10 June 2013 — Morning Star
Top lawyers concluded today that British drone attacks on Afghanistan are almost certainly illegal.
Tag: Helmand
Interview: “My Afghanistan – Life in the Forbidden Zone” by Nagieb Khaja, Ian Sinclair
19 April 2013 — New Left Project
Nagieb Khaja, a well-known journalist and filmmaker in Denmark, has travelled extensively in Afghanistan since 2004. In 2008 he was kidnapped by the Taliban. His new documentary ’My Afghanistan – life in the forbidden zone’ provides civilians in Helmand province with camera phones, thus giving a voice to those normally ignored by the Western media. Continue reading
Media Lens: Britain’s Own Pravda-Style Propaganda: Part 2
20 October 2011 — Media Lens
The Statistics of Western State Terror
Ten years later, the violent consequences of the invasion of Afghanistan are truly appalling. A Stop the War video, ‘What is the true cost of the Afghanistan war?’ details some of the appalling statistics: Continue reading
MEDIA LENS ALERT: WAR AS PR – OPERATION MOSHTARAK, MEANING “TOGETHER”
25 February, 2010 — MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
Spinning For Edelman
Reports that former BBC director of news and Media Lens sparring partner Richard Sambrook had found new employment were delivered with perfect timing. The Times commented, February 16:
“He was 30 years at the BBC, but in May Richard Sambrook will start a new life spinning for Edelman, the world’s biggest independent public relations company.” (business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/movers_and_shakers/article7028335.ece)
It seems a natural career move. In 2002 and 2003 Sambrook’s BBC news team spun heaven and earth to lend an air of respectability to one of history’s most brazen campaigns of state-orchestrated lying. The performance was encapsulated perfectly by BBC “rotweiller” Jeremy Paxman when he said last year:
“… when Colin Powell sat down at the UN General Assembly and unveiled what he said was cast-iron evidence of things like mobile, biological weapon facilities and the like [in Iraq]… When I saw all of that, I thought, well, ‘We know that Colin Powell is an intelligent, thoughtful man, and a sceptical man. If he believes all this to be the case, then, you know, he’s seen the evidence; I haven’t.’”
(coventryuniversity.podbean.com/2009/10/29/is-there-a-crisis-in-world-journalism-jeremy-paxman/)
Idiocy is one thing, but the BBC’s idiocy all went one way – no journalist swooned with comparable helplessness at the feet of experts excoriating US-UK propaganda. As news of Sambrook’s move arrived, his former colleagues at the BBC were once again deferring to the “intelligent”, “thoughtful”, “sceptical” American and British politicians hawking the public relations event known as Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires or just a graveyard with a pipeline running through it? By William Bowles
6 November, 2009
“The US does not need a final victory over the Talibs. Despite their widely advertized ferocious conflict, the US and the Talibs manage to coexist quite successfully in Afghanistan…” — Andrei KONUROV, US Objectives in Afghanistan [1]
Come on folks, it’s just good sense, there is no way the Empire can actually win the war in Afghanistan. As I have stated before it’s not about ‘winning’ but occupation. Afghanistan is basically a stepping stone on the way to some place else and leaving an oil pipeline behind with a friendly government in place to protect it. Ah, but the best laid plans of mice and men etc…
Britain’s propaganda offensive on behalf of Afghan war By Chris Marsden
28 July, 2009 — Global Research
The speech by Foreign Secretary David Miliband at the NATO headquarters in Brussels makes clear that Britain intends to deepen its collaboration with the United States in Afghanistan.
There is growing public concern that Afghanistan is fast becoming a worse and more intractable debacle than Iraq, fueling opposition to the war and demands for an exit strategy. Despite Miliband’s statement that he accepted the public ‘wanted to know whether and how we can succeed’ in Afghanistan, he demonstrated the government’s willingness to defy anti-war sentiment and press ahead with the neo-colonial war.
The New Dark Age 