World News

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>A major “Washington Post” investigation released on December 9 is a confirmation of the peace movement’s message that “there’s no military solution in Afghanistan.”

>That assessment is according to Paul Kawika Martin, senior director of policy and political affairs at Peace Action, replying to The Afghanistan Papers. The report exposes how top officials spanning the George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations waged a deliberate misinformation campaign to conceal the total failures of the 18-year war in Afghanistan.

>The bombshell from investigative reporter Craig Whitlock “broadly resembles the Pentagon Papers,” and it is based on over 2,000 pages of notes from interviews with a federal agency that “bring into sharp relief the core failings of the war that persist to this day” and belie comments by officials “who assured Americans year after year” of progress made in the war.

>The paper obtained the cache of documents following a legal battle that lasted three years and included two lawsuits. The documents came out of a project from the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), an agency now headed by Obama-appointee John Sopko. That project, entitled Lessons Learned, was meant to assess “the U.S. reconstruction experience in Afghanistan.”

>They revealed that officials continually misled the public about the war’s success, there was no strategy, their efforts fueled corruption, and the U.S. was clearly losing ground as well as tens of thousands of lives and at least $1 trillion.

>The trove includes transcripts and notes from over 400 interviewers between 2014 and 2018. SIGAR blacked out names of roughly 85 percent of interviewees.

>“It was impossible to create good metrics” about the troop surge, one unnamed senior National Security Council official said in a 2016 interview. “We tried using troop numbers trained, violence levels, control of territory and none of it painted an accurate picture.” They added, “The metrics were always manipulated for the duration of the war.”

>Ryan Crocker, who was the top U.S. diplomat in Kabul from 2011 to 2012, said in a 2016 interview, “Our biggest single project, sadly and inadvertently, of course, may have been the development of mass corruption.”

>A US police officer who was fired after shooting dead an unarmed man was temporarily rehired so he could apply for a pension, local media report.

>U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday unveiled over 450 pages of leaked documents that he said expose British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's effort to open up the National Health Service to corporate exploitation in trade negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump.

>During a press conference, Corbyn said the Trump administration's negotiators are "demanding" that the NHS be put "on the table" in talks over a possible post-Brexit trade pact between the U.S. and U.K.

>"That could lead to runaway privatization of our health service," said Corbyn. "Mega-corporations see Johnson's alliance with Trump as a chance to make billions from the illness and sickness of people in this country. And if the Conservatives have their way and this deal goes forward, the changes I've revealed will be almost irreversible."

>The spaces have gentle names: The reflection room. The cool-down room. The calming room. The quiet room.

>But shut inside them, in public schools across the state, children as young as 5 wail for their parents, scream in anger and beg to be let out.

>The students, most of them with disabilities, scratch the windows or tear at the padded walls. They throw their bodies against locked doors. They wet their pants. Some children spend hours inside these rooms, missing class time. Through it all, adults stay outside the door, writing down what happens.

>Children were sent to isolation after refusing to do classwork, for swearing, for spilling milk, for throwing Legos. School employees use isolated timeout for convenience, out of frustration or as punishment, sometimes referring to it as “serving time.”

>The Tribune/ProPublica Illinois investigation, which also included more than 120 interviews with parents, children and school officials, provides the first in-depth examination of this practice in Illinois.

>In the nearly 50,000 pages of reports reporters reviewed about Illinois students in

>Records and interviews show how seclusion can harm children. Students ripped their fingernails or bruised their knuckles hitting the door. Their hands swelled and bled from beating the walls. In some cases, children were hurt so badly that ambulances were called.

>Several parents said their children became afraid of school. Some said their children didn’t want to sleep alone. Other families said the rooms were so distressing that their children would not talk about them.

>Even preschool children spent time in isolated timeout, records show.

>Caracas, September 25, 2019 (venezuelanalysis.com) - Self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaido and the Venezuelan opposition have been given US $52 million by the Trump administration.

>According to a Tuesday statement from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the funding will be destined for independent media, civil society, the health sector and the opposition-controlled National Assembly.

>In addition, USAID administrator Mark Green announced on Wednesday that the US will commit $36 million in aid to Venezuela, as part of a relief program led by the United Nations. It is not clear at the present time whether this sum is part of the $52 million or an additional disbursement.

>The Trump administration had previously diverted over $40 million in aid destined for Central America to fund the Venezuelan opposition. According to a USAID memo seen by the LA Times, the money was destined for salaries, airfare, training, propaganda, among other budget items.

>Guaido proclaimed himself president in January and has since led several attempts to oust the Maduro government, including a failed military putsch on April 30.

>The new aid package dovetails with a fresh round of US sanctions against Venezuela’s oil sector.

>Aircraft carrier sent to Middle East after indications Iran planned attack on US forces