The American soldier accused of shooting 16 Afghan villagers in a pre-dawn killing spree was flown out of Afghanistan on Wednesday to an undisclosed location, even as many Afghans called for him to face justice in their country. Afghan government officials did not immediately respond to calls for comment on the late-night announcement. The U.S. military said the transfer did not preclude the possibility of trying the case in Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the soldier could receive capital punishment if convicted. Many fear a misstep by the U.S. military in handling the case could ignite a firestorm in Afghanistan that would shatter already tense relations between the two countries. The alliance appeared near the breaking point last month when the burning of Qurans in a garbage pit at a U.S. base sparked protests and retaliatory attacks that killed more than 30 people, including six U.S. soldiers. In recent days the two nations made headway toward an agreement governing a long-term American presence here, but the massacre in Kandahar province on Sunday has called all such negotiations into question.
Category: Head Stories
I was once a young man, very much like the young men and women who have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan as US military soldiers. I grew up believing in the red, white and blue. I believed that the United States had a sacred mission to spread democracy around the world. Viet Nam was my generation’s war. I did not volunteer, but when I was drafted, I answered the call. It was in Viet Nam that my journey toward a different kind of knowledge began. One hot sunny morning in April 1969 I found myself in a small Mekong Vietnamese fishing village that had just been bombed, burned bodies lying everywhere. My job in that moment was to assess the success of bombing missions of so-called military targets. In my naivete, it never occurred to me that the countless targets, systematically being bombed, were undefended, inhabited rice farming and fishing villages. In effect, all that mattered was the creation of “enemy” body counts – lots of them – Washington’s demonic criteria for defining “success.”
Tokyo’s outspoken conservative governor Shintaro Ishihara on Friday said he agreed with the mayor of Nagoya’s statement that the 1937 ‘rape’ of Nanjing by Japanese troops never happened. Diplomatic sparks flew earlier this week when Takashi Kawamura said he believes only a “conventional fight” took place in Nagoya’s sister city of Nanjing, instead of the well-documented massacre of Chinese civilians. China says 300,000 people were killed in an orgy of murder, rape and destruction when the eastern city — then the capital — fell to the Japanese imperial army, and the incident has haunted Sino-Japanese ties ever since. Beijing lodged a formal complaint over the denial and Nanjing officials said they were freezing twin city activities in protest.
Western forces shot dead 16 civilians including nine children in southern Kandahar province on Sunday, Afghan officials said, in a rampage that witnesses said was carried out by American soldiers who were laughing and appeared drunk. One Afghan father who said his children were killed in the shooting spree accused soldiers of later burning the bodies. Witnesses told Reuters they saw a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar’s Panjwayi district at around 2 am, enter homes and open fire.
BALANDI, Afghanistan (AP) — An American soldier opened fire on villagers near his base in southern Afghanistan Sunday and killed 16 civilians, according to President Hamid Karzai who called it an “assassination” and furiously demanded an explanation from Washington. Nine children and three women were among the dead. The killing spree deepened a crisis between U.S. forces and their Afghan hosts over Americans burning Muslim holy books on a base in Afghanistan last month. The burnings sparked weeks of violent protests and attacks that left some 30 dead. Six U.S. service members have been killed by their Afghan colleagues since the Quran burnings came to light, but the violence had just started to calm down. “This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven,” Karzai said in a statement. He said he has repeatedly demanded the U.S. stop killing Afghan civilians. The violence over the Quran burnings has spurred calls in the U.S. for a faster exit strategy from the 10-year-old Afghan war. President Barack Obama even said recently that “now is the time for us to transition.” But he also said he had no plan to change the current timetable that has Afghans taking control of security countrywide by the end of 2014.
As we approach the tragic one-year anniversary of Fukushima’s multiple nuclear reactors’ accident on March 11, that initially affected the entire Japanese population, we now know that this nightmare has engulfed all of us. Let us also not forget that this is the third nuclear attack on the Japanese (the first two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Given what has not been done to ensure public safety, we cannot think of it any other way. From the very first day, there were lies and a massive cover-up of the extent of the destruction and the inherent radioactive dangers –not just from Japanese officials and TEPCO corporate reports, but also from the US.
On March 6, the BBC reported Obama saying Washington won’t intervene in Syria unilaterally. At the same time, he stopped short of ruling out joint Western aggression. In his first 2012 news conference, he said: “The notion that the way to solve every one of these problems is to deploy our military, that hasn’t been true in the past, and it won’t be true now.” “We’ve got to think through what we do through the lens of what’s going to be effective – but also through what’s critical for US security interests.” Since taking office, Obama launched more belligerence than all his predecessors. He’s not shy about initiating more. As a result, his comments ring hollow, especially given his record as a serial liar. Believe nothing he says.
“The crisis is at its end” is no longer a relieving statement made by some political analysts, as the crisis is really close to its end. Baba Amro is now under the control of the Syrian army… and so are the armed groups of which a big number escaped to the Lebanese borders dubbing their retreat “tactical”. Around 700 Arab and Western gunmen surrendered in Baba Amro, well-informed sources told Al-Manar website, adding that “huge and critical surprises will be uncovered in the coming few days… such as the kinds of arms seized, as well as the military tactics the armed groups followed, and the sides that supervised the operations.” The sources further assured to the news website that the security operation in Homs will be over in a maximum of five to eight days.
Putin Wins. Pre-election polls predicted around a 60% majority. Final results show Putin won 63.6% of the vote. He got a clear third term mandate. In 2004, he won 71%. Five candidates contended: United Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The Communist Party’s Gennady Zyuganov. The Liberal Democratic Party’s Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Just Russia’s Sergey Mironov. Independent candidate Mikhail Prokhorov (billionaire/Russia’s third richest man). With nearly all votes counted, official results were as follows: Putin: 63.6% Zyuganov: 17.2% Prokhorov: 7.9% Zhirinovsky: 6.2% Mironov: 3.9% Turnout was 63.3%. It exceeded December’s parliamentary elections. Opponents allege fraud. So do major media scoundrels. At issue isn’t who won or lost. Nor is it about a fair or fraudulent process. America’s electoral system is hopelessly corrupted and broken, yet media giants praise it.
Recent media reports suggest the intriguing possibility that ‘non-alignment’ is likely gaining currency once again as the core tenet of India’s foreign policy. Life is taking full circle after almost 6 or 7 years ago when the former United States Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice exhorted Indian pundits to purge from their thinking the last trace of the doctrine of ‘non-alignment’ associated with the world of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. She sought that Indians should instead trust the United States’ determination to make their country a truly global player. Thus, in the period that followed, Chanakya (circa 3rd century BC) who is credited with authorship of the ancient Indian political treatise called Arthasatra, was brought out of the woodwork to replace Nehru and Indira Gandhi as the new game in town in New Delhi. The ‘Hindu Machiavelli’ who was forgotten for some two millennia as an archaic past if little relevance to the modern-day world, provided the ‘civilisational alibi’ for the Indian establishment to bring about a paradigm shift in its foreign policy – under the garb of ‘national interests’ – attuned to its ‘unipolar predicament’ in the post-Cold War era.