This video is called U.S. Torture at Afghanistan Bagram Army Base Pt1.
And here is Part 2.
By Patrick Martin in the USA:
More evidence of US war crimes
24 January 2011
Military documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union after a lengthy lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act provide important new evidence of American war crimes. The documents include autopsy reports and investigative reports on the deaths of 190 prisoners held by the US military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The more than 2,600 pages of documents were turned over to the ACLU on January 14 and made public on the organization’s web site five days later.
An ACLU statement said that 25 to 30 cases were “unjustified homicides.” US military investigators themselves identified many of the deaths as homicides, although there were very few trials or convictions of the soldiers involved.
The ACLU issued a statement declaring: “So far, the documents released by the government raise more questions than they answer, but they do confirm one troubling fact: that no senior officials have been held to account for the widespread abuse of detainees. Without real accountability for these abuses, we risk inviting more abuse in the future.”
Remember Obama’s executive order that Guantanamo be shut down within 12 months? Oops: here.
NYT Disappears Public Support for Military Spending Cuts: here.
Britain: US and Britain have no legitimacy in Afghanistan says Tory MP. We’re inventing reasons for being there: here.
We [NATO] Had To Destroy The [Afghan] Village To Save It: here.
Justin Norman, Truthout: “Two years ago, if someone had suggested to me that I don an orange jumpsuit and a black hood and haul a cross down the street in opposition to torture, I would have laughed at them. Yet here I am at the end of 2010 having pulled that stunt, or something akin to it, more than 30 times in the past year”: here.
Ray Rivera and Sharifullah Sahak, The New York Times News Service: “The Afghan government is putting new scrutiny on private security companies, raising concerns among Western officials that President Hamid Karzai may be accelerating efforts to push them out of the country. A special committee appointed by Mr. Karzai to investigate the companies has found that 18 have committed ‘major offenses,’ although that number may have later been lowered, according to an Afghan official who has read the committee’s report”: here.
US military lost more troops to suicide than combat for 2nd year in a row: here.
Afghans face death penalty for converting to Christianity: here.
Happy Talk On The Afghan War Is Just Spin & 2014 Is Not The End: here.
William Fisher, Truthout: “US officials tried to influence Spanish prosecutors and government officials to head off court investigations into Guantanamo Bay torture allegations and secret CIA ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights involving Spanish airspace, according to the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. Among their biggest worries were investigations originated by the magistrate Baltasar Garzon, the storied jurist who had the Europe-wide arrest warrant issued for former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet”: here.
Related articles
- The United States of War Crimes: Just Ask Panama (mickeyzvegan.wordpress.com)
- First Guantanamo Commander Calls It ‘A Prison That Should Never Have Been Opened’ (thinkprogress.org)
- Chinese Muslims Freed From Guantanamo Ten Years After Being Found Innocent (thinkprogress.org)
- Shooting the Messenger (truthdig.com)
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
War Protestors Arrested in D.C., New Antiwar Rallies Planned for April 9
Veterans for Peace organized and led a December 2010 rally outside the White House, protesting U.S. warmaking in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Washington police arrested 135 of the protesters, in what is being called the largest mass detention in recent years. No major U.S. news media reported on the demonstration or the arrests. It was blacked out of the New York Times, blacked out of the Philadelphia Inquirer, blacked out of the Los Angeles Times, blacked out of the Wall Street Journal, and even blacked out of the capital’s local daily, the Washington Post.
Rally speakers denounced U.S. government leaders for recruiting poor and unsophisticated American boys and girls to terrorize and kill Asian peasants in the service of corporate wealth. Several independently produced videos of the December 16 D.C. rally are available on the Internet, including this one.
U.S. military spending – Dept. of Defense plus nuclear weapons – is equal to the military spending of the next 15 countries combined.
Veterans for Peace is among the endorsing organizations for new antiwar rallies planned for April 9, 2011. For details on the April rallies, go to http://www.nationalpeaceconference.org.
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Human rights group criticizes Afghanistan’s pro-government militias
01.02.2011 13:10
Human rights group criticizes Afghanistan’s pro-government militias
A human rights group in Afghanistan highlighted the emergence of pro-government armed groups and their misdeeds in a report published Tuesday.
“These groups have been deplored as criminal and predatory by many Afghans and been accused of severe human rights violations such as child recruitment and sexual abuse,” the report by Afghanistan Rights Monitor said, DPA reported.
The Kabul-based independent human rights organization has been monitoring and reporting on rights violations since 2008.
Earlier this week, the Afghan government signed an agreement with the United Nations to stop recruiting children to security forces.
The government has been hiring and equipping local militias, supported by the United States and NATO allies, in a bid to fill the security gaps and combat the insurgency.
Afghans are concerned that the reemergence of militia groups will revive and empower old criminal gangs and warlords that have a record of killing, abuse and violating human rights, the report said.
“But little or nothing has been done by the Afghan government to ensure the militias operate within the legal boundaries and held accountable for their misdeeds,” the group said in its annual report on the civilian casualties of war.
In some instances, it said, civilians were shot dead by the pro-government militias and dubbed “suspected insurgents.”
The group also said it recorded accusations against US and NATO forces that civilians had suffered heavy casualties in areas where the international troops had conducted operations.
http://en.trend.az/regions/world/afghanistan/1821436.html
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Young veterans hit hard by unemployment
BY STEVE GIEGERICH • sgiegerich@post-dispatch.com > 314.340.8172 http://www.STLtoday.com
Posted: Monday, January 31, 2011 12:15 am
John Duwe carries himself with a bearing that telegraphs his service in the United States Marine Corps Reserve — forthright, with eyes locked in.
Duwe reflexivel stands at parade rest during casual conversation even out of uniform. His demeanor displays and demands respect.
Yet nearly a year after he returned unscathed from a tour in Iraq, those qualities have done nothing to earn the St. Genevieve County resident a full-time job.
“We came back to a market that was in the hole,” said Duwe, 30, who has worked a few part-time gigs.
Like Duwe, enlisted, reserve and National Guard personnel trickling back from Iraq and Afghanistan are learning that military service is no job guarantee during an employment crisis that has sidelined nearly 14 million Americans. The unemployment rate for returning soldiers stands at 11.3 percent, compared with the already dire national unemployment figure of 9.4 percent as of November.
The problem seems concentrated among younger veterans, fresh from war. The rate for all veterans over the age of 18 — 8.3 percent — actually trails the national rate.
Employment experts cite several reasons for the increased unemployment rate among young veterans, including the uncertainty raised by multiple deployments, extended time away from a job market that has grown ferocious and subtle worries that soldiers return home bearing psychological scars.
The heightened joblessness comes even as today’s military personnel typically boast a more sophisticated set of skills and credentials than in past conflicts, in which soldiers often enlisted — or got drafted — right out of high school. The majority of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were drawn from the reserve and National Guard units, many of whom had full-time jobs, college degrees or both.
Regardless, many of those full-time positions were swept away by the same recessionary wave that wiped out 8 million other jobs between 2007 and 2009.
“People are having trouble finding jobs no matter what group they are in,” said Michael Holmes, director of the St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment.
BACK TO THE FRONT
In America’s last prolonged conflict, Vietnam, soldiers generally served a single 12-month tour. In Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers have grown accustomed to getting deployed two and three times.
“My gut feeling is that a lot of employers are reluctant to hire National Guard and reservists because they are afraid they’re going to leave again,” said Shams Chughtai, a veterans coordinator with the Missouri Department of Workforce Development. “That is especially true among smaller employers. They’re afraid that someone who is an integral, indispensable part of the team will be activated and gone.”
Military personnel who enlisted straight out of high school are even more vulnerable to joblessness. A major hurdle for these enlistees — discharged after six years of active duty — is a lack of job-seeking experience, according to Mark Lear, a veteran and a vice president with the Travelers Companies regional office in St. Louis County.
Chris Edwards, a veterans liaison with the Illinois Department of Employment Security office in Belleville, pointed out that even highly skilled veterans are hitting the employment wall.
“They come back after working on highly complex defense systems, and employers are telling them they are overqualified,” Edwards said.
Another factor, not so easily defined, may also be a hurdle.
Employment officials have varying opinions on how concerns over combat-related psychological issues may affect job opportunities for veterans. Some contend that the fallout from publicity given post-traumatic stress disorder and other disorders is minimal.
If anything, said Lear, the national conversation about post-traumatic stress has helped lift some of the stigma that vets faced in other wars, particularly Vietnam.
“This era (of veterans) is coming back to 100 percent support,” said Lear, a co-organizer of the Show-Me Heroes Career Fair last Saturday at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Edwards concurs — to a point.
“There are more people talking about PTSD,” he said. “But you still have employers that say, ‘Oh no, I’ve got John Rambo coming back.'”
GETTING THEIR DUE
The issue of veterans returning to the work force could take on an increasing sense of urgency as U.S. involvement in Iraq winds down and a timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan dominates the national conversation.
Missouri and Illinois, in fact, are already moving jobs for veterans to the top of the employment priority list. In Missouri, the Show-Me Heroes program, sparked by Gov. Jay Nixon and coordinated by the Department of Economic Development, asks businesses statewide to take a pledge promising to add veterans to their payrolls. Companies that follow through are recognized on the program’s website.
Missouri employment officials are also redoubling the effort to ensure that employers with federal contracts in excess of $100,000 are complying with guidelines that veterans comprise a portion of their work force.
“We’re not asking (employers) to hire veterans above everybody else,” said program director Lt. Col. Alan Rohlfing. “We’re asking them to consciously consider the attributes of veterans that can have a positive impact on the work force.”
Illinois, meanwhile, is committed to assistance programs that provide individual job counseling for veterans, tax incentives that encourage businesses to hire veterans and other resources designed to assist the transition back to civilian life.
—”‘Are you a veteran?’ is the first thing the greeter asks when clients walk through the door,” said Vicki Niederhoffer, director of the Illinois Department of Employment Security’s Belleville field office.
Bob Schaefer, of Fairview Heights, who was laid off as a structural design engineer last June, appreciates the sentiment. But he contends his Air Force service during the 1960s should not give him priority in the job market over nonveterans.
That’s not to say Schaefer is averse to veterans programs that Illinois has to offer. Schaefer is jobless at age 60, and with ‘so little work out there,” he says he will seize any advantage.
Del Senn, the veterans representative in the Florissant office of the Missouri Career Center, says most veterans — like Schaefer — don’t believe that hiring should be a quid pro quo for military service.
Unfortunately, he added, prolonged unemployment — following prolonged deployments — has a way of changing that viewpoint.
“They feel that their country has abandoned them,” said Senn, a Vietnam veteran. “They feel that they are not getting their righteous due. I’m not saying it’s true. But I can understand why they feel that way.”
Copyright 2011 http://www.STLtoday.com.
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