The Afghan statement comes as NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was investigating an incident in Badghis province Friday in which more than 25 international and Afghan forces were wounded.
Five of the 25 wounded were US soldiers injured in what a Western military official, speaking anonymously, said was friendly fire. …
The incident is believed to have taken place during a clash involving ISAF and Afghan soldiers searching for two paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division who went missing Wednesday during a routine supply mission.
Local police said a party looking for the two missing soldiers clashed with Taliban and that alliance aircraft were called in to provide support.
The defence ministry made no reference to a clash between the joint forces and Taliban militants.
Police said the casualties occurred when the air strike mistakenly targeted international troops.
At least eight Afghans working with US forces have been killed in a Nato air strike in north-western Afghanistan, the defence ministry in Kabul says: here.
Returning veterans often have a hard time adjusting to civilian life and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) Foundation is helping them find an outlet to tell their stories: here.
Britain: Attempts by the Establishment to use Remembrance Sunday to whip up patriotism for their conflicts were overshadowed by the latest death of a young British soldier in Afghanistan - and news that most British citizens now consider the war unwinnable: here.
‘We’re expecting a big turn out tomorrow for the nationwide demonstrations,’ an Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) spokesman told News Line yesterday.
He added: ‘The purpose of the Get Up Stand Up Campaign launched by ourselves with the support of all affiliates on the island of Ireland is to oppose the government and the way it is handling the crisis in favour of the banks.
‘The government has done nothing for jobs. And cutting incomes, including social welfare in a recession is not only morally wrong, it’s madness.
‘It will turn a recession into a depression.
‘Demonstrators will be carrying banners and placards saying “Banks 54m euros – jobs zero”.
‘Tomorrow is just the start of our campaign leading to the Budget.
‘There will be stoppages and 24-hour strikes to follow.’
The Get Up Stand Up Campaign website says: ‘We believe there is a fairer way.
‘Where are the plans to protect peoples’ jobs, or create new employment?
‘Where are the plans to protect peoples’ homes from repossession? And where are the plans to protect vital services at a time when greater numbers will come to depend on them?
‘The course of action proposed by government is both unworkable and unfair.
‘To cut peoples’ incomes in a recession invites economic freefall and to impose the greatest burden on low and middle income earners is unjust.
‘They played no role in causing this crisis and should not be presented with the bill.
‘This crisis demands fresh thinking. So far all we’ve seen are reruns and reheats of the same failed policies that have brought us to this sorry pass.
‘This crisis demands that people get active and get involved. Get Up, Stand Up!
‘Show your solidarity. March with us on November 6th!’
Over 5,000 young Greek workers on so-called ‘training’ schemes in the public sector, demonstrated on Thursday in Athens and in other main cities against a government decision to immediately sack them: here.
Francisco Ayala García-Duarte (16 March 1906 – 3 November 2009) was a Spanish writer and teacher. Born in Granada, at the age of nineteen he published his first novel, Tragicomedia de un hombre sin espíritu.
At the start of the Spanish Civil War, Ayala was out of the country. He returned for a brief time, later serving as secretary of the Spanish Republic’s legation in Prague. After the war he moved to Argentina where he lived between 1939 and 1950. There he taught sociology while continuing to publish works of fiction, literary criticism and sociology, notably a three-volume Tratado de la sociología (1947.) …
Many of his writings deal with the topics of power and abuse of power. In general he has not directly written about the war in Spain, but examines it instead through other periods of history.
He was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the top literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, in 1991 and seven years later the Prince of Asturias Prize for literature, the Spanish equivalent of the Nobel Prize. …
Ayala went into exile at the end of Spain’s 1936-39 civil war as right-wing General Francisco Franco consolidated power, and he only permanently returned to the country in 1980, five years after the dictator’s death.
The documentary, Afghanistan, on the Dollar Trail, which was aired this month on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) program “Four Corners”, is a well-produced exposure of the corruption and criminality that has accompanied the “reconstruction” of Afghanistan since the 2001 US invasion.
Blaming the Karzai administration conveniently ignores the fact that pay-offs and bribes have been integral to the US invasion and occupation from the outset. Washington brought down the Taliban regime by buying off a series of warlords who were notorious for their thuggery and criminal activities, including involvement in the drug trade. Karzai was simply installed as the frontman for the puppet regime constructed on this basis.
The documentary follows director Paul Moreira as he seeks to track down how some of the estimated $US18 billion in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan has been used. Last year, a host of countries and organisations attended the “International Afghanistan Support Conference” in Paris. The assembled delegates voted to finance the building of 680 new schools in the country. Moreira makes it his initial task to inspect some of these schools in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
Moreira stumbles across one by chance. It is a girls´school in which “a few minor details are missing for the situation to be perfect”, comments the narrator, “details like walls and a roof”. The students are forced to have lessons outside, with only a damaged portable blackboard to suggest a classroom setting. There is no protection from the cold. Snow begins to fall. A teacher comments that the students cannot be expected to learn when they are more concerned about staying warm.
Moreira contacts USAID, which can suggest only one other newly-built school to visit in Kabul. Upon arriving, a billboard depicts a modern facility in a pristine surrounding. The next shot is of the school itself. It consists almost entirely of tents. Although the government promised 18 months ago that construction would be finished within two years, all that has been built are a brick wall and some bathrooms.
A presidential run-off election planned for Nov. 7 seemed headed for collapse Saturday, with the main challenger to President Hamid Karzai, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, widely expected to pull out of the race: here. And here.
More than 1,000 American troops have been wounded in battle over the past three months in Afghanistan, accounting for one-fourth of those injured in combat since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001: here.
A US diplomat has resigned from his post in protest over the US-led war in Afghanistan, becoming the first US official to step down over the conflict since it began eight years ago.
“I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end,” the letter, which was dated September 10, said.
The Washington Post, a US newspaper, reported that Hoh’s decision “sent ripples all the way to the White House”. …
Government officials had tried to convince Hoh to stay, amid concerns that he could become a prominent voice against the US’s involvement in Afghanistan, the Post reported.
Hoh, a former Marine Corps captain who fought in Iraq, also turned down a senior staff-level job at the US embassy in Kabul after he gave in his resignation. …
The former diplomat said that his resignation, which became final on Wednesday, was tended because staying in his post “was not the right thing to do,” he told the Post.
“… you have to draw the line somewhere, and say this is their problem to solve”
“I’m not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love,” he said.
“I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, ‘Listen, I don’t think this is right’.”
Rosiland Jordan, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Washington, said that the content of the letter had won some endorsement.
“There is already support coming from liberal quarters [in the US] for what Matthew Hoh wrote in his resignation letter, which indicated that, in his view, the US has the wrong perception of who the enemy is inside Afghanistan.
“He said that all his efforts inside Afghanistan were being over-run by [what he called] the fact that people in Afghanistan do not like outsiders, regardless of what flag they work under.”
‘Corrupt’ government
Many Afghans fight US forces because of their presence in the country, Hoh said in his letter.
Afghanistan: The boy is but one youth among many throughout the country forced into an age-old underground tradition known as “bacha bazi,” or “boy play,” in which young boys are taken from their families, made to dance and used as sex slaves by powerful men. The number of boys involved is unknown — the practice has been going on for centuries, in a country where such practices are overshadowed by conflict and war: here.
Caspar de Rijk, the former founder and director of Scientology Netherlands, was on Dutch TV1 this morning. Asked whether his former organization was a cult, he agreed. He said that scientologists sold so called e-meters etc. for over ten times the prices which they were worth, thus financially ruining recruits. He himself, being a prominent member, had participated in such activities, which he rejects now. Since leaving Scientology in 2003, the organization’s bosses had prevented him from contacting his daughters, who are still members.
In 2004, Caspar de Rijk had already agreed to be interviewed on TV. However, the “church” leaders had said that if he would cancel the TV interview, he might see his daughters again. After he had said no to the broadcasters, Scientology still prevented Mr de Rijk from contacting his daughters.
The National Union of Journalists has called for “tough and urgent” police action in response to the physical violence, intimidation and death threats members covering far-right demonstrations endure: here.
Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.
I sent the music to the photographer, Paulo Pinto, who I Googled on the internet. He told his editor, who told a reporter and the story ended up as an interview in the very same newspaper.
Here I’ve posted a short video made with the photo, the music and the score (composed by the birds).
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