(ANTIWAR.COM) — Following a series of militant rocket attacks against the Kabul airport, an apparent attempt to target Defense Secretary James Mattis, the US responded with an airstrike to support a military operation against those responsible.
Andre Vltchek driving in Afghanistan
Andre Vltchek
Global Research
It often appears that “true Afghanistan” is not here in Kabul and not in Jalalabad or Herat either; not in the ancient villages, which anxiously cling to the steep mountainsides.
Security forces inspect near the site of a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 31, 2017. A massive explosion rocked a highly secure diplomatic area of Kabul on Wednesday morning, causing casualties and sending a huge plume of smoke over the Afghan capital. (AP/Rahmat Gul)
KABUL, Afghanistan — A massive suicide truck bombing rocked a highly secure diplomatic area of Kabul on Wednesday morning, killing 80 people and wounding as many as 350, an attack that left a scene of mayhem and destruction and sent a huge plume of smoke over the Afghan capital.
Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his boldest and perhaps most defining speech. It alienated liberal allies in the North and the Northern press, plus many in King’s own civil rights movement, and prompted President Johnson to withdraw King’s secret service detail. Exactly one year later, forty-nine years ago on April 4, he was assassinated.
Corporal Mark Hickok, a 23-year-old combat engineer from North Olmstead, Ohio, patrols through a poppy field during a clearing mission in Helmand province, Afghanistan (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. John M. McCall)
Published in partnership with Shadowproof.
Government officials and business people today routinely negotiate: “We’d like to extract the oil.” Or gas, or such and such a mineral. Water? “Oh don’t worry, we’ll see to that too….”
But they’re not angels, and their bottom line is profit, so Nature and human beings have a problem having enough to drink, and to survive, not just along Kabul River, but also along the Missouri and Mississippi of the Standing Rock Sioux.
They craft the ‘legal’ rules of the industry, and embellish their plans with ‘democracy, or development, or rights’.
Calais – This month, French authorities (supported and funded by the UK government to the current balance of £62 million) have been demolishing the ‘Jungle,’ a toxic wasteland on the edge of Calais. Formerly a landfill site, 4 km² it is now populated by approximately 5,000 refugees who have been pushed there over the past year. A remarkable community of 15 nationalities adhering to various faiths comprises the Jungle.
In Kabul, where the Afghan Peace Volunteers have hosted me in their community, the U.S. military maintains a huge blimp equipped with cameras and computers to supply 24 hour surveillance of the city. Remotely piloted drones, operated by Air Force and Air National Guard personnel in U.S. bases, also fly over Afghanistan, feeding U.S. military analysts miles of camera footage every day. Billions of dollars have been invested in a variety of blimps which various vendors, such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Aeros have shipped to Afghanistan.
