Patrick Cockburn in the Independent: As the US and its allies ponder what to do about Syria, one suggestion advanced by the protagonists of armed intervention is to use unmanned drones to attack Syrian government targets. The proposal is a measure of the extraordinary success of the White House, CIA and Defense Department in selling…
Showing all posts tagged Pakistan
Scahill calls out liberals for remaining largely silent over Obama’s drone murders
After last week’s New York Times feature on Obama’s “Kill List” for supposed terrorists, independent journalist Jeremy Scahill tells MSNBC that the US President has created a Minority Report style of justice: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Memo to media; American killing of “militants” is often not the truth
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald: Earlier this week,… The New York Times… reported… that the Obama administration, in order to conceal civilian deaths caused by their drone attacks, “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.”… Although I wrote at length about the… NYT”˜s various revelations,… I… wrote separately… about that specific disclosure, in order to emphasize the implications for media outlets reporting…
The militarisation of aid in “war on terror”
This is a growing issue since 9/11, where the US military and others are perfectly happy to corrupt the NGO process by delivering so-called aid and development themselves, therefore trying to convince people under occupation that the military will “save” them. The vitally important separation between the military and aid has largely disappeared. This story…
Scahill on Obama’s war on Muslim civilians
The relentless US-led drone war against “terrorists” in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond rarely examines who is actually being killed. President Obama has massively expanded the global program. This weekend saw a Drone Summit held… in Washington DC that highlighted this still largely secret war. A keynote speaker was the leading investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill…
Shadow of Bin Laden continues to haunt
The life and times of Osama Bin Laden post 9/11 remains shrouded in mystery. During my recent visit to Pakistan, I spent time with Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani Army Brigadier, who personally investigated the story behind Bin Laden’s killing last year. This lead story in the Guardian by Jason Bourke adds more details to…
The kindly Washington gift to dysfunctional Pakistan
Today’s Pakistan is a nation with various sources of power but the intelligence services, ISI, are who truly controls the place. Dilip Hiro writes in TomDispatch about who has been largely funding this degradation since 9/11: It is common knowledge that Pakistani judges, fearing for their lives, generally refrain from convicting high-profile jihadists with political…
Private militias polluting Pakistan
My following investigation is the lead story on Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar English: The past decade has seen a significant increase in foreign investments in the private security market around the Middle East. Pakistan is one of the countries that attracted the most attention in this global mercenary business. The American killing of Osama bin Laden last…