Almost funny. This is what a floundering empire looks like (via Wired): Insurgencies are amongst the hardest conflicts to predict. Insurgents can be loosely organized, split into factions, and strike from out of nowhere. But now researchers have demonstrated that with enough data, you might actually predict where insurgent violence will strike next. The results,…
Showing all posts tagged United States
How the US is expanding its African reach
Nick Turse writes in TomDispatch: They call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today’s “spice road” has nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks.… Instead, it’s a superpower’s superhighway, on which trucks and ships shuttle fuel, food, and military equipment…
The US still doesn’t know who the Taliban are and have thankfully lost the Afghan war years ago
Via Wired: Since January 2011, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan claims it’s killed or captured over 100 insurgent “leaders.” Too bad it doesn’t have any clear idea what “leader” means. Any insurgent who commands another person apparently qualifies. And worse, by that criteria, Taliban and aligned insurgents have killed twice as many U.S. troops in…
Beyond the rhetorical flourish, Obama is typical US President
In a long and pretty unremarkable look at Barack Obama’s attitude towards the Israel/Palestine conflict in the Washington Post yesterday, this paragraph reveals all you need to know. The Zionist lobby has far too influence in US politics and Obama in practice is little different to every President before him when it comes to accepting…
What’s some billions lost in Iraq between friends?
No heads will roll and nothing will be remembered. History is forgotten. Money was wasted and for what? Today’s Iraq is burning: After years of following the paper trail of $51 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars provided to rebuild a broken Iraq, the U.S. government can say with certainty that too much was wasted. But…
Wikileaks wins important legal fight against Visa cowardice
Here’s a just released Wikileaks statement: In a case against Valitor, formerly VISA Iceland, ReykjavÃk District Court just ruled the company had violated contract laws by blocking credit card donations to Wikileaks. After WikiLeaks’ publications revealing U.S. war crimes and statecraft in 2010, U.S. financial institutions, including VISA, MasterCard, Bank of America, erected a banking…
Yet another company profits from Australia’s privatised detention system
Shameful (via Paige Taylor in The Australian): It will cost about $29 million over the next 20 months for independent observers to watch over young, unaccompanied asylum-seekers in Australia’s immigration detention camps. The figure is the nominal amount of a new contract between the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the US-linked Maximus Solutions to…
