Afghanistan

Authored by Whitney Webb via TheAntiMedia.org,

When the U.S. overthrew the Taliban in the wake of 9/11 as part of its newly launched “war on terror,” it set the stage for the explosive growth of Afghanistan’s dying opium industry. A few short months before the invasion took place, the Taliban made headlines for having “dramatically ended the country’s massive opium trade” after the leader of the fundamentalist group had declared the substance to be un-Islamic. At the time, Afghanistan’s opium was used to produce 75 percent of the world’s heroin.

Authored by Paul Atwood via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

A few months ago I received a message from a professor at the Khomeini Institute for Education and  Research in Tehran, Iran, informing me that my 2010 book “War and Empire: The American Way of Life” (London, Pluto Press) had been translated into Farsi. He requested that I write an Introduction for Iranian readers. What follows is that Introduction. Two years ago the Xinhua Peoples’ Press in Beijing, China also published a translation in Mandarin.

Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

It was no coincidence that America's 11-ton bunker-tunnel busting bomb was deployed in Afghanistan as tensions mount over North Korea's nuclear theats.

In the past, China resisted U.S. saber-rattling against North Korea. Now China is threatening North Korea with military action. What's going on? Why the sudden convergence of U.S.-China threats of military force against North Korea?

One day after the Trump administration demonstratively used the GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb (MOAB, also known as Mother Of All Bombs) the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal in Afghanistan, in a clear show of force meant to send a signal to North Korea, it released a video of the explosion.

JUST IN: New video shows massive, 21,000-pound bomb hitting ISIS in Afghanistan https://t.co/FHXxuPb0Xq https://t.co/8A69FEO26y

— CNN (@CNN) April 14, 2017

At roughly 7pm local time, the United States military for the first time ever, used a GBU-43 bomb to target caves and tunnels in Aghanistan, denying operational space to ISIS, Sean Spicer said during a press briefing.

.@PressSec: "The United States takes the fight against ISIS very seriously." https://t.co/AtIMfKSdrE pic.twitter.com/Sa9BW10Sgi

— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) April 13, 2017