Nato following directive of the US
'Twenty members of my family are killed'
'10 are injured'
'The airplanes came and were bombing until 3 AM'
'In the morning, they started hitting our village with mortars and rockets'
'They didn't allow anybody to come to our help'
Much of it  [drug shipments]  goes to Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia.
From there the Kosovo Albanian mafia moves heroin back to Germany and other EU countries.
US 'special services' make huge amounts of money out of drug trafficking.   They can spend this money at their own discretion, without the knowledge of the Congress and even the U.S. president.
With this money secret services can solve certain political problems.
For example, they can enter into mutually profitable agreements with Afghan warlords, who give protection to drug business in their fiefdoms.

Alexander Nagorny served in a special unit of the Russian GRU
Pravda 2004 interview
Harsh Winter Has Afghans
Struggling for Survival
Fived years after invasion, many in Kabul lack central heat, water, power.
Kabul — It was well below freezing in Raza Khan's tiny concrete apartment late one recent night.   Half a dozen children huddled under blankets on the floor, coughing in their sleep.   The fire in the rusty stove had faded to ashes, and there was no more wood to stoke it.   Sometime before dawn, Khan's 3-month-old granddaughter, breathing raggedly from pneumonia, grew still and died.
"There are 18 of us, and we only have three blankets.   It is not enough," said Khan, a gray-bearded man of 75 who earns about $2 a day pulling handcart loads in city streets.   The baby had been treated at a city hospital and sent home, but she was not strong enough to recover.   "It was just too cold," the old man said.
Winter across Afghanistan is a season of majestic beauty, with distant snowcapped mountains rising in all directions, icicles forming on orchard branches and midday sunlight sparkling on iced-over irrigation streams that meander across a thousand fields.
But in the capital, it is a season of unrelenting harshness for tens of thousands of poor families, focused on the struggle to survive.
People spend their days scrounging to buy a few chunks of coal or firewood, and their nights huddled under common blankets around braziers called sandali, praying for dawn to come.
More than five years after the U.S.-led overthrow of Islamic Taliban rule and the advent of an internationally backed civilian government, the country is still so destitute and undeveloped that most inhabitants have no central heating, electricity or running water.
Even in Kabul, some desperate families remain beyond the reach of foreign aid agencies that provide cold-weather assistance such as free coal and blankets in impoverished rural provinces.
Winter is the time that most starkly sets apart Kabul's nouveau riche from its permanent poor.
The cozy, generator-heated homes and winking shop lights of central neighborhoods such as Wazir Akbar Khan and Shar-i-Nau, home to Afghan officials and international agency employees, seem far removed from the pitch-dark alleys and frigid rented rooms of suburban slums such as Chelsitoon and Char Qala.
Worst off are thousands of former refugees such as Khan and his family, unskilled people who returned to Kabul after years of wartime exile in Pakistan.
Unable to find stable jobs or shelter, they survive on the margins of a chaotic, crowded capital that has quadrupled in population since the U.S.-led invasion.   Some live in tents on vacant lots or squeeze into alleys, squatting on narrow bits of frozen land.
"All my children are sick.   When I cook dinner, the room becomes a little warm and I put them under a blanket.   But it gets cold soon, and they wake up and start crying," said Roya, 25, a laundress with four children who lives in a single cavelike room with patched tent cloth forming a flimsy fence around her tiny front yard outside.
Two winters ago, the Afghan Ministry of Migration offered to move several hundred refugee families from their tents into empty, rent-free apartment buildings on the southern outskirts of Kabul.
Roya said she refused to move, because the location was too far from affluent homes where she can walk to wash and iron clothes.
The customers also give her food, and earlier this month her tiny room was hung with strings of drying beef, special donations distributed to the poor during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Khan and many of his neighbors took up the government's offer and moved to Teknikom, a five-story concrete college dormitory built by the Soviet Union in the 1980s and later abandoned.   Today it is home to about 3,000 people, but in many ways it is still a ghost building.
The corridors are windy and dark, with blankets hung across open doorways and plastic taped over gaping windows.   Small children, many of them barefoot, play in the halls.   The original heating and plumbing systems have not worked in years, so older boys collect sacks of scrap paper and donkey dung to use as fuel.
"This is worse than the tents," said Yar Mahmad, 25, an unemployed driver whose ailing 10-month-old son also died of cold this month.
Neighbors had each lent him $2 for medicine for the boy and then helped bury him, lighting a fire to warm their hands while they dug in the frozen ground.   "Now I owe $400, and I lost my son, too," Mahmad said glumly.  
No one knows exactly how cold it gets here, because there is no national weather service.
Afghan television stations report the local weather based on forecasts by faraway foreign meteorologists, conveyed via the Internet.
But aid workers said the temperature had recently dipped to 5 degrees Fahrenheit at night.
Even for residents with slightly better incomes than Mahmad's, a Kabul winter such as this one, which struck earlier than usual, brings hardships unimaginable in the West.
The city's overloaded, war-damaged power system is still near collapse despite extensive repairs since 2001.
Homes typically receive electricity only a few hours every other night, assuming that they're wired at all.
Water must be heated in buckets, and bathing can be an excruciating ordeal.
Because much of the capital's commercial life takes place outdoors, in sidewalk stalls and workshops, winter weather shuts down much of the economy.
Only a few kinds of business thrive in the cold weather: the used-clothing sellers who hang sweaters and jackets from roadside fences, and the coal and wood sellers who chop and stack their wares on frozen lots.
Rabbani, an elderly man who sells firewood in the Old City district, waits for customers by the stove in his toasty plywood hut, keeping an eye on a mountain of chopped logs.
Often poor families send their sons to buy a few kilograms of wood at a time, and Rabbani sometimes adds a couple of sticks to the meager pile on his ancient scale.
"I think I am the only happy man in Kabul, because when it gets cold, everyone comes to me," he said.   "It is so hard for people.   They ask for three kilos, and I know it will only burn for an hour.   If they earn $2 a day, they have to choose between buying bread and wood."
Cold-related deaths usually come one or two at a time, but occasionally poverty and bad weather conspire to produce large numbers in one place.
Last month, 80 women and children perished in central Logar province when they were trapped in several remote hillside villages after a heavy snowfall.
Afghan and international aid officials said they began planning last summer to help people in the most vulnerable regions get through the coldest months.
The U.N. World Food Program, working with the Ministry of Rural Development, trucked 21,000 tons of donated oil, wheat, lentils and salt to warehouses in more than a dozen provinces.
Nevertheless, they said, the deliveries were delayed by bad security and red tape at the Pakistani border.
On top of that, winter arrived early, making it hard for trucks to reach some remote spots.   In some cases, officials resorted to airdropping supplies by helicopter.
"This year has been very challenging, with millions of people at risk, but we have avoided a crisis," said Ebadullah Ebadi, a spokesman for the World Food Program here.   "In some provinces with heavy snows, the roads are cut off for three to four months.   Because of the drought, places that used to be breadbaskets are now asking us for food."
One wealthy private philanthropist, Ehsan Bayat, has also been delivering emergency food and supplies to families in many parts of the country.   He sends fleets of private trucks to needy regions and then personally flies there in Afghan army helicopters to inspect and distribute the supplies.
Bayat, an Afghan American entrepreneur who owns one of two major cellphone companies and a private TV station in Kabul, has also been taking winter supplies to needy families in the capital.   Residents at the Teknikom building said that he had brought them a load of blankets and coal but that what they really needed were permanent homes.
"There is nothing here for us: no jobs, no land.   In the summer we can work as laborers, but in the winter all we do is wait in the cold," said Nader Mohammed, 38, the unofficial leader of the Teknikom families.   "We thought we would be welcomed home when we left Pakistan.   Now we just sit here by the stove, asking ourselves why we came back."
 
Wednesday, 29 March 2006
Afghanistan's hair-rising highway

Taxi driver Abdul Bari
Our government has robbers and thieves to guard us
Abdul Bari
The road connecting the capital, Kabul, with the southern city of Kandahar is one of Afghanistan's key highways. The BBC's Bilal Sarwary took a taxi ride down the 250-mile (400km) highway, rebuilt by the Americans, and found the journey perilous in more ways than one.
I had to travel back to Kabul from Kandahar so I went to the main taxi stand in Kandahar to find a ride.
Taxi driver Abdul Bari was playing loud Pashto music and joking with his friends as I approached the group and politely asked them if there was somebody who could take me to Kabul.
He was quick to get up.
"I will take you and I will get you there before any one else. But I want 3,500 Afghanis ($70)," he said.
It seemed a fair bargain so I agreed.
Like all taxi drivers around the world, Afghan cabbies are also very keen to engage you in conversation — whether you like it or not.
Colourful past
As it turned out my driver had a particularly colourful past.
As a young man, he had fought the Soviets. Many of his family members were jailed, some even killed.
But he became disillusioned with the anti-communist mujahideen when they began abusing their power following the defeat of the Soviet troops.
He fled to Pakistan and began supporting the Taleban "because they were the good guys".
Soon after, he returned to Kandahar and bought himself a taxi.
Map of Kabul and Kandahar, Afghanistan
"I've been driving on this road for the past 10 years," says Abdul Bari.
As we started driving towards Kabul the complaints began. Apparently driving down this highway was particularly hazardous.
"You know the police take money from me, the Taleban come out and start breaking my music cassettes," he said.
I inquired why the police asked him for money.
"Just wait and see for yourself," he said.
As we tried to get out of Kandahar we were stopped at the first police checkpoint in Daman district.
A uniformed policeman approached us and asked Abdul for 100 Afghanis ($2), claiming he had not been paid his salary.
But once paid the policeman was very polite and thanked the driver.
I had never driven at such a high speed in my life... Afghanistan's roads were never good enough


"Our government has robbers and thieves to guard us," Abdul told me angrily.
As we drove past Zabul the topic changed to the Taleban.
According to Abdul Bari, they come out at different times "mostly early morning and late afternoon".
The driver was quick to emphasise they did not ask for money or take belongings.
Robbers pose as police
"They will break the cassettes... Start beating the passengers. We intervene and beg the Taleban not to harm them," he said.
Sometimes robbers wearing police uniforms come out on to the road, he says.
"The first thing they ask for are mobile phones. They don't take mine but they once told me if I ever had a foreigner I should call them," he said.
By now we were hurtling down the highway at 140kph.
I had never driven at such a high speed in my life. I always wanted to, but Afghanistan's roads were never good enough.
The Kandahar to Kabul road
The Kandahar to Kabul highway is not a place for the faint-hearted
I asked Abdul why he had not put on his seat belt.
His answer was quite shocking.
"I will die whenever God decides — nothing will keep me alive if my number is up.
"Only the stupid foreigners put their seat belts on all the time, they are so scared," he added, sniggering.
I just could not convince him to put his seat belt on.
No traffic police
We hardly saw any traffic police on the way.
The only place you would see them was at the site of an accident. There are a few every day.
The drivers try to drive really fast and race each other.
Most accident victims die because they cannot make it to the hospitals in time and there are none on the road.
As we talked about problems and security fears. I suddenly noticed a group of four cars had been stopped along with our taxi by police from a nearby checkpoint.
Apparently an attack had been launched on the police post from the mountains which surrounded the road.
The police returned fire using a heavy machine gun.
A goatherd Goats and sheep far outnumber people along the road
Goats and sheep far outnumber people along the road
In a few minutes they told everyone they could leave.
I was shocked but it appeared very normal to everyone else.
As we passed Zabul we reached Shah Joy, an area where the Taleban is strong and their members can often be seen driving on motorcycles.
We stopped for lunch at a local restaurant.
As I went inside, I saw a group of men on motorcycles driving around the car holding walkie-talkies.
Security still a problem
"Taleban," Abdul said quietly. "They come and check the cars and passengers and then they radio their friends. They are looking for foreigners and anyone working for the Afghan government."
During the five-hour drive to Kabul I did not see a single house or village along the road.
I could see goats and sheep, but hardly any people.
Burned and destroyed buildings could be seen — it was clear security in the south was still a big problem.
As we said goodbye in Kabul Abdul Bari told me he dreamed of driving along this road without being asked for bribes.
"I voted for [President Hamid] Karzai to make things right. I will not vote for him again unless he notices the problems of the poor like me," he warned.
Angry Afghans confront US forces
The demonstrators, chanting "Die America", were angry at the arrest of a number of villagers on Monday night.  Some threw stones at military vehicles.
Piles of tyres were burned on the main road near the base, sending clouds of black smoke billowing over the area.
"They are arresting our people without the permission of the government.  They are breaking into our houses and offending the people.  We are very angry."
BBC 26 July, 2005
BBC Monday, 29 May 2006
US crash sparks Afghanistan riot
Afghans throw stones at US vehicle
Afghans throw stones at US vehicle.
The crowd turned on the US convoy after the crash
At least four people have been killed in Kabul after a accident involving a US military convoy triggered a riot.
Police said the convoy collided with a rush-hour traffic jam.
The incident sparked angry scenes in which crowds shouting anti-US slogans began throwing stones and burning cars, police said.
The violence soon degenerated into an exchange of gunfire, although there are conflicting reports about who was doing the shooting — US troops or Afghans.
Checkpoint blaze
"We can confirm there was a traffic accident in Kabul involving coalition forces which sparked a demonstration which went violent," Afghan interior ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai said.
Hundreds of Afghans gathered in the wake of the accident chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Karzai", referring to the Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
They pelted the US military vehicles with rocks before the shooting began, forcing them to scatter.
Two police vehicles and a police checkpoint were set alight, witnesses said.
"People are very angry," resident Samad Shah said.
The US-led coalition in Kabul confirmed there had been an accident but did not give any details.
"We are looking into it.   We don't have any information on number of casualties at the moment," coalition spokeswoman Lieutenant Tamara Lawrence said.

ABC News International, Rahim Faiez, Kabul, Afghanistan May 29, 2006 (AP)
Abdullah Fahim, a Health Ministry spokesman, said that eight bodies were brought to hospitals in Kabul and 107 more Afghans were treated for injuries.
The unrest started after three U.S. Humvee vehicles coming into the city from the outskirts rammed into a rush-hour traffic jam, hitting several civilian cars, witnesses said.
A Kabul police chief, Sher Shah Usafi, said another person was killed when U.S. troops fired into a crowd of stone-throwing protesters soon after the crash.
Col. Thomas Collins said a large cargo truck in a coalition convoy had suffered a mechanical failure and hit as many as 12 civilian vehicles at a busy intersection.   He said the coalition was investigating.
Afghans often complain about what they call the aggressive driving tactics of the U.S. military.   Convoys often pass through crowded areas at high speed and sometimes disregard road rules.   The U.S. military says such tactics are necessary to protect the troops from attack.
"Today's demonstration is because Americans killed innocent people.   We will not stop until foreigners leave the city.   We are looking for foreigners to kill," one protester in his late 20s, Gulam Ghaus, said near where rioters burned a police post.
AP Television News video showed hundreds of angry young men hurling rocks at what appeared to be three U.S. military trucks and three dun-colored Humvees as they sped from the area after the crash, their windshields cracked by the stones.   A machine gun mounted on one of the Humvees fired into the air over the crowd as the vehicle sped away.
The riot continued for hours into the afternoon.

Agence France Presse, May 29, 2006
The trouble began when a US vehicle appeared to lose control and smashed into other vehicles, according to an AFP photographer who was on the scene.
People angered by the carnage started protesting and pelting the military vehicle with stones.
US troops then opened fire and killed at least four people, the photographer said.
He said two men were shot dead next to him, and two other bodies were found after the burst of gunfire.   Several people were wounded.
The shooting set off more fury as protesters held aloft one of the bodies and chanted: "Death to America, Death to (President Hamid) Karzai."
"These traitors killed at least 10 people.   Death to them," a protestor named Ahmadullah said told an AFP reporter, referring to the American troops.
Another said: "These cowards opened fire into the crowd and killed them like sheep.   First they drove into the people's cars, destroyed them and then fired onto the people who were only throwing stones at them.
"They think Afghanistan is a playground where they can practise shooting," he said, without giving his name.

"Even the Commission against Corruption is corrupt...."
A diplomat:
Remember that Karzai's brother controls close to 70% of global heroin production.
If there hadn't been opium, the Afghans would have had to accept our reforms.
But in this narco-state from which any notion of the common weal has disappeared, one can become immensely rich in a year.
According to a UN study, in the province of Helmand alone, where Westerners have spent two billion dollars for the eradication of opium poppies since 2001, the harvest has doubled in the last year.
Drug experts estimate that there has never been a better year for the poppy harvest in the history of Afghanistan.
      Sara Daniel      Le Nouvel Observateur      10 August 2006      
      Translation: www.truthout.org      French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher     
 
 
        Afghanistan Guantanamo Report       
         — PDF Document for download         
         — Right click Save Target As         
        US Psychological Operations in Afghanistan        
Saturday, 15 July 2006
Refuge from the real Afghanistan
By Paul Vickers
BBC News, Kabul
Some 10,000 US-led coalition forces have been engaged in a large-scale offensive against Taleban fighters in southern Afghanistan, where around 700 people have been killed in the last few weeks.
An Afghan woman buys gold jewellery at a Kabul gold market. It is easy to forget the poverty affecting the rest of the country.
An Afghan woman buys gold jewellery at a Kabul gold market
It is easy to forget the poverty affecting the rest of the country
But in the capital, Kabul, the upper echelons of society appear to have forgotten the horrors on their doorstep.
Just a few days ago now, a grand party was held at the US Embassy in Kabul, a redoubt as impregnable as any crusader castle reinforced deep in the heart of a city still described by hardy optimists as the capital of Afghanistan.
The US Ambassador, Ronald Neumann, made an upbeat speech reminding the guests (dress code: lounge suits or national dress) of the thousands of Afghan students educated thanks to the generosity of the American people; of the schools and courthouses built, and of the roads rolled out by provincial reconstruction teams stretching far into the deserts and mountains.
There was some polite applause and then the guests made a bee line for the dance floor, the band of the 10th Mountain Division, still wearing their desert camouflage, struck up and churned out a few more Gershwin classics.
Kabul scene
This was a typical social event, tailor-made for the elite in Kabul; aid workers, journalists, diplomats, military top brass and the odd rough diamond — the Northwest Frontier's new Raj — all eagerly swapping business cards and networking with the same people they had met before at the last, equally lavish cocktail and canape melee.
In fact, the same faces and the same frocks turn up over and over again at this embassy or that — at the British Council perhaps.
There is even a magazine here called Kabul Scene Magazine that carries a people section with Tatler-style photos.
It is easy to forget that you are in a war zone when you graduate to this exclusive social set.
If you fancy a change there is l'Atmosphere, Kabul's premier French restaurant, where by day you can lounge by the pool, or play petanque and by night you can dine under the stars, eating steak frites, ending the evening with a brandy, or one of the best mojitos in town.
Gary, an American military contractor, told me over a cold beer that the street outside l'Atmosphere is known as "Abduction Alley".
It is especially busy at night, when well-oiled partygoers who have forgotten that they are in a war zone set off into the darkness hoping to find their Landcruisers.
And it is easy to forget that you are in a war zone when you graduate to this exclusive social set.   It is easy to forget the poverty too.
Chicken Street
A very glamorous French woman with ruby-painted toenails bent my ear about her shopping trip to Chicken Street.
"I have bought everything I need for my apartment," she said.   "All I want now is to find somewhere in Kabul that sells enough bubble wrap so I can fly it home."
A quarter of the children born in this country still die before reaching the age of five
She had spent more than most Afghans earn in a year on carpets and traditional furniture.
And she complained: "I hate the military here.   All they do is follow orders.
"Most of the private contractors are nothing more than murderers," she said.   I thought of my friend Gary, the contractor.
Had this murderous band of soldier contractors not been here, I suggested, the shopping trip might well have ended with a bag over her head ... or much worse.
She silenced the discussion with a brisk flick of her hand.
But the last time I was here, a local man strolled up to a Western shopper — just as though he was greeting an old friend, his beard dyed scarlet with henna, his eyes ecstatic.
He embraced the shopper and then detonated the five grenades tied around his belt.   That was Chicken Street not so long ago.
No future
The only Afghans that many of these people meet are the ones circulating with the trays of Chardonnay or Merlot at parties.
But once they have collected the empty glasses, they go home to a rather different Afghanistan — the Afghanistan that their guests are supposed to be reconstructing.
A quarter of the children born in this country still die before reaching the age of five.
In provinces like Helmand and Zabul, those fabled schools have been taken over by mullahs who have learned to hate the West.
She had spent more than most Afghans earn in a year on carpets and traditional furniture.
And she complained: "I hate the military here.   All they do is follow orders.
"Most of the private contractors are nothing more than murderers," she said.   I thought of my friend Gary, the contractor.
Had this murderous band of soldier contractors not been here, I suggested, the shopping trip might well have ended with a bag over her head ... or much worse.
She silenced the discussion with a brisk flick of her hand.
But the last time I was here, a local man strolled up to a Western shopper — just as though he was greeting an old friend, his beard dyed scarlet with henna, his eyes ecstatic.
He embraced the shopper and then detonated the five grenades tied around his belt.  
That was Chicken Street not so long ago.
ESTIMATED NUCLEAR WARHEADS, STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL
Map showing declared, suspected and potential nuclear nations. The US is also said to have some 3,000 warheads in reserve, while Russia has about 11,000 in non-operational stockpiles. Israel declines to confirm it has nuclear weapons. North Korea — 1 test underground, October 2006. Iran is accused by the US of ambitions to build nuclear arms. The United states had drawn up a battle plan for the potential use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and the United States has been involved in planning potential nuclear use scenarios for Iran. The United States is now involved in a massive program to overhaul its nuclear arsenal. In fact they're working to replace every nuclear warhead and all of the existing delivery systems in the arsenal to ensure prompt precision global strike capabilities. Jackie Cabasso — Western States Legal Foundation
The United States has conducted 1,127 nuclear and thermonuclear tests — 217 in the atmosphere.
The Soviet Union/ Russia conducted 969 tests — 219 in the atmosphere.
France, 210 tests, 50 in the atmosphere.
The United Kingdom, 45 tests — 21 in the atmosphere.
China, 45 tests — 23 in the atmosphere.
India and Pakistan — 13 tests underground.
Israel — possible 1 test atmosphere South Africa 1979.
North Korea — 1 test underground, October 2006.
“The United states had drawn up a battle plan for the potential use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and the United States has been involved in planning potential nuclear use scenarios for Iran.”
“The United States is now involved in a massive program to overhaul its nuclear arsenal.   In fact they're working to replace every nuclear warhead and all of the existing delivery systems in the arsenal to ensure prompt precision global strike capabilities.”
Jackie Cabasso — Western States Legal Foundation
Western Elite militarism
Western Elite Terror States
Western Elite War Crimes
"Terror Experts" — James Petras:
The motivators
The Terrorist Experts are the "set-up" people, the motivators.
They project the violence of the rulers, their ambitions to conquer, their greed to seize land and resources, their destructive impulses on to their victims.
The responses of the victims are evoked in the rhetoric of pathological behavior.
Cannot distinguish savageries committed by their patron-states
Of course the truly clinical pathologies are found in the minds of the verbal assassins ­who cannot distinguish the savageries committed by their patron-states from the desperate cries of the excluded, displaced and exploited.
Almost all the terror experts have a chronic psychological blindness to the systematic and comprehensive violence inflicted by the West and Israel on particular groups.
Today it is the "Arabs" — at others times it is all insurgents who respond to imperial violence with violence.
"Terror Experts" — James Petras:
Torture
The all-pervasive practice of torture is a means of breaking and converting militants, and then infiltrating resistance movements.
Sub-human
The techniques of torture receive ideological justification and moral support from the Terror Experts.
In their writings insurgents or 'terrorists' are described as beyond the human pale ­ as sub-human.
Their leaders are presented as cynical profiteers and manipulators who have no human values.
Their communities are "lawless pockets".
Once committed, they know no law, no justice ­ only death, murder and martyrdom.
They live in failed states.
They have no history or culture (or at best one inferior to 'Western', 'Judeo-Christian' civilization).
In a word, the world will be better without them.
Torture best interest of civilization
To the torturers this means their work is in the best interest of civilization.
Of course the Terror Experts are offended when the practitioners are exposed, their handicraft of brutality photographed and published.
The Terror Experts are grieved, not for the acts of moral degradation, but because it confirms what the "terrorists" have been saying.
Physical humiliation by the armies and states of the civilizers
Terror Experts protest at the public exposure: that the dirty secrets absent from their analysis have become public knowledge.
They attribute feelings of "anger", "humiliation" to the personality disorders, childhood or family or cultural/religious dysfunctions of the "terrorists".
The statements of the Terror Experts become less convincing when confronted by the publicized facts of physical humiliation by the armies and states of the civilizers.
killed in indiscrimination
Picture: AP/Matiullah Achakzai
ACLU Releases New Torture Documents on Afghanistan
The American Civil Liberties Union has released more documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act — these dealing with Afghanistan.
According to the documents, members of an Army Special Forces unit allegedly punched, slapped, kicked and beat Afghan civilians in two villages southeast of the capital Kabul last May, prompting official complaints from two senior Army psychological operations officers who were present and said they witnessed the incidents.
The incidents are detailed in internal Army criminal files that the ACLU released yesterday.  They also document other allegations of abuse in Afghanistan as recent as last year.
In one strikingly similar event, the Army last year found about half a dozen photographs that depict masked U.S. soldiers standing with their weapons pointed at the heads of handcuffed and hooded or blindfolded detainees at a base in southern Afghanistan and, in one case, pressing a detainee's head against the wall of a "cage" where he was brought for interrogation.
The photographs were found on a compact disc left in one of the unit's offices.  None of the photos have been published and an Army spokesman said yesterday that they are being withheld from release "to protect the privacy" of the Afghan victims.
The acts photographed in Afghanistan occurred without provocation between December 2003 and February 2004 and violated Army regulations, according to testimony in the Army documents.
Members of the unit said they took the pictures for sport and also said they destroyed some images after photos appeared in the media of similar acts at the Abu Ghraib prison.
The ACLU said some of the photos depicted "mock executions."
None of those involved in the seven new cases of alleged abuse were charged by the Army with criminal wrongdoing.
Even though investigators found probable cause to charge another soldier in the unit with assault for punching a bound detainee in the back of the head, the documents do not indicate any punishment was imposed.
    www.democracynow.org February 18, 2005    
A unidentified Afghan soldier sits by the dead body of Mullah Rehmatullah, at Spinboldak, Afghanistan along the Pakistan border on Wednesday, July 28, 2004.
One of two people injured in an attack by United States military helicopters is treated at a hospital in the south eastern Afghan town of Khost, May 21, 2004.
Three Afghan civilians were killed and two wounded in an attack by U.S. helicopter gunships in the village of Tani, residents said.
The U.S. military said it had killed Islamic militants in the attacks.
Below US fighter pilot Major Harry Schmidt.
Dropped 500-pound bomb on Canadian infantrymen.
Picture: AFP/Getty Images/File/Mario Villafuerte
The US Air Force upheld the punishment handed out to fighter pilot Major Harry Schmidt, pictured here with his wife Lisa and attorney Charles W. Gittins (L), over a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan that killed four Canadian soldiers.
Schmidt is alleged to have disobeyed orders when dropping a 500-pound bomb on Canadian infantrymen engaged in a live-fire training exercise whom he mistook for Taliban fighters.
Major Harry Schmidt was found guilty of dereliction of duty, reprimanded for "willful misconduct," and fined 5,762 dollars last month in connection with the deadly April 2002 incident.
Schmidt's lawyer, Charles Gittins: "We are not surprised by the denial. We expected it. Any other decision is an acknowledgment that Harry was not at fault for the accident.
"It is in the Air Force's interest to keep the responsibility as far away from the careerist (Air Force) generals who were involved in creating the non-doctrinal command and control system that directly led to the accident."
Hornburg's decision closes the book on a highly publicized case that caused an outcry across Canada.
This image taken on Thursday, Aug. 5, 2004 from Afghan State Television shows an Afghan man identified as Reza Khan, charged by a prosecutor with killing four foreign journalists in Afghanistan in the closing days of the former Taliban regime that collapsed in late 2001. The victims were Australian television cameraman Harry Burton and Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari of the Reuters news agency, Maria Grazia Cutuli of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and Julio Fuentes of the Spanish daily El Mundo. Photo: Afghan State Television via APTN

This image taken on Thursday, Aug. 5, 2004 from Afghan State Television shows an Afghan man identified as Reza Khan, charged by a prosecutor with killing four foreign journalists in Afghanistan in the closing days of the former Taliban regime that collapsed in late 2001.
The victims were Australian television cameraman Harry Burton and Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari of the Reuters news agency, Maria Grazia Cutuli of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and Julio Fuentes of the Spanish daily El Mundo.
Photo: Afghan State Television via APTN
"Terror Experts" — James Petras:
Scholarly researchers
The Terror Experts operate and see themselves on two levels: as 'scholarly researchers' and as political prosecutors and 'security' advisors.
As 'experts' their work is of dubious quality despite the self-declared wealth of sources they claim to have consulted.
Many of the alleged "terrorists" interviewed were in jail where they were most likely tortured, drugged and their conversations monitored.
Edit all political context
The Terror Expert can be expected to edit out any excerpts that provide a political context for their actions: they are likely to pay more attention to their own jaundiced "impressions" of how the 'terrorist' looks, speaks or listens, usually fixing on their own preconceived "meanings" of particular facial expressions or body movements.
The Terror Experts excel in selecting the worst case sample as "representative" of the leadership of the terrorists, the boastful, the moneygrubber, the affluent.
They omit the norm of persecuted resistance fighters who are modest, sacrificing, in solidarity with their people, upon whom they have many times to depend for food, medical care and refuge.
"Terror Experts" — James Petras:
Fundamentalists!
There are "fundamentalist" Moslems who pursue modern professions, use Western critiques of colonialism and imperialism; but who seek self-determination, majority rule and the freedom to practice their religion.
There are fundamentalist Muslims who are pietistic they seek solace in spiritual practices, who live in a narrow circle of work, mosque and family, who have experienced the violent disruption of their lives and who respond, not only because the imperialists have transgressed the sacred, but because they have destroyed the family network and intergeneration codes of existence
A whole people adversely affected
In the midst of the chaos, violence, dislocation, pillage and occupation of a country, a whole people are adversely affected.
As they reach out to respond, to protest, to survive, they seek movements and institutions that have some resources, a modicum of power.
In the past there were powerful nationalist, socialist and communist parties, dynamic trade unions and peasant movements.
In a few countries they are still active and a force to be reckoned with.
Decimated by US client regimes
In many regions however, they have been decimated by US client regimes, local secular or religious dictators, and by the disintegration of the old Communist Parties.
Under harsh conditions requiring clandestine activity and mass support, many secular activists have jointed politically-oriented religions movements, which embrace anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and social warfare programs.
The secular "conversion" to Muslim-inspired movements is based on politics, not religion.
Leon Trotsky once advised his followers during the Nazi occupation of Europe that it might be necessary to join the Catholic Church if that was the only space available for political action.
Given the mass base of the Muslim movement, given its engagement in the anti-colonial struggle, it is no surprise that many secularists (who may be leftists, nationalists and democrats) have joined these movements.
And may later turn to other political movements.
Monday, 16 January 2006
'Suicide bombs' kill many Afghans
Afghan police inspecting a damaged car hit by suicide bomber
Kandahar has been the scene of three 'suicide attacks' in two days
Two suspected suicide blasts have killed at least 24 people in the Afghan province of Kandahar, officials say.
A suspected bomber drove his motorbike into a crowd, killing 20 and injuring another 20 in Spin Boldak, the governor of the southern province said.
An earlier attack killed an Afghan soldier and three civilians in the city of Kandahar, officials say.
The attacks fuel fears that those hostile to the US presence in the country are copying Iraq's insurgents.
A defence ministry spokesman told the BBC the blast was the "work of the enemies of Afghanistan" - a term used to describe hardline Taleban militants.
Kandahar governor Asadullah Khaled told the BBC that government soldiers were among the casualties but did not specify how many.
He also alleged that the bombers came from Pakistan, "where they lived and received training".
Differing accounts
Map of Kandahar and Spin Boldak, Afghanistan
As well as the four dead, six Afghan soldiers and 10 civilians were injured in the first attack, which targeted an army convoy, reports say.
Witnesses at the scene of the first attack in the city of Kandahar reported seeing blood and body parts scattered over the area.
But accounts of what actually happened differed.
A senior army official in Kabul said the attacker detonated explosives placed in a vehicle next to an Afghan army convoy.
But the army commander in Kandahar city, where the attack occurred, told the Associated Press news agency the blast was caused by a roadside bomb.
SUICIDE ATTACKS
15 January 2006: A senior Canadian diplomat and 3 Afghan bystanders killed in Kandahar
5 January 2006: 10 killed in Tirin Kowt, Uruzgan
November 2005: 3 civilians killed in Kandahar
September 2005: 12 killed outside Afghan army base in Kabul
May 2005: 3 killed in Kabul internet cafe
June 2005: 20 killed in Kandahar mosque

Another security official in Kandahar, who did not want to be named, told the BBC that a man who had strapped explosives to himself jumped onto a military vehicle and blew himself up.
He said he went to the scene minutes after the blast and talked to eyewitnesses who had seen the bomber jumping on to the military car in Kandahar's district four.
According to the official, security forces opened fire, injuring several civilians.
A Canadian envoy to Afghanistan died in a bomb attack in Kandahar on Sunday.
Two civilians were also killed in Sunday's attack, which took place as Canada seeks to triple its contingent in Afghanistan as part of an expanded Nato force.
A man claiming to be a spokesman for the ousted Taleban regime said it was behind the bombing, and warned that more violence would follow.
"Terror Experts" — James Petras:
Truckling to political interests of paymasters
To subsume the rich mosaic of resistance fighter to one ideological formula because of formal affiliations as these Terror Experts do, is an egregious error.
They are eager to prescribe an overall repressive solution to the "terror" problem, truckling to the political interests of their paymasters in the big foundations or state apparatus.
They repress inconvenient complexities, diverse motivations, conjunctural convergences between secular and spiritual.
Terror Experts evoke the emotive phrase 'Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists' to end debates and considered analysis.
Analysis which might require the public to reconsider their support for imperial wars, Israeli conquests and their opposition to Iraqi nationalists and Palestinian resistance fighters.
"Terror Experts" — James Petras:
Interrogation: Questions for the Terror Experts.
Terror Experts claim that objective conditions, or what they refer to disparagingly as "exploitation", "oppression" or "imperialist" (equipped always with quote marks), are only a veneer covering some deeper "personal need".
The Terror Experts then proceed to "unmask" the "true" motives ­ with a stream of psychobabble.
In fact the resort to crudely conceived and applied psychological categories, are the principle method that the Terror Experts use to suppress the "objective " world, which impinges on the action of the resistance fighter.
The external world, in which violent resistance movements emerge are by any measure very hostile.
US and Israel consider themselves unaccountable
The US and Israel, for example, are recognized the world over as aggressive actors considering themselves unaccountable to any and all international laws.
The Terror Experts can avoid this fundamental 'fact' impinging on the resistance fighters' behavior by focusing on their supposed "inner world", and "immediate" face to face relations.
This allows the Terror Experts to avoid the unpleasant aspects of their own state loyalties.
"Terror Experts" — James Petras:
Totalitarian pseudoscience
The Terror Experts were horrified by the photographs of US torture in Iraq ­ not the acts.
The revelations unmasked the savagery of their accomplices, the practitioners of their prescriptions, the whole underworld of crime and punishment that is logically derived from the totalitarian pseudoscience of the Terror Experts.
It brings the Terror Experts of Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Johns Hopkins closer to the savage scenes of homo and heterosexual rape, mass sequential genital violence.
The Terror Experts, of course, assume a posture of indignation at the brutal guards, interrogators, the military commanders.
They are silent as their current paymasters are pilloried —­ Rumsfeld, Bush — ­knowing full well that the next President will also employ their services.
In any case who is going to look deep and far form the scenes of torture and identify the torture accomplices among the Terror Experts?
"Terror Experts" — James Petras:
Politicians dictate the commands
The Terrorist Expert simply pronounce their diagnosis of the armed resistance fighters: incurable psychopaths, extremely dangerous when at large.
The politicians dictate the commands: capture, confine, torture or kill.
The Special Forces break doors in the middle of the night, cut throats or take prisoners.
The prison commandants establish the rules of "interrogation".
The guards torture.
This is s very coherent international division of labor, in which the Terror Experts play an important part in elaborating the rationale, a morally and scientifically justified war-unto-death on the the "inferior" peoples, the "fundamentalist Arab Muslims", the "suicide bombers", the "Terrorists".
A common language is spoken between the Terror Experts and their state patrons, and then promoted in and by the mass media.
www.thebusinessonline.com     Sunday, January 29, 2006     By Fraser Nelson
Real Afghan war is now beginning
THE bloodiest wars often start with the least political fanfare.
The Crimean war was agreed in a Cabinet meeting while three members were asleep.
And last week, just 13 Labour MPs listened to the Commons statement about Afghanistan.
The voice of John Reid, the Defence Secretary, echoed to the lack of listeners in the chamber as he announced the £1bn (E1.45bn, $1.79bn), three-year deployment of 6,000 troops.
The contrast to the hubris before the Iraq war could hardly be starker.
Yet the Afghanistan mission could — for British troops — bring a higher death toll than Iraq.
The risks are higher, the stakes lower and the goals would be considered laughable if so many lives were not at stake.
There are, in effect, two armies in Afghanistan.
There are 20,000 Americans under Operation Enduring Freedom, whose mission is to hunt and kill insurgents and — ideally — haul Osama bin Laden out of his cave.
While they have been doing battle, Nato forces have been pacifying various sectors of Afghanistan.
They have so far done the easy parts, which the Taliban never controlled.
It is now time to move on to stage three: Helmand.
www.thebusinessonline.com     Sunday, January 29, 2006     By Fraser Nelson
Real Afghan war is now beginning
This is Afghanistan’s richest province, irrigated by the Tarnak river.
Its fields are red with opium poppies, an illegal crop that generates 55% of Afghanistan’s wealth.
This is what the British come to destroy.
Perhaps one of the most deceptive statements Tony Blair made in the war on terror was claiming that a reason to depose the Taliban was that they were the world’s biggest drug dealers.
“The Taliban regime are funded in large parts on the drugs trade — 90% of all heroin sold in Britain originates from Afghanistan.   Stopping that trade is directly in our interests.”
He repeated this claim at Labour’s conference.
“The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets.   That is another part of their regime that we should seek to destroy.”
The Taliban, for all their boundless evil, had in fact dealt the greatest blow ever inflicted on world heroin trade by declaring poppy cultivation “un-Islamic” and production collapsed by 91%.
The United Nations, which has monitored Afghan drug crops since 1994, sent in teams of ground inspectors who confirmed in 2001 “the near total success of the ban in eliminating poppy cultivation in Taliban-controlled areas”.
So in the year of invasion, a pathetic 8,000 hectares of Afghanistan was growing poppies — all of it in areas where the Taliban had no presence.
It is impossible the Prime Minister did not know this.
Today, the Afghan deployment is still projected as a form of opium war — which is doubtless how it seems to the naïve Department for International Development and the idealistic Nato planners.
www.thebusinessonline.com     Sunday, January 29, 2006     By Fraser Nelson
Real Afghan war is now beginning
To hear ministers talk, it is as if the mission is to introduce the rule of law to grateful natives who live in pre-feudal anarchy.
But Helmand has strong local authorities in the form of drug barons whose efforts keep locals from starving.
To call Afghanistan a third world country exaggerates its wealth.
In a typical developing nation, 25% are undernourished; in Afghanistan, this figure is 70%.
Infant mortality is almost twice the third world average.
Today, about 2m Afghans rely on opium poppies for their livelihood, generating $2.7bn of illegal wealth.
They will not give this up readily, nor will the farmers whose desire to feed their families is stronger than their desire to placate Nato.
It took Thailand 25 years and Pakistan 20 years to end opium production — and neither country had, at their peak, produced anything near Afghanistan today.
Its narcotics industry is a contemptible, but inevitable, function of poverty.
No amount of western bribes guns or idealism can overcome this.
“It’s not just a question of growing tomatoes instead of poppies,” says the head of the UN drugs mission in Kabul.   “Tomatoes will never bring the same profit.”
While the British Army may not defeat the opium trade, it will succeed in picking a fight with the tribes who control it — and perhaps start a new insurgency in one of the most explosive areas of Afghanistan.
For all its anti-drug rhetoric, the British military seems to realise it is preparing for ground war.
Its troop deployment is led by 16 Air Assault Brigade, the Army’s largest.
This is not the armed division of Oxfam.
www.thebusinessonline.com     Sunday, January 29, 2006     By Fraser Nelson
Real Afghan war is now beginning
Commanders know the powers Britain seeks to depose in Helmand are capable of organising an insurgency — and readily calling in reinforcements from Iran, which is only a day away by horse.
It can easily turn into a battle.
And all for what?
There is no dictator to depose.
There is no gathering military threat.
There is no winning the drug battle if farmers make 10 times as much from opium poppies as from licit crops.
No wonder the Dutch are wondering whether such a mission is worth the blood price.
Its parliament has woken up to the naiveté of the Nato mission and may this week vote to overturn a decision by its government to send troops.
But the UK political class remains too obsessed with America’s alleged misdemeanors to notice that, more than four years after the Taliban left Kabul, the real Afghan war may be only now beginning.


Photo: www.Aljazeera.com
Production of opium poppies rose to 4200 tonnes in 2004
Kabul, Afghanistan — Poppy eradication in Afghanistan
story by Darko Zeljkovic and Charlene Cowling
Wave upon wave of lush pink petals burst through acre upon acre of dry land nestled between towering slate gray mountains and hugging a nonchalantly meandering river.
Children play in the fields and picnics of fresh, tangy goat cheese and warm tea are laid out while farmers tend to their crops. The scene is deceivingly and pastorally idyllic.
Behind the scenes, however, is the ongoing, internationally fuelled battle of poppy field and heroin production eradication purportedly embraced by the Afghanistan government and militantly opposed by groups directly benefiting from the production, particularly in the district of Shinwar, near the Pakistani border.
Impotently wedged between the two is the farmer who has historically relied on this cash crop to feed his family; he has no equitable replacement crop in sight.
Under the pressure of the International community, the Afghanistan government, on the surface, recently declared Jihad, or holy war, on local opium production and distribution.
Regardless, the poppy business flourishes and is regarded by the people of Afghanistan as any other openly run business in the country.
Opium contributes to approximately 60 per cent of Afghanistan’s National Gross Product (NGP).
In an attempt to appease the international community the Afghani government strategically sacrificed the high profile province of Nangarhar for eradication while only symbolically eradicating poppy fields in outlying regions where approximately one field in a hundred is sacrificed, thereby allowing the precarious financial structure of Afghanistan to retain its delicate balance.
According to the counter-narcotic's intelligence officer, Amir Shah, more than 90 per cent of opium fields have been destroyed in this province.
Photo: Noor Khan/AP
One Afghan policeman stands guard while others destroyed opium poppies in a field near Kandahar, Afghanistan.
600 policemen have been killed in the past year fighting the drug trade.
However, in other parts of the country, especially south of Kabul in the regions of Kandahar, Helmond and Nimroz, and in the western provinces of Farah and Heart, along the Iranian border, opium production is booming.
The American Embassy blames President Hamid Karzai for not asserting strong leadership and American officials theorized that they believed that Mr. Karzai might not want to challenge local Afghan resistance in an attempt to gain votes for the parliamentary elections scheduled for this fall.
Meanwhile, caught between the opposing forces, the fate of the average farmer hangs by a gossamer thread.
Farmers were promised funding and support if they destroyed their fields and, to date, no evidence of that support has materialized.
Farmer Zulmai, from the village of Awobazak, scrupulously extracts delicate opium paste by slicing the head of the plant with a compact seven-bladed razor sharp cutter.
He explains that from one gerib, or acre, of land he hopes to collect 18 to 20 kilograms of opium in the upcoming ten days netting him approximately $3,000 USD.
Those 20 kilograms of opium will produce approximately two to three kilograms of pure heroin in Helmond’s Sangin district where the heroin labs are gearing up for the season.
Opium is measured and packed in "one man" (4.5 kilogram) plastic bags. Each bag is sold for approximately 35,000-40,000 Pakistani Rupees or $150 USD per kilogram.
Tonnes of raw opium and heroin will cross the Iranian border to be processed.
From there it will go to Turkey and then to the European market.
Eradication and Jihad on drugs may take decades since the Karzai government does not have effective reach or effect in the tribal areas of Afghanistan.
Its influence outside of Kabul is relatively negligible.
In Kandahar, some farmers pay approximately $500 in taxes to police and their fields are left alone.
Currently only one field in 100 is actually eradicated.
One Kandahari farmer we spoke with is confused as to why the Eradication Team destroys his field but leaves his neighbour’s intact.
However, without any personal connections in local government, the farmer keeps his own counsel, because if he asked, "They would say I support the Taliban and al-Qaida and I'd be thrown in jail," he says.
http://www.communitypress-online.com/ July 22, 2005
US Coalition Complicity in 0.4 Million Drug Deaths
By Gideon Polya      October 26, 2005      www.aljazeerah.info
Since 2001 there have been about 0.4 million global drug deaths [1] linked to US Coalition re-establishment of globally-dominant Afghan opium production.
(destroyed by the Taliban in 2000-2001 but 76% and 86% of global production in 2002 and 2004, respectively, after US Coalition invasion and conquest) [2-6]
While the ruling Taliban had effectively destroyed the massive Afghan opium industry by 2001 (from 79% of the global market in 1999), the invasion and conquest of Afghanistan by the US and its allies (notably the UK and Australia) in 2001 resulted in the rapid re-establishment of the Afghan opium industry to 76% global share by 2002 and 86% global share in 2004 [2].
Under the Coalition, by 2002 the Afghan opium poppy cultivation area had jumped from 3% to 38% of the World total and Afghan opium production was 76% of the World total.
By 2004, the Afghan opium poppy acreage had jumped to 67% of the World total and Afghan opium production was 86% of the World total [2].
The US and its Coalition allies (notably the UK and Australia) have a clear complicity in the rapid restoration of the Afghan opium industry to World domination and are accordingly complicit in an estimated post-9/11 opioid-related death toll of 0.4 million (the World), 40,000-60,000 (the US), 3,200 (the UK), 2,000 (Australia) and 1,200 (Scotland).
    References and footnotes    
     — Dr Gideon Polya website    
     http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html    
US Coalition Complicity in 0.4 Million Drug Deaths
By Gideon Polya      October 26, 2005      www.aljazeerah.info
Since 2001 there have been about 0.4 million global drug deaths [1] linked to US Coalition re-establishment of globally-dominant Afghan opium production.
(destroyed by the Taliban in 2000-2001 but 76% and 86% of global production in 2002 and 2004, respectively, after US Coalition invasion and conquest)
Of these 0.4 million post-2001, US Coalition-complicit, opioid-related deaths 1,200 have been Scots, 2,000 Australian, 3,000 Canadian, 3,200 British and 50,000 American.
One can understand why intrinsically racist, Anglo-American mainstream media resolutely refuse to report the horrendous post-invasion avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories that now total 2.1 million and 1.7 million, respectively [0.5 million and 0.3 million, respectively, in Occupied Iraq]      (UN data)
    References and footnotes    
     — Dr Gideon Polya website    
     http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html    
September 9, 2006
Afghanistan ready to flood Europe with first-grade heroin
RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Goncharov
RIA Novosti (MCT)
MOSCOW — For the umpteenth time now, Afghanistan is breaking all records in opium production, and is ready to flood Europe with first-grade heroine.

Opium Heroin harvest Afghanistan
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the area sown to opium poppy has increased this year by 59 percent, and reached 165,000 hectares against 100,000 hectares last year, while the gross opium harvest will amount to 6,100 tons.
Afghan experts maintain that this year opium will be exceedingly rich in morphine.   A mere seven kilograms of raw opium will produce one kilogram of heroin.
This ratio is very rare.   Usually it takes from 10 to 15 kilograms of opium to make this amount.   According to UNOCD, last year's harvest — 4,000 tons of raw opium — produced 400 tons of heroin.   The current concentration of morphine in 6,100 tons of raw opium will make it possible to get more than 870 tons of heroin.   This is a fantastic scale.
It is easy to imagine what amounts of first-grade heavy drug Afghanistan will supply to the European and Russian markets, especially considering that the time-tested system of opium harvesting, its procession into morphine and heroin, and the transportation of ready opiates to consumer countries by reliable routes, is as fail-safe as a Swiss watch.
Is there a way to combat Afghan drugs? Afghans cannot do this themselves — either economically or by force.   As for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), it has to have a special U.N. mandate to destroy opium fields, and heroin-producing labs.
Neither the United States, which leads the anti-terrorist coalition, nor the NATO leaders, who have headed ISAF, will ever request such a mandate from the U.N. Security Council.   The United States is even less likely to do so.   It stays in Afghanistan not under the U.N. aegis.   Why should it make worse the already complicated relations with the local population? Besides, the Russian-European problems with Afghan drugs are too remote for Americans.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attributed growing production of drugs in Afghanistan to increasing demand for them in Europe and Russia.   He thinks that Russia and Western Europe should pool efforts in Afghanistan to resolve this problem.
UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa has dispelled the illusions about Europe's potential anti-drug action at the international conference on Afghan drugs in Moscow.   In his words, pilot ISAF involvement for the destruction of opium fields and chemical labs did not produce the desired effect in 2005, but only generated tension in relations with the locals.   Now the efforts will concentrate exclusively on logistics and training of the Afghan personnel.
Inadvertently, Maria Costa also put an end to the myth about "caravans with drugs" next to the U.S. and ISAF troops.   There are caravans indeed, but with precursors rather than drugs both in Afghanistan, and especially around it.   Precursor is any chemical reagent, which takes part in the production of a toxic chemical by any method.   From two to six tons of acetic acid anhydride is a reagent required to produce heroin from one ton of raw opium.
Maria Costa said that more than 10,000 tons of this anhydride was brought to Afghanistan last year to produce heroin from the 4,000 tons of raw opium harvested.   This was a real caravan of more than 500 20-ton trailers.
The acetic acid anhydride is not made in Afghanistan, and is only available in China, India, and Russia.   It is a real mystery how such caravans can remain unnoticed in Afghanistan with its poor road network, or in approaches to it.
In early July the Afghan authorities were compelled to admit their inability to counter illegal drug production.   Late last year they adopted a new law on countering drug production, and set up a whole ministry for this purpose, but all was in vain.
It is hard to say how to resolve this problem.   A regional UNODC representative for Central Asia said that the transit of drugs does not go down despite the efforts of Central Asian governments to reduce it.
Meanwhile, the Afghan opium is gaining in strength.   Apparently, Russia and Western Europe will have to hope that if opium fields continue to expand by 50 percent a year, there will be less and less available plough land left.   After all, Afghanistan has only 7 million hectares of arable land, 165,000 of which have already been developed.
© 2006 RIA Novosti
 
 
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Nov-26-2005

Opium cultivation dropped 21 percent in 2005 according to government figures
Opium cultivation dropped 21 percent in 2005 according to government figures
AFGHANISTAN: GLOOMY OPIUM PROGNOSIS AS DRUG ADDICTION GROWS
New York, 24 Nov. (AKI) - The UN has painted a gloomy picture about the state of the drugs industry in Afghanistan in a new report.
Although the area of the country under opium cultivation was reduced by 21 per cent in 2005, the drug problem in the country could remain severe because of renewed insecurity, continued corruption and free opium seed distribution by traffickers.
Briefing reporters in New York on the Afghan Opium Survey, Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, warned that these factors are combining to pose “a risk that opium cultivation may not decline any further in 2006 when we certify it next year, namely for the harvest period that just started.”
He said other obstacles to further progress include farmer dissatisfaction with the level of development assistance and a decreased eradication effort.
Some others increasing as much as 350 per cent
According to the survey, 104,000 hectares of land in Afghanistan is under opium cultivation.   Provinces varied widely in the change in cultivation over the year, with Kandahar experiencing a major decline — 96 per cent — and some others increasing as much as 350 per cent.
Costa said the variations could be attributed in part to the levels of corruption prevailing in different areas.
He said that one surprise of this year’s survey was the extent of drug addiction in Afghanistan, which is far greater than had been previously estimated, with about 3.8 per cent of the population — nearly one million people — using some form of drug.
Most use hashish, with a little over 1 per cent using opium or heroin, Costa said, describing a disturbing trend where Afghan children are being offered opium derivates to relieve pain or even hunger.
Also surprising was the extent of cannabis cultivation.   The survey put Afghanistan’s marijuana fields at about 30,000 hectares, making it the second-largest producer of cannabis after Morocco.
(Slb/Aki)
Nov-24-05
Sunday, 4 December 2005
Losing the war on Afghan drugs
Andrew North
By Andrew North
BBC News, Lashkar Gah, Helmand
"Of course we're growing poppy this year," said the district chief.
"The government, the foreigners — they promised us help if we stopped."
"But where is it?"
A farmer extracting opium from a poppy blossom.
In 2004, Afghanistan produced 90% of the world's opium
You hear similar things from many other people in Helmand province in Afghanistan — the number one opium poppy producing region in the number one opium producing country in the world.
If there's a central focus for the international and Afghan government campaign to stamp out the trade, it's here.
And here many believe drugs profits directly fund Taleban militants, for whom parts of Helmand remain a haven.
But after a small drop in Helmand's opium cultivation this year — according to UN figures — many fear a sharp increase next year.
If that happens, the British and US governments will take much of the flak.   Together they have been leading international efforts to tackle the problem.
Hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of British and US taxpayers' money have been spent.   But it's mostly been water off a duck's back to a business that is deeply rooted and underpins the still war-ravaged Afghan economy — especially in remote places like Helmand.
Dealing with Afghanistan's drugs problem since the fall of the Taleban has been a big failure here — a failure that soaks into every aspect of the country's progress
Approach questioned
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair recently admitted that his government had little to show for four years of effort since the fall of the Taleban.
But recent studies call into question the international community's whole approach to the problem.
Helmand has become a specific challenge to the UK which is gearing up to send several thousand troops and civilian advisers to the province next spring.   Tackling drugs will be top of the agenda.
I spoke to one Afghan elder — sporting a large, black Taleban-style turban, still common in this region — who asked not to be named.
He had just emerged from a council meeting with Helmand's governor and other district chiefs.   Governor Sher Mohammed Akhunzada had been urging them to spread the message to farmers not to sow opium again.   It's planting time now.
They heard the same message this time last year — government officials here say this year's small decline is evidence it's getting through.
Map of Afghanistan
But is this sustainable?   There were already warning signs.   While Helmand recorded a 10% decline in opium cultivation in 2005, in neighbouring Nimroz it went up by a spectacular 1,370%.
It's believed many of those involved in the Helmand trade moved to Nimroz because it is even more remote and weakly policed.
And at the council meeting in the Helmand governor's guesthouse there was a restive mood and complaints that promises had not been met.
"What happened to the new roads and irrigation canals, the jobs we were told about?" the elders asked.
As always at such meetings, there were excuses too.   "Why does the government tell us to stop growing opium when it's doing nothing about alcohol use and prostitution?" one man demanded.
"Opium is not mentioned in the Koran, but alcohol and prostitution are."
The international community has to demonstrate that it's just as concerned about the problem as it affects Afghanistan
Afghan government official
Evidence hard to find
Helmand is supposed to have received $55m of "alternative livelihood" development aid this year, according to the UN's drugs control agency.
That's $55 for every person in the province, a quarter of the average annual income here.
But it's hard to find any evidence of it in Helmand, where the tarmac on the roads runs out well before you leave the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.
There have been some "cash for work" schemes, employing people on basic infrastructure projects like clearing drainage ditches.
But they don't pay enough to compensate people for losing their opium incomes, especially for the poorest farmers who are often deeply indebted to local drugs barons.
British and US counter-narcotics official argue, though, that there was never any chance of a quick replacement for opium.
Helmand governor Sher Mohammed Akhunzada
We need the British to stop the smugglers
Governor Sher Mohammed Akhunzada
But in major drug-producing areas that was not how farmers and community leaders understood things, according to a new European-Union funded study about the links between Afghanistan's opium economy and conflict.
Complying with President Hamid Karzai's edicts to stop growing poppy "was explicitly seen as conditional on rapid compensation and rural development", say the authors.
The implicit message from the meeting at Governor Akhunzada's guesthouse was that farmers would be planting again.   Even he admits a rise in poppy cultivation is likely.
"It's not only because the farmers don't have alternatives," he says.   "It's also because the Taleban and al-Qaeda are forcing them to grow poppy."
He wants more pressure put on the traffickers, the people higher up the chain who make the bigger profits and provide the market.
"We need the British to stop the smugglers," he says.
Motives questioned
For some time, many drug control experts and development workers have been saying similar things, that there's too much focus on farmers and eradicating their opium crops.
There is mounting concern back in the capital, Kabul, about the way things are going.
"We may be in danger," a senior Afghan government official told the BBC.
Helmand bazaar. Few in Helmand are aware British troops are about to arrive.
Few in Helmand are aware British troops are about to arrive
"The farmers did listen to President Karzai, but they may lose confidence in him if they don't get more support."
There's scepticism, too, about the West's motives on the drugs issue, that its only real concern is reducing the supply of heroin to its own streets.
"The international community has to demonstrate that it's just as concerned about the problem as it affects Afghanistan," said the official.
Dealing with Afghanistan's drugs problem since the fall of the Taleban has been a big failure here — a failure that soaks into every aspect of the country's progress.
More and more, people are realising it's going to take a long time to reverse.
Jenny Cuffe with opimum grower Abdul Latif Muskinyar
Opium growers say they have no choice financially
Tuesday, 5 November, 2002
Opium trade resumes in Afghanistan
Farmers in Afghanistan are planting seeds for a new crop of opium poppies despite efforts by Britain to stop the trade.   Jenny Cuffe reports from Afghanistan.
At the district council offices in Surkh Rud, an area in the south-west that owes its wealth to opium, a mullah is lecturing religious leaders and farmers about the evils of the heroin trade.
Drugs destroy your humanity, he says, and they are outlawed by the Koran.
But since the Taleban was ousted a year ago, the industry has flourished.
Abdul Latif Muskinyar and his neighbours are busy preparing the land for the next crop of poppy seeds.
Broken promise
You pay some people to eradicate crops, then a wider group grows some because they'd like to be paid.
"These seeds will be grow as soon as we have rain," he says.
"I know it's dangerous but I have to feed my family."
Mr Muskinyar is angry with the British Government.
His last crop was destroyed under the poppy eradication scheme launched by Tony Blair earlier this year to stem the flow of heroin into Europe.
Mr Muskinyar was offered £1,500 in compensation but has not received a penny.
"They gave us a slip of paper but we never got any money for it.
Gulam Sakhi, 83, with his grandchildren
Refugees are flooding back into Afghanistan
"Unfortunately I had to grow poppies again because they did not deliver what they promised."
Some £20m of British taxpayers' money was earmarked for even distribution among the farmers.
But the officials asked to make a survey of the crops to be destroyed are accused of fraudulently manipulating the figures.
The local warlords and their supporters, it seems, got the bulk of the money while others lost out.
Afghanistan's Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, who helped the British set up the scheme, admits it was flawed.
"In terms of compensation, there were a lot of logisitical difficulties.

    Drugs could destroy Afghanistan    


    Taleban drugs control 'effective'    

London newspaper — Independent
By NICK MEO in Kabul July 29, 2004
< Aid workers who remained in Afghanistan throughout the years of Soviet occupation, tribal anarchy and Taleban rule are preparing to flee the country because US military tactics have made it too dangerous to operate there.
A grim shadow was cast over the future of all aid missions to Afghanistan as the French organisation Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) said independent humanitarian work could no longer be safely carried out.
MSF claimed that the US military had endangered the lives of humanitarian volunteers by blurring the distinction between soldiers and aid workers. Five MSF workers were killed last month.
The announcement comes as Britain's Foreign Affairs Select Committee is today due to record its fears over a rise in heroin production since the fall of the Taleban as part of a report into the War on Terrorism.
The Foreign Office yesterday admitted that the opium harvest in Afghanistan this year will be one of the biggest on record.
One member of the Select Committee has already described Afghanistan as a "basket case".
And an image of a nation staring into the abyss was compounded yesterday as MSF suggested the message being sent out by the Afghan government was that it is acceptable to murder aid workers. It failed to take action against suspects in last month's murder of the MSF staff.
Independent — Aid workers prepare to flee Afghanistan:
"In some quarters there's a real sense of dread about what will happen during the election campaign."
Mr Gluck also denounced US military programmes in insurgency-plagued southern Afghanistan which have sometimes promised aid only to villages which provide intelligence on Taleban fighters.
Mr Gluck said: "The US-backed coalition has consistently sought to coopt humanitarian assistance to build support for its own military and political ambitions.
"MSF denounces attempts to use humanitarian aid to win hearts and minds. That jeopardises the aid to people in need and endangers the lives of humanitarian aid workers."
He said the coalition had several times apologised for activities the aid agencies found threatening, such as distributing leaflets promising aid for information, only for the same thing to happen again later.
"These soldiers are often out of uniform. It's hard to know what nationality they are," he said.
Around 20,000 US combat troops are currently in Afghanistan.
A few British soldiers are stationed as peacekeepers, some manning Provincial Reconstruction Teams, small garrisons which have proved controversial with aid workers although many have welcomed security they have brought to cities outside the capital.
Concerns centre on the actions of combat troops attempting to win over villagers in areas afflicted by guerilla warfare.
"MSF has raised our concerns about blurring humanitarian and military objectives over three years with the Coalition, the Pentagon, and the British Government. We are tired of lobbying," Mr Gluck said.
Despite years of work by organisations like MSF in the country, many Afghan villagers now confuse aid workers and soldiers, he claimed.
"We have seen military people with weapons and in white cars providing health care. How can you expect Afghans to distinguish?"
Aid workers particularly criticise US Special Forces teams who sometimes operate clinics to win over local populations or distribute sweets and toys to village children.
The pull-out will affect 80 foreign and 1,400 Afghan staff, most of whom will lose their jobs. Although clinics and health programmes in some of the country's most deprived areas would be handed over to the Afghan government, thousands of people would lose access to health care, he said.
Phil Halton of the independent Afghanistan NGO Security Office, which advises aid workers on safety, said he expected other organisations to now take another look at whether or not to stay.
Two weeks ago GOAL, a small Irish group that works with children, left Afghanistan quoting security fears.
But Mr Halton said: "It really is a watershed when MSF pulls out. "They are regarded as an outfit which is prepared to go to riskier places than anybody else, although they compensate for that by professionalism."
 
Published on Monday, April 11, 2005 by the Agence France Presse
Afghan City Mourns Its Lost Children, Looks Back to Taliban
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — In the photograph, 12-year-old Mohammed Tahir looks barely conscious.  A bloodied rag covers his left hand, where the kidnappers hacked off his finger and sent it, along with the picture, to his family.
"We are not Muslims.  We don't know God, so don't ask us for sympathy.
"Just send us money," the ransom note read.
His family begged and borrowed the 10,000 dollars the kidnappers asked for, but two days after they left the money in an abandoned school in the southern city of Kandahar, his battered body was found nearby.
In another incident blamed on the same gang, 13-year-old Nakibullah's body was unrecognisable when he was found nine days after his family paid kidnappers the same amount for a ransom.
Wild animals had destroyed his face and right arm, and only the missing finger on his left hand showed who he was.
"When we went there and I saw my son, whatever my feelings only I know, my heart knows and my God knows," said the boy's father Haji Bismillah, sitting in a room he has barely left since his son was found dead last month.
The boys were among six children kidnapped since the new year in Kandahar, once the spiritual heartland of the fundamentalist Taliban regime, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).
The disappearances have sparked a political firestorm in the deeply conservative city.  Many people have begun to feel life was better under the harsh Islamic law of the Taliban, because they could at least guarantee the safety of their children.
On March 7 more than 3,000 people took to the streets of Kandahar demanding the resignation of the governor and the police chief, accusing police of collusion with the kidnappers and demanding a restoration of law and order.
The protest turned violent.
Three people were shot and another 15 were injured according to security sources and hospital doctors in the city.
Demonstrators have in part achieved their ends.  On March 16, President Hamid Karzai ordered a sweeping shake-up of provincial police leaders and sent Kandahar's police chief Khan Mohammed to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Karzai is right to be worried.  The Taliban came to power in Kandahar after a similar spate of child kidnappings, when the now fugitive leader of the movement intervened to stop a fight between two militia commanders who were battling in the streets over a boy they wanted to sodomise.
According to one of the many urban legends surrounding the regime, the Taliban soldiers freed the boy and were welcomed by residents of the city.
But now people are worried about their children again.
"Three of the boys were abused and then murdered in the most violent ways.  Two of them had been raped," Shamsuddin Tanrir, director of the Children's Rights Section at the AIHRC said about the latest spree of abductions.
According to Tanrir's records a further nine boys were kidnapped last year, and he suspects many more children were snatched but their parents have kept quiet after their offspring were returned once they had paid a ransom.
"A lot of children go missing.  And Kuchi or Baluchi children whose parents are nomads and not part of the system are probably never traced," a western security source in Kandahar told AFP.
Afghan Independent Radio, which broadcasts a program in Kandahar city, reports that missing children declarations are the most commonly placed adverts on the show.
"We get about four or five missing children a month.  About 20 percent of them are found before we hit the air," said Ismael Tahir, director of radio programming at the station.
However, others are taken for child labour, or abuse, or are runaways, Tahir said, adding that the station is planning to log their names and addresses to help with investigations.
The radio station is at the front line of the search for missing children because public confidence in the police has sunk so low.  Even the newly appointed police chief, Lieutenant General Mohammed Ayoub Salangi, concedes that there was probably official corruption behind the kidnappings.
"It seems as if local militia or tribal commanders were involved," he told AFP.
For Mohammed Tahir's family their nightmare had only just begun when they lost their son.  Police arrested two of the child's uncles, keeping one of them, Abdul Zahir, for 18 days and torturing him to try and force him to admit to the crime.
"I couldn't admit it because I haven't done anything, but now our whole family wants to leave Kandahar because we think there were powerful people involved," he said.
No police investigators have been to look at the pictures the kidnappers sent to try to find out who might be behind the killings, he added.
"It should be possible to work out where this was developed and try to trace the kidnappers that way," he said holding out a picture of his dead nephew.
Salangi said that police were still investigating the case, but while a handful of people were arrested and later released, no one has been charged.
"One of the biggest problems we face here is police corruption and judicial corruption.  If the police can't find the real killer they will often arrest an innocent man and try and get him to confess," said AIHRC's Tanrir.
Abdul Zahir said he hopes things will improve under the new police chief Salangi, who is a Tajik from northern Afghanistan, rather than an ethnic Pashtun like the majority in Kandahar.
"We don't care if he's Pashtun, Tajik or an animal.  We just want him to bring security," he said.
www.democracynow.org Thursday, May 20th, 2004>
Afghan Massacre: Eyewitnesses Testify that US Troops Were Complicit in the Massacre of up to 3,000 Taliban Prisoners During the Afghan War
In hearings yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the head of US Central Command Gen. John Abizaid said the U.S. military has investigated 75 cases of abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan since late 2002.
Abizaid is responsible for US military operations in both countries.
He said the army was still investigating several homicides in Afghanistan that went as far back as December 2002.
The issue of the US military's treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq has only become a major issue in the US since scores of photos showing US soldiers abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were published by US media outlets.
But the abuse has been going on from the beginning of the so-called war on terror, even if the corporate media only picked up on the story in the past few weeks.
Today, we are going to play a documentary that Democracy Now! premiered in the US a year ago this week: "Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death."
It was produced and directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran.
The film provides eyewitness testimony that U.S. troops were complicit in the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners during the Afghan War.
Brothers of Dilawar, who died in U.S. custody
at secret detention center
Three brothers of Dilawar, who died in U.S. custody 18 months ago, pray at his grave in Yaqubi, about 140 kms (87 miles) south east of Kabul, May 13, 2004. The 22-year-old taxi driver died in U.S. custody at the secretive detention center at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, where he was held along with hundreds of others for suspected links to al Qaeda and the ousted Taliban regime. Photo: REUTERS/Akram Saleh
Three brothers of Dilawar, who died in U.S. custody 18 months ago, pray at his grave in Yaqubi, about 140 kms (87 miles) south east of Kabul, May 13, 2004.
The 22-year-old taxi driver died in U.S. custody at the secretive detention center at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, where he was held along with hundreds of others for suspected links to al Qaeda and the ousted Taliban regime.
      Film outlining this massacre can be viewed on      
      www.DemocracyNow.Org      
      Click here.    Archive date:    Thursday, May 20th, 2004.      
Afghan Massacre: Eyewitnesses Testify that US Troops Were Complicit in the Massacre of up to 3,000 Taliban Prisoners During the Afghan War
According to eyewitnesses, after the seige of Kunduz, some three thousand prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison.
Eyewitnesses say when the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them.
The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds.
Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead.
They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a mass grave.
The film has sent shockwaves around the world.
It has been broadcast on national television in Britain, Germany, Italy and Australia.
It has been screened by the European parliament.
It has outraged human rights groups and international human rights lawyers.
They are calling for investigation into whether U.S. Special Forces are guilty of war crimes.
But most Americans have never heard of the film.
That's because not one corporate media outlet in the U.S. will touch it.
Before Democracy Now! premiered the film one year ago this week, it had never before been broadcast in this country.
"Afghan Massacre" is produced and directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran.
Doran has worked at the highest levels of television film production for more than two decades.
His films have been broadcast on virtually every major channel throughout the world.
On average, each of his films are seen in around 35 countries. Before establishing his independent television company, Jamie Doran spent over seven years at BBC Television.
The film was researched by award-winning journalist Najibullah Quraishi, who was beaten almost to death when he tried to obtain video evidence of US Special Forces' complicity in the massacre.
Two of the witnesses who testified in the film are now dead.
    The film outlining this massacre can be viewed on www.DemocracyNow.Org    
    Click here for direct link. Thursday, May 20th, 2004.    
 
Military of many nations.
 
Afghanistan is No One's War
"All Foreigners Are Our Enemy"
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
A summary of events leading to the invasion of Afghanistan is helpful.
Following 9/11, the Taleban government said it would extradite Osama bin Laden if the U.S. could produce evidence against him.
This is the approach taken by the courts of every Western country when extradition is requested.
The U.S. either could not or would not produce any evidence, yet it insisted the Taleban was behaving in bad faith and harboring criminals.
To this day, the public has not been given one genuine piece of evidence that ties bin Laden to 9/11. I'm not saying he's innocent, only that there was no proof at the time Bush used him as an excuse to invade Afghanistan.
Bin Laden certainly did not like the United States, but was he in any way responsible for a great crime?
How would his apparent happiness with events distinguish him from the group of Israeli spies in the New York area who were photographed, reported to police, and arrested (later being quietly deported) after dancing and shouting atop a truck as the World Trade Center billowed into flames?
To this day, the FBI wanted-notice for bin Laden does not mention 9/11.
I am sure that with a real campaign of pressure — diplomatic, legal, and economic — America could have secured bin Laden's extradition.
Bush's government didn't really try.
Invasion was an attractive option for many reasons.
These include satisfying the bellowing, belly-over-the-belt types that are Bush's natural constituency.
Doing something for Bush's missing leadership credentials.
Gaining new influence over a nuclear and uncooperative Pakistan.
Bilding a long-planned trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
And, importantly, preparing the way for an invasion of Iraq, something discussed and advocated for years before in Bush's Neo-con crowd.
Afghanistan is an ancient, backward civilization with an average life expectancy of 45 years.
Those who really know a lot about the country tended to say from the beginning that it was unrealistic for the U.S. to expect to make meaningful change there.
This interpretation agrees with generally accepted principles of economic development, in particular the principle that social and political changes only come gradually with steady economic growth.
One is tempted to say that the U.S. could have brought more genuine, positive change in Afghanistan and Iraq by dropping planeloads of dollar bills rather than bombs.
KILL
Although American military destruction in Afghanistan appears to have been less than in Iraq, this largely reflects the fact that there was little infrastructure in Afghanistan to start with, especially when compared with what existed in Iraq, once the Arab world's most advanced country.
Still, relative terms are what count here, and destruction in Afghanistan was considerable.
Now that the financial costs of the two wars and the instability and risk of the occupations have proved much greater than anticipated, Bush is not able to execute even rushed, poorly-made plans for reconstruction.
This is not a formula for long-term success even if you are a Neo-con visionary.
Making change there — beyond getting rid of bin Laden and the boys and removing the Taleban government — was never the American purpose, although it features heavily in all propaganda supporting the invasion as though it were a central purpose.
Canada's Conservative government today plays a cover version of the same tired song, hyping a military mission supporting American withdrawal from its fiasco as a noble nation-building project.
Canada's Prime Minister Harper whom Bush affectionately now calls "Steve" — tries to distort the simple freakish fact that 30 Canadians died in the World Trade Center into a grandiose argument for spending billions on a delusional War on Terror.
More Canadians than that die every month in traffic accidents on roads in the United States.
The U.S.-placed government in Kabul has a sensible and reasonable man as President, however he has almost no power, nor is there the prospect of his gaining any.
The U.S. would have to re-conquer the country — a huge, ugly, and perhaps impossible job against the warlords who helped them the first time — if it really wanted to change things.
The warlords who made a cheap American victory possible are the very reason the President can have no real power over the country, a vicious cycle if there ever was one.
But it is a misnomer to refer to an American victory, even a cheap one.
In ancient lands, things, including guerrilla wars, move at a pace not understood by those blackberrying around Washington making presentations from notebook computers.
Dispersing the Taleban so that the Northern Alliance could rule for a while is hardly victory.
America and its allies now are trapped in an impossible situation.
Other than wishing all opposition somehow would disappear, it is not even clear now what would constitute victory.
British commanders have told Blair recently that hostile activity in the area of the country they occupy has so increased that they cannot succeed without more troops and equipment.
That comes as very unwelcome news to Blair whose popularity in Britain is even lower than Bush's in America.
More troops, more coffins, more money.
Afghanistan and the Taleban
Jason Burke, a journalist with considerable knowledge of Afghanistan, wrote the following as part of a column in The Observer.
It offers, in an off-hand, matter-of-fact way several realities of Afghanistan and the Taleban generally not appreciated in North America:
Walk out of the gates, past the bored British soldiers in their guardhouse, past the Afghan troops on the outer wall, past razor wire and take the dusty path through the ramshackle cemetery.
Go past a new, whitewashed villa built for a local 'businessman' and on through the labyrinth of narrow alleys and traditional mud-walled homes and then turn left through a passage way and there you will find the scruffy bazaar of Lashkar Gah and the Taliban.
Two men, both bearded and wearing the trademark thick-coiled black turban, were sitting in the shade behind a friend's workshop.
They had agreed to talk to The Observer.
'I am proud to be a Talib,' said Fazl Rahman, 40.
'Why should I deny it?'
Why should I be afraid?'
'The foreigners are here for their own reasons,' said his younger comrade.
'If they were here to help us, everyone would be living better.'
'But look.'
He pointed to the dirt street outside, the shacks, the sagging electricity cables, the thin trees that provide scant protection from the heat of the early afternoon sun and then waved his hand towards the camp a few hundred metres away, the longest-established British base in Helmand province.
'All foreigners are our enemy,' he says.
'You are a journalist, so we don't harm you.'
'But if you were a soldier we would kill you.'
'Afghanistan is the castle of Islam and the foreigners are destroying our religion.'
The Taleban, in other words, are easily found even near a British military base.
They include the most ordinary-looking men.
The American effort at building-up the country, if it ever was serious, is a failure.
Burke's report suggests the Taleban cause strongly appeals to feelings against foreign occupation and in defense of religion.
What Americans do not understand is that the Taleban is not a fixed organization but a fluid alliance of interests.
The fierce mountain men of Afghanistan move back and forth between one alliance and another, depending on changing needs and advantages.
The sad state of American achievement was demonstrated by recent bragging headlines about one old, crippled warrior chief changing sides, leaving the Taleban.
Afghanistan is the land of ferocious (male) libertarianism if ever there was one, something you might think Americans, with all their rhetoric about freedom to bear arms against tyranny, would understand.
How can anyone influence the new explosion of drugs from Afghanistan?
The economy is a shambles, and poor farmers can only make a living with poppies.
Any aggressive effort to end the crop simply creates new opposition to the existing government.
Anyway, there is no effective central government to undertake this task.
Even in Kabul the government's authority remains weak.
The government's allies, the warlords, profit from poppies.
The technology and know-how of guerrilla fighting steadily improves in Afghanistan.
Of course, it has always been so with guerrilla operations, the IRA, for example, having increased the deadliness of its efforts dramatically over the years.
Iraq's huge guerrilla movement is becoming adept at creating new devices and tactics, exporting them to Afghanistan, and an angry Iran is there to offer lots of help and encouragement.
The U.S. knows this.
That's why it won't stay for a great deal longer in Afghanistan.
Even in Iraq, the American commander has referred already to plans for some withdrawal of troops despite being in the midst of murderous storm.
Foreign occupations of people
There is no reason to feel hopeful or idealistic about anyone's role in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan and Iraq are neither wars in the traditional sense nor humanitarian projects.
They are foreign occupations of people who do not want to occupied.
The idea that you can successfully occupy a hostile land into peace remains a delusion of consultants on big expense accounts in Washington.
Just ask Israel nearly four decades after the Six Day War.
 UK attacks Afghanistan
       Film outlining massacre of Afghanistans can be viewed on      www.DemocracyNow.Org      
       Click here.    Archive date:    Thursday, May 20th, 2004.      
Afghanistan Part I
       Afghanisan — Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy       
       Photos of Afghanistan people being killed and injured by NATO     
Afghanistan US military abuse of tribal people. 'After that I was so humiliated I couldn't see for my pain' What I find is that the US Marines act with impunity. They are conducting cordon and search operations designed to humiliate and terrorise the local community into compliance. This is a rare and damning insight into what US forces are doing in that other “war on terror.” Away from the eyes of the media, humiliation and brutalisation tactics similar to those used at Abu Ghraib are practiced here with impunity. This documentary on Afghaistan by Carmela Baranowska that won the Walkley Award is a unique and unprecedented look at the sharp edge of the war on terror in one of the most remote and inaccessible places on earth.
Winner of the Walkley Award   Australian filmmaker   Carmela Baranowska.
What I find is that the US Marines act with impunity.  They are conducting cordon and search operations designed to humiliate and terrorise the local community into compliance.
This is a rare and damning insight into what US forces are doing in that other “war on terror.”
Away from the eyes of the media, humiliation and brutalisation tactics similar to those used at Abu Ghraib are practiced here with impunity.
This documentary is a unique and unprecedented look at the sharp edge of the war on terror in one of the most remote and inaccessible places on earth.
       This movie is worth watching      
       http://www.archive.org/details/Taliban      
       Film outlining Afghanistan massacre can be viewed on      www.DemocracyNow.Org      
       Click here.    Archive date:    Thursday, May 20th, 2004.      
       Index on Afghanistan 2007:       
      Dead in Afghanistan: May 2007       
       Index on Afghanistan 2006:       
      indexresearch.blogspot.com/       
       Practice of Torture by the American Army Widespread in Afghanistan       
      Russian troops who converted to Islam       
       Afghan boy at Guantanamo prison       
       —  Pay me, I was not a criminal      
      Russian troops who converted to Islam       
       More on Afghanistan      
 
       We are change      
            9/11 lies have sustained the ruling terrorism-threat paradigm          
       The “why” is obvious: To justify an unjust war to serve corporate interests and greed       
       9.11 Truth New York City      
      Decades long history of political disruption the US has been responsible for          
           9/11 is part of a long series of criminal, imperialist conquests          
           Another major highlight was surprise appearance of Cynthia McKinney       
 
       Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth      
            A solid convincing case which architects & engineers will readily see: that the 3 WTC high-rise buildings were destroyed by both classic and novel forms of controlled demolition          
       These buildings were professionally demolished with explosives       
  Protests around world every 11th of month
Danish scientist Niels Harrit on nano-thermite in the WTC dust. Niels Harrit, you and eight other researchers conclude in this article that it was nano-thermite that caused these buildings to collapse. We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic. The carbon content of the red material indicates that an organic substance is present. This would be expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures upon ignition and thus make them explosive. Photo: agenda911.dk
Danish scientist Niels Harrit on nano-thermite in the WTC dust
ITALIAN SAYS 9-11 SOLVED
It’s common knowledge, he reveals
CIA — Mossad behind terror attacks
By the Staff of American Free Press
Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, who revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, has told Italy’s oldest and most widely read newspaper that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad, and that this was common knowledge among global intelligence agencies.
In what translates awkwardly into English, Cossiga told the newspaper Corriere della Sera:
“All the [intelligence services] of America and Europe… know well that the disastrous attack has been planned and realized from the Mossad, with the aid of the Zionist world in order to put under accusation the Arabic countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part … in Iraq [and] Afghanistan.”
Cossiga was elected president of the Italian Senate in July 1983 before winning a landslide election to become president of the country in 1985, and he remained until 1992.
Cossiga’s tendency to be outspoken upset the Italian political establishment, and he was forced to resign after revealing the existence of, and his part in setting up, Operation Gladio.
This was a rogue intelligence network under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 1960s, 1970s and ’80s.
Gladio’s specialty was to carry out what they termed 'false flag' operations — terror attacks that were blamed on their domestic and geopolitical opposition.
In March 2001, Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony:
“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game.
The reason was quite simple: to force … the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”
Cossiga first expressed his doubts about 9-11 in 2001, and is quoted by 9-11 researcher Webster Tarpley saying:
“The mastermind of the attack must have been a sophisticated mind, provided with ample means not only to recruit fanatic kamikazes, but also highly specialized personnel.
I add one thing: it could not be accomplished without infiltrations in the radar and flight security personnel.”
Coming from a widely respected former head of state, Cossiga’s assertion that the 9-11 attacks were an inside job and that this is common knowledge among global intelligence agencies is illuminating.
It is one more eye-opening confirmation that has not been mentioned by America’s propaganda machine in print or on TV.
Nevertheless, because of his experience and status in the world, Cossiga cannot be discounted as a crackpot.
Free to redistribute as long as credit given to American Free Press
We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic. The carbon content of the red material indicates that an organic substance is present. This would be expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures upon ignition and thus make them explosive. Photo: Bentham-Open.org
Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe
Photo: Bentham-Open.org
Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe
We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center.
One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later.
The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).
The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.
The carbon content of the red material indicates that an organic substance is present.
This would be expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures upon ignition and thus make them explosive.
       Told for the first time — the story of Mossad's advance 'knowledge' about the 9-11 attack and how the US Army reported that Mossad "has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."       
       Suppressed Details Of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly Into The Cia's Highest Ranks
In the hours following the World Trade Center attack, millions of American Jews were shocked and deeply hurt at accusations spreading around the world like wildfire that Israel had been behind the attack, and had even warned thousands of Jews working in the Twin Towers not to go to work that morning.       
       It is a fair question to ask if Israeli intelligence might have known in advance and, further, if Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) might have had a hand in advancing the act to deflect criticism against Israeli actions in Palestine.       
       The secret story of Mossad and the World Trade Center attack      
       The Odigo Warning: Israeli employees get e-mail warnings of 9-11     
       SEC Secret Probe Of Stock Dealings Before 9/11    
       Truth Action LA Branch      
            We are in the midst of a mass awakening          
       9/11 is the foundational myth upon which the entire agenda has been triggered for our generation       
 
       Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice      
            High Velocity Bursts of Debris From Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers           
       Why Did the World’s Most Advanced Electronics Warfare Plane Circle Over The White House on 9/11?        
Your life, your children's lives —
Will you live or die?
Decided by small group of elite.
Pure evil
It doesn't get any clearer than this
 
Published on Friday, March 2, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times
US to Develop New Hydrogen Bomb
by Ralph Vartabedian
The Energy Department will announce today a contract to develop the nation's first new hydrogen bomb in two decades, involving a collaboration between three national weapons laboratories, The Times has learned.
The new bomb will include design features from all three labs, though Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area appears to have taken the lead position in the project. The Los Alamos and Sandia labs in New Mexico will also be part of the project.
       Hiroshima, Nagasaki      
       — George Weller report      
Why are the West's elites trying to start a nuclear war?
Because you pay for it
BBC — Thursday, 6 September 2007
UK jets 'chase Russian bombers'
UK MoD image of Tupolev-95 Bear bomber An MoD photo shows RAF Typhoon shadowing a Russian Bear-H
Norway says Russia has increased military flights in the Arctic
The UK's Royal Air Force has launched fighter jets to intercept eight Russian military planes flying in airspace patrolled by Nato, UK officials say.
Four RAF F3 Tornado aircraft were scrambled in response to the Russian action, the UK's defence ministry said.
The Russian planes - said to be long-range bombers - had earlier been followed by Norwegian F16 jets.
Russia recently revived a Cold War-era practice of flying bombers on long-range patrols.
A Norwegian officer, Lt Col John Inge Oegland, told the BBC the Russian Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bombers flew in international airspace from the Barents Sea to the Atlantic, before turning back.
Two Norwegian F-16s shadowed them on Thursday morning and another two went up later, he said.
There have been several similar incidents in recent months, Lt-Col Oegland added.
"Norway is following the increased Russian activity in the far north with interest," he told the BBC News website.
He said the Russian flights were not causing alarm in Norway.   "Our systems are adequate," he said, when asked whether Norway was bolstering its security in the area.
If you never see another movie, better watch this: the old original version still allowed on Google video
For Google video version — click here — it will state this version is old!
This version is not censored — it is infinitely better then the newer censored version
To download this version and keep
http://keepvid.com
copy and paste
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331
P.S. The new Zeitgeist movie is loaded with political rhetoric
It cannot be more opposite of the sense of Zeitgeist — a German word meaning 'Of the time'
AND don't forget this:
Pandora's Black Box Chapter Two — click here
Canada, US, Western rogue governments — War crimes continue
Child killed by Western rogue governments, by Canada, US, UK, Western European nations that have troops in Afghanistan propping up a US imposed puppet government Photo: www.uruknet.info
Child killed by Western rogue governments
by Canada
US
UK
by all Western European nations that have troops in Afghanistan propping up a US imposed puppet government
  uruknet.info
  اوروكنت.إنفو
    informazione dall'iraq occupato
information from occupied iraq
أخبار منالعراق المحتلة
Afghanistan hit by record number of bombs
Bruce Rolfsen, Air Force Times
July 19, 2008
Air Force and allied warplanes are dropping a record number of bombs on Afghanistan targets.
For the first half of 2008, aircraft dropped 1,853 bombs — more than they released during all of 2006 and more than half of 2007’s total — 3,572 bombs.
Afghanistan Part I
       Afghanisan — Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy       
       Photos of Afghanistan people being killed and injured by NATO     
     Cluster bombs Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon     
      US new generation of landmines called Spider      
Iraq
Almost a million dead
4 million displaced, scattered into other countries
Untold injured
Horror of US UK invasion continuing
Sadriya market, Baghdad, Iraq. Unknown if any of the explosions were paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations. Photo: BBC/AFP
Sadriya market, Baghdad, Iraq.
Unknown if any of the explosions were paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.
       Basra, Fallujah, Baghdad, Mosul...      
       US created Iraq — devastated cities       
       They are such liars     
Alex Jones End Game. Photo: prisonplanet.tv
Alex Jones End Game. Photo: prisonplanet.tv
Alex Jones End Game. Photo: prisonplanet.tv
Alex Jones End Game. Photo: prisonplanet.tv
Click on image to help Alex and for high quality video
EndGame — Alex Jones, you have done the world a great favor
It has taken me until now to view this great masterpiece that chronicles the planet's true history
But I am glad for this delay as my awareness of reality, and the events that seemingly must unfold to educate humankind, have come from sentience off planet — now with this movie the circles merge
A movie par excellence, it will likely be considered the most significant in the downfall of the rich and powerful who control the world and rising politicians already in their pocket — the imprisonment of all those who seek to bring forth this horror, this enslavement of 'New World Order'
Kewe
Alex Jones End Game. Photo: prisonplanet.tv
The aim of TheWE.cc is to make us all aware that the most murderous violence and terror by far, committed by anyone, is done by The West
Violence and terror is the footprint and modus operandi of Western Government and the shadow power that operates from behind these 'elected officials'
This film helps us to focus on that reality
Indonesia's 9/11 — Exposing US government operations in the Bali Bombing
Kewe
Questioning War, Organizing Resistance
— Carol Brouillet
Glen Clancy, from Victoria, Australia, created "Fool Me Twice" described as 'A documentary about the Australian government's lies about the East Timor massacres, the cover-up of the Bali Bombings and subsequent anti-terror laws.'
The 25 year old, Clancy is Australia's Dylan Avery (of Loose Change fame).
The work was originally created to be viewed online, but Clancy is working on improving the resolution for larger screen and theatrical viewing.
Glen wrote (at the Fool Me Twice Blog on December 4, 2008)
To all,
After discovering 911 was an inside job, through such movies as Loose Change, Terrorstorm and Zeitgeist, I decided to investigate the Bali bombings.   The evidence was overwhelming.   There had been a cover-up.
As shocking as the truth may be, please keep an open mind while viewing this documentary.   FOOL ME TWICE is 100% sourced.   Please see reference list below.   I tried to produce a documentary as true to the genre as possible, limiting opinion and simply documenting the facts.
I believe that 911 Truth is one of the most important movements of our time and exposing the cover-up of the 2002 Bali bombings can help destroy the "911/War on terror/Al-CIAda" myth.
Please help spread this information.
Kind regards,
Glen
To listen to the March 10, 2008 interview of Glen Clancy by Carol Brouillet broadcast on:
   We The People Radio Network
— Right Click Here    (Save Target As, Link As, File)      MP3 1 hour
Americans are politically paralyzed by both cognitive dissonance and by what psychologists call “learned helplessness,” the result of years of having one outrage after another foisted upon them, without there ever being any real accountability.
So, as many truthers have discovered, the most common reactions of average Americans, when presented with the facts of 9/11, are either, “My government would never do that,” or, “Okay . . . but what can anybody do about it?”
Firefighters for 9/11 Truth
Erik Lawyer is the founding member of  FirefightersFor911Truth.org.
He is currently a full time firefighter, assigned to 3 Truck in the City of Seattle for the last 12 years.
Before that he was with the City of Sacramento as a Firefighter Paramedic.
He first began working in Emergency Services in 1988 in the Sacramento area with a 911 private paramedic ambulance company.
He has 20 years experience in Emergency Services.
He earned my pilot's license in 1987, and have been recreationally flying since.
He graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Mathematics from the University of California at Davis in 1993, with 2 years of elective Engineering courses, and a Minor in Psychology.
Erik wrote a moving account of his own shift in consciousness regarding 9/11 which prompted him to start Fire Fighters For 9/11 Truth entitled:   MAYDAY...MAYDAY...MAYDAY.
Here's an excerpt:
I, like most Americans, remember exactly where I was when I saw the attacks and had the overwhelming urge to take action.
I was shocked, outraged, scared and confused.
I called my Battalion Chief and asked if Seattle would be sending any teams to help.
I was a member of the MMST, and figured we would be needed and I wanted to know where to report.
Due to the nature of the incident we were not called up, and instead USAR teams, including Seattle's, were sent.
I first visited Ground Zero in October of 2001 with several firefighters from Seattle.
We went to pay our respect and show support.
We raised money for our brother firehouses and attended the funerals of our fallen Brothers.
I was deeply moved and humbled by the community support, the sheer enormity of the tragedy along with the courage and compassion of the FDNY "Brotherhood."
I vividly remember the anger, the intense desire for vengeance,the feelings of helplessness
Even though I listened to their stories for days, I cannot even begin to imagine the pain and tragedy they suffered on that day and the years to come.
I vividly remember the anger I felt, the intense desire for vengeance, and the feelings of helplessness.
I was relieved when the government identified the terrorists and satisfied that we were going to have a swift deliverance of "justice."
I've been a conservative my entire life; a registered Republican since I could vote.
I am a self proclaimed Patriot with George Washington as one of my all time heroes.
So when conspiracy theories quickly surfaced, and "Liberals" cried foul on the erosion of civil liberties, I chalked it up to their political beliefs and bitterness towards the Republican President.
I read many debunking articles — including Popular Mechanics — and watched many debunking videos including, Farenhype 9/11.
I was convinced that these "Liberals" were misinformed and were grasping at straws to discredit the "official" story.
Don't confuse me with the facts, I have my mind made up!
Like most people with strong opinions, instead of looking at all the facts, I was specifically looking for anything that supported my own beliefs.
As soon as I discovered any inaccuracy in a conspiracy claim, I wrote it off.
My father, a big city cop and Korean War veteran, loved to say, "don't confuse me with the facts, I have my mind made up!"
Well, I had my mind made up.
I told conspiracy theorists like my own Truck Officer, Lt. Earl Emerson, that they were insane if they thought anyone other than the terrorists did this.
Bin Laden confession tapes — how much clearer did they need it
Heck, we have ID cards, security camera videos, Bin Laden confession tapes — how much clearer did they need it?
The years went on and I was satisfied in my beliefs.
I even believed these "Wackos" that doubted the "official" story were distracting our country from focusing on the real threat of terrorism...
Fast forward to March of 2008.
A great friend of mine with a Business degree from West Point, as conservative and non-conspiratorial as they get, came over one night to talk about what he saw happening in the economy.
Began researching such things as economies, who is in control of currencies
He provided some disconcerting evidence that we as a nation are at risk of entering into another depression; he pointed out historical parallels where other countries, such as Germany, suffered economic collapse.
THAT was my eye opener.
I became obsessed researching things such as economies, who is in control of currencies, what causes depressions, who profits during war, etc.
So many things kept pointing to 9/11.
Another one of my dad's favorite quotes was, "believe half of what you see and none of what you hear."
So, I looked at both sides and quickly noticed a pattern.
On one side, the general media ignores some of the most compelling evidence that contradicts the "official" story...
When I voiced my new opinion and concerns most of my friends listened.
Shocked that a staunch Conservative could have such a major shift
I think because they were shocked that a staunch Conservative could have such a major shift, or because they thought I had lost my mind and wanted to diagnose the cause.
Curiously, some became angry at my new questions and actually thought I was supporting Terrorists with my concerns.
Being a part of that same mindset myself only a few weeks ago, and then having a major shift in consciousness, really shook me to the core.
What has happened to our collective consciousness that we believe anyone who doubts the "official" story or what the government tells us is an enemy?
What has happened to us — are we not founded on Freedom of Speech and taught to check our Government?
Anyone who asks for the Truth is labeled a "Wacko" or "Terrorist Sympathizer?"
What has happened to us?
Are we not founded on Freedom of Speech and taught to check our Government?...
To be honest, I was asleep at the wheel, and relied on what I was being told by mainstream media.
The same media whose parent corporations, are some of the largest suppliers of weapons in this war.
Before this "awakening" I had no idea the extent of our civil liberties that had been eroded in the name of Terrorism.
I had never really wrapped my brain around what legalized torture means.
I had always claimed America was noble.
Just look at how we treated POW's during WWII and Vietnam compared to our enemies.
[Ever check out the real story of John McCain as a POW, keep investigating! — TheWE.cc]
That separated us.
We were setting the example of Human Rights to the rest of the world.
[Check out the real facts of US instigations in Central and South America! — TheWE.cc]
Sure, you'll always have individuals that will take things too far, but Government sponsored torture?
[Let's mention CIA activity across the planet since its inception, including inside the US, and other black budget US government special operations agencies! — TheWE.cc]
What has happened to our country?
What kind of example are we setting for our children, and the world?
You would be interested to learn how many of our own rights have been stripped away recently.
Look up the Military Commissions Act of 2006, John Warner Defense Authorization Act, Homegrown Terrorism Act, Presidential Directive 51.
Amazing the rights we have all lost
It is amazing the rights we have all lost in the past couple of years and very little is covered by the U.S. media.
After discovering this, I applied the "common sense" test that my Grandfather always said wasn't so common.
Why would a government so aggressively suppress truth and blatantly destroy evidence if there was nothing to hide?
Why has every testimony from sworn government and military officials that points to "prior knowledge" been stricken from the 9/11 Commission Report?
How did paper business cards, cloth bandanas, and plastic ID's that implicate the terrorists survive so neatly through jet fueled fireballs hot enough to destroy titanium and steel?
I've seen bodies burned beyond recognition, yet I have never found one that was wearing unburned clothing.
These questions alone are enough to make me risk everything for a real investigation and accounting...
When I truly realized the enormity of the effect 9/11 has had on our Rights, our Economy, our Beliefs, our Fears, our Intolerances and our Government — I felt fear, then anger, then the need to take action.
Bill Chickering said it best:
“Anger is a very appropriate and necessary response to an injustice.
“But stand back now; the truth, clearly spoken, is always your best weapon.
“Calmly spoken, it can burn a hole through the hardest heart.”
When I realized the extent of the force and attitudes working to silence those who peacefully ask questions, demand answers, and seek truth, it became clear to me that our Country is in serious trouble and I must now stand alongside those Patriots who seek Truth and Constitutional Restoration.
Richard Gage, AIA is the founding member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth   ae911Truth.org.
He has been a practicing Architect for 20 years and has worked on most types of building construction including numerous fire-proofed steel-framed buildings.
He is employed with a San Francisco Bay Area architecture firm and has most recently performed Construction Administration services for a new $120M High School campus including a $10M steel-framed Gymnasium.
Currently he is working on the Design Development for a very large mixed use urban project with 1.2M sq.ft. of retail and 320K sq.ft. of mid-rise office space — altogether about 1,200 tons of steel framing.
He has been one of the most tireless speakers on the issue of 9/11 truth, and more specifically on challenging the official narrative of the disintegration of the 3 major skyscrapers in the World Trade Center complex that took place on September 11th.
He has been lecturing widely across the US and in Canada.
Those who see his presentation rarely walk away still thinking that fires alone could have brought down the buildings.
When NIST came out with a report recently that fires were responsible for the destruction of WTC7, Richard and Architects and Engineers were quick to challenge that report.
See NY Times quotes Richard Gage on WTC7 "collapse"
Aside from the NYT's reporter and a media request from Bulgaria, the press has tried to ignore the serious criticisms that Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has raised about their reports.
Richard Gage gives an insightful interview on major points that scientifically do not agree with the official story of 9/11.
Firefighters for 9-11 truth Image: firefightersfor911truth.org/Click logo for Firefighters for 9-11 truth
Click logo for architects & engineers for 9/11 truthArchitects & Engineers for 9/11 truth Image: www.ae911truth.org/
For Film: Elephant in the Room
— Click Here
Elephant in the Room is a documentary following British filmmaker Dean Puckett through his journey into the 9/11 Truth Movement: a global movement of 'conspiracy theorists' who believe that the official explanation about what happened on 9/11 is totally or partially inaccurate.
The filmmakers travel from middle England, across Europe and to New York for the six year anniversary of the attacks, where the film takes one final twist as we are introduced to the 9/11 first responders who are suffering from various grave health difficulties due to the toxic dust that they breathed in trying to help their country during the weeks after this tragic event.
Told with a personal hands on approach that avoids advancing any one position, the film asks the question: are these crazy conspiracy theorists?
Or is 9/11 Truth a credible political movement?
9/11
By all accounts, the unprecedented events of September 11th, 2001 changed the way our country functions, and in turn, the world.
It is therefore critical that conscientious Americans, as well as people around the globe, understand these events in detail.
Unfortunately the official reports, including The 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST WTC Report, written by those working under the direction of the Bush Administration, have been proven to be elaborate cover-ups.
 Film: 9/11 Revisited
September 11th Revisited is perhaps the most riveting film ever made about the destruction of the World Trade Center.
This is a powerful documentary which features eyewitness accounts and archived news footage that was shot on September 11, 2001 but never replayed on television.
Featuring interviews with eyewitnesses & firefighters, along with expert analysis by Professor Steven E. Jones, Professor David Ray Griffin, MIT Engineer Jeffrey King, and Professor James H. Fetzer.
This film provides stunning evidence that explosives were used in the complete demolition of the WTC Twin Towers and WTC Building 7.
For Film: 9/11 Revisited
— Click Here
Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
An excellent documentary about the families of the victims of 9/11 and their fight to uncover and expose the truth about what happened that day.
For Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
— Click Here
Film: 9/11 Mysteries
90 minutes of pure demolition evidence and analysis, laced with staggering witness testimonials.
Moving from “the myth” through “the analysis” and into “the players,” careful deconstruction of the official story set right alongside clean, clear science.
The 9/11 picture is not one of politics or nationalism or loyalty, but one of strict and simple physics.   How do you get a 10-second 110-story pancake collapse?
'Oh!   You don't believe the 9-11 official version,' they say.
'You mean where they want you to accept the buildings were not blown up from below.
'Plane fuel!   Substance never burns higher then a gas stove!   That it caused the inner core steel to melt!
'Steel melting!
'Concrete vaporizing!
' 'No!   I don't believe that conspiracy theory.
'Cheney!   Bush!   Rudy Giuliani!   HA!  HA!
'Tower 7 that never had a plane hit — just came tumbling down!
'You believe that, eh!
'Ever think it had to be blown up because the plane scheduled to fly into it was off getting shot down.
'Thermite in Tower 7's walls, you see — incriminating evidence — impossible to get out without people watching!
Had to be blown up!
'Next you'll be saying Obama is not a Wall Street Illuminati banker stooge?
'Take your pick:   The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedians.
'Him who allows himself to be used.
'Oh!   I can't really blame you,   Television it turns minds to pulp.
'Turn off the television.   It's the only way.'
'Turn off the television?'
'Get rid of it really.   I mean what else is there to do!'
'Get rid of the television?'
'Don't forget all radio garbage is propaganda, even the songs.
'Then those five minute propaganda hits they send you every hour!
'The ones they refer to as News
'Get rid of all the propaganda from your brain, the only way to do it.'
'Stop being hooked on those Hollywood movies — even those that make you think they are making you think'
'All paid performers to make your brain dead.
'You turn the brainwashing off, you'll begin to become yourself.
'It really is the only way!'
'Oh!'
Kewe — TheWE.cc
Firefighters for 9-11 truth Image: firefightersfor911truth.org/Click logo for Firefighters for 9-11 truth
Click logo for architects & engineers for 9/11 truthArchitects & Engineers for 9/11 truth Image: www.ae911truth.org/
War on Democracy. Since 1945 the United States government US U.S. has attempted to overthrow 50 governments.
Poor Barrios - Urban areas in Spanish-speaking country War on Democracy. Since 1945 the United States government US U.S. has attempted to overthrow 50 governments.
War on Democracy. Since 1945 the United States government US U.S. has attempted to overthrow 50 governments.
Every missile has a home. Photo: Alaska Image Library
Every missile has a home
(No Mortgages to Worry About)
Image: Natasha Mayers
It's kind of a fun game
You see the aim of those inner forces who guide the Elite —
For them the real agenda is depopulation
To kill off you
your children
your grandchildren
It is to have fun watching our stupidity as we allow the destruction of our planet
     — but most haven't figured this out yet!
If we stop them with the nuclear and biological weapons
then it's the 400+ MPH, KPH wind
the increase in UVB, UVC, UVA rays due to loss of stratospheric ozone.
It's the climate!
It's the reduction and elimination of food coming from all levels of cunning
World Elite — tools and servants of Lucifer
The fall of Lucifer, Gustave Doré's illustration for Paradise Lost by John Milton. Photo: wikipedia.org/
The fall of Lucifer
Gustave Doré's illustration for Paradise Lost by John Milton
       The Dark Side Initiates — Click here      
       Dark path initiates depend on the denial      
       The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path      
       Agent Orange Dioxin — Vietnam      
       Cleft palate, Canoe footed, Clawed fingers continue in births    
       I didn't know what it was then, but it was white    
If you never see another movie, better watch this: the old original version still allowed on Google video
For Google video version — click here — it will state this version is old!
This version is not censored — it is infinitely better then the newer censored version
To download this version and keep
http://keepvid.com
copy and paste
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331
P.S. The new Zeitgeist movie is loaded with political rhetoric
It cannot be more opposite of the sense of Zeitgeist — a German word meaning 'Of the time'
AND don't forget this:
Pandora's Black Box Chapter Two — click here
US destroyed Fallujah as it tries to destroy the rest of Iraq
Published on Monday, July 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Sheldon Drobny
Justice O'Connor's decision in Bush v. Gore led to the current Bush administration's execution of war crimes and atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places in the Middle East that are as egregious as those committed by the Third Reich and other evil governments in human history.
The lesson is clear.
Those people who may be honorable and distinguished in their chosen profession should always make decisions based upon good rather than evil no matter where their nominal allegiances may rest.
Justice O'Connor was quoted to have said something to the affect that she abhorred the thought of Bush losing the 2000 election to Gore.
She was known to have wanted to retire after the 2000 election for same reason she is now retiring.
She wanted to spend more time with her sick husband.
Unfortunately, she tarnished her distinguished career with the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore by going along with the partisan majority of the Court to interfere with a democratic election that she and the majority feared would be lost in an honest recount.
She dishonored herself and the Supreme Court by succumbing to party allegiances and not The Constitution to which she swore to uphold.
And the constitutional argument she and the majority used to justify their decision was the Equal Protection Clause.
The Equal Protection Clause was the ultimate basis for the decision, but the majority essentially admitted (what was obvious in any event) that it was not basing its conclusion on any general view of what equal protection requires.
The decision in Bush v Gore was not dictated by the law in any sense—either the law found through research, or the law as reflected in the kind of intuitive sense that comes from immersion in the legal culture.
The Equal Protection clause is generally used in matters concerning civil rights.
The majority ignored their basic conservative views supporting federalism and states' rights in order to justify their decision.
History will haunt these justices down for their utter lack of justice and the hypocrisy associated with this decision.
Sheldon Drobny is Co-founder of Air America Radio.
       The Dark Side Initiates — Click here      
       Dark path initiates depend on the denial      
       The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path      
       Appointment of U.S. President by the U.S. Supreme Court      
       Hiroshima, Nagasaki      
       — Raw political clout exercised by U.S. Supreme Court    
Pelosi
The United States will stand with Israel now and forever.
Now and forever.
29 July 2007
Israel hails US military aid rise
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has confirmed that the United States is planning a significant increase in military and government aid to Israel.
The package would amount to more than US $30bn increase.
       The Dark Side Initiates — Click here      
       Dark path initiates depend on the denial      
       The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path      
Afghanistan Part I
       Afghanisan — Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy       
       Photos of Afghanistan people being killed and injured by NATO     
       Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying      
       — Lest we forget      
       Atrocities committed by Israel — graphic pictures      
       What CNN never shows you      
       Israel, chemical weapons and phosphorous bombs       
       New and unknown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces      
       Undetectable poison-needle gun for 'clean' assassinations       
       Suicide Bombing  Blair, Bush      

       Suicide Bombing is response to foreign occupation      

       Will stop once troops withdraw      
       Mental Health disorders effecting returning US troops       
       US and  War — Interview with George Galloway       
       Most religious people are on the same side as most progressive people        
        Depleted Uranium — its use in Afghanistan, Iraq, Balkans      
       Photos of Iraq children being born deformed    
      U.S. War Crimes — Falluja photos — Graphic Images      
      US used chemical and thermobaric weapons in Fallujah     
       Guantanamo Hunger Strikers being tortured         
       US Congress — too stupid or gullible, and have killed many.       
       I would suggest that any member of the US Congress who had voted       
       for it, should be barred from ever running for       
       any public office in America ever again!       
       Iraq?     Vietnam?     Palestine?     Lebanon?   —   US War Crimes       
      Some U.S. soldiers speak — Iraq Invasion       
        Siberia, Alaska        
        Dramatic permafrost melt — click here       
       US veteran Mothers against the war:       

       So anyway that filth-spewer and warmonger, George Bush       
       was speaking after the tragedy of the marines in Ohio...         
       Doris Colmes escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 — Patriot Act — Iraq photos      
      IRAN US Confrontation      
      Iraq — US missiles from the sky      
       World Tribunal       
       War Crimes — Illegality of Preventive Attack       
       Unilateral Use of Force       
       Globalization         
     "None of that spilling of secrets for crass political retribution       
       could have gone on without her knowledge and approval,       
       and thus complicity.      

     Little of it could have happened without her participation,       
      if not as a leaker herself,      
     at least with her direction and with her scripting."       

      Condoleezza Rice — Iraq — Rove       
       Simple Questions — Iraq June 2005 photos         
       Settlements — Trees — Jayyous — West Bank — Palestine        
      Flag draped U.S. coffins      
      US air strikes and bombings over Iraq — Fallujah and Sadr City photos       
      Fallujah photos — War — lunacy, bewilderment, panic, fear invading body, death       
      Auschwitz, a French village, and the bourgeoisie      
       The Politics of Anti-Semitism      
       99 US Senators, 350 US House members attend AIPAC May, 2005 meeting     
      How to End the War — Naomi Klein      
      The six children of Tal Afar      
      U.S. War Crimes — Falluja photos — Graphic Images      

      US used chemical and thermobaric weapons in Fallujah      
      George Galloway on the attack— interview on voting fraud — transcript of Senate hearing      
From the video 'Holes in Heaven' — Brooks Agnew, Earth Tornographer
In 1983 I did radio tornography with 30 watts looking for oil in the ground.
I found 26 oil wells over a nine state area.
100 hundred percent of the time was accurate, which is just 30 watts of power beaming straight into solid rock.
HAARP uses a billion watts beamed straight into the ionosphere for experiments.
Picture these strings on the piano as layers of the Earth, each one has its own frequency.
What we used to do is beam radio waves into the ground and it would vibrate any 'strings' that were present in the ground.
We might get a sound back like ___ and we would say, that's natural gas.
We might get a sound back like ____ and we'd say that's crude oil.
We were able to identify each frequency.
We accomplished this with just 30 watts of radio power.
If you do this with a billion watts the vibrations are so violent that the entire piano would shake.
In fact the whole house would shake.
In fact the vibrations could be so severe under ground they could even cause an earthquake.
Download or watch   HAARP Holes in Heaven
— Complete version available for mp4 download
Download or watch movie on HAARP — Advanced US Military research weapon on behaviour modification
weather change, ionesphere manipulation — click here
Download or watch audio of Dr. Nick Begich talking on HAARP
— The 2006 update to 'Angels Don't Play This HAARP'.
'Angels Still Don't Play This HAARP: Advances In Tesla Technology'.
Planet Earth Weapon by Rosalie Bertell
ozone, HAARP, chemtrails, space war — click here
HAARP/Chemtrails/Alien aircraft/Illuminati involvement
1 hour FreemanTV.com video — click here
(has 30 second lead in with blank screen and silence)
Angels Dont Play This HAARP weather manipulation
1 hour 36 minutes video — click here
(poor quality to watch but well worth listening)
Dr. Nick Begich, his book and his articles can be found here
       http://www.earthpulse.com/      
Article on Chemtrails — unusual cloud formations in the US.
      As Jews we march with the Palestinians and raise their flag!     

     His Majesty King Abdullah — The American Magazine     November 1947     

     Norman Finkelstein, Professor Marc Saperstein and Middle East Journal     
      US once great nation transformed into a neo fascist nightmare      
      U.S. voter fraud 2004      
      Inside Fallujah — A family speaks of the terror      
      Beslan, music and children      
      Yasser Arafat — I shall not look upon his like again      
      NASA scientist shows Bush wired in debate      
       The Dark Side Initiates — Click here      
       Dark path initiates depend on the denial      
       The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path      
       Civilian Death Toll in Iraq May Top 1 Million     
            —  ORB, a British polling agency, September 2007          
        U.S. destructive, psychotic fantasy: The War On Terror        
        Falluja    
        U.S. to Israel:        
        - An apocalypse of Evil being created        
        - 500 'bunker buster' bombs        
U.S. Bombing of Fallujah
— the Third World War continued: Chechnya, North Ossetia, Ingushetia
       The Negative Return Economy — a discourse on America’s black budget      
       Fascinating and lucrative    
       Black Budget?   What Black Budget?    
More atrocities - Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying
al-Sadr City
Iraq's real WMD crime - the effects of depleted uranium
World War Two soldiers did not kill Kill ratio Korea, Vietnam. Iraq.
Aid agencies compromised by US actions
      US soldiers sent to Iraq committing suicide      
      NSA coverup - Vietnam - Kerry      
The Iraq War - complete listing of articles, includes images
The House of Saud and Bush
       All with U.S. Money:       
       US and Israel War Crimes       
All with U.S. Money:

Israel agents stole identity of New Zealand cerebral palsy victim.

(IsraelNN.com July 15, 2004) The Foreign Ministry will take steps towards restoring relations with New Zealand. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark today announced she was implementing diplomatic sanctions after two Israelis were sentenced on charges of attempting to obtain illegal passports. Despite Israeli refusal to respond to the accusations, the two are labeled in the New Zealand media as Mossad agents acting on behalf of the Israeli intelligence community.

Foreign Ministry officials stated they will do everything possible to renew diplomatic ties, expressing sorrow over the "unfortunate incident".
Projected mortality rate of Sudan refugee starvation deaths — Darfur pictures
Suicide now top killer of Israeli soldiers
Atrocities files - graphic images
'Suicide bombings,' the angel said, 'and beheadings.'

'And the others that have all the power - they fly missiles in the sky.

They don't even look at the people they kill.'
       The real Ronald Reagan       
       — Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, South Africa        
Follow the torture trail...

Photos May 2004

        When you talk with God        
         were you also spending your time, money and energy, killing people?         
       Are they now alive or dead?       

Photos July 2004

US Debt

Photos June 2004

Lest we forget - Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying

More photos May 2004
 American military: Abu Gharib (Ghraib) prison photos, humiliation and torture
- London Daily Mirror article: non-sexually explicit pictures

Photos April 2004

The celebration of Jerusalem day, the US missiles that rained onto children in Gaza,
and, a gathering of top articles over the past nine months

Photos March 2004

The Iraq War - complete listing of articles, includes images

Photos February 2004

US missiles - US money - and Palestine

Photos January 2004

Ethnic cleansing in the Beduin desert

Photos December 2003

Shirin Ebadi Nobel Peace Prize winner 2003

Photos November 2003

Atrocities - graphic images...

Photos October 2003

Aljazeerah.info

Photos September 2003
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