The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have received weapons including ballistic missile defense capabilities, attack helicopters, advanced frigates and anti-armor missiles, according to David McKeeby, a spokesman the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
“Consistent with the commitments we made to our Gulf partners at the Camp David summit last May, we have made every effort to expedite sales. Since then, the State and Defense departments have authorized more than $33 billion in defense sales to the 6 Gulf Coordination Council countries,” McKeeby told Defense News.
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Category Archives: What interests us
Scientists must do more to challenge the failed economic and political system
But at the top, there is paralysis: leading scientific organizations do little except chase money and reinforce the ruling nexus of politics and finance — even since the financial crisis of 2008, which discredited the free-market philosophy that underpins that nexus. I argued years ago (see Nature479, 447; 2011) that scientific leaders had failed to respond in any meaningful way to that collapse, and I’m still waiting.
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Climate change is not just about carbon dioxide – the dangerously high level of methane leak to the atmosphere
In February, Harvard researchers published an explosive paper in Geophysical Research Letters. Using satellite data and ground observations, they concluded that the nation as a whole is leaking methane in massive quantities. Between 2002 and 2014, the data showed that US methane emissions increased by more than 30 percent, accounting for 30 to 60 percent of an enormous spike in methane in the entire planet’s atmosphere.
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German Poll: No to nuclear weapons
85% of German citizens want US nuclear weapons currently deployed at the Büchel nuclear base in Germany to be withdrawn. According to the latest opinion poll taken by the market research institute Forsa, 93% of the German population think that nuclear weapons should be banned under international law, in the same way that chemical and biological weapons are banned. 88% said they are against the US deploying new, “modernised” nuclear weapons, planned to take place from 2020 in Europe.
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Arts and group work is waste of time accoring to this government
A child’s education is too important to be messed about by people like these.
Schoolchildren who spend lessons watching DVDs, designing posters and doing “group work” are not being taught properly, the Government’s behaviour czar has warned.
Tom Bennett, the Department for Education’s discipline expert, said some teachers fill lessons with pointless activities that keep children busy but do not constitute proper teaching.
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South Korea: Basic Income
Lots of political and social issues have risen as the general election in April is coming, among which the most important one is how to give all people the economic stability. Junghoon Park, president of Alba Union said “today unemployment is normal and employment is exception for part time workers, so they should be given stable income, basic income guarantee to protect their rights as workers.” And Namhoon Kang insisted “basic income guarantee is a sole way which we, human beings could live and survive as humans under the economic system Al would change.” Under these circumstances, Green Party and Labor Party, small and extra-parliament parties in Korea, promise basic income scheme their major policies, and some politicians in office interest in it.
CIA-armed militia fight Pentagon-armed ones in Syria
If it doesn’t work, just keep doing it.
The fighting has intensified over the last two months, as CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed ones have repeatedly shot at each other while maneuvering through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, U.S. officials and rebel leaders have confirmed.
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Bahraini snipers received training from British armed forces
The revelation that elite Royal Navy commandos are running week-long training courses for Bahraini personnel has outraged human rights campaigners, who accuse the regime of using snipers to target protesters during anti-government protests in 2011.
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Public perceptions of economy, shocks and elections
Perceptive.
Regime change – the Libya intervention
Remember this next time there is another talk of ‘interventions.’
In truth, the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start. The threat posed by the Libyan regime’s military and paramilitary forces to civilian-populated areas was diminished by NATO airstrikes and rebel ground movements within the first 10 days. Afterward, NATO began providing direct close-air support for advancing rebel forces by attacking government troops that were actually inretreat and had abandoned their vehicles. Fittingly, on Oct. 20, 2011, it was a U.S. Predator drone and French fighter aircraft that attacked a convoy of regime loyalists trying to flee Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. The dictator was injured in the attack, captured alive, and then extrajudicially murdered by rebel forces.
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United Nations
This from Anthony Banbury, former United Nations assistant secretary general for field support:
The heads of billion-dollar peace operations, with enormous responsibilities for ending wars, are not able to hire their immediate staff, or to reassign non-performers away from critical roles. It is a sign of how perversely twisted the bureaucracy is that personnel decisions are considered more dangerous than the responsibility to lead a mission on which the fate of a country depends.
One result of this dysfunction is minimal accountability. There is today a chief of staff in a large peacekeeping mission who is manifestly incompetent. Many have tried to get rid of him, but short of a serious crime, it is virtually impossible to fire someone in the United Nations. In the past six years, I am not aware of a single international field staff member’s being fired, or even sanctioned, for poor performance.
The second serious problem is that too many decisions are driven by political expediency instead of by the values of the United Nations or the facts on the ground.
Peacekeeping forces often lumber along for years without clear goals or exit plans, crowding out governments, diverting attention from deeper socioeconomic problems and costing billions of dollars. My first peacekeeping mission was in Cambodia in 1992. We left after less than two years. Now it’s a rare exception when a mission lasts fewer than 10.
I Love the U.N., but It Is Failing
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/i-love-the-un-but-it-is-failing.html
Nixon: War on Drugs
A new report by Dan Baum for Harper’s Magazine suggests the latter. Specifically, Baum refers to a quote from John Ehrlichman, who served as domestic policy chieffor President Richard Nixon when the administration declared its war on drugs in 1971. According to Baum, Ehrlichman said in 1994 that the drug war was a ploy to undermine Nixon’s political opposition — meaning, black people and critics of the Vietnam War: Continue reading
Northrop Grumman’s B-21
At a “state of the Air Force” press conference, Air Force secretary Deborah James and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh listed seven companies that will build components for the new plane. They didn’t provide many details as to what those contributions will be, but a quick look at the history of the companies provides some indication of how this project will be built. It also shows the program is being designed to have broad political support by spreading the work across numerous states and congressional districts.
Veteran military reformer Franklin “Chuck” Spinney described political engineering as “business as usual” for programs of this kind. “By designing overly complex weapons, then spreading subcontracts, jobs, and profits all over the country, the political engineers in the Defense Department deliberately magnify the power of these forces to punish Congress, should it subsequently try to reduce defense spending by terminating major procurement programs.”
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Tories’ deception: NHS massively underfunded
The doctors’ union points out that the Department of Health’s budget to fund health in England will only have gone up by £4.5bn by 2020-21 compared to the current financial year, well below the £10bn extra the government has pledged to increase it by. …
The BMA bases its claim on joint projections by the King’s Fund, Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation thinktanks. They found that Osborne’s spending reviewlast November means that the Department of Health’s budget will rise by just £4.5bn during this parliament – to £120.9bn by 2020 – but that NHS England’s share of it to pay for frontline services will go up by £7.6bn to £108.9bn. Continue reading
Finlnd, Sweden, UK – Privatisation of Education
All Scandinavian education gets branded as excellent but this is not the case. Finland’s education system is world class but Sweden’s isn’t and there is a reason: privatisation.
One of the main operators of Swedish education services – JB Education – owned by private equity company Axel – went bust in June 2013 leaving around 10,000 students without a school. In the words of the Swedish education minister, Jan Bjorklund: ‘We had a venture capital company that didn’t know much about education taking over Swedish schools… They thought they were going to make big money, discovered it wasn’t easy, got tired quickly and quit.’ Continue reading
The biggest appropriation of Church land since the 1530s.
George Osborne just announced the biggest appropriation of Church land since the 1530s. …
Now the state isn’t quite stealing that land. The land on which academies sit is generally leased to the new academy trusts on long term leases (125 years, for example). But that is basically compulsory: it’s not as if the councils which are losing their schools get any say over whether to sign those leases or not. And to quote some lawyers, fromBrowne Jacobson:
Where the diocese own the land, it is usual for the diocese to grant the academy trust a licence to use the land under the church supplemental agreement
2°C too high – Climate catastrophe decades not centuries away
“We’re in danger of handing young people a situation that’s out of their control,” said James E. Hansen, the retired NASA climate scientist who led the new research. The findings were released Tuesday morning by a European science journal, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Continue reading
The nightmare of F-35s
Not only would the F-35 take off from land bases like most conventional fighters do—it would also be able to launch from aircraft carriers and lift off vertically from smaller assault ships.
To do all these things today, the Pentagon possesses no fewer than eight different types of fighters. Dogfighting F-15s and F-16s. Hard-hitting A-10 ground-attack planes. Several kinds of carrier-launched F/A-18s. Vertical-takeoff Harriers. Continue reading
Pentagon need 15 million hour to find out how many it had in stock of just one item
Answering this simple question, the Pentagon said, would take the department — hold your breath now — 15 million labor hours. Doing so would cost — no, don’t breathe yet — $660 million, the Pentagon said. …
In a two-page response to Peck, the department’s FOIA office said Robert Jarrett, the Pentagon’s Director of Operations, Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy, had explained that although the Pentagon maintains a database of all its contracts — in something called the Electronic Documents Access (EDA) system — it cannot be comprehensively searched. Continue reading
The London Fairness Commission’s Final Report
London is a global city, yet compared to other cities of its standing the cost of living in London is high. Londoners on average salaries spend 49% of their pay on rent, compared with 26% for those on average salaries outside the capital. The average extra costs for householders who are renting and using childcare is £6,000. Would-be homeowners in London need to earn £77,000 a year to get on the housing ladder[1]. Across the UK, a first-time buyer needs a minimum income of £41,000.
The London Fairness Commission’s recommendations include: Continue reading
Tipping Point North South 