Afghanistan

NOVANEWS NATO Nazi helicopter strike killed two children in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said, in the latest civilian casualties to beset the coalition’s war against Taliban militants. The operation close to Ghazni city was conducted after local people complained of a Taliban post targeting traffic convoys in the area, Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, the deputy governor of Ghazni province, said. “It was a joint (Afghan and coalition) operation conducted this morning that killed nine Taliban. Unfortunately, two school children were also killed and seven other civilians were wounded,” he said. A spokesman for the NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said it was aware of the reported civilian casualties and was seeking further information. However he added that the ISAF helico...

NOVANEWS By Dana Visalli Global Research A brief review of the recent history of Afghanistan explains some of the background pertaining to today’s crisis in the country. To begin with, Afghanistan is a complex place; there are 20 major ethnic groups and more than 50 total, with over 30 languages spoken, although most also speak either Pashtun and/or Dari. This reflects its geographical position at a cultural crossroads, as well as its mountainous topography, which isolates different ethnic groups from one another. In the 1700s, when Afghanistan was just forming as a nation, two of the world’s major powers of the time were advancing towards it from opposite directions. England was busy conquering India between 1757 and 1857, and Russia was spreading its control east and was on Afgh...

NOVANEWS By Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research “The Tony Blair Faith Foundation is ... honouring International Women’s Day ...” (Tony Blair Faith Foundation, 5th March 2013.) It was former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson who is attributed with the quote “a week is a long time in politics”, referring to the speedy shifting sands of political priorities. If a week is a while, approaching twelve years is a millennium. Remember the deluge of political concern over the subjugation of Afghan women at the time of the October 2001 invasion? The tsunami of documentaries, articles, books on their plight, contributing to the justification of another invasion – actually for $trillions of minerals, a geographically strategic country and a pipeline. It is salutary to recap a few. In November 20...

NOVANEWS By Dana Visalli Global Research The United States has spent over $600 billion dollars on its Afghan war effort1, but most of the money has gone to military infrastructure and sophisticated weaponry; little of it has gone to the education of Afghan youth or to addressing the degradation of Afghan land. The children I am working with had never heard the word ‘ecology.’ They can only conjecture at the species of animals and plants that might co-inhabit their nation, guessing at camels, elephants and lions, all of which are wrong. One student suggested the word ‘snake’, when I asked her if she knew what a snake was, she said that she thought it was “some kind of bug.” This is one small indicator of the level of ignorance that humanity faces about the physical world that we inhabit a...

NOVANEWS Karzai’s 'orders' repeatedly ignored By Richard Becker 'President' meets President On March 1, a U.S./NATO helicopter gunship killed two Afghan brothers, seven and eight years of age, as they tended cattle in Uruzgan province. According to reports from residents, the boys were listening to a radio, which the helicopter crew interpreted as “radio signals” from Afghan resistance fighters. The latest killing comes amidst a series of atrocities against civilians that has further enflamed opposition to the ongoing occupation. On. Feb. 24, Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-installed “president” of Afghanistan, announced that he was demanding the withdrawal of all U.S. Special Forces troops from Wardak province within two weeks. Wardak is a key strategic region and an area of active resistanc...

NOVANEWS by Keith Johnson The left’s anti-war movement was in full swing during the Bush administration—but as soon as Obama took office—it practically vanished from sight.  All of a sudden, the war in Afghanistan became chic.  Code Pink and other leftist groups justified US occupation as a crusade to liberate the repressed Afghan women from their “male-chauvinist pig” husbands.  While the rest of us stood fast and rightly pointed to historical examples of why the US cannot expect to win a war in Afghanistan, the Obamanoids responded with a resounding “yes we can!’ Bringing Western feminism to the women of Afghanistan is the latest despicable tactic being tried by the US military in this ‘graveyard of empires.’ Currently, 45 female Marines are deployed throughout Afghanistan as members o...

NOVANEWS Posted by gordon  Osama Killing gets more shrouds Some Possibly Killed in Abbottabad Helicopter Crash Months Before By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor Today 31 NATO troops, 22 of them Navy Seals from the Osama bin Laden operation died in what is reported as a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.  The chances of this story being true is almost nil.  The chances of this being a staged coverup is over 80%.  We believe these people were murdered to silence them.  This is why. We have solid information on two areas: Osama bin Laden died in 2001 as an active CIA employee and his body was recovered in Afghanistan and taken to “the sand box.”  We were told it was frozen.  We have so much verification from this, CIA, ISI, US military and top officials.  I have a direct confirmation from Bi...

Edward W Deptola, a US sergeant, to be demoted one rank in plea deal after urinating on the corpse of a Taliban fighter. Tens of thousands of US troops remain in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001 [GALLO/GETTY]   A US marine who pleaded guilty to urinating on the corpse of a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan is likely be demoted one rank under a plea agreement. Staff Sergeant Edward W Deptola admitted to multiple charges at a court-martial on Wednesday, including that of violating orders by desecrating remains and posing for photographs with the corpses. Deptola and another marine were charged last year after a video surfaced showing four marines in full combat gear urinating on the bodies of three Afghans in July 2011. In the video, one of the marines looked...