The international aid effort in Afghanistan is in large part “wasteful and ineffective”, with as much as 40 per cent of funds spent going back to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries, Kabul-based charities will say on Tuesday.

This is not an accident - rather it is the new mode of imperial profiteering.

Predictably, the CBC also ran this story, but only mentioned the part about aid retuning to donor countries in the form of corporate profits as a footnote. The main emphasis being the assertion that not enough aid is being sent to Afghanistan in the first place.

CBC

–A new movement against nuclear armament. There is a long history in the UK of protests against the Bomb, hopefully the people will learn from their mistakes last time and merge the movement with others that fight for similar causes.

–For those interested in what Tony Benn has to say there is a new album that features some of his poetry. There is no question that it will be political.

–The National Union of Teachers in the UK has come up with some progressive changes to public education that deals with the current problems of faith in school.

–An examination of the economic crisis in the US from a trade union perspective.

–We continue to admire the work of Rachel Corrie.

This is a draft document for discussion amongst supporters of Fightback in Canada. Perspectives are a guide to action and it is through creating a dialogue with working class militants that we hope to increase the authority of Marxist ideas in the Canadian Labour movement.

–Imperialist war takes on some different forms these days. The attack on Iran has started through the undermining of its main financial system.

–The wildly inefficient markets.

–An analysis of the current crisis is global capital with a focus on the effects here in Canada.

The 600 skeletons are packed into cartons and stacked on shelves in the cupboard of a forensic laboratory. They are identified as “Skeleton No. 4″ or “Skeleton No. 21″.

But 25 years after Argentina’s “Dirty War” dictatorship which left 12,000 government “opponents” officially listed as dead or missing, DNA testing is identifying skeletons mostly collected from unmarked graves across Argentina.

Israel Defense Forces troops killed an unarmed Palestinian and wounded another during a clash with gunmen on the border of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Monday, hospital officials and militant sources said.

Hamas suspended its rocket fire after Israeli forces raided northern Gaza this month, killing more than 120 Palestinians, many of them civilians. There have, however, been sporadic launches by a smaller militant group, Islamic Jihad.

The cruelty and illegality of the US government’s program of secret detentions can be illustrated by one man’s story. It is the story of a man who was never charged with any crime, but who was held in secret CIA custody for nearly three years, becoming the victim of enforced disappearance.

South Korea’s new president has pledged to transform Asia’s third biggest economy through a mix of tax cuts, deregulation and privatisation, sticking to his promise to boost the country’s economic growth to 7 per cent a year in spite of the global market turmoil.

“This Easter, the 92nd anniversary of the Rising, it is intriguing to look at the parallels that connect Ireland and the Middle East … Israel’s settlements on Palestinian Arab land in the occupied territories were as illegal as the Protestant settlements and the dispossession of the Catholics in 16th-century Ireland. A closer historical symbol was Fallujah. Not long after the US 82nd Airborne killed 14 Iraqi civilians during a protest in 2003, the people of Derry wanted to twin with Fallujah … we must deal with injustice before we look for “compromise”.”

“The US hosting service, Network Solutions, said it was investigating complaints that it may have breached guidelines on hate language.”

Unfortunately this is not enough to reverse the long-standing problems of underfunded universities in this province. What’s needed is a role-back and a long-term commitment to funding increases over a decade to counteract what the Chretien Liberals did to young people in the ’90s. What’s needed is a real student movement in this province.

“More than a dozen journalists have been killed in Russia in contract-style killings since President Vladimir Putin took office in 2000 and cases are rarely brought to court.”

Five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the country is still in disarray. The human rights situation is disastrous, a climate of impunity has prevailed, the economy is in tatters and the refugee crisis continues to escalate.

A new Amnesty International report, Carnage and Despair: Iraq five years on, says that, despite the heavy presence of US and Iraqi security forces, Iraq is one of the most dangerous countries in the world, with hundreds of Iraqi civilians killed every month.

A series of destabilizing-actions have taken place in Pakistan since June of 2007: the Pakistani Supreme Court has been dismantled, the Pakistani constitution suspended, the Pakistani military has taken to fighting a low-level civil war in the country’s western provinces, and the number of political prisoners and ‘dissapearances’ have reached new heights. The cumulative result of these actions is an increasing desperation and a general breakdown in security, as evidenced by a growing insurgency within the country, the likes of which have never been seen in Pakistan before. This article/interview attempts to contextualise the downward trajectory of Pakistan.

Aside from whether Americans believe the administration lied about the threat Iraq posed, many Americans simply believe the threat didn’t exist. More than half of those who consider the war a mistake (representing 32% of Americans) say they hold that view because they believe the United States lacked sufficient justification to invade Iraq in the first place. Significantly fewer (18% of Americans) cite mishandling of the war effort as the main reason they consider it to have been a mistake. Another 8% say both reasons are equally important to their criticism of the invasion.

Poll after poll shows that Americans are worried about US troops. They’re distressed at the war’s rising human and financial cost and are fully aware of the globe’s rising tide of anti-Americanism. Most of all, they may be confused – unsure of how the United States got here, uncertain about what to do next, and in doubt about how, and when, the conflict will end.

In a February CBS/New York Times survey, 58 percent said the US should have stayed out.