(Reuters) – Inquiries into the bloody assault on an Algerian gas plant are uncovering increasing evidence of contacts between the assailants and the jihadis involved in killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya nearly a year ago.
The extent of the contacts between the militants is still unclear and nobody is sure there was a direct link between the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the carnage at In Amenas, where 39 foreign hostages were killed in January.
But the findings, according to three sources with separate knowledge of U.S. investigations, shed some light on the connections between Al Qaeda affiliates stretching ever further across North and West Africa.
The lack of detail, meanwhile, highlights the paucity of intelligence on jihadis whose rise has been fuelled by the 2011 Arab uprisings and who have shown ready to strike scattered Western targets including mines and energy installations.
The “war on terror” has, since its birth in the smoldering horror of 9/11, carried within it the seeds of deep, cynical irony. The battle cry against the enemies of freedom turned into an exercise in torture and surveillance, set against a bored backdrop of reality TV and economic catastrophe. During this wasted decade-plus, America has turned to a series of unreliable partner governments who frequently made a mockery of its goal to eliminate transnational terrorism while promoting America’s values of democracy and human rights. They illuminated the horrible paradox of being the lone superpower in a time of global dislocation.
Perhaps no one represented this difficulty more than former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Salih. Salih was one of the first allies in the “war on terror,” and one of the most confusing and unreliable friends a country can have. The U.S. never understood Salih, and in its official imagination assumed that any of his behavior was born of a particular anti-Western or pro-terrorism animus. It is therefore one of the stranger ironies that the U.S. has essentially adopted Salih’s style of crisis management in its Yemen policy.
A Chinese energy firm offered big money and access to women to entice an engineer at a U.S. company to launch a cyber raid on his employer, stealing sensitive computer codes and “thereby cheating (the firm) … out of more than $800 million,” according to newly unsealed court documents and internal messages and emails obtained by NBC News.
Federal prosecutors call the alleged cyber theft from American Superconductor (AMSC) in Devens, Mass., one of the most brazen cases yet of Chinese economic espionage in the United States. The techniques the Chinese used to rob the company of three quarters of its revenue, half its workforce, and more than $1 billion in market value were straight out of a “spy novel,” the firm's CEO said in an interview with NBC News.
Jeff St. Claire and the late, and much missed, Alexander Cockburn have written an excellent and important history of how the democrats under Clinton sold out their heritage and, in effect, became the enablers of the Republicans in the construction of the emerging American police.
In November of 1994 two years of ramshackle government, breached pledges and the Clinton administration’s frequently manifested contempt for its traditional base, exacted their price. In the midterm elections Republicans seized control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since the Eisenhower era. The rout extended to governors’ mansions across the country, where the Republicans captured the majority of governorships for the first time in a quarter-century. Newt Gingrich, the new Speaker of the House, became the nation’s political wunderkind.
Two and a half years after the Fukashima tragedy Japan does not want to admit how serious it is, but it is obvious the drastic environmental implications are to follow, Harvey Wasserman, journalist and advocate for renewable energy, told RT.
RT:Japanese officials have admitted a leak at Fukushima has been happening for two years and is worse than earlier thought. Why did it take so long to evaluate the actual repercussions of the tragedy and take decisive measures to tackle them?
HW: The Japanese authorities have been covering up the true depth of the disaster because they don’t want to embarrass themselves and the global nuclear industry and they are trying to open up another nuclear plant in Japan. When the Japanese people now find out that the accident is worse than we thought and they have been leaking many tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean for almost two and a half years, this is a catastrophe. Tokyo Electric has no idea how to control this accident. This is absolutely terrifying after two and a half years. To find out that these reactors have been out of control, now that they can’t control this they don’t know what’s going on. This is not a primitive backward country; this is Japan with advanced technology. It has very serious implications for nuclear power all over the world.
RT:Why the plant's operator failed to contain the leak?
HW: Because they don’t know what to do. This has never happened before. You have three explosions; you have four nuclear reactors that are severely compromised. No one ever planned for this. This is an apocalyptic event. This is something that could contaminate the entire Pacific Ocean. It is extremely serious. The reality is that Tokyo Electric does not know what is happening and does not know how to control what is going on. Our entire planet is at risk here. This is two and a half years after these explosions and they are still in the dark. It’s terrifying.
I have been urging SR readers for several years now to become pro-actively involved with the food they eat, and feed to their families. It is a terrific pain-in-the-ass I know, but one has to read every label, and constantly search out information on food. You cannot assume anyone is going to protect you, and there can be major health consequences. This is not easy to accept, I know, but here are some examples of what I mean.
Phi Beta Iota: Here is the list only (each explained in full post above). Each item represents a lack of INTEGRITY at every point in the government-corporate-retail chain.
#1: Farm-Raised Salmon #2: Genetically Engineered Papaya #3: Ractopamine-Tainted Meat #4: Flame Retardant Drinks #5: Processed Foods Containing Artificial Food Colors and Dyes #6: Arsenic-Laced Chicken #7: Bread with Potassium Bromate
#8: Olestra/Olean #9: Preservatives BHA and BHT #10: Milk and Dairy Products Laced with rBGH
For those who have not seen. Most of us have significant experience with the Huey. In my case, my takeoffs exceed by a considerable number my landings in the airframe. Some of us know Ranger Nightengale personally. Some of us have been involved in emergency landings or other aircraft mishaps. Some of us owe something, perhaps a lot, to a pilot or aircrew.
Unique to all that served in Vietnam is the UH1H helicopter. It was both devil and angel and it served as both extremely well. Whether a LRRP, US or RVN soldier or civilian, whether, NVA, VC, Allied or civilian, it provided a sound and sense that lives with us all today. It is the one sound that immediately clears the clouds of time and freshens the forgotten images within our mind. It will be the sound track of our last moments on earth. It was a simple machine-a single engine, a single blade and four man crew-yet like the Model T, it transformed us all and performed tasks the engineers and designers never imagined. For soldiers, it was the worst and best of friends but it was the one binding material in a tapestry of a war of many pieces.
The smell was always hot, filled with diesel fumes, sharp drafts accentuated by gritty sand, laterite and anxious vibrations. It always held the spell of the unknown and the anxiety of learning what was next and what might be. It was an unavoidable magnet for the heavily laden soldier who donkey-trotted to its squat shaking shape through the haze and blast of dirt, stepped on the OD skid, turned and dropped his ruck on the cool aluminum deck. Reaching inside with his rifle or machine gun, a soldier would grasp a floor ring with a finger as an extra precaution of physics for those moments when the now airborne bird would break into a sharp turn revealing all ground or all sky to the helpless riders all very mindful of the impeding weight on their backs. The relentless weight of the ruck combined with the stress of varying motion caused fingers and floor rings to bind almost as one. Constant was the vibration, smell of hydraulic fluid, flashes of visionary images and the occasional burst of a ground-fed odor-rotting fish, dank swampy heat, cordite or simply the continuous sinuous currents of Vietnam’s weather-cold and driven mist in the Northern monsoon or the wall of heated humidity in the southern dry season. Blotting it out and shading the effect was the constant sound of the single rotating blade as it ate a piece of the air, struggling to overcome the momentary physics of the weather.
