Extraordinarily beautiful: Afghanistan – touch down in flight from Augustin Pictures on Vimeo.
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Supporting Overland and indy media
Wonderful independent Australian magazine Overland is currently running its Subscriberthon. I was asked to offer some words of support: Independent media has never been more important. Our world is currently experiencing a necessary crisis in confidence in corporate media, corporate governance and capitalism itself. Relying on corporate media to accurately report on this crisis is…
Of course Afghan government can’t live without privatised forces
Don’t believe anybody who says that private security and mercenaries won’t increasingly be in the front-line of US-led wars (if not in the headlines). The New York Times reports: President Hamid Karzai’s plan to disband private security companies that protect billions of dollars worth of aid projects and replace them with government forces is fraught…
Only fools believe we should stay in Afghanistan
After more than 10 years of Western-led war in Afghanistan, The Guardian’s Jonathan Steele says that it is a conflict that we’ll (thankfully) never win. Take note America, Britain and Australia: Two days after 9/11, I wrote a column in The Guardiansaying that if the U.S. reaction was to put boots on the ground in…
Israel, your new best friend Mitt Romney (who loves you to death)
Think Progress reports on a truly fundamentalist position from the Presidential candidate that will only further isolate the Zionist state: If Mitt Romney becomes president, there are a lot of important foreign policy decisions that he’d leave up to others. Most notably, Romney often says that whatever the generals decide, that’s the course he’ll take…
Private companies love war on terror lasting forever
Just one day, via the US Department of Defence website: Global Integrated Security (USA), Inc., Reston, Va., was awarded a $480,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the reconstruction security support services throughout Afghanistan in support of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Work will be performed in Afghanistan, with an estimated completion date…
Who wants to make heaps of money in Afghanistan?
So what does this really mean? Private security firms, both local and foreign, will make increasingly high profits: A fully fledged Afghan national security force, including army and police, will cost about $5 billion a year after international combat forces pull out in 2014, the Afghanistan defence minister told reporters on Tuesday. The price tag…
War on Terror Inc; private companies loving endless conflict (and profits have nothing to do with it, of course)
One: The U.S. military has launched miniature kamikaze drones against Taliban targets and plans to deploy more next year for U.S. special operating forces, according to documents and an Army official. The tube-launched “Switchblade” drone, made by Monrovia, California-based Aerovironment Inc. (AVAV), was secretly sent to Afghanistan for the first time last year. “Under a…
A blinkered view of the war on terrorism
My following book review appeared in last weekend’s Sydney Sun Herald newspaper: The Triple Agent Joby Warrick (Scribe, $32.95) Reviewed by Antony Loewenstein The war in Afghanistan is the longest in modern American history. This year has been the most deadly for Afghan civilians. British MP Rory Stewart wrote in The New York Times that…
The Obama rationale for intervention in Libya
A fascinating investigation by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone – this is one journalist (and friend) with a fine record of uncovering secrets – on the internal American dialogue over military intervention in Libya. A key theme, repeated over and over again by various officials, is the desire by elements within the Obama administration to…