Translate

Showing posts with label philippines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philippines. Show all posts

Saturday, May 2, 2020

On Police brutality and other forms of Nazism woken anew in the era of COVID-19

Every single day since mid March 2020,  I understand anew how deeply flawed and ugly happens to be the dregs of human nature within a large portion of my fellow human beings.  I used to wonder how those millions of  people living in Germany and the European countries the Nazis occupied, could let themselves be so stupidly docile and stand in queues to board trains taking them to the death camps or make them do the most inhumane things to other prisoners and go willingly into gas chambers or stand still against walls awaiting the Nazis' bullets.

After a few more months of this degradation that we are going through at this strange time, better known as "stay home stay safe" or "safe distance"  or "home quarantine" or whatever you want to call it, due to a virus that might kill probably a few thousand more than during the seasonal flu, many of us are going to be probably as docile as those who fell victims to the  Nazis.  You don't think so? 

Granted that this new disease is deadly ... you just have to look at the number of dead in New York State (whether those numbers are cooked or not).  We also know that by all accounts the disease is lethal to the senior population, especially those with a compromised immune system and especially to those in nursing home, but take a look at what the quarantine measures are doing to the rest of the population and to the economy of the world.  Is the lockdown and the destruction that is happening all around us justified?  IMO, definitely not.  

Below just some of the aspects of Nazism which are rising up round the world, emitting primarily from the Police Authorities and the Mayors, Governors, Premiers, doctors and other individuals holding power over common citizens.

I am firmly on the side of the anti-lockdown protests.  There are several such protests happening all over.  Thank goodness for these freedom loving people.  It's better to die free than be led willingly to a non-life because of some "models" and "tables" that the fearmongering academia "doctors" with ulterior motives have forced upon the politicians of the world.





From Al Jazeera
UN raises alarm on police brutality during lockdowns
 UN says countries flouting the rule of law in the name of fighting coronavirus risk sparking a 'human rights disaster'.

The United Nations human rights chief has warned that countries flouting the rule of law in the name of fighting the novel coronavirus pandemic risk sparking a "human rights disaster".
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on countries to refrain from violating fundamental rights "under the guise of exceptional or emergency measures".
"Emergency powers should not be a weapon governments can wield to quash dissent, control the population, and even perpetuate their time in power," she warned in a statement on Monday.
"They should be used to cope effectively with the pandemic - nothing more, nothing less."
A top official from her office said about 80 countries have declared emergencies due to the new coronavirus, including 15 where the allegations were deemed most troubling.
They were: Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Honduras, Jordan, Morocco, Cambodia, Uzbekistan, Iran and Hungary.
However, Georgette Gagnon, director of field operations, added at a virtual briefing in Geneva "there are probably several dozen more we could have highlighted"..........



From AlJazeera on Kenya
Fury in Kenya at police brutality

...........The officers fired tear gas, shot guns in the air and beat people with canes and rubber hoses, residents said. Nyambura was hit while trying to flee the scene, breaking in the process one of her flasks that she uses to sell coffee.
"There was no warning, they just started to beat people," Nyambura said on the phone. "Everyone on the road - it didn't matter your age, even grandparents - all were being beaten."
According to Nyambura, many people in the area had no idea the 7pm-to-5am curfew was actually in place. "It was a surprise because most slum people don't have a TV; they get information from one another and don't always get the right information."......






From iol.co.za In South Africa
  Police brutality on the rise during lockdown
As South Africans acclimatise to life under lockdown, the security forces’ heavy-handedness has come under the spotlight, with many communities decrying how they carry themselves.
A week into the lockdown and already eight men have died allegedly the hands of the police.
The public outcry followed the killing of a Vosloorus man by a member of the Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department and a private security guard.
Sibusiso Amos, who had recently been released from prison after serving a 15-year sentence, was gunned down last week Sunday in front of his two nieces after he was allegedly contravening the lockdown regulations by “drinking alcohol and being at a tavern”. Locals, however, denied the notion....




 From rfi on Mauritius
Mauritius Police brutality during lockdown
The Prime minister of Mauritius has announced an investigation into alleged cases of police brutality while the island remains under total lockdown to contain the rapid spread of Covid-19. This comes after two men, apprehended by the police, were subsequently hospitalised.  ....



from AllAfrica
Police shot and killed
Police shot and killed two people for defying lockdown orders imposed by the government to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, according to Bloomberg.
Rwanda National Police spokesperson John Bosco Kabera said the two young men "attempted to tussle" with officers.....



From CTV on India, Kenya, the Philippines
  Concerns raised about extreme measures and power abuse during lockdowns

....In India, a video showing men in protective suits spraying “disinfecting sanitizer” on a group of people at a bus station in the city of Bareilly has sparked nationwide outrage.
Local administrator Nitish Kumar said the men were sanitizing storefronts on Tuesday, when police ordered them to spray the crowd of people. Kumar said no one was injured, but The Indian Express reported that the spray was a bleaching agent, and several people suffered injuries......

...... a 13-year-old boy in Kenya was shot by police who were enforcing a curfew. The Associated Press also reported that Kenyan police have fired tear gas at a crowd of commuters in Mombasa before the first night of the country’s curfew started.
In the Philippines, an official is facing charges after five people, including two minors, were put in dog cages for allegedly breaking curfew. Municipal police told local media that the official allegedly threatened to shoot the victims if they did not stay in the cage for 30 minutes.......

 

g

 From the BBC on Nigeria
  Nigeria's police kill more people than the virus during lockdown

 Security forces enforcing the lockdown in parts of Nigeria have killed more people than coronavirus itself, a local rights group says.
Evidence of the killings comes from members of the public who rang their hotline or sent in videos, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) adds.
It says law enforcers have killed 18 people in Nigeria since lockdowns began on 30 March.
Coronavirus has killed 12 people, according to health ministry data.





From nzherald, New Zealand
New lockdown law bans swimming, fishing, hunting, surfing

There is now no doubt - fishing, swimming, surfing, hunting and tramping are banned under new lockdown laws.
Kiwis had previously been advised not to take part in these activities during the Covid-19 lockdown but the ban was made official in fresh laws released on the Government's Covid-19 website today.
People cannot leave home to hunt, tramp, swim, take part in other water-based activities, such as surfing and boating, or do anything that may put them in danger or require help from rescue services.....




From CrestAdvisory, UK
Lockdown and what the public thinks
Two weeks into the UK’s coronavirus lockdown the debate continues on how the public should interpret government guidance and how the police should enforce new laws designed to respond to the public health emergency.

This follows considerable criticism of some police tactics including the use of a drone to film ramblers in the Peak District and the arrest and £660 fine of a woman at Newcastle railway station. Former Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption said that excessive measures were in danger of turning Britain into a “police state” and numerous legal figures have argued police officers have acted beyond their powers. Transport Secretary Grant Schapps has agreegd that there had been ‘teething problems’ and that some forces had been over zealous in enforcing the rules. In response, Martin Hewitt, Chair of the National Police Chiefs Council, has set out a clear strategy for officers to “engage, explain, encourage” and move only to “enforce” as a last resort and new guidance has been issued to officers stressing the need for a “consistent” level of service and a “inquisitive, questioning mindset” when dealing with the public outside their homes.......

   


 
Posted by MariaS at 22:39 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

How Jihad spread from Afghanistan to other parts of our world

And, this is only part of the story where the USA looms over everything rotten.

Andre Vltchek at DissidentVoice
U.S. “Jihadi Express”: Indonesia, Afghanistan, Syria, Philippines

It was late at night but the new Terminal 3 at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport outside Jakarta was still bustling with families and friends waiting for their loved ones returning from abroad.

My friend Noor Huda Ismail was just arriving from Singapore, and I decided to pick him up and discuss ‘certain issues’ with him in the car, on the way to the capital. Lately he and I were busy, awfully busy, and a one-hour journey seemed to be the most appropriate setting for the exchange of at least some essential ideas and information.

Huda could easily pass for the most knowledgeable Indonesian “expert on terrorism”; a Muslim man who grew up and was educated in the madrasahs that have produced some of the most notorious jihadi cadres in the country. Later he became the man who managed to ‘get away’ from the extremism, to study, and to finally become a respected filmmaker and a thinker.

For years, both of us have been studying a complex web produced by Western imperialism – a web, which has literally destroyed entire countries, while locking other ones ‘behind bars’, in virtual neo-colonialist slavery. All this done in the name of ‘freedom’ and democracy, naturally, and often using various religions as tools, even as weapons.......

........ Huda could easily pass for the most knowledgeable Indonesian “expert on terrorism”; a Muslim man who grew up and was educated in the madrasahs that have produced some of the most notorious jihadi cadres in the country. Later he became the man who managed to ‘get away’ from the extremism, to study, and to finally become a respected filmmaker and a thinker.

For years, both of us have been studying a complex web produced by Western imperialism – a web, which has literally destroyed entire countries, while locking other ones ‘behind bars’, in virtual neo-colonialist slavery. All this done in the name of ‘freedom’ and democracy, naturally, and often using various religions as tools, even as weapons.

Inside the car we managed to quickly ‘compare notes’. Huda filled me in on his groundbreaking film Jihad Selfie, while I informed him about my political revolutionary novel Aurora, and my big work in progress, a book about Afghanistan. I also mentioned my future ‘Afghan’ film, a dark love story, a drama about betrayal, collaboration and the virtual collapse of one family; a film which I’m preparing to produce and direct sometime during the next year.

“Afghanistan,” he says, “that’s where the roots of so many things lie… You recall that in the 80’s, the U.S. was using some local, Indonesian, jihadi cadres, sending them to Afghanistan…”

I knew about it; I knew something, but not everything. The fact that both Indonesian and Malaysian citizens went to fight against the Soviet Union, Karmal, and then Mohammad Najibullah’s government in Afghanistan, was something that I have never yet addressed in my books or films. Now I suddenly felt that it was important, extremely important, to address this fact.

“Huda,” I asked, as we were slowly progressing through perpetual traffic jam of Jakarta, “how many Indonesian men went to fight in Afghanistan, after the 1979 Soviet intervention?”.........
Posted by MariaS at 17:40 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Situation in the Muslim autonomous region of the Philippines


Latest update from the army:



Earlier news:


Posted by MariaS at 22:27 0 comments
Labels: , ,

Sunday, January 1, 2017

News, views and opinions from the Alternative Media ... week ending Sunday, Jan 1


Jason Ditz at Antiwar
Putin Won’t Expel US Diplomats,
Invites Them to a Big Party Instead
Thursday’s announcement that the US is expelling 35 Russian diplomats and also ordering them out of a pair of long-owned diplomatic compounds fueled calls from top Russian MPs for retaliation, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reportedly proposed that they expel an identical number of US diplomats. Russian President Vladimir Putin said no.
Putin later released a statement saying Russia is not expelling anyone, and “would not descend to the level of irresponsible diplomacy” of the Obama Administration. He added that he was going to wait for steps to improve Russian-American relations with President-elect Donald Trump.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the Obama Administration ‘a group of embittered and dim-witted foreign policy losers,” presenting the expulsion from the diplomatic compounds, popular vacation sites for diplomats’ families, as an “anti-family” move.

Putin followed up his announcement that the US diplomats aren’t being expelled by announcing that he is inviting all the US diplomats, and their families, to the Kremlin for a big New Years party, and inviting diplomats’ children to a Christmas party (Russian Orthodox Christmas is on January 7).....

Andre Vitchek at Off-Guardian
President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ascended to power in 1999, almost no one in the West, in Asia and even in most of the Latin American countries knew much about his new militant revolutionary anti-imperialism. From the mass media outlets like CNN and the BBC, to local televisions and newspapers (influenced or directly sponsored by Western sources), the ‘information’ that was flowing was clearly biased, extremely critical, and even derogatory....
....Now President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines is demonized and ‘mistrusted’, ridiculed and dismissed as a demagogue, condemned as a rough element, mocked as a buffoon.

In his own country he is enjoying the highest popularity rating of any president in its history: at least well over 70 percent, but often even over 80 percent.

“Show me one woman or man who hates Duterte in this city”, smiles a city hall employee of Davao (located on the restive Mindanao Island) where Duterte served as a Mayor for 22 years. “I will buy that person an exquisite dinner, from my own pocket … that is how confident I am”.

“People of the Philippines are totally free now to express their opinions, to criticize the government”, explains Eduardo Tadem, a leading academic, Professorial Lecturer of Asian Studies (UP). “He says: ‘they want to protest? Good!’ People can rally or riot without any permit from the authorities.”

Like in the days of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, in the Philippines, the press, which is mainly owned by right-wing business interests and by pro-Western collaborators, is now reaching a crescendo, barking and insulting the President, inventing stories and spreading unconfirmed rumors, something unimaginable even in a place like the U.K. with its draconian ‘defamation’ laws.....

Rick Sterling at ConsortiumNews
The War Against Alternative Information

The U.S. government is creating a new $160 million bureaucracy to shut down information that doesn’t conform to U.S. propaganda narratives, building on the strategy that sold the bloody Syrian “regime change” war, writes Rick Sterling.
The U.S. establishment is not content simply to have domination over the media narratives on critical foreign policy issues, such as Syria, Ukraine and Russia. It wants total domination. Thus we now have the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” that President Obama signed into law on Dec. 23 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017, setting aside $160 million to combat any “propaganda” that challenges Official Washington’s version of reality.

The new law mandates the U.S. Secretary of State to collaborate with the Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence and other federal agencies to create a Global Engagement Center “to lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” The law directs the Center to be formed in 180 days and to share expertise among agencies and to “coordinate with allied nations.”

The legislation was initiated in March 2016, as the demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia was already underway and was enacted amid the allegations of “Russian hacking” around the U.S. presidential election and the mainstream media’s furor over supposedly “fake news.” Defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton voiced strong support for the bill: “It’s imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public sector step up to protect our democracy, and innocent lives.”......

Darius Shahtahmasebi at AntiMedia
Has Obama Abandoned Israel? What You’re Not Being Told

In 2011, linguist and foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky was asked whether he thought Obama was as bad as George W. Bush, to which Chomsky responded: “he’s worse.” Asked why, Chomsky cited Obama’s use of the U.N. veto at the Security Council level, which killed a resolution condemning settlement expansions that Israel was building in 2011.

After that, Obama was famously known for placing very few limits on Israel (with the exception of blocking an arms transfer during Operation Protective Edge, for example). There was also the supposed fallout between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Obama over the Iranian nuclear agreement last year, but that agreement had nothing to do with curbing Israel’s power in the region. Anyone paying attention to the Iranian nuclear issue knows the agreement was largely symbolic and meaningless as sanctions targeting Iran have continued quite dramatically.

Just recently, the Obama administration approved the largest military package to Israel to date. Per this agreement, the U.S. will provide Israel with $38 billion worth of military aid if Israel, in turn, promises to use that money to purchase equipment from American suppliers. If there was ever any need to prove that Washington is in bed with the military-industrial machine, this deal alone kills any debate on the issue.

Israel is the largest recipient of foreign aid in the world, with the exception of Afghanistan and Iraq, which receive military funding due to the U.S. military’s long history in the countries. This aid increased under Obama. According to Colin Powell’s leaked emails, Israel also has a stockpile of at least 200 nuclear weapons, and the U.S. is well aware of this fact.

Further, since Obama took office, the population in Israel’s settlements rose dramatically from 100,000 to 600,000......

From ZeroHedge
'Policing For Profit' Goes To The Next Level

It’s bad enough getting arrested – especially when you didn’t do anything to warrant it. This happens all the time, because the the threshold for arresting someone is very low. It can be done by any cop, pretty much anytime – without much in the way of legal justification. He has the gun – and the handcuffs, after all. If he wants to arrest you, he will arrest you. Maybe the courts will sort it out later; eventually you are released, your record “cleared.”

This isn’t new – or news.

What is new – and ought to be news – is that several states have begun charging people “processing” and “incarceration” fees for their bogus arrest and subsequent just-as-bogus caging.

Minnesota and Kentucky are among the states that levy fees on people who are merely arrested and taken to the clink… even if they are never convicted of anything. In some cases, the people being charged for “services” rendered are never formally charged with any crime (which is something a prosecutor must do; a cop hasn’t got the power to do more than arrest you on suspicion of violating a statute).
t’s policing for profit taken to the next (entirely predictable) level.

Why not, after all?

Most states already have “just take it” laws on the books that empower cops to simply seize cash and other property prior to any judicial proceeding  – and to keep it, even if there never is a judicial proceeding.

The mere fact that you have “excessive” cash on your person is sufficient legal justification in many states to result in its forfeiture – until you prove to their satisfaction it wasn’t “drug” money....





Eric Draitser
It’s rather easy, and undoubtedly necessary,
 to lambast President-elect Donald Trump and his team of corporate parasites who will soon head nearly every key agency in the U.S. government.

Of note are the pro-fracking, anti-environmental protections positions of everyone from the nominee for secretary of state, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, to the incoming head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt. Such appointments signal a reckless abandonment of even the pretense of safeguarding vital resources such as air, water, and soil, among many others, at a time when many in the scientific community are ringing the alarm about our quickly unraveling biosphere.

However, while we rightly protest against this direct threat to our existence as a species, many have chosen to employ the age-old tactic of every ideologue from time immemorial: selective memory.

Indeed, it wasn’t Trump, but President Barack Obama, who held the reins of the federal government and did nothing while drinking water contamination poisoned the people of Flint, Michigan. It was Obama who expanded offshore oil drilling while paying lip service to environmental responsibility in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill — a 2010 disaster which continues to wreak havoc on the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem. It was Obama who signed off on new oil pipelines, approving the construction of the equivalent of 10 Keystone pipelines between 2010 and 2015 alone. Oil and gas shipments by rail continued under his watch.

These are just some examples of the countless other irresponsible policies. Forgive me if I don’t offer the liberals a post-consumer recycled handkerchief for their eco-friendly crocodile tears.
Obama: Owner of the water crises

Although issues such as climate change are simply too all-encompassing, too staggering in their scope and scale, to simply be chalked up to bad policy and bad leadership, specific public health crises are not. And President Obama has indeed stood idle while communities, and in some cases even entire cities, fall victim to water contamination.

The most well-documented example of this sort of gross negligence is the ongoing health emergency in Flint, Michigan. Once a thriving working-class industrial city, Flint has seen poverty rates soar while its city infrastructure deteriorates thanks in no small part to racism and endemic corruption by city and state officials. And it is, of course, the children of the poor who are most directly impacted by the lead contamination. In late 2015, researchers found that the levels of lead in the blood of Flint’s children were so high that a state of emergency was declared....

Mike Shedlock at Mishtalk
Like Iraq WMD Fiasco,
Russia Story Doesn’t Add Up
Yesterday, President Obama expelled 35 Russian “Operatives” from the Russian Embassy.

Is there any evidence those expelled are “intelligence operatives”? Any hard evidence Russia was behind the Hillary hacks? Any credible evidence that Putin himself is to blame?

The answers are No, No, and No. Yet, once again the American press is again asked to co-sign a dubious intelligence assessment....

....John McAfee, founder of the security firm McAfee Associates, says ‘I Can Guarantee You, It Was Not the Russians’.....

From GlobalResearch
Huge stockpiles of weaponry and ammunition,
many with NATO markings, were discovered in East Aleppo when the Al-Nusra militants, a local branch of Al Qaida, were pushed out of the city by Syrian forces.

The previous reports that NATO personnel were captured are now retracted, as they were allowed to leave with the militants on the buses provided according to the agreement, to spare NATO the embarrassment. FWM interviews the Syrian MP Fares Shehabi, an Aleppo resident himself. He calls the discoveries “SyriaGate”.

Mr. Shehabi, European mainstream media and leading politicians are upset about the liberation of Aleppo by the Syrian Arab Army. They write reports about massacres committed by the army and horrified civilians in Aleppo…

It is the total opposite. The news in Europe is a real problem because they report exactly the opposite of the real facts in Syria. We were able to liberate around 100.000 civilians who were held hostage by terrorists in Aleppo. A lot of them were taken hostage for more than four years. These liberated civilians are happy now. The 1.5 million civilians who left Aleppo since 2012 are now able to come home again. This is a very positive and happy moment for Aleppo and Syria in general. We were able to celebrate Christmas in Aleppo for the first time since 4.5 years – we celebrate Christmas every day now in our city!

So the terrorists left the city completely?

 – Yes, but before they left they executed more than hundred Syrian soldiers and hundreds of civilians. We found their bodies. This is all documented. Any international independent investigation can see and check the evidence of these terrorist crimes. But we are happy that our city is now liberated. Some rural areas around Aleppo are still under terrorist occupation. The next step will be to liberate the countryside so the city is well maintained and well protected.....



Derrick Broze at AntiMedia
Unhappy Holidays: Houston Police Force Homeless People to Throw Away Food

On Thursday, the Houston Police Department targeted a group of homeless advocates who were attempting to hand out hot food and gifts to the homeless.

(ANTIMEDIA) Houston, TX — Local activists attempting to hand out food and gifts were shocked on Thursday afternoon when Houston police forced the homeless to throw away the donations.  Around 1 pm on Thursday,  several individuals met in downtown Houston to distribute plates of hot food, blankets, and other supplies to the city’s growing homeless population. Soon after, Houston police arrived on the scene of two different intersections where the homeless advocates were giving out gifts and food.

According to witness testimony posted on Facebook, the police instructed the homeless to throw away everything they had been given. “Not only were the police called, but they brought a large waste management truck and are forcing the homeless to throw away their food, pillows and other items,” reads one post....

From RT
Chronicle of violence:
Turkey’s year of devastating terrorist attacks (VIDEOS)
The New Year’s shooting spree that left at least 39 people dead at a crowded Istanbul night club is just the latest in a wave of sporadic terrorist attacks, particularly suicide blasts, which have rocked Turkey throughout the past 12 months.
As many as 39 people, including 15 or 16 foreigners, were killed and dozens of others were injured when at least one gunman opened fire in one of Istanbul’s most popular night clubs, Reina, just one hour into the new year. “A terrorist with a long-range weapon... brutally and savagely carried out this incident by firing bullets at innocent people who were there solely to celebrate the New Year and have fun,” Istanbul’s governor, Vasip Şahin, told the media at the scene of the attack....
Posted by MariaS at 22:57 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, November 6, 2016

News, views and opinions from the Alternative Media ... week ending November 6


Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews
NYT Admits Key Al Qaeda Role in Aleppo

As much as The New York Times and the mainstream U.S. media have become propaganda outlets on most foreign policy issues, like the one-sided coverage of the bloody Syrian war, sometimes the truth seeps through in on-the-ground reporting by correspondents, even ones who usually are pushing the “propo.”

Such was the case with Anne Barnard’s new reporting from inside west Aleppo, the major portion of the city which is in government hands and copes with regular terror rocket and mortar attacks from rebel-held east Aleppo where Al Qaeda militants and U.S.-armed-and-funded “moderate” rebels fight side-by-side.

Almost in passing, Barnard’s article on Sunday acknowledged the rarely admitted reality of the Al Qaeda/”moderate” rebel collaboration, which puts the United States into a de facto alliance with Al Qaeda terrorists and their jihadist allies, fighting under banners such as Nusra Front (recently renamed Syria Conquest Front) and Ahrar al-Sham.

Barnard also finally puts the blame for preventing civilians in east Aleppo from escaping the fighting on a rebel policy of keeping them in harm’s way rather than letting them transit through “humanitarian corridors” to safety. Some of her earlier pro-rebel accounts suggested that it wasn’t clear who was stopping movement of civilians through those corridors....

David Coldewey at TechCrunch
Turkey blocks social media sites again 
to stall protests — here’s how to access them
Turkey has once again blocked access to social media in an apparent effort to keep a lid on protests; many in the capital and elsewhere are demonstrating following the arrest of a number of opposition leaders.
Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube are reportedly blocked or at least being throttled to the point of inaccessibility, reported Turkey Blocks. The outage started late last night and seems to be ongoing. The government also blocked internet access entirely for several days in some locations earlier this week.....

From EuroNews
Turkey rocked by protests after high profile arrests

Police have fired tear gas to disperse crowds of demonstrators in Istanbul.

Many are angry about the arrests overnight of several pro-Kurdish politicians.

Fighting broke out between police and protesters in a number of cities.

Officials say 10 protesters were detained in Ankara, five in Antalya and seven in Istanbul.



Steven Sahiounie at GlobalResearch
Erdogan's al-Qaeda mercenary army of uyyghur Chinese jihadist..

...Pres. Erdogan’s mercenary Army are all Chinese citizens of the far Western region in China, and home of the Uygur people, and are Sunni Muslims.  The Uygur people are an ethnic group of Muslims living near the far west frontier of China and they speak the ancient Turkic language, which is the root of the modern Turkish language now spoken in Turkey.  Their province is Xinjiang, and their capital city is Urumqi.
For many years, Pres. Erdogan has supported the Uygur’s claims of oppression by the Chinese government.  Pres. Erdogan has made speeches in which he compared the Uygur people to the ancestors of the people of Turkey.  Pres. Erdogan feels there is a close historical and ethnical tie between modern Turkey and the Uygur people.  In a speech, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that “Eastern Turkestan is not only the home of the Turkic peoples, but it is also the cradle of Turkic history, civilization, and culture. The martyrs of Eastern Turkestan are our own martyrs.”  His designation of Eastern Turkestan is actually the Chinese province of Xinjiang, the home of the Uygur people.

Pres. Erdogan used his own mercenary Army of Chinese citizens: the Uygurs.   He had allowed them Turkish passports, which they used to pass legally through Central Asia to arrive in Turkey.  The immigration officials at the airport in Turkey recognized these special passports, and would confiscate them, but allow the Chinese to pass through legally and enter Turkey.  Pres. Erdogan had arranged for them to be transported from the airport in Turkey into Syria through the large and porous border area North of Idlib, which was once a mid-size town in North West Syria.....


Joseph Thomas at NewAtlas
What the Philippines Says Vs. What it Does 

....President Duterte's rhetoric is meant to stir up public support more than actually signal his nation's real intentions. Other nations throughout Asia are also pursuing a "pivot" away from the United States and its attempts to reassert itself in Asia Pacific. However, they are doing it quietly, incrementally and are attempting to make whatever concessions they must with Washington to stave off large-scale, concerted attempts to destabilise or even overturn political order in each respective nation.

The Philippines has a long journey ahead of itself in establishing a more independent and self-sustaining nation state. It faces not only countervailing forces it must navigate amid Beijing and Washington's ongoing jockeying for regional power and influence, but also internal challenges to overcome.....

 
What you're not being told


Gary Younge at InformationClearingHouse
Note to America: Don’t Be So Sure You’ve Put Trump Behind You

I’ve been living in Britain for the last year and have returned to the United States to cover the election from a small town in Indiana—with the experience of Brexit on my mind.

On June 24, a significant proportion of the British electorate woke up and thought they were living in a different country. Britain narrowly voted to leave the European Union. It felt like the politics of fear, isolation, and xenophobia had delivered an utterly devastating and enduring blow to the body politic. There are many lessons from that night, and indeed we in Britain are only just beginning to learn them. But as it relates to the American elections, I want to dwell on just three.

The fact that the messenger is deranged doesn’t mean the message itself contains no significant truths.

First, don’t let the polls guide your strategic decisions about voting. If you want Hillary Clinton to win, vote for her. If you favor Jill Stein, vote for her. Don’t cast your vote thinking you’re compensating for a result that has not been declared but that you think you’ve factored in. You don’t know....

From Telsur
John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman,

is a little known figure outside Washington but an immensely influential person.

In the latest episode of The Empire Files, journalist Abby Martin examines the leaked emails from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta and the man himself, whom Martin calls “one of the most powerful people in Washington.”

“Understanding who John Podesta is, and his political rise, sheds light on who really pulls the levers in our society,” says Martin.



Together with his brother Tony, Martin calls John Podesta one of the “most influential corporate lobbyists in the world.”

Podesta is a little known figure, despite his connections to the White House, which includes work for both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. It is likely your average person in the U.S. only heard of Podesta as a result of the release of his email by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.....

Jason Ditz at Antiwar
UN Slams Aleppo Rebels Amid Accused Poison Gas Attacks

Rebels Continue Offensive Against Western Aleppo
A coalition of rebels including al-Qaeda’s-Nusra Front and the Free Syrian Army are continuing their offensive against the government-held western half of Aleppo. The UN harshly criticized them for their use of “indiscriminate” weapons, warning it could amount to war crimes.
Perhaps the biggest issue, though as-yet-unproven, is reports that the rebels have begun to use chlorine-filled shells in their attacks. Syrian media reported 35 civilians were suffering from effects of the toxic gas, though the rebels denied using them....


The Saker at his blog
The Russian media just loves the campaign to demonize Putin

Last May I wrote an article entitled Counter-propaganda, Russian style in which I explained that far from banning or censoring the western anti-Putin/anti-Russia campaign, the Russia media reported about it in meticulous detail.  Half a year later, not only is this still true, but the level of coverage has now sharply increased.  Check out this screenshot from the latest (and most watched) weekly news show:

Remember that roughly 80% plus of the audience watching this are strong supporters of President Putin.  You can imagine what they think when they see these reports. The fully understand that the West hates Putin so much precisely because Putin is one of them, a real Russian who cares for the interests of the Russian people.  So when the West demonizes Putin, it is really all the Russian people who are demonized and their conclusion is simple: the West does not hate Putin, the West hates *us*.  As for “Blame it on Putin” – it has now become a real joke.

One of the main effects of this kind of demonization is that the Russian public fully understands that there is no way back.  In practical terms, most Russians believe that even if Russia pulled out of Syria, stopped supporting the Donbass or even decided to hand Crimea to the Ukies, the West would still continue to demonize Russia and try to subdue her.  Furthermore, the Russians remember that the only time....

Patrick Cockburn at UNZ
This Is What Will Happen to Mosul After Isis Is Pushed Out

I visited Mosul on the day it fell to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and a small detachment of US Special Forces on 11 April 2003. As we drove into the city, we passed lines of pick-up trucks piled high with loot returning to the Kurdish-controlled enclave in northern Iraq. US soldiers at a checkpoint, over which waved the Stars and Stripes, were shooting at a man in the distance who kept bobbing up from behind a wall and waving the Iraqi flag.

If there had ever been any sympathy between liberators and liberated in Mosul, it was disappearing fast. Inside the city, every government building, including the university, was being systematically looted by Kurds and Arabs alike. I saw one man who had stolen an enormous and very ugly red and gold sofa from the governor’s office dragging it slowly down the street. He would push one end of the sofa a few feet forward and then go to the other end and repeat the same process. The mosques were soon calling on the Sunni Arab majority to build barricades to defend their neighbourhoods from marauders.

We parked our vehicle near a medieval quarter of ancient stone buildings while we went to see a Christian ecclesiastic. When we got back, we found that our driver was very frightened and wanted to get out of Mosul as fast as possible. He explained that soon after we left a crowd had gathered, recognised our number plates as Kurdish and debated lynching him and setting fire to his car before being restrained by a local religious leader moments before they took action.

The oil city of Kirkuk was captured at about the same time by the Peshmerga, despite having promised the Americans and Turks that they would do no such thing. Again, .....




Vijay Prashad at Alternet
Why the U.S. and Western Countries Could Be Bluffing 
About Military Intervention in Syria
Five years ago, a high-octane media campaign pushed for war on Libya. Voices in the Gulf Arab press, in particular, cried out for blood. Al-Arabiya, the media conglomerate owned by the Saudi kingdom, led the way. It suggested that genocide was on the horizon in Libya’s eastern cities. The forces of Muammar Qaddafi, it said, had moved swiftly against the rebellion. Qaddafi’s legions would not only crush the rebellion, it suggested, but it would kill a great number of civilians.

The Western press echoed al-Arabiya, with far less understanding of the dynamics that involved Qaddafi and the Gulf Arab sheikhs. After all, in 2009, at the Arab League summit in Doha (Qatar), Qaddafi looked directly at the King of Saudi Arabia and said, “You are propelled by fibs towards the grave. You were made by the British and protected by the United States.” King Abdullah, furious, said to Qaddafi, “the grave is before you.” Personal animosity from the Gulf Arab emirs should not be underestimated. Only someone with little understanding of the Arabic media would have given al-Arabiya any credibility.

It was shocking then to have the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon say that he was getting his information on Libya through “press reports.” What press was the UN secretariat reading? Was it the Arabic language press, with al-Arabiya in the lead, or was it reading the Western press, which was largely mimicking the coverage in the Gulf Arab media?...



From Telsur
The Venezuela Recall Referendum story

The Venezuelan opposition has effectively called for a coup after President Nicolas Maduro announced the recall referendum would be put on hold until allegations of fraud could be investigated.

The mainstream media have jumped on the news, declaring Maduro's decision to delay the referendum "evidence" that he is a "dictator." But what is really happening in Venezuela? What does the recall referendum mean and how will it affect the people?



From ZeroHedge
Wikileaks Exposes Collusion Between Clinton Campaign, State Department, And
New York Times
And the hits just keep on coming.

At the same time as the latest Wikileaks email dump revealed an email sent from the gmail account of DOJ assistant attorney general, Peter Kadzik, to the gmail account of John Podesta, warning him of a FOIA case that would make it "a while before the State Department posts the [Hillary] emails", an off-the-record communication which the DOJ apparently had no complaints about, we learned of another coordinated, collusive event, this time involving not the Department of Justice, but the Secretary of State, the New York Times, and the Clinton campaign.

In an email dated March 1, 2015, just one day before the NYT's story revealing that Hillary Clinton had a personal email server, a State Department official, Lauren Hickey, coordinated with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign staffers Heather Samuelson as well as Philippe Reines and Nick Merrill, on a statement given to The New York Times regarding how to frame its landmark story.

In the email also sent from the gmail account of State Department press aide Lauren Hickey (laurenashleyhickey@gmail.com), the government employee told Clinton aides that then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki had “just cleared” a statement to a New York Times reporter. Hickey attached the statement, which appeared to include a change made at the behest of the Clinton aides.

“Yes on your point re records - done below,” she wrote although it is unclear what change the Clinton campaign had requested.

    Hi guys - Jen just cleared. She made the highlighted change -- just rephrased a line about NARA updates state is undertaking. Yes on your point re records - done below. And yes will let you know -- should be in the new few minutes.

The statement describes the State Department’s efforts to respond to document requests from the House Benghazi Committee, which uncovered the existence of Clinton's server.

     “From the moment that the Select Committee was created, the State Department has been proactively and consistently engaged in responding to the Committee’s many requests in a timely manner, providing more than 40,000 pages of documents, scheduling more than 20 transcribed interviews and participating in several briefings and each of the Committee’s hearings.

One day after the exchange, the New York Times published its "groundbreaking", if preapproved report revealing Clinton's server to the public. A short time later, Hillary Clinton would announce her candidacy for president.

In a briefing Wednesday afternoon, ......

On the killing of a fish-seller in Morocco


Stephen Lendman at GlobalResearch
ICC to Investigate US War Crimes in Afghanistan? Hold the Cheers

.....On October 7, 2001, US-led NATO forces attacked Afghanistan without just cause – less than four weeks post-9/11, naked aggression planned months before that fateful day.

Appalling war crimes followed, continuing daily. All post-WW II US wars were and continue being waged illegally against nonbelligerent countries reflecting over 70 years of unaccountability.

No US government or military official ever faced charges for Nuremberg-level high crimes. It’s irrelevant what Bensouda does or doesn’t do.

The 2002 American Service Members’ Protection Act (ASPA, aka The Hague Invasion Act) “protect(s) United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States government against criminal prosecution by an international court to which the United States is not party.”

It authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”

It prohibits the extradition of anyone from America to the ICC. In a November 2000 open letter, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Zbigniew Brzezinki, former CIA director Richard Helms and other US signatories said Washington must put “our nation’s military personnel safely beyond the reach of an unaccountable international prosecutor operating under procedures inconsistent with our Constitution.”

Kissinger’s high crimes are well-documented.Brzezinski got Jimmy Carter to sign a secret directive, authorizing aid for Mujahadeen fighters combating the pro-Soviet Russia government in Kabul, aiming to induce Moscow’s military intervention which followed, what Brzezinski called “the Afghan trap.”.....
 



Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews
Phony ‘Corruption’ Excuse for Ukraine Coup

If Ukraine becomes a flashpoint for World War III with Russia, the American people might rue the day that their government pressed for the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s allegedly corrupt (though elected) president in favor of a coup regime led by Ukrainian lawmakers who now report amassing, on average, more than $1 million each, much of it as cash.

The New York Times, which served as virtually a press agent for the coup in February 2014, took note of this apparent corruption among the U.S.-favored post-coup officials, albeit deep inside a story that itself was deep inside the newspaper (page A8). The lead angle was a bemused observation that Ukraine’s officialdom lacked faith in the country’s own banks (thus explaining why so much cash).

Yet, Ukraine is a country beset by widespread poverty, made worse by the post-coup neoliberal “reforms” slashing pensions, making old people work longer and reducing heating subsidies for common citizens. The average Ukrainian salary is only $214 a month.

So, an inquiring mind might wonder how – in the face of all that hardship – the post-coup officials did so well for themselves, but Times’ correspondent Andrew E. Kramer treads lightly on the possibility that these officials were at least as corrupt, if not more so, than the elected government that the U.S. helped overthrow. Elected President Viktor Yanukovych had been excoriated for a lavish lifestyle because he had a sauna in his residence....
Posted by MariaS at 22:43 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)