South Asia

from wsws, 21 January 2009: In a speech to an international conference on January 15, Britain's defence secretary John Hutton delivered the UK government's sharpest public criticism of its European NATO allies as regards the US-led occupation of Afghanistan. Urging an increase in NATO troop deployment to the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, Hutton accused his European counter-parts of expecting the US to do all the "heavy lifting" and said it was time for them to "step up to the plate." more

from various sources, 25 November 2008: "Throughout its history, capitalism has functioned through geographical displacement of crisis – attempting to offload the worst impacts onto those outside the core. This article presents a short survey of what this crisis might mean for the Global South..." more

from RINF, 14 November 2008: "During Hurricane Ike, U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the first time flew the Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle in “support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s relief efforts,” the insider tech publication reported... The deployment of the robotic killing machines in the United States for “disaster management” is troubling to say the least and a harbinger of things to come. more

posted 12 November 2008: "In this month’s Underreported Struggles: 400,000 Guatemalans Reject Development Model, Philippines Indigenous People Unite for the Land, Riot Police Target Algonquin Blockade, Chagos Islanders Denied the Right of Return, and 17 other stories that you probably haven’t heard about..." more

from sumoud, 30 October 2008: SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Three years ago, the man known as Internment Serial Number 669 stopped eating. Ahmed Zaid Zuhair, a compact 43-year-old with 10 children in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, had been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 without charges and decided to join a mass hunger strike in protest. The U.S. military was determined not to let him succeed. Since then, according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press, guards have struggled with him repeatedly, at least once using pepper spray, shackles and brute force to drag him to a restraint chair for his twice-daily dose of a liquid nutrition mix force-fed through his nose. more

via mostly water, 25 October 2008: "the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 (and then of Iraq in March 2003) were conceived as opening salvos in a long-term "war on terror" whose actual, inter-connected goals included defeating anti-U.S. Islamic fundamentalist forces (including ideologically), overthrowing states not fully under U.S. control or fueling anti-U.S. Islamist movements, restructuring the entire Middle East and Central Asian regions, and seizing deeper control of key sources and shipment routes of strategic energy supplies..." more

from mostly water, 25 October 2008: "One thing that's not been up for debate in the Presidential campaign is Afghanistan: both candidates (not to mention George W. Bush) agree on the urgent need to escalate - and win - that war. This stance has overwhelmingly gone unchallenged - even by most who opposed the invasion of Iraq. But the war in Afghanistan is not the proverbial "good war," now gone bad. It was an unjust, imperialist war of conquest and empire from the start. And it continues to be an unjust, imperialist war of empire today..." more

from cryptogon, via WAPO, 21 October 2008: Real-time streaming video of Iraqi and Afghan battle areas taken from thousands of feet in the air can follow actions of people on the ground as they dig, shake hands, exchange objects and kiss each other goodbye. The video is sent from unmanned and manned aircraft to intelligence analysts at ground stations in the United States and abroad. They watch video in real time of people getting in and out of cars, loading trunks, dropping things or picking them up. They can even see vehicles accelerate, slow down, move together or make U-turns. more

from RAWA, 14 October 2008: Attacks are on the rise and civilians, especially educated women, are increasingly nervous with the jihadists now just 20 minutes from the capital... more

from the Guardian, 12 September 2008 OK, its a corporate repost but its useful information ++++ A secret order issued by George Bush giving US special forces carte blanche to mount counter-terrorist operations inside Pakistani territory raised fears last night that escalating conflict was spreading from Afghanistan to Pakistan and could ignite a region-wide war.  more

from RAWA, 31 March 2008: As Afghanistan battles to check growing poppy production, there thrives a disturbing trend behind the scene, where daughters of poppy producers pay the price for the unpaid loans. Termed as "opium brides", the daughters of poor poppy farmers are often given to drug traffickers if their fathers are unable to pay the loan taken for growing the illicit crop because of the official action. more