myMinaret: War

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Half a Century of Pain – 50 Years of Agent Orange Disaster in Vietnam – 1961-2011

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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , "geneva" , sans-serif;">A selection of images from the book </span><em style="font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;">Half a Century of Pain – 50 Years of Agent Orange Disaster in Vietnam – 1961-2011</em><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , "geneva" , sans-serif;">, published by the Ministry of Information and Communication of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , "geneva" , sans-serif;">Click here to view images: </span><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , "geneva" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.cpa.org.au/photos/half-a-century-of-pain/index.htm" target="_blank">http://www.cpa.org.au/photos/half-a-century-of-pain/index.htm</a> </span><br />
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Half a Century of Pain – 50 Years of Agent Orange Disaster in Vietnam – 1961-2011

A selection of images from the book Half a Century of Pain – 50 Years of Agent Orange Disaster in Vietnam – 1961-2011 , published by th...

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

EVERYONE NEEDS TO WATCH THIS!! The Protocols of Zion Full Movie

EVERYONE NEEDS TO WATCH THIS!! The Protocols of Zion Full Movie

Thursday, June 22, 2017

These 5 Censored Books Tell a History the US Establishment Wants Hidden

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Abby Martin speaks with NYU media studies professor, Mark Crispin Miller, about five historical books that have been actively suppressed and hidden from the American public.<br />
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The Phoenix Program: America's Use Of Terror In Vietnam (Forbidden Bookshelf).<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program</a><br />
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The <b>Phoenix Program</b> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_language" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Vietnamese language">Vietnamese</a>: <span lang="vi" xml:lang="vi"><i>Chiến dịch Phụng Hoàng</i></span>, a word related to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenghuang" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Fenghuang">fenghuang</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="China">Chinese</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(mythology)" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Phoenix (mythology)">phoenix</a>) was a program designed, coordinated, and executed by the United States <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Central Intelligence Agency">Central Intelligence Agency</a>(CIA), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_special_operations_forces" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="United States special operations forces">United States special operations forces</a>, US Army intelligence collection units from MACV, special forces operatives from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Army_Training_Team_Vietnam" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Australian Army Training Team Vietnam">Australian Army Training Team Vietnam</a> (AATTV),<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-1" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program#cite_note-1" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;">[1]</a></sup> and the <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Vietnam" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Republic of Vietnam">Republic of Vietnam</a>'s (South Vietnam) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Vietnam_National_Police_Field_Force" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Republic of Vietnam National Police Field Force">security apparatus</a> during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Vietnam War">Vietnam War</a>.</div>
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The Program was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-terrorism" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Counter-terrorism">counter-terrorism</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrogation" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Interrogation">interrogation</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Assassination">assassination</a>) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Viet Cong">Viet Cong</a></i>).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program#cite_note-2" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;">[2]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-3" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program#cite_note-3" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;">[3]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-4" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program#cite_note-4" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;">[4]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-5" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program#cite_note-5" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;">[5]</a></sup> The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-6" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program#cite_note-6" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;">[6]</a></sup> The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected NLF members, as well as civilians who were thought to have information on NLF activities. Many of these people were then taken to interrogation centers where many were allegedly tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-otterman-62-64_7-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program#cite_note-otterman-62-64-7" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;">[7]</a></sup> The information extracted at the centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-otterman-62-64_7-1" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program#cite_note-otterman-62-64-7" style="background: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;">[7]</a></sup></div>
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The program was in operation between 1965 and 1972, and similar efforts existed both before and after that period. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had neutralized 81,740 suspected NLF operatives, informants and supporters, of whom between 26,000 and 41,000 were killed</div>
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These 5 Censored Books Tell a History the US Establishment Wants Hidden

Abby Martin speaks with NYU media studies professor, Mark Crispin Miller, about five historical books that have been actively suppressed ...

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Why Is Obama Still Killing Children?

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President Barack Obama closed his speech at last week’s National Prayer Breakfast with a prayer for forgiveness.<br />
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“I pray that my failings are forgiven,” Obama told the audience of spiritual leaders. “I pray that we will see every single child as our own, each worthy of our love and of our compassion. And I pray we answer Scripture’s call to lift up the vulnerable, and to stand up for justice, and ensure that every human being lives in dignity.”<br />
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Obama may find that asking for forgiveness is a lot easier than receiving it, at least in this life. Chief among the many things for which this president needs to be forgiven is his expansion of George W. Bush’s drone assassination program. According to reporting by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, thousands of civilians, including hundreds of children, have fallen victim to his preemptive drones strikes over the last seven years.<br />
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One person who will not forgive Obama is Nasser al-Awlaki. He is the grandfather of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen who was summarily executed in a 2011 drone strike as he sat in a cafe in Yemen. Abdulrahman was looking for his father, American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who had already been assassinated by Obama two weeks earlier. U.S. officials would later concede that Abdulrahman’s killing was a case of mistaken identity.<br />
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“I cannot comprehend how my teenage grandson was killed by a Hellfire missile, how nothing was left of him except small pieces of flesh,” Nasser told Time magazine in October 2011.<br />
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“I urge the American people to … expose the hypocrisy of the 2009 Nobel (Peace) Prize laureate. To some, he may be that. To me and my family, he is nothing more than a child killer.”<br />
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Obama has tried to disguise his illegal drone program with the patina of legal legitimacy. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the drone program — aside from the serial child killing — is the normalization by the U.S. of extrajudicial assassination as an accepted practice under a tortured interpretation of constitutional due process and International law.<br />
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Obama first publicly acknowledged the pre-emptive first strike drone program during a May 2013 speech at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.<br />
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“America’s actions are legal,” Obama said. “We were attacked on 9/11. Within a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force. … We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first. So this is a just war — a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense.”<br />
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This argument had previously been rejected by Christof Heyns, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions. “It’s difficult to see how any killings carried out in 2012 can be justified as in response to (events) in 2001,” Heyns told a conference in Geneva, Switzerland.<br />
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Read more: <a href="http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-obama-still-killing-children" target="_blank">http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-obama-still-killing-children</a> </div>

Why Is Obama Still Killing Children?

President Barack Obama closed his speech at last week’s National Prayer Breakfast with a prayer for forgiveness. “I pray that my faili...

Tuesday, March 01, 2016

The US tells Russia “put up or shut up”. Russia unimpressed

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US State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner made an interesting and very significant statement today.  He told Russia to “put up or shut up”.  <a href="http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/02/27/452530/Russia-US-Toner-Syria" style="background: rgb(203, 217, 225); box-sizing: border-box; color: #2c424e; padding: 0px 3px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s;">Here is what he said exactly</a>:</div>
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<a class="rempad" data-slb-active="1" data-slb-group="21194" data-slb-internal="0" href="http://thesaker.is/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Mark-Toner.png" style="background: rgb(203, 217, 225); box-sizing: border-box; color: #2c424e; padding: 0px 3px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s;"><img alt="Mark Toner" class="wp-image-21195 size-medium" height="190" src="http://thesaker.is/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Mark-Toner-300x190.png" style="border: 0px none; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: auto;" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: 'Roboto Slab', serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; line-height: 17px; padding: 8px 0px;">
Mark Toner</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;">“I don’t know how to put it any better than saying: ‘It’s put up or shut up time,'” (…)  “It is time for them to show through action rather than words that they are serious about what they profess to be serious about, which is a ceasefire, a cessation of hostilities and a political process that leads to a transition.”</em></div>
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The Russian reply came from Maria Zakharova, the Director of the Information and Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. <a href="http://www.1tv.ru/wap/news/id=302868" style="background: rgb(203, 217, 225); box-sizing: border-box; color: #2c424e; padding: 0px 3px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s;">She replied</a>:</div>
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<a class="rempad" data-slb-active="1" data-slb-group="21194" data-slb-internal="0" href="http://thesaker.is/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%97%D0%B0%D1%85%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0.png" style="background: rgb(203, 217, 225); box-sizing: border-box; color: #2c424e; padding: 0px 3px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s;"><img alt="Мария Захарова" class="wp-image-21196 size-medium" height="194" src="http://thesaker.is/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%97%D0%B0%D1%85%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0-300x194.png" style="border: 0px none; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: auto;" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: 'Roboto Slab', serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; line-height: 17px; padding: 8px 0px;">
Maria Zakharova</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;">“We are generally surprised that the rhetoric and statements which are made by officials from the White House and State Department spokesman: every day are becoming sharper and sharper, but not in terms of facts or any argument, but in the use of some strange idioms.  What do these rude statements illustrate? Of course, the absence of intelligence or of a decent education, but this is not even the most important thing.  The most important thing is that this is a symptom of a total lack of arguments.”</em></div>
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An “absence of intelligence or of a decent education” and “a total lack of arguments”?  This is hardly something for US diplomats.  Remember how Admiral Kirby ‘lost it’ when questioned  by RT’s Gayane Chichakyan:</div>
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More: <a href="http://thesaker.is/the-us-tells-russia-put-up-or-shot-up-russia-unimpressed/" target="_blank">http://thesaker.is/the-us-tells-russia-put-up-or-shot-up-russia-unimpressed/</a> </div>
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The US tells Russia “put up or shut up”. Russia unimpressed

US State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner made an interesting and very significant statement today. He told Russia to “put up o...

Monday, February 29, 2016

What the Syrian Death Toll Really Tells us About Western Policy

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Less than two months after the UN announced “shocking” new casualty figures in Syria, its high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay estimates that deaths are “probably now approaching 70,000″. But two years into a Syrian conflict marked by daily death tolls, the question arises as to whether these kinds of statistics are helpful in any way? Have they helped save Syrian lives? Have they shamed intransigent foes into seeking a political solution? Or might they have they contributed to the escalation of the crisis by pointing fingers and deepening divisions?<br />
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Casualty counts during modern wars have become a highly politicised business. On one hand, they can help alert the outside world to the scale of violence and suffering, and the risks of conflict spreading both within a country’s borders and beyond them. On the other, as in Syria, Iraq, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere, death tolls have routinely been manipulated, inflated or downplayed – a tool for the advancement of political interests.<br />
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As if to underline the point, Libya’s new government recently announced that death tolls had been exaggerated during the 2011 Libyan civil war; that there had been around 5,000 deaths on either side – a long way from the reported tens of thousands of casualties that set the scene for Nato’s “humanitarian” intervention, or the 30-50,000 deaths claimed by opponents of this intervention.<br />
While physically present in Iraq, the US and British governments were unable to provide estimates of the numbers of deaths unleashed by their own invasion, yet in Syria, the same governments frequently quote detailed figures, despite lacking essential access.<br />
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Syria’s death toll leapt from 45,000 to 60,000 earlier this year, a figure gathered by a UN-sponsored project to integrate data from seven separate lists. The new numbers are routinely cited by politicians and media as fact, and used to call for foreign intervention in the conflict.<br />
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But Rami Abdulrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), whose casualty data are part of this count, calls the UN’s effort “political” and the results “propaganda”.<br />
Abdulrahman, whose daily death toll releases are widely quoted in the western media, argues that many of the UN’s casualties don’t exist. “Yesterday in Qahtaniyah, I had a video of 21 people killed, but 19 names only. Other groups said 40 were killed – where are the 40? Tell them to provide me with only 21 names,” he demands, frustrated.<br />
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When I interviewed the UN spokesman Rupert Colville in January, he conceded: “We can’t prove most of these people have died.”<br />
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And Megan Price, lead author of the UN’s casualty analysis project, whose firm, Benetech, is part-funded by the US state department, explained to me: “We were not asked to do verification of whether the casualties are real.” Benetech’s task was mainly a data collation effort: working from seven separate UN-identified lists, the firm discarded duplicates and victims without names, place and date of death to arrive at the highly-publicised 60,000 number.<br />
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But questions about the accuracy of casualty numbers is only part of the story. Dig deeper, and it’s clear that this data also offers an insight into the Syrian conflict at odds with the story that this is essentially about a brutal regime killing peaceful civilians.<br />
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With the proviso that the data may itself prove unreliable, Benetech’s research nevertheless offers some useful clues about the makeup of the recorded death toll. Only 7.5% are female, making the casualties in Syria overwhelmingly male. Second, the largest segment of the 30% of victims whose ages are included in the records are between the ages of 20 and 30 – who might be classified as males of “military age”.<br />
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The SOHR’s statistics confirm this picture. On 27 December, Abdulrahman cited 148 violent deaths in Syria for that day: 49 rebels, 42 soldiers, three defectors, and the remaining 54 likely to be a mix of noncombatant civilians and unidentified rebels: “It isn’t easy to count rebels because nobody on the ground says ‘this is a rebel’. Everybody hides it.”<br />
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According to Abdulrahman’s conservative estimates, at least two thirds of the dead are armed men – an appreciatively different take on the perception of “civilian slaughter” in Syria created by reporting of the UN’s and other unverified casualty numbers. And the UN itself points out that “the analysis was not able to differentiate clearly between combatants and noncombatants”.<br />
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Even the civilian death toll is nuanced. There are civilians targeted by the regime through shelling and air strikes, civilians targeted by rebels via mortars, IEDs and urban bombings, and civilians caught in crossfire (not targeted). Further to that, there have been reports of sectarian and political killings by supporters of both sides.<br />
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While bald casualty numbers taken out of context have clearly failed to explain what now looks closer to a parity in violence inside Syria, the UN is not wrong that body counts can be valuable indicators in a crisis.<br />
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The problem is that, increasingly, death tolls are used as political tools to scene-set for western-backed “humanitarian interventions” in the Middle East and north Africa and – more broadly – against the kinds of negotiated political settlements that could actually reduce or stop the killing.<br />
It’s time to stop headlining unreliable and easily politicised casualty counts, and use them only as one of several background measures of a conflict. It’s essential too that the media help us avoid such manipulation by asking questions about reported deaths: how were these deaths verified? Are they combatants? Who killed them? How do we know this? Who benefits from these deaths? Was this a violent death or one caused by displacement? How is it even possible to count all these dead in the midst of raging conflict?<br />
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Numbers without context or solid foundations can incite and escalate a conflict, leading to even more carnage. Contemporary casualty data have been inaccurate in so many recent conflicts that it’s time to retire these numbers from the telling of the story.<br />
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Sharmine Narwani is a political analyst and commentator on Mideast geopolitics and a senior associate at St Antony’s College, Oxford University. Follow her on Twitter @snarwani<br />
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Source:<br />
<a href="https://uprootedpalestinians.wordpress.com/2013/02/16/what-the-syrian-death-toll-really-tells-us/" target="_blank">https://uprootedpalestinians.wordpress.com/2013/02/16/what-the-syrian-death-toll-really-tells-us/</a><br />
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What the Syrian Death Toll Really Tells us About Western Policy

Less than two months after the UN announced “shocking” new casualty figures in Syria, its high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pilla...

Monday, February 29, 2016

World of Synthetic Manufactured Terrorism

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<span style="background-color: transparent;">April 21, 2013 edition of the Alex Jones Show, Alex breaks down the revelation that the two suspect brothers in the Boston Marathon bombing were known by the FBI. We'll examine the FBI's attempt to coverup that knowledge by releasing photos Thursday asking for the public's help, when all along they knew full well who they were looking for. We'll also get into other possible actors that could be involved in one of the most botched plots in the FBI's long résumé of terror. Alex also analyzes the history of staged events and gives insight into what type of self inflicted wound the Boston bombing is. Infowars reporter David Knight also covers the CISPA bill passing the House, which could put your personal information in the hands of military organizations like the NSA. Tune in for the LIVE broadcast from.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">World of Synthetic Manufactured Terrorism - </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Published on Apr 21, 2013</span></div>
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World of Synthetic Manufactured Terrorism

April 21, 2013 edition of the Alex Jones Show, Alex breaks down the revelation that the two suspect brothers in the Boston Marathon bom...

Monday, February 29, 2016

90 Percent Of People Killed In Drone Strikes Were Not The Target

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U.S. drone strikes have killed scores of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.<br />
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The controversial U.S. drone strike program in the Middle East aims to pinpoint and kill terrorist leaders, but new documents indicate that a staggering number of these "targeted killings" affect far more people than just their targets.<br />
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According to a new report from The Intercept, nearly 90 percent of people killed in recent drone strikes in Afghanistan "were not the intended targets" of the attacks.<br />
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Documents detailing a special operations campaign in northeastern Afghanistan, Operation Haymaker, show that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. In Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has far more limited intelligence capabilities to confirm the people killed are the intended targets, the equivalent ratios may well be much worse.<br />
The report, compiled from classified documents released by a source in the intelligence community, corroborates the many news accounts of civilian deaths caused by drone strikes. U.S. drone strikes have killed scores of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia since 2009.<br />
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In December 2013, a drone strike in Yemen killed 14 people returning from a wedding. Government officials mistook their vehicles for those of al Qaeda militants. Parents in Pakistan have reported taking their children out of school to protect them from possible strikes.<br />
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Read more: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-strikes_us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff" target="_blank">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-strikes_us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff </a><br />
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90 Percent Of People Killed In Drone Strikes Were Not The Target

U.S. drone strikes have killed scores of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The controversial U.S. drone strike pr...

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Afghanistan: Are Minerals the Driving Force Behind the War?

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Last December 13th, the leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the vice-president of India met in Turkmenistan; a table with four buttons was set up so each leader could press a button, simultaneously initiating the construction of the TAPI natural gas pipeline. TAPI is the acronym for the four countries involved in the pipeline construction.<br />
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This event was big news in south Asia and was covered by all the major newspapers in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. It should have been big news in the US too, but except for one paragraph in Foreign Policy online, it seems that the US media ignored the story. Even the Houston Chronicle, the hometown newspaper of the largest US pipeline construction companies, ignored it.<br />
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A US State Department spokesman told the Press Trust of India that "The United States congratulates Turkmenistan and its partners on the recent ground-breaking for the construction of the natural gas pipeline to Afghanistan..." Yet, the US media decided that this was news that US citizens did not need to know.<br />
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We have been at war in Afghanistan for over 14 years. The preceding sentence answers the first four journalistic questions of who, what, where and when, but it doesn't answer the most important question - why?<br />
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Many peace advocates have suspected from the beginning that this natural gas pipeline is one of the ways that the coalition of the greedy expected to profit from this war. But the story that the media promoted continuously after September 11, 2001 was that Afghanistan was just a worthless pile of rocks that had no economic value; therefore, the goal of the war must be to deprive terrorists of a base and, as a bonus, to spread democracy, protect women, and rebuild the country.<br />
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In 2010 the New York Times reported on "newly discovered mineral deposits" in Afghanistan. The James Risen article stated that according to US officials "the previously unknown deposits...are so big...that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world." But news of mineral riches in Afghanistan was not really new.<br />
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Since the 1960s, it was reported by the Minerals Yearbook of the US Geological Survey that Afghanistan is rich in natural gas, copper, iron ore, gold, silver, and precious gems. Afghanistan has chromite that hardens steel. It has barite that is used in oil well "drilling fluid." The 1963 entry on Afghanistan in the Minerals Yearbook says "known natural gas reserves are substantial and have potential significance." The 1982 entry reports about the Hajigak iron ore deposit that "a 1977 independent survey concluded that the deposit was large enough and of a sufficient grade to support a major iron and steel industry."<br />
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The high point of reporting by the Minerals Yearbook came in 1992, when they reported on "The country's rich reserves of natural gas, estimated at 2,000 billion cubic meters..." The Yearbook also reported "copper ore from a reserve estimated at 360 MMT (Million metric tons)" and that "rich reserves of iron ore were estimated at 1,700 MMT."<br />
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This knowledge should have served as the starting point for reporters seeking background on Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11, 2001. But reporters must have asked the wrong people for information. They consistently reported that Afghanistan had no economic value aside from pistachios, pomegranates, goats, and sheep.<br />
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Against this tide of misinformation a few brave souls tried to tell the true story to the American people. In an opinion column in the New York Times in November 2001 Ishaq Nadiri, a professor of economics at New York University, wrote that Afghanistan "...once exported natural gas to the Soviet Union. It has large reserves of copper and high-grade iron ore."<br />
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In a December 2001 column in the Christian Science Monitor, John F. Shroder, Jr., a professor of geology at the University of Nebraska, said that he had studied the natural resources of Afghanistan for decades and that it had "what may be the world's largest copper deposit and the third-largest deposit of high-grade iron ore, in addition to reserves of gas, oil, coal, precious stones." Professor Shroder said that several American companies had called him "to find out more about the prospects for post-war mining and hydrocarbon acquisition."<br />
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This news might lead a careful reader to question the nobility of our motives in Afghanistan, but the day after Professor Shroder's column appeared, the New York Times rode into town to put the kibosh on any growing suspicion. In its usual inconclusive way, the Times both denied and confirmed that there might be something interesting going on. The first sentence of their article said that, "There is no oil in Afghanistan, but there are oil politics" But later the article says, "Oil companies and regional experts wonder whether significant new oil and gas reservoirs will be opened to foreign investment," a reference to oil and gas reserves north of Afghanistan in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.<br />
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Aside from the TAPI pipeline there are many opportunities for the coalition of the greedy to make a killing, so to speak. Selling weapons to both sides, opium smuggling, and overcharging for shoddy construction and useless consulting fees are just a few examples, but stealing minerals may be the driving force that makes the war continue.<br />
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President Karzai of Afghanistan was once called paranoid by the New York Times because he said the goal of US policy was to weaken his country, not to strengthen it. But just look at what we've done. Under US guidance, Afghanistan, year after year, slipped down the Transparency International corruption index until it is now tied for second most corrupt nation on earth.<br />
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The October 2015 report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction shows that over 99% of our tax spending in Afghanistan has gone to military spending or supporting a corrupt government. Less than 1% has gone tor food, clothing, and shelter for some of the poorest people on earth, the Afghans, now suffering through their 38th year of war. What better way to steal the mineral wealth of Afghanistan than to create a weakened government and a starving people?<br />
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The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his brilliant "Beyond Vietnam" speech at Riverside Church in 1967 said that an important reason for forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and for speaking out against the Vietnam War was "To save the soul of America." If we are going to save the soul of America and bring relief to our suffering sisters and brothers in Afghanistan and in all the wars we are involved in, then our nation must stop being a leader in war and become a leader in peace.<br />
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Source: <a href="http://www.vfpbellingham.org/tipping-the-scale/afghanistan-are-minerals-the-driving-force-behind-the-war" target="_blank">http://www.vfpbellingham.org/tipping-the-scale/afghanistan-are-minerals-the-driving-force-behind-the-war</a><br />
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Afghanistan: Are Minerals the Driving Force Behind the War?

Last December 13th, the leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the vice-president of India met in Turkmenistan; a table wit...

Thursday, February 25, 2016

War Crimes and US Responsibility in Syria and Yemen

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The international press has rightfully focused attention in the past couple of months on the plight of the people of Madaya in Syria, who have been starved by the Syrian regime and its allies. This week, the United Nations is attempting to draw attention to the similar plight of the people of Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city. Starving out noncombatants is a war crime. Unfortunately, it is one being widely and routinely practiced, sometimes by allies of the United States. Washington has a responsibility to see that charges are brought at the International Criminal Court against civilian officials and military leaders who order such crimes. Where politics makes this step impossible, the United States must at the least mobilize what boycotts and sanctions it can. Where the policy is being carried out by US allies, Washington’s obligations are clear.<br />
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At least 400,000 Syrians are trapped in conditions of severe food insecurity, caught in the cross-fire of military maneuvers by the regime and its opposition. While Madaya and nearby Zabadani are being starved by the Assad regime and its allies in order to get at Al Qaeda (the Nusra Front) and other hard-line Salafi jihadis using them as a base, Foua and Kefraya in Idlib consist of Shiite populations being starved by the opposition, elements of which are supported by the CIA and by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.<br />
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In Yemen, a Saudi-led coalition backed by the United States is at war with an indigenous tribal group, the Faith Supporters, or Houthis. The result is that the UN’s World Food Program estimates that the country’s third-largest city, Taiz, is only one level below famine, despite the small amounts of food aid it has been able to deliver in the past two weeks. (To be fair, some of that food was paid for by the Saudis.) Indeed, people in 10 of the country’s 22 provinces are in the same boat. Some 7.6 million Yemenis (a country of 24 million) are now food insecure, and some UN agencies suggest the number is double that. Some UN officials have seen a pattern of Saudi airstrikes on food convoys headed to Houthi-held areas, or on ports key to provisioning the civilian population. The Houthis have also been charged with using food denial as a tool of war. The threat of famine is driven not only by military disruptions of food delivery but also by price spikes in what food there is. (Many victims of famine starve to death not because there is no food but because they cannot afford to buy it.)<br />
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Cynics will maintain that wars inescapably involve war crimes. The history of military diplomacy, however, does not support that contention. Outside of superhero movies, no one boasts of killing innocent women and children. Even those who glorify their own ruthlessness depict their victims as dangerous or polluting to the body politic, not as innocent. Rather, movements and governments are eager to justify themselves to the outside world, and gaining its support is sometimes crucial to their success. Throwing light on war crimes, as defined by international treaties and instruments that are now enforceable against individual leaders under the Rome Statute, is crucial to combating this recrudescence of mass brutality in the contemporary world. The 1977 protocols to the Geneva Conventions, which explicitly declare that use of starvation as a method of war is a crime, were signed by Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom, so this norm is not alien but rather something widely agreed to by treaty in the region.<br />
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More: <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/war-crimes-and-us-responsibility-in-syria-and-yemen/" target="_blank">http://www.thenation.com/article/war-crimes-and-us-responsibility-in-syria-and-yemen/</a> </div>

War Crimes and US Responsibility in Syria and Yemen

The international press has rightfully focused attention in the past couple of months on the plight of the people of Madaya in Syria, wh...

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Hijab a form of ‘passive terrorism,’ says US Air Force paper

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A US Air Force policy paper alleges that the hijab Muslim women wear as part of their religion represents a type of “passive terrorism.”<br />
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Titled Countering Violent Extremism: Scientific Methods & Strategies, the publication has dedicated a chapter to unsubstantiated theories of radicalization, with scholarly merited articles written by academics and researchers in the field of counterterrorism, the Intercept reported Tuesday.<br />
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One of the articles has set forth a number of bizarre solutions to overcome terrorism.<br />
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It claims that “hijab contribute[s] to the idea of passive terrorism” and represents an implicit refusal to “speak against or actively resist terrorism.” However, its authors never make it clear how they have reached that conclusion.<br />
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The article also argues that addressing the lack of sexual activity among young men is key to reducing support for militant groups.<br />
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The strange assertions have drawn criticism from terrorism experts and academic figures, who dismiss them as baseless.<br />
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“This characterization of the hijab demonizes millions of women whose reasons for covering have nothing to do with the advocacy of political violence,” says Arun Kundnani, a lecturer on terrorism studies at New York University.<br />
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He said the paper’s theories of terrorism are not “genuine” and are rather a poor effort “to supply national security agencies with bogus surveillance rubrics.”<br />
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Amarnath Amarasingam, a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, also rejected the theories.<br />
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“There is virtually no evidence that sexual deprivation is somehow a cause of radicalization, or suicide attacks,” he said.<br />
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Ingrid Mattson, a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Western Ontario, pointed out to the diverse array of women who choose to wear hijab, citing 2014 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai as an example.<br />
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Yousafzai was the subject of a Taliban assassination attempt in northwest Pakistan after campaigning for women’s rights.<br />
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The policy paper, first published in 2011, was reissued by the Air Force last summer, after President Barack Obama announced his national counter-extremism strategy. The revised copy was published online this January, by Public Intelligence, an open source research website.<br />
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Sources:<br />
<a href="http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/02/24/452147/USAF-Hijab-Extremism" target="_blank">http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/02/24/452147/USAF-Hijab-Extremism</a><br />
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<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/6-women-terrorists-wearing-hijab-202300514.html" target="_blank">http://news.yahoo.com/6-women-terrorists-wearing-hijab-202300514.html</a><br />
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Hijab a form of ‘passive terrorism,’ says US Air Force paper

A US Air Force policy paper alleges that the hijab Muslim women wear as part of their religion represents a type of “passive terrorism.”...

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

“I will complain about you to God; I will tell him everything!”

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While in the hospital, the little Syrian boy felt that soon he would give his soul to God…<br />
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[Ed. – The article below is from a Russian language website here. It has been translated into English by Nina Sidorova ]<br />
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War is a destructive force that spares no one and nothing in its path. Especially scary when the war takes lives and distorts the fates innocent civilians.<br />
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Willy-nilly, one wonders: Who gave the right to political leaders to solve their conflicts through ordinary civilians? Why hundreds, thousands, millions of people have to die because of that insatiable politicians who want to catch and take more and more from the world pie. What is terrible in this creepy, inhuman, bloody cycle that this often affects children …<br />
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On this sentimental picture shows the three-year Syrian boy. He has received numerous severe injuries that led to internal bleeding. Doctors desperately fought for his life of the crumbs. But, unfortunately, those injuries that this little child received were incompatible with life – to save the baby’s life failed …<br />
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While being in the hospital, the boy felt that soon would give his soul to God. Dying, he uttered the words that hooked not only the hospital staff, but also shocked the world.<br />
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Choking with tears and exhausted from the incredible pain, the little boy said, “I will complain about you to God; I will tell him everything!”  Shortly thereafter, the baby’s heart stopped beating … Many believe that this cry from the heart a little sacrifices great misfortune was a kind of sign from above that people have thought again. After all, as they say, truth is the mouth of babes.<br />
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Share this:<br />
<a href="https://richardedmondson.net/2015/04/23/choking-with-tears-dying-syrian-boy-says-i-will-complain-to-god-about-you/" target="_blank">https://richardedmondson.net/2015/04/23/choking-with-tears-dying-syrian-boy-says-i-will-complain-to-god-about-you/</a><br />
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“I will complain about you to God; I will tell him everything!”

While in the hospital, the little Syrian boy felt that soon he would give his soul to God… [Ed. – The article below is from a Russia...

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Killing people with drones is working out great for America, says ex CIA chief

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Michael Hayden sure does love him some drone-killing.<br />
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In a New York Times opinion piece titled “Drone Warfare: Precise, Effective, Imperfect,” the former head of the National Security Agency celebrates the joy of wiping people out from a distance.<br />
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Do innocent men, women, and children routinely get murdered by an errant strike?<br />
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Sure, says Hayden.<br />
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“Civilians have died, but in my firm opinion, the death toll from terrorist attacks would have been much higher if we had not taken action.”<br />
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But here is the bottom line: It works. I think it fair to say that the targeted killing program has been the most precise and effective application of firepower in the history of armed conflict. It disrupted terrorist plots and reduced the original Qaeda organization along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to a shell of its former self. And that was well before Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.<br />
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Source: <a href="http://boingboing.net/2016/02/19/killing-people-with-drones-is.html" target="_blank">http://boingboing.net/2016/02/19/killing-people-with-drones-is.html</a><br />
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Killing people with drones is working out great for America, says ex CIA chief

Michael Hayden sure does love him some drone-killing. In a New York Times opinion piece titled “Drone Warfare: Precise, Effective, Imp...

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

“I helped create ISIS”

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A former US Marine who served in Iraq in 2003-05 explains how much ISIS is the product of the accumulated wrongs and horrific crimes committed by the US against the Iraqi people during its genocidal military campaign in that country.<br />
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For the last several years, people around the world have asked, “Where did ISIS come from?” Explanations vary but largely focus on geopolitical (US hegemony), religious (Sunni-Shia), ideological (Wahhabism) or ecological (climate refugees) origins. Many commentators and even former military officials correctly suggest that the war in Iraq is primarily responsible for unleashing the forces we now know as ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/etc. Here hopefully I can add some useful reflections and anecdotes.<br />
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Mesopotamian nightmares<br />
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When I was stationed in Iraq with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, in 2003-05, I didn’t know what the repercussions of the war would be, but I knew there would be a reckoning. That retribution, otherwise known as blowback, is currently being experienced around the world (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, France, Tunisia, California, and so on), with no end in sight.<br />
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Back then, I routinely saw and participated in obscenities. Of course, the wickedness of the war was never properly recognised in the West. Without question, anti-war organisations attempted to articulate the horrors of the war in Iraq, but the mainstream media, academia and political-corporate forces in the West never allowed for a serious examination of the greatest war crime of the 21st century.<br />
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As we patrolled the vast region of Iraq’s Al-Anbar Province, throwing MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) trash out of our vehicles, I never contemplated how we would be remembered in history books; I simply wanted to make some extra room in my Humvee. Years later, sitting in a Western Civilisation history course at university, listening to my professor talk about the cradle of civilisation, I thought of MRE garbage on the floor of the Mesopotamian desert.<br />
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Examining recent events in Syria and Iraq, I can’t help but think of the small kids my fellow Marines would pelt with Skittles from those MRE packages. Candies weren’t the only objects thrown at the children: water bottles filled with urine, rocks, debris and various other items were thrown as well. I often wonder how many members of ISIS and various other terrorist organisations recall such events.<br />
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Moreover, I think about the hundreds of prisoners we took captive and tortured in makeshift detention facilities staffed by teenagers from Tennessee, New York and Oregon. I never had the misfortune of working in the detention facility, but I remember the stories. I vividly remember the Marines telling me about punching, slapping, kicking, elbowing, kneeing and head-butting Iraqis. I remember the tales of sexual torture: forcing Iraqi men to perform sexual acts on each other while Marines held knives against their testicles, sometimes sodomising them with batons.<br />
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However, before those abominations could take place, those of us in infantry units had the pleasure of rounding up Iraqis during night raids, zip-tying their hands, black-bagging their heads and throwing them in the back of Humvees and trucks while their wives and kids collapsed to their knees and wailed. Sometimes, we would pick them up during the day. Most of the time they wouldn’t resist. Some of them would hold hands while Marines would butt-stroke the prisoners in the face. Once they arrived at the detention facility, they would be held for days, weeks and even months at a time. Their families were never notified. And when they were released, we would drive them from the FOB (Forward Operating Base) to the middle of the desert and release them several miles from their homes.<br />
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After we cut their zip-ties and took the black bags off their heads, several of our more deranged Marines would fire rounds from their AR-15s into the air or ground, scaring the recently released captives. Always for laughs. Most Iraqis would run, still crying from their long ordeal at the detention facility, hoping some level of freedom awaited them on the outside. Who knows how long they survived? After all, no one cared.<br />
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We do know of one former US prisoner who survived though: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS.<br />
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Amazingly, the ability to dehumanise the Iraqi people reached a crescendo after the bullets and explosions concluded, as many Marines spent their spare time taking pictures of the dead, often mutilating their corpses for fun or poking their bloated bodies with sticks for some cheap laughs. Because iPhones weren’t available at the time, several Marines came to Iraq with digital cameras. Those cameras contain an untold history of the war in Iraq, a history the West hopes the world forgets. That history and those cameras also contain footage of wanton massacres and numerous other war crimes, realities the Iraqis don’t have the pleasure of forgetting.<br />
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Unfortunately, I could recall countless horrific anecdotes from my time in Iraq. Innocent people were not only routinely rounded up, tortured and imprisoned, they were also incinerated by the hundreds of thousands, some studies suggest by the millions.<br />
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Only the Iraqis understand the pure evil that’s been waged on their nation. They remember the West’s role in the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran; they remember Clinton’s sanctions in the 1990s, policies which resulted in the deaths of well over 500,000 people, largely women and children. Then, 2003 came and the West finished the job.<br />
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Today, Iraq is an utterly devastated nation. The people are poisoned and maimed, and the natural environment is toxic from bombs laced with depleted uranium. After 14 years of the War on Terror, one thing is clear: the West is great at fomenting barbarism and creating failed states.<br />
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Living with ghosts<br />
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The warm and glassy eyes of young Iraqi children perpetually haunt me, as they should. The faces of those I’ve killed, or at least those whose bodies were close enough to examine, will never escape my thoughts. My nightmares and daily reflections remind me of where ISIS comes from and why exactly they hate us. That hate, understandable yet regrettable, will be directed at the West for years and decades to come. How could it be otherwise?<br />
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Again, the scale of destruction the West has inflicted in the Middle East is absolutely unimaginable to the vast majority of people living in the developed world. This point can never be overstated as Westerners consistently and naively ask, “Why do they hate us?”<br />
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In the end, wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions take place and subsequent generations live with the results: civilisations, societies, cultures, nations and individuals survive or perish. That’s how history works. In the future, how the West deals with terrorism will largely depend on whether or not the West continues their terroristic behaviour. The obvious way to prevent future ISIS-style organisations from forming is to oppose Western militarism in all its dreadful forms: CIA coups, proxy wars, drone strikes, counterinsurgency campaigns, economic warfare, etc.<br />
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Meanwhile, those of us who directly participated in the genocidal military campaign in Iraq will live with the ghosts of war.<br />
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Source: <a href="http://www.cpa.org.au/guardian/2016/1720/20-culture.html" target="_blank">http://www.cpa.org.au/guardian/2016/1720/20-culture.html </a><br />
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“I helped create ISIS”

A former US Marine who served in Iraq in 2003-05 explains how much ISIS is the product of the accumulated wrongs and horrific crimes com...

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

A fast growing club: Countries that use drones for killing by remote control

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The targeting crosshairs are focused on a dark building, tucked in the trees, when a missile dropped from the wings streaks down and the suspected terrorist base explodes in a fireball.<br />
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The grainy video might appear to be another U.S. drone strike, but this was a Nigerian military crew operating a Chinese-built Rainbow drone against Boko Haram, an extremist militia allied with Islamic State, in northeastern Nigeria's remote Sambisa Forest on Feb. 2.<br />
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Nigeria thus joined the small but fast-growing club of countries — six so far, including three since September — using armed drones for targeted killing by remote control.<br />
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The United States and Britain fly U.S.-made armed MQ-1 Predators or MQ-9 Reapers, and Israel builds its own. But the three newcomers — Nigeria, Pakistan and Iraq — all took advantage of China's growing exports of the unmanned aircraft systems that are reshaping modern warfare.<br />
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That worries some military analysts, who see China as undermining U.S. attempts to control a technology that gives poorer countries a relatively inexpensive bombing system that, critics say, lowers the threshold for using lethal force at a distance.<br />
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<u><i>(REALLY!!! Why not call it a defence sysem like te US does!!)</i></u><br />
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The "efforts to control the spread of drones will be relatively meaningless in the face of China's relative promiscuity when it comes to selling drones," said Sarah Kreps, a Cornell University professor who studies weapons proliferation. "China's drones seem especially attractive to countries that have … been rebuffed by the U.S."<br />
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China is "engaged in an ambitious effort" to sell drones in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, said Ian Easton, a research fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, which is based in Arlington, Va., and tracks security issues in Asia.<br />
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A total of 78 countries now deploy surveillance drones. More than 20, including the six named above, either have or are developing armed drones, according to the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy institute in Washington that tracks the industry.<br />
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Read more: <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-drone-proliferation-2-20160222-story.html" target="_blank">http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-drone-proliferation-2-20160222-story.html</a> </div>
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A fast growing club: Countries that use drones for killing by remote control

The targeting crosshairs are focused on a dark building, tucked in the trees, when a missile dropped from the wings streaks down and the...

Tuesday, February 23, 2016