North Atlantic Treaty Organization

From The Times
March 8, 2010

Cyberwar declared as China hunts for the West’s intelligence secrets

Urgent warnings have been circulated throughout Nato and the European Union for secret intelligence material to be protected from a recent surge in cyberwar attacks originating in China.

The attacks have also hit government and military institutions in the United States, where analysts said that the West had no effective response and that EU systems were especially vulnerable because most cyber security efforts were left to member states.

M. Shahid Alam

More than eight years after dismantling the Taliban, the United States is still mired in Afghanistan. Indeed, last October it launched a much-hyped ‘surge’ to prevent a second Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, not imminent yet, but eminently possible.

The first dismantling of the Taliban was a cakewalk.

In 2001, the United States quickly and decisively defeated the Taliban, killed, captured or scattered their fighters, and handed over the running of Afghanistan to their rivals, mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks from the Northern Alliance.

Unaware of Pashtoon history, American commentators were pleased at the smashing victory of their military, convinced that they had consigned the Taliban to history’s graveyard.

Afghan's were much better during Taliban's period!
Nato strike kills a number of Afghanistan civilians
At least 33 civilians were killed in a Nato air strike in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, the Afghan government says.
Nato said it hit a suspected insurgent convoy, but ground forces later found "a number of individuals killed and wounded", including women and children.
Civilian deaths in air strikes have caused widespread resentment in Afghanistan, and embarrassment to Nato.
A Lame Excuse
A Nato statement said it was thought the convoy contained Taliban insurgents on their way to attack Afghan and foreign military forces.
DEADLIEST AFGHAN AIR STRIKES
Sep 2009: Up to 140 civilians die in Kunduz province

Veer Savarkar once started addressing a public meeting in Hindi at Bangalore.

The crowd started shouting " Speak in Kannada. We will hear only in Kannada."

Veer Savarkar replied " Friends, I have spent 14 years of rigorous imprisonment in ill famous Andaman Jail where all freedom fighters were kept in jail. I have learned Bengali from the freedom fighters coming from Bengal, Hindi from those coming from Uttar Pradesh, even Gujarati and Punjabi. Unfortunately there was none from Karnataka from whom I could have learned Kannada."

...and there was pin drop silence.

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7th Nov- "A NATO airstrike has killed at least seven members of the Afghan security forces in the western province of Badghis on Friday"

6th Nov-"The NATO-led force in Afghanistan issued a statement on Friday saying that that two of its troops went missing on Wednesday while on a routine supply mission".

4th Nov - 'A "rogue" policeman from Afghanistan has shot down and killed five British soldiers in the Helmand province of South Afghanistan today'

This is the best way to fight a war ............

A Taleban commander and two senior Afghan officials confirmed yesterday that Italian forces paid protection money to prevent attacks on their troops.

The payment of protection money was revealed after the death of ten French soldiers in August 2008 at the hands of large Taleban force in Sarobi. French forces had taken over the district from Italian troops, but were unaware of secret Italian payments to local commanders to stop attacks on their forces and consequently misjudged local threat levels.

What times were those ... right?
A generation,whose history begins, hopefully with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

- We are the last generation that learned to play in the street, we are the first we've played video games, seen cartoons in color and went to amusement parks

- We were the last to record songs of the radio on cassettes and we are the pioneers of walkmans and chatrooms

- We have been labeled Generation X, and we had to swallow Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills 90210 ...

- We will always remember events from before we were born, as if we had not experienced anything historic.

- We have learned what terrorism is, we saw the Berlin Wall fell and a drunk Boris Yelsin grabbing his secretary ass

Please read it all -----------------------

At first light last Friday, in the Chardarah district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, the villagers gathered around the twisted wreckage of two fuel tankers that had been hit by a Nato airstrike. They picked their way through a heap of almost a hundred charred bodies and mangled limbs which were mixed with ash, mud and the melted plastic of jerry cans, looking for their brothers, sons and cousins. They called out their names but received no answers. By this time, everyone was dead.

Are the fault lines beginning to develop ????

America’s senior commander in Afghanistan rebuked his German subordinate on Monday as the Nato allies exchanged recriminations over an air strike that claimed at least 54 lives.

German troops in Kunduz province summoned a US F-15 jet to destroy two fuel tankers, which had allegedly been hijacked by Taliban insurgents.

When the fighter dropped two 500lb bombs, the explosions ignited the cargo of liquid fuel, causing a fireball that engulfed a crowd of people.

Scores of Afghans had apparently gathered around the tankers to siphon petrol – and between 54 and 70 are thought to have died. At a stroke, German troops were responsible for more deaths than at any other time since the Second World War.