Libya in Flames!

While Libya lies in flames, with thousands of men, women and children, driven by desperation, trying every day to cross the Mediterranean — and many of them will lose their lives – Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano issues this warning: "Beware of the outbreaks all around us," starting with the "persistent instability and fragility of the situation in Libya.” (aletheiaonline.it, July 12)

He forgets, and with him almost all the government officials and politicians, that Italy itself played a key role in 2011 in the “outbreak” of the war against Libya, of which the massacre of migrants is one of the consequences.

On the southern shores of the Mediterranean, across from Italy, there was a state — documented by the World Bank itself in 2010 — which maintained "high levels of economic growth,” with an average increase in GDP of 7.5 percent per annum, which recorded "high indicators of human development," including universal access to primary and secondary education, and for 46 percent of the population, also at the university level. Despite income disparities among individuals, the standard of living of the Libyan population was significantly higher than that of other African countries. Bearing witness to this fact was that nearly two million immigrants, mostly Africans, were working in Libya.

This state, in addition to being a factor of stability and development in North Africa, had used its investments to facilitate the emergence of organizations that one day might have made the financial autonomy of Africa possible: the African Investment Bank, based in Tripoli; the African Central Bank, with headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria; the African Monetary Fund, based in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

After having funded and armed hostile tribal areas in Tripoli, which caused the "Arab Spring" in Libya to assume from the outset the form of armed insurrection, and thus provoking the government’s response, they waged a war that destroyed the Libyan state in 2011: in seven months the U.S./NATO Air Force carried out 10,000 attack missions, unleashing more than 40,000 bombs and missiles.

Italy participated in this war, using its bases and military forces, tearing up the Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between Italy and Libya. "In the memory of the liberation struggles and April 25” - President Napolitano declared on April 26, 2011, “we could not remain indifferent to the bloody reaction of Colonel Gadhafi in Libya: That’s why Italy adhered to the plan of action of the coalition under the aegis of NATO." (Wall Street Italia, April 26, 2011)

During the war in Libya, its enemies infiltrated special forces, including thousands of Qatari commandos, and at the same time funded and armed Islamist groups, which up until a few months before had been called terrorists. It is significant that the Islamic militias of Misrata, which lynched Gadhafi, now occupy the airport in Tripoli.

In this framework, the first nuclei of ISIS formed, and moved to Syria, where they built the bulk of their strength before launching the offensive in Iraq. They acted as a de facto instrument of the U.S./NATO strategy to demolish these states through covert war.

"It is now clear,” said President Napolitano, “that every failed state inevitably becomes a center of accumulation and global spread of extremism and lawlessness." (quirinale.it, June 18)

It only remains to be seen what the "failed states" really are. They are not nation-states such as Libya, Syria and Iraq, states located in areas rich in oil or with an important geo-strategic position, which are wholly or partly outside the control of the West, and which were then demolished by war. They are in fact the major states of the West, which, betraying their own constitutions, have failed as democracies and returned to nineteenth-century imperialism.

by Manlio Dinucci

Translation
by John Catalinotto

Source
Il Manifesto (Italy)

The US Army & recent developments (protests & laws)!

A Brief History of GI Resistance During The Vietnam War

Published on 6 Jun 2014 | As the controversy continues over the prisoner swap involving U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, peace activist and author David Cortright recounts the history of U.S. soldiers organizing against the Vietnam War.

US Sending Saudi Arabia Thousands of Cluster Bombs, Despite International Ban

John Glaser, August 23, 2013

Even as they condemn the Syrian regime’s use of cluster munitions, the U.S. is selling Saudi Arabia $640 million worth of American-made cluster bombs. Cluster munitions have been banned in 83 countries on account of their indiscriminate nature and their record of killing children.

John Reed at Foreign Policy:

• These weapons are loathed because in addition to killing enemy combatants, their fairly indiscriminate nature means they can kill plenty of civilians. And not just in the heat of battle. The little ball-shaped bomblets dispersed by cluster munitions don’t always detonate on first impact. Often, they will just sit there on the ground until someone, often a child, picks them up and causes them to explode.
• So far, 112 countries have signed an international treaty banning cluster bombs, with 83 ratifying it.

The international ban began to take effect in June 2010, just after a U.S. cluster bomb killed 35 women and children in Yemen, with the Pentagon stubbornly refusing to admit to the wrongdoing despite damning evidence compiled by Amnesty International, which was later corroborated by classified diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

Cluster bombs were used in the initial phases of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the Obama administration has firmly opposed their prohibition, as have countries like Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. What’s that old saying about how you’re known by the company you keep?

It’s also worth pointing out how eager the U.S. is to keep giving Saudi Arabia, one of the most horrific, repressive, mysogynist theocracies in the world, all the weapons and money it asks for. Reed again:

• The cluster bomb sale is just the latest in a string ongoing arms deals between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that include dozens of F-15SA Strike Eagle fighter jets, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, H-60 Blackhawk helicopters and AH-6 Little Bird choppers as well as radars, anti-ship missiles, guided bombs, anti-radar missiles, surface to air missiles and even cyber defenses for those brand new Strike Eagles. It’s a relationship that’s worth tens of billions to American defense contractors. And even though the Saudi and the American governments have recently been at odds over a range of issues — Riyadh recently offered to replace any financial aid to Egypt’s military rulers that the U.S. withdrew — those arms sales are all-but-certain to continue. If the Saudis want cluster bombs, the U.S. will provide — no matter what the world thinks.

On the one hand, the U.S. is desperate to maintain the geo-political dominance it has held over the Middle East at a time when it seems to be slipping through their fingers. And on the other, one of the strongest lobbies in Washington – the defense corporations – really want to proceeds of these nefarious weapons sales. And you gotta please them.

source>>

...the real motives behind the wars of the past two decades.

Published on 11 Sep 2012 | We are on a road that leads straight to the World War 3, but in order to see that and to fully understand what is at stake you have to look at the big picture and connect the dots. This video examines the history of the dollar, its relation to oil, and the real motives behind the wars of the past two decades.

Intense Involvement in Africa.

Published on 18 Jan 2013 : World police protecting corporate interest.

Tuareg & AQIM fought on opposite sites in Qaddafi's Libya? But is on same side in Mali? Mali : Is it about Gold & preventing China into Africa?

Boots on the ground in Timbuktu & the rest of Mali?

Published on Nov 13, 2012 : Mali Crisis: West African bloc pledges 3.300 troops to help recapture north; UN expected to approve military plan before 2013. West African troops will back 5.000 Mali military forces.

Washington busy with Generals' Sex?

David Petraeus Resigns from CIA Over Affair

Published on Nov 9, 2012 by ABCNews : Four-star general says he "showed extremely poor judgment" by having extramarital affair.

Senior US General linked to Petraeus scandal

Published on Nov 13, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish; The top US commander in Afghanistan is now caught up in the same scandal that ended the career of CIA Director David Petraeus. General John Allen is being being accused of an inappropriate relationship with Jill Kelley, the woman who tipped off the FBI that Petraeus was having an affair.Now the scandal is sending shock waves across Washington.

U.S. Military Death Toll in Afghan War Reaches New Milestone

Published on Aug 24, 2012 by PBSNewsHour ; Since the beginning of the the Afghan War in 2001 up to the current day, there have been 2,000 U.S. servicemen and women who have lost their lives. That number includes both combat deaths as well as military suicides that occurred in Afghanistan. Ray Suarez looks at the factors that have contributed to those casualties.

War Wounds : For every soldier killed in war this year, about 25 veterans now take their own lives.

IT would be so much easier, Maj. Ben Richards says, if he had just lost a leg in Iraq.

Instead, he finds himself losing his mind, or at least a part of it. And if you want to understand how America is failing its soldiers and veterans, honoring them with lip service and ceremonies but breaking faith with them on all that matters most, listen to the story of Major Richards.

For starters, he’s brilliant. (Or at least he was.) He speaks Chinese and taught at West Point, and his medical evaluations suggest that until his recent problems he had an I.Q. of about 148. After he graduated from West Point, in 2000, he received glowing reviews.

“Ben Richards is one of the best military officers I have worked with in 13 years of service,” noted an evaluation, one of many military and medical documents he shared with me.

Yet Richards’s intellect almost exacerbates his suffering, for it better equips him to monitor his mental deterioration — and the failings of the Army that he has revered since he was a young boy.

Military suicides are the starkest gauge of our nation’s failure to care adequately for those who served in uniform. With America’s wars winding down, the United States is now losing more soldiers to suicide than to the enemy. Include veterans, and the tragedy is even more sweeping. For every soldier killed in war this year, about 25 veterans now take their own lives

read more >>.

'CIA, Mossad on Syria front line'.

Lebanonize & Conquer: Published on Aug 2, 2012 by RussiaToday:

US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order allowing the CIA and other American agencies to support rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime, a US government source told Reuters - READ MORE

Tel Aviv's agenda is clear; a weakened Syrian government, an overextended army in disarray, sectarian hatred all around and a relentless slouching towards balkanization. The ultimate goal; not only the Lebanonization, but the Somalization of Syria and environs: Obama Does Syriana

Trafficked Into Tragedy: Abuse of Immigrant Workers In Afghanistan and Iraq

On every military base in Iraq and Afghanistan exists an economy sustained by immigrant workers. For transportation, construction, food services, security and more, the United States government relies on 174,000 laborers, 70,000 of them recruited from developing countries like Nepal, India, the Philippines and Uganda.

But not all of these workers voluntarily leave home to serve alongside the United States military. According to a report released in June by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lowenstein Clinic at Yale Law School, many of these workers are tricked into working for American contractors and subcontractors who abuse them with "impunity" and subject them to grueling hours, meager wages, confinement and deadly working conditions.

In 2004, Buddhi Prasad Gurung and 12 other men from a village in Nepal were promised jobs in a luxury hotel in Jordan. Instead, they were sent to Iraq to work for a United States government subcontractor and, en route, were kidnapped by insurgents. Twelve men were executed "in the single largest set of executions of foreign captives by Iraqi insurgents."

Mr. Gurung survived the attack but said he had not been permitted to go home for 15 more months, according to a lawsuit against the subcontractor, Daoud & Partners, and the primary contractor, KBR.

In 2011, The New Yorker's Sarah Stillman documented Fijian beauticians who suffered from the same deceptive practices. "For the first time in American history, private-contractor losses are now on a par with those of U.S. troops in both war zones, amounting to 53 percent of reported fatalities in the first six months of 2010," she wrote.

The United States has a zero-tolerance policy toward human trafficking, but the report says existing measures — prevention, investigation and prosecution — are failing to curb the entrapment and abuse of foreign workers.

"Accountability exists in theory but not in practice: to date, the U.S. government has yet to fine or prosecute a single contractor for trafficking- or labor-related offenses," the report states.

Original Article | 30 July 2012 

Collateral Damage?

Published on Jul 17, 2012 by aston79suara ; "We had no warning at all from the ship, we were speeding up to try and go around them and then suddenly we got fired at," 28-year-old Muthu Muniraj told Reuters from a hospital in Dubai on Tuesday.

The Bahrain-based US Navy Fifth Fleet issued a statement on Monday saying that the USNS Rappahannock only attacked a small motor boat near the Dubai port of Jebel Ali, killing one and injuring three Indian fishermen, after they "ignored the warnings and came too close."

20 June : World Refugee Day

Refugees and Forcibly Displaced Persons

Facts and Figures

At the end of 2011:

• 42.5 million forcibly displaced people, of which
  • 5 - 7% people living with disabilities, one third of them children
• 15.2 million were refugees, of which:
  • 46% were children under the age of 18
  • 48% were women and girls
• 895,000 asylum-seekers
• 26.4 million IDPs
• 12 million stateless persons
• 3.7 million returnees

Source: UNHCR's Global Trends 2011 

There are several types of forcibly displaced persons. But all one one thing in common:

Every minute eight people leave everything behind to escape war, persecution or terror.

If conflict threatened your family, what would you do? Stay and risk your lives? Or try to flee, and risk kidnap, rape or torture?

For many the choice is between the horrific or something worse.

Refugees

A refugee is someone who fled his or her home and country owing to “a well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion”, according to the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention. Many refugees are in exile to escape the effects of natural or human-made disasters.

Developing countries hosted four-fifths of the world’s refugees. The 48 Least Developed Countries provided asylum to 2.3 million refugees.

Asylum seeker

Asylum seekers say they are refugees and have fled their homes as refugees do, but their claim to refugee status is not yet definitively evaluated in the country to which they fled.

Internally Displaced Persons

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are people who have not crossed an international border but have moved to a different region than the one they call home within their own country.

full report here :

AWOL from US Air Force since 1984.

Published on Jun 19, 2012 : David Hemler became disillusioned with the policies of then - US President Ronald Reagan and decided to ditch his job with Uncle Sam in exchange for a new life in a new world. For 28 years, he hid his true identity from everyone — even his family.

Infallible - in this age,in theory & practice!

Published on Jun 14, 2012 by PressTVGlobalNews : A renowned American political analyst says Israel gets away with numerous violations of international law as the Jewish entity is a client of the US and therefore enjoys "total impunity," Press TV reports.

Why Obama Will Free Jonathan Pollard 

President accepts Israel infallibility doctrine

The US Department of Justice has released new files about convicted spy Jonathan Pollard’s bid for presidential clemency. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after passing more than a million highly classified documents to Israel while working as an intelligence analyst for the US Navy. Documents in the Freedom of Information Act response (PDF) reference 32 pages of government agency deliberative communications and 37 pages of new communications between Pardon Attorney Ronald Rogers and Pollard’s legal team — all produced since July of 2011. While the contents have been withheld, their existence signals that the Pollard commutation request may be nearing a conclusion within the Obama administration. June 18 could mark the culmination of a massive lobbying campaign for release. Obama’s dismal record on Israeli accountability suggests Pollard will soon walk free.

Released documents reveal that the Rabbinical Assembly — claiming to represent "1.5 million Jews worldwide" — passed a formal resolution asking Obama to commute Pollard’s sentence. Rabbi David Zwiebel of Agudath Israel of America and Moshe Kantor of the European Jewish Congress also urged Pollard’s release. Letters demanding release also continue to flood in from former and current members of the US Congress. Steve Symms, Matt Salmon, Alan Simpson, Robert Wexler, Barney Frank, and Gary Ackerman joined the ranks of fellow representatives already demanding release. Moshe Kahalon, Israel’s Minister of Communications, gushed to Obama "I have no doubt that your decision to release Jonathan Pollard now as a humanitarian expression of justice and compassion will bring great relief to many, and will remove this impediment to the friendship between our nations." Former New York City Mayor David Dinkins is also now rooting for Pollard’s release. Upping the ante, Israeli President Shimon Peres has explicitly linked his receipt of a US Presidential Medal of Freedom during a special June 18 White House dinner to Pollard’s freedom gambit — channeling even more intense pressure on Obama to take action in a specific context, place and time.

by Grant Smith, June 09, 2012 | Original post :

Supplying Israel with nuclear-armed subs sparks controversy in Germany.

Published on Jun 13, 2012 by PressTVGlobalNews : The sale of six Dolphin-class submarines to Israel continues to cause controversy in Germany.

Last week news weekly DER SPIEGEL reported that the three submarines already delivered were being armed with nuclear-tipped missiles by Israel. Defense minister Thomas de Maiziere now defended his government's decision: The deliveries were a continuation of previous administration's policies.

How the U.S. Army Is Using Bloggers

Here are some of the things you’ll learn in this video:

The story behind Army Strong Stories

How the U.S. Army uses social media and technology to share stories

How to encourage authenticity and transparency to build credibility

How to actively listen and why that is important for developing advocates

The reasons to consider a blogger outreach campaign

How to look for the influencers relevant to your business

How to use alternative channels to connect with influencers

Attack of the Drones - USA

Published on Apr 23, 2012 by journeymanpictures - Iran claims to have reverse engineered US drone

They can move together in swarms, build towers, dance, throw and catch, assess targets and soon will even make their own decisions. Both in war and at home, drones are developing fast and gaining control.

The screens at a US air force base lock onto a civilian car driving along a road in New Mexico. "We don't simulate or actually engage them, it is just training to follow a moving target." The question, "with their permission?" is met with an embarrassed pause and the faltering reply, "we're just following them with a camera". Rapidly becoming acceptable practice, increasingly police are also using drones to survey civilian areas for criminals. The US air force are now training more 'desk pilots' than traditional pilots, raising concerns that war is becoming "just a big computer game", allowing pilots to kill a few Taliban fighters and then go home for dinner. Nathan Wessler, a civil rights lawyer, strongly argues that the US using drones to kill targets in countries like Yemen despite not being in a state of war with them could lead to serious repercussions. "It is really a dangerous precedent. The technology of drones is not that complicated and there are dozens of nations developing it." And these robots are advancing. Future drones will be able to independently find targets and decide to attack. As Iran lays its hands on a US spy drone, which experts in this report argue they are "perfectly capable of copying", has an uncontrolled new arms race already begun?

Strike Apart: Israel & US clash over Iran attack.

Uploaded by RussiaToday on 21 Feb 2012 : Cracks appear to widen in US/Israeli relations over opposing views on how to approach the Iranian issue. Tel-Aviv is upset by Washington's opposition to launching strikes on Tehran's nuclear facilities and now says that position actually play into Iran's hands. RT's Irina Galushko reports from Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile the UN nuclear inspectors are back in Iran - for the second time in less than a month. The IAEA team is expected to hold key talks over Tehran's nuclear program - with the Islamic state hoping to to dispel all allegations of it's military purpose. Despite growing international pressure triggered by Iran's atomic development, some experts say the West's war rhetoric is misguided.

Mercenaries in Papua (Bahasa Indonesia/Malay)

Video dalam bahasa Indonesia/Malay:

Uploaded by malaysiakini on 3 Feb 2012 - What happens when the police and military are on the payroll of a private company that persecutes people? Violence, intimidation and even murder. Like in Papua, Indonesia. Where police are paid by Freeport Indonesia to prevent workers from demonstrating. Tempo TV's Rio Rizalino reports.