Writing about and reporting the Middle East is not an easy task, especially during these years of turmoil and upheaval. While physical maps remain largely intact, the geopolitical map of the region is in constant influx.
While some aspects of the conflict are stagnating between a corrupt, ineffectual Palestinian Authority (PA), and the criminality of Israeli wars and occupation, it would also be fair to argue that 2014 was also a game changer to some degree - and it is not all bad news.
Source: ABC News
Wikileaks has released a CIA document from 2009 analyzing the positive and negative effects of strikes against high value targets.The U.S. military has used high value targeting of insurgent leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the CIA also uses drone strikes to target high value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan and Yemen.
The 18 page secret document is dated July 7, 2009 and is entitled “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency: Making High Value Targeting Operations an Effective Counterinsurgency Tool”.
The anti-secrecy Wikileaks posted the report on its website Thursday. A press release accompanying the release said the report was compiled by the CIA’s Office of Transnational Issues and “weighs the pros and cons of killing “insurgent” leaders in assassination plots.”
When the people of Hernani, Spain, began a residential compost system, they weren’t looking to become heroes of the movement for climate justice.
Source: Tom Dispatch
Go to war and every politician will thank you, and they’ll continue to do so — with monuments and statues, war museums and military cemeteries — long after you’re dead. But who thanks those who refused to fight, even in wars that most people later realized were tragic mistakes? Consider the 2003 invasion of Iraq, now widely recognized as igniting an ongoing disaster. America’s politicians still praise Iraq War veterans to the skies, but what senator has a kind word to say about the hundreds of thousands of protesters who marched and demonstrated before the invasion was even launched to try to stop our soldiers from risking their lives in the first place?
There is a fire that burns within everyday people. Fueled when disrespected or dehumanized, this fire ignites when people in our community are shot and killed by police. It is nurtured when those same people realize they are not alone, and learn that this rage is shared by many.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019