Speaking Truth to Power

Victims, in uniform or out of uniform. Watch here.

Another week in Libya...

Another £40 million...

Military chiefs have acknowledged that the air campaign would last six months. At this rate, the Ministry of Defence's own estimates will put the cost of war at about £400m, but the expert view is that the figure will top £1bn by September.

Bin Laden oddities

Amar al Sadah, the mysterious fifth wife of Bin Laden is still being interrogated in Pakistan. I'm very interested to hear what she says. The latest speculation is that she tipped off the US about where Bin laden and his two other wives and children were hiding. Or, alternatively

The joke doing the rounds in Pakistan is that Bin laden gave himself away to the Americans as he found his life with three wives and many children too hot to handle

Also

On 13 May, the Times of India reported that Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said the claim that Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden had been hiding in the Abbottabad compound for the past six years "is not authentic."

Source:
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-05-13/news/29539863_1_al-sadah-abbottabad-compound-bin-laden

You'd think the Seal team would take a wife or three to get humint from. Anyway, the whole marriage arrangement sounds very bizarre:

International Channel Watch News says her marriage to Bin Laden was arranged by a prominent Al Qaeda leader in Yemen called Sheikh Mohammed Rashed Saeed Ismail.

The task of convincing the parents of Amal that Bin Laden was a suitable bridegroom lay on Ismail too. He told the parents that Bin Laden was looking for a wife and that the bridegroom was "famous and known for his piousness, humbleness, religion, strong belief, generosity and goodness. I told them that he would be a good husband for your daughter.”

Source: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/142095/20110506/bin-laden-wife-amal-al-sadah-fifth-5th-afghanistan-yemen-9-11.htm

Granted this was just before 911, but what an interesting person this Sheikh Ismail sounds. A quick search turns up not very much on him. Will he disappear back into the shadows?

'Zombie' Bin Laden could be new weapon in War on Terror

• Bin Laden more dangerous dead than alive

American Predator drones are constantly patrolling the site of Bin Laden's watery grave in case Al Qaida attempts a daring sea bed recovery. 'Officially, Bin Laden still exists and we're not going to risk terror striking out of a clear blue sea.'

A new Al Qaida video shows Bin Laden looking defiant even though he's dead and under the ocean. Fears are growing that the next terror attack could come from beneath the waves. 'This would be a Domesday scenario,' said a security source.

'Despite being dead, Osama Bin Laden is still spiritually leading Al Qaeda from the bottom of the ocean,' said a security source.

Bin Laden is sending out powerful messages to would be terrorists to act on their own. The biggest threat of terror attack comes from so-called 'lone wolf' extremists, who have never heard of 9-11 but could be inspired to carry out exactly the same attack.

This raises the prospect that Bin Laden could be brought back to life to make the world safer. The 'Zombie Bin Laden' option is being discussed behind closed doors at a top level. 'It would be better to have a Zombie Bin Laden we control, rather than a dead one under the waves that we can't,' a well-paid spook said.

Being on the right side of the world revolution

The words of Martin Luther King are just as relevant today. Note how the use of language changes: 'revolution' is a word now closely paired with violence or terrorism in mainstream western political discourse.

These words are from his first public anti-Vietnam war speech on 4 April 1967. It marks the broadening of his campaigning from racial segregation into wider issues of unjust war, poverty and global injustice. He became a threat to power, and some powerful people made the decision to silence him. Exactly one year later he was assassinated:

"...the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered"

RAF dogs patrol London streets

I'd rather we keep the dogs in their kennels and the soldiers in their barracks.

Will the punishment fit the crime? (if proven)

"Given the volume of allegations and the complexity of investigating the events in question, we anticipate that it will take around two years to complete the work of the IHAT."

"There are those that argue that the Government should hold a public inquiry into these unproven allegations now – we disagree. A costly public inquiry would be unable to investigate individual criminal behaviour or impose punishments. Any such inquiry would arguably therefore not be in the best interests of the individual complainants who have raised these allegations."

Death squads in Pakistan

From a fascinating summary of Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars. This worrying escalation of the war into Pakistan will lead to more destabilisation of the region. Remember Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia? It was the Domino theory then, now it's the safe havens for Al Qaeda, however small their actual numbers are...

The CIA created, controls and pays for a clandestine 3,000-man paramilitary army of local Afghans, known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. Woodward describes these teams as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens there.

Soldier commits suicide after seeing coffins of eight soldiers killed in Afghanistan

More collateral damage... War still is a racket.

From Stop the War

Andrew Watson saluted the television as he watched the bodies of eight soldiers repatriated from Afghanistan. The 25-year-old, who was suffering from post traumatic stress after serving in Iraq war, jumped from the top of the building where he lived in South London last Friday.

During his time in Basra he saw two friends being blown up by landmines and even carried dead babies from wrecked buildings.

Afghan MP Malalai Joya calls for the international anti-war movement to demonstrate against the war in Afghanistan

Via Stop the War

She told the audience of the suffering of Afghans, and in particular women, at the hands of both occupation forces and the warlords who benefit from the occupation. If the war was ever about eradicating opium, 93% of global opium production now comes from Afghanistan, and £500m goes into the pockets of the Taliban every year because of the drug trade. Afghans have lost almost everything, she said, except that they have gained political knowledge. And they are against the occupation.

She holds little hope for the upcoming elections in August. She said the ballot box is controlled by a mafia of warlords and criminals, and that even if the democrats in Afghanistan could put up a candidate, they would inevitably become puppets of the US and NATO, or they wouldn't survive in office. NATO could not possibly provide a solution because the troops are despised for the carnage they have brought to the country.

As Malalai repeated a number of times in the meeting, no nation can liberate another nation, and only the oppressed can rise up against their oppressors. The only solution, she said, was for the anti-war movement internationally to speak out and demonstrate against the war in their own countries, "because our enemies are afraid of international solidarity." It will be a prolonged and risky struggle, she continued, but the Afghans must liberate themselves.

Breaking the will: Vietnam then, Afghanistan now

A quote from the late Robert McNamara that is relevant to endless war in Afghanistan:

"Look, we dropped three to four times the tonnage on that tiny little area as were dropped by the Allies in all of the theaters in World War II over a period of five years. It was unbelievable. We killed--there were killed--3,200,000 Vietnamese, excluding the South Vietnamese military. My God! The killing, the tonnage--it was fantastic. The problem was that we were trying to do something that was militarily impossible--we were trying to break the will; I don't think we can break the will by bombing short of genocide."