disaster of remarkable proportions.”
Unless the war on drugs' goals are to target the marginalized etc.

Mexico drug war

Article on the war on drugs in Mexico.

NAM at NPT

NAM goals at the NPT conference.