Wings Over Iraq

sunnyinkabul:

AAF choppers. Because…choppers. 

forlackofabettercomic:

If your Privilege stat is above 20, you are forced to roll a Privilege Check before each conversation.

youlikeairplanestoo:

The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds Diamond formation performs the Echelon Pass in Review maneuver March 13 during a practice sortie over a range in Nevada. The Thunderbirds are the Air Force’s aerial demonstration team and current operations have been suspended because of budget constraints. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Manuel J. Martinez)

thepoliticalnotebook:

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

• Syrian forces are making advances on rebel-held Homs. 
• Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance.
• J. Malcolm Garcia has a touching essay on Syria’s child refugees living in Turkey in Guernica.
• Syrian PM Wael Nader al-Halki survived an apparent assassination attempt. 
• The Obama administration continues to weigh its options following intelligence that offered evidence that Assad’s forces may have deployed sarin gas. 
• An Israeli rocket killed a Gazan soon after an Israeli civilian was stabbed to death in the West Bank. 
• Egypt walked out of nuclear talks in Geneva, accusing other nations of not moving quickly enough. 
• Saif al-Islam al-Gaddhafi appeared in court in Zintan for the second time. 
• Armed men seized Libya’s justice ministry.
• A coup attempt against Chad’s president Idriss Deby was foiled. 
• According to a new study, 260,000 people died between 2010 and 2012 in the Somali famine.
• The Nigerian army’s tactics in their war against Islamist insurgents has come under serious scrutiny following word of a horrifying massacre in the village of Baga, where as many as 200 civilians lost their lives when Nigerian soldiers torched homes and gunned down fleeing residents. 
• Inside the PKK’s headquarters in Northern Iraq. 
• On Monday 25 people were killed and many more wounded in a series of car bombings in Shi’ite areas in Iraq. At least 15 people were killed in a series of blasts in Iraq on Wednesday. 
• The Taliban killed a senior member of Afghanistan’s peace council on Wednesday.
• Pakistani troops and Afghan police clashed on Wednesday, exchanging fire over the border which left one Afghan policeman dead.
• A Pakistani court banned former leader Pervez Musharraf from ever again holding public office in Pakistan. 
• Bolivian president Evo Morales expelled USAID as a reaction to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s remark about Latin America being Washington’s “backyard.”
• South Korean-born US citizen Kenneth Bae was sentenced in North Korea to 15 years of hard labor for crimes against the state. 
• 100 prisoners (out of 166) are currently on hunger strike in Guantánamo. 
• The New York Times’ Room for Debate series hosts a discussion on the ethics of force-feeding in light of the Guantánamo hunger strike.
• John Bellinger, the lawyer who first drew up the White House drone policy under Bush, has said that the Obama administration has turned to targeted assassination so they don’t have to deal with detaining more suspects in Guantánamo.
• Four policies under the Obama administration that participate in keeping Guantánamo Bay open. 
• PBS Frontline’s Top Secret America traces the war on terror from 9/11 to the Boston bombings. 
• Azmat Khan looks more closely at the magazine that gave the Tsarnaev brothers information on how to build bombs. 
• Three friends of Dzokhar Tsarnaev have been arrested for their obstructionism and actions after the bombing.
• According to Freedom House, the percent of the global population living in a country with a free press is at its lowest level in sixteen years. 
• The Independent launches a new online section: Voices in Danger - to cover attacks on and harassment of journalists around the world.

If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at torierosedeghett@gmail.com.

Photo: Otaybah, Syria. Near Damascus. A photo released by the official Syrian News Agency, SANA, shows the damage to the town after weeks of fighting. SANA/AP.

thepoliticalnotebook:

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

• US Defense Secretary Hagel announced that US intelligence believes it to be likely that Syria has used chemical warfare, specifically sarin gas.
• On Sunday, 566 people were found dead in Syria, having been killed over the previous six day period. According to the opposition group Local Coordination Committees, that is the highest number of dead found on a single day since the war began two years ago.
• 2 kidnapped Syrian bishops remain missing.
• The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will withdraw from Turkey.
• Egypt’s justice minister resigned. 
• A car bomb exploded outside the French embassy in Libya this week, destroying about half of the embassy. Two guards were injured, but most employees had not arrived yet.
• 185 people in a fishing community in the northeast of Nigeria were killed during fighting between extremists and government forces. 
• The Security Council has approved the creation of a peacekeeping force in Mali. 
• Sudanese Darfur war crimes suspect Saleh Muhammad Jerbo Janus was killed in fighting in the region this week.
• Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army have been brought together for peace talks for the first time.
• Jeremy Scahill, author of the new book Dirty Wars, on the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki (and his son).
• The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony on drones from a Yemen with experience having drone strikes hit close to home. 
• Jordan and the UK have signed a mutual assistance treaty that will allow the UK to deport Abu Qatada.
• Iraqi soldiers opened fire on gunmen from helicopters this week, part of an escalation of violence in the country that has many worried.
• According to a recent report from an NGO, Taliban violence in Afghanistan is up sharply for the first quarter of 2013. 
• Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency has formally arrested former President Pervez Musharraf for his role in the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
• Pakistan’s Supreme Court made public a list of journalists who allegedly received money from a secret government fund. 
• The Taliban’s election-related violence could have serious impact on the kind of people elected to office in Pakistan’s northwest regions.
• Spain is currently holding two suspects believed to be part of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb.
• Serbia’s president has issued an apology for Srebrenica and “all crimes” committed by Serbia during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. 
• As news of Guantanamo hunger striking reveals the extent of the protest, Sen. Feinstein urges White House review of the 86 detainees cleared for release and a search for where to relocate them.
• The RCMP arrested two people for an Al Qaeda-linked plot to derail a Via Rail train on the Toronto-NY route.
• Law enforcement believes the Tsarnaev brothers to have been planning further attacks.
• Read about the criminal charges and first-round court proceedings for Dzokhar Tsarnaev from this Monday.
• Further information has come out regarding the process of the investigation and how events unfolded during the manhunt: read here, here, and here.
• The DC Circuit Court voted on Tuesday to review Congressional power to create new war crimes that apply to crimes committed prior to the existence of those laws. Whichever way the Circuit Court goes, the ruling is likely to be challenged at the Supreme Court. 
• Paul Curtis was freed after charges against him in the ricin letter cases were dropped.
• At GQ, Nate Penn challenges arguments against women in combat by relaying stories from women who have served, in their own words. 

If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at torierosedeghett@gmail.com.

Photo: Umayyad Mosque earlier this month. The UNESCO World Heritage site was seriously damaged, losing its minaret, by fighting this week. Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty. 

thepoliticalnotebook:

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

• Syria denied access to a UN team seeking to investigate chemical weapons use.
• A new Human Rights Watch report details “deliberate and indiscriminate air strikes on civilians” by the Syrian government.
• From PBS Frontline: “Syria Behind the Lines: The Bombing of Al-Bara.”
• The Al-Nusra Front, a group fighting in Syria, has formally pledged support to Al-Qaeda.
• Egyptian doctors were ordered to operate on protesters without anesthetic during protests against military rule according to an investigation commissioned by President Morsi.
• According to a UN panel, weapons in Libya are spreading at  ”an alarming rate.”
• Yemen’s president has ordered a military command shake-up.
• Saudi Arabia is building a giant fence to seal off its border with Yemen.
• Two Tuareg prisoners died in detention in Mali after being tortured.
• 12 people (5 UN peacekeepers, 2 UN staffers, and 5 civilian contractors) were killed in an ambush on a convoy in South Sudan.
• Obama approved military assistance to Somalia.
• An Iraqi blogger, “Riverbend,” who documented daily life in Iraq from 2003 to 2007 before going silent after leaving for Syria, posted again with a look back on the ten years of the war.
• A French photographer, Pierre Borghi, kidnapped four months ago in Kabul, has been freed.
• A suicide attack in southern Afghanistan killed five, three soldiers and two civilians, one of whom was diplomat Anne Smedinghoff, the first US diplomat to die in Afghanistan since the 1970s.
• A special ops raid in southern Afghanistan resulted in the death of Khiraullah Janan, a man with family ties to Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
• Taliban peace envoys were sent to Qatar for negotiations in 2010. They haven’t left (although they are having children).
• An NPR interview with Afghan photojournalist Farzana Wahidy.
• A candidate for provincial election in Sindh province, Pakistan, was assassinated, the second such killing during the country’s election campaign.
• Tirah Valley in Pakistan has become a nexus of violence as the Pakistani army fights Tehreek-i-Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, causing an exodus.
• Drone strikes are not actually only being used to target senior terrorist leaders, but lesser suspected militants and other unidentified militants within certain areas.
• Anonymous hacked North Korean social media and networking accounts. 
• Japan set up interceptor missiles in Tokyo as a reaction to tensions on the Korean peninsula. 
• April 10th was the official fifteenth anniversary of the Good Friday agreement, which ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland. 
• Drones will accompany an 8000-strong police force in Northern Ireland to provide security for the upcoming G8 summit.
• A new round of trials seventy years later may bring some former guards at Auschwitz to justice. 
• A mysterious disappearance of the defense’s legal documents has delayed pretrial hearings for the Guantanamo war crimes trials. 
• Wikileaks published 1.7 million US diplomatic and intelligence records from the 1970s.
• A judge ruled at a pretrial hearing that Bradley Manning’s prosecutors are required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Manning “had reason to believe” that the files he leaked could be harmful. 
• Defense Secretary Hagel has asked Congress to pass legislation that would remove the power of the convening authority to overturn court martial convictions for major crimes like sexual assault. 
• An interview at The Nation with the makers of Invisible War.

If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at torierosedeghett@gmail.com.

Photo: Drapes and curtains are hung all over the city of Aleppo to allow safe (or the closest approximation of safe) passage of residents across streets, a protection from snipers. Conflict photographer Franco Pagetti took a series of photographs of these colorful protective drapes, which can be viewed at TIME’s Lightbox blog.

wired:

It was the tweet that launched a thousand trolls. When Adria Richards tweeted out a picture of two men she overheard making sexual jokes behind her during open-source conference PyCon, the internet erupted.

Much has already been discussed about the “Donglegate” incident, from how everyone lost (both were fired) and what Richards should have done instead, to the very dangers of asking what could have been done differently at all. The resulting brouhaha is the kind of zeitgeisty moment that only happens when inflammatory topics combine: sexism in tech, social shaming, and the potential of social media to generate intense and unwanted publicity.

Rather than attempting to discern whether Richards was in the right or the wrong, I’ve been thinking about why the issue blew up and what it reveals. Because it’s far from the first time this kind of thing has happened. The Richards incident and resulting backlash not only reveals the lack of diversity and presence of misogyny in tech culture, but the myth of meritocracy and the growing belief in “misandry” online.

Regardless of the nuances of the incident, the fact remains that Richards faced a gargantuan backlash that included death threats, rape threats, a flood of racist and sexually violent speech, a DDOS attack on her employer — and a photoshopped picture of a naked, bound, decapitated woman. The use of mob justice to punish women who advocate feminist ideals is nothing new, but why does this happen so regularly when women criticize the tech industry? Just stating that the tech industry has a sexism problem — something that’s supported by reams of scholarly evidence — riles up the trolls.

[More: Why the Tech Community Hates Feminists]

thepoliticalnotebook:

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

• The resignation of Syrian opposition leader Moaz al-Khatib troubles the movement. although they’ve told him he cannot resign.
• Colonel Riad Al-Asaad, founder of the Free Syrian Army, lost his leg in a car bomb in an assassination attempt. He is recovering at a hospital in Turkey.
• The Syrian opposition government will represent the country at the upcoming Arab League summit in Doha. 
• The Syrian opposition has opened its first embassy, in Qatar. 
• A former US soldier who served from 2000-03 was arrested upon his return to the US from Syria, where he allegedly took up arms with the Al-Nusra brigade, considered a terror group by the US.
• Israel destroyed a machine gun nest inside Syria after troops in the Golan Heights were shot at twice.
• Human Rights Watch reports on the mass sexual violence and other abuse faced by internally-displaced Somalis.
• Interethnic violence in Nigeria killed at least 27 on Wednesday.
• The UN approved a new combat force, called an intervention brigade, in the Congo.
• Former Congolese rebel commander Bosco Ntaganda, known as “The Terminator,” appeared before the ICC for the first time on charges of rape, murder, sexual slavery and using child soldiers. 
• A coup in the Central African Republic and a dissolution of its constitution puts power in the hands of rebel leader Michel Djotodia.
• An appeals court in Bahrain overturned the convictions of 21 medics  for treating protesters two years ago.
• The US ceded control of Bagram prison to Afghanistan.
• Russia is currently in negotiations with NATO to set up military bases in Afghanistan after the US departs. 
• AP’s Kathy Gannon interviews Afghans who have fled their homes in an attempt to escape the American drones. 
• The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan have threatened the life of former President Pervez Musharraf.
• Pakistan estimates the human losses for its country in the war on terror at 49,000. 
• Authorities raided the offices of the Russian headquarters of Amnesty International. This is the latest in a set of moves by the Kremlin to harass and pressure NGOs.
• British police continue to search for clues in the death of Russian tycoon-in-exile Boris Berezovsky.
• Thailand has begun peace talks with southern rebel group Barisan Revolusi Nasional. 
• The US and South Korea have signed a pact outlining their communication policies and responses to potential North Korean aggression.
• North Korea has ordered artillery and rockets into ‘combat posture,’ threatening to target US bases in Hawai’i, Guam and the mainland.
• North Korea is cutting off communication with South Korea. 
• Iran, Syria and North Korea blocked the arms trade treaty in the UN. Britain and others have requested that the Secretary General put the draft resolution to a vote in the GA to bypass the blockade.
• Newly-released court documents show that Somali Shabab commander Ahmed Abdelkadir Warsame, captured in 2011, has pleaded guilty in a closed court proceeding in Manhattan and has been cooperating by disclosing intelligence on Shabab and Al-Qaeda.
• The US has sentenced Chinese national and former L-3 Communications employee Liu Sixing of exporting military information to China. 
• “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” a visually stunning and well-designed interactive about every drone strike in Pakistan and their victims. 
• Photographs taken by Charles Haughey, who served in Vietnam and took photographs for the Army and the press, have been rediscovered and put on display. 
• According to a Harvard study, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately cost taxpayers between $4 and 6 trillion. 

If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at torierosedeghett@gmail.com.

Photo: Manama, Bahrain. A girl holds the flag at a rally in solidarity with imprisoned activist Nabeel Rajab. Mohammed Al-shaikh/AFP/Getty.

thepoliticalnotebook:

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

• Recent News: A shooting late Thursday night at Marine Base Quantico has left three dead, including the suspect.
• The Syrian opposition and the Assad government have been trading accusations of chemical weapons use.
• Syrian rebels have overtaken several towns near the border with the Golan Heights.
• Pro-Assad hackers infiltrated the Human Rights Watch website.
• Mohammed Said Ramadan al-Bouti, a senior Sunni cleric and Assad supporter, was reportedly killed in a blast yesterday in Damascus.
• George Butler’s watercolor dispatch from Syria.
• A meeting of EU foreign ministers in Dublin today focuses on action on the Syrian civil war. 
• The role of the camera in the human rights situation in the occupied West Bank.
• President Obama made a fairly optimistically toned visit to Israel and Palestine.
• Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan has declared an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal from Turkish territory.
• Over the weekend, at least 14 journalists in Egypt were attacked by the police and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.
• Human Rights Watch released satellite imagery of the human rights abuses and revenge crimes against people in Libya believed to have been loyalists.
• Kenyan President-elect Uhuru Kenyatta is challenging the ICC case against him.
• A car bomb in the Somali capital of Mogadishu killed ten people on Monday, including VOA journalist Mohammed Ali Nuxurkey. 
• Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, a Somali journalist who was arrested for interviewing a rape victim, now freed, speaks out.
• A UN-backed dialogue on a new constitution is ongoing in Yemen.
• Israel’s new housing minister, Uri Ariel, has pledged more settlements. 
• March 19th was the ten year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003: here’s an archived Guardian article from that day. And here’s President Bush’s video announcement of the invasion.
• Jon Lee Anderson: “How We Forgot Iraq.”
• The real story behind the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square.
• NPR revisits Iraq with exiled poet Dunya Mikhail.
• As of September 2012 there remained at least 1.3 million internally displaced persons in Iraq.
• George Packer writes eloquently about the anniversary and about his time in Iraq during the war. 
• 55 photojournalists share the photo of the last decade of war that is to them most significant or meaningful.
• “Am I a Torturer?” Veterans question themselves after “softening up” detainees.
• Photographer Jo Metson Scott’s new book shows dissenting soldiers in Iraq.
• A selection of AP photographer David Guttenfelder’s photographs from Iraq in 2003.
• A collection of some of the most iconic images of the war taken by Reuters photographers. 
• The Kuwaiti parliament passed legislation to naturalize roughly 4000 Bidoon (the “stateless”).
• 18 have been indicted in Iran for involvement in the deaths of nuclear scientists. There have been at least five such killings since 2010.
• Afghan and US officials are working out a deal that will most likely allow elite US forces to remain in Wardak province.
• Pakistani officials arrested militant Qari Abdul Hayee, a suspect in the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. 
• Clashes between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Meikhtila, Myanmar over the past two days have left 20 dead. 
• China is now the world’s fifth largest arms exporter, its arms exports having grown by 162% between 2008 and 2012 in comparison to the previous five year period. Pakistan accounted for 55% of these sales.
• UN negotiators began a final round of talks to complete an international arms trade treaty.
• A new study estimates that 253,000 US guns are smuggled into Mexico every year. 2.2% of gun sales are made to smuggling rings that traffick them into Mexico. Read the full study (pdf).
• Colombian journalist Germán Uribe, the victim of a violent assault, has suspending his writing and reporting as a consequence.
• The Pentagon wants to build a new prison at Guantánamo.
• Quil Lawrence and Marisa Peñaloza report on the threat of rape to female servicemembers. 
• A wonderful essay by Brandon Friedman at the New York Times At War blog: “The End of War Stories.”

If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at torierosedeghett@gmail.com.

Photo:  Kabul, Afghanistan. A soldier in the Afghan army looks out over the city. Visible is Kart-e-Sakhi mosque. Ahmad Jamshid/AP.

thepoliticalnotebook:

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

• A member of the EU’s Syria delegation was killed in a rocket attack.
• A report from the charitable organization Save the Children details the murder, rape, torture and trauma inflicted on the children of Syria. [PDF] UNICEF released a statement calling this generation of Syrian children a “lost generation.”
• Rebels released 21 UN peacekeepers on Saturday.
• Ankar Kochneva, a Ukrainian journalist captive for several months in Syria, has escaped.
• Syria has increasingly lost control of the border with Iraq.
• The Guardian investigates why 110 bodies washed up in the river running through Aleppo.
• The UN has disputed the claim that BBC video editor Jehad Mashshrawi’s baby son was killed in an Israeli rocket attack. The BBC is challenging this counterclaim, saying there is little evidence that the rocket was instead a Hamas misfire.
• Hazem Kandil on deadlock in Cairo in the LRB.
• An unemployed man who self-immolated in Tunisia’s capital died on Wednesday.
• Journalists are on strike in Mali to demand the release of Boukary Daou, editor of the Le Républicain.
• Kurdish rebels released 8 Turks in a promising move for the peace process.
• Western weapons are the tools of a crackdown in Azerbaijan.
• Seymour Hersh notes the tenth anniversary of the bombing of Iraq.
• The Guardian tracks down the stories from the most iconic images of the Iraq War. 
• The New York Times’ Lens Blog reprints Dexter Filkins’ introduction to Photojournalists at War, an oral history of the war from the photojournalists who saw from the front lines. 
• The family of Amir Hekmati, an Iranian-American former Marine who has been held in Iran for the last 19 months, is pleading for his release.
• On the two year anniversary of the Saudi-led intervention, clashes between protesters and security forces have erupted in Bahrain.
• The USAF is no longer reporting drone strike data from Afghanistan.
• The Atlantic In Focus has a collection of stunning black and white photos (like the one above) taken of anti-Taliban militia activity in Afghanistan.
• Mazar-i-Sharif is facing a wave of suicides, particularly young women. 
• A suicide bomber detonated at a buzkashi game on Wednesday in the province of Kunduz, killing ten. 
• Monday was the deadliest day so far this year for American troops in Afghanistan: 5 soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in the east.
• Over this weekend, Staff Sgt. Bales will begin a court-ordered sanity review.
• Parveen Rehman, a well-known Pakistani aid worker and the head of the Orangi Pilot Project to help people escape poverty, was killed by four gunmen on Wednesday.
• Former President Pervez Musharraf will return home to Pakistan after four years of self-imposed exile in Dubai.
• Gunmen kidnapped two Czech tourists in southwest Pakistan.
• Peace talks may have begun with FARC and the economy may be looking up in Colombia, but the Afro-Colombian population seems to have been left behind.
• A Chilean court has ordered the exhumation of Pablo Neruda as part of an investigation into allegations that he was poisoned following the 1973 military coup that replaced Salvador Allende with Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
• Remembering when journalists became part of the story during Northern Ireland’s Troubles.
• Gen. Keith Alexander, the chief of the newly-created Cyber Command, testified before Congress this Tuesday alongside top intelligence official James R. Clapper Jr.
• Court documents from the failed federal prosecution of Blackwater reveal a previously secret CIA past.
• Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch asks what rules ought to govern drones. 
• Listen to Bradley Manning’s leaked court statement.
• Secretary Hagel has ordered a review of the overturning of a jury conviction of an Air Force Lt on charges of aggravated sexual assault.
• Senators like Kirsten Gillibrand grilled military leaders over this case and sexual assault in the military in a senate hearing.

If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at torierosedeghett@gmail.com.

Photo: Logar Province, Afghanistan. Farzad Akbari, the young son of anti-Taliban militia commander Farhad Akbari, poses armed for a photograph. Vikram Singh.