Hunger and Anger in Afghanistan

by Kathy Kelly

(Photo: Paul Casier)

The Obama administration has announced the imminent release of a December Review which will evaluate the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan.  The military has yet to disclose what the specific categories for evaluation will be.  Yet many people in Afghanistan might wish that hunger along with their anger over attacks against civilians could top the list.

In Afghanistan, a nation where 850 children die every day, about a quarter of the population goes hungry. The UN says that 7.4 million Afghans live with hunger and fear of starvation, while millions more rely on food help, and one in five children die before the age of five. 

 “Do you think we like to live this way?” an Afghan man asked me, last October, as he led us toward a primitive tent encampment on the outskirts of Kabul. “Do you see how we live?  The cold and the rain are coming.  How will we protect our children?”  He flicked his forefinger on a weather-beaten blanket covering a tent.  The blanket immediately ripped. 

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Open letter from Afghan Youth to our World Leaders

Dear Mr Obama, Mrs Clinton, Mr Petraeus, Mr Rasmussen, and all our world leaders,
 
We are Afghans and we ask the world to listen.
 
Like yourselves, we couldn’t live without the love of our family and friends.
 
We were hurt by your criticism of Mr Karzai for voicing the people’s anguished pleas, “Stop your night raids.”
 
Please, stop your night raids.
 
If you could listen, you would have heard 29 NGOs in Afghanistan describe how we now have “Nowhere to Turn”.
 
If you could listen, you would also have heard Mr Karzai and the 29 NGOs express concern over your Afghan Local Police plan; the world will henceforth watch our militia killing the people, your people and our people, with your weapons and your money.
 
If you could listen, you would have heard the sound of your drones crystallizing the nights of hatred among the Afghan, Pakistani and global masses.

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An Animal of Colossal Proportions

This review first appeared at the new Muslim Institute website (worth watching)..

These days it seems that almost everyone sees the apocalypse bearing down. This is the age of Kali Yag and the oncoming rapture, the arrival of the triumphant Mehdi, of catastrophic climate change and resource shortage. This is the age in which Beduin compete to build the taller towers, in which fog appears above cities as a sign of their evil.

‘2666’ is a vast apocalypse-in-motion novel set in the 1990s. It was written by a poet who turned to novel writing in his forties only in order to support his young family. He died at 50.

Roberto Bolano wrote ‘2666’ in five books. Before he died he asked that each book be published separately, because he believed that would leave more cash for his loved ones. His publishers decided to ignore this directive, for each book feeds thematically and by plot tangent into the others. The novel has a cumulative, total effect.

The first book – effortlessly cosmopolitan, densely detailed, persistently digressive – centres on a menage a trois between three European academics who also share an obsession with a reclusive German writer called Archimboldi. When a British-Pakistani cab driver expresses his outrage at the academics’ unorthodox relationship, the two men of the trio beat him to a pulp. Afterwards, “they were convinced that it was the Pakistani who was the real reactionary and misogynist, the violent one, the intolerant and offensive one, that the Pakistani had asked for it a thousand times over.” Almost in passing, the episode diagnoses a very contemporary European disease, but also contributes to some of the novel’s central themes, of violence, anonymity, senselessness and the failure of imagination.

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Support Assange

The Russian government is encouraging NGO’s to nominate Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile this letter of support has appeared in the Guardian signed by several of our friends.

We protest at the attacks on WikiLeaks and, in particular, on Julian Assange (Report, 9 December) The leaks have assisted democracy in revealing the real views of our governments over a range of issues which have been kept secret and are now irreversibly in the public domain. All we knew about the mass killing, torture and corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan has been confirmed. The world’s leaders can no longer hide the truth by simply lying to the public. The lies have been exposed. The actions of major corporations such as Amazon, the Swiss banks and the credit card companies in hindering WikiLeaks are shameful, bowing to US government pressure. The US government and its allies, and their friends in the media, have built up a campaign against Assange which now sees him in prison facing extradition on dubious charges, with the presumed eventual aim of ensuring his extradition to the US. We demand his immediate release, the dropping of all charges, and an end to the censorship of WikiLeaks.

John Pilger, Lindsey German Stop the War Coalition, Salma Yaqoob, Craig Murray, Alexei Sayle, Mark Thomas, Caryl Churchill, AL Kennedy, Celia Mitchell, Ben Griffin (former soldier), Terry Jones, Sami Ramadani, Roger Lloyd Pack, David Gentleman, Miriam Margolyes, Andy de la Tour, Katharine Hamnett, Iain Banks

Police cavalry charges students in London

Barack Obama will no doubt issue a statement of solidarity soon. (via Lenin’s Tomb) According to Chris Greenwood of the Press Association, the police has made 20 arrests and 43 protesters have been treated at hospital for injuries. Twelve police officers were also injured.

Guardian reports:

At 5.40pm news of the MPs’ historic decision reached the crowds gathered in Whitehall to cries of “Shame!”

Within an hour, the scuffles at police lines that had been erupting all afternoon escalated into more violent confrontations, windows were broken at several buildings including the Treasury and supreme court and in Trafalgar Square

A car carrying Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall was attacked in Argyll Street as they headed for the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium, with a window of the vehicle being cracked in the violence. Paint was also thrown and splattered the car. […]

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It Doesn’t Take a Nobel Laureate to Understand the Complex and Seemingly Unsolvable Phenomena of Apartheid

Spot the Nobel Laureate

At the end of October, 40 Nobel Laureates decided to collaborate with an overtly Zionist institution and write a dubious-at-best (Fisking will begin momentarily) public statement, denouncing the academic and cultural portion of the initiatives of the growing world-wide BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. Their claims were not new to us, in the movement, nor did they inspire any serious debate, or new thought. Though the statement in itself merited no intellectual response, the mere stature of its authors elicited a response from PACBI (the Palestinian campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel). That said, in the spirit of the free exchange of ideas (and my obsession with taking talkbacks way too seriously), I’d also like to reply to the [n]obel Laureates.

On Ethics and Axioms

“Always shocked but never surprised” has become a mantra to me in the past couple of years. I’ve grown to understand my reality as a place (or rather a twilight zone) where shocking events often happen and ignorant statements are often made, and all without the blink of an eye. No guilt, no shame. No accountability.

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Wikileaks: It’s War

One day after the US government declared ‘war’ on Wikileaks, hackers around the world have retaliated. They’ve already taken down the websites of Mastercard and the Swedish prosecutor. Others, such as Paypal and Visa are also under cyber attacks.

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