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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'Afghanistan'
In Afghanistan, the US military has tried training sessions, embedded cultural advisers, recommended reading lists, and even a video game designed to school American troops in local custom. But 11 years into the war, NATO troops and Afghan soldiers are still beset by a da...
Sins of omission can be every bit as serious as sins of commission. The country’s failure to have a reckoning with the tragedy of Iraq is the outstanding case in point. President Barack Obama bears the main responsibility for that; many others have made their contributi...
There’s got to be some symbolism—if not irony–in the fact that just as the last of the 33,000 troops surged by Obama two years ago supposedly to pacify Afghanistan pulled out, the highest ...
Kabul.
On this International Day of Peace I am sitting in Kabul, Afghanistan with a handful of youth that want nothing but peaceful coexistence in their lives. This in some respects is like a dream because their entire lives have been surrounded by war, de...
The deceptive ways a loss in war is described can be contagious. Retreats are often regarded as odious, but sometimes necessary. These can either have the genius of the British spirit of tactical withdrawal, or a more laughable concept of an honourable peace. When t...
“You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go ‘according to plan.’ Even if the plan is horrifying!”
– The Joker
Sounding very much like his predecessor, George W. Bush, President Obama enga...
“We are at War. Somebody is Going to Pay.”
– George W. Bush, Sept 11th, 2001.
Kabul.
Eleven years later, we are still at war. Bullets, mortars and drones are still extracting payment. Thousands, t...
As a correspondent in Washington 20 years ago, I received occasional calls from local television stations on the anniversary of the burning of the White House by a British force in August 1814. The reason they wanted a comment was because the raid was jointly led by my di...
Power is self-sufficient, a replete possession, and must be maintained by whatever agency is required.
—Wole Soyinka, Climate of Fear [1]...
“Stop fighting,” suggests Farzana, a brave 22 year old Afghan stage actress.
Significantly, her statement is in sharp contrast to what seems to be the democratic world’s unquestioned modus operandi of today, exemplified by U.S. Secretary of State ...
Three U.S. soldiers have been shot dead by an Afghan worker on a military base in southern Afghanistan in a deadly 24 hours for NATO-led forces in the country during which six soldiers died in rogue attacks.
“Let me clearly say that those two incident...
The disclosure of President Barack Obama’s decision to provide secret American aid to Syria’s rebel forces is a game changer. The presidential order, known as an “intelligence finding” in the world of espionage, authorizes the CIA to support armed groups fighting...
Two days ago, we spent three anxious hours in an outer waiting area of the “Non-Immigrant Visa” section of the U.S. consulate here in Kabul, Afghanistan, waiting for our young friends Ali and Abdulhai to return from a sojourn through the inner offices where they were ...
Northern Mali promises to be the graveyard of scores of innocent people if African countries don’t collectively challenge Western influence in the region.
Mali is fast becoming the Afghanistan of Africa.
The tragic reality is that Mali – a large ...
Kabul.
For the Afghan Peace Volunteers, living in a working class area of Kabul’s “Karte Seh” district, daily problem-solving requires a triage process.
Last week, upon arrival, I looked at the sagging ceilings over the kitchen, living room an...
Perhaps the most humiliating legacy of our nation-building venture in Afghanistan is the stubborn narco-state flourishing under our noses. The opium crop in Afghanistan has doubled since US forces deposed the Taliban, and the drug trade threatens to dominate the country a...
Recent wars from Libya to Afghanistan and Pakistan in a region of vast natural wealth and strategic importance highlight a phenomenon as old as humanity. Iraq and Libya had oil, but their leaders were longtime foes of the United States, now the world’s lone hegemon. Sad...
Two years after he was sacked by President Obama as the top commander in Afghanistan for suggesting to Rolling Stone magazine that the real enemy were ”the wimps in the White House”, General Stanley A McChrystal has recycled a perennial chestnut: Brin...
Islamabad.
On November 26, 2011 in a brazen incident NATO attacked the Salala post on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed. Pakistanis were shocked at the incident since it was unprovoked. The Government of Pakistan re...
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
– T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
As Afghans stand up, they will not stand alone.
– Barack Obama, May 21, 2012
The war in Af...
Americans may feel more distant from war than at any time since World War II began. Certainly, a smaller percentage of us – ...
“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.”
– André Gide
Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai said recently that he had had an argument with...
In April of 2003, I returned from Iraq after having lived there during the U.S. Shock and Awe bombing and the initial weeks of the invasion. Before the bombing I had traveled to Iraq about two dozen times and had helped organize 70 trips to Iraq, aiming to cast light on...
“PTSD is going to color everything you write,” came the warning from a stepmother of a Marine, a woman who keeps track of such things. That was in 2005, when post-traumatic stress disorder, a.k.a. PTSD, wasn’t getting much attention, but soon it was pr...
In a New York Times (NYT) opinion piece, Jimmy Carter opens with: “The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.”
I read these words and focus on the present tense of “is”. And I think: When was this country e...