Arms trade: Business before human rights? - Inside Story. According to an Amnesty International report, the US, Russia and a number of European countries supplied large quantities of weapons to repressive governments in the Middle East and North Africa before this year's uprisings.
The report says that these arms deals were signed despite evidence of a substantial risk that they could be used to commit serious human rights violations. The human rights group reports that in the five years preceding the Arab spring $2.4bn worth of small arms, tear gas, armoured vehicles and other security equipment was sold to five specified countries that have faced or are facing popular uprisings - Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen. And these sales were committed by at least 20 governments including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the UK and the US. The Amnesty International report also says that existing arms export controls have failed to prevent the transfer of arms.
East Africa Is the New Epicenter of America's Shadow War. When Adm.
Eric Olson, the former leader of U.S. Special Operations Command, wanted to explain where his forces were going, he would show audiences a photo that NASA took, titled “The World at Night.” The lit areas showed the governed, stable, orderly parts of the planet. The areas without lights were the danger zones — the impoverished, the power vacuums, the places overrun with militants that prompted the attention of elite U.S. troops. And few places were darker, in Olson’s eyes, than East Africa. Quietly, and especially over the last two to three years, special operations forces have focused on that very shadowy spot on NASA’s map (see below).
It’s not quite the new Pakistan, or even the new Yemen, but it’s close — especially as new bases for the U.S.’s Shadow Wars pop up and expand. Fighting Somalia’s pirates might get most of the media attention. That’s where the forces Olson used to run came in. Recently, more and more special operations forces have called it a temporary home. The US power grab in Africa. Oct-24-2011 18:16 By Pepe Escobar Special to Salem-News.com Washington couldn't care less about the "responsibility to protect" civilians; the only thing that matters is the excuse to "protect" Libya's and Africa's wealth for its own interests. (SAO PAULO Asia Times) - Beware of strangers bearing gifts. Post-modern Amazon and United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally landed in Tripoli - on a military jet - to lavish praise on the dodgy Transitional National Council (TNC), those opportunists/defectors/Islamists formerly known as "North Atlantic Treaty Organization rebels".
Clinton was greeted on Tuesday "on the soil of free Libya" (her words) by what the New York Times quaintly described as an "irregular militia" (translation: a heavily armed gang that is already raising hell against other heavily armed gangs), before meeting TNC chairman Mustafa Abdel-NATO (formerly known as Jalil).
Clinton told students at the University of Tripoli, "We are on your side. " Contractors' Next Payday: Commando Logistics for Africa Shadow Wars. A Casa 212 contracted for Afghanistan drops supplies to paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade on Nov. 9, 2007.
It’s now likely headed to Africa. Photo: Army Here’s how serious the U.S. is about its African war on terror. The Pentagon is preparing to spend millions to create a privatized flying taxi service to fly its commandos everywhere from Libya to Congo. That’s according to details in a recent solicitation notice for a Defense Department contract worth up to $50 million, expected to be handed over to a private contracting firm in August. Based at a secretive military airfield in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, the contractors will be tasked with missions across central and northern Africa, with the most likely destinations being Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania and other countries including Algeria, Cameroon and Nigeria. There’s no shortage of targets. “Passengers will possibly travel with personal weapons (small arms) and small amounts of ammunition,” the solicitation notes.