Central Asia

This wikileaks stuff on Afghanistan is hard evidence that the US presence has led to a incredibly corrupt situation. Were it not for widespread public denial of the degree of badness of US "intelligence" agencies a huge amount of global evil could be avoided.
I recieved this by way of a listserve from Tacoma- Peaople For Peace, Justice and Healing: http://www.tacomapjh.org/
-Rick

[In its Friday edition, the *New York Times* series based on secret
U.S. diplomatic cables leaked to Wikileaks focused on Afghanistan. --
Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti, and Dexter Filkins reported that they
show that Afghanistan is "a looking-glass land where bribery,
extortion, and embezzlement are the norm and the honest official is a
distinct outlier."[1] -- While corruption in Afghanistan is no news,

By William Fisher

NEW
YORK, Feb 28, 2010 (IPS) - Legal headaches are growing exponentially
for the security firm formerly known as Blackwater – once the darling
of the military-industrial community.

In separate
developments, two former employees of the company charged that the
security firm committed "systematic fraud" under its contracts with the
U.S. State Department in Iraq and Afghanistan; the Iraqi government
announced it would seize heavy weapons from foreign security firms and
expel ex-Blackwater contractors still in the country; and a U.S. Senate
hearing learned that Blackwater employees stole more than 500 assault

Barack Obama is on record as advocating a military escalation in
Afghanistan. Before sinking any deeper into that quagmire, we might do
well to learn something about recent Afghani history and the role
played by the United States.

Less than a month after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, US leaders began an all-out aerial
assault upon Afghanistan, the country purportedly harboring Osama bin
Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization. More than twenty years
earlier, in 1980, the United States intervened to stop a Soviet
“invasion” of that country. Even some leading progressive writers, who
normally take a more critical view of US policy abroad, treated the US

The
CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a
place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with
broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador
to the central Asian country.

Libcom.org Jun 30 2009

The mass unrest in the garment industry continued on Monday (29 June) for a third day...

Libcom.org Jun 28 2009

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI and BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press June 20, 2009

TEHRAN, Iran – Thousands of protesters defied Iran's highest authority Saturday and marched on waiting security forces that fought back with baton charges, tear gas and water cannons as the crisis over disputed elections lurched into volatile new ground.

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI and ANNA JOHNSON, Associated Press June 13, 2009

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer Devlin Barrett May 28, 2009

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration asked a federal appeals court Thursday to halt the release of disturbing images of detainee abuse, saying the photos could incite violence in Pakistan as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

May 29, 2009

LONDON (Reuters) – More than 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final days of Sri Lanka's military operation to defeat Tamil Tigers rebels, The Times newspaper reported on Friday.

May 12 2009  Libcom.org

Two major outbreaks of garment workers' fury have occurred this week.

May 10, 2009 By KRISHAN FRANCIS

(AP) COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – An unrelenting hail of artillery in Sri Lanka's war zone killed at least 378 civilians, according to a government doctor who survived the attack as shells flew near the makeshift hospital. More than 100 of the victims were children, the U.N. said Sunday.

by Mohammad Reza May 7,2009

HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) – Afghans chanted "Death to America" and demanded US troops leave Afghanistan as mobs threw stones at government offices Thursday in a violent protest against civilian deaths, witnesses said.

March 20, 2009

BAGHDAD (AP)– American flags were set on fire Friday to chants of "no, no for occupation" as followers of an anti-U.S. Shiite cleric marked the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war.

In five other Iraqi cities, supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also either marched or stood in protest after prayers to demand the release of their allies detained at Iraqi and U.S.-run prisons.