Activist Who Helped Search For Mexico's Missing Students, Shot And Killed

At least fifteen people were killed during the weekend in the southwestern state of Guerrero, including an activist who helped lead efforts to find 43 students who disappeared and were presumed murdered last year, according to Mexican officials. Ten of the murders took place in the resort city of Acapulco, which is packed with tourists due to summer vacations, local police said.

Miguel Angel Jimenez, a leader of a community police organization, was found shot to death inside the taxi he drove on Saturday night in the rural outskirts of Acapulco, according to local police. Jimenez led a group that searched for approximately 300 people who have disappeared in the state, helping uncover mass graves found around the city of Iguala where 43 Mexican students went missing last year.

The government has said the students were abducted by police and handed over to drug traffickers who allegedly killed the students and burnt their bodies. Guerrero, which has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, saw 1,514 homicides in 2014 and 943 people who have been killed so far this year through June, according to federal statistics.

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Life After Qaddafi — Libya: A Broken State

Three years after the Libyan revolution and the subsequent downfall of its dictator Muammar Qaddafi, the country has descended further into chaos and insecurity. Rebel militias, radical Islamists and former Qaddafi commander Khalifa Haftar are among the different groups vying for power and oil wealth, creating a vacuum in which violence and militancy reign supreme.

VICE News

Honduras and the dirty war fuelled by the west's drive for clean energy

The west's drive to reduce its carbon footprint cheaply is fuelling a dirty war in Honduras, where US-backed security forces are implicated in the murder, disappearance and intimidation of peasant farmers involved in land disputes with local palm oil magnates.

More than 100 people have been killed in the past four years, many assassinated by death squads operating with near impunity in the heavily militarised Bajo Aguán region, where 8,000 Honduran troops are deployed, according to activists. Farmers' leader Antonio Martínez, 28, is the latest victim of this conflict. His corpse was discovered, strangled, in November.

Peasant farmers say they are the victims of a campaign of terror by the police, army and private security guards working for palm oil companies since a coup in June 2009 ended land negotiations instigated by the deposed president, Manuel Zelaya.

Witnesses have implicated Honduran special forces and the 15th Battalion, which receives training and material support from the US, in dozens of human rights violations around the plantations of Bajo Aguán.

Full story on The Guardian - The Bajo Aguan Region - A Laboratory for the New Global Counterinsurgency, and a Laboratory for Neoliberalism (Rights Action)

Full-scale invasion as the United States deploys troops in 35 African countries

A full-scale invasion of Africa is under way. The United States is deploying troops in 35 African countries, beginning with Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger. Reported by Associated Press on Christmas Day, this was missing from most Anglo-American media. The invasion has almost nothing to do with “Islamism”, and almost everything to do with the acquisition of resources, notably minerals, and an accelerating rivalry with China.

Unlike China, the US and its allies are prepared to use a degree of violence demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Palestine. As in the cold war, a division of labour requires that western journalism and popular culture provide the cover of a holy war against a “menacing arc” of Islamic extremism, no different from the bogus “red menace” of a worldwide communist conspiracy.

Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century, the US African Command (Africom) has built a network of supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American bribes and armaments.

Last year, Africom staged Operation African Endeavor, with the armed forces of 34 African nations taking part, commanded by the US military. Africom’s “soldier to soldier” doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. Only pith helmets are missing.

It is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master’s black colonial elite whose “historic mission”, warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the promotion of “a capitalism rampant though camouflaged”.

A striking example is the eastern Congo, a treasure trove of strategic minerals, controlled by an atrocious rebel group known as the M23, which in turn is run by Uganda and Rwanda, the proxies of Washington.

Full article by John Pilger on Newstime Africa

Blackwater Founder’s Mercenary Army Abandoned in Somali Desert

Last year it was revealed that Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince had been put in charge of building a mercenary army in northern Somalia, with funding from the United Arab Emirates and a goal of attacking the various pirate factions along the Somali coast.

It apparently seemed like a good idea at the time, but the United Arab Emirates has gotten sick of throwing money at the operation and pulled the plug. Now, the hundreds of mercenaries are sitting on a secret desert base with potentially millions of dollars in heavy weapons illegally smuggled into Somalia and nothing to do.

The decision apparently came after an April incident when the fighters attacked and killed a South African trainer. The corporation put in charge of the mission, the shadowy Sterling Corporate Services, insisted at the time that it was an isolated incident, but quickly withdrew its trainers, leaving the recruits stranded on a base in the Puntland desert.

But they likely won’t stay on that base for long, as those familiar with the situation say that the fighters, who were not ideologically motivated to join the anti-piracy fight in the first place, are liable to take their weapons and head out looking for new employers, with pirates among the likely bidders.

Antiwar.com - stratrisks.com

Libyans storm militia bases in Benghazi

Ansar al-Sharia, blamed for consulate attack, forced to evacuate base as public anger against armed groups boils over. At least one person has died and 20 others injured after demonstrators in Benghazi attempted to storm the headquarters of militias based in the eastern Libyan city.

Protesters seized the headquarters of the Ansar al-Sharia militia and evicted its fighters from its bases on Friday night. The confrontation appeared to be part of a co-ordinated sweep of militia headquarters buildings by police, government troops and activists following a mass public demonstration against armed groups earlier in the day.

Ansar al-Sharia has been linked to the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi last week in which  J Christopher Stevens, US ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans died amid demonstrations over a YouTube video deemed insulting to Prophet Muhammad. The group denies any involvement in the killing of Stevens.

Chanting "Libya, Libya," hundreds of demonstrators entered the compound, pulling down militia flags and torching a vehicle inside the headquarters, Ansar al-Sharia's main base in Benghazi - once an internal security base under former leader Muammar Gaddafi. People in the crowd waved swords and even a meat cleaver, shouting "No more al-Qaeda!" and "The blood we shed for freedom shall not go in vain!"

Al Jazeera English

Who Wants Peace in Colombia?

The far right is not interested in a peace process.

Peace In Colombia on The Real News

Iran shoots down US drone

Iran's armed forces have shot down an unmanned US spy plane that violated Iranian airspace along its eastern border.

An unidentified military official quoted by the official Irna news agency on Sunday warned of a crushing response to any violations of Iranian airspace by US drone aircraft. "An advanced RQ170 unmanned American spy plane was shot down by Iran's armed forces. It suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran's armed forces," Irna quoted the official as saying. No further details were given.

Later a spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said a surveillance drone flying over western Afghanistan had gone out of control late last week and may be the one Iran said it had shot down over its own airspace. "The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a US unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status," an ISAF statement said.

The Guardian

Rival militias wage turf war near Libyan capital

One local official was killed and a militia base reduced to ruins in a clash between rival armed groups near the Libyan capital, the latest flare-up of tension between militias that is destabilizing the new Libya.

Two months after Muammar Qaddafi was killed, Libya’s new government is still unable to impose its authority on the ground, leaving security in the hands of militias which answer only to themselves and often wage turf wars with their rivals. The violence in Janzour, a town about 17 km (10 miles) west of the capital, demonstrated that these militias remain the biggest threat to Libya's security despite attempts by the newly-formed interim government to get them under control.

Rival militias wage turf war near Libyan capital