One: Roads, canals and schools built in Afghanistan as part of a special U.S. military program are crumbling under Afghan stewardship, despite steps imposed over the past year to ensure that reconstruction money is not being wasted, according to government reports and interviews with military and civilian personnel. U.S. troops in Afghanistan have spent $2…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
US: $10k for killed Iraqi civilians
Victor’s justice and an insight into the occupier’s attitude towards “inconveniences” (aka murdered Iraqi civilians courtesy of Blackwater): Just how much is an Iraqi life worth? I don’t know but, in the aftermath of the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians by Blackwater employees at Nisoor Square in September 2007, apparently Iraq and the United States,…
Fallujah children suffering because of us?
What will the West do if we are at fault in causing massive defects in Iraqi children? A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that…
Here’s an idea; let’s get mercenaries from Iraq and send them to another war
Just what the world needs; another privatised war with unaccountable players: Somalia’s transitional government is using private security firms and Arab governments to train and fund a paramilitary force to battle pirates in the region that have threatened international shipping. A lawyer representing Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) said on Tuesday that a security contractor,…
Nothing in the Wikileaks documents? Please
One: The prime minister of Mauritius has accused Britain of pursuing a “policy of deceit” over the Chagos islands, its Indian Ocean colony from where islanders were evicted to make way for a US military base. He spoke to the Guardian as his government launched the first step in a process that could end UK…
Iraq and Afghanistan come to American streets and homes
The future has arrived. Another installment in the stunning Washington Post series, Top Secret America called Monitoring America, on the bleeding of the “war on terror” into mainstream US life. Often privatised, mostly secret. This is the creation of a truly all-seeing police state in a so-called democracy: The months-long investigation, based on nearly 100…
ABC TV News 24 on refugees and government failures
I was invited back on ABC TV News24’s The Drum tonight with host Waleed Aly and guests Jo Stella and ABC journalist Gillian Bradford (video here). We talked mostly about domestic politics especially asylum seekers and the parlous state of refugee policy on both major sides of parliament. I argued that Labor has spent the…
Here’s to a return to Saddam days!
This is what the US has brought Iraqis? Dozens of Iraqi writers and poets took to the streets of Baghdad Friday to protest at the closure of social clubs that serve alcohol in the capital, arguing that it harkened back to Saddam-era repression. Holding up placards with the phrases “Freedom first” and “Baghdad will not…
Are journalists leaders or followers over war?
Lesson number one; never trust the corporate press to accurately report our illegal wars. The latest figures from the US media are depressing and reflect the unhealthy tendency to base coverage of war zones around Washington’s dictates. Obama says the Iraq war is winding down (even though the occupation continues) so we better move to…