Dear Kitty. Some blog

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Bagram: A living hell

Friday 20 November 2009

The US military has allowed journalists into its newly expanded secret detention centre at Bagram air base in Afghanistan this week.

The base has been described by campaigners as Guantanamo Bay’s “more evil twin” and the allegations of torture and murder within its secretive walls continue to this day.

The US claims this is proof of its determination to provide greater transparency and openness in its policy of extraordinary rendition and detention without trial.

The claim was somewhat undermined by the fact that the touring journalists had no access to the hundreds of inmates held at the facility.

Omar Deghayes is one man who has personal experience of both Bagram and Guantanamo. He was not impressed by US grandstanding.

He had seen it all before and has strong reason to doubt the announcement of improved conditions at Bagram.

Having suffered hellish torture there himself, he has now discovered that his brother-in-law has been detained at Bagram for the last two months and, if anything, he appears to have been treated even more brutally.

Deghayes was born in Libya in 1969. He was forced to flee the country with his mother and siblings after the torture and murder of his father by the Gadaffi regime.

Arriving in Brighton as a teenager, he went on to study law in Wolverhampton. The family were granted refugee status here in 1987.

In 2002 Deghayes was arrested in Pakistan and was “sold” to the US for a bounty. He was taken first to Bagram and then Guantanamo, where he was imprisoned without trial for five years.

During his time at Guantanamo he was blinded in one eye, which was already damaged since childhood, after guards repeatedly rubbed pepper spray in it.

The only “evidence” against him was a clip from an Islamic propaganda film showing Chechen fighters, one of which the US authorities claimed was him.

It later transpired that the image was not of Deghayes but of an Abu Walid, a Chechan rebel who had been killed some time in 2004.

Deghayes had in fact never been to Chechnya and had always maintained as much.

Speaking to the Morning Star, he gave his opinion on the US press tour of Bagram.

“This is how they manipulate things,” he says.

“I have experienced it personally at Guantanamo. They gave guided tours of the camp like it was a tour of the Himalayas or something.”

In 2002 a group of congressmen were given a guided tour of “Gitmo,” albeit a much sanitised one.

Following his tour of the facility Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe told CNN: “We are giving very good treatment to these people.

“Quite frankly, I personally think better than they deserve. We’re dealing with terrorists here.”

As if to complete the bizarre theme park atmosphere, each congressman was given a souvenir cap, a Guantanamo flag and a DVD of their visit to take home with them.

Select journalists were also given guided tours, reminiscent of this week’s at Bagram.

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who represented Deghayes and many other Guantanamo prisoners, notes in his invaluable book Bad Men that, for one tour, “there was a show block in camp four … there was a show interrogation cell in camp five, designed to make solitary confinement look like a private suite.”

He goes on to say that “various military personnel were wheeled out for interviews about one humanitarian highlight of the prison or another.

“Whenever an inconvenient question might arise, they could shelter politely behind the barricade of institutional security.”

Deghayes agrees. “Those on the tour, the congressmen and reporters were not allowed to meet the prisoners. They were shown all the new facilities and it was like a nice party for them.

“Then they went back and gave glowing reports about how good it all was there,” he says.

“It was only when a whistle-blower told the real story that they became aware of what it was really like.

“The Obama administration is just copying the same policy as Bush. It is the same bureaucrats giving the same camouflage and using the same deceptions.”

Asked what credence he gave to the US claims of improved conditions at Bagram, he stated: “My brother-in-law is in Bagram now.

“He was just picked up a few months ago. He went to visit his in-laws in Afghanistan and they arrested him.

“My sister was finally able to visit him and she said the conditions were even worse than when I was there.

“She said he was in very bad condition. His eyes and face were battered and bleeding. It is worse there now than it ever was.

“They are saying there are all these new facilities, but that is not the issue,” says Deghayes.

“The real issue is that they are subjecting people to brutal and inhuman torture.”

Perhaps the most perfidious aspect to the situation in Bagram is that the US has stated that Afghan nationals held there have no legal rights.

Foreign nationals held there are said to have “some” legal rights, but those imprisoned in their own country by an invading foreign power have none.

The only way to ensure the freedom of those who still suffer torture and indefinite imprisonment is for the people of the US, Britain and elsewhere to continue to campaign and vocally criticise the policy. This is something Deghayes is keen to emphasise.

“When Obama came into power it was under a mandate of closing Guantanamo and stopping these abuses, but he has not done it. He has not come up with any new system,” says Deghayes.

“There is no legal system, no court system in Guantanamo or Bagram.

“Everyone who has been released from either Guantanamo or Bagram has been released due to campaigning and pressure brought on their behalf, not by any legal system or by being found innocent. Many people have been told they should have been released but are still there.

“I know from personal experience that campaigning is the only thing that works and we will continue to campaign for the release of my brother-in-law and all the others.”

Bagram’s brutal record

Bagram air base is located 27 miles north of Kabul and is estimated to house in excess of 600 prisoners. The recent extension will bring the number of prisoners it can hold to over 1,000.

The reason for this extension of the facility is seen by many to indicate an intention to increase US troop numbers and presumably therefore prisoners in the region.

The base was originally used to process prisoners during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 - part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

But since then Bagram has been filled with detainees held for years without charge, trial or legal rights.

Unlike Guantanamo where, after a hard-fought struggle, US lawyers have been granted access to detainees, those incarcerated in Bagram remain in a legal black hole.

Since 2002 there have been numerous reports of torture and at least two cases of murder.

In one of the worst cases a taxi driver by the name of Dilawar was beaten to death there in December 2002. His body was found to have suffered over 100 savage blows to the legs, apparently for the sadistic amusement of guards.

The autopsy report said that his legs had become “pulpified” and that he had died from blunt force trauma.

Omar Deghayes described his time at Bagram as follows: “Lying on the floor of the compound, all night I would hear the screams of others in the rooms above us as they were tortured and interrogated.

“My number would be called out and I would have to go to the gate. They chained me and put a bag over my head, dragging me off for my own turn.

“They would force me to my knees for questioning and threaten me with more torture.”

This video is called No to George Bush and torture enablers in Canada.

From the National Post in Canada:

Canada Ignored Torture: Ex-Envoy

Afghan Detainees; Allegations can’t be verified, Tories say

Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, November 19, 2009

A senior Canadian diplomat said he was on orders from his Ottawa superiors to leave no paper trail about his allegations that Canada was handing detainees over to Afghan custody where they were allegedly tortured and abused.

Richard Colvin, a top Foreign Affairs official posted in Afghanistan in 2006-07, told a House of Commons committee yesterday that the government and the military turned a blind eye to what was happening to their captives, a claim that the Prime Minister’s Office and Conservative MPs questioned yesterday.

…

But Mr. Colvin alleged the government imposed a “wall of secrecy” after he wrote and distributed reports about the Canadian military routinely and haphazardly handing over prisoners and then failing to follow up on their fate.

“There was certain information that was seen as too hot potato,” said Mr. Colvin, who was the political officer at the Canadian-run reconstruction base when troops began handing over prisoners to Afghan authorities three years ago.

Mr. Colvin said he was specifically told by Mr. Harper’s former foreign affairs advisor, David Mulroney, to use the phone instead of putting anything in writing about prisoner abuse, which Mr. Colvin said contradicted Canadian policy and international law against surrendering to the risk of torture.

“There was indeed a policy, but behind the military’s wall of secrecy, that’s exactly what we were doing,” said Mr. Colvin, who is now the deputy head of intelligence at the Canadian embassy in Washington.

Mr. Mulroney had just left the Prime Minister’s Office to become deputy minister of Foreign Affairs at the time that he allegedly warned Mr. Colvin to watch his step in April 2007.

At the time, senior Cabinet ministers in Ottawa were on the hot seat over the prisoner abuse allegations, denying daily in the House of Commons that there were any credible reports of torture.

Mr. Colvin also alleged that Rick Hillier, the former defence chief, knew that Afghan detainees were being abused and he turned his back to it. …

Mr. Colvin maintained that he learned from credible sources that Canadian detainees handed to Afghan control were beaten with power cables, given electrical shock and were sleep deprived in Afghan jails.

“According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured,” said Mr. Colvin, who said most of them were insurgent foot soldiers or innocents who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, rather than hard-core Taliban.

He said he first learned of the abuse soon after arriving in Kandahar in the spring of 2006 and that he later saw evidence himself after visiting prisons and seeing torture marks on prisoners. Canada handed over far more prisoners than either the British or the Dutch and that Canada, unlike its allies, did no follow up on the fate of those they surrendered, Mr. Colvin said.

“We kept hopeless records, and apparently to prevent any scrutiny, the Canadian Forces leadership concealed all this behind walls of secrecy,” he said.

The result, said Mr. Colvin, was that Canada helped strengthen the Taliban by spreading fear of foreigners among the Afghan people.

“Instead of winning hearts and minds, we caused Kandaharis to fear the foreigners,” he said. “Canada’s detainee practices in my view alienated us from the population and strengthened the insurgency.”

Mr. Colvin was called before the House of Commons committee after he filed an affidavit with the Military Police Complaints Commission, alleging that he warned senior government officials and military brass of “serious, imminent and alarming” reports of detainee abuse soon after he arrived in Afghanistan. …

In the House of Commons question period yesterday, Mr. MacKay was grilled on why it took 18 months for the government to act on allegations of detainee abuse. While sidestepping questions, he repeatedly affirmed that the government in 2007 improved a weak prisoner transfer arrangement that had been implemented by the former Liberal government.

See also here.

“We detained, and handed over for severe torture, a lot of innocent people,” a Canadian diplomat has told a parliamentary committee on the Canadian Armed Forces’ Afghan mission: here.

Canada’s new guide for prospective citizens no longer pretends that Canada is about social programs and saving the environment. Instead, it celebrates a land reigned over by a monarch and that possesses a tough, no-nonsense military: here.

“I currently don’t have a family care plan, but they told me they did not care and for me to get ready to go to Afghanistan,” explained Oakland, California native Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old soldier based at Hunter Army Airfield outside of Savannah, Georgia: here.

In August, we launched a campaign to “Free Army conscientious objector Dustin Stevens and the end illegal pre-trial punishment of the Fort Bragg 50!” With your help, we did just that! Dustin is certain that he would still be facing over a year in the stockade if it were not for your support. It is not everyday that we win an outright victory for GI resisters: here.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai was inaugurated Thursday amid a state of siege in Kabul. Western officials who were present issued hypocritical demands that Karzai fight corruption: here.

This video is called The Corrupt Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Remember George W. Bush’s and his cronies’ propaganda about their wars? If we were to believe them: No, really, the Iraq war was not about oil; perish the thought … And the Afghan war did not have anything to do with pipelines … It was all about Saddam Hussein being behind 9/11 … err, sorry, after the war was already well underway, the United States Bush administration itself retracted their earlier propaganda on this. It was about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction … err, sorry, after the war was already well underway, the Bush administration itself retracted their earlier propaganda on this.

After the two official reasons for starting bloody war had proved to be spurious, the Bush propagandists came with a third pretext: they were so full of love for the poor Afghan and Iraqi people, especially for women and children, that they wanted to bring prosperity, democracy and good government to their countries, by bombing them, firing guns at them, and opening torture prisons in them.

The Bush regime also really loved the poor Somali people, especially women and children. They wanted to bring prosperity, democracy and good government to Somalia as well. They had the US Air Force bombing Somalia. Though they left most of the invasion, aimed at bringing prosperity, democracy and good government to Somalia, to their buddy Meles Zenawi, dictator of Ethiopia. Mr Zenawi being well known for being prosperous himself, though his subjects are starving, enjoying free speech himself though suppressing it among his subjects, seemed exactly the right guy for bringing Bush style democracy to the Horn of Africa.

In the propaganda of the Bush gang, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan would become shiny examples, models for the other countries of the Middle East and Africa.

Well, how are things eight year years later, now that Bush’s presidency is finished, but his wars are not?

Let’s look at Iraq. Where there had been a really bad dictator, Saddam Hussein, and US sponsored economic sanctions on top of that. Things then, just before Bush’s war started, were so bad that many people could not imagine them becoming even worse. Still, they did.

Now, there are definitely more jails in Iraq, and more torture.

Over a million more deaths.

More unemployment, less women’s rights, less gay rights, far less electricity and water, in Iraq. And far more refugees from Iraq, than in the darkest days of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq may hang 126 women by year’s end despite international appeals: here.

Let us look at corruption. What does Associated Press today have to say about Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, which, if we would believe the Bushists, will surely after those eight years be shiny beacons of prosperity, democracy and good government?

Associated Press says:

Afghanistan slips in corruption index despite aid

17 Nov 2009

BERLIN - Afghanistan has slipped three places to become the world’s second most-corrupt country despite billions in aid meant to bolster the government against a rising insurgency, according to an annual survey of perceived levels of corruption.

Only lawless Somalia, whose weak U.N.-backed government controls just a few blocks of the capital, was perceived as more corrupt than Afghanistan in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

Iraq saw some improvement, rising to 176 of 180 countries, up two places up from last year.

Some ‘improvement’ in Iraq … at least half of it caused by corruption in Afghanistan getting even worse.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai’s inability or unwillingness to tackle cronyism and bribery the past five years have resulted in an increase of support for the Taliban insurgents. That has prompted calls by the Obama administration for Karzai to tackle the practice or risk forfeiting U.S. aid.

Since 2001, the U.S. Congress has appropriated more than $39 billion in humanitarian and reconstruction assistance for Afghanistan, according to a report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. European nations send about 1 billion euros ($1.49 billion) a year, a total of 9 billion euros since 2002.

International donors are increasingly questioning how much of the billions of dollars in aid might have been misappropriated.

The report said examples of Afghan corruption ranged from the sale of government positions to daily bribes for basic services. …

In Iraq, corruption has become widespread since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 with scarcity of serious government measures against corrupted officials.

That has undermined the largest nation-building efforts with siphoning billions of dollars away from the country’s struggling economy, increasing frustrations among Iraqis mainly over corruption, lingering violence and poor public services. …

The United States, which was in 19th place compared with 18th last year, remained stable despite Transparency’s concerns over a lack of government oversight of the financial sector.

The report also pointed out that the U.S. legislature is another reason for concern, as it is “perceived to be the institution most affected by corruption.”

There were some bright spots in the new report — Bangladesh, Belarus, Guatemala, Lithuania, Poland and Syria were among the countries that improved the most.

US-occupied Iraq, Afghanistan among world’s most corrupt countries: here.

Afghan minister accused of receiving huge bribe: here.

An Australian man who worked with a security contractor in Afghanistan pleaded guilty to a scheme to solicit kickbacks from a U.S. contract, Washington said: here.

The deaths of 12 civilians in a rocket attack aimed at military and local leaders on Monday underscored the inability of NATO to defeat the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, local observers have said: here.

A 21-year-old single mother serving in the US Army will likely face charges for refusing deployment to Afghanistan when she could not find care for her infant son: here.

Afghanistan’s Colombia connection: here.

Saudi Arabia bombards Yemeni rebels in policing role for US imperialism: here.

From 16 Deaths Per Day in the USA:

Sixteen workers are killed a day in the United States because of reckless negligence on the part of their employers. Under existing laws, these employers get a slap on the wrist, or walk away scot-free. Meanwhile, workers who blow the whistle face threats and retaliation at the workplace.

You can sign a petition against this here.

The number of workplace accidents and illnesses in the US is vastly underreported, according to a survey by the Government Accountability Office: here.

This video from the USA is called Washington Blade’s 40th Anniversary Video.

From Pink News in Britain:

America’s biggest gay media company forced to close

By PinkNews.co.uk Staff Writer • November 16, 2009 - 17:15

Window Media LCC, the largest publisher of LGBT newspapers and websites in America, has closed down.

The company owns the Washington Blade, Southern Voice, Dallas Voice, David magazine and the South Florida Blade.

It is thought that a major shareholder had been forced into liquidation and faced federal receivership.

The Washington Blade recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, while Southern Voice was founded 21 years ago.

Southern Voice editor Laura Douglas-Brown arrived at her Atlanta office today to find the locks changed and a note on the door saying the parent company had ceased business.

Douglas-Brown told Creative Loafing: “It’s not just a loss for the employees, but the gay community as well.”

She added: “[This] didn’t happen because of a lack of need for our publications. It didn’t happen because of a lack of hard dedicated work by local staff. And that’s the shame of it. . .It’s a sad tale, how it all came crashing down.”

A 10-year-old Arkansas boy name Will Phillips has decided that he cannot in good conscience pledge allegiance to the flag as long as the country for which it stands refuses legal equality to its GLBT citizens: here.

Gay people in Nazi Germany: how hate triumphs: here.

A Philippines gay rights group is waging a legal battle to be allowed to run in next year’s polls: here.

From British daily The Independent:

Ministry of Defense investigating fresh Iraq abuse claims

By Paisley Dodds, AP

Saturday, 14 November 2009

Some 33 allegations of abuse involving British soldiers who served in Iraq are being investigated, the Ministry of Defense said today.

The rape, torture and physical assault allegations come in the wake of the British withdrawal from Iraq.

One claimant says he was raped by two British soldiers while another claims he was sexually humiliated by both male and female personnel. Others allege they were stripped naked and photographed in the same style as the notorious pictures at Abu Ghraib, where abuses of prisoners by US troops helped fuel anti-American sentiment.

British soldiers have faced a series of claims that they mistreated Iraqi civilians in southern Iraq during six years of combat operations. Last year, Britain settled a legal case involving the death of one Iraqi civilian, and the abuse of nine others, paying out nearly £3m in compensation.

A public inquiry is still under way into the death of hotel worker Baha Mousa. He died in the custody of British troops following a raid on his hotel in the southern Iraq city of Basra in 2003 and suffered 93 separate injuries. British Cpl. Donald Payne pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating Iraqi civilians in Britain’s first war crimes conviction.

“Given the history of the U.K.’s involvement in the development of these techniques alongside the US, it is deeply concerning that there appears to be strong similarities between instances of the use of sexual humiliation,” Phil Shiner, the lawyer representing the Iraqis who made the claims, said in a letter to the Ministry of Defense. He said some Iraqis are coming forward now since the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq this year. …

In one of the most serious allegations, a 16-year-old boy claimed that he was among a group of Iraqis in May 2003 who were taken to the Shatt-al-Arab British camp to help fill sandbags. In a statement reported by The Independent, he alleged when he entered a room to get more sandbags he saw two British male soldiers engaged in oral sex. When he tried to leave, he alleges the men started to beat and kick him. When he fell to the floor, he claims one of the men held a blade to his neck while the other soldier stripped him naked. He claims the two British soldiers, one after the other, raped him.

In another claim, a 24-year-old Iraqi said he was playing football with friends in April 2007 when he was approached by British soldiers in vehicles and taken to a British base with another youth. When he arrived at the camp, he was allegedly surrounded by six to eight soldiers who ordered two of the young men to pick fights with one another. He alleges that the soldiers then stood on top of them and shouted and laughed.

Another 35-year-old carpenter said he was arrested in April 2006 and taken to the British camp at Shaaibah where he alleges he was subjected to sexual abuse and humiliation by both male and female soldiers.

He alleged soldiers used to watch pornographic films and would play loud music when he tried to pray. He also alleged that female soldiers exposed themselves or taunted him sexually. He alleged a soldier in the observation tower used to point the laser spot of his gun at his penis when he was in the toilet.

At the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, female guards and interrogators were documented as using aggressive and sexually charged techniques with the detainees, most of whom were Muslim.

It was unclear when results of the investigation would be released.

Britain’s Abu Ghraib: Did Britain collude with US in abuse of Iraqis? Here.

A British army officer staged a mock execution of a young Iraqi detainee by pretending to pour petrol over him and set him alight, the Baha Mousa inquiry has heard: here.

Huge rise in birth defects in Falluja. Iraqi former battle zone sees abnormal clusters of infant tumours and deformities: here.

As a likely result of the weaponry unleashed on the Iraqi city of Fallujah by the US military in 2004, doctors are discovering a horrifying increase in birth defects and deformities: here.

New Evidence Jack Straw Guilty On Torture - A Smoking Gun: here.

The absurdity of government attempts to suppress details about the CIA torture of a British national was exposed when the High Court rejected claims that their publication would damage national security: here.

This video from the USA says about itself:

PALIN: “Iraq War IS over OIL” !!? SHOCK - Sarah Questions McCain Rationale On Iraq War

By Alex Lantier:

Former US diplomat Peter Galbraith grabs hundreds of millions in Iraqi oil money

13 November 2009

Yesterday the New York Times reported the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv’s revelations that Peter Galbraith, a former US diplomat and advisor to the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from Iraqi oil revenues.

Galbraith’s profits would result from his cashing in on his links to the Kurdish regional leadership, and his role in drafting Iraq’s Constitution, shortly after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. In 2004, Galbraith helped the Kurds arrange deals with Norwegian oil firm DNO and prepare for negotiations on the Iraqi Constitution, including controversial provisions on how to divide Iraq’s oil revenues. During the 2005 negotiations, the Times noted, Galbraith worked to ensure the draft included “clauses that he maintains will give the Kurds virtually complete control over all new oil finds on their territory.”

Galbraith stood to benefit enormously from these clauses, Dagens Naeringsliv revealed last month. On June 30, 2004—the day after the successful conclusion of the Kurd-DNO negotiations—the Kurdish regional leadership had given Galbraith a major stake in undiscovered oil fields on its territory. Oil analysts quoted by the Times estimate his five-percent stake in the newly-discovered Tawke oilfield alone would be worth at least $115 million.

There are indications, moreover, that Galbraith may make even larger sums from the affair. After a falling-out with Galbraith in 2008, DNO sold a stake in the oil fields to the Kurdish regional government, apparently trying to cut Galbraith and a Yemeni business partner out of the deal. Galbraith and his partner sued DNO for compensation, which Dagens Naeringsliv estimates at $525 million. A ruling is expected early next year. …

Galbraith’s attempt to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from Iraq is unanswerable evidence of the neocolonial character of the US occupation of that unfortunate country. Far from being a war against al-Qaeda terrorists or Iraqi weapons of mass destruction—which were crude inventions of a US government determined to justify a war to a skeptical and hostile public—the 2003 invasion was an imperialist adventure offering well-connected operators the chance to make fortunes.

Moreover, it is ever clearer that a central element of the occupation was the theft of Iraq’s oil resources. The Times’ article on Galbraith comes only one week after the revelation that southern Iraq’s huge West Qurna oil field has been divided between Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell.

The New York Times itself described the Galbraith story’s potential to “inflame” Iraqi public opinion. In a comment that demonstrates its own political complicity with the theft of Iraq’s oil, it crudely described Iraqi sentiment that “the true reason for the American invasion of the country was to take its oil” as “a conspiracy theory.” This is in the middle of a story describing the looting of hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue! …

Peter Galbraith, the son of prominent liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith, was a professional staffer for the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1979 to 1993. In the late 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war, he documented the massacre of Iraqi Kurds by Saddam Hussein, then a US ally.

From 1993 to 1995, during the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, he served as US envoy to Croatia. He communicated to Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman the Clinton administration’s approval for Operation Storm, Croatia’s 1995 ethnic cleansing campaign that drove 200,000 Serbs from the Krajina area.

Appearing last year before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Galbraith stated that the US had an “understanding attitude” towards the operation. He claimed that he would not have asked Washington “to give it the green light” if he had believed Tudjman intended to remove Serbs. However, he had previously admitted that Tudjman and his associates were known to want an “ethnically clean country.”

Before and after the invasion of Iraq, the war’s goal of privatising Iraq’s oil to the benefit of Western oil corporations was highlighted not just by the war’s opponents, but also by many of its supporters: here.

Talking about oil; from Mother Jones in the USA:

During the final days of the Bush administration, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) scheduled a controversial auction of oil and gas leases on federal lands, including areas bordering national parks and monuments in Utah. While environmental organizations launched a round of protests and lawsuits, Tim DeChristopher, a 27-year-old econ major at the University of Utah, decided he had to try to stop the sale by himself. Not knowing exactly how he’d do it, DeChristopher walked into the auction in Salt Lake City on December 19, 2008, and had a sneaky idea handed to him in the form of a bidder’s paddle. Simply by raising it again and again and pretending to bid on the leases, he proceeded to drive up their prices and outbid the real speculators on 13 parcels covering more than 22,000 acres and worth $1.7 million dollars.

When it became clear that bidder No. 70 was an impostor with no intention of paying for his purchases, federal agents removed him from the auction. But the damage was done. DeChristopher’s monkey-wrenching tainted the sale, forcing BLM to offer the other buyers the option of withdrawing their bids. That effectively postponed any final decision on the leases until February 2009, when the Obama administration would be in office. Soon after taking office, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar canceled the results of the chaotic auction and criticized the previous administration for allowing it in the first place.

Hawks in Congress Willing to Shell Out Trillions for War, but Won’t Help Americans Get Decent Health-Care: here.

Tom ‘Dr. No’ Coburn Wins Our GOP Hypocrite Award for Authorizing War Spending, While At the Same Time Denying Veterans Care: here.

This video from the USA is called Rethinking Afghanistan With Robert Greenwald.

Shortly after taking office, the new German defence minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, has justified the Kunduz massacre carried out at the beginning of September in Afghanistan: here.

Sections of the British armed forces and the pro-Conservative Party press are waging a concerted campaign for the drastic escalation of the war in Afghanistan: here.

This video is about an Australian artist’s protest against the war in Afghanistan.

Even in the London Times, owned by warmonger Rupert Murdoch, of today:

US ambassador [in Kabul] warns against Afghanistan troop surge

See also the BBC on this.

This video from the USA is called Blackwater Guards Indicted for Role in Nisour Square Massacre; Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now.

From the New York Times in the USA:

Blackwater Said to Approve Iraqi Payoffs After Shootings

By MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN

Published: November 10, 2009

WASHINGTON — Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

See also here. And here. And here.

This is a satire video, in English, about Czech nazis.

In the United States, nazis are infiltrating the armed forces; seeing wars like in Iraq and Afghanistan as good “training” for the “racial holy war” which the nazis want to have at home against non white people.

Similar things are happening among the US’ Czech NATO allies. And not just among simple soldiers; also among commissioned and non-commissioned officers.

From Trend News in Azerbaijan today:

A scandal hit the Czech army on Monday when two commanders of Czech elite troops wore Nazi symbols on their helmets during their mission in Afghanistan, Czech daily MF Dnes reported. …

Lieutenant Jan Cermak wore the SS Dirlewanger brigade, and sergeant Hynek Matonoha wore the symbol of the 9th SS panzer division Hohenstaufen.

The SS units were the cruelest of German dictator Adolf Hitler’s armed forces, which actively exterminated civil population of occupied countries during the Second World War.

Even today, it is a crime to boast their emblems in the Czech Republic as well as in most European countries, Bartak said. …

Both men, having served in Afghan’s Logar province, were decorated for bravery on Friday after they returned home from the mission.

From ČTK news agency in the Czech Republic today:

Prague - The Czech military has sacked soldier Lukas Sedlacek who co-founded and trained the White Justice neo-Nazi organisation, Defence Minister Martin Bartak said today. …

White Justice was preparing terrorist attacks on power plants and unit substations and kidnappings of “Jews in high posts” and the police.

Members of the extremist group were taught to destroy property, blast cars and fight with and without arms.

Britain: Stop The War convener Lindsey German has called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to end the human suffering and deaths in Afghanistan by pulling out the troops: here.

Britain faces a growing threat from violent right-wing extremists operating as “lone wolves,” the country’s most senior anti-terror officer has warned: here.

US anti-war groups have urged their members to launch nonviolent direct actions as soon as the long-expected escalation in Afghanistan is announced: here.

USA: With the massacre at Fort Hood and reports that President Obama is about to approve the sending of 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, “The Good Soldier” arrives at movie theaters in the nick of time. What is needed desperately right now is a shot in the arm for the antiwar movement and this deeply moving documentary about the conversion of five soldiers to the cause of peace supplies it in spades: here.

Gorbachev to Obama: ‘Prepare the ground for withdrawal’ in Afghanistan: here.

USA: Military Families Decry Move to Send More Troops to Afghanistan. “Honor Veterans by Bringing Our Troops Home!”: here.