On April 7, an
airstrike on a Taliban commander killed him and a total of 16 civilians, 12 of them children. Hamid Karzai condemns the attack
and says that the CIA is carelessly planning these airstrikes that go awry far too often. Kunar district was the site of another airstrike that killed civilians in February.
[more inside]
posted by Sleeper
on Apr 22, 2013 -
186 comments
"We're just trying to lead normal lives, doing what we want to do. Why shouldn't we?"
The members [of Afghanistan women's national team], who range in age from 16 to 24, are up against widespread resentment from their relatives* and neighbors, and threats from men who disapprove of women playing sports. They managed to participate in an inclusive
tournament in Berlin and they registered their first official win as they defeated Pakistan national women's team 4-0 and reached the semi-finals of the 2nd SAFF women's championship in 2012 improving on their past performance (
rough 2010 SAFF footage). They're able to practice just three times a week for 90 minutes, occasionally at the
stadium (
2) or in its gym, but more often at a helicopter landing pad on a base for NATO troops, where practices are interrupted by takeoffs and landings.
Players have some outside support from
hummel, the sponsor of the
women's and the
men's team, and have had football clinics in
Stuttgart and
with Olympic U.S. player Lorrie Fair in Kabul.
[more inside]
posted by ersatz
on Jan 19, 2013 -
8 comments
Most of us reading on the blue lived through at least a portion of it. Forty-plus years of tension between the world's two superpowers and their allies. That's right: The Cold War.
Then, they
made a documentary. Aired on CNN in 1998, and never released on DVD,
the 24 episode, 20 hour series features tons of archival footage, along with many interviews with individuals directly involved at some of the highest levels.
You might not be able to see it on DVD, but you can watch the full series on Youtube, starting with
Part 1: Comrades (1917-1945).
posted by symbioid
on Mar 27, 2012 -
78 comments
The failure to fix electricity infrastructure in Afghanistan. IEEE Spectrum published a
damning investigation into the ongoing incompetence, corruption, and waste of the
USAID and its murky
cost-plus contracts, some 'so vague that it did not require the contractor to provide "specific deliverables with concrete delivery dates."' [from
here] Not surprisingly, they spend a
lot of money.
previously
posted by thandal
on Oct 8, 2011 -
5 comments
Freedom to love, tested in Afghanistan. When Rafi Mohammed, a 17-year-old
Tajik Afghani, met and fell in love with his girlfriend Halima, he did not think about the rage that would erupt in her ethically conservative
Hazara neighborhood, or of the lengths to which the local police and religious leaders would go to protect the couple from an angry mob in a region of Afghanistan which
has seen fewer attacks recently and has been restored to local control. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- the violence that ensued, many of the locals have found themselves opposed to the fundamentalists, unwilling to see another pair of young lovers executed,
as happened under Taliban rule. (
video, NSFW)
""I feel so bad. I just pray that God gives this girl back to me. I'm ready to lose my life. I just want her safe release. . . It’s the heart. When you love somebody, you don’t ask who she is or what she is. You just go for it.”
posted by markkraft
on Jul 31, 2011 -
35 comments
In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 14, 2009 -
60 comments
With election season in the US, it's probably hard to get a less than Gung-ho picture of the war in Afghanistan, but this
Spiegel Online article paints a dark picture. "Pessimism about the situation has never been so high." High level NATO commanders are using phrases like "Doomed to Fail," "We are trapped," "repeating the same mistakes as the Soviets", military victory "neither feasible nor supportable," "downward spiral." For some it is so dark the only beacon of light would be peace talks with the Taliban.
[more inside]
posted by stbalbach
on Oct 21, 2008 -
35 comments
CIA Predicts European Union Will Break Up Within 15 Years. With all the attention focused on Iraq, this new CIA report seems to have slipped under the radar. Europe's dismal economic prospects and the continent's unfavorable demographics could have dire consequences for the EU, result in the dissolution of NATO and generally @#$?! up every post World War II/Cold War alliance that has been formed over the last half-century. Not that the CIA has ever been wrong...
posted by Heminator
on Jan 20, 2005 -
67 comments
Black widow pop. "With tATu, Ivan Shapovalov took the media's
obsession with paedophilia, and spun it into a
chart-topping lesbo-schoolgirl pop act. Now
he's trying to do the same with Islamic
terrorism. On Sept 11 in Moscow, he launched
nATo, a 16-year-old girl who dresses in a
Burqua, much like the Black Widow suicide bombers
who are currently terrorising Russia. With
the Beslan massacre only a week old, Nato's
launch - complete with invitations designed
like plane tickets - was not a huge success...
Mindful of the dire consequences of being a
dissenting voice in Putin's Russia these days,
Shapovalov is planning to launch nATo properly
in London later this year, and get a
recording contract here."
stolen from popbitch
posted by mr.marx
on Sep 24, 2004 -
19 comments
First Casualties? NATO, the U.N. A 3 day old article, but it gave me a much better understanding of the workings of the U.N. and NATO and what the strengths and weaknesses are of each.
"
What is surprising, however, is the trouble the U.N. has had acting effectively even after the U.S.-Soviet rivalry ended. Again and again during the 1990s, the U.N. appeared helpless to meet “unsanctioned” aggressions in places like Rwanda, Liberia, the Horn of Africa and, especially, in the Balkans. "
posted by Ron
on Mar 23, 2003 -
4 comments
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo,
Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, Xray, Yankee and Zulu. Now I know my NATO
phonetic ABCs, next time won't you sing with me?
posted by iconomy
on Feb 14, 2003 -
30 comments
BBC's Newsnight reports on a massive security oversight that makes unencrypted NATO video surveillance available on the Internet "Nato surveillance flights in the Balkans are beaming their pictures over an insecure satellite link - and anyone can tune in and watch their operations live," reports Mark Urban of BBC2's late-night news analysis show.
Near-realtime footage of NATO surveillance operations in the Balkans is routinely gathered by spy planes and returned to base as an encrypted signal and then forwarded to intelligence facilities in the US. However, when they are beamed back to Europe for analysis at NATO headquarters, no encryption is used. It is possible to tune into and watch these live video feeds (complete with map references and information about the type of aircraft in use) and so, in theory, an unfriendly agency could use the pictures to see what troops are up to and who they are watching. How long before this loophole is acknowledged and closed? Or should all surveillance data be made
ever more available to whoever wants it?
posted by hmgovt
on Jun 12, 2002 -
13 comments
Reuters confirms that our friend Dubya did in fact authorize the attack on Iraqi radar stations. We're killing people and giving a dictator fuel for the propaganda mill he needs to prop up his regime. But that's okay, because the people who are dying don't share our race and religion and so, in fact, they're not really "people" at all. They're ciphers and objects and statistics. Apparently it's only when white Protesetants die that death really matters. Incidentally, remember this bombing isn't a matter of protecting the Kuwaiti ethnic minority (read: our oil interests), this is over perceived violation of arbitrarily imposed NATO sanctions. Scum. Scum scum scum!
posted by hanseugene
on Feb 16, 2001 -
40 comments
NATO Ducks Uranium Ban Amid Clamor for Research. NATO partners split on dangers of depleted uranium weapons.
"U.S. attack jets fired some 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition during NATO's 1999 campaign to end Serb repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. About 10,000 rounds were also fired in neighboring Bosnia in 1994-95."Of course, this doesn't count rounds used during the Gulf War.
posted by Mr. skullhead
on Jan 9, 2001 -
1 comment
left-over gun shells poisoning the environment US and NATO forces left enough low-level depleted uranium shells lying around in bosnia/kosovo to cause an environmental hazard. I wrote whitehouse.gov and the d.o.d. about how important i think it is that we clean up this mess, pronto. i love using the word, pronto. this is important, and could really affect us if we don't fix it now.
posted by bliss322
on Jan 7, 2001 -
26 comments
