By Ron Paul, Media With Conscience

 

Last week the National Bureau of Economic Research published a report on the effect of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq that confirmed what critics of our foreign policy have been saying for years: the killing of civilians, although unintentional, angers other civilians and prompts them to seek revenge. This should be self-evident.

 

The Central Intelligence Agency has long acknowledged and analyzed the concept of blowback in our foreign policy. It still amazes me that so many think that attacks against our soldiers occupying hostile foreign lands are motivated by hatred toward our system of government at home or by the religion of the attackers. In fact, most of the anger towards us is rooted in reactions towards seeing their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and other loved ones being killed by a foreign army. No matter our intentions, the violence of our militarism in foreign lands causes those residents to seek revenge if innocents are killed. One does not have to be Muslim to react this way, just human.

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By John Ingold, The Denver Post

 

Cannabis advocates on Wednesday filed a petition to include post-traumatic stress disorder on the state's list of medical-marijuana-approved conditions.

 

The petition argues that medical marijuana can help with PTSD — especially in veterans — by easing depression, anxiety and nightmares. The petition was formally filed at the state health department by Kevin Grimsinger, an Army veteran and double amputee who said he lost his legs after stepping on a land mine in 2001 in Afghanistan.

 

"People who have served our country or other people who were injured and have PTSD should be able to have access to medicine that helps them," said Brian Vicente, executive director of Sensible Colorado, an advocacy group backing the petition.

 

Colorado voters in 2000 approved a constitutional amendment allowing for the use of medical marijuana for eight conditions. The amendment also creates a petition process by which more conditions can be approved. Read more »

By: Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press

 

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Being the world's largest producer of opium is taking its toll in the form of collateral damage on the residents of Afghanistan.

 

A country marred by decades of civil war and extreme poverty, Afghanistan produces the raw opium used to make 90 per cent of the world's heroin, according to the United Nations.

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RT.com

The Russia-NATO Council is meeting in Brussels Wednesday to discuss ways of reducing or eliminating drug production in Afghanistan. But as politicians talk, people continue to suffer from prospering drug business.

Russia is facing a crisis, with an estimated 2.5 million addicts – more than any other country in the world – and 90 per cent of them use cheap Afghan heroin.

Moscow estimates narcotics production in Afghanistan has increased 44 times since the US-led war started in 2001. It says coalition forces are just not doing enough to eradicate the problem. And drugs production remains a major source of income for Taliban militants.

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Jacob's note: The Canadian Armed Forced have been involved in opium and hashish production arrests, so some of these detainees that were tortured may have been simple Afghan poppy farmers, not enemy combatants.

Government was told detainees faced 'extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial'

By. Paul Koring, Globe and Mail

The Harper government knew from its own officials that prisoners held by Afghan security forces faced the possibility of torture, abuse and extrajudicial killing, The Globe and Mail has learned.

But the government has eradicated every single reference to torture and abuse in prison from a heavily blacked-out version of a report prepared by Canadian diplomats in Kabul and released under an access to information request.

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Jerome Starkey in Kabul, Times Online

A police colonel accused of running a drug smuggling network went on trial in Kabul yesterday in a landmark prosecution by Afghanistan’s new anti-corruption taskforce. Diplomats hope that it marks the beginning of a new era in the fight against government corruption.

Hidden behind blast walls, watchtowers and miles of razor wire, the 45-year-old police commander appeared in front of a panel of three judges, including a woman, at the country’s most heavily guarded court on the outskirts of the capital.

Manacled and despondent, the former police chief from Arghestan in Kandahar province shuffled into the dock with four young men wearing striped prison uniforms. They were charged with possessing 40 tonnes of cannabis and operating a sophisticated smuggling network along the border with Pakistan.

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October 28, 2009

Brought to You by the CIA

By DAVE LINDORFF

Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the downtown of your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin overdose, just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying: “Your Federal Tax Dollars at Work.”

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