Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said Russia will support a resolution on Syria proposed by Kofi Annan, but only if two conditions are met.
One: The details of the resolution are made public.
Two: That it is not an “Ultimatum”, but an on going process of dialog to “…end to violence on all sides…”
In Farah Province it seems the “Taliban” have started the Spring Offensive early.
A convoy of U.S./NATO/ISAF fuel tankers has been destroyed, and several people killed. Also, in a separate incident two militants were detained and accused of plotting to launch an attack on Afghan forces.
The fuel convoy was being escorted by a private security company, two of the security guards were killed.
Speaking of private security companies, the media hasn’t talked about the Afghan President’s mission to shut them down. Turns out that Hamid Karzai ordered an end to privately run security companies. So far 58 companies have been shut down. Another 40 have been given an extra three months to get out a town!
In Kandahar yet more attacks. Afghan National Security (ANS) forces say several of their troops were killed and wounded in the past 24 hours. They claim it was the result of military operations against anti-government militants. Although the ANS listed the types of weapons they confiscated, they did not mention any casualties on the militant side.
Afghan police claim that violence against women is on the increase. In the latest case a Baghlan Province woman was found with her head shaved, made to sit in the snow, was beaten with cables, and was forced into prostitution by her husband.
Afghan officials are praising their increased efforts to end violence against women, but the woman in the latest case says she had been tortured for the past three years of marriage, and had asked for help from the police several times!!!
Because the Afghan officials are finally doing something about violence against women, it might seem like there’s an increase in the violence. But like the woman said, in her case it had been going on for three years, and she told the authorities several times.
Very quietly, on March 16, 2012, Nobel prize winning U.S. President Barack Obama issued a new Executive Order: National Defense Resources Preparedness.
If you think the military industrial complex is big now, guess what!
The bulk of the Order focuses on creating a full blown Total War military industry. Obama stresses the need to “improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the domestic industrial base to support national defense requirements” and “to foster cooperation between the defense and commercial sectors for research and development and for acquisition of materials, services, components, and equipment to enhance industrial base efficiency and responsiveness.”
The Order establishes the officials who will lead the Defense Production Act Committee, and orders the Secretary of Commerce to co-operate with the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Homeland Security!
It also orders six Departments to begin prioritizing and allocating resources respective to food, health care, transportation, resources for industries, and even water supply (assigned to the Department of Defense)!
“The Secretary of each agency delegated authority under subsection (a) of this section (resource departments) shall plan for and issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources and establish standards and procedures by which the authority shall be used to promote the national defense, under both emergency and non-emergency conditions.”
The Order even gets into the details of providing loans to companies involved with providing for National Defense!
It makes the Secretary of Defense the go to man for funding, as he is now acting Defense Production Act Fund Manager.
The Order places the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of the National Defense Executive Reserve (NDER), including the “…establishment, recruitment, training, monitoring, and activation of NDER units…”
The Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of Defense, will “…collect and maintain data necessary to make a continuing appraisal of the Nation’s workforce…” and develop “…policies regulating the induction and deferment of persons for duty in the armed services…”
“Executive Order 12919 of June 3, 1994, and sections 401(3) (4) of Executive Order 12656 of November 18, 1988, are revoked.”
Executive Order 12919 deals with national defense industrial resource policies and programs. Executive Order 12656 deals with emergency preparedness responsibilities.
The major differences between this National Defense Resources Preparedness, and those made in the past, is the use of the term “non-emergencies”, several times in the order. Also, the desire to control food & water supplies as well as health care and transportation.
From Section 201: “…to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense…”
This is for real people! This is basically an order that puts the United States in a Total War stance. “Total war is the practice of war where nearly all the resources of a society are employed to defeat an opponent.”–Silvapages
“They said they would rape me, and one time they took a stick and dipped it into chili powder and threatened to insert the stick into my anus. They tried to pull off my pants. When they did that, I confessed to everything they wanted.”-prisoner at Kandahar prison
“After [the torture] was finished I told them that I only confessed because of the beating. But they responded to that by beating me again. I swear by God and by my children that I am innocent.”-prisoner at Kandahar prison
U.S. forces know prisons use torture because they were told about it in an order in 2011! However, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has evidence of several cases where people were sent to the torture prisons, after U.S. personnel were ordered to stop such practices, and it looks like U.S. forces also operate their own torture centers!
The United States detains thousands of individuals all across Afghanistan, with the majority held in the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP) as well as a number of temporary detention sites, including a secretive U.S. screening facility at Bagram Air Base run by the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).-report titled Torture, Transfers, and Denial of Due Process: The Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghanistan
Investigators discovered there are U.S. units that officially operate outside NATO/ISAF command, even though there’s only one commander for Afghan operations: USMC General John Allen. However there are some U.S. units that are even exempt from General Allen’s authority!
It is important to note that some U.S. forces in Afghanistan operate as a part of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), a U.S. led counter-terrorism coalition that is separate from ISAF forces. Known as U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), most of these non-ISAF U.S. forces are special operations forces and also referred to as Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan (CFSOCC-A). CFSOCC-A forces frequently conduct operations in which individuals are detained. USFOR-A is under the command of General John Allen, who also serves as the commander of ISAF (COM-ISAF). There are also a number of U.S. military units that operate separately from ISAF and USFOR-A forces, and are not under the command of General Allen.-report titled Torture, Transfers, and Denial of Due Process: The Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghanistan
Investigators also discovered that prisoners have tried to report the torture, but are punished for doing so: “I have nothing else to say. They will put me somewhere else after I talk to you. They will disappear me.”-prisoner in Herat prison
They even torture children: “We wrote a complaint letter once, but the director found out, and then we got hit very hard with the pipe after that.”-child prisoner Juvenile Corrections Center in Helmand
The latest investigation was conducted between February 2011 and January 2012. In September 2011, the United Nations said they found evidence of torture at 16 detention centers in Afghanistan.
The latest report also talks about coalition forces and goes into detail about torture run by U.S. supported Afghan prisons. Torture, Transfers, and Denial of Due Process:The Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghanistan
March 13, two U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, one in North Waziristan, one in South Waziristan, killed 15 people. Two of those killed were pro-government militants!
March 11, Israeli drone hits family as mother walked her children home. All ended up in the hospital with cuts and fractures. One 15 year old boy died.
“We were coming back from school along with six of our companions when suddenly a drone hit us. I had the sensation of flying.”-Hani Al-Qanoo, boy injured in attack
“The drones fly low over the night sky, the explosions are now less frequent but nobody is relaxing or being lulled in to any false sense of security, Gaza is awake and will not sleep tonight.”-eyewitness living in Gaza Strip
March 11, nine people killed in Yemen by U.S. drone strike. Three people killed in Jabal Khanfar, a hill overlooking the Abyan town of Jaar. Six people killed in Makhzan, southeast of Jaar. Witnesses say at least six missiles were fired from several U.S .drones.
“Obviously Israel is an independent country, and they’ll make whatever decisions they make on their own based on what they think is in their national interests….If they should make that decision, then obviously the United States would take action.”-Leon Panette, U.S. Secretary of Defense
“What’s coming now is increasing evidence that everything the U.S. Army has said is a lie!”-Gordon Duff, Veterans Today, USMC Vietnam veteran
The investigation made by a Afghan Parliament group, gave details of what they found regarding the “lone” U.S. shooting genocide in Panjwaii.
The investigators say there were between 15 and 20 U.S. troops, operating in two teams (squads), being backed up by two helicopters. Two, not one, villages were attacked. They also discovered that several women were raped!
Some of the witnesses interviewed were Afghan National Security Forces.
The attacks actually took place in two villages more than 1.5 kilometers (0.9 mile) apart. All the killings took place in less than 30 minutes, which makes it impossible for one person to hit two villages! Investigators say three sizes of bullets were used. In one house eleven bodies had been piled up and burned. Women had been raped.
A U.S. Vietnam War veteran, and current veterans activist, Gordon Duff, stated that it is impossible for a single soldier to walk off a U.S. base in Afghanistan: “When you’re in a forward position [Forward Operating Base FOB, Combat OutPost COP]….to leave a base requires a vehicle…a vehicle could not have left the compound at night without more than one person in it…to open the [compound] gate would have required the mission to be allowed…a watch officer, he would have had to have given permission, so they had permission…”
Duff went on to explain that the fact that the bodies were piled and burned is also proof that more than one person did the killing: “The fires would have been caused by pouring gasoline from what we call a cherry can [not everyone calls it that, my 13 years in service no one in the units I was in called it that, although I did hear it from other units] which weighs about 50 pounds. Nobody walked with one or more cans…they’re attached to the back of our vehicles…”
“What about the innocent families who have been brutally killed? The women who have been raped, the children who have been sliced up? Your enemies were the Taliban not innocent families.”-facebook posting
The above comment got a 19 year old man arrested by Yorkshire police, and facing charges of “racially aggravated public order offence”.
“We are moving four more minesweepers to the theater, making eight….We are moving Airborne Mine Countermeasure helicopters, that’ll take us to eight in theater.”-Admiral Jonathan Greenert, USN
The four Avenger class minesweeping ships, along with MH-53E Sea Dragon minesweeping helicopters, are being shipped from San Diego, California. It will be a few weeks before they arrive in U.S. puppet state of Bahrain.
March 16, 2012, Zabiullah Mujahid, “official” spokesman for the “Taliban” says they have launched yet another rocket attack against Bagram airfield.
He says two rockets were launched, causing casualties among U.S. led troops. The attack comes a day after Taliban ended negotiations with the United States.
An Associated Press report says the Obama Administration is hopeful they can resume negotiations with the Taliban.
The same report said Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai said U.S. President Barack Obama actually called to confirm that he said he wanted U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by 2013: “He asked, ‘Did you announce this?’ I said, ‘Yes, I announced it.”‘-Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan
The AP article indicated that U.S. officials were not expecting such a backlash: “There was confusion among U.S. military officials and diplomats about just what Karzai was asking, and how far apart he is from current U.S. policy.”-Associated Press