NATO is 'mafia' and Obama a 'snake charmer': Castro

India Report

HAVANA: NATO is a "military mafia," the war in Afghanistan is "genocidal" and US President Barack Obama deserves the prize for the "best snake charmer" who ever lived, Cuba's Fidel Castro has said. 

In an article published on Tuesday in response to the Western alliance's weekend summit in Portugal, the former Cuban leader called NATO an "aggressive institution" that ignored "billions of persons suffering from poverty, underdevelopment, shortages of food, housing, health, education and jobs." 

Castro, 84, communism's most visible living figure, led Cuba from the 1959 Revolution until he stepped down for health reasons in 2006, handing over the presidency to his brother Raul. 

Castro called NATO (short for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) "a bird of prey sitting in the lap of the Yankee empire," that was used by the United States to wage "the genocidal Afghanistan war." 

He brushed off ambitious plans unveiled at the Lisbon summit that would have Western leaders press Kabul to take over security by 2014, predicting they would eventually "hand over power to the Afghan resistance, in defeat." 

The United States is "going through a difficult phase as the result of its war exploits" and using its "enormous media resources to maintain, dupe and confuse world public opinion," Castro said. 

"Obama already admitted that his promise to withdraw US soldiers from Afghanistan may be postponed... After the Nobel Prize, we would have to award him with the prize for 'the best snake charmer' that has ever existed."

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US military uses biometric data in Afghanistan

Sebatian Meyer
Guardian




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What the numbers say about progress in Afghanistan (only 37% approve of War)

image: World Can't Wait

Adam Levine

CNN 

American support for the war in Afghanistan has never been lower, according to the latest CNN polling. The low numbers just the latest figure in the complex math being calculated to determine how the US should proceed in the ten year war.

The latest poll from CNN and Opinion Research Corporation found only 37% of all Americans favor the war, 52% say the war in Afghanistan has turned into a Vietnam.

Those numbers are going down as US commitment to the war is going up, significantly. 30,000 more troops added this year. At the time the troop increase was announced, military leaders were aware it would mean a rise in troop casualties and were vocal in trying to warn Americans that it would happen.

Still the daily headlines about troop deaths is staggering. 16 NATO troops have been killed in the last three days. The US has lost 386 troops so far this year. 

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Afghan civilian war injuries double in Kandahar conflict

Wounded patients flooding into hospitals, says Red Cross, while fighting is stopping the sick getting basic medical care

Nosrait Shoaib/AFP/Getty Images

Peter Beaument
Guardian

The number of Afghan civilians hospitalised for serious war wounds has doubled in 12 months in Kandahar, the focus of an ongoing US-led campaign against Taliban strongholds.

In August and September, Mirwais regional hospital in the country's second biggest city admitted almost 1,000 new patients with weapons injuries, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The total for the same period of 2009 was 500.

The Red Cross reported a "drastic increase" in the number of amputations from war injuries, reflecting the nature of the violence.


Afghan and Nato forces launched Operation Dragon Strike to retake strongholds in the insurgency's heartland around Kandahar from the Taliban. But the area had already been the focus of escalating military operations for weeks. There are now about 30,000 international troops in the southern Taliban heartlands of Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

Describing the influx of new patients as "hitting record highs", Reto Stocker, the Red Cross chief in Kabul, said the casualties being seen at Mirwais hospital were only "the tip of the iceberg".

The Red Cross has been distributing emergency first aid kits at the front lines.

The latest figures from Kandahar have dramatically underlined a warning from the UN this year that civilian deaths caused by the conflict were up by a third from the previous year.

That report noted a sharp increase in suicide attacks, roadside bombings and political assassinations. Other injuries were from air strikes including drones and other military actions by the coalition forces. The UN report noted three suicide bombings a week and a 45% increase in assassinations of officials.

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US quietly testing 'scary new war in Pakistan'

David Edwards
Raw Story

Don’t get it twisted, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow essentially told her viewers Thursday night.

“Borders matter” and “AfPak” is not the name of a single country. Contrary to popular and media opinion, America is now fighting in three countries: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Since President Barack Obama took office, the US has increased the number of airstrikes in Pakistan by unmanned aerial vehicles. “We have shot missiles at people in Pakistan 20 times in the past 23 days,” Maddow noted Wednesday.


Pakistan has largely been silent about the unmanned airstrikes but that changed after reports said the US had started using manned aircraft. Pakistan reportedly closed down US supply lines leading into Afghanistan when they learned that a US helicopter had attacked inside Pakistan.

McClatchy reported:
Pakistan closed down a critical supply route for U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan on Thursday after U.S. helicopters crossed into Pakistan during a confused, predawn attack that killed three Pakistani paramilitary troops.

Pakistan shuttered one of the two main crossings into Afghanistan hours after a pair of Apache helicopters apparently attacked a border post, manned by the paramilitary Frontier Corps, about 200 yards inside Pakistan.

…Hundreds of supply trucks bound for the busy Torkham crossing north of Peshawar were sidelined in Pakistan as the U.S.-led security force said it was investigating.

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