Translate

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

World War 3 news and updates .... March 24


Some of the countries in it, either in major or minor roles:
USA, UK, Canada,  Australia, New Zealand, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Kurdistan, Yemen, Nigeria, France with (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad ) Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Albania, Estonia, Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Republic of Korea, Ireland, Spain, Slovakia, Norway, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Novorussia, Ukraine, Russia, Chechnya, Somalia, Iran, India, South Korea, North Korea,  Central African Republic, Kenya, Tunisia, The Philippines, Egypt,  Albania, Serbia, China, Sudan, South Sudan, Bukina Faso, Palestine, Georgia, Chad, Spain, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Nepal, Congo, Uganda, Romania, Mexico, Gambia, Haiti, Cameroon, Chad, Algeria, Venezuela, Thailand, Argentina, Vietnam, Myanmar, Georgia ....

From BBC
Yemen could become   'protracted conflict' envoy warns
The conflict in Yemen could become "protracted in the vein of an Iraq, Syria, Libya combined scenario'' the UN's special envoy has warned.
Jamal Benomar was speaking as the Security Council met in New York to express support for ousted President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
Mt Hadi fled the capital Sanaa in February as Houthi rebels from the north tightened their grip on the city.
The rebels, who are Shia, have now taken Yemen's third-largest city, Taiz.
In a video link from Qatar, Mr Benomar called for "peaceful dialogue" and warned that Yemen was on the "edge of civil war".......

From MotherJones
US Weapons Have a Nasty Habit of Going AWOL  
From Afghanistan to Yemen, a short history of American arms ending up in the wrong hands.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon can't say what happened to more than $500 million worth of gear—including "small arms, ammunition, night-vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles and other supplies"—it had given to the Yemeni government. The news comes as Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed groups vie to control the country following the collapse of the country's US-backed regime in January. The Post noted that the Pentagon has stopped further shipments of aid, but the damage has been done. "We have to assume it's completely compromised and gone," an anonymous legislative aide said.
This isn't the first time US military aid to allies has gone AWOL or wound up in the wrong hands. A few notable examples:

Libya: In late 2012, the New York Times reported that weapons from a US-approved deal had eventually gone to Islamic militants in Libya. The deal, which involved European weapons sent to Qatar as well as US weapons originally supplied to the United Arab Emirates, had been managed from the sidelines by the Obama administration.
Syria: More than once, American arms intended to help bolster the fight against ISIS in Syria and northern Iraq have ended up in the group's control. Last October, an airdrop of small arms was blown off target by the wind, according to the Guardian. ISIS quickly posted a video of its fighters going through crates of weapons attached to a parachute.
Iraq: American weapons supplied to the Iraqi army have also found their way ISIS via theft and capture. And weapons meant for the Iraqi army have also gone to Shiite militias backed by Iran. This isn't a new..............


From PressTV
Thirty people have been killed   in fresh clashes between Ansarullah fighters and forces loyal to the fugitive President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi in Bayda Province.
The clashes erupted on Tuesday, when the pro-Hadi tribesmen attacked several bases and checkpoints of Houthi fighters. The fighting left 15 Houthi fighters and nine tribesmen dead.
In Marib, east of the capital, Sana’a, six tribesmen loyal to Hadi, including a tribal chief, were killed in clashes with Ansarullah fighters late on Monday.

From AlJazeera
Thousands march in Kabul over mob killing of woman
Marchers demand justice for Afghan woman beaten to death after being falsely accused of burning Quran.
Thousands have marched through the Afghan capital, demanding justice for a woman who was beaten to death by a mob a week ago after being falsely accused of burning a Quran.
Men and women of all ages carried banners and some painted their faces red as a symbol of the bloodied face of Farkhunda, the 27-year-old religious scholar killed last week by the mob.
Farkhunda, who went by one name like many Afghans, was beaten, run over with a car and burned before her body was thrown into the Kabul River.
Organisers of Tuesday's march - the second protest over the brutal slaying in as many days - estimated that up to 3,000 people took part............

From Reuters
Obama: U.S. to maintain troop levels   in Afghanistan through 2015
President Barack Obama on Tuesday granted Afghan requests to slow the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and said he would maintain a force of 9,800 through the end of 2015 while sticking to a 2017 exit plan.
Obama said the speed of the reduction in 2016 would be established later this year and the goal remained to consolidate U.S. forces in the country to a presence at the Kabul embassy at the end of 2016.
Under a previous plan U.S. forces were to have been cut to about half of the current level of just under 10,000 by the end of 2015. But U.S. officials said improved relations with Afghan leaders contributed to a revision of the plan.........

From NewInvestors
Obama Pentagon can't account for $500 million  in weapons left in Yemen
You know how sometimes you lose your cellphone, so you ask a family member to call it? And finally you detect the ringing under the bed where the phone fell? Happy ending.
Well, this story is not like that. It seems the Obama administration has misplaced some military equipment, a large amount of military equipment. A very large amount, actually. It doesn't know where about $500 million in weapons and equipment is, in fact.
That's $500,000,000 -- a half-a-billion dollars. Almost as much taxpayer money as it blew on that solar energy company Solyndra, owned by an Obama bundler. Except the Solyndra money went down a political rat-hole........


This is what the supposedly Christian countries of the West has wrought on Christians of the Middle East by siding with the Sunni jihadis.  Did you expect anything better from Western leaders?
 From NewYorkMag
I Was an ISIS Hostage   for 5 Months..........
....On February 28, 2013, I left Lebanon to visit my family in Syria. I had passed maybe 15 Syrian Army checkpoints, and nobody bothered me. But then I came to another one, and men wearing black clothes stopped me and took me aside with another man. I didn't know this other man, but he was from my area and, like me, was Christian. They looked at my I.D. and said, “Your name is very strange.” So I knew they realized I was Christian. They took us into a building to see a man with a long beard, a Salafi. After about ten minutes, they took us out and handcuffed us and put us in the back of a truck where we couldn’t see anything.
They drove us for about eight hours, and when we stopped, they blindfolded us and chained us to the wall. You hear about hostages, but you have no idea. That night, they talked to the man who was with me and said they were going to kill him. That was it; he was going to die. And they tortured him. They electrocuted him and beat him very badly. They saw something in his mobile phone. I don't know what it was, but they were very angry.........

From ZeroHedge
Regime Change: America's Failing Weapon Of International Deception
For years, Winston Churchill’s famous quote, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried,” has served as Americans’ last word in any political discussion which requires validation of the US government, no matter how corrupt or flawed in its behavior, as the best in the planet, comparatively or by default.  Never mind the meaning that Mr. Churchill had intended back in 1947, or how the international political panorama has changed during the past seven decades.
These remarks were made by Britain’s prime minister before the House of Commons a few months before there was a changing of the guards in the “Anglo-Saxon Empire” as the Brits gave away their colonial hegemony in favor of the super-influential economic and military power represented by the United States.  And that was symbolically marked by Britain’s relinquishing its mandate in Palestine, and the creation of Israel. .........

.........And that’s where our empire, or sphere of influence, stands these days… fighting the windmills of the world, giants that we see menacing “American interests,” and doing it under the banner of “for democracy and human rights.”  Such lofty empire aims appear to rationalize an obscene military budget almost twice as large as those of Russia, China, India and United Kingdom combined!  Americans, representing less than 5 percent of the world’s population, are footing a military bill almost twice as large as that expended by half of the world’s population.  If that isn’t imperialistic and obscene, it’s difficult to image what other societal behavior could be more detrimental to peace and harmony in this global village where we all try to co-exist...........

From Yahoo
US, Israel snub UN rights council session on Gaza war.
US and Israeli envoys refused to attend a UN Human Rights Council special session Monday on the situation in the Palestinian territories in the aftermath of the 2014 Gaza conflict.
The US decision will disappoint those who hoped the recent disagreement between the allies over Iran policy and the Middle East peace process would see Washington withhold diplomatic cover from Israel.
"As was the case last year, the United States will not engage in the debate. Neither will Israel. Instead, we will call a vote, and vote 'no' on Item 7 resolutions," said the US ambassador to the council, Keith Harper.....

From TerrorismWatch
More than 120 000 people   have fled their homes in the impoverished southern Philippines since fighting broke out between government troops and Islamic militants in late January, the UN refugee agency said on Friday.
"UNHCR is concerned about the safety of civilians as the conflict spreads into local villages," spokesperson Babar Baloch told reporters.
The Philippines military launched an offensive earlier this year against the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a rebel group fighting for an independent Muslim homeland in the south.
The offensive, including attacks with artillery and helicopter gunships, has taken place in poor farming areas on Mindanao island, where Muslim rebels have for decades fought for independence...... 

From DailyStar
Algeria temporarily evacuates   Turkish workers after IS threat: sources
Algerian authorities temporarily evacuated nearly 100 Turkish construction workers from a roadway project east of Algiers as a precaution after a threat from militants affiliated with Islamic State, security sources said on Monday.........

From Reuters
North Africa jihadi front spreads   to Arab Spring cradle Tunisia
Praised as a model of Arab Spring progress, Tunisia has finally been drawn onto the global jihadi battlefield after Islamist militants gunned down foreign tourists in a brazen assault at the heart of the capital.
The storming of the Bardo museum inside the heavily guarded parliament compound was more deadly evidence Islamist militants are turning to North Africa as a new front beyond their main battlegrounds in Iraq and Syria.
Libyan and Tunisian jihadists have streamed to the ranks of Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria and Iraq. That flow is reversing with experienced North African fighters returning to target their homelands. ............


From TomDispatch
It Didn't Work in Afghanistan,   So Let's Do It in Mexico
........The Pentagon and CIA are also involved in Mexico in significant ways. Since at least 2011, the Pentagon has deployed both piloted aircraft and drones in the Mexican war on drugs. The CIA has also sent operatives to do intelligence gathering. And without specifying which agencies are responsible for such activities, the New York Times reports that "the United States has trained nearly 4,500 new [Mexican] federal police agents and assisted in conducting wiretaps, running informants, and interrogating suspects.” Furthermore, the "Pentagon has provided sophisticated equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters.”

In 2011, the State Department recalled career diplomat Earl Anthony Wayne from Kabul.  He was then serving as deputy ambassador to Afghanistan and coordinating with the NATO-led occupation forces there. His new assignment based on his counterinsurgency experience? Ambassador to Mexico. In 2013, the U.S. Army opened a special-ops center in Colorado, according to the El Paso Times, "to teach Mexican security forces how to hunt drug cartels the same way special operations teams hunt al-Qaida." Because that worked out so well in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Drug War Comes Home (Along With Plenty of Blowback)
All in all, the U.S. drug war in Mexico has been an abject failure. In spite of high-profile arrests, including in 2014 Joaquín "El Chapo” Guzmán, who ran the Sinaloa group, and in 2015 Servando "La Tuta" Gómez, head of the Knights Templar Cartel in Michoacán, the cartels seem as strong as ever. They may occasionally split and reassemble, but they are still able to move plenty of product, and reap at least $20 billion a year in sales in the United States. In fact, this country remains the world's premier market for illegal drugs.

The cartels are responsible for the majority of the methamphetamine sold in the United States today. Since 2006, when a federal law made it much harder to buy ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in this country, the cartels have replaced small-time U.S.-based meth cookers. The meth they produce is purer than the U.S. product, apparently because it's made with purer precursor chemicals available from China. The other big product is heroin, whose quickly rising consumption seems to be replacing the demand for cocaine in the United States. On the other hand, marijuana legalization appears to be cutting into the cross-border traffic in that drug.............

From MediaLens
Love For Libya: 2011-2015
Islamic State's horrific mass beheading of 21 Coptic Christians last month forced a reluctant UK media system to return to Libya, scene of saturation news coverage in 2011.
Then, the media lens hovered obsessively over every Libyan government crime – indeed, over every alleged and even predicted crime - in an effort to justify a Nato 'intervention' that was supported by most media and 557 British MPs, with just 13 opposed......
....Today, as many as 1,700 armed gangs are fighting over a country in which at least five governments have tried and failed to restore basic order. Djiby Diop, a 20-year-old from Senegal who spent three months amidst the chaos, explains:

    'Everyone in Libya is armed now. Every guy of my age has a gun. If you don't work for them, they shoot you. If you don't give them all your money, they shoot you. Or they shoot you just for fun. Or they will throw you in prison and you have to pay 400 dinars (£200) to get released.'.........

From RT
Private army in Kiev:   Why oil stand-off in Ukraine shows oligarchs won Maidan revolution
Whatever the outcome of the stand-off between President Petro Poroshenko and his subordinate Igor Kolomoysky may be, their conflict over Ukrainian oil giant Ukrnafta reveals realities about post-Maidan Ukraine which mainstream media manages to circumvent.
 Firstly, the country is still ruled by oligarchs, not by the people, even though Igor Kolomoysky is formally governor of Dnepropetrovsk region. Kolomoysky’s private army simply took control first of Ukrtransnafta (Ukraine’s oil transportation monopoly) and later of Ukrnafta. What does this tell us about the Ukrainian state?
Secondly, Ukraine’s oligarchs are not at peace with each other; the country is bracing for a major 'war for assets' between the country’s richest men (Kolomoysky is worth $2.4 billion on the Forbes list and 'The Chocolate King' Poroshenko is worth $1.3 billion).
Thirdly, the Maidan revolution not only left the country without any meaningful legal opposition in the parliament or in the media – as Kost Bondarenko, director of the Kiev-based Foundation for Ukrainian Politics, put it in his article for the Moscow-based Nezavisimaya Gazeta – but the revolution also....



From VOANews
Cameroon Blames CAR for Fresh Attack 
Cameroon says suspected rebels from the Central African Republic have kidnapped 16 people from its territory, including influential local politicians, clergy and businessmen. Although the government says no group has claimed responsibility, it is widely speculated that supporters of rebel leader Abdoulaye Meskine are pressing for his release and that of his fighters who have been arrested and detained in Cameroon.
Governor Samuel Dieudonne Ivaha Diboua of Cameroon's eastern region that shares a boundary with the troubled Central African Republic, says the 16 people including four women were attacked by at least 30 heavily armed men in Babio on March 19. The kidnap victims were returning from the burial of a local official of Cameroon's ruling political party, the Cameroon People's Democratic movement. He says the bus transporting the clergy, politicians and businessmen was seized by the assailants at Midnight and taken to the Central African Republic..........

From JerusalemPost
UNHRC investigator: Israel likely ‘deliberately’ targeted civilian homes  in Gaza war
A report charging that Israel apparently “deliberately” targeted civilian homes will be presented Monday to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva by its special investigator Makarim Wibisono.
Is is part of a general debate the UNHRC will hold on Israeli violations of human rights during its 28th session.
The day will open with a short initial oral report from the controversial Commission of Inquiry into the Gaza war, which is made up of a two-member investigatory team, headed by former New York Supreme Court judge Mary McGowan Davis...........

From Reuters
South Syrian rebels say Assad foes are supplying more arms  
Mainstream rebels in southern Syria say foreign states have stepped up weapons supplies to them since Damascus launched an offensive early last month to regain the frontier zone near Jordan and Israel.
This suggests President Bashar al-Assad's Arab and Western enemies want to help preserve the last major foothold of what they call the moderate opposition, although the rebels say the equipment still falls short of their needs..........

Wonder how much Saakashvili has been paid by the US govt for this new role as wannabe coup leader. 
From GeorgiaStateNews
Georgian Ex-President     Saakashvili's Party Launches 'Tbilisi Maidan'
Fugitive Ex-President Threatens Georgia With Protests, 'Coup' Several hundred people have gathered in downtown Tbilisi as part of a protest organized by ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili's United National Movement party against the current government, in what is supposed to be the biggest opposition march since 2012.
At this time, a stage and a large screen have been installed on the central square of the Georgian capital, and groups of people are moving toward the square. An organized march is supposed to take place later on, and police have blocked off the center of the capital. ..........

From RT
Czech people were told not to throw tomatoes and eggs at a US military convoy rumbling through Eastern Europe, the local media said, citing the laws of the land. Those in love with egg & tomato hurling may get up to three years if convicted.
“Should anyone emerge with the intent to attack the convoy, with [items] such as tomatoes or eggs, it would qualify as disorderly conduct according to Czech legislation (up to 2 years without parole, in recidivist cases up to 3 years) or damage to property (sentences in the range of 6 months to 3 years).”

This statement was aired on Czech TV Nova and cited by the Russian Insider last week, ahead of the planned US military convoy.
Operation ‘Dragoon Ride’, a convoy of US military vehicles, mostly IAV Stryker APCs, started on Saturday. The convoy will make its way through Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, the Czech Republic, with its final destination being Germany. It will cross the Czech Republic between March 29 and April 1 on its way to a base in the German city of Vilseck. ..........
Posted by MariaS at 20:12
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)