"Davos in the Desert" is Saudi Arabia's charm offensive aimed at global financial elites, but its launch last year was marred by its close proximity to the gruesome murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, carried out at the personal behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who styles himself a progressive reformer. Read the rest
Kirstjen Nielsen was Trump's DHS Secretary, where she oversaw the performatively cruel practice of separating thousands of children from their parents, in a calculatedly shambolic and chaotic way, ensuring that many of them will never be reunited with their families. Read the rest
Hacking Team (previously) was an Italian cybermercenary company that sold surveillance tools to the world's most vicious autocrats and dictators, only to collapse when all of its internal documents were hacked and dumped online by an unknown person who claimed to be motivated by a desire to expose their complicity in human rights abuses including torture and murder. Read the rest
George HW Bush was a mass murderer and a war criminal and now he is dead. Read the rest
Henry Kissinger -- the war-criminal who abetted Pinochet's coup in Chile, supported the genocide of Bangledeshis by Pakistan, and architected the US's secret bombing campaigns in Indochina -- is worried about AI. Read the rest
Jakiw Palij is a convicted Nazi war-criminal who helped train the force charged with murdering every Jew in Poland, guarded the Trawniki forced labor camp -- where 6,000 prisoners were murdered in a single day -- and was present at the "liquidation" of the Warsaw Ghetto. He's lived in the USA since 1949, when he entered the country and lied about his Nazi past. Read the rest
At his war crimes tribunal Wednesday, Bosnian Croat general Slobodan Praljak made a statement disdaining the court, then drank what he said was poison. He was rushed to hospital and died, according to reports, though courtroom footage depicts long moments of dithering confusion in the courtroom.
Praljak, who commanded ethnic Croat troops in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, yelled: "Judges, Slobodan Praljak is not a war criminal. I reject the verdict with contempt." He then drank from a small glass bottle in the courtroom. Moments later, as the court moved on to the next defendant, Praljak loudly announced "What I drank was poison."
The presiding judge called for medical assistance and ordered the session to be closed to the public. While the content of the bottle was not immediately clear, Praljak was hospitalized after the incident.
Later on Wednesday, Croatian state broadcaster HRT reported that Praljak had died. This was echoed by Croatia's Jutarnji List newspaper, citing "unofficial" information.
Note that the video below depicts Praljak's dramatic statement and his suicide.
In a dramatic turn of events, former Bosnian Croat General Slobodan Praljak appeared to drink what he said was poison at the ICTY. pic.twitter.com/V3yZLW5sBT
— RFE/RL (@RFERL) November 29, 2017
This short interview with Homer Venters from Physicians for Human Rights, recorded in May at the the Right to Protest conference in Buenas Aires, is a succinct and important summary of the lie of "less-lethal" crowd-control weapons that kill and maim protesters, from tear-gas burns on lung-tissue to lethal, point-blank rubber bullet usage. Read the rest
Though Puerto Rican law prohibits ownership and bearing of most long-guns and especially semiautomatic weapons, the streets of the stricken US colony now throng with mercenaries in tactical gear bearing such arms, their faces masked. They wear no insignia or nametags and won't say who they work for, apart from vague statements in broken Spanish: "We work with the government. It’s a humanitarian mission, we’re helping Puerto Rico." Read the rest
On Saturday at New York Comic-Con, Marvel was scheduled to do a splashy launch event announcing the crossover between the Avengers and Northrop Grumman, a notorious arms dealer whose stealth bombers and drones have been front and center in the US campaigns of assassination in many theaters of war, declared and undeclared, in which literally uncounted civilians have been collateral damage. Read the rest
The world's most sophisticated security experts have been bombarded with recruiting offers from UAE-based company Darkmatter, which bills itself as a major state security contractor -- but people who've taken the bait say they were then told that they were being hired to weaponize huge arsenals of zero-day vulnerabilities so that the UAE can subject its own population to fine-grained, continuous surveillance. Read the rest
Yusuf Abdi Ali, a former Somali national army commander, is a pretty famous alleged war criminal, someone who's been profiled on major news media, deported from Canada over a failed claim of refugee status, arrested in the USA for lying about his participation in "genocidal acts" on his visa applications, currently embroiled in a lawsuit with someone who claims Ali tortured and shot him -- and now he works as a private airport security officer at DC's Dulles airport. Read the rest
Bosian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was jailed for 40 years for war crimes today after being found guilty of genocide in the mid-1990s Balkan conflict.
The court sentenced Karadzic, 70, to 40 years in prison for his role in the conflict that was triggered by the collapse of the Yugoslav federation after the fall of communism. He was found guilty of genocide for the massacre of Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica, as well as murder, deportation, taking hostages, and other crimes, according to the court. The war killed more than 100,000 people.
Karadzic was collared in 2008 after spending a dacade on the run as "Dr. Dragan David Dabić", an alternative medical practitioner. Karadzic will now have plenty of time to work on his poetry. Read the rest
Michael Karkoc — a 94-year-old Ukranian immigrant who lives in a neighborhood of Minneapolis known for housing populations of both Eastern Europeans and artists — has turned out to be a former Nazi SS commander whose unit was involved in cracking down on the Warsaw uprising, as well as other brutal attacks on civilians. The Associated Press broke the story and Minnesota Public Radio has some great, in-depth coverage. Reached at his home, Karkoc told AP reporters, "I don't think I can explain." (Strangely, this has been a big week for Nazi-related news. Yesterday, Xeni posted a story about the discovery of a diary belonging to one of Hitler's confidants.) Read the rest
