Democracy Now!: In a last-minute dissent ahead of a critical war cabinet meeting on escalating the Afghan war, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has cast doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems. Meanwhile, a report reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting. Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack.      Full news...

Health News: New Delhi - Eight years after the start of the international campaign to end Taliban rule in Afghanistan, more than half of all children under age five suffer from malnutrition, a UNICEF official told the German Press Agency dpa Wednesday. 'Nutrition is somewhat better (now), but not much,' said Daniel Toole, UNICEF's South Asia director, as the UN agency for children released a report tracking global progress in maternal and child nutrition.      Full news...

Morning Star: Anti-war Lance Corporal Joe Glenton has been arrested and faces 10 years in jail for bravely honouring his moral responsibility to speak out against the illegal occupation of Afghanistan. The serving soldier faces up to seven charges after he defied orders to address 10,000 demonstrators last month in Trafalgar Square and told the media that he did not believe the war was legitimate or in the nation's interest.      Full news...

The Associated Press: Warlords helped drive the Russians from Afghanistan, then shelled Kabul into ruins in a bloody civil war after the Soviets left. Now they are back in positions of power, in part because the U.S. relied on them in 2001 to help oust the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks. President Hamid Karzai later reached out to them to shore up his own power base as America turned its attention to Iraq after the Taliban's rout.      Full news...

South Asia News: A US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, while television footage showed Taliban insurgents sorting and transporting what appeared to be US military ammunition sized by militants in two remote outposts in October. The US soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the US military said in a statement without giving more details.      Full news...

The Guardian: With his 9mm Smith and Wesson at the ready, the Afghan police chief strode through the bazaar of rickety wooden stalls, grabbed a hapless shopkeeper by the hair and slapped him across the face three times. One officer hit a man in the knees with his rifle butt. This was an afternoon raid on shops suspected of selling illegal radio equipment used in the making of IEDs (improvised explosive device). Moments later the contents of all the shops was thrown outside in a large heap of "evidence".      Full news...

PAN: Artillery and mortar shelling by the NATO-led international troops killed nine civilians in southern Afghanistan, locals said. People, who brought bodies of their slain relatives to Lashkargah, said the dead included three children and six men. They died as a mortar shell landed in the fields covered with maize crop, said the locals.      Full news...

FPIF: As President Obama and his advisors debate future troop levels for Afghanistan, a new report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) muddies the water on one of the most important issues in the debate — the effects of Afghanistan's drug production. The report, entitled "Addiction, Crime, and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium," gives the false impression that the Taliban are the main culprits behind Afghanistan's skyrocketing drug production.      Full news...

IRIN: The average per capita monthly expenditure of nine million Afghans is less than 66 US cents a day, and millions of other Afghans spend about $42 a month, according to a summary of Afghanistan’s new National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA). NRVA 2007/08 was produced by the government with European Union funding and in collaboration with aid agencies. A bleak picture is painted.      Full news...

The Gargoyle: Last month, Barack Obama became the third U.S. president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. But unlike the countless followers of the lunatic Glenn Beck who think our 44th president is turning our country into Stalinist Russia, there is a more rational argument to be made against Obama’s recent award. The Nobel Peace Prize was given to a man who, like a character in a George Orwell novel, kills in the name of peace.      Full news...

The Independent: Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it – they still are – and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and – yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election.      Full news...

Foreign Policy In Focus: While President Barack Obama reviews his strategy on Afghanistan, a perfect moment to send a strong unified message to end the war is slipping through our fingers. Whether it's because we seem to have bought into the lies about the goals of this war or because we mistakenly feel that a Democratic president is going to come to the right conclusion on his own, one thing is clear: There's no debate within the Democratic Party or in the White House about whether to end the war.      Full news...

TruthDig: The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women.      Full news...