Why We Can't Save Her

Powerful video from the International Committee for the Red Cross...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm0TYebjyHQ

The Killing of Osama by Seymour Hersh

The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE....
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

Life under drones — in victims’ own words

‘I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer grey skies.’

Read full article here...

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/war/150210/living-under-drones-victims-own-words

The Gift of American Power

Often I'm inundated with left-wing liberal media, so it's refreshing to get a different point a view even if I don't entirely agree with it....great article by Robert D. Kaplan

The United States is not a traditional empire because it has no colonies, but its military -- and the diplomatic power that accompanies it -- is deployed in an imperial-like fashion worldwide. The U.S. Navy calls itself a global force for good. That claim would pass the most stringent editorial fact-checking process. Without that very naked American ambition, which allows the Navy and the Air Force to patrol the global commons, the world is reduced to the sum of its parts: a Japan and China, and a China and India, dangerously at odds and on the brink of war; a Middle East in far wider war and chaos; a Europe neutralized and emasculated by Russian Revanchism; and an Africa in even greater disarray. It is not that regional powers cannot act rationally on their own; it is only that without a global hegemon of sorts, local balance-of-power interactions become more fraught with risk and are, therefore, more dangerous.

READ MORE HERE....
http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2014/05/15/the_gift_of_american_power.html

Captured: Joaqin "El Chapo" Guzmán, Mexico's No 1 drug lord

Early on Saturday, dozens of soldiers and police officers descended on a hotel-condominium tower in Mazatlán, Mexico, a beach resort known as much as a hangout for drug traffickers as for its seafood and surf.

The forces were following yet another tip about the whereabouts of the trafficker Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, who, to the utter frustration of American and Mexican pursuers, had eluded such raids for 13 years since escaping from prison in a...

READ MORE HERE...
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/10655962/Captured-Joaqin-El-Chapo-Guzman-Mexicos-No-1-drug-lord.html


Another great article...

Mexican Kingpin El Chapo Guzman Hid In Secret Tunnels And Sewers Before Being Captured

 

Korea Execution Is Tied to Clash Over Businesses

Radio Free Asia, in a report last week that cited anonymous North Korean sources, reported that Mr. Kim saw North Korean soldiers malnourished during his recent visits to islands near the disputed western sea border...

Read more here...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/asia/north-korea-purge.html?hp&_r=0

also...

A Need Now to Prepare for North Korea's Collapse

The Whistleblowers

In the past week I've read about two whistleblowers... and it's made me wonder which one of them will get killed first.  Sorry state of affairs to be honest, certainly there needs to be much more protection afforded to whistleblowers.

Author of Blog del Narco, chronicle of Mexico's drug war, flees

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations

 

Other Whistleblowers

Update:

NSA hacks China, leaker Snowden claims

 

Iraq, Afghan wars will cost to $4 trillion to $6 trillion, Harvard study says

 A new study has put the total cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars at between $4 and $6 trillion. By my calculation that's more than $40,000 per American household. And of course that's just the financial cost, not including the toll in American or Iraqi lives.

 To put that sum in perspective, the mid-range figure of $5 trillion is enough (by UNESCO numbers) to get all the remaining unschooled kids in the world through primary school for the next 312 years. In other words, for the first time in the history of the world, we would have had universal literacy--and education often fights extremism more effectively than bombs.

Read more here...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/study-iraq-afghan-war-costs-to-top-4-trillion/2013/03/28/b82a5dce-97ed-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html

Mexican police charged in attack on CIA officers

There are two Mexicos.
There is the one reported by the US press, a place where the Mexican president is fighting a valiant war on drugs, aided by the Mexican army and the Mérida Initiative, the $1.4 billion in aid the United States has committed to the cause. This Mexico has newspapers, courts, laws, and is seen by the United States government as a sister republic.
It does not exist.

There is a second Mexico where the war is for drugs, where the police and the military fight for their share of drug profits, where the press is restrained by the murder of reporters and feasts on a steady diet of bribes, and where the line between the government and the drug world has never existed.

Mexican police charged in attack on CIA officers


Fourteen officers in Mexico’s federal police force have been formally charged with the attempted murder of a pair of American CIA operatives who were attacked in their armored SUV in August on a road south of the capital, federal prosecutors said Friday.
In a statement, prosecutors said the officers’ actions were deliberate, alleging that they “intended to take the lives of two functionaries from the United States Embassy in Mexico,” as well as a member of the Mexican navy who was traveling with them through dangerous country on their way to a Mexican military training facility.

 READ MORE HERE...
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/11/mexican-police-charged-cia.html

Mexican Official:  CIA "Manages" Drug War

The US Central Intelligence Agency and other international security forces "don't fight drug traffickers", a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico has told Al Jazeera, instead "they try to manage the drug trade".
 
Allegations about official complicity in the drug business are nothing new when they come from activists, professors, campaigners or even former officials. However, an official spokesman for the authorities in one of Mexico's most violent states - one which directly borders Texas - going on the record with such accusations is unique.

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/07/2012721152715628181.html?utm_content=features&utm_campaign=features&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=rss&utm_medium=tweet

The World is Safer Now. But Who Cares?

The world is safer now, but no one in Washington can talk about it...

Excerpt:

Obama says terrorist networks remain the greatest threat to the United States. “We have to remain vigilant,” he warned recently. But global terrorism has barely touched most Americans in the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, with 238 U.S. citizens killed in terrorist attacks, mostly in war zones, according to the National Counterterrorism Center’s annual reports. By comparison, the Consumer Product Safety Commission found that 293Americans were crushed during the same stretch by falling furniture or televisions.

Beyond the United States, global statistics point undeniably toward progress in achieving greater peace and stability.
READ MORE HERE... 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-world-is-safer-but-no-one-in-washington-can-talk-about-it/2012/11/02/2e59cfea-2442-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_story.html

Is the US Provoking a War between Japan and China?

Ex-Envoy Says U.S. Stirs China-Japan Tensions

Excerpt:

Mr. Chen accused the United States of encouraging the right wing in Japan, and fanning a rise of militarism. 

“The U.S. is urging Japan to play a greater role in the region in security terms, not just in economic terms,” he said during his speech at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong. That “suits the purpose of the right wing in Japan more than perfectly — their long-held dream is now possible to be realized.”

The United States has said that, in the event of conflict, the disputed islands are covered by its mutual defense treaty with Japan, a position that China has severely criticized since the latest dispute flared last month. 

Mr. Chen described what he called the intervention of the United States in territorial disputes in the South China Sea — where China has been at odds with another American ally, the Philippines — as a way for the United States to expand its influence and restrain the influence of China. 

“Will these countries misjudge and draw China and the United States into a confrontation?” Mr. Chen asked. “The danger is apparent, and China needs to be aware of that.” 

READ MORE HERE...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/world/asia/in-speech-organized-by-beijing-ex-diplomat-calls-islands-dispute-with-japan-a-time-bomb.html 

Welcome Home

This is the Pulitzer Prize Winning Feature about a soldier suffering from PTSD.  Certainly, documentary photography at it's finest...

 

 Scott looks over his military service records and weeps after being told his apartment application had been turned down. The leasing manager said he couldn't allow Scott to move in because of an assault charge on his background check. Though Scott had his honorable discharge papers and his good-conduct medal, Scott said they meant nothing. 'I'm not a criminal. You would think this would be worth something. It should be. It's not, though.' (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post -Dec. 29, 2011)

 

 Scott drinks a beer outside the VFW Post in Longmont, Colo. Scott recalled his worst day in Iraq. 'We got this infantry platoon attached to us to beef up our numbers. ... There was this one guy, and I knew right away that we were going to be friends. ... The vehicle he was riding in the passenger seat hit a really big bomb that day - really big IED, and it trapped him inside the humvee, and I got to listen to and watch him scream as he burned. And I never learned his name. There was nothing I could do. ... I lost a friend that I never had.' (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post - December 29, 2011)

 After punching a hole in his bedroom door, Scott panics in his living room. 'My PTSD comes from long exposure to combat trauma,' Scott said. 'I think it comes from the fact that I survived. That wasn't my plan. It's an honor to die for my country, but I made it home.' Scott said that being diagnosed with PTSD 'means I have nightmares every night. It means I'm hyper-vigilant -- It means I have no fuse and if I get attacked, I'm going to kill. 'I don't want to feel this way.

Scott watches an evening storm roll in outside his apartment. 'I'm just feeling guilty about the things I did. I was a brutal killer, and I rejoiced in it. I was bred to be a killer, and I did it. Now I'm trying to adapt and feel human again. But to feel human, I feel guilty. I did horrible things to people... That's why I can't eat: I feel guilty, I feel sick.' 

SEE FULL SLIDESHOW HERE...
http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2012-Feature-Photography# 

Also see more Pulitzer Prize Winning Photos here...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2131084/Pulitzer-Prize-winners-2012-Picture-screaming-girl-standing-amid-Afghan-suicide-attack-carnage.html 

And lastly an exceptional documentary called "Hell and Back Again" which depicts the reality of modern war and the pain of reintegration.
http://hellandbackagain.com/ 
(It's easy to download this doc from torrentz...)

Best Military Photographs of the Year

 

An AC-130U Gunship from the 4th Special Operations Squadron flies a local training mission on January 27, 2011 at Hurlburt Field, Florida.

 

Sgt. 1st Class John Berentis, from Yuma, Ariz., and Staff Sgt. Laura Dickmeyer, from Abilene, Texas - members of the U.S. Army Parachute Team - assess wind conditions aloft prior to their pre-game jump into FedEx field for the Army vs. Navy game.

 

Above, U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Reagan Lodge, conducts water running exercises during a physical training session in Ramer Hall, on Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia on Sept. 14.

 

First Place, News category

"A Father's Salute"

The father of Lance Cpl. Christopher Mies salutes the casket of his son at Buckley Air Force Base.

SEE MORE HERE...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/23/combat_camera?page=0,8#0

Latin America wants out of drug war

Philadelphia Inquirer

Apr. 14, 2012

Excerpt:

Latin American countries are rightfully fed up with fighting Washington’s war on drugs. In the four decades since President Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, its battles have been fought predominantly in Latin American nations, leaving behind a trail of death and corruption while failing to achieve any of its goals.

Central America has become a hub for drug smugglers. American-style street gangs operate as the armed muscle of the drug cartels, bringing the violence in Central America to levels that rival those of the civil wars of the 1980s. The bloodshed has even spread to countries that until recently enjoyed some of the lowest crime rates in the world, such as Costa Rica and Belize.

In addition, the perception in the region is that the United States makes tough demands on other governments to combat drug cartels while doing too little to reduce demand at home. America remains the largest drug consumer market in the world. Furthermore, its lax gun laws have made it the main source of weapons for drug cartels, and its financial institutions enjoy much of the profit of the drug business.

Some former Latin American leaders and U.S. officials have long advocated decriminalization of drugs to address the failure of the existing approach. But it’s only been recently that current leaders of Latin American countries have joined the calls for that approach.

First, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, a conservative whose nation is the United States’ staunchest ally in the war on drugs, declared the drug war a failure and came out in support of decriminalization. Then, a few weeks ago, President Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala, a conservative former general, said he would consider legalizing the possession and transportation of drugs, and he called for a meeting of all of Central America’s presidents to debate the issue.

READ MORE HERE...
 
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20120414_Latin_America_breaking_ranks_on_drug_war.html

Semper Fi: Always Faithful

Here's a documentary that is definitely worth looking out for...Thanks for the link Kara!

Semper Fi: Always Faithful” tells the story of Marine Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger, a devoted Marine for nearly twenty five years who lived and breathed the U.S. military.  But when his nine-year-old daughter died of a rare form of leukemia, his world fell apart. Years later, he made the shocking discovery of an alleged Marine Corps cover-up that the drinking water at the Corps Base was highly contaminated by toxic chemicals for thirty years.

According to the film, it is estimated that almost one million Marines and their families were exposed to these high levels of carcinogens, a fact which was never exposed to the public. The film also alleges that to this day, only a fraction of former residents who lived there during 1957 to 1987 – many of who have lost children or are now sick themselves – even know that they were exposed.

“A big shocker is the fact that the Department of Defense is our nation’s largest polluter. The other thing that is shocking is the influence of special interest groups and polluters on the regulation of harmful chemicals.

Watch trailer here...

 

Find out more here...
http://semperfialwaysfaithful.com/

The Price of 9/11

As the mainstream media keeps drumming the "official" 9/11 story into the minds of viewers, it's good to see that some news outlets like Truthout are talking about the true cost of 9/11...

New York – The September 11, 2001, terror attacks by Al Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush’s response to the attacks compromised America’s basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to Al Qaeda – as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive – orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning – as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation.

Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I calculated America’s war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3-5 trillion. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50% of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans’ medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health-care costs will total $600-900 billion. But the social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable.

Read more here:

http://www.truth-out.org/price-911/1315403131

UPDATE:

 The Years of Shame by Paul Krugman
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/
Related:
Missing Iraq Cash as High as 18 billion
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.com/2011/06/missing-iraq-cash-as-high-as-18-billion.html

Drone Warfare

Grim Reaper, with 4 Hellfire Missiles, 2 sidewinder air to air missiles, and 2 GBU Paveway laser guided bombs, can fly at 60,000 feet, controlled from Nevada, USA by computer.

The US has stepped up it's use of drones in Pakistan's tribal region. The drone program is run by the CIA, Special forces units and various civilian contractors. Deeply unpopular among Pakistani residents because of the high civilian death toll, the drone program operates in a theater without oversight or accountability. What's interesting here is that right now a new realm of warfare is quickly unfolding before our eyes. Pakistan could be a microcosm of the future of war in which robot replaces soldier. Already, the US is working on NANO Drones...which are the size of birds or insects.

Jane Mayer’s “The Predator War” in the current New Yorker is a must-read addressing an essential issue... have our accountability and oversight mechanisms kept track with technological developments? The answer seems equally clear: no.

UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Philip Alston said the US needs to be more up front, ‘otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line that the CIA is running a program that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability.’

All told, as many as 10 militant leaders fell to the drones in 2009, in addition to hundreds of lower-level militants and civilians.

The killing of civilians in drone attacks is an important and politically charged issue in Pakistan. The strikes are quite unpopular among Pakistanis, who view them as violations of national sovereignty; according to a Gallup poll from August 2009, only 9 percent approved of such attacks. Statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities in early January 2010 indicated that more than 700 civilians were killed by the drones in 2009 alone.

At the other end of the spectrum, an anonymous U.S. government official told the New York Times in early December that “just over 20” civilians and “more than 400” fighters had been killed in less than two years.

Other commentators have suggested that the civilian death rate from the drone attacks in Pakistan is 98 percent, while one study claims it is only 10 percent. Trying to ascertain the real civilian death rate from the drone strikes is important both as a moral matter and as a matter of international law, which prohibits indiscriminate attacks against civilians.

Compounding the issue is that the civilians who die in these strikes are the citizens of a U.S. ally, and just as it has become a core doctrine of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan that civilians must be protected, so too it should be across the border in Pakistan.

Read more here...

The Predator War

What are the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_mayer

Death From Above, Outrage Down Below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17exum.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

The Secret US War in Pakistan

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

http://www.thenation.com/article/secret-us-war-pakistan

The Year of the Drone

An Analysis of U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004-2010

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/26/the_year_of_the_drone

Here's a documentary about the future of Drone warfare:

http://ajarnmike.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-robot-drones-revolutionized-face-of.html

UPDATE....
BBC ---Mapping the Drone Attacks: A Special Report...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10648909

Pictures of Thai Military Crackdown in Bangkok

Amazing pictures of the Thai military crackdown in Bangkok...(Thanks for the link John!)

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/crackdown_in_bangkok.html

Rape case to force US defence firms into the open

Another strike against Halliburton...it was only a few months ago in which they were convicted of bribery of Nigerian government officials and now this...

Senate passes measure prompted by case of woman prevented from suing over alleged rape by Halliburton/KBR colleagues

Excerpt:

In legal papers Jones, who was 20 at the time, says she was fed a knockout drug while drinking with KBR firefighters.

"When she awoke the next morning still affected by the drug, she found her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured and her pectoral muscles torn‚ which would later require reconstructive surgery. Upon walking to the rest room, she passed out again," the papers say.

Read more at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/15/defence-contractors-rape-claim-block

HOW ROBOT DRONES REVOLUTIONIZED THE FACE OF WARFARE

War most certainly will never be the same. In the future, wars will primarily be fought without soldiers on the battlefield. This absolutely fascinating yet, scary documentary about the future of robots in war is a window into our future. Check it out...
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/23/wus.warfare.remote.uav/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
PS: It's in three parts. Enjoy!