Taliban
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Ashley Smith, “A War of Terror in Pakistan: Interview with Saadia Toor”
The Pakistani Intelligence, with the full knowledge of the U.S., helped create and sustain the Taliban for years. Only after al-Qaeda’s attack on September 11 did the U.S. begin to oppose the Taliban, and once it did, this upset the longstanding relationship between the Pakistani state and the Taliban. Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: AFGHANISTAN — “BIG BEASTS” BIG BLOODBATH
At the heart of the uncertainty lies the internet and how to make it pay. For 100 years the corporate mass media has flourished thanks to its monopoly of the means of mass communication. Reviewing the history of the British media, James Curran and Jean Seaton write that the industrialisation of the press in the… Continue reading
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M. Junaid Levesque-Alam, “Pakistan at the Precipice”
After some searching, I realized that Pakistan’s existential crisis should not be seen as a shock but rather as an expected disappointment. The train of the Pakistani state did not jump the tracks; it merely arrived at the destination announced long ago by a series of indifferent conductors. Continue reading
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Frédéric Bobin, “Antonio Giustozzi, Researcher, London School of Economics and Political Science: ‘The New Afghan Taliban Are Waging a Real Guerrilla War’”
these ‘Neo-Taliban’ are waging a real guerrilla war. This was not the case with their elders. Before conquering Kabul in the autumn of 1996, the first generation was a simple, ill-organized militia. Then, after taking power, it attempted to build an army. There never was a real guerrilla experience in that period. The situation changed… Continue reading
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Jamal Dajani, “Pakistan: Who’s to Blame?”
Pakistan is on a precipice. The Swat Valley, once called the Switzerland of Pakistan for its great natural beauty, is now the Taliban’s battle ground for Islamic fundamentalism where harsh Islamic (shari’a) law is imposed on the population and fully sanctioned by the Pakistani government. Continue reading
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Democrats and War Escalation By Norman Solomon
In their eagerness to help the Obama presidency, many of its prominent liberal supporters — whatever their private views on the escalation — are willing to function as enablers of the expanded warfare. Continue reading
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Military Escalation and Obama’s “War on Terrorism”: US Officials “Rediscover” ISI-Taliban Nexus By Tom Burghardt
While an open secret in Washington, Obama’s new product roll-out in the form of an ill-conceived plan to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaeda and the Taliban has everything to do with the construction of the $7.6 billion dollar “Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline Continue reading
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Disturbed Afghan mass grave site must be secured: rights group
The Dasht-e-Leili site is suspected of having held up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners, according to Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which discovered the grave in 2002 and has performed autopsies on some of the bodies. Continue reading
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Michael Parenti: Afghanistan, Another Untold Story
The war against Afghanistan, a battered impoverished country, continues to be portrayed in US official circles as a gallant crusade against terrorism. If it ever was that, it also has been a means to other things: destroying a leftist revolutionary social order, gaining profitable control of one of the last vast untapped reserves of the… Continue reading
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Does a leopard change its spots? By William Bowles
The US government is talking with Iran, so what’s the catch? The simple answer is the November election. The move is clearly aimed at associating McCain/Republican Party with a new, kinder, softer Bush cabal although the Washington Post sees it somewhat differently. Continue reading
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May the force be with you? By William Bowles
Messianism seems to be the thing with the Bush government. A God-given mission to cleanse the world of evil, or ‘creative destruction’ as Michael Ledeen puts it. There are those who are making dark comparisons with the Third Reich but perhaps because of my background, upbringing or whatever you want to call one’s past, I… Continue reading
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Is a military junta ruling Iraq? By William Bowles
Why is it so difficult find out who the people are who are running Iraq? What does the Bush administration have to hide? We read the odd story in the press about these characters but you have to dig deep to find out much about their backgrounds. Continue reading
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WHOSE NEXT AND WHY? By William Bowles
I predicate this essay on the fact that there is no basis whatsoever for the reasons given by the Bush/Blair Axis as to why they invaded the sovereign state of Iraq. As with virtually all the dictators of the 20th century, Saddam Hussein was wholly ‘our’ man from the very beginning of his reign to… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 