Former members of UK Special Forces have broken years of silence to give BBC Panorama eyewitness accounts of alleged war crimes committed by colleagues in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Giving their accounts publicly for the first time, the veterans described seeing members of the SAS murder unarmed people in their sleep and execute handcuffed detainees, including children.
"They handcuffed a young boy and shot him," recalled one veteran who served with the SAS in Afghanistan.â¯"He was clearly a child, not even close to fighting age.
"Killing of detainees "became routine", the veteran said. "They'd search someone, handcuff them, then shoot them", before cutting off the plastic handcuffs used to restrain people and "planting a pistol" by the body, he said.
The new testimony includes allegations of war crimes stretching over more than a decade, far longer than the three years currently being examined by a judge-led public inquiry in the UK. (...)
This week, NATO III celebrates itself As thousands descend on Washington for a anniversary summit, we posit that the alliance is broken and sleepwalking into war
Will you join my new club? Itâs going to be called the Society for Abolishing World War II Analogies.
Members must pledge never to call anyone âthe new Hitler.â They may not dismiss peace proposals as âanother Munichâ or justify attacks on other countries as efforts to prevent âanother Pearl Harbor.â Most important, they must recognize that wars usually end with messy compromise, not total victory.
Americans love hearing about World War II. The stream of books, movies, comics, video games, and other flashbacks to that conflict seems endless. Thatâs because World War II presents the United States as we want to see it: a liberating force that uses mighty power to win total victory over evil.
Very few wars, however, conclude with triumphant parades. Most end with half-decent accords shaped over the remains of devastated nations and masses of dead, wounded, and traumatized human beings. To avoid facing that reality when we launch wars, we reach instinctively back to the example of World War II. Itâs the gift that never stops giving. (...)
This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves
the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of
the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight
âthe closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.
To continue the thread jack...
Like it or not, the (capital) markets are investing heavily in alternatives (also worth mentioning how the markets contributed to our current oil supply issues by reducing exploration and production since the great recession, and again during the pandemic).
The bigger question is how do we fix our electricity infrastructure (necessary with or without the lofty alternative goals)?
