Egremont: Drones are lethal on the battlefield and gentle on the wallet -
Crispin Burke
In March of this year, Wired Magazine revealed that an armed drone from the Royal Air Force - controlled from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire - fired ordnance at enemy forces in Helmand, Afghanistan, in support of British troops. It was the first drone strike controlled…
Posting some of the strategy lols I’ve made for friends over the last two years at the Cheezburger Network. This is one is a somewhat creepier version of Basil Liddell-Hart. Imagine good ol’ BLH as a PUA.
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Map of Pangaea with current international borders.
Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras, forming about 300 million years ago. It began to break apart around 200 million years ago. The single global ocean which surrounded Pangaea is accordingly named Panthalassa.
(via pax-cafune)
If your Privilege stat is above 20, you are forced to roll a Privilege Check before each conversation.
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)
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.
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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.
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.
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“It turns out that instead of Reading About Foreign Policy and Thinking Deeply About the Future of the Economy, we are watching videos of cats hitting walls.” — And we’re talking about it. On the Internet. Great funny read on Jennifer Lawrence and falling down from Washington Post. (via curiousontheroad)
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]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/886dbbb354a9c754b8a7fd3e3b43c59b/tumblr_mkgai0aw0D1r69k7do1_500.jpg)
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.
