Military Corruption News Stories
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While Facebook has long sought to portray itself as a "town square" that allows people from across the world to connect, a deeper look into its apparently military origins and continual military connections reveals that the world's largest social network was always intended to act as a surveillance tool to identify and target domestic dissent. LifeLog was one of several controversial post-9/11 surveillance programs pursued by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that threatened to destroy privacy and civil liberties in the United States. LifeLog sought to .. build a digital record of "everything an individual says, sees, or does." In 2015, [DARPA architect Douglas] Gage told VICE that "Facebook is the real face of pseudo-LifeLog." He tellingly added, “We have ended up providing the same kind of detailed personal information without arousing the kind of opposition that LifeLog provoked.” A few months into Facebook's launch, in June 2004, Facebook cofounders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz [had] its first outside investor, Peter Thiel. Thiel, in coordination with the CIA, was actively trying to resurrect controversial DARPA programs. Thiel formally acquired $500,000 worth of Facebook shares and was added its board. Thiel's longstanding symbiotic relationship with Facebook cofounders extends to his company Palantir, as the data that Facebook users make public invariably winds up in Palantir's databases and helps drive the surveillance engine Palantir runs for a handful of US police departments, the military, and the intelligence community.
Note: Consider reading the full article by investigative reporter Whitney Webb to explore the scope of Facebook's military origins and the rise of mass surveillance. Read more about the relationship between the national security state and Google, Facebook, TikTok, and the entertainment industry. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.
Fort Benning, the infamous Georgia U.S. military base, is once again in the news, changing its name to Fort Moore, thereby ditching its Confederate name. Across Latin America, the very name of Fort Benning is enough to strike terror into the hearts of millions, bringing back visions of massacres and genocides. This is because the fort is home to the School of the Americas (now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC), a shadowy academy where around 84,000 Latin American soldiers and police officers have been taught on the U.S. dime on how to kill, torture and how to stamp out political activists. “The school is controversial partly because of its role in promoting US hegemony in Latin America,” James Jordan, national co-coordinator at Alliance for Global Justice, told MintPress, adding, “But even worse, it is how the school has promoted this: teaching methods of torture – even publishing torture manuals, counterintelligence, psyops, repression of political voices that don’t meet the approval of Washington DC. If one looks at cases of human rights abuses by the military throughout Latin America, the number of those responsible who were trained at the School of the Americas is simply staggering.” In 1996, the Pentagon was pressured into releasing the school’s official training manuals. Even a casual glance through the nearly 1200 pages of instructions makes for sobering reading and dispels the myth forever that the U.S. is a benevolent global force.
Note: The School of the Americas graduated more than 500 human rights abusers. The identities of many other US-trained troops operating in other countries remain hidden by US courts. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Funding for the Department of Defense and related work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy will reach more than $850 billion in Fiscal Year 2023, far higher than spending at the height of the Cold War or the peak years of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. While advocates of spending these enormous sums often argue that the money is needed to "support the troops," more than half of the Pentagon's yearly budget goes to private contractors, many of whom are making hefty profits at taxpayer expense while producing flawed products at exorbitant prices. One telling example of how these companies waste taxpayer dollars is how much they pay their top executives. In 2021 ... the CEOs of the top five contractors received compensation ranging from $18 million to $23 million each, including James Taiclet of Lockheed Martin, $18.1 million; David Calhoun of Boeing, $21.1 million; Gregory Hayes of Raytheon, $21.8 million; Phebe Novakovic of General Dynamics, $23.5 million; and Kathy Warden of Northrop Grumman, $19.9 million. Since these firms receive a large share of their revenue from U.S. government contracts, much of this excessive executive compensation is essentially subsidized by the taxpayers. Defense executives wouldn't be able to earn multi-million dollar salaries if their companies weren't grabbing billions in Pentagon contract awards. In addition to campaign contributions, the industry spent over $100 million on lobbying in just the first three quarters of 2022.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.
Though once confined to the realm of science fiction, the concept of supercomputers killing humans has now become a distinct possibility. In addition to developing a wide variety of "autonomous," or robotic combat devices, the major military powers are also rushing to create automated battlefield decision-making systems, or what might be called "robot generals." In wars in the not-too-distant future, such AI-powered systems could be deployed to deliver combat orders to American soldiers, dictating where, when, and how they kill enemy troops or take fire from their opponents. In its budget submission for 2023, for example, the Air Force requested $231 million to develop the Advanced Battlefield Management System (ABMS), a complex network of sensors and AI-enabled computers designed to ... provide pilots and ground forces with a menu of optimal attack options. As the technology advances, the system will be capable of sending "fire" instructions directly to "shooters," largely bypassing human control. The Air Force's ABMS is intended to ... connect all US combat forces, the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control System (JADC2, pronounced "Jad-C-two"). "JADC2 intends to enable commanders to make better decisions by collecting data from numerous sensors, processing the data using artificial intelligence algorithms to identify targets, then recommending the optimal weapon ... to engage the target," the Congressional Research Service reported in 2022.
Note: Read about the emerging threat of killer robots on the battlefield. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Research by Brown University is shedding light on the impact of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones, finding that the U.S. military, among others, contributes significantly to climate change, becoming one of the world's top greenhouse gas emitters through the fighting of battles. Air pollution from military vehicles and weaponry has adversely affected public health among civilians in the war zone and U.S. service members. The report examines everything from the destruction of military base garbage in burn pits to the deforestation in Afghanistan to cancer, birth defects and other conditions associated with war-related toxins. "The water supply in the war zones has been contaminated by oil from military vehicles and depleted uranium from ammunition. Along with the degradation of the natural resources in these countries ... the animal and bird populations have also been adversely affected." Now think about Russia and Ukraine. Russia's targeting of Ukraine's energy grid has been particularly damaging, as oil depots and gas power plants explode, releasing carbon and methane into the air. Reports suggest that ordinary Ukrainians are feeling the impact, forced to rely on dirtier fuels to keep warm. A recent report by GHG, a Dutch firm examining the war's greenhouse gas impact, found that each explosion of a missile or projectile causes pollution of air, water and land with toxic substances, and that Russian bombing of industrial infrastructure in Ukraine has led to uncontrolled chemical releases.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.
The U.S. military is facing its worst recruitment crisis since the end of the Vietnam War. We Are Not Your Soldiers is a project of New York City-based nonprofit World Can’t Wait. The organization sends military veterans into schools to share honest stories of the harm they have caused and suffered. In doing so, they hope to prevent young people from signing up.Susan Cushman is a professor at Nassau Community College ... where military recruiters have a heavy presence. She hosts veterans from We Are Not Your Soldiers to help her students “think about alternative ways to achieve an education and get a pension and get a job and travel, without feeling the only option is to join the military.” In order to counter both the narrative and incentives that military recruiters offer young people, veterans try to share the truth about traumatic personal experiences as well as practical information. In addition to the military’s preparedness for counter-recruitment, there’s also the issue of simple math. The Pentagon has a multibillion-dollar budget for recruiting alone. By contrast, We Are Not Your Soldiers has an annual budget of $25,000. With these challenges in mind, [the nonprofit] NNOMY produced a video called “Before You Enlist!” The 16-minute video seeks to lay out a case against military service that preempts the military’s psychological recruitment tactics. With veteran stories and statistics, the video debunks perks, such as “free education” and job training, that the military uses to appeal to potential recruits.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
In the roughly 16 months since Russia's February 2022 escalation of the Ukraine conflict, the US government has approved several multi-billion dollar spending packages to sustain the Kiev military's fight against Moscow. Though many Americans likely believe that US dollars allocated for Ukraine are spent directly on supplies for the war effort, the lead author of this report, Heather Kaiser, conducted a thorough review of Washington's budget for the 2022 and 2023 fiscal year and discovered that is far from the case. US taxpayers may be shocked to learn that as their families grappled with fears of Social Security's looming insolvency, the Social Security Administration in Washington sent $4.48 million to the Kiev government in 2022 and 2023 alone. In another example of bizarre spending, USAID paid off $4.5 billion worth of Ukraine's sovereign debt through payments made to the World Bank – all while Congress went to loggerheads over America's ballooning national debt. (Western financial interests including BlackRock Inc. are among the largest holders of Ukrainian government bonds.) Calculating the total dollar amount that the US has given to Ukraine is incredibly challenging for multitude of reasons: there is a lag in reporting expenditures; covert money given by the CIA (Title 50 Covert Action) won't be publicly disclosed; and direct military assistance in the form of military equipment is not calculated in the same manner as raw cash.
Note: The above article doesn't provide a total figure. Congress approved $113 billion in aid to Ukraine in 2022. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Weapons-grade robots and drones being utilized in combat isn't new. But AI software is, and it's enhancing – in some cases, to the extreme – the existing hardware, which has been modernizing warfare for the better part of a decade. Now, experts say, developments in AI have pushed us to a point where global forces now have no choice but to rethink military strategy – from the ground up. "It's realistic to expect that AI will be piloting an F-16 and will not be that far out," Nathan Michael, Chief Technology Officer of Shield AI, a company whose mission is "building the world's best AI pilot," says. We don't truly comprehend what we're creating. There are also fears that a comfortable reliance in the technology's precision and accuracy – referred to as automation bias – may come back to haunt, should the tech fail in a life or death situation. One major worry revolves around AI facial recognition software being used to enhance an autonomous robot or drone during a firefight. Right now, a human being behind the controls has to pull the proverbial trigger. Should that be taken away, militants could be misconstrued for civilians or allies at the hands of a machine. And remember when the fear of our most powerful weapons being turned against us was just something you saw in futuristic action movies? With AI, that's very possible. "There is a concern over cybersecurity in AI and the ability of either foreign governments or an independent actors to take over crucial elements of the military," [filmmaker Jesse Sweet] said.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Joerg Arnu has been obsessed with Area 51 ever since his first visit to the perimeter of the secretive military base in 1998. The rumours of alien life forms, CIA spy plane testing programmes, and sense of forbidden mystery surrounding the massive military base in the southern Nevada desert instantly intrigued the 61-year-old retired software developer. In 1999, he launched the DreamlandResort blog as a comprehensive one-stop-shop for photos, videos and discussion about the base and the top secret military aircraft that are built and tested there. He eventually bought a second home near the gates of the military base. Last year, he was in bed when around 20 armed counter-terrorism agents in tactical gear raided his Rachel home, handcuffed him and led him out of his home in the freezing cold for questioning. The agents seized four of Mr Arnu's computers, containing his life's work on Area 51, along with treasured photos of his deceased parents, and medical and tax records. The agents handed Mr Arnu a search warrant signed by a federal magistrate judge. The first 39 pages were missing, and it only provided vague hints of what the agents had been looking for. A joint team from the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (USAF OSI) had conducted the raids. Eight months on, he still has no idea whether he will face charges, or if he'll ever get back the more than $30,000 he says he's out of pocket for as a result of seized equipment, property damage and legal fees.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and UFOs from reliable major media sources.
As the Ukraine war drags on, the Biden administration is now reportedly in the final stages of deciding whether to send more [cluster munitions] to the Ukrainian military. The decision to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine would likely be seen as a setback to nonproliferation efforts aimed at stopping use of the weapon. The report by Human Rights Watch analyzing the impact of previous cluster munition attacks carried out last summer by the Ukrainian military found numerous dead and wounded civilians in Izium who were hit by exploding cluster bomblets. Cluster munitions are controversial due to the manner in which "bomblets" are scattered around a targeted area, creating secondary explosions that can cause death and injury even long after a conflict has ceased. The bombs are currently at the center of an international campaign to ban their use in armed conflict. More than 100 states have signed an international convention on cluster munitions vowing not to employ them in war, produce them domestically, or encourage their use in foreign conflicts. Despite public pressure to join, the U.S. has not become a signatory to the convention. The Ukrainian military was reported to have requested significant transfers of the munitions late last year. "Cluster munitions used by Russia and Ukraine are killing civilians now and will continue to do so for many years," said Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, in the report.
Note: The global cluster bombs trade is funded by the world's biggest banks. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and war from reliable major media sources.
With the U.S. supplying billions-of-dollars of munitions to Ukraine and growing tensions in the Taiwan Strait, some Pentagon generals are sounding alarms about the dwindling supply of U.S. weapons ... at a time when the cost of replacing them is skyrocketing. A six-month investigation by 60 Minutes found it has less to do with foreign entanglements than domestic ones - what can only be described as price gouging by U.S. defense contractors. It wasn't always like this. The roots of the problem can be traced to 1993, when the Pentagon, looking to cut costs, urged defense companies to merge. Fifty one major contractors consolidated to five giants. The landscape has totally changed. In the '80s, there was intense competition amongst a number of companies. And so the government had choices. They had leverage. We have limited leverage now. The problem was compounded when the Pentagon, in another cost saving move, cut 130,000 employees whose jobs were to negotiate and oversee defense contracts. The Pentagon granted companies unprecedented leeway to monitor themselves. Instead of saving money ... the price of almost everything began to rise. In the competitive environment before the companies consolidated, a shoulder fired stinger missile cost $25,000 in 1991. With Raytheon now the sole supplier, it costs more than $400,000 to replace each missile sent to Ukraine ... even accounting for inflation and some improvements that's a seven-fold increase.
Note: Leading military contractors are hiking up prices of everyday products as well, costing US taxpayers more than $1.3 million in unnecessary markups. Explore how the Pentagon paid arms manufacturer Boeing over $200,000 for four trash cans used in surveillance planes (roughly $51,606 per unit). War profiteering happens on many levels, as articulated in a summary of War is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler.
More than 50 years had passed since Ellsberg – risking prison for the rest of his life – had provided the New York Times and other newspapers with 7,000 pages of top-secret documents that quickly became known as the Pentagon Papers. From then on, he continued to speak, write, and protest as a tireless antiwar activist. I asked what the impacts would likely be if pictures of people killed by the U.S. military's bombing campaigns were on the front pages of American newspapers. "I am in favor, unreservedly, of making people aware what the human consequences are of what we're doing – where we are killing people, what the real interests appear to be involved, who is benefiting from this, what are the circumstances of the killing," Ellsberg replied. "I want that to come out. It is not impossible, especially [with] social media, where people can be their own investigative journalists." Ellsberg died today from pancreatic cancer. While he is best known as the whistleblower who gave the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War to the world, he went on for 52 years to expose other types of secrets – including hidden truths about the psychology and culture of U.S. militarism. Ellsberg added, “How much of a role does the media actually play in ... deceiving the public? I would say, as a former insider, one becomes aware: It’s not difficult to deceive them. First of all, you’re often telling them what they would like to believe – that we’re better than other people, we are superior in our morality and our perceptions of the world.”
Note: This article was written by Norman Soloman, longtime political activist and media critic on war coverage. Explore a powerfully written adaptation from Soloman's new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and the war machine from reliable major media sources.
A MintPress investigation has found that a host of Western government officials, intelligence agents and assets have been directly involved in intimate collaboration with Nazi groups and individuals since at least 2014. This has included involvement in creating and operating the Nazi-run kill list in Ukraine. While Western media have belatedly been forced to concede that there are Nazi influences in Ukraine, many journalists have insisted that the visible fascist patches on uniforms are only there to troll Russians and that they are insignificant and a gift to Russian propaganda. Still, other journalists admit to asking Ukrainian service members to cover up their Nazi symbols. Last May, The Irish Independent claimed that [former adviser to Ukraine's foreign minister Cormac] Smith is "an unlikely key player in the information war," who "estimates he has given about 100 TV, radio and print interviews with the international media in the past few months to tell Kyiv's side of the story." Smith has a nice line in outrageous propaganda gambits, claiming that Russians are the actual Nazis and that they murder, rape and pillage, including the rape of children. As it turns out, the source of many of the allegations ... was the Ukraine parliamentary commissioner for human rights, Lyudmila Denisova. Last year, it was comprehensively demonstrated that her stories had little evidential basis. She ... admitted to "promoting fake news to persuade Western countries to send more arms and aid." Smith nonetheless carried on making vague allegations of rape for months afterward.
Note: US agencies used at least 1,000 ex-Nazis as spies and informants during the Cold War. Nazi doctors were also used used to teach the CIA mind control methods. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the war machine from reliable major media sources.
Last year, my name was added to a blacklist published online by the Ukraine Center for Countering Disinformation. I joined over ninety others deemed to be “speakers who promote narratives consonant with Russian propaganda.“ These included Manuel Pineda and Clare Daly, both leftist Members of the European Parliament (MEP); Also counted are ... a slew of rightist MEPs; Ex CIA officer, Ray McGovern; former military and intelligence figures such as Scott Ritter and Douglas McGregor. Journalists on the list included Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson and Eva Bartlett. The Center for Countering Disinformation ... is an official governmental body created in late March 2021, along with a similar organization, the Center for Strategic Communication, by President Zelensky himself. They [are] related to other blacklisting websites like Myrotvorets (“Peacemaker”), widely seen as a “kill list.” The covert “kill list” website is a product of the Ukraine regime, effectively funded by the CIA (amongst others) and is hosted by NATO. One extraordinary thing is that many American citizens, including ex-military and intelligence operatives, are included, as well as a significant number of citizens of NATO member countries. Perhaps the most remarkable element is that NATO has hosted the site ... on its servers in Brussels. Myrotvorets lists thousands of “saboteurs”, “separatists”, “terrorists” and “traitors”. Sometimes, it has crossed out their photographs once they had been killed, with the label “liquidated”.
Note: This article was written by sociology professor and investigative researcher David Miller, who is widely known for his writings on propaganda, lobbying, and media issues. Tune into an entertaining yet revealing video from The Jimmy Dore Show to further explore interesting perspectives about the Ukrainian "Kill List."
Amid a crisis in recruitment, the U.S. military has found a new way of convincing a war-weary Generation Z to enlist: thirst traps. Chief among these attractive young women in uniform posting sexually suggestive content alongside subtle ... calls to join up is Hailey Lujan. In between the thirst traps and memes, the 21-year-old makes content extolling the fun of Army life to her 731,000 TikTok followers. Lujan is a psychological operations specialist with the Army. Her [job] is to convince, persuade and propagandize in creative new ways. The Army recruitment website description of the role sounds eerily similar to her own content. "As a Psychological Operations Specialist, you'll be an expert at persuasion," it reads, adding: "You'll assess and develop the information needed to influence and engage specific audiences. You'll broadcast important information through various mediums and assist U.S. and foreign governments, militaries, and civilian populations." Lujan is far from the only serviceperson on military TikTok (#MilTok) promoting military life, however. Juliana Keding – a military policewoman with over 900,000 followers – regularly combines thirst traps with videos about Army life. TikTok is not the only battleground for young people's minds, however. In the last year, a significant portion of the Biden administration's record-breaking $857 billion defense budget went on advertising. The Army in particular has spent large sums of money collaborating with some of YouTube's biggest stars.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and media manipulation from reliable sources.
Within ten days [of its release], the first-person military shooter video game [Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II] earned more than $1 billion in revenue. The Call of Duty franchise is an entertainment juggernaut, having sold close to half a billion games since it was launched in 2003. Its publisher, Activision Blizzard, is a giant in the industry. Details gleaned from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Call of Duty is not a neutral first-person shooter, but a carefully constructed piece of military propaganda, designed to advance the interests of the U.S. national security state. Not only does Activision Blizzard work with the U.S. military to shape its products, but its leadership board is also full of former high state officials. Chief amongst these is Frances Townsend, Activision Blizzard's senior counsel. As the White House's most senior advisor on terrorism and homeland security, Townsend ... became one of the faces of the administration's War on Terror. Activision Blizzard's chief administration officer, Brian Bulatao ... was chief operating officer for the CIA, placing him third in command of the agency. Bulatao went straight from the State Department into the highest echelons of Activision Blizzard, despite no experience in the entertainment industry. [This] raises serious questions around privacy and state control over media. "Call of Duty ... has been flagged up for recreating real events as game missions and manipulating them for geopolitical purposes," [journalist Tom] Secker told MintPress.
Note: The latest US Air Force recruitment tool is a video game that allows players to receive in-game medals and achievements for drone bombing Iraqis and Afghans. For more on this disturbing "military-entertainment complex" trend, explore the work of investigative journalist Tom Secker, who recently produced a documentary, Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood, and published a new book, Superheroes, Movies and the State: How the U.S. Government Shapes Cinematic Universes.
Scientists in Wuhan working alongside the Chinese military were combining the world's most deadly coronaviruses to create a new mutant virus just as the pandemic began. Investigators who scrutinized top-secret intercepted communications and scientific research believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments, which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid-19 outbreak. The US investigators say one of the reasons there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military, which was funding it and which, they say, was pursuing bioweapons. The investigators' report was published in early 2021. It made two assertions: that Wuhan scientists were conducting experiments on RaTG13 from the Mongolian mine, and that covert military research, including laboratory animal experiments, was being done at the institute before the pandemic. Dr Steven Quay, a US scientist who advised the State Department on its investigation ... believes Covid-19 was created by inserting a furn cleavage site into one of the mine viruses and then serial passaging it through humanized mice. He submitted a statement to the US Senate explaining the process. "You infect the mice, wait a week or so, and then recover the virus from the sickest mice. Then you repeat. In a matter of weeks this directed evolution will produce a virus that can kill every humanized mouse."
Note: Don't miss this article by Michael Heisenberg titled "First People Sickened By COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists At Wuhan Institute Of Virology, Say US Government Sources." And this article sheds more light on the pandemic's origins. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
How Death Outlives War: The Reverberating Impact of the Post-9/11 Wars on Human Health, published by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute, focuses on what [author Stephanie Savell] terms “indirect deaths” – caused not by outright violence but by consequent, ensuing economic collapse, loss of livelihoods, food insecurity, destruction of public health services, environmental contamination and continuing trauma, including mental health problems, domestic and sexual abuse and displacement. Calculated this way, the total number of deaths that occurred as a result of post-9/11 warfare in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Somalia rises dramatically from an upper estimate of 937,000 to at least 4.5 million, of which up to 3.6 million were “indirect deaths”. Such deaths grow in scale over time. In Afghanistan, where the war ignited by the 2001 US-led invasion ended in 2021, the indirect death toll and related health problems are still rising. Experts suggest “a reasonable, conservative average estimate for any contemporary conflict is a ratio of four indirect deaths for every one direct death”, Savell says. The poorer the population, the higher the resulting indirect mortality when conflict erupts. Savell does not attempt to apportion blame between various actors, although the US, which launched the “global war on terror” in 2001, bears heavy responsibility. An estimated 38 million people have been displaced since 2001.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.
Across Ukraine's vast expanse, there are thought to be 174,000 square kilometres which are contaminated by landmines. It is an area of land larger than England, Wales and Northern Ireland combined. In the war-scarred Kharkiv region, warning signs occasionally appear next to brown, barren fields which were once front lines. Even more infrequent is the sight of demining teams sweeping their metal detectors across small, taped-off areas. A literal scratching of the surface. More landmines have been found in the Kharkiv region than anywhere else in Ukraine. The Russians deployed landmines to both defend their positions and slow the Ukrainians. After leaving in a rush, a lethal footprint was left behind. In the small town of Balakliya, on a patch of land next to an apartment block, Oleksandr Remenets' team have already found six anti-personnel mines. They'd earlier uncovered around 200 nearby. "My family calls me every morning to tell me to watch where I tread," he says. "One of our guys lost his foot last year." The day after we spoke, another member of his team was wounded by a mine. Since September, 121 civilians have been injured in the Kharkiv region alone, according to the State Emergency Service. 29 were killed. More than 55,000 explosives have been found in the area. So-called butterfly mines [are] the most common in the area. They're only three to four inches wide, propeller shaped, and are scattered from a rocket. They're banned by international law. That hasn't stopped them from being used in this war.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.
The U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia between 1969 and 1973 has been well documented, but its architect, former national security adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ... bears responsibility for more violence than has been previously reported. An investigation by The Intercept provides evidence of previously unreported attacks that killed or wounded hundreds of Cambodian civilians during Kissinger's tenure in the White House. "You can trace a line from the bombing of Cambodia to the present," said Greg Grandin, author of "Kissinger's Shadow." "The covert justifications for illegally bombing Cambodia became the framework for the justifications of drone strikes and forever war." Kissinger bears significant responsibility for attacks in Cambodia that killed as many as 150,000 civilians, according to Ben Kiernan, former director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University and one of the foremost authorities on the U.S. air campaign in Cambodia. That's up to six times the number of noncombatants thought to have died in U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during the first 20 years of the war on terror. Grandin estimated that, overall, Kissinger – who also helped to prolong the Vietnam War and facilitate genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; accelerated civil wars in southern Africa; and supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America – has the blood of at least 3 million people on his hands.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and war from reliable major media sources.
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