by Oui
Sun Oct 16th, 2022 at 02:14:36 PM EST
Before the horror of the Afghanistan retreat and devastation for women's rights to education #Trump #Taliban
American provocation and covert acts by CIA intelligence ...
CIA Vaccination Cover in Pakistan | John Hopkins - Jan. 2013 |
The Deans of twelve of the most eminent American schools of public health sent a letter to President Barack Obama vigorously protesting the precedent that was set when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used the guise of a vaccination campaign to hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Widespread media reports and U.S. government spokespersons suggested that Dr. Shakil Afridi ran a Hepatitis B vaccination campaign in multiple areas in Pakistan with the goal of obtaining fluid containing DNA from children living in suspect households in proximity to Osama Bin Laden's residence. The effort did not succeed in the Bin Laden compound and Afridi was convicted of treason in Pakistan last summer.
This disguising of an intelligence-gathering effort as a humanitarian public health service has resulted in serious collateral consequences that affect the public health community. In September of 2012, after working for 30 years in Pakistan, Save the Children was ordered to remove all expatriate staff from the country, despite never having employed Dr. Afridi. Last month, eight polio vaccination workers were assassinated, resulting in the suspension of U.N. polio eradication efforts in Pakistan. Pakistan is one of only three countries where wild polio transmission still occurs.
Medical neutrality is outlined in the Hippocratic Oath and is delineated in the Geneva Conventions. It is a cornerstone of the Red Cross Code of Conduct, to which almost all international nongovernmental organizations including, the U.N., adhere.
As US Forces were losing district after district to the Taliban in 2020 ...
"U.S. intelligence officials said Russian operatives secretly offered cash payments to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition troops, including Americans, in Afghanistan."
Pelosi, Schumer request US intelligence leaders brief Congress on reports of Russian bounties
Dementia or Sick Foreign Policy
Certain extended damage to internal biological memory chip ...
Biden's quip 'won't help US cause' | Dawn News |
The White House assured Pakistan on Saturday that President Joe Biden supports a strong and prosperous Pakistan, hours after the US leader stirred a storm by calling the South Asian nuclear nation a dangerous nation.
But others were not convinced this latest outburst will help Washington win over any `hearts and minds' in the country that is already witnessing a wave of anti-US sentiment, championed by former PM Imran Khan.
Over decades, the United States was the greatest transgressor of Pakistan's sovereignty and International Law. Likely speaking of hundreds of unlawful killings with devastating suffering and deaths of civilians.
Conciliatory words from a very select and distinctive think tank "experts" ...
Prof Hassan Abbas of the US National Defence University said to him [Kugelman] "Biden's statement appears to be a slip of the tongue."
President Biden, he said, was not talking about any weakness in the nuclear command and control in Pakistan as the country has indeed developed a strong system over the last decade or so."
The US president was "likely hinting at cohesion in the political sphere in Pakistan, given political instability and rising polarisation," Prof Abbas said. "The increasing use of anti-US rhetoric in PTI political rallies are concerning for Washington," he added.
Tamanna Salikuddin of the US Institute of Peace [USIP], another US think-tank, said President Biden's remarks were not an official statement nor a change of policy towards Pakistan.
Our Hawk Running the State Department with USIP Support | @BooMan - June 2012 |
I wholeheartedly agree with the criticism in the article by Robert Dreyfuss on June 4, 2012.
Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an investigative journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, specializing in politics and national security. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam and is a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, and Mother Jones.
Perhaps not a Neocon, Hillary Clinton on the wrong side of diplomatic succes | The Nation |
Here's the book on Hillary: hawkish and pro-military, skilled at using human rights as a cudgel against regimes she doesn't like while glossing over human rights abuses by allies, a liberal interventionist who's on the wrong side of the administration's internal debates on Afghanistan, China, Libya, and Syria. Let's hope that Clinton's next war isn't Syria, where the United States is coordinating weapons delivery to rebels, including Islamist militants.
Former Cheney Spokesperson hired by Hillary Clinton
Though she isn't a neocon - if "neocon" means someone addicted to the unilateral use of hard power to impose the American will overseas, regardless of the views of America's allies, the United Nations, and international law - Clinton isn't averse to hiring one as her spokesperson. That would be Victoria "Toria" Nuland, a polyglot diplomat who previously served most prominently as Vice President Dick Cheney's national security adviser from 2003 to 2005, during the peak moment of neoconservative influence in the administration of George W. Bush, before becoming the U.S. ambassador to NATO. She was appointed as Clinton's spokesperson in 2011.
As I have written over the years, friendship with Pakistan is pivotal as all of South-East Asia may succumb to extremism from the Saudi school of Wahhabism. Next to the IMF and World Bank, Saudi Arabia has a long relationship with Pakistan and always willing to give support 💰💰.
Convictions in the 'Karachi affair' | Editorial Published June 19, 2020 |
It has taken nearly a quarter of a century of a complex, stop-start investigation to shed some light on the epic cloak-and-dagger saga that became known over time as the 'Karachi affair'. A Paris court sentenced six men to prison for their role in a scandal involving kickbacks on an arms deal between France and Pakistan in 1994. A car bombing on May 8, 2002, outside what was then Karachi's Sheraton hotel turned out to be a seminal moment in this tale, pitching it from being about financial misconduct to a possible act of revenge for unpaid commissions. Fifteen people were killed and several injured in the attack. Of the dead, eleven were French naval engineers working on a submarine project for the Pakistan Navy; they were leaving the hotel on their way to the dockyard when the explosives-laden vehicle rammed into their bus.
French intelligence agencies later said their investigations turned up evidence of unpaid kickbacks in the Agosta deal by their government to figures in Pakistan's corridors of power. That, they believed, was the motive behind the bombing. The deal for the sale by France of three Agosta military submarines to Pakistan was worth around €1bn; of this, some €50m were to grease the palms of some individuals in the top tier of the Pakistani military and political elite.
In the 1990s, the giving of such `gifts' was legal in France (the practice was criminalised in 2000, and president Chirac stopped the remaining payments to Pakistan).
Protests Geert Wilders
View From Abroad: Cartoon furore satiates Wilders hunger for publicity | Dawn News - Aug. 31, 2018 |
Geert Wilders, the fiercely anti-Islam Dutch politician, has got what he wanted: his decision to hold a controversial cartoon competition on his party's private premises in the Dutch Parliament in November this year means he's back in the headlines, the centre of national and international attention.
What more could a Far Right European politician, whose star hasn't been shining too brightly in recent months, ask for?
Unsurprising in the Western World with a turn to populism #Islamophobia
Danes Call Pro-Palestine Ads Offensive | May 5, 2015 |
Raging mob and false accusations of blasphemy in Punjab ...
Protest Danish cartoons seen as insult to Muhammad [PBUH]
The right to blasphemy | by Sirocco on Feb 2nd, 2006 |
Cross-posted from my blog. Promoted to the front page by Jérôme. As discussed in this previous story, there is global outcry over the publication in a Danish and a Norwegian newspaper of satirical cartoons on the Prophet Muhammed Mustafa. Everybody who's anybody in the Islamic world, from Chechen rebel leader Sjamil Basajev via the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to the Indonesian foreign ministry, is jumping on the bandwagon. Even the offically secular Syria has recalled its ambassador from Copenhagen.
Cartoons of Mass Destruction: The Whole Story Behind the Danish Dozen | Jan. 2015 |
My recent diaries ...
Archived:
Nuclear Spy AQ Khan - CIA/America Refused Arrest in 1975 & 1985 | Aug. 9, 2005 |
Death of a whistleblower ...
The death of Frits Veerman - not the end of the AQ Khan Affair | Int'l Panel Fissile Materials - March 2021 |
