Soviet ‘Lessons Learned’ on Road War in Afghanistan
Moon of Alabama
A study on how the Soviets lost the road war in Afghanistan can help us to assess the chances of the ‘western’ occupation in Afghanistan. 30 is still a magic number around the Hindu Kush: This just in from Reuters: International troops called in the air strike in which 30 Taliban fighters were killed after the militants attacked a convoy of foreign troops and Afghan forces in the Sarobi district of Paktika province near the border with Pakistan on Tuesday, the deputy provincial governor said. If this did not happen directly within a village the bombing may have indeed, for a change, killed some combatants. But I can guarantee that the number 30 was picked from hot air. It is interesting that the attack aimed a convoy. It was thereby part of the earlier discussed road war that will eventually suffocate the occupation. The foreign troops in Afghanistan live off fuel that has to be brought into the country. The fuel transports increasingly need more protection and escorts. More escorts will require more fuel. Which requires more fuel convoys … Guess how that spiral will end. Here is an interesting U.S. military report written in 1995 about Convoy Escort in Guerrilla Country: The Soviet Experience…

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Scheme to give Israelis “wet jobs” in construction in place of Palestinians
IRIN News
If the Israeli Ministry of Finance manages to push through some reforms as part of the proposed 2009 budget, there may soon be almost no Palestinian workers in Israel’s construction sector. “We are supporting a plan where the idea is to increase the number of Israelis in the workforce,” an official at the Ministry of Finance told IRIN on condition of anonymity. “We want to create a situation where there is no interest in hiring Palestinian workers instead of Israeli ones,” he added. According to initial estimates – based on Israeli government statistics and non-governmental organisation (NGO) data – some 15,000 Palestinian workers in the sector would be at risk of losing their jobs…

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Israeli PR fails the “decent, honest and truthful” test
Stuart Littlewood
When Ron Prosor arrived in London last year to take up his post as Israeli ambassador he was eager to step up public relations. He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “I’m not afraid to appear anywhere, and there is no platform… that I will not utilize for PR work.” We are familiar with the usual Israeli PR mantras: * having to contend with suicide bombers; * how Arafat turned down former prime minister Barak’s so-called ‘generous offer’ in 2000; * how the Israeli public has moved to the left in recent years whereas Palestinians have moved to the extreme right; * Israel is a democracy under attack; * Jerusalem is the capital of Israel forever; * Israel is against any negotiations with Hamas because it as a terrorist movement. This last is all the more preposterous when echoed by the US, Britain and the EU, which have connived to keep Palestine under Israel’s military jackboot for 40 years. Israel, of course, is an ethnocracy with racist laws, not a democracy as we know it in the West. This week an Israeli human rights organization, Gisha, is appealing against a decision by Israel’s so-called ‘democracy’ banning radio advertisements to highlight the plight of Palestinian students…

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Failing Darwish’s legacy
Sumia Ibrahim, The Electronic Intifada
…It is hard to imagine that Darwish would have been pleased with his PA-sponsored state funeral. Indeed, with the Oslo Accords he opposed came the establishment of the PA and the illusion of a Palestinian government in parity with Israel. However, in effect the PA served as an arm of the occupation, relieving Israel of its obligations as an occupying power. Meanwhile, Israel continues to colonize Palestinian land, control the borders and Palestinian movement, and the Palestinians are no closer to realizing their right to self-determination. Furthermore, Darwish was overtly critical of political factionalism between Fatah and Hamas, Palestine’s leading governing parties. In July 2007, he described deadly infighting in Gaza as “a public attempt at suicide in the streets.” He said with irony, “We have triumphed. Gaza won its independence from the West Bank. One people now have two states, two prisons who don’t greet each other. We are victims dressed in executioners’ clothing.”…

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“Reuters” faked images of Georgian victims allegedly killed by Russian attacks
Daniel Neun
On September 1 the European Union is going to meet in Brussell to debate sanctions against Russia who has been attacked by NATO-backed Georgia. On September 2 US Vice President Dick Cheney will arrive in Georgia to support this President Saakashvili who has started all this. May the worldwide public not sleep this time. A few days after these pictures had been analyzed by the Russian blog “Russia Insider” and the Serbian blog “Byzantine blog” as fake ones, staged by the photographer David Mdzinarishvili, some of them have been simply removed from the website of “Reuters”. Here the deconstruction made by “Byzantine blog”. This (upper) photo was first published by the Reuters as an image of a “dead woman being carried from the town of Gori”. But this “dead woman”, incredibly, is clutching the nurse’s arm…

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An Interview with Michael Hudson
How the Chicago Boys Wrecked the Economy
Mike Whitney
Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase & Co.), Arthur Anderson, and later at the Hudson Institute (no relation). In 1990 he helped established the world’s first sovereign debt fund for Scudder Stevens & Clark. Dr. Hudson was Dennis Kucinich’s Chief Economic Advisor in the recent Democratic primary presidential campaign, and has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments, as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire…

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Relief Agencies Furious as US Military Takes Over Aid Operations
Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com
Relief agencies fear that their workers could be put in jeopardy by what they call the “militarization” of humanitarian operations in Georgia. In making the effort a military operation, they fear the line will be blurred between military and civilian aid, and that civilian aid workers may be mistaken for soldiers. Brigadier General Jon Miller, the head of the relief efforts, denied having heard any such objections, and insisted that the military was essential to the success of the operation. However the Baltimore Sun quotes a senior US official as saying “there are reasons why we did a military lead, as a matter of foreign policy,” suggesting that the reasons were perhaps more political than operational. A spokesman for one of the leading civilian aid agencies the International Rescue Committee said “My sense is that the reason the military is there is not because it was needed to stand up a humanitarian response, but for other reasons”.,,

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Video: McCain: Iraq is a Peaceful, Stable Country
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
I’m hurt. I thought everyone who is anyone in Washington read IC. McCain seems to have missed these recent headlines here: Wednesday, August 27, 2008: “45 Dead, 79 Wounded in Wave of Violence; Bombing in Jalawla’ Raises Tensions with Baghdad” Monday, August 25, 2008: “54 Killed in Bombings, attacks; Water Crisis;Fixing the Intelligence Around the Policy”…

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Journalist recounts nightmarish detention in PA prison
Khaled Amayreh
A Palestinian journalist just released from a Hebron jail has accused the Palestinian Authority (PA) security authorities of mistreating him and incarcerating him in “difficult conditions” for over a month. Awadh Rajoub told reporters Friday that he was placed in solitary confinement for more than 15 days and that he had to sleep in a rancid cell, using his own shoes as a pillow. “At one point they covered my head with a bad-smelling sack, apparently in order to prevent me from seeing people they didn’t want me to see…

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Five million Afghans need food aid: Oxfam
AFP
Five million Afghans face serious food shortages with winter drawing near, but donors have put forward less than a fifth of the money needed to cope, development charity Oxfam warned Saturday. Time is running out to avert a humanitarian crisis, the British-based group said, urging governments to respond to an emergency humanitarian appeal launched in July. “Up to five million Afghans face severe food shortages, yet the appeal for Afghanistan has a huge funding shortfall, with less than a fifth of the 404 million US dollars needed to respond,” Oxfam said in a statement…

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A biblical tragedy in Galilee
Kim Sengupta, Independent
The 2,000-year-old fishing boat of Galilee in which, the story goes, Jesus may have sailed, is one of the most precious ancient treasures in Israel. The vessel, which draws thousands of tourists to a kibbutz in Ginosar, was discovered by chance in 1986 when the sea level dropped dramatically because of a severe drought. “This year it is actually worse. I have been here 54 years and I have never seen the water so low, the situation so bad,” said Haim Binstock, an expert on the boat in the museum where it is kept. “I don’t think the outside world realises just how dangerous the situation is, not just for Israel but for the whole region.” The waters of the Sea of Galilee are now at their lowest on record and, officials say, are set to fall even lower. The crisis is both natural and man-made. Four successive years of droughts, with rainfall less than half the annual average, has combined with a lack of snow on the peaks of Mount Hermon to lead to the shortage. At the same time,Israel’s relentless pumping of water to irrigate farmland and supply homes has been massively worsening the situation…

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PM al-Maliki will punish Peshmerga deployed outside Kurdish enclave-PM
Voices of Iraq
A lawmaker from the main Shiite bloc on Friday said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has threatened the deployment of Kurdish forces outside the Kurdish enclave would make them face legal actions. Iraq’s Kurdistan is a semi-autonomous region governed by two main Kurdish parties and its terroritoes were determined by U.S-led coalition in 1991. The International coalition banned the former regime of Saddam Hussein not to violate the imaginary blue line, which applied to latitude 36 passing through northern Iraq…

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Russia ‘could destroy NATO ships in Black Sea within 20 minutes’
RIA Novosti
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is capable of destroying NATO’s naval strike group currently deployed in the sea within 20 minutes, a former fleet commander said on Friday. Russia’s General Staff said on Tuesday there were 10 NATO ships in the Black Sea – three U.S. warships, the Polish frigate General Pulaski, the German frigate FGS Lubeck, and the Spanish guided missile frigate Admiral Juan de Borbon, as well as four Turkish vessels. Eight more warships are expected to join the group…

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Boycott Israeli Medjoul Dates this Ramadan
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
The Boycott Israeli Goods Campaign and Palestine Solidarity Campaign are calling for a boycott of Israeli Medjoul dates this Ramadan (1st to 29th September). During the autumn period large quantities of Medjoul dates are imported from Israel and from illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. Many of these dates, often mislabeled as from the “West Bank”, are used to break the Ramadan fast. Every year Israeli companies profit from this trade while impoverished Palestinian farmers are denied access to land, water and export markets. This year we call on you to join the boycott of Israeli goods, especially those sourced from illegal settlements, and join the worldwide movement for national, civil and human rights for the Palestinian people…

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August 29, 2008: 1 US Soldier, 9 Iraqis Killed; 1 Iraqi Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
Many reporters take Fridays off as it is the weekly prayer day for Muslims; however, today has been unusually quiet even for a Friday. Only nine Iraqis were reported killed and one was reported wounded. Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier died in a non-combat related incident. A day after Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr indefinitely extended a cease-fire he has imposed on his Mahdi Army, there are positive signs that his followers are laying down their arms. Also, an Iraqi parliamentarian has admitted that a U.S.-Iraqi security deal is not imminent. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had said it was settled, but U.S. authorities denied it was a done deal. ..

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