Tony Blair the war criminal came back to Westminster today to atone for his crimes against humanity. See another video link here Will the inquiry hold him to account? Don't make me laugh - this is the same British establishment that backed the war in the first place. Indeed the same people who now tell us they woon't release the papers relating too the death of Dr Kelly for 60 years. What kind of sham democracy do we live under?

Lance Corporal Joe Glenton has become the first serving British soldier to speak out publicly against the Afghan war. Joe faces court martial and a possible two-year prison term after going on the run rather than return to Afghanistan. Joe says he gradually became aware that justifications for occupying Afghanistan were ringing hollow. "The Afghan people were attacking us, even though our politicians said we were going in to help them. It came as a real shock" "That's when I became aware that there was something seriously wrong with the war," he says. Joe will attend a court martial hearing next Monday We are asking all our supporters to send messages of complaint, for forwarding to the Ministry of Defence, to joeisinnocent@hotmail.co.uk Watch Joe's speech at the Stop the War meeting here: http://bit.ly/1vyX7b

Patrick Cockburn in today's Independent says local officials claim 147 were killed in that Afghan air strike by the US - which was not one misguided air strike but a prolonged bombardment that destroyed three villages. Thousands of those villagers are now on the march, chanting: 'Death to America' and 'Death to the government' . Change we can believe in President Obama? Shouting "Death to America" and "Death to the Government", thousands of Afghan villagers hurled stones at police yesterday as they vented their fury at American air strikes that local officials claim killed 147 civilians. The riot started when people from three villages struck by US bombers in the early hours of Tuesday, brought 15 newly-discovered bodies in a truck to the house of the provincial governor. As the crowd pressed forward in Farah, police opened fire, wounding four protesters. Traders in the rest of Farah city, the capital of the province of the same name where the bo...

From Iraq to Palestine Occupation is a crime ...and that includes Afghanistan, where the western 'liberators' today killed at least 100 civilians in an air strike . NATO, the coalition, or whatever they call themselves, will perhaps say sorry but will carry on with their indiscriminate killing and wonder why they can't, and will never, win this war. (Photograph: Abdul Malek/AP). Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and U.S. President Barack Obama are meeting today to discuss how they can arrest Pakistan's descent into the abyss. Ex-US spy and Afghan President Hamid Karzai is also in on the talks, despite Washington's intention to circumvent/depose him . The US watches in horror as the Taliban get nearer to the nuclear trigger but fail to understand how it is there policy of formenting civil war in the country in the name of the war on terror that has brought the country to the precipice. The Pakistan government is now doing its master's bidding and preparing to ...

We commented last week on the strange sight of Hamid Karzai, the western puppet in Kabul, complaining about foreign interference in his country as he stood next to the general secretary of NATO. It turns out the foreign influence Karzai was talking about was that of the US, not the usual suspect Pakistan. This morning's news that the US is to appoint a prime minister to circumvent Karzai should only be a surprise to those that fell for the stuff about building democracy in Afghanistan. Nevertheless it is a surprise that such fissures in the 'coalition' busted out into the open from behind closed doors. Maybe Karzai has done his pleading in private already and now sees the writing on the wall for his grubby little money-spinner otherwise known as governing Afghanistan. The US has lost patience with its dictator. The US knows Karzai has no real power in the country other than that exercised by the warlords he has brought into his orbit. A puppet with no power is no good fo...

Well a NuRoz greeting from the US president is certainly a change to the usual mood music of bellicosity and war has come from US presidents recently. But what does it mean by way of real change in US foreign policy? Many are tempted by the warming after-glow from this year's US presidential election; making history as it did by seeing the first African-American person to be elected to that office. Tempted to believe that this was change we could really believe in - although to be honest Obama's silence on Gaza before, and also in the days after, his inauguration, will naturally have soured things for some among his international admirers. There has been a change but it is probably not the one most readily imagined by liberal commentators, or arch right, pro-Israel neo-cons for that matter - although for diametrically opposed reasons in the case of the latter. Has Obama signalled to Tehran's mullahs that he means them no harm if only they would give up the nuke programme. ...

This has to be the most surreal story of the day so far. The head of the puppet government installed by the US, whose writ does not run much beyond the capital Kabul, is bemoaning foreign intervention in the country. Without that intervention Karzai would be hanging from a lamp post by now. And to preempt the pro-war crowd from getting too excited, this is not an argument in favour of the occupation of the country, or the Taliban's medievalism for that matter. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, today warned the international community not to meddle in the government of his country as it prepares to go to the polls for presidential elections this summer. Speaking alongside the Nato secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, at a news conference in Kabul, Karzai said the government's foreign partners should respect his country's independence. "Afghanistan … will never be a puppet state," he said. From the Guardian

Lurid headlines appeared in some papers yesterday regurgitating a story that was placed in the media by US intelligence agencies. The story claimed that an ex-prisoner of the the Guantanamo torture camp in Cuba is now a leading Taliban commander in Afghanistan, responsible for the change in tactics that has seen their effectiveness increase markedly against occupying troops - especially British troops in the south of the country. I find the timing of this story too good to be true on the part of the UK government, coinciding as it does with the revelations about UK collusion in torture at Guantanamo, Morocco and Pakistan by recently released detainee, Binyam Mohamed. Conveniently for the authorities it is impossible to cross reference any sources to verify the veracity of their claims. The man, who has been named as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, was released into the custody of the Afghan government in December 2007 and subsequently released. According to US intelligence the man has since c...

The right-wing pro-Israel Daily Telegraph in the UK speaks to the ex-SAS chief (an elite fighting formation of the British Army) about the disaster for the British and US armies unfolding in Afghanistan. End the occupation now. Bring the troops home. Perhaps that's why the US is now going to talk to Syria and the British to Hezbollah - the foreign policy of the neo-cons and Blair lies in ruins, but unfortunately so do the lives of millions of people in the Middle East and beyond.