Brandishing the official excuse that near-nonagenarian King Abdullah was not able to receive him, Charles of Arabia declined to discuss with the House of Saud the absolutely appalling women’s rights, migrant workers’ rights and for that matter the full human rights situation in the kingdom. Of course not; this is only brought up when demonizing Russia, China and/or Iran.
On one side we have the Obama administration dying to exit Afghanistan, but with the Pentagon adamant on keeping boots on the ground and at least some well-located pearls in its vast Empire of Bases.
On the other we have a US puppet who needs to think about his future after whatever form the American exit takes; otherwise the Taliban may grill him like a live kebab.
Mike Raddie discusses today’s agreement between UK and France on future drone technology development
The discovery of links connecting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Al- Qaeda is upsetting Turkish politics. Ankara not only actively supported terrorism in Syria, but did so as part of a NATO strategy. For Thierry Meyssan, the case also shows the artificiality of armed groups fighting against the government and the Syrian people.
Afghan government figures reveal that 60 per cent of children are malnourished and only 27 per cent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water. Many survive only through remittances from relatives working abroad or through the drug business, which is worth some 15 per cent of the Afghan gross national product.
“As the weather was dusty, the marine forces based there thought he was enemy and opened fire. As a result of mistaken fire, he was killed,” the spokesman for the governor of Helmand Province, Omar Zwak, told Reuters.
For 2014 though, plenty of signs point to a tectonic shift in the geopolitical map of Eurasia, with Iran finally emerging as the real superpower in Southwest Asia over the designs of both Israel and the House of Saud. Now that’s (geopolitical) entertainment. Happy New Year.
Robert Parry, Consortium News joins Thom Hartmann. Al Qaeda is back – with a vengeance. Islamic militants linked to the terrorist group have taken over two Iraqi cities – almost 10 years after the American military took those same cities from insurgents during the bloody early days of the Iraq War. Has Bush’s Invasion of Iraq doomed the people of the Middle East to decades of sectarian violence?
It is well-documented that the U.S. government has – at least at some times in some parts of the world – protected drug operations.
Big American banks also launder money for drug cartels. Indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis. And the U.S. drug money laundering is continuing to this day. The U.S. military has openly said that it is protecting Afghani poppy fields
the war on terror is mutating, growing and spreading. Drone attacks, which have escalated under Obama from Pakistan to north Africa, are central to this new phase. And as Dirty Wars – the powerful new film by the American journalist Jeremy Scahill – makes clear, so are killings on the ground by covert US special forces, proxy warlords and mercenaries in multiple countries.
U.S. pundits cheer when some African warlord or East European brute is dragged before an international tribunal, but not at the thought of justice being meted out to George W. Bush or other architects of post-9/11 torture and aggressive war on Iraq
Twelve years after the start of the war, Afghanistan is still a basket case, severely limiting Karzai’s ability to follow Maliki’s example. Karzai has spent years walking a political tightrope, objecting to night raids by US Special Forces, assailing American airstrikes that have killed many civilians—once even threatening to join the Taliban himself. Indeed, in his speeches to the loya jirga, Karzai stressed that civilian casualties are an explosive issue.
