The British Royal Navy’s helicopter carrier HMS Illustrious is deployed to the Mediterranean, on August 25, 2013. Western and Arab military leaders have reached a “consensus” on military intervention in Syria over accusations that…
Tag: France
The ongoing situation in Mali is gaining traction in the media with the reporting of Al Qaeda members within the ranks of the Tuareg rebels. The situation in quite complicated and involves not only France,…
Part I: Africa’s New Thirty Years’ War? Mali at first glance seems a most unlikely place for the NATO powers, led by a neo-colonialist French government of Socialist President Francois Hollande (and quietly backed to the hilt by the Obama Administration), to launch what is being called by some a new Thirty Years’ War Against Terrorism. Mali, with a population of some 12 million, and a landmass three and a half times the size of Germany, is a land-locked largely Saharan Desert country in the center of western Africa, bordered by Algeria to its north, Mauritania to its west, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Niger to its southern part. People I know who have spent time there before the recent US-led efforts at destabilization called it one of the most peaceful and beautiful places on earth, the home of Timbuktu. Its people are some ninety percent Muslim of varying persuasions. It has a rural subsistence agriculture and adult illiteracy of nearly 50%. Yet this country is suddenly the center of a new global “war on terror.”
France, U.S. Escalate Imperialist War in Mali and Niger French Socialist President Francois Hollande has visited Mali in an effort to claim victory over targeted Islamic groups based in the central and northern regions of this vast West African state. The president visited…
Summary executions and mass human rights abuses targeting innocent civilians in Mali are being perpetrated by soldiers loyal to the dubious Malian regime in a campaign supported by the United Nations, the new socialist French government, and the Obama administration. According to human rights groups and witnesses on the ground, the atrocities are increasing as the number of murdered victims continues to rise — eerily reminiscent of similar tragic interventions in Libya, Syria, and the Ivory Coast. The regime ruling southern Mali out of the capital city of Bamako, which seized power in a military coup last year led by a U.S. government-trained officer, is currently attempting to recapture the northern regions of the country. The vast swath of territory in the north was declared independent last year by a group of historically oppressed nomadic Tuareg rebels armed with weapons obtained from the recent Western-backed war on Libya.
Why Is Germany Demanding 300 Tons of Gold from the U.S. and 374 Tons from France? The German’s are demanding that the U.S. return all of the 374 tons of gold held by…
France has escalated its military intervention into the West African state of Mali with increased bombing operations in the north, central and east of the country and the deployment of additional troops. Paris says that…
With France’s ignominious track record for disastrous military adventures on the African continent – the 1956 Suez Crisis comes most to mind – one would think that the former colonial power would have learned some prudence by now. But alas, no. The French charged into Mali last week with hundreds of troops, fighter jets and attack helicopters in a rash move that casts serious questions of legality and military viability. French state-of-the-art Rafale fighter jets have been bombing at least six towns across the north and central belt of the remote Sahel desert country for five consecutive days and counting.
French military forces step up their campaign, launching…
Since the independence of the former French colonies in western Africa they are in spite of the richness of their natural resources and the productivity of their populations still catastrophically under-developed. In 2007 the French…