The U.S.'s new public enemy No. 1 in Afghanistan is one of its own making. Ten years into the occupation of Afghanistan, American officials describe the militia led by Jalaluddin Haqqani as the country's deadliest insurgent group, responsible for a slew of particularly bold attacks, including the day-long assault three weeks ago on the U.S. embassy in Kabul.
But Haqqani's rise to power can be traced directly back to the secret, multi-billion-dollar U.S. campaign to create a radicalized and well-equipped army of Islamic jihadists -- known as the mujahideen -- to lead a war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Jalaluddin Haqqani, Once CIA's 'Blue-Eyed Boy,' Now Top Scourge For U.S. In Afghanistan
McChrystal: U.S. Wasn’t Ready for Afghan War
The U.S. began the war in Afghanistan with a "frighteningly simplistic" view of the country and even 10 years later lacks knowledge that could help bring the conflict to a successful end, a former top commander said Thursday.
Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations that the U.S. and its NATO allies are only "a little better than" 50 percent of the way to reaching their war goals.
Nobel Peace Prize goes to 3 women activists, including Liberia's Sirleaf
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to three women activists, two from Liberia and one from Yemen, in recognition of their nonviolent campaigns toward peace and women’s rights in conflict zones.
The 2011 laureates are: Africa’s first democratically elected female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, of Liberia; Leymah Gwobee, also of Liberia; and Tawakkul Karman, a Yemeni civil society campaigner who’s played a vocal role in her nation’s months-old uprising against the government.
Obama and Congress ARE Wall Street, Geithner IS the Federal Reserve - Now What?
Barack Obama and his 2008 presidential challenger John McCain both received more money from Wall Street donors than their combined lifetime government salaries. It was a billion-dollar-plus campaign. In fact, all of Congress makes more from Wall Street and corporate campaign contributions than their public salaries. It is the nature of the modern political system. And Timothy Geithner, despite cheating on his own taxes, was plucked from the New York Federal Reserve to serve as U.S. Treasury Secretary. So who can the People turn to for solutions?
Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list"
American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
Body suit may soon enable the paralyzed to walk
In a busy lab at Duke University, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis is merging brain science with engineering in a bid to create something fantastical: a full-body prosthetic device that would allow those immobilized by injury to walk again.
On Wednesday, Nicolelis and an international group of collaborators declared that they had cleared a key hurdle on the path toward that goal, demonstrating they could bypass the body's complex network of nerve endings and supply the sensation of touch directly to the brains of monkeys.
The New York Times: Distorting and Suppressing Truth for Power
Imagine winning 106 Pulizer Prizes awarded for excellence in journalism, more than any other broadsheet, for delivering managed, not real news, information and opinion.
Imagine doing it since 1851. Imagine being called the "newspaper of record," producing "All the News That's Fit to Print."
Imagine an establishment publication representing wealth and power, backing corporate interests, cheerleading imperial wars, ducking uncomfortable issues too sensitive to report, and functioning as an unofficial ministry of information and propaganda.
The Fleeting Comfort of Familiar Lies
Familiar lies. We all live with them. These are the lies that we were brought up with. The ones that we rely on to be true in our corner of the universe. The ones that comfort us with their familiarity and social acceptance. That is, until that moment when we learn that just one of those “truths” was indeed, a lie.
Then we begin to question… everything. And that is not comforting in the least. In fact, it is the loneliest place in the world, because every comfort is fleeting – remaining only until the light of truth shines on it. Until the mere knowledge of the truth becomes the only real comfort. Until the love of truth outweighs any dalliance from reality and fleeting comfort generated from the bed of lies that encircle us and attempt to ensnare. These are the lies generated by the media machine that intend to mold us into perfect little consumer and social batteries fueling the ever-increasing beast that is our current government system.
You know the ones…
NYPD spied on city's Muslim partners
The New York Police Department's intelligence squad secretly assigned an undercover officer to monitor a prominent Muslim leader even as he decried terrorism, cooperated with the police, dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series by The New York Times about Muslims in America.
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Sheikh Reda Shata was among those singled out for surveillance because of his "threat potential" and what the NYPD considered links to organizations associated with terrorism, despite having never been charged with any crime, according to secret police documents obtained by The Associated Press.
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