What is being done by Obama to change world’s perception of US as a well meaning power will be undone by these corporates.
By the way, is US short of people to serve the army so as to outsource security on foreign soil?
Or is it that private employee’s life is cheaper than th Govt. employee?Story:
WASHINGTON — Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/middleeast/11blackwater.html?_r=1&emc=na
Tag: International relations
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Blackwater Said to Approve Iraqi Payoffs After Shootings-NYT
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Fort Hood suspect contacted Islamist: sources-Reuters:CIA,NSA,HS,FBI?!
1.What is the point in having world’s best listening post,NSA, when Elint is not used properly?
2.Typical governmental apathy in not letting the right hand know what the left does, and starting the blame game!
3.Once the information about the suspect has been received action should have been taken ,not withstanding his records and early back ground check.
4.Yet another instance of faith transcending National loyalty!What the apologists for Muslims are going to say who have been saying fingerprinting or profiling Muslims by Homeland Security/FBI is racist, on this issue?
Story:
By Jeremy Pelofsky and Adam EntousWASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. intelligence agencies learned an Army psychiatrist contacted an Islamist sympathetic to al Qaeda and they relayed the information to authorities before the man allegedly went on a shooting spree that killed 13 people in Texas last week, U.S. officials said on Monday.
While the agencies were monitoring contacts by Anwar al-Awlaki, a fiery, anti-American cleric in Yemen who sympathized with al Qaeda, they came across some communications late last year with the shooting suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, U.S. government officials said.
They said the information was given to federal authorities who determined that Hasan’s writings were largely consistent with his academic work, offering no hint that he was planning an attack or was following orders from anyone
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5A85DK20091110?feedType=nl&feedName=usmorningdigest -
Regions angered by EU budget proposals-Financial Times
EU is an Utopian concept.When you seriously analyse Nationalism , you will find it petering out to Regions,then to States within the Region,then districts,to cities.At a critical point like resoruce crunch, we will find the lowest ranked constituent(in fact it is the basic unit),will try to assert and it is justified.
Such being the case,EU shall find the going tough.
Interesting to observe that the much touted one global entity,borderless world in terms of communications and the squabble for resources fighting it out.
Story:
The European Commission is pressing for a “root-and-branch reform” of the European Union’s €140bn-a-year budget in a proposal that is stirring outrage among Europe’s regions, which risk losing their grip on vast sums of financial aid.A Commission document obtained by the Financial Times says the EU should impose tighter national controls on funds that at present are passed directly to Europe’s regions and extend recent cuts in agricultural subsidies. It says the EU should concentrate its regional aid budget, worth almost €50bn a year, on individual member states rather than poor regions within them.
The proposal has angered representatives of rich regions in western Europe, some of which still receive aid, as well as those in poorer central and eastern Europe. All fear a renationalisation of EU aid policy that will lead to a loss of funds and influence over how money is spent.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e789fcb0-ca54-11de-a3a3-00144feabdc0.html -
Napoleon’s Dynamite-US ?
True,US is not an Imperial builder, nor does it wage war for territory.Where is the nececessity for wars when you can overrun Natives with your military?Why should you wage a war when you can control countries by Dollars?
US does not wage war-it just entered Vietnam, to help people out.
It helped Kuwait by moving in Iraq .It is helping Afganistan right now.
It is trying to help Pakistan as well.
Yes, it does not wage a war directly unless attacked directly as in Pearl Harbour.It just acts as a catalyst when local conditions are conducive to US’s economic benefit,by aiding both parties against each other, some times helping one,sometimes another and many a times both at the same time.
Story:PARIS — He’s in there somewhere, under the gilded dome of Les Invalides in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. The Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, is entombed by six coffins in what has to be the most spectacular sarcophagus in all the City of Light.
I stared at this extravagance of marble and mortality not long ago, thought about Napoleon’s campaigns in Russia, Italy and Prussia, the wars that briefly remade Europe, and realized that I owed a considerable part of my heritage as a citizen of the American West to the Little Corporal in the coffin.
Distracted as he was in trying to build an empire, Napoleon looked across the Atlantic and decided he had little use for the mid-section of a distant continent. Needing cash for conquest, he then sold the French holdings for a pittance to the fledgling United States.
Putting aside the fact that these lands had Native Americans living on them, with deep attachments and rights of sovereignty of their own, the United States got one of the greatest real estate deals of all time from the French.
For barely 5 cents an acre, the U.S. picked up more than 800,000 square miles in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. With the stroke of a pen at Thomas Jefferson’s behest, and without the loss of a single life, America doubled in size.
We were wary, following the advice of Jefferson and others, of ceaseless and senseless overseas wars. Wars for territory. Wars for defense. Wars for revenge. Wars because one religion was better than another. This was not our way. We didn’t meddle. We fought “good wars,” against imperial occupiers like Great Britain and, much later, the Nazis.
And we were slow to rouse, intervening only when called to the rescue. That was — perhaps still is — our narrative as a people.
From that peaceful triumph with France, you pivot to the present day, and wonder how we will fit what are likely to be our two longest wars into this story. The United States has been in Afghanistan coming up on a decade. Iraq is not far behind.
http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/napoleons-dynamite/?8ty&emc=ty -
Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions -NYT
When terrorism is trans national,there is nothing wrong in law enforcing agencies to be trans national.If you wait for official redtape to clear,the terrorists would have committed more crimes in the country where they have been apprehended.
Were the US,if they had hands on Red Brigade, let them off in US, what would Italy have done?Same applies to Italian Mafia.Story:
In a landmark ruling, an Italian judge on Wednesday convicted a base chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans, almost all C.I.A. operatives, of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003.Extraordinary RenditionThe case was a huge symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, who drew the first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, often one more open to coercive interrogation techniques.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a1
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