My friend Isabel did a fantastic story for the Nation about the anti-immigration pundit Lou Dobbs who had undocumented workers caring for his horses and grounds, and she had the chance to talk to Lou Dobbs about it on MSNBC. Check it out.
Author: Justin Podur
Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction.
Bruce Levine on Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic
I’m reading Bruce Levine’s “Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic”. The story of how I got the book is interesting. I was reading some psychology books a while back (Alfie Kohn, Alice Miller) and a reader of this blog suggested that no psychology reading list would be complete without Levine’s “Commonsense Rebellion”. I read it, and agreed totally. Then the other day I was reading Z Magazine and noticed a book review written by Bruce Levine, and at the bottom of that it mentioned “Surviving”. So, here I am, reading the book.
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The Rwandan Election
Paul Kagame is headed for a landslide victory at the Rwandan polls. Exit polls indicate 93% of the electorate voted for him. If some Western media commentators could vote in Rwandan elections, the number would likely be even higher.
Take Stephen Kinzer, who wrote a biography of Kagame subtitled “Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed it”. Earlier this year, Kinzer wrote in the UK Guardian about the stakes of Rwanda’s election:
The Afghan War Diary Data – an initial look
An initial look at the first 76,000 records in the “Afghan War Diary” leaked by Wikileaks yields some important information, much of which has been known or suspected by analysts for years. Given the sheer size of the database, there is a great deal more to be learned, but here are some initial findings.
Casualty data
The first impression is one of an extremely lopsided war, like all wars of occupation, where occupied casualties are vastly higher than those by the occupier.
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The Drug War in Afghanistan – the Dyncorp connection
Just reading some of the 800+ hits on the drug war in Afghanistan, and these are real – the US is fighting a drug war in Afghanistan. There are DEA agents running around arresting people, there are troops eradicating poppy in farmers fields, and they are finding and burning piles of opium, heroin, hashish, and marijuana.
One thing I keep coming across is mentions of DynCorp, a private military contractor, in lines like this: “DYNCORP reps have confirmed that they are being told by senior provincial police officials that the CoP is taking bribes, involved in drug trafficing, etc.”
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Reading the incidents in Pakistan – some notes
[Analysis of the Wikileaks Afghan War Diary]. I pulled out the 170-or-so incidents that mention Pakistan and are actually in Pakistan. A lot of them involve coordination with the Pakistani military, getting it, failing to get it, etc. An observation post comes under indirect fire, they track the point of origin, discover it’s in Pakistan, try to get permission to attack the point, and either do or don’t.
For example, this one dated October 16, 2009:
Event Title:D10 0523Z
Zone:null
Placename:IJC#10-1454
Outcome:EffectiveTF EAST PAKTIKA
C/3-509TH IN (ABN)Continue reading “Reading the incidents in Pakistan – some notes”
Afghan War Diary incidents in Pakistan
[Analysis of Wikileaks’s Afghan War Diary]. I thought it might be useful to show a map of the (approx. 170) incidents in the Afghan War Diary that mention Pakistan and also take place within Pakistan’s borders. I will be reading the summaries to see what happened here, but take a look at it – there are incidents in Balochistan, FATA, and NWFP.
Iran in the Afghan War Diary
A search on “Iran” in the Afghan War Diary gives about 150 hits – more, actually, but I cleared a bunch that were place names that have the string “iran” in them, like Faqiran, and any entries about how the US raids a weapons cache and uncovers Iranian-manufactured weapons (there are a lot of those cache raids in the record).
India in the Afghan War Diary
In the phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, foxtrot, golf, hotel, india…), the letter “i” is represented by “india”. This makes searching for “India” in the Afghan War Diary a bit of extra work, as grid systems and nomenclatures that use alphabetical numbering and reach the letter “I” end up having US military units or areas around bases that have nothing to do with India, called “India”. When you go through that and cut those out, I got about 82 entries. Almost all of them have to do with Indian road construction company and other contractors, NGOs, and other business operations in Afghanistan, the Indian Consulate or Embassy, and India’s positions in meetings with NATO or the US or Pakistan.
One interesting one I did find, dated October 23, 2007:
“At 1150Z, TF Nimroz reported 1x insurgent on a motorcycle crashed into a car belonging to a construction company at grid 41R MQ 431 527, in the Chakhansor district, Nimroz province. The motorcycle exploded. 1x construction worker was killed and 1x wounded. The ANP sent a QRF. The QRF struck an explosion possibly remote controlled IED, which killed 11x ANP, 1x Indian officer. 3x ABP and 4x ANP were wounded in the second explosion. It is unknown if the Indian officer was armed forces or police. ISAF tracking # 01-082.”
Seems that there was some kind of Indian military presence, perhaps associated with the Embassy or Consulate.
Task Forces in Afghanistan
[More analysis of Wikileaks Afghan War Diary]. Looking through the 200- entries in the Afghan War Diary that specifically mention Canada, I noticed that most of them mention one of three task forces: TF Aegis, TF Paladin, and TF Kandahar. Searching for each of those terms gives a 1000-3000 hits each. It seems that these task forces are multinational NATO efforts with regional commands. From some quick searching, Task Force Aegis seems to have been under the command of a Canadian general. Task Force Paladin seems to be a specific anti-IED unit. Task Force Kandahar is a bigger force that had a large presence of UK troops as well as Canadian and US troops. I think the different TFs might have operated at different times during the war.