SPECTRE

Oh those Russians.They have a really good sense of humour naming satellites after SPECTRE the secret Russian organization out to get James Bond.

Russia is also planning to orbit Specter-M, Specter-RG and Specter-UF spacecraft, and launch a Coronas-Photon satellite to conduct extensive scientific research of outer space, he said.

And I always liked Blofeld, a man and his cat.

The word SPECTRE stands for Special Executor for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. The powerful and ruthless criminal organisation is dedicated to gaining wealth and power though criminal schemes the involve extortion, instigation of major wars to gain power and acts of revenge. Throughout several missions, Bond has been dedicated to the destruction of SPECTRE and it's leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

It should not be confused with SMERSH.


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As Long As Its Not Iran

So why would South Africa need nuclear weapons? Russia, SA agree on nuclear fuel, satellites

Cause we all know enriched uranium is used for weapons. Just look at Iran.


Also See:

Iran

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Americans Kill Canadian Olympian

Now if I was the paranoid conspiracy theory kind of guy I would suspect that with all that wonderful high tech super secret spy weaponry the U.S. has, satellites in the sky that can read your address on your door, high tech listening equipment that can hear you fart in bed, all that stuff. That maybe, just maybe, they targeted this guy cause they didn't want him to beat them in the Olympics.

See my articles:

• Canadian Death Toll In Afghanistan
• Deja Vu

Also See:

Friendly Fire

Afghanistan

War





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Harpers Night Of the Long Knives

Couldnt happen to a nicer party. You know the one that is critical of others, claims to be open, transparent, accountable, not going to act like the Liberals......

Tory infighting flares as members sue party
OTTAWA (CP) - The federal Conservative party is facing a lawsuit from grassroots members over its nomination process, while officials continue to reject would-be candidates with no explanation.

Opps better not look in the mirror....cause this guy




is looking a lot like this guy

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Harper


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Policing the Police

Yep like having the fox guard the hen house.....


RCMP officer won't be charged after shooting
An RCMP officer won't be charged in the death of a man who was shot in the back of the head at a rural B.C. police detachment after he was arrested for drinking beer outside the local hockey arena. Cameron Ward, a lawyer who has acted for several families who have lost loved ones in misadventures with police, said he was not surprised at the decision not to lay charges because the Crown based its decision on police investigating police.


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America Safe From Terrorism

George Bush in his speech today said America had not been attacked since 9/11 implying his war in Iraq was the reason.

He forgot to mention that Russia was attacked in the summer of 2004, London was attacked last summer. Spain was attacked in 2004. Indonesia has suffered terrorist bombings. India has suffered from terrorist attacks.

And the base support for many of these attacks came not from Iraq or Afghanistan, or Iran or North Korea but from the terrorist state that is America's ally; Pakistan.

Sure America has not been attacked, not because of the war in Iraq, or the failed occupation of Afghanistan, or because they have increased Homeland Security and decreased civil liberties.

Nope its because the terrorists hit other targets. And they are not living in America.

Foreign Affairs - Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? - John Mueller
Summary: Despite all the ominous warnings of wily terrorists and imminent attacks, there has been neither a successful strike nor a close call in the United States since 9/11. The reasonable -- but rarely heard -- explanation is that there are no terrorists within the United States, and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad.

Five years after 9/11: The fear and dread campaign

But this overblown "terror" rhetoric is clearly augmenting and thereby empowering the very terrorist networks Bush and Blair say they are trying to constrain.

The most powerful recruiting tool for suicide bombers certainly isn't Osama bin Laden, says Margolis, but Bush and his administration's attempt to "exploit terrorism" for political gain.

Ironically, while Bush's policy may be encouraging support for terror networks across the Muslim world, it's beginning to backfire at home.

As its fifth anniversary approaches, 9/11 has become dwarfed by the carnage in Iraq, where more civilians are killed every month than died in the attack on America.

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Pakistan

Afghanistan

War

Bush

9/11

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Harper Out Of Touch With Canada

Aloof, cold, unapproachable, distant, serious, all those adjectives ascribed to Stephen Harper place him outside of main street. As does his politics. Good thing he has his garret in Ottawa where he can run the country solo. But he should never say he speaks for us or for them.

New poll released that shows Canadians overwhelming support Kyoto's objectives: Prime Minister Stephen Harper has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, an international pact to cut greenhouse emissions that cause global warming, and federal officials suggest their top priority is air and water quality, not climate. McAllister's poll suggests that the great majority of Canadians don't agree with that stance Canadians: Massive Support for Kyoto

Put all the data together, and the SES-Sun poll paints a political landscape that is pocked with major challenges for the Harper government between now and the next election.

First, the war in Afghanistan and, to a lesser degree, Harper’s pro-Israel stance on the conflict in Lebanon, are taking a definitive toll on Conservative popularity, particularly in Quebec where the party has tanked since the spring.

Second, the Conservative communications strategy of making the government “all Harper, all the time” has also turned him into the lightning rod for voter discontent.

Asked what they don’t like about the Harper government, voters didn’t point to Conservative policies, but “his policies.” Steve, it’s time to wake up

Canada's ruling Conservatives are not in a position to win an overall majority in a new federal election, and many voters dislike their tough foreign policy positions, according to two recent opinion polls.

Pollsters Ipsos-Reid, whose survey was published in the National Post newspaper on Saturday, said a tough pro-Israel line appeared to be lowering support for the Conservatives, especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec, where the Conservatives must do well to win an majority. Poll finds aversion for Harper's foreign policy

September 4: Majority (54%) Feel P.M. Was Wrong Not To Attend Recent International AIDS Conference

Canadians seem to have figured out for themselves that Afghanistan could turn out to be a disaster: a Strategic Counsel poll this week found that 55 per cent opposed the military mission in Kandahar, up from 41 per cent in March. Reversing that trend might seem like an obvious step for Stephen Harper. Yet the Prime Minister hasn't made explaining Afghanistan to Canadians much of a priority, beyond his speech on a motion in the House last spring to extend the mission by two years to February 2009 -- a parliamentary ploy that looked more designed to expose a rift in the Liberal party on the issue than to spark serious debate.Bullets fly. Ottawa ducks

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Harper


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Whose A Nazi Now?

Gee them Tories like to throw the term NAZI around.

As the saying goes it takes one to know one....

Spectre of Hitler invoked by Tories
,Darrel Reid, the Tory hopeful in Richmond riding, once compared Canada to Nazi Germany, warning that Christians could face imprisonment for speaking out against homosexuality.

Day compares Hezbollah to Nazi Party

Harper says comparison of Hezbollah, Nazis is fair

Layton forcing the war issue
Conservative MP Jason Kenney said it would be like talking to Hitler's Nazis, a comparison which created good headlines but neatly sidestepped the history. (In the 1930s, no one, including Winston Churchill, objected to the idea of talking to Nazis; the only dispute, which peaked during the 1938 Munich crisis, was whether to cave in to Hitler's demands.)



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Harper


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Stephen Harpers Galaxy Quest

This headline from the Star;


Harper rewrites book on being PM
He rarely retreats, never explains,



reminded me of this......

Never give up... and never surrender.





















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Harper

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Lenin bin Laden

Seriously the greatest terrorist threat in the world began when an "ex-lawyer wrote What Is To Be Done? "

That's the claim made by King George II today in his speech and explaination of why America is still in Iraq.

And why the U.S. moved out of the Cold War of Containment into the New Cold War of Ameica Liberating the World....well some parts of it...if you call bombing Iraq back to the stone age liberation.....

And still looking for bin Laden....which he compared Lenin too.

His speech pre-empted Liberal Leadership announcements by Dryden and Dion.

I always thought of Lenin as a journalist, editor of Pravda. Leinin the ex-Lawyer, boy George sure has it in for trial lawyers.

Now, I know some of our country hear the terrorists' words, and hope that they will not, or cannot, do what they say. History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake. In the early 1900s, an exiled lawyer in Europe published a pamphlet called "What is to be Done?" -- in which he laid out his plan to launch a communist revolution in Russia. The world did not heed Lenin's words, and paid a terrible price. The Soviet Empire he established killed tens of millions, and brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war. Remarks by the President on the Global War on Terror

Gee I thought it was the US that launched the cold war. Yep they did. Right after WWI.

The seeds of hostility between the United States and the USSR began near the end of World War I. The Bolsheviks (later Communists) overthrew the existing Russian government. In December 1922 began the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) under Communist control. The United States refused to recognize the Soviet state until 1933. In 1947 president Harry S. Truman authorized U.S. aid (The Truman Doctrine) to anti-Communist forces in Greece and Turkey. The policy was expanded to justify support for any nation that the U.S. government considered to be threatened by Soviet expansionism. This policy, known as the containment doctrine, was aimed at holding back and restricting the spread of Communism world wide.The Cold War

Thor-Agena preparing for launch with a top secret payload, 1959. (credit: Paul Gatherer)

When were we on the brink of thermonuclear war? And who got us into it?

It promised to be a quiet evening at the Soviet nuclear early warning center when Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov settled into the commander's seat on Sept. 26, 1983. But within minutes, Colonel Petrov was locked in perhaps the most dangerous drama of the cold war. An alarm sounded, warning screens blinked. A computer map on the wall showed the hostile launch of a US nuclear warhead."Every second counted.... My legs were unsteady, my hands were trembling, my cozy armchair became a hot frying pan," says the former officer. It only got worse. Within five minutes the computer registered five more launches; the alarm flashed: "Missile Attack."The decision that Petrov made in those pressure-cooked minutes - that the computer was in error, and the elaborate early warning system that he helped build was wrong - may have prevented a nuclear holocaust. US and Russia nukes: still on cold war, hair-trigger alert ...

And I think George is confusing Lenin with Stalin. The Russian that all post WWII neo-cons love to hate cause they were once socialists who became Trotskyists and then became liberals.

In an interview with Stephen Schwartz in Canada’s National Post, Jeet Heer showed just how deeply the Marxist right has burrowed into the Bush administration:

To this day, Schwartz speaks of Trotsky affectionately as “the old man” and “L.D.” . . . “To a great extent, I still consider myself to be [one of the] disciples of L.D.,” he admits, and he observes that in certain Washington circles, the ghost of Trotsky still hovers around. At a party in February celebrating a new book about Iraq, Schwartz exchanged banter with Wolfowitz about Trotsky, the Moscow Trials and Max Shachtman. “I’ve talked to Wolfowitz about all of this,” Schwartz notes. “We had this discussion about Shachtman. He knows all that stuff, but was never part of it. He’s definitely aware.”

The "Trotskyist roots" of neoconservatism

As far back as the mid 1980s, paleoconservatives were caustically commenting on the supposed "Trotskyist roots" of the neoconservatives. At an infamously raucous debate between conservatives held at the Philadelphia Society in 1986, the paleoconservative historian Stephen J. Tonsor expressed dismay that former Marxists had come to play such a dominant role within conservatism, and quipped that had Trotsky not been assassinated he would no doubt be working for the Hoover Institute and writing articles for Commentary. [4] But it was not until the Gulf War of 1991 that the tale about neoconservatism's "Trotskyist roots" took the form in which we know it today.

What gets all these right wingers is that the NEO-CONS were not just influenced by Trotskyism but originated in the liberal intellectual circle of New Yorkers. You know those Latte drinking, BMW types.

Neoconservatism--the term was Michael Harrington's--originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves "paleoliberals." While there was a pro-Israel wing, the movement's focus was on confrontation with the Soviet bloc abroad and on the defense of New Deal liberalism and color-blind liberal integrationism against rivals on the left at home. With the end of the cold war and the ascendancy of the Democratic Leadership Council, many "paleoliberals" drifted back to the Democratic center. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once spoken of as a possible neoconservative presidential candidate, broke with the movement in the 1980s over its growing contempt for international law and its exaggeration of the Soviet threat. Today's neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition.

Ah well Bush never was much of a historian, any more then he was much of a businessman.

The first cold war erupted amid Western alarm over the march of Soviet power into Eastern Europe after WWII, as Moscow staged coups against democratic governments and encouraged local Communist Parties to turn their countries into Soviet "satellites." Ironically, Russians today report similar feelings of outrage at what they view as Western incursions into the post-Soviet region through pro-democracy revolts. "Russians feel that these [neighboring] countries are part of us, and they can't accept that someone else wants to control them," says Yevgeny Bazhanov, vice rector of the Diplomatic Academy, which trains Russian diplomats. Russia and USA to launch another Cold War

Guess he didn't like Lenin saying this, about Georges favorite fetish...freedom...

“Freedom” is a grand word, but under the banner of freedom for industry the most predatory wars were waged, under the banner of freedom of labour, the working people were robbed.

He probably got his 'facts' about Lenin from this article.

Besides everyone knows Bush is an idiot. Scary thing is not only is he an idiot he appears to be channeling Barry Goldwater, thinking it's God telling him what to do.

The origins of the containment doctrine, dating from consular official George Kennan’s cable from Moscow in 1947 setting forth the strategy, have been amply researched, but the origins of the liberation doctrine have not been. As a strategy, it became the trademark of a new generation of conservative Republicans, led by Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater. It was originally developed, however, neither by Republicans nor self-styled conservatives, but by former Communists and Trotskyists like Whittaker Chambers, the former spy who fingered Alger Hiss, and James Burnham, a former CIA consultant. These were men who were still halfway on a journey from left to right and whose view of the Soviet Union was not shaped by debates with State Department officials, but by their anguished reflection on their own revolutionary pasts. The Origins Of Conservative Foreign Policy



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When Hel Freezes Over

The federal government could hold consultations for up to five years before it finalizes new regulations for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, CBC News has learned.

Which the Tories had better hope happens.

Hel freezing over that is, since it is actually an arctic wasteland in Norse Mythology.

And last time I checked the Arctic was melting faster than the Tory focus groups meeting to discuss Harpers non- existent Green plan.

Tory government pays for focus-group research on environmental policy
Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists he doesn't govern by polls, but a leaked report indicates his government has been paying for research to see what Canadians think about the environment. Conservative plans for a new environmental policy - said to rely heavily on pollution-fighting measures rather than climate change - fall in line with what focus groups told researchers this summer.The report, prepared for senior officials by the Strategic Counsel and obtained by The Canadian Press, is a compilation of the views of 75 Canadians across the country.

Seventy Five Canadians will determine the environmental policy of Canada wonder who they were? Maybe these guys or these guys.

The report added that while people in the focus groups didn't feel a strong sense of urgency about environmental problems, the issue is potentially a powerful tool for the Tories in the next election.

Yep must have been these guys. Because they are right out of touch with the rest of Canadians.


So why worry if the arctic is melting right....

Even if 2006 is not a record-breaker, it will mark the fifth straight year of dramatic Arctic sea-ice declines. If the trend continues - and it's expected to - the summertime Arctic could be completely ice-free well before the end of the century, the Boulder researchers say. The change would open previously inaccessible shipping lanes but would be bad news for wildlife and native peoples who rely on the Arctic ice.

Let it melt. Because then you don't need a Green Plan when you have a plan to build a military industrial complex in the Canadian North......

Arctic meltdown

THE Arctic ice cap is melting at a rate that could allow routine commercial shipping through the far north in a decade and open up new fisheries. But a report for the US Navy seen by New Scientist reveals that naval vessels will be unable to police these areas.

But in 10 years' time, if melting patterns change as predicted, the North-West Passage could be open to ordinary shipping for a month each summer. And the Northern Sea Route across the top of Russia could allow shipping for at least two months a year in as little as five years.

The new routes will slash the distances for voyages between Europe and East Asia by a third, and open up new fisheries. The resulting boom in shipping could lead to conflicts, as nations try to enforce fisheries rules, prevent smuggling and piracy, and protect the Arctic environment from oil spills. To complicate matters, Russia and Canada consider their northern sea routes as national territory, while the US regards them as international waters.

Also See

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Environment

Rona Ambrose

Green Plan

Kyoto

Oil

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Freedom and Democracy Where?

In his speech today Georgie Porgie Terrorist Fighter promoted the same old worn out pre-emptive strike policy that was put in place five years ago, and ain't working. But it comes wrapped in a new cover.National Strategy for Combating Terrorism

The United States, says President Bush, is committed to advancing freedom and democracy as the alternatives to repression and radicalism. "We will take the side of democratic leaders and reformers across the Middle East," he says. "We will support the voices of tolerance and moderation in the Muslim world."Bush On Freedom Agenda

So what countries in the Middle East are now moderate Muslim democracies thanks to the U.S.

Jordan? Nope. Saudi Arabi? Nope Kuwait? Nope. Dubai? Nope. UAE? Nope. Oman? Nope. Baharain? Nope. All of them are repressive regimes and allies of the Americans.

Iraq and Afghanistan are dysfunctional so to call them democracies is laughable.

Iran had democratic elections, as did Lebanon and Palestine. But they unfortunately keep electing enemies of Israel that other repressive democractic state in the Middle East.

And Egypt well they have democracy if you call it that, like Morrocco they ban opposition parties and newspapers.

Yep the US sure is doing a bang up job bringing liberty, freedom and democracy to the Middle East. Sure is helping all those reformers their Petro allies keep jailing.


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Post 9/11 The Real Tragedy

Lung Problems Plague 9/11 Workers
Study: Nearly 70% Of Ground Zero Workers Had Respiratory Issues
Findings highlighted by the study include:

Almost 70 percent of World Trade Center responders had new or worsened lung symptoms after the attacks.

Among responders who had no health symptoms before the attacks, 61 percent developed lung symptoms while working on the toxic pile.

One-third of those tested had abnormal lung function tests.

Thanks to the Bush Regimes EPA refusal to do a hazards assessment, those who went to clean up were not warned of the toxic hazards. And in fact Bush himself was the poster boy for how safe it was, when he stood on the rubble of the WTC without Personal Protective Equipment...Respirator, etc.

Five years later; Chickens, Home, Roost.

9/11: Katrina Started at Ground Zero

Here's how it worked: First, Karl Rove and George Bush saw an opportunity -- mounting the pile of World Trade Center rubble -- for a public-relations coup in devastated Manhattan that could instantly reverse the President's distinctly unpresidential day on 9/11 and his administration's previously weak polling numbers. Second, Washington pushed New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani and local officials to get with the program and re-open Wall Street (which the 9/11 attacks had shut down) faster than was advisable. Third, city officials were told by administration emissaries that, despite the pall hanging over Ground Zero, all was well with the air and water in lower Manhattan and normal life should resume.

Finally, although nearly the entire city could, for months to come, smell the rancid co-mingling of burning plastics, asbestos, lead, chromium, mercury, vinyl chloride, benzene, and scores of other toxic materials as well as decaying human flesh, Bush's appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continually bombarded city officials with reports claiming that the air was certifiably "safe" to breathe. As EPA Administrator Christy Whitman put it, "There's no need for the general public to be concerned." To this day we do not know the extent of contamination or level of exposure to which residents, workers, and students in the area were (and are still being) subjected.

Everyone got on the band wagon: the President mounted the pile of rubble without respiratory protection, signaling to firemen, policemen, and volunteers that he-men shouldn't worry about the towers having become a toxic waste-pile the likes of which the developed world hadn't seen since Chernobyl. Under the goading of EPA officials, even the venerable New York City Department of Health (despite internal dissention) began proclaiming lower Manhattan safe for the return of residents. (At that time, Lower Manhattan's congressional representative Jerrold Nadler was arguing that it was still dangerously toxic.) The Board of Education, feeling the heat from the Giuliani administration -- in turn, reacting to pressure from Washington -- ordered schools just a few blocks from Ground Zero reopened and thousands of students were sent back to the neighborhood.

Also See:

War

Bush

9/11

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Say It Ain't So

Afghanistan is falling back into the hands of the Taleban, a report by an international think-tank has claimed.

The Senlis Council has blamed international forces for failing to achieve stability and security.

The Senlis Council, which provides advice on foreign policy, security and development, claims nothing has been done to address widespread poverty in Afghanistan.

Its report, Afghanistan Five Years Later: The Return of the Taleban, says that the Taleban have a strong psychological and de facto military control over half of the country.

"Nato is caught in a trap in a way. They are faced with a deteriorating situation, they cannot do the core job of helping reconstruction," Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Senlis Council, said.

Opium war 'making enemies

British and US efforts to decimate the opium industry in Afghanistan have "hijacked" nation-building attempts in the country, and are driving support for the Taliban, a report said today.

The highly critical study of the five years since the US-led invasion found that Afghans are starving to death despite international donor pledges and that the foreign military presence was "fuelling resentment and fear" among the local population.

The report, by the Senlis Council, an international policy thinktank, said that the US-led international community had "failed to achieve stability and security" in the war-torn country and that attacks were perpetuated on a daily basis.

Of course Opium helps fuel that armed resistance.......as it did with the War against the Soviet Union.....

Commentary: Pakistan fuels Taliban's resurgency

Some of the opium bounty greases the relays for Taliban to operate in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which Pakistan also denies despite having lost at least 700 soldiers fighting Taliban and their al-Qaida allies in these same areas.
Since the liberation of Afghanistan in November 2001, the area under opium cultivation has grown by almost 60 percent to 400,000 acres. And this despite draconian eradication campaigns by Britain and the United States. Now well over half the country's GDP is derived from narcotics trafficking. Warlords and drug lords -- frequently one and the same -- are represented surreptitiously in President Hamid Karzai's central government, which also includes a minister for "counternarcotics."
Taliban's resurgency in southern Afghanistan has impacted five provinces where crop substitution was abandoned to the exigencies of counter-guerrilla operations. Taliban also encourages poppy farming for levied protection.

And why is that....perhaps because the Taliban and bin Laden Inc. are hiding in the terrorist state next door...

General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, will also visit Kabul on Wednesday for anti-terrorism talks with Karzai. Fighters cross between Afghanistan and Pakistan through their porous 2,450-km-long border. The two neighbours routinely accuse each other of not doing enough to stamp out attacks along the frontier where Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives are believed to be hiding.

And of course he will bring good news with him.....that the Pakistani government has negotiated a truce with the Taliban..in the Northwest....allowing the Taliban to reinforce their troops in the Southeast of Afghanistan......yep NATO is screwed......

The Pakistani government and pro-Taliban fighters have agreed a deal aimed at ending five years of conflict in Waziristan on the Afghanistan border.
Hundreds of Pakistani troops and pro-Taliban fighters have been killed in the government's attempt to assert its authority in Waziristan as part of the US-led "war on terror". Under the agreement, the pro-Taliban forces have agreed to stop attacks both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan.

Pakistan Backs Taliban, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan: ANP

He said with agreement the Taliban operative in tribal areas were given free hand to carry out disruptive acts in Afghanistan. After the agreement, the Taliban would boldly launch insurgencies in Afghanistan. He said: "Pakhtun of Pakistan will never accept such series of current violence should be on in Afghanistan."

Also See:

Pakistan

Afghanistan

War

Opium





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