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Aljazeera - Afghanistan - How The East Was Lost - 05-11-09

Category: Documentary
Description:
On September 11, 2001, the US was rocked by the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. Within less than a month, it struck back at the people it believed were responsible for those attacks and the Taliban government that was hosting them in Afghanistan. Soon, the US-backed Northern Alliance pushed back the Taliban and took over Kabul. However, winning the peace in Afghanistan has proved to be a far more lengthy and difficult process. In the alliances put together to achieve this end, there was the promise of a better future for the country. But within three years, the Taliban were back as a major force. So, eight years on, what has been achieved? Afghanistan appears to be a narco-state where corrupt politicians and commanders rule the country from their heavily fortified "poppy palaces" in the capital and civilians face the daily threat of Taliban bombs and US air strikes. Operation Enduring Freedom, the US response to 9/11, promised a better future for the country, but eight years on it appears that Afghanistan's freedom has anything but endured.
Seeders: 16
Leeches: 6

Unreported World ~ Greece The Unwanted 2009 10 30 Ch 4

Category: Documentary
Description:
Unreported World ~ Greece The Unwanted 2009 10 30 Ch 4 File Name .............: Unreported World S18E06 - Greece The Unwanted (30 October 2009) 232.69 MB / 24:13.920 / XviD As the French and British governments discuss how to deal with migrants camped outside Calais, Unreported World travels to the European Union's eastern border, to the illicit crossing points for hundreds of thousands of Afghans making their way to our shores. Reporter Jenny Kleeman and director Jacob Waite begin their journey on Turkey's north-west coast, just eight miles from Greece and the EU. It's 2.40am and the team come across a people smuggler and 25 migrants - men, women, children and even toddlers, all from Afghanistan. One of them tells Kleeman that he'd fled Afghanistan aged 13, after his father was taken away by the Taliban, and he'd worked in Iran for four years to earn $4000 to pay the smuggler. The fee covered a small inflatable dinghy, a little food and some basic life jackets. The team watches as all 25 get into the rickety craft and start paddling towards Greece. No one knows how many migrants try to make the eight-mile crossing, or how many drown. It's common for bodies to be found in the seas. ............edit The team moves on to the port of Patras, from where ferries head off to the rest of Europe. Around the port, migrants are living in camps along railway tracks as they try every day to stow themselves away in lorries. The walls of the port are topped with razor wire, but it's full of bits of cloth torn from the clothes of the migrants who've been trying desperately to get inside. It's clear that these desperate and determined people will stop at nothing for their chance to start a new life in Europe. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-w...s-2009/episode-16 http://www.thebox.bz/details.php?id=97284 Cap: geclipse Other shunster posts at:http://www.bt-chat.com/browse.php?category=11
Seeders: 5
Leeches: 2

CNN-Amanpour.Oct 25, 2009.PDTV.XviD.Ekolb

Category: Talks, Debates, Interviews
Description:
Sunday Oct 25, 2009 Afghan Opium A new report from the U.N. reveals the extent of the Taliban's involvement in the global heroin trade. Women for Sale Poverty, fueled by drought and economic crisis, has increased the trafficking of women and girls - sold off to raise money for their families. Envoys United Three U.N. ambassadors on the front lines of the fight against radical Islamist terrorism presented a united front Thursday against extremism Ban Ki-moon U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says 200 Afghan election officials will be sacked ahead of the November 7 presidential run-off.
Seeders: 3
Leeches: 19

PBS Frontline - Obama's War (October 13 2009)

Category: Documentary
Description:
PBS Frontline - Obama's War (October 13 2009) Tens of thousands of fresh American troops are now on the move in Afghanistan, led by a new commander and armed with a counterinsurgency plan that builds on the lessons of Iraq. But can U.S. forces succeed in a land long known as the "graveyard of empires"? And can the U.S. stop the Taliban in neighboring Pakistan, where U.S. troops are not allowed and the government is weak? In Obama's War, veteran correspondent Martin Smith travels across Afghanistan and Pakistan to see first-hand how the president's new strategy is taking shape, delivering vivid, on-the-ground reporting from this eight-year-old war's many fronts. Through interviews with top generals, diplomats and government officials, Smith also reports the internal debates over President Obama's grand attempt to combat terrorism at its roots. "What we found on the ground was a huge exercise in nation building," says Smith. "The concept's become a bit of a dirty word, but that's what this is. We started with the goal of eliminating Al Qaeda, and now we've wound up with the immense task of re-engineering two nations." The brunt of the work is falling on rank-and-file soldiers, and nowhere is it more difficult than in the dusty, unforgiving landscape of Helmand province, the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, where FRONTLINE embedded with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. Since the Marines' arrival in July, Helmand has become the most lethal battlefield in Afghanistan. But FRONTLINE found the Marines trying to act as armed diplomats, attempting to build the necessary trust for badly needed economic development. "It's trying to change the culture of the organization," Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, tells FRONTLINE of the administration's plan. "At the end of the day, our best counterinsurgents are going to be young sergeants who just have an ability to deal with people. We've got to give them the flexibility to make decisions." Even as American soldiers struggle to make progress in Afghanistan village by village, equally vexing challenges remain across the border in Pakistan. "In Afghanistan we know what to do; we just don't know if we have the resources or the time available to do it," David Kilcullen, a leading counterinsurgency expert, tells FRONTLINE. "The problem in Pakistan is we're not really sure what to do." When FRONTLINE confronts the Pakistani army about its reluctance to take out key Taliban leaders, the military's chief spokesman, Gen. Athar Abbas, argues that the accusations are misplaced. There is no truth, he claims, that insurgents stage attacks on American forces from the Pakistani side of the border. "They operate from Afghanistan. If somebody claims that everything is happening from this side of the border, I am sorry, this is misplaced, and we refute it." Barred from sending troops across the border, the United States is left with few good options. No quick fix will solve Pakistan. "If we have a strategy in Pakistan," says George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, "it's to build up the civilian government to the point where it can be a kind of counterbalance to the military and begin to reorient their own sense of their destiny. Is that even thinkable for a foreign power to do? Even as I say it, I think, why do we think we could even begin to accomplish that?"
Seeders: 74
Leeches: 12

Al jazeera - People and Power - Return of the warlords

Category: Documentary
Description:
US military commanders have released a series of reports and recommendations in recent weeks on Afghanistan, and their conclusions have been sobering. General Stanley McChrystal, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, has stated that success in the fight against the Taliban cannot be taken for granted, advising the White House that more troops and a new strategy are needed to turn the tide. While the US and Nato face their highest casualty rates of the conflict, widespread fraud in the recent presidential election has raised questions about just what kind of political system US and Nato troops are dying to protect. In the midst of these military and political crises, Rashid Dostum, Afghanistan's most notorious warlord, who has been a powerful player in the country's politics for three decades, returned to the country. General Dostum had been living in exile in Turkey for nine months because of ongoing criminal and human rights investigations against him. However, he was invited back into the country by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, two days before this year's presidential election to take a prominent role in Karzai's election campaign. Karzai hails his warlord allies as national heroes, but what does their return to political prominence mean for Afghan democracy? In the run up to the election, American filmmakers Rick Rowley and Jason Motlagh travelled to Dostum's stronghold in northern Afghanistan to get the first TV interview with him since his return.
Seeders: 2
Leeches: 1

Democracy NOW Tuesday the 6th of October 2009

Category: News & Current Affairs
Description:
* White House: No Plans to Withdraw from Afghanistan * 61 Antiwar Protesters Arrested at White House * Abbas Faces Calls to Resign over Goldstone Report * Coup Gov’t Lifts Emergency Decree in Honduras * Taliban Claims Responsibility for World Food Program Bombing * DynCorp’s Role in Pakistan Scrutinized * Suspect in 1994 Rwandan Genocide Arrested * 3,000 Protest Outside Climate Talks in Bangkok * Obama to Speak Before Leading Gay Rights Organization * Ohio Postpones Four Executions * Flooding in India Kills 250; Leaves 2.5 Million Homeless * Anti-Vietnam War Mom Peg Mullen, 92, Dies Twitter Crackdown: NYC Activist Arrested for Using Social Networking Site during G-20 Protest in Pittsburgh Elliot Madison was arrested last month during the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh when police raided his hotel room. Police say Madison and a co-defendant used computers and a radio scanner to track police movements and then passed on that information to protesters using cell phones and the social networking site Twitter. Madison is being charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility, and possession of instruments of crime. Exactly one week later, Madison’s New York home was raided by FBI agents, who conducted a sixteen-hour search. We speak to Elliot Madison and his attorney, Martin Stolar. [includes rush transcript] # Wallst-web A Hidden $34 Billion Bank Subsidy? Study Exposes How Taxpayers Are Subsidizing Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Other Large Banks One of the key terms to come out of the nation’s economic meltdown has been “too big to fail.” The government has funneled billions of dollars to large financial firms by arguing that their collapse would deal an irreparable blow to economic recovery. A new study has calculated the tab of the “too big to fail” approach, and it amounts to a far larger taxpayer-funded subsidy than previously thought. The Center for Economic and Policy Research says the bailout has allowed “too big to fail” banks to pay significantly lower interest rates than those paid by smaller banks. According to one estimate, that’s meant a subsidy for the nation’s eighteen largest bank holding companies of $34.1 billion a year. That amount represents nearly half these companies’ combined annual profits. We speak to the study’s author, Dean Baker. [includes rush transcript] # Nyc-water-web Environmental Battle Brews in New York over Natural Gas Drilling Last week, government regulators opened the door to natural gas drilling inside the Marcellus Shale watershed, which supplies drinking water to some 15 million people, including nine million New Yorkers. Stretching from New York to Kentucky, the shale is believed to hold some of the world’s largest deposits of natural gas. Proponents say the drilling will boost the nation’s economic recovery and reduce dependence on foreign oil. But environmentalists are warning the drilling could contaminate New York’s water supply as it has in other states. The proposed regulations are now open for public comment until the end of the next month, followed by a final decision early next year. [includes rush transcript]
Seeders: 102
Leeches: 18

Democracy Now! Monday, August 17, 2009

Category: News & Current Affairs
Description:
Today's Headlines Obama Admin May Drop Public Option from Health Plan Zelaya Plane Stopped at Base with US Troops Indian Movie Star Detained at Newark Airport Warlord Dostum Returns to Afghanistan Ahead of Election New Afghan Law Allows Men to Starve Wives If They Refuse Sex Gay Iraqs Targeted in Murder and Torture Campaign Sen. Webb Visits Burma, Secures Release of American British Politicians Defend UK Health System Memos: Brazil Conspired with US to Overthrow Allende Obama Adviser Heckled at Netroots Nation Convention BusinessWeek: "The Health Insurers Have Already Won" In a cover story for BusinessWeek earlier this month, reporters Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein argue UnitedHealth and other insurers maneuvered to shape healthcare reform for their own benefit. The story is titled “The Health Insurers Have Already Won,” and the authors argue that the insurers have “succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable.” We speak with Chad Terhune, senior writer at BusinessWeek, where he’s covered healthcare for several years. [includes rush transcript] Human Rights Watch Calls on Israel to Investigate "White Flag" Shootings of Gaza Civilians Human Rights Watch released a report last week detailing new evidence of possible Israeli war crimes committed during last winter’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza that left over 1,400 Palestinians dead. The report says Israeli soldiers unlawfully shot and killed at least eleven Palestinian civilians, including five women and four children, who were in groups waving white flags to make clear that they were civilians and not combatants. We speak to HRW’s Fred Abrahams and air exclusive video from Gaza from Democracy Now!‘s Anjali Kamat and Big Noise Film’s Jacquie Soohen. Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi A new documentary premiering tonight on HBO provides a harrowing look at today’s Afghanistan, where violence and corruption continue to ravage the country. It’s called Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi. It tells the story of Ajmal, a young Afghan journalist, translator and coordinator working for American journalist Christian Parenti. In 2007, Ajmal was kidnapped by Taliban forces, along with Italian reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo and an Afghan driver, who was immediately beheaded. After weeks in captivity, Mastrogiacomo was eventually released, but weeks later the Taliban killed Ajmal. [includes rush transcript]
Seeders: 71
Leeches: 27

Democracy Now! Thursday, August 13, 2009

Category: News & Current Affairs
Description:
Headlines 60 Arrested as Honduran Police Occupy Teacher’s College Pakistan: 12 Militants Killed at Taliban Base 18 Die in Iraq Violence 2 Journalists Wounded in Afghanistan Another Ft. Hood Soldier Refuses Afghanistan Deployment Report: Cheney Felt Snubbed by Bush in 2nd Term Judge Rejects Reversal of Bush Mountaintop Removal Rule “Cap and Trade” Founder Doubts Use in Reversing Climate Change Foreclosures Rose 7% in July Gay Rights Group: No Prop 8 Reversal Until 2012 Alabama Town Pardons Civil Rights-Era Protesters More Headlines… "All Roads Lead to Rove": Fmr. New Mexico US Attorney David Iglesias on New Evidence Linking Bush Admin to Firings Documents released by Congress this week offer powerful new evidence that Karl Rove and other senior Bush administration figures took the lead in the firing of nine US attorneys in 2006. We speak to former New Mexico US attorney David Iglesias, who was fired after refusing Republican pressure to take on allegations of voter fraud and pursue cases against Democrats to help a Republican lawmaker’s re-election campaign. [includes rush transcript] GOP, Right-Wing Pundits' Misinformation Fuels Hysteria at Democrats' Public Forums on Healthcare Reform Opponents of President Obama’s healthcare plan continue to disrupt town hall meetings held by Democratic lawmakers. We speak with Stanley Zuber, a registered nurse who attended a town hall in Pennsylvania and was shouted down while trying to ask Senator Arlen Specter a question. We’re also joined by Chip Berlet about the right-wing populism that has fueled the town hall disruptions. [includes rush transcript] Alleged Obama-Era Rendition Victim Accuses US of Torture, Coercion A Lebanese contractor named Raymond Azar says he’s the first known victim of rendition under President Obama. Azar alleges that he was coerced into confessing to bribing a contract officer after being seized and tortured by armed federal agents in Afghanistan. We speak with attorney and legal expert Scott Horton about Azar’s case. [includes rush transcript]
Seeders: 67
Leeches: 9

Democracy Now! Monday, August 10, 2009

Category: News & Current Affairs
Description:
Today's Headlines Unemployment Rate Falls Slightly in July Report: Holder to Appoint Prosecutor to Probe CIA Abuses Phone Records Show Frequent Calls Between Paulson and Goldman Sachs CEO Banks to Collect a Record $38 Billion in Overdraft Fees US Extends Blackwater Contract in Iraq Sonia Sotomayor Sworn In as Supreme Court Justice US to Target Afghan Drug Lords McChrystal: Taliban Has Gained Upper Hand in Afghanistan Head of Pakistani Taliban Said to Have Died in Drone Strike Over 40 Die in Multiple Bombings in Iraq Iraq Arrests UK Contractor on Murder Charges Coup Government in Honduras to Accept OAS Delegation Obama Attends North American Summit in Mexico Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A Look Back at the US Atomic Bombing 64 Years Later This year marks the sixty-fourth anniversary of the US atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed over 150,000 people instantly. Commemorations this weekend in Japan and around the world marked the US bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and then on August 9th, of Nagasaki. We play the report of Wilfred Burchett, the first journalist to make it into Hiroshima, as well as Anthony Weller, the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Weller, who was the first reporter to enter Nagasaki after the bombing, and we hear from Hiroshima survivor Shigeko Sasamori. [includes rush transcript] "For the 64th Time: No More Nuclear War" - A Roundtable Discussion on Disarmament Sixty-four years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we host a roundtable discussion on the present nuclear landscape. We speak with nuclear physicist and disarmament activist Pervez Hoodbhoy, peace activist Frida Berrigan, and Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Over the next year, Ellsberg will release regular installments of his insider’s memoir of the nuclear era, “The American Doomsday Machine.” [includes rush transcript] Iranian Dissident Journalist Akbar Ganji Blasts Mass Trial in Iran, Torture of Prisoners In Iran, nearly two months after the disputed presidential election that generated mass protests, the crackdown on opposition members, activists, journalists, scholars, students and ordinary citizens continues. As court proceedings in a mass trial of reformers and protesters continued into their second week, a top judiciary official acknowledged Saturday that some of the arrested protesters had been tortured in Iranian prisons. We speak with leading Iranian dissident and journalist Akbar Ganji. [includes rush transcript]
Seeders: 80
Leeches: 15

Democracy Now! Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Category: News & Current Affairs
Description:
Today's Headlines July Becomes Deadliest Month for US in Afghanistan Taliban Launch Multiple Attacks in Gardez Killing 14 Obama’s Guantanamo Task Force Misses Deadline Gates: Military to Expand by 22,000 Troops Watchdog: Financial Bailouts Could Cost Taxpayers up to $24 Trillion Police Accused of Bias After Arresting Harvard Scholar Inside His Own Home California Lawmakers Reach Deal to Close $26 Billion Budget Gap Gov’t Agency Withheld Research on Dangers of Cell Phones & Driving Salazar Bans New Mining Near Grand Canyon for Two Years Ex-Peruvian President Convicted of Embezzlement Number of Latino Workers Killed on Job Rises TV Commentators Criticized over Racist Remarks Despite Pledge to Cut Military Ties to Coup Regime, US Continues to Train Honduran Soldiers at School of Americas While the European Union cut off aid to the coup regime in Honduras, the United States continues the money flow, and while the US says it has cut military ties, the National Catholic Reporter reveals Honduran army officers are still receiving military training at the notorious School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. [includes rush transcript] "From Arbenz to Zelaya: Chiquita in Latin America" “When the Honduran military overthrew the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya two weeks ago there might have been a sigh of relief in the corporate board rooms of Chiquita banana,” writes journalist Nikolas Kozloff. “Earlier this year the Cincinnati-based fruit company joined Dole in criticizing the government in Tegucigalpa which had raised the minimum wage by 60%.” Kozloff goes on to trace Chiquita’s “long and sordid” political history in Central America. [includes rush transcript] As Obama Continues Push for Healthcare Reform, House Committee Approves Kucinich-Sponsored Measure to Keep Single-Payer Option Alive On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders say they’re open to paring down a healthcare reform bill in order to sway “conservative” Democrats who’ve threatened to oppose the measure that would create a government-run public insurance option. We speak with progressive Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). A House committee recently approved his amendment that would allow individual states to adopt a single-payer system. [includes rush transcript] Frank McCourt (1930-2009): Late Author's Younger Brother Malachy Remembers Childhood Poverty Depicted in "Angela's Ashes" We remember the author Frank McCourt, who died Sunday at the age of seventy-eight. McCourt was best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela’s Ashes. The book chronicles McCourt’s poverty-ridden childhood in Brooklyn and Ireland, a childhood he said he felt lucky to have survived. McCourt published the book after a thirty-year career as a New York City schoolteacher, which he also chronicled in a later memoir, Teacher Man. We speak with Frank McCourt’s younger brother, actor and writer Malachy McCourt. [includes rush transcript]
Seeders: 83
Leeches: 7