Honest Independent Aggregate News
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has mistakenly admitted for the first time the cost of a secret multibillion-pound programme it manages for the Saudi Arabian royal family’s de facto protection force, which is also active in the devastating war in Yemen.
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But by the time Obama arrived in Oslo to accept the prize two months later, he had approved a 30,000 troop surge in Afghanistan, dashing any hopes that the anti-war candidate would reverse the militarism of the Bush administration. By the end of his second term, Guantanamo Bay – the closing of which he had made a cornerstone of his first presidential campaign – remained open.
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What’s happening is a quadruple win.
1. The US performs a face saving withdrawal, which Trump can sell as avoiding a conflict with NATO alley Turkey.
2. Turkey has the guarantee – by the Russians – that the Syrian Army will be in control of the Turkish-Syrian border.
3. Russia prevents a war escalation and keeps the Russia-Iran-Turkey peace process alive.
4. And Syria will eventually regain control of its oilfields and the entire northeast.
In the past year, “telecommunications interception equipment,” or software & technology for it, has been exported to authoritarian regimes such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, report Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis.
In June this year the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, called for an immediate worldwide moratorium on the sale, transfer and use of surveillance technology until human rights-compliant regulatory frameworks are in place.
He noted, “Surveillance tools can interfere with human rights, from the right to privacy and freedom of expression to rights of association and assembly, religious belief, non-discrimination, and public participation. And yet they are not subject to any effective global or national control.”
Ecuador’s workers are rising up against the IMF-mandated neoliberal economic reforms of President Lenin Moreno, a close ally of Washington who calls them “zánganos,” or drone bees.
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“[They] face increased risks of all forms of exploitation including being forced to join the fighting, child labor and early marriage. They lose the opportunity to develop and grow in a caring and stimulating environment, ultimately becoming trapped in a life of poverty and hardship.” A team of investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council found numerous cases of Saudi airstrikes that violated international humanitarian law and, for the first time, directly implicated the United States, Britain, France and Australia for supplying the weapons used in the attacks.
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A recent interview given by a former high-ranking official in Israeli military intelligence has claimed that Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual blackmail enterprise was an Israel intelligence operation run for the purpose of entrapping powerful individuals and politicians in the United States and abroad.
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It is an irony not to be missed, that not only does World Problematique underlie “right wing” neo conservatism, but is also at the root of the rise of the “new left” ecological movement as its leading adherents included Sir Alexander King who used it to create the Club of Rome in 1969 and a new green technocracy governed by the quasi-science of systems analysis which is more focused upon depopulation than actually cleaning the environment [1].
So if you are happy living in a world that denies creativity, then a new bureaucracy of risk management is the way to go. If, on the other hand, you are a member of the human species and have faith that we were created for something better, then you might want to applaud China’s Belt and Road Initiative, celebrate Hong Kong’s participation in it, and hope your nation joins if it hasn’t done so yet.
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A month before Hillary Clinton spread the widely-believed myth that WikiLeaks had never revealed anything on Russia, the publication had already released more than a million files on the country.
This is the fifth article in a series that is looking back on the major works of the publication that has altered the world since its founding in 2006. The series is an effort to counter mainstream media coverage, which is ignoring WikiLeaks’ work, and is instead focusing on Julian Assange’s personality. It is WikiLeaks’ uncovering of governments’ crimes and corruption that set the U.S. after Assange, ultimately leading to his arrest on April 11 and indictment under the U.S. Espionage Act.
Take Afghanistan, for example, the only war longer than the American debacle in the Philippines. After 18 indecisive and bloody years of combat, the US military and its Afghan allies now kill more civilians annually than the vicious Taliban. That ought to be cause for pause, reflection, concern. Only it isn’t, not in Washington, not even in most universities. These war crimes hardly crack mainstream media and the macabre photo evidence barely raises an American eyebrow. That’s apathy manifested as tragedy.
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Over the past two decades, Israel and Arab Gulf monarchies have forged a tacit partnership, increasingly aligning their interests and agendas, while hiding behind a public perception of being enemies. Saudi-Israeli links are not new. Though still having no official diplomatic relations, in recent years the Kingdom and Israel have put far less effort into concealing their unspoken strategic partnership.
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There is an unquestionable contradiction between Snowden’s opposition to Assange’s arrest and the rhetorical games he plays with Assange’s character in his memoir, Permanent Record.
Sadly, Snowden does not need to disparage Assange to appear responsible, honest, and humble—unless, of course, his audience is not the global millions of his adoring supporters but instead the same national security state functionaries he exposed six years ago. If this is the case, perhaps Snowden isn’t as far removed from the United States’ imperialistic project as many of us had hoped.
Hong Kong’s increasingly xenophobic protests are devolving into chaos with help from US government regime-change outfits and a right-wing local media tycoon with close ties to hardliners in Washington.
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The fight for Manning and Assange’s freedom must be taken up by workers all over the world. If it is to be effective this struggle must be connected to the fight for the social and political rights of the working class as a whole and the fight against war and capitalism.
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The Australian-born Assange has previously been awarded with accolades and respect for his truth-telling journalism which exposed massive crimes, corruption and nefarious intrigues by the US government and its Western allies.
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