Look at two other wars our government is currently deeply involved in - because they show that the claims made for this bombing campaign can't be true

Most of us have a low feeling that we are not being told the real reasons for the war in Libya. David Cameron's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to jump on a plane and tour the palaces of the region's dictators selling them the most hi-tech weapons of repression available. Nicolas Sarkozy's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to offer urgent aid to the Tunisian tyrant in crushing his people. Barack Obama's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to refuse to trim the billions in aid going to Hosni Mubarak and his murderous secret police, and for his Vice-President to declare: "I would not refer to him as a dictator."

Yet now we are told that these people have turned into the armed wing of Amnesty International. They are bombing Libya because they can't bear for innocent people to be tyrannised, by the tyrants they were arming and funding for years. As Obama put it: "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different". There was a time, a decade ago, when I took this rhetoric at face value. But I can't now. The best guide through this confusion is to look at two other wars our government is currently deeply involved in - because they show that the claims made for this bombing campaign can't be true.

Imagine a distant leader killed more than 2,000 innocent people, and his military commanders responded to evidence that they were civilians by joking that the victims "were not the local men's glee club". Imagine one of the innocent survivors appeared on television, amid the body parts of his son and brother, and pleaded: "Please. We are human beings. Help us. Don't let them do this." Imagine that polling from the attacked country showed that 90 per cent of the people there said civilians were the main victims and they desperately wanted it to stop. Imagine there was then a huge natural flood, and the leader responded by ramping up the attacks. Imagine the country's most respected democratic and liberal voices were warning that these attacks seriously risked causing the transfer of nuclear material to jihadi groups.

Suicide bombers and gunmen have stormed a police compound in southern Afghanistan, killing six members of the Afghan security forces.

Afghan officials say at least three insurgents attacked the complex in Kandahar province Thursday, waging a gun battle with security forces for several hours before being killed.

Witnesses say American Black Hawk Helicopters circled overhead and NATO armored vehicles responded to the assault, which killed members of the Afghan intelligence service, army and police. At least 12 people were wounded.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack which took place near the main highway that connects Kandahar city with the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Also Thursday, NATO said coalition and Afghan troops killed an Afghan border policeman who shot and killed two American soldiers earlier this week in Maymana, the capital of northern Faryab province.

U.S. officials say the nation's health system is ill-prepared to cope with a catastrophic release of radiation, despite years of focus on the possibility of a terrorist "dirty bomb" or an improvised nuclear device attack.

A blunt assessment circulating among American officials says, "Current capabilities can only handle a few radiation injuries at any one time." That assessment, prepared by the Department of Homeland Security in 2010 and stamped "for official use only,'' says "there is no strategy for notifying the public in real time of recommendations on shelter or evacuation priorities."

The Homeland Security report, plus several other reports and interviews with almost two dozen experts inside and outside the government, reveal other gaps that might increase the risks posed by a nuclear accident or terrorist attack.

One example: The U.S. Strategic National Stockpile stopped purchasing the best-known agent to counter radioactive iodine-induced thyroid cancer in young people, potassium iodide, about two years ago and designated the limited remaining quantities "excess," according to information provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ProPublica. Despite this, the CDC Web site still lists potassium iodide as one of only four drugs in the stockpile specifically for use in radiation emergencies.

The drug is most effective when administered before or within hours of exposure. The decision to stop stockpiling it was made, in part, because distribution could take too long in a fast-moving emergency, one official involved in the discussions said. The interagency group that governs the stockpile decided that "other preparedness measures were more suitable to mitigate potential exposures to radioactive iodine that would result from a release at a nuclear reactor," a CDC spokesperson said in an e-mail to ProPublica.

Unit would protect private sector firms and gov agencies

Israel is mulling the creation of a counter-cyberterrorism unit designed to safeguard both government agencies and core private sector firms against hacking attacks.

The proposed unit would supplement the efforts of Mossad and other agencies in fighting cyberespionage and denial of service attacks. Israel is, of course, a prime target for hackers from the Muslim world.

The country's hi-tech industries also make it an interesting target for cyberespionage from government-sponsored hackers from China and elsewhere. Spear-phishing attacks featuring targeted emails, custom malware and subsequent hacking action have been in the news over recent weeks, in the wake of cyberattacks against EU agencies and oil-prospecting multinationals, to quote just two recent threats.

Major General Isaac Ben-Israel, former head of the Defence Ministry's administration for the development of weapons and technological infrastructure, the main candidate to lead Israel's cyber-defenders, reportedly met with local and international experts for a brainstorming strategy development session late last year.

About ten hours before a warplane roared down the Red Sea, crossed into Sudanese airspace and let fly a missile at a sedan, killing both of the people inside, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Gilad offered a piece of advice about secret military actions to audience of diplomats and journalists in a Jerusalem hotel.

"Never boast," Gilad said. "Be humble. Be modest. Do it, what you have to do. Don't talk.''

The topic was Iran's nuclear ambitions, and what Israel might do military to impede them. As director general of political-military affairs for Israel's defense ministry, Gilad may be the person in Israel in the best position to answer, but he demurred on the grounds that saying things in public tended to impede the ability to do them. So it is that when asked about the Stuxnet worm that wreaked havoc with Iran's centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility, or the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists on their way to the office, Israeli officials limit themselves to a knowing smile and a "no comment."

During Operation Cast Lead Israel committed massive war crimes for all the world to see. Among these crimes the use of White Phosphorus in densely populated areas, use of Depleted Uranium, bombing civilian targets of all sorts without military necessity, destroying civilian infrastructure with no military justification and the infamous massacre of the Samouni family... among many other crimes.

In the aftermath of Cast Lead, Justice Richard Goldstone, a Zionist Jew, was commissioned by the United Nations to write a report on the alleged war crimes. Although the report did not go nearly far enough in exposing the brutality of all the crimes committed, crimes committed by the fourth largest military in the world against a essentially defenceless and captive population, it did allege that Israel (and Hamas) was almost undoubtedly guilty of war crimes and possibly, crimes against humanity.

But on April 1st, 2011 Justice Goldstone had an apparent change of heart and effectively said that he was wrong. With regard to the Samouni family he said, Israel simply made a mistake. It seems that the world in which we live in, a world of impunity for the favoured Israeli state, is set to continue. Unless of course we the people decide enough is enough.

Israeli defense exports for 2010 are expected to match the all-time high reached in 2009, according to Defense Ministry officials. The record year of 2009 saw exports reach $7.4 billion.

Based on calculations of new orders from Israeli defense companies, the export totals for 2010 exceeded $7.3 billion and will probably match those of 2009 once figures for support and follow-on contracts are finalized.

Some 80 percent of all Israeli defense production is sold on the export market. The country's export order totals have steadily grown, reaching $3.5 billion in 2005, $4.9 billion in 2006, $5.6 billion in 2007, and $6.6 billion in 2008.

Will remain tiny compared to inventory of obsolete crap

The UK expects to double its fleet of "Reaper" robot hunter-killer aircraft, according to the machines' manufacturer.

General Atomics, which developed the famous Predator drone warplane and its bigger successor the Predator-B/Reaper, announced last week that it is opening a new office in London to support the British Reaper fleet. The company says that it has thus far supplied six of the robot aircraft to the UK forces - though one of these crashed and was destroyed in Afghanistan three years ago.

The company announcement adds that the UK Reaper fleet is "expected to nearly double in size over the next few years". Presumably this might indicate that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) expects to field as many as ten roboplanes in the near future.

Remove your penis from this hornets' nest

Several Sony PlayStation sites are unavailable this morning thanks to what looks like a distributed denial of service attack launched by Anonymous.

The hacktivists have left the Scientologists alone in order to harass the console-makers because of Sony's action against two lads for jailbreaking PS3s.

In a strangely self-important and sanctimonious message, the hackers said:

Congratulations, Sony.

You have now received the undivided attention of Anonymous.

Your recent legal action against our fellow hackers, GeoHot and Graf_Chokolo, has not alarmed us, it has been deemed wholly unforgivable....

Now you will experience the wrath of Anonymous.

You saw a hornets' nest, and stuck your penises in it.

You must face the consequences of your actions.

Anonymous style."

Cuba on Tuesday announced plans to drill five deepwater oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico beginning this summer, expressing confidence that its efforts will be rewarded with major new energy finds.

"We're about to move to the drilling phase," said Manuel Marrero, an official with the government authority tasked with overseeing Cuba's oil sector.

"We're all really hopeful that we will be able to discover large reserves of oil and gas," said Marrero, who added that the ventures would be undertaken with the help of unspecified foreign companies.

He said the deepwater wells were to be drilled between 2011 and 2013, and would be in waters ranging in depth between 400 meters (a quarter mile) and 1,500 meters (1.6 miles). He did not specify which countries would be among the foreign partners working with Havana on the project.

Some studies estimate Cuba has probable reserves of between five and nine billion barrels of oil in its economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Cuban authorities have said their crude reserves are as high as 20 billion barrels.

In 2010, Cuba produced 21 million barrels of oil, about the same as it had extracted the previous year, representing a little less than half of its annual energy needs.