Tag Archives: Al Qaeda
War on Terror paves way for neo-imperalism in Africa
The United States and Niger will bring together in that West African nation police officers, customs inspectors and other authorities from a half-dozen countries in the region to hone their collective skills in securing lightly guarded borders against heavily armed traffickers and terrorists. Denmark has already forged a partnership with Burkina Faso to combat violent […]
Divide and conquer working to cull Syrian populace
Syria’s widening civil war has killed more than 100,000 people in the 27-month-old conflict, with pro-government forces taking far more casualties than rebels seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad, while civilians accounted for more than one-third of the overall fatalities, the biggest single category. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/world/middleeast/syria.html?hp&_r=0 The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based […]
Pentagon looks to aid foreign troops that violate human rights
The Pentagon is increasingly training and equipping local security services to combat militants in their countries. A 16-year-old law that bars American aid to foreign security forces that violate human rights is drawing unusual fire from some top military commanders who say it undermines their ability to train the troops to fight militants. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/us/politics/military-says-law-barring-us-aid-to-rights-violators-hurts-training-mission.html?ref=us The […]
Force-feeding Guatanamo inmates considered torture
“The UN and numerous other authoritative bodies have quite explicitly stated that the force-feeding that goes on in Guantanamo is torture. Forcing someone to accept treatment which they’re competent to refuse is an assault.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/22973263 A prisoner currently on hunger strike in Guantanamo Bay has described the pain and discomfort of the force feeding regime […]
West continues to kill Afghan women and children
The United Nations reports that a coalition airstrike killed three children in eastern Afghanistan. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/06/14/world/asia/ap-as-afghanistan.html?ref=world The United Nations Children’s Fund cited the alleged incident in a statement this week condemning a steep rise in child casualties. The statement said an aerial attack by international forces killed three children in the eastern province of Kunar this […]
Arms sales have “very high risk” of corruption?
The Congressional Research Service estimated last year that global arms exports had swelled to $85 billion. And several prominent criminal investigations have added to the pressure for change. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/business/report-aims-to-help-military-industry-fight-corruption.html?ref=us&_r=0 BAE Systems, Europe’s largest military contractor, agreed in 2010 to plead guilty to criminal charges in the United States and Britain related to billions of dollars […]
US domestic surveillance program laid bare
Imagine if the government required every American to report to the government every night who they spoke to, or texted, for how long, and from where. People would be furious, but that’s precisely the information the N.S.A. is collecting from telecom companies. And it’s precisely why the government desperately wanted to keep the practice a […]
Alternative media uncovers domestic spy program
Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and longtime blogger, published an article in the British newspaper The Guardian about the existence of a top-secret court order allowing the National Security Agency to monitor millions of telephone logs. An N.S.A. program, Prism, that has gathered information from the nation’s largest Internet companies going back nearly six years. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/business/media/anti-surveillance-activist-is-at-center-of-new-leak.html?pagewanted=all […]
TSA profiling in misguided security effort
As a result of the T.S.A.’s ineffective oversight of the program, it “cannot ensure that passengers at U.S. airports are screened objectively,” The T.S.A.’s “behavioral detection program” is supposed to rely on security officers who pull aside passengers who exhibit what are considered telltale signs of terrorists for additional screening and questioning. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/us/report-says-tsa-screening-program-not-objective.html?ref=us It is […]
As US lifts sanctions, Myanmar kills muslim women
At least three women from the Rohingya minority were killed when police fired on protesters in Burma’s Rakhine state. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22780085 The women – one of whom was pregnant – were protesting because the authorities were planning to move them to another temporary camp. Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims remain displaced in the wake of […]
Afghans shot protesting deaths at US base
Soon after family members found what they believe are the bodies of the last three people still missing out of 17 Afghan men detained by an American Special Forces team in Wardak Province, another tragedy found them: they said one person was killed and another was critically wounded on Tuesday when Afghan Army troops opened […]
NATO to assume security role in Nothern Africa
Libya has been bedeviled by instability since a NATO air campaign helped topple the country’s longtime dictator. Now NATO is sending a team of experts to Libya to assess how the alliance can provide security assistance. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/world/africa/nato-to-send-team-to-libya-to-assess-security-aid.html?hp&_r=0 The overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi’s autocratic government has left the new government struggling to fill a security vacuum. […]
US operative killed fighting with Syrian rebels
F.B.I. agents from Detroit’s field office showed up in Flint, Mich. with reports and images, broadcast by pro-government news media agencies in Syria, show that Nicole Lynn Mansfield, 33, and a British man were among three people killed in Syria on Wednesday during a confrontation with government forces. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/us/syria-fighting-touches-a-family-in-michigan.html?ref=us The state media agencies broadcast a […]
Parents of Chechens repudiate narrative
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said her son, surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, told her in a phone call that he and his brother, killed in a police manhunt after the blasts, were innocent. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22725542 Mr Tsarnaev, who was shot and injured during the manhunt, is currently being held in a prison hospital. Mrs Tsarnaeva told […]
Lebanese sentenced after another FBI sting
A gullible youth, Sami Samir Hassoun, 25, was sentenced to 23 years in prison Thursday for placing a backpack he believed contained a bomb near Wrigley Field in Chicago after being sucked into a 2010 terrorism sting during an alcohol-addled stretch of his life. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/us/illinois-lebanese-man-gets-23-years-in-bomb-plot.html?ref=us Mr. Hassoun was arrested after planting the fake explosive device, […]
UN expert calls for killer robot ban
A United Nations expert called Thursday for a global moratorium on the testing, production and use of armed robots that can select and kill targets without human command. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/world/europe/united-nations-armed-robots.html?ref=world “War without reflection is mechanical slaughter. A decision to allow machines to be deployed to kill human beings worldwide, whatever weapons they use, deserves a collective […]
Recent attacks give way to police state rationale
“Short of a police state on East German lines the number of such individuals who can be subject to very intensive surveillance sufficient to detect preparations for violent action is but a small proportion of the total — and of course individuals can flip quickly even where they have been checked out previously.” http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/05/31/world/europe/ap-eu-tracking-terrorists.html?ref=world “This […]
Drones continue to strike with impunity
At least four people were killed and four others injured in a drone attack on a house near the Pakistani-Afghan border early Wednesday. Wednesday’s strike came just six days after President Obama unveiled his new drone policy, curtailing their use to limit civilian casualties and moving oversight of the program from the C.I.A. to the […]
MI5 had hacking assailants under surveillance
British security officials confirmed Thursday that the suspects were known to MI5, the domestic security agency, in the years before the attack, which stunned many people with its sheer brutality. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/world/europe/london-attack.html?pagewanted=1&src=twr What British security officials knew about the two men held after the London attack remained unclear. But unidentified officials who spoke with British reporters […]
Dirty Babylon 
Sheeple renounce 4th amendment
People were not upset to learn that the government might be tracking their telephone calls, Facebook posts and Yahoo accounts. The news that the government might be looking in too was often something short of a surprise. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/many-americans-appear-resigned-to-surveillance.html “If people think the government hasn’t been monitoring whatever they want to, whenever they want to they […]