Compiled and edited with comment by Carolyn Bennett
Without constantly factoring in these engagements, theaters, and proxies, which critically affect social, educational, governmental, structural policy and action in every sense ─ often looming silenced in a room ─ any talk about U.S. foreign or domestic conditions and relations is nothing more than empty rhetoric.
MIDDLE EAST
Israel’s “Double game”
“When dealing with world superpowers, Israel has long played a double game whenever its relationship with the U.S. permitted it. In the 1990s, Israel tried to help China out of its global isolation following the Tiananmen massacre. It even tried to lobby Washington for Chinese interests. The Israelis have long boasted of lobbying the U.S., the White House, Congress and media in favor of countries of little importance to the United States; countries with poor human rights records; or merely need U.S. support.… Eventually many tapped Israel and its U.S. lobby for help in return of better relations with a country long considered an international pariah.…One wonders if boasting that its lobby has major influence in Washington doesn't indirectly fuel anti-Semitic claims of Jewish influence and control.…
“The Netanyahu government’s aggressive policies and settlement expansion in occupied Palestinian lands following his predecessor’s war on Lebanon and Gaza is driving Israel further to isolation. The only regional issue that has kept Israel in the loop is the Iranian nuclear issue.…” [“Israel shakes down China,” (Marwan Bishara in Imperium on June 10th, 2010), http://blogs.aljazeera.net/Israel shakes down China Al Jazeera Blogs].
Palestine
A Palestinian died Friday when Israelis opened fire in occupied East Jerusalem. “Palestinian witnesses said the man was standing on the side of the road when Israeli police officers started firing indiscriminately, killing him and seriously injuring a young woman.” Israelis said the man had attempted to ram his car into two Israeli police officers. It remained unclear whether the incident was an accident or a deliberate attack. Israeli security forces were deployed across East Jerusalem in large numbers in anticipation of possible unrest. Israeli police had announced a policy of limited-access for under-40-year-old Palestinian men travelling from East Jerusalem to the al-Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers. Tensions between Israelis and Arabs in East Jerusalem remained high [“Israeli police kill Palestinian man,” June 11, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/201061116939579309.html].
Iraq blowback
June 8
Video footage from a helicopter cockpit shows a deadly aerial strike carried out in 2007 in the Iraqi capital. Twelve civilians died in the attack among them two Reuters’ journalists.
Twenty-two-year-old U.S. Army Specialist Bradley Manning deployed at a base near Baghdad last year allegedly leaked the classified combat video to a whistleblower website Wikileaks. Manning was arrested last month after he reportedly bragged online about leaking the video and U.S. diplomatic cables. The U.S. military is reported to have issued a statement saying the soldier currently in Kuwait is in “‘pre-trial confinement for allegedly releasing classified information’” [“U.S. solider arrested over Iraq video,” June 8, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/20106815818808270.html].
Yemen
June 7
Fifty-five people among them 14 women and 21 children died in this attack. Amnesty International released photographs on Monday apparently showing parts of a U.S. cruise missile and cluster munitions gathered from the site of the military strike last December in the village of al Ma'jalah in southern Yemen.
After the rights group published what is said to be new evidence of U.S. involvement in the strike, the United States faces fresh questions concerning its role in the 2009 attack on an alleged al-Qaeda camp in Yemen. Fourteen alleged al-Qaeda members also died.
“The Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program said, ‘A military strike of this kind against alleged militants, without an attempt to detain them is, at the very least, unlawful.… The fact that so many of the victims were actually women and children indicates that the attack was in fact grossly irresponsible, particularly given the likely use of cluster munitions’” [“‘U.S. missile’ used in Yemen strike,” June 7, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/20106653442608341.html].
Yemen
June 12
Tribal fighters in eastern Yemen today blew up an oil pipeline in retaliation for an army raid on the home of one of their leaders accused of harboring al-Qaeda operatives. “The sabotage targeted a section of the pipeline that runs about six kilometres east of Maarib, capital of the province of the same name” [“Oil pipeline blown up in Yemen,” June 12, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/20106126547917129.html].
SOUTHWEST ASIA
AF/PAK
Afghanistan
June 9
Four foreign soldiers died Wednesday in Afghanistan when their helicopter was shot down in the south of the country.
U.S. and British forces stationed in southern Afghanistan are planning major operations in the Kandahar area where the U.S. president has said 30,000 more U.S. troops will be deployed. Following the plane hijacking of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government accused Taliban of harboring al-Qaeda in the area and invaded Afghanistan [“NATO troops killed in Afghanistan,” June 9, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/20106911642572476.html].
Afghanistan
June 10
More than 40 people in a wedding party in Kandahar died on Wednesday. Dozens suffered wounds. Afghan president Hamid Karzai called the incident ‘a crime of massive inhuman proportions.’
Rising deaths among foreigners (nearly 300 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001) and rising costs straining already stretched public finances “are eroding the UK's public support for the war” [“Karzai condemns Kandahar bombing,” June 10, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/201061010921894475.html].
Afghanistan
June 11
Eleven civilians (among them women and children) and two U.S. soldiers died Friday in violence across southern Afghanistan. Taliban fighters have increased attacks ahead of the planned U.S.-NATO operation. Nine of the civilian deaths occurred when a roadside bomb struck a minibus in the city of Kandahar. The other two civilians died in Zabul, a province neighboring Kandahar, when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in a shopping area of Shahjoy district. Sixteen people suffered wounds [“Many killed in Afghan blasts,” June 11, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/201061174818697945.html].
Pakistan
June 11
Fifteen people have died in two U.S. drone attacks launched “against alleged Taliban strongholds.” Carried out 12 hours apart, these attacks hit “west and east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, a tribal region near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.” U.S. policy prohibits confirming drone attacks but “the U.S. army and Central Intelligence Agency are the only forces in the region with access to pilotless drones.”
More than 900 people among them many civilians have died “in nearly 100 drone raids on Pakistan since August 2008 and there have been at least 35 suspected drone attacks so far this year. This is a large increase over previous periods.”
Commenting on these drone killings the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions issued a report this month questioning the legality of CIA-directed drone attacks and calling them ‘license to kill without accountability.’ Moreover, critics have called these attacks “extra-judicial killings that create a ‘video-game warfare’ mentality … where civilian lives are not seriously valued” [“Deaths in Pakistan drone attacks,” June 11, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/201061113424264165.html].
EASTERN EUROPE/WESTERN ASIA
U.S.-Russia-Afghanistan Connection
NATO is said to have begun moving military supplies to Afghanistan through Russia after its convoys moving through Pakistan faced deadly attacks from the local Taliban. … Cargo had previously been shipped to the Pakistani port of Karachi and then transported into Afghanistan. The Alliance “cannot ship supplies through Iran’s southeastern port of Chahar Bahar due to the political dispute over Iran’s nuclear program [and] the Chinese route through the Wakhan Corridor is impractical “because the dirt road is blocked by snow for much of the year” [“NATO route opens through Russia,” June 12, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/2010611204927850979.html].
EAST ASIA
Koreas
Following the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, South Korea has put up loudspeakers in 11 locations along the tense border in order to resume anti-Pyongyang broadcasts, suspended since 2004. The North Koreans are calling the move ‘a direct declaration of a war’, a ‘flagrant violation’ of the inter-Korean declaration for peace and reconciliation signed in 2000. North and South Korea technically have remained at war since the end of the 1950-53 conflict and each side has waged cross-border propaganda campaigns during and since the end of the Cold War [“S Korea warned over loudspeakers,” June 12, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/06/20106124113542531.html].
Notes and more sources
“Yemen, an international quagmire,” Inside Story, January 5, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2010/01/20101562037795156.html
“Threats from al-Qaeda frightened the U.S. and the UK into indefinite closure of their embassies in Yemen. According to the U.S. embassy website, the danger is that the group’s Yemen-based offshoot, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is growing stronger and planning attacks on Western targets.”
Al Jazerra report May 30, 2010
A UN report released in January of this year revealed that at least 2,412 civilians had died in the Afghan conflict in 2009. The figure represented a 14 per cent increase over the previous year. NATO and Afghan government forces were responsible for 25 per cent of the deaths; and of those, about 60 per cent were due to airstrikes [“U.S. crew faulted in drone deaths,” May 30, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/05/201053034934522302.html].
Casualty sites reporting
June 12, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)
• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003
• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003
[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 177]
Wounded 31,844-100,000;
U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000;
Suicides 18 a day
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count figures:
96,663 – 105,409,
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,405 U.S., 4,723 Coalition;
AFGHANISTAN: 1,114 U.S., 1,823 Coalition
UPDATE ─ UK
Iraq
June 13
“Baghdad bombings hit central bank,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_east/10304652.stm
Twelve people died today when bombs went off within a few minutes of each other in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The attacks come on the eve of the Iraqi parliament’s first day in its new session.
Britain/Afghanistan
June 13
“[UK] Armed forces chief to quit early - Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup is to quit as head of the armed forces in the autumn, before the end of his term in April 2011.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/default.stm
Britain’s most senior military officer Jock Stirrup will cut short his tenure and leave his position in the autumn. As Air Chief Marshal, Jock Stirrup has been chief of the defense staff since 2006. The previous Labour government had asked him to extend his term. The UK Ministry of Defense civil servant Bill Jeffrey will also leave his position.
“British troops joined a U.S.-led coalition that invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban in that country were accused of providing a sanctuary for al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.” Approximately 295 British service personnel have died in Afghanistan since military operations began in 2001.
June 13
Pakistan
“Pakistani agents ‘funding and training Afghan Taliban’ ─ Pakistan's links with the Taliban could go much deeper than thought,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/default.stm
“Pakistani intelligence gives funding, training and sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban on a scale much larger than previously thought, a report says. London School of Economics authors of the report suggest that support for the Afghan Taliban was ‘official ISI policy.’
“The ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] first became involved in funding and training militants in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979. Since 2001 the ISI has been a key U.S. ally, receiving billions of dollars in aid in return for helping fight al-Qaeda.”
Wikipedia ref. note: “The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (also Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI) is the largest intelligence service in Pakistan. It is one of the three main branches of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.”
The report on Pakistani intelligence leaves no other conclusion than that the United States government ─ while claiming to fight “an enemy” and killing and traumatizing thousands of Afghanis, Pakistanis, Americans and sundry foreign nationals ─ is simultaneously funding (with debt and taxes) the very group it insists is a mad “extremist” bent on destroying “the West’s way of life.”
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