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.
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.
SAN JUAN - Three human rights groups said yesterday that they will decline an invitation to tour the Guantanamo Bay prison next month because it doesn’t include an opportunity to speak with prisoners.
R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails Join Campaign To Close Guantanamo Bay: here.
A UN human rights investigator insisted on Monday that Guantanamo Bay detainees must be freed or transferred to US federal courts for trial by the January 22 deadline set by US President Barack Obama: here.
It is about the romance between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, during the last three years of Keats’ life, until he died on 23 February 1821.
The film is based on a biography of Keats by Andrew Motion, the British Poet Laureate. The job of Poet Laureates is to write poems for the royal family. That sounds pro establishment rather than rebellious. It is true in Motion’s case. There is an idea that a Poet Laureate should not just be a faithful servant of the monarchy, but a good poet as well. So, the job was first offered to Benjamin Zephaniah. Zephaniah refused it, being an opponent of the British empire. Then, it was offered to Tony Harrison, who refused as well, being a republican. Finally, it went to the “safe” Andrew Motion.
Keats lived at a time when most people in Britain were poor, and when the ruling class and the Conservative government were doing their best to make them even poorer and keep them down. Keats, and his fellow poets like Shelley and Byron, were opponents of that government. That was why their poetry was so sharply attacked by pro government literary critics. Byron and Shelley left Britain as political exiles to Italy. Keats joined them there a few months before his death, as poverty had given him tuberculosis and a warmer climate was prescribed by a doctor.
How much of this social, economic, and political background of John Keats do we find in the movie? Some, but not enough. Keats’ personal poverty, which prevents him from marrying his love Fanny Brawne, is a theme in the film. In a short scene, we see something of the dire poverty in the slums of London. However, we never hear about the Peterloo Massacre which Shelley wrote about.
The movie does offer fine filming and acting. In the final scene, after she has learned of Keats’ death in Rome, Fanny Brawne walks to the Hampstead Heath, crying, and reciting Keats’ poem Bright Star.
Several poems are recited in the movie, including “The Eve of St. Agnes” and “Ode to a Nightingale“. Keats wrote the latter poem when a nightingale nested near his house. It is the last part of the film, recited as the list of actors and other workers of this movie scrolls down the screen.
We hear a nightingale sing during the film, but never see it. As usual with nightingales.
Another review of this film is here. Yet another one is here.
Tens of thousands of US soldiers are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. They say they’ve been abandoned by the Bush Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs, claiming that government officials are actively trying to cover up the extent of America’s traumatised soldiers.
For many vets, this means not enough help is being offered and their lives are plagued by anxiety and mental health issues. But for some, the results are even more tragic. Dateline video journalist Nick Lazaredes meets the widow of an Afghanistan veteran who was severely depressed by his recall to fight in Iraq. He was killed in a police shootout on Christmas Day, his death dubbed ‘police-assisted suicide’. As Dateline reveals, his story is not an isolated one.
US soldier commits suicide in Indiana movie theater
20 October 2009
A National Guard soldier home on a 15-day leave from the war in Afghanistan committed suicide in a Muncie, Indiana, movie theater October 12. Jacob W. Sexton, a 21-year-old from rural Farmland, Indiana, shot himself in the head, approximately 20 minutes into the violent comedy Zombieland, with friends and siblings sitting around him. The suicide underscores once again the psychological damage done to soldiers charged with carrying out the brutal colonial occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sexton’s death came as a shock to his family and military cohorts, who told the Muncie Star Press they had not seen any symptoms of suicidal behavior or post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet the young man’s behavior before the film showing revealed that the war’s violence was on his mind. When asked by the theater manager for identification proving the group was of age to see the movie, Sexton reportedly snapped at him, “I shot 18 people and you want to see my identification?”
Sexton’s father, Jeffrey Sexton, told the Associated Press, “We just need to watch these boys and the girls coming back home. Something’s just not right. Too much is happening.”
Like many active-duty military members, Sexton had served multiple tours in both Middle East occupations.
U.S. Army had no mandatory policies for handling suicidal soldiers in Iraq: here.
U.S. Army Reserve Spc. Chancellor Keesling died in Iraq on June 19, 2009, from “a non-combat related incident,” according to the Pentagon. Keesling had killed himself. He was just one in what is turning out to be a record year for suicides in the U.S. military: here.
As with suicides, the rate of sexual assaults within the US military now exceeds that of the general population. A Pentagon report earlier this year found one in three female service members are sexually assaulted at least once during their enlistment. Sixty-three percent of nearly 3,000 cases reported last year were rapes or aggravated assaults. Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within is a documentary that focuses on the cases of three female service members victimized by rape and other forms of sexual assault. We air excerpts of the film and speak to filmmaker Pascale Bourgaux: here.
British soldiers’ families against the Afghanistan war: here.
The top government watchdog of the US bank bailout published an audit Monday claiming that Bush administration officials misled the public about the financial condition of the firms receiving funds: here.
As the winter months approach, state agencies throughout the US are being inundated with requests for home heating assistance from workers losing their jobs or facing reduced hours and wage cuts: here.
Arizona: Man killed in police shooting following home foreclosure: here.
AS THE economic crisis continues to take its toll, the city of Seattle is ratcheting up the war on its most vulnerable citizens. But the homeless and their supporters are fighting back: here.
The International Monetary Fund has said Britain must introduce radical spending cuts, including raising the retirement age beyond 65 and introducing charges for health care: here.
According to the Daily Mail, the only known film footage of Anne Frank has been released for the first time to a worldwide audience. This is not entirely true. I watched this video a few years ago when it was included in a documentary about the tragic diarist. Nonetheless, it is touching.
BBC has gotten its hands on what they’re calling a “New ‘Iraq massacre’ video.” The video, too gruesome to air in full, shows that a number of Iraqis officially killed by a crumbling building after a firefight with the U.S. military, actually appear to have been killed by gunshots.
U.S. Prison’s Closure Offers No Solace For One Iraqi
by Jonathan Blakley
October 1, 2009
As the U.S. continues its slow reduction of forces from Iraq, it is also releasing thousands of Iraqi prisoners and transferring other detainees to Iraqi custody. The largest U.S. prison in Iraq, at Camp Bucca, closed this month, stirring fresh and painful memories for one Iraqi journalist who was detained there.
Camp Bucca, opened just after the U.S. invasion in March 2003, sits on more than 40 acres of desert sand near the head of the Persian Gulf, just north of the Kuwait border. At its peak, the prison housed more than 22,000 detainees in separate camps.
Ali Omar al-Mashhadani was one of them. A 40-year-old journalist, he recalls his detention at Bucca — and all of his memories — as negative.
…
“We were isolated from everything. We didn’t have a radio or anything. The Americans would sometimes bring us very bad news, like a Sunni guy killing a Shiite, or vice versa, to make the prisoners hate each other,” he says.
After the U.S. invasion, Mashhadani worked as a cameraman for the BBC and Reuters, and as a stringer for NPR.
In the summer of 2005, he was detained without charges while photographing a clash between U.S. forces and insurgents in Haditha.
He was released after spending three months at Camp Bucca.
“We’d demonstrate inside because we heard about massacres or other bad news about the war. We’d throw apples, and they’d respond with gunfire or dogs,” he recalls.
Over the course of the next six years, the U.S. military detained Mashhadani seven more times, essentially, he believes, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, while holding a camera near U.S. forces.
Like many other detainees, he has never been charged.
…
Mashhadani says he suffered psychological abuse at Camp Bucca, where Shiites and Sunnis were knowingly housed together, and where prisoners were forced to stay in small, dark holding cells.
The rooms had many air conditioners, and prisoners were only give one blanket.
“It was freezing there. Every eight hours, the guards would take us out for just 10 minutes. The prisoners were given food twice a day, but their hands and feet were chained. They had to use the bathroom right there in the cell. This went on for weeks, or even up to a month,” he says.
Mashhadani says he spent 21 days in a cell like this, because the Americans didn’t like the answers he was giving them.
Now, he says, he wants to sue the American government. He wants compensation, or at least to clear his name.
“Until this moment,” Mashhadani says, “they have not told me what my crime is.”
Fate Of Camp Bucca
Western and Iraqi journalists toured the sprawling Camp Bucca facility hours before the prison was permanently closed on Sept. 16.
The United States invested more than $50 million in the camp.
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The U.S. has detained more than 100,000 Iraqis since 2003. Now, only 8,000 are behind bars.
There are now only two U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, and they will be handed over to the Iraqi government next year.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — It isn’t clear whether the United States will ever be able to declare victory in Iraq, the top U.S. commander there said Thursday: here.
Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein have directed at least three remarkable documentaries about the US invasion of Iraq and its consequences: Gunner Palace (2004), The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair (2006), and now, How To Fold a Flag: here.
The Ministry of Defence was excoriated in a High Court judgement on Friday over its failure to disclose information regarding the alleged torture and murder of 20 Iraqis by British troops five years ago: here.
Britain: Human rights campaigners will descend on Parliament Square on Saturday to demand the release of more than 200 Guantanamo Bay detainees and draw attention to other “secret torture camps” worldwide: here.
Nicole Colson examines revelations about the acts of violence committed by soldiers returned from Iraq–and how the military is trying to evade responsibility: here.
Iraq has been devastated by war and the foundations of society have been shattered. Saba Jawad describes the reality behind the cosmetics of “democracy” and the continuing determination of the Iraqi people to resist the US occupation of their land: here.
Supreme Court delay may help keep detainee abuse pics forever sealed: here.
Moore’s latest screen gem, “Capitalism: a Love Story,” may be the most he has moved away from support for capitalism and the closest he has come toward advocating socialist solutions. His final comment on the matter? “Democracy is the system” he likes best: here.
Having spent much of his adult life campaigning on issues including the arms trade, the illegality of the Iraq war and the misdeeds of Coca-Cola, comedian and activist Mark Thomas has now turned his attention to the ongoing financial crisis: here.
Britain: In a surprisingly bold move the TUC has invited Linton Kwesi Johnson to headline an event for its World Day for Decent Work. The day will focus on the impact of the international financial crisis on workers’ rights: here.
