Source: Al Jazeera, Fault Lines
“For the first time in nine years there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. After a decade of war that’s cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, the nation we need to build is our own.”
Barack Obama, the US president
In keeping with Barack Obama’s presidential campaign promise, the US has withdrawn its troops from Iraq and by the end of 2012 US spending in Iraq will be just five per cent of what it was at its peak in 2008.
Source: Tom Dispatch
On July 12th, TomDispatch posted the latest piece in Nick Turse’s “changing face of empire” series: “Obama’s Scramble for Africa.” It laid out in some detail the way in which the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has, in recent years, spread its influence across that continent, establishing bases and outposts, sending in special operations forces and drones, funding proxy forces on the continent, and so on. As last week ended, TomDispatch received a “letter to the editor” from Colonel Tom Davis, director of the U.S. Africa Command Office of Public Affairs, disputing in some detail a number of Turse’s points. (Colonel Davis also sent a copy of the letter to the Nation Institute, which supports this website.)
Source: The Nation
Fungurume—The 73 million human beings who live here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to struggle through one of the greatest humanitarian disasters on the planet since the end of the Second World War. By one estimate, more than 5 million people have died since the Second Congo War broke out in 1998. Fighting has just started up again in eastern Congo; hundreds are already dead, and there may already be more than 200,000 refugees, adding to the 2 million Congolese already displaced by war. Doctors Without Borders has just warned that the renewed violence is blocking efforts to control an outbreak of cholera.
Source: The Real News Network
A recent report found that one African American dies in an extrajudicial killing every 36 hours. What are the systemic factors at play?
Source: Al Jazeera
As drought takes its toll on US crops, we ask if it is time to reassess the global food market.
Source: The New York Times News Service/Truthout
In a significant expansion of the war on drugs, the United States has begun training an elite unit of counternarcotics police in Ghana and planning similar units in Nigeria and Kenya as part of an effort to combat the Latin American cartels that are increasingly using Africa to smuggle cocaine into Europe.
The growing American involvement in Africa follows an earlier escalation of antidrug efforts in Central America, according to documents, Congressional testimony and interviews with a range of officials at the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Pentagon.
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