London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), is the world's leading think tank for military affairs. It represents the top echelon of defence experts, retired officers and senior military men, spanning the globe from the United States and Britain to China, Russia and India.
I've been an IISS member for over 20 years. IISS's reports are always authoritative but usually cautious and diplomatic, sometimes dull. However, two weeks ago the IISS issued an explosive report on Afghanistan that is shaking Washington and its Nato allies.
The report, presided over by the former deputy director of Britain's foreign intelligence agency, MI-6, says the threat from al-Qaeda and Taliban has been "exaggerated" by the western powers. The US-led mission in Afghanistan has "ballooned" out of all proportion from its original aim of disrupting and defeating al-Qaeda. The US-led war in Afghanistan, says IISS, using uncharacteristically blunt language, is "a long-drawn-out disaster".
Just recently, CIA chief Leon Panetta admitted there were no more than 50 members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Yet US President Barack Obama has tripled the number of US soldiers there to 120,000 to fight Al Qaeda.
Puppet Masters
© Chuck Olsen/Flickr
There's a difference between being paranoid and being suspicious. Paranoia is mental disturbance; suspicion is a rational deduction.
For example, if you suspect that America's economy, politics, government, media, judiciary and practically every other system has been wired to favor corporate interests over every other interest in our country, you're deducing, not hallucinating. From the infamous Wall Street bailout to the Supreme Court's shameful decree that corporations have more political rights than humans, we see again and again that corporate might overwhelms what's right.
This is not by accident, but by the deliberate, relentless efforts of corporatists to bend our nation's institutions to their will. Take one huge corporation you've probably never heard of, even though your consumer dollars are financing its right-wing agenda.
© Nabil Mounzer/EPA
Sa'ad al-Hariri, Lebanon's prime minister, has been in talks with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad
Sa'ad al-Hariri, Lebanon's prime minister, has been in talks with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad
Lebanon's prime minister, Sa'ad al-Hariri, has said it was a "mistake" to accuse Syria of the assassination of his father, Rafiq al-Hariri.
Hariri's comments mark part of the ongoing reconciliation between the two countries following Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon after the "Cedar Revolution" protests that were triggered by the 2005 killing.
"At a certain point we made a mistake in accusing Syria of assassinating the martyred prime minster," Hariri told al-Sharq al-Awsat, the London-based Saudi daily. "That was a political accusation and that political accusation has now come to an end." The UN tribunal investigating the affair would look "only at the evidence", he added.
© Unknown
In explaining why, I'll begin by defining some terms, because, when discussing the covert op called "the politics of terror," words and their management are all important.
How are politics and terror actually defined: how are these meanings manipulated; for what purposes, and by whom?
Terrorism is defined as "violence against civilians intended to obtain a political purpose."
This is an ambiguous phrase, which begs the questions: what are politics and violence?
© Unknown
He made the remark in a BBC interview marking the publication of his memoirs.
Blair said radical Islamists believed that whatever was done in the name of their cause was justified, including the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
I can't make up my mind whether Blair's remark is amusing or tragic, for not a single Islamic leader has ever used "chemical, biological or nuclear weapons". If anything, it is Britain and the USA who deployed weaponry that contained depleted uranium. A recent study reveals that the cancer rate in Fallujah, Iraq, is worse than it was in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
© eaglecartoons.com
It seems only yesterday that Americans, or those interested in their civil liberties, were shocked that the Bush regime so flagrantly violated the FlSA law against spying on American citizens without a warrant. A federal judge serving on the FISA court even resigned in protest to the illegality of the spying.
Nothing was done about it. "National security" placed the president and executive branch above the law of the land. Civil libertarians worried that the US government was freeing its power from the constraints of law, but no one else seemed to care.
Encouraged by its success in breaking the law, the executive branch early this year announced that the Obama regime has given itself the right to murder Americans abroad if such Americans are considered a "threat." "Threat" was not defined and, thus, a death sentence would be issued by a subjective decision of an unaccountable official.
Originally published in the July-August 2010 issue of The Dot Connector Magazine.
At approximately 4am on May 31st 2010, a group of vessels attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza were attacked by the Israeli navy in international waters off the coast of the occupied Palestinian territories. Nine civilians aboard the largest vessel, the Mavi Marmara, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers and dozens more were wounded. The Israeli government claimed it was exercising its right to self defence. Flotilla members, and much of the international community, saw it as an act of piracy and murder on the high seas that has exposed deep flaws in the Israeli mentality and further alienated it from the rest of the world.
© Spyros Fragias/Sott.net
© Ed Kashi
Oil pipelines in Okrika, near Port Harcourt. The UNEP denies it has been influenced by Shell, which paid for its $10m, three-year study.
Oil pipelines in Okrika, near Port Harcourt. The UNEP denies it has been influenced by Shell, which paid for its $10m, three-year study.
Report claims rest of leaking oil caused by saboteurs
A three-year investigation by the United Nations will almost entirely exonerate Royal Dutch Shell for 40 years of oil pollution in the Niger delta, causing outrage among communities who have long campaigned to force the multinational to clean up its spills and pay compensation.
The $10m (£6.5m) investigation by the UN environment programme (UNEP), paid for by Shell, will say that only 10% of oil pollution in Ogoniland has been caused by equipment failures and company negligence, and concludes that the rest has come from local people illegally stealing oil and sabotaging company pipelines.
The shock disclosure was made by Mike Cowing, the head of a UN team of 100 people who have been studying environmental damage in the region.
Cowing said that the 300 known oil spills in the Ogoniland region of the delta caused massive damage, but added that 90% of the spills had been caused by "bunkering" gangs trying to steal oil.
China's households hide as much as 9.3 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) of income that is not reported in official figures, with 80 percent accrued by the wealthiest people, a study showed.
The money, much of it likely "illegal or quasi-illegal," equates to about 30 percent of China's gross domestic product, the study, conducted for Credit Suisse AG and published last week by the China Reform Foundation, found. The average urban disposable household income in China is 32,154 yuan, or 90 percent more than official figures, according to the report.
Most of that extra cash is going to the wealthiest families. The top 10 percent of China's households take in 139,000 yuan a year, more than triple the official figures, according to the Credit Suisse report. In contrast, the bottom 10 percent earns 5,350 yuan, or 13 percent more. The top 20 percent of households account for 81.3 percent of total hidden income, according to the study, written by Wang Xiaolu of the Beijing-based foundation.
The money, much of it likely "illegal or quasi-illegal," equates to about 30 percent of China's gross domestic product, the study, conducted for Credit Suisse AG and published last week by the China Reform Foundation, found. The average urban disposable household income in China is 32,154 yuan, or 90 percent more than official figures, according to the report.
Most of that extra cash is going to the wealthiest families. The top 10 percent of China's households take in 139,000 yuan a year, more than triple the official figures, according to the Credit Suisse report. In contrast, the bottom 10 percent earns 5,350 yuan, or 13 percent more. The top 20 percent of households account for 81.3 percent of total hidden income, according to the study, written by Wang Xiaolu of the Beijing-based foundation.
© Press Association
All three governments are confirmed liars and although the UK has a new administration, our new prime minister voted for the Iraq war, currently sends our soldiers to continue the destruction of Afghanistan with assassination of Afghan freedom fighters and colludes with America and Israel in their aggression against Iran. The UK voted for this government and will suffer for it as it has under the ruinous Blair and Brown administrations.
At the same time as new calls in the UK media for a new inquest on Dr David Kelly's death, Anthony Blair announced that he will donate the proceeds from his memoirs, estimated at GBP 5 million, to the Royal British Legion for the benefit of injured armed services personnel. They have evidently accepted this gift from the now-rich Mr Blair who is being paid generously by the Americans for his betrayal of both international law and his own country. Perhaps the soldiers who have survived the Bush/Blair war with disabilities will be delighted at Mr Blair's generosity but it will do little for the 179 British men who died in the cause of enriching him, to say nothing of Iraqi deaths and refugees.
Comment: Please read Joe Quinn's article, Mossad Murders Former Lebanese PM in Carbon Copy of 1979 Assassination, connecting the hand of Israel's Mossad with Hariri's assassination.