There are three basic problems with the CIA: its objectives, methods, and unaccountability. Its operational objectives are whatever the CIA or the President of the United States defines to be in the U.S. interest at a given time, irrespective of international law or U.S. law. Its methods are secretive and duplicitous.
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Its unaccountability means that the CIA and president run foreign policy without any public scrutiny. Congress is a doormat, a sideshow.
As a recent CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, said of his time at the CIA: “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”
The CIA was established in 1947 as the successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS had performed two distinct roles in World War II, intelligence and subversion.
Fewer than 1-in-10 children in low-income countries have access to child benefits, leaving them vulnerable to disease, education gaps, poor nutrition, poverty and inequality.
GENEVA / NEW YORK (ILO)* –-Globally, 1.4 billion children, aged under 15, lack any form of social protection, leaving them vulnerable to disease, poor nutrition and poverty, according to new data released on 14 February 2024 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), Save the Children and UNICEF.
SYDNEY, Feb 14 2024 (IPS)* –Israel continues to defy its strongest backer the US and its western allies in its quest to control the land from the “River to the Sea”, and in the process ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.
Anis Chowdhury
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to push ahead with a ground offensive against Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah despite mounting warnings from aid agencies and the international community that an assault on Rafah would be a catastrophe.
He also snubbed the US on the latest hostage release and ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and Egypt. The interim order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take all effective measures to stop “plausible” genocide in Gaza seems irrelevant to Israel.
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 14 2024 (IPS)* –A gathering ‘perfect storm’ – due to various developments, several quite deliberate – now threatens much devastation in the global South, likely to most hurt the poorest and most vulnerable.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Globalisation’s protracted decline The age of globalization had mixed consequences, unevenly incorporating national markets for labour, goods and even some services.
It ended gradually, with the trend far more pronounced following the protracted worldwide stagnation since the 2008 global financial crisis.
Sometimes still referred to as the Great Recession, Western central banks resorted to unconventional monetary policies, mainly ‘quantitative easing’, to keep their economies afloat.
But easier credit enabled more financialization and indebtedness, rather than recovery, let alone sustainable development.
PANAMA CITY, Feb 8 2024 (IPS)* – At the bar that Sandra manages in Panama City’s central financial district, the variety offered on the menu has shrunk due to delays in ship traffic through the Panama Canal, one of the world’s major shipping routes. | En español
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A ship passes through the Pedro Miguel lock on its way to the Miraflores system to cross the Panama Canal. The infrastructure faces water shortages due to drought in the country, which limits the pace of maritime cargo transport through the bioceanic route that moves six percent of the world’s maritime trade. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS
“We are out of stock of some of our foreign beers, because the shipment didn’t arrive. I hope it will get here one of these days,” the Panamanian bar-keeper told IPS, as she pointed to a half-empty refrigerator in the bar nestled between skyscrapers.
“Sanctions,” as imposed by the US, is a sanctimonious word for economic warfare and outright theft, and Venezuela is a textbook case.
Anya Parampil’s book tells the story of US hybrid warfare on Venezuela and of the tectonic social and economic shifts reshaping the world today.
As Anya Parampil demonstrates in Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire, sanctions were part of a multi-pronged regime change war that included diplomatic aggression, economic terrorism, covert operations, and information warfare.
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 9 2024 (IPS)* – As the UN continues its never-ending saga on the reform of the Security Council (UNSC), one of the political anomalies that keeps cropping up is the absence of Africa, among the five permanent members (P5)—a privilege bestowed only on the US, UK, France, China and the Russian Federation.
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Credit: United Nations
The African continent, which has been shut out, consists of 55 states with a total population of over 1.4 billion people.
5 February 2024 (FAO)* —They are the dried edible seeds of legumes both cultivated for food and feed. They are pulses, and if you didn’t know already, they have the potential to transform our agrifood systems.
(By UNEP)* — For months last year, Florida’s beachgoers were plagued by rotting tangles of decaying seaweed that had washed ashore. Known technically as sargassum, the thick clumps were part of a record-setting 8,000-kilometre-long seaweed belt in the Atlantic Ocean.
Sargassum blooms cause a range of environmental problems, including coastal “dead zones” bereft of aquatic life. Past sargassum outbreaks have been linked to the excessive release of phosphorus and other chemical substances known as nutrients.
Phosphorus and another nutrient, nitrogen, are key ingredients in synthetic fertilizers. They have become increasingly popular in recent decades but can have devastating effects when they enter lakes, rivers and the ocean.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Feb 2 2024 (IPS)* –Two months ago, an opinion piece I wrote, “The Cries of Gaza Reach Afghanistan,” was published with the hope of reminding American and other Western leaders of how quickly wars ON terror descend into wars OF terror because of their disproportionate impact on civilians and the unpredictability once unleashed.
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Sa’ada, Yemen. Aftermath of a Saudi airstrikes. Credit: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
The United States and its Western alliance of ‘forever wars’ since 9/11 were all entered under the pretext of defeating terrorism. Instead, they strengthened the political and military standing of those they aimed to destroy while simultaneously causing unimaginable suffering for millions of civilians, including their own citizens.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 