Typically astute thoughts by the Afghanistan Analysts Network’s Kate Clark on the clusterfuck that the West is leaving in the country: Obama did indeed struggle to define victory in his state of the union address (read the text here). The US mission, he said, would achieve its mission by defeating ”˜the core al-Qaeda’ by the…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
How war language has infected Afghanistan
Moving story by Habib Zahori, a reporter for The New York Times’s Kabul bureau. During my visit to the country last year I constantly heard how the war consumed the lives of most Afghans, though I deeply respected the individuals who tried and not let it control their lives: It is a cliché anymore to…
More on Dirty Wars and covert US wars ignored by corporate press
Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley speak to Huffington Post Live:
Mali shows that West understands little about failures of “war on terror”
History repeats. Leaders learn nothing or don’t want to. Countless media hacks repeat the talking points about fighting “terrorism” and ask few questions. The “war on terror” has been a catastrophic debacle from day one. If you ask the civilians who suffer under its wrath, which most reporters don’t, you’ll know that. Seumas Milne in…
How the crimes in Vietnam echo to this day
Kill Anything that Moves is a new book by Nick Turse that uncovers the reality of American brutality during the Vietnam war. There were countless My-Lai type massacres. Here he writes about the legacy of that war and its relevance to (virtual) media silence over the human cost of US-led wars since 9/11: Leaving aside…
The Western war to assist brutality against the Shia
With the current Western war in Mali (in simple terms, blowback from our intervention in Libya), who and what exactly is the West supporting in the Muslim world? Patrick Cockburn writes in Counterpunch that hypocrisy is name of the game: It is a ferocious war waged by assassination, massacre, imprisonment and persecution that has killed…
Radio Live in New Zealand on heroin in Afghanistan
I was interviewed this morning on Radio Live in New Zealand on the massive drug issues in Afghanistan, something I witnessed first hand last year. From poppy fields to locals and foreigners using the drug, the West has largely ignored this in the last decade despite rhetoric telling us otherwise.
ABCTV News24’s The Drum on sexism, Syria and divestment
I appeared tonight on ABCTV News24’s The Drum (video here), alongside Rowan Dean and Jacqueline Maley, talking about a range of political issues. I argued that it was legitimate for pension funds to divest from organisations or companies that go against people’s morality such as big tobacco, the thuggish Murdoch empire or fossil fuels (quoting…
What the poppy trade has done to Afghanistan
During my time in Afghanistan last year I spent time with opium addicts on the outskirts of Kabul. It was a brief insight into the massive drug problems facing the country. This new book, Poppy – Trails of Afghan Heroin, looks fascinating: