Tag Archives: US military
18th American drone strike in Pakistan tribal belt this year
A drone suspected of being American killed at least four militants early Saturday in an attack on a compound in the North Waziristan tribal district, near the border with Afghanistan, a Pakistani security official and local residents said. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/asia/drone-strike-kills-suspected-militants-in-pakistan.html?hp&_r=0 The drone fired missiles at a building and a nearby parked vehicle in a village close […]
Snowden releases US intelligence budget, Post withholds info
The top secret budget request for the current fiscal year was obtained by The Washington Post from the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden and published in part on its Web site on Thursday. The newspaper said it was withholding most of the 178-page document at the request of government officials because “sensitive […]
Cameron hears the people, Brits vote “no” on war with Syria
The stunning parliamentary defeat on Thursday for Prime Minister David Cameron that led him to rule out British military participation in any strike on Syria reflected British fears of rushing to act against Damascus without certain evidence. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/world/middleeast/syria.html?pagewanted=2&hp British legislators rejected a motion urging an international response to the chemical weapons attack by […]
UN tries to forestall US aggression in Syria
Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, cut short a European trip and rushed home on Thursday to prepare for a weekend briefing by his team of chemical weapons inspectors on the ground in Syria. He implored President Obama to refrain from a threatened military strike and to allow the procedures enshrined in […]
China asks for evidence in West pretext for war with Syria
China, clinging to a longstanding policy of noninterference, said on Wednesday that it opposed military action against Syria and insisted that the truth about the chemical weapons attack against civilians last week remained unclear. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/world/asia/culprit-in-syrian-chemical-attack-is-unclear-china-insists.html?ref=world As momentum built for Western military strikes against Syria, China was unmoved by the conclusions of Western governments that […]
Americans draw parallel to Iraq WMD lie in Syria
A grim-faced secretary of state reading a bill of charges against a rogue Arab leader. The White House promising intelligence that will provide proof about weapons of mass destruction. Frenetic efforts to piece together a coalition of the willing. Breathless news reports about imminent bombing raids. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/world/middleeast/on-syria-a-drumbeat-with-some-echoes-of-iraq.html?ref=world The days since the deadly chemical weapons […]
Brits, Iran call for evidence in Syrian attack as war looms
In London, government enthusiasm for a rapid retaliatory strike against Syrian government targets seemed to evaporate late Wednesday when British leaders, facing dissent among lawmakers, signaled that they would await the inspectors’ findings. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government, aware of the sensitivities created by the Iraq war, said unexpectedly that a separate vote would be […]
Middle East questions validity of US pretext for war
Why would Syria’s Bashar Hafez al-Assad launch a deadly chemical attack on a scale not yet seen in his country’s civil war — as American and allied officials assert his loyalists did last week — when he seemed to be holding his own in the stalemated conflict, and just as international weapons inspectors arrived in the […]
US and West looking for World War 3 in Syria
Iranian lawmakers and commanders issued stark warnings to the United States and its allies on Tuesday, saying any military strike on Syria would lead to a retaliatory attack on Israel fanned by “the flames of outrage.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/28/world/middleeast/strike-on-syria-would-cause-one-on-israel-iran-declares.html?ref=todayspaper The warnings came against a backdrop of rising momentum among Western governments for a military intervention in the […]
Julian Assange exposes Google collaboration with NSA et al
It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance with the PRISM mass surveillance system. http://cryptome.org/2013/08/assange-google-nsa.htm So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the […]
Egypt turns police state focus from Muslim Brotherhood
The Egyptian authorities have begun cracking down on other dissenters, sometimes labeling even liberal activists or labor organizers as dangerous Islamists. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/world/middleeast/egypt-widens-crackdown-and-meaning-of-islamist.html?pagewanted=1&ref=middleeast Ten days ago, the police arrested two left-leaning Canadians — one of them a filmmaker specializing in highly un-Islamic movies about sexual politics — and implausibly announced that they were members of […]
Tens of thousands protest corruption in Philippines
Tens of thousands of Filipinos protested in Manila on Monday, outraged over accusations that an estimated $141 million in public money had been diverted into the coffers of politicians and their associates. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/world/asia/filipinos-stage-anticorruption-protest-in-manila.html?ref=world The peaceful four-hour rally was fueled in part by photographs posted on social media sites by the daughter of one of the […]
Egyptian people: US, islamists allied in Divide and Conquer
When the conversation in Egypt turns to politics, the predominant topic is the conspiracy between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy Egypt. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/world/middleeast/as-egyptians-ignore-curfew-talk-of-a-us-brotherhood-conspiracy.html?ref=world The idea is widespread among supporters of the military, which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, last month. For journalists who ventured out Saturday night in violation […]
US Defense Department sets up military base in Jordan
The Defense Department is using a warehouse to coordinate support for Jordan’s military as the kingdom copes with a refugee crisis spawned by civil war in neighboring Syria — and to help prepare if violence spills across the border. The Pentagon deployed Patriot air-defense missile batteries here, along with F-16s to train with the Jordanian […]
Hastings, Snowden warn journalists of the info war
In a recent interview NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden states, “After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power — the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government — for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period […]
TSA violates 4th amendment and ushers in US police state
At Union Station on a recent morning, an armed squad of men and women dressed in bulletproof vests made their way through the crowds. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties-beyond-airport-security.html?pagewanted=1&ref=us The squad was not with the Washington police department or Amtrak’s police force, but was one of the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads — VIPR […]
Islamist prison breaks may be connected to Syrian conflict
Interpol cited prison escapes in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan, and asked its members to examine if they were connected. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23560889 In the most recent escape, 248 prisoners were sprung from a jail in north-west Pakistan. Militants used automatic weapons and bombs to break down the walls of the jail in Dera Ismail Khan on 30 […]
Drone killings escalate in Pakistan
There were more drone strikes in Pakistan last month than any month since January. Three missile strikes were carried out in Yemen in the last week alone. And after Secretary of State John Kerry told Pakistanis on Thursday that the United States was winding down the drone wars there, officials back in Washington quickly contradicted […]
Peacekeepers replaced with The United Nations force in Africa
The United Nations has threatened to forcibly disarm rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an early test of the robust new mandate for the multinational peacekeeping contingent that includes going on the offensive there.In an uncharacteristically stern warning on Tuesday, the United Nations ordered individuals near the eastern city of Goma to turn in […]
Dirty Babylon 