British General Contradicts US Claim Of Increased Threats From Iran | Hardball | MSNBC

British Major General Chris Ghika, the number two officer in the US led coalition fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq, briefed Pentagon reporters and directly disputing what the Trump administration has been saying for the past ten days about Iran.

Governments are becoming ever more reliant on digital technology, making them more vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has promised to resign by the end of the month. That announcement came after thousands of Algerians took to the streets in March to protest his decision to run for a fifth term.

Warning that Islamic extremists want to impose fundamentalist religious rule in American communities, right-wing lawmakers in dozens of U.S. states have tried banning Sharia, an Arabic term often understood to mean Islamic law.

On March 27, India announced it had successfully conducted an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test, called “Mission Shakti”. After the United States, Russia and China, India is now the fourth country in the world to have demonstrated this capability.

Cenk Uygur speaks with Ieva Jusionyte about the injuries and illnesses encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border on The Young Turks.

The recent massacre of 50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand is the latest confirmation that white supremacy is a danger to democratic societies across the globe.

The names of American-born Hoda Muthana and Brit Shamima Begum have appeared in countless headlines in the United States and Europe since these two female members of the Islamic State group were discovered in a large displaced persons camp weeks ago.

While Europe was in the early days of the Renaissance, there were empires in the Americas sustaining more than 60m people.

When I was 4 years old, my grandfather died. The preacher said "por fin el a alcanzado la paz" which means (in Spanish) that he has finally reached peace. As I listened to him I began to think that peace was really important if grandfather had to go away to attain it. So I asked my mom what it meant "to have peace".

It’s a full Moon. If past months have been anything to go by, this will be accompanied by a round of public chat about how this affects human behavior – claims of more hospital admissions and arrests, to crazy antics in children.

The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were the worst acts of terrorism on American soil to date. Designed to instill panic and fear, the attacks were unprecedented in terms of their scope, magnitude and impact on the American psyche.

The Soviet Union and now Russia under Vladimir Putin have waged a political power struggle against the West for nearly a century.

For others, as for myself, the yearning for just a drop of miraculous balm to quiet the troubled waters of daily life is universal. Loved ones hope to heal the bitter quarrels that sunder them from one another. Busy people maneuver to snatch a moment of calm. Those who are poor long for the peace of a full stomach and physical security.

Media coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency has fixated on his outlandish, off-the-cuff tweets, his ill-conceived and inflammatory positions on immigration, race relations and climate change, his “America First” mantra, and his unrelenting attacks on the various inquiries into collusion with Russia.

Many women have wrestled within themselves about peace and war. Joining a chain of women stretching far back in time, they have asked, as they have asked for centuries, why humankind endlessly repeats the tragic cycle of violence and retribution. Once again, they have mourned lives needlessly sacrificed to bitter political and religious rivalries

Before 1914, flowers in everyday life spelt beauty, femininity and innocence; they were seen as part of women’s culture.

When Americans think of being at war, they might think of images of their fellow citizens suffering. We count the dead and wounded. We follow veterans on their difficult journey of recovery...

What causes terrorism? The combination of the horrendous terrorist attack in Manchester and a British general election inevitably meant that this question would dominate political and media discourses.

The bombing of Manchester Arena on May 22 struck the very heart of British society. It was a horrific, direct assault on the innocent and the vulnerable.

On Memorial Day, we pay respects to the fallen from past wars – including the more than one million American soldiers killed in the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam.

A January 2017 Pew survey showed that Americans rate terrorism as the top priority for the Trump administration and Congress.

The Trump administration’s surprise missile strike on Syria raised many more questions than it answered – and the most pressing are those related to the future of the US’s relationship with Russia.

"If there's anything we should've learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...it's that it's easier to get into a war than get out of one"

Testifying before a congressional committee, FBI Director James Comey has confirmed that his agency is investigating links between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia.

The risk of thermonuclear war has rarely been greater. But despite the growing threat, the general public are less prepared than they ever have been to cope with an attack.

Much has been written lately about Russia “hacking” the US presidential elections, and how Vladimir Putin’s government is in a new Cold War with the West.

In the two month interregnum between the 2016 presidential election and Donald Trump’s inauguration, many hoped that the new president’s bark would be worse than his bite

At the tip of the Arabian peninsula, Yemen’s disastrous war has been raging for nearly two years.

It’s not often that any one of us needs to dial 911, but we know how important it is for it to work when one needs it.

Gang violence is forcing people to flee Central America and Mexico, heading north to the United States in record numbers. Right?

The liberation of Mosul, the last stronghold of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, appears to be imminent.

The era in which we live is now officially described as an atomic Anthropocene or the “age of humans”, an epoch defined by humans’ impact on the planet – and one of its most distinctive features is radiation.

The Syrian civil war and subsequent refugee migration caused sudden changes in the area’s land use and freshwater resources, according to new satellite data.

California is now the capital of liberal America. Along with its neighbors Oregon and Washington, it will be a nation within the nation starting in January when the federal government goes dark.

In the autumn of 1983, at the height of Cold War tensions, the world was only saved from nuclear disaster by the gut feelings of two soldiers during different incidents.

Central American migrants – particularly unaccompanied minors – are again crossing the U.S.-Mexico boundary in large numbers.

When Narendra Modi was elected as head of India’s BJP government in May 2014, he was expected to usher in a period of stability and development.

The number of refugees in Central America has reached a scale not seen since armed conflicts tore the region apart in the 1980s, with more than 110,000 people fleeing their homes.

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki Moon, is set to open a new investigation into the death of former secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold, whose plane crashed during a peace mission in the Congo in September 1961.

A number of catastrophic events have afflicted the Arab world in recent years. Western news reporting and Hollywood cinema tend to present these crises through disaster footage or stories about Western protagonists in which local people are merely extras. Film from the Arab world is often more complex and nuanced.

In recent months, lone offender attacks – sometimes called “lone wolf” attacks – have regularly populated news headlines.

A new kind of warfare: how urban spaces are becoming the new battlefield, where the distinction between intelligence and military, and war and peace is becoming more and more problematic.

A bomb exploded in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan on Saturday, injuring 29 people. Police discovered a second explosive device nearby.

Chatham House’s new report on elite perceptions of the US in Latin America and the post-Soviet states – which follows a previous survey of Asia and Europe – underlines the uniquely daunting task of expectation management task that awaits anyone in charge of America’s image in the world.

Tensions are again mounting between Russia and Ukraine.Dubiously claiming provocation, Russia has stationed 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned of a full-scale invasion.

Few images have captured the peculiar horrors of the war in Syria more powerfully than the photograph and short video that emerged recently showing five-year-old Omran Daqneesh sitting in an ambulance after being rescued from the aftermath of an airstrike in Aleppo.

A child between the ages of 12 and 14 was reportedly the culprit behind a suicide attack – blowing up the wedding of Besna and Nurettin Akdogan in Gaziantep, Turkey and killing 54 people on Aug. 20.

The death of 22-year-old Dean Carl Evans, the second British man to be killed fighting the Islamic State in Syria after Konstandinos Erik Scurfield was killed last year, should prompt us to wonder why he and others would choose to travel to the frontline and involve themselves in the bloody civil war of a country other than their own.

This September, as they start the school year, French children aged 14 years old and upwards are going to get lessons on how to deal with a terrorism attack on their school.

Contrary to the view that the South China Sea disputes are driven by a regional hunger for seabed energy resources, the real and immediate prizes at stake are the region’s fisheries and marine environments that support them.

Imagine you woke up to discover a massive cyber attack on your country. All government data has been destroyed, taking out healthcare records, birth certificates, social care records and so much more.

The scent of chaos hangs heavy in the air. Donald Trump evokes it in Cleveland. Islamic State sows it in Nice, Brussels, Paris, Orlando. Britain is immersed in it after Brexit, while the EU struggles to prevent its onset amid mounting crises of migration and political legitimacy.

Take America back from those who have stolen it. Protect America from those who want to destroy it. Restore the principles that these usurpers betrayed.

This has been a difficult year for humanitarian relief. Huge events have left indelible images. From a dead Syrian child washed up on a Turkish beach, to villagers trapped under rubble after earthquakes in Nepal and grieving families of Ebola victims in West Africa.

Opponents of the Iraq war often highlight the importance of oil when explaining why the invasion took place. While leaders at the time denied it was a motivation there is no doubt the country’s huge oilfields did offer possible post-conflict opportunities for the Iraqi industry and international corporations.

Last night, we sat toasting Bastille Day, and watching a glorious fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower from our window. We were joyful, oblivious to the events unfolding in Nice, almost 600 miles away

Only four months after a series of coordinated attacks in Paris left 130 people dead, Europe was once again the target of chilling acts of terrorism when yesterday, March 22, 2016, two explosions rocked the airport in Brussels and another ripped through a subway station in the Belgian capital. At least 30 people were killed and several hundred others were wounded in the attack.

Many obstacles stand in the way of a two-state solution to the conflict in Israel and Palestine. At the moment, negotiations are a nonstarter for all parties.

Darwin suggested that togetherness and cooperation, like the kind we saw initially on 9/11, is positively adaptive for human beings. According to Dacher Keltner — a professor at the University of California at Berkeley — “Survival of the kindest” is as important a principle as “survival of the fittest.” “We have been designed to care about...”

As it seeks to modernize its nuclear arsenal, the United States faces a big choice, one which Barack Obama should ponder before his upcoming Hiroshima speech.

Many take time on Memorial Day to remember the Americans who have given their lives in service to our country.

Since the Ukraine crisis exploded into civil conflict and war in 2013, we have known that we live in troubled times. It has become increasingly clear that the peace order in Europe, established at the end of the Cold War in 1989, is unstable.

Several Australian government politicians have said a frank discussion is needed about the causes of terrorism. Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg set the tone for the week by saying “religion is part of the problem”. There is a problem “within Islam”, he added.

Every religious community, at some point in its history, has harboured a vision of the apocalypse. It reminds us that the world periodically goes through tumultuous socio-religious strife, agonising chaos and unbearable anarchy.

In the aftermath of the co-ordinated terrorist attacks on Paris the urge to do something in response is understandably overwhelming. For want of something better to do when faced with an outrage of this sort, the default option is to bomb Syria.

Just this past weekend of July 4, US-led coalition aircraft targeted the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria. It was one of the “largest deliberate engagements to date,” said a coalition spokesman, and it was executed “to deny [ISIS] the ability to move military capabilities throughout Syria and into Iraq.”

The release of the CIA Torture Report last December re-opened the debate about using contractors to perform national security functions. Indeed, when Saturday Night Live mocks contractors for their role in waterboarding, you know that a national conversation has been unleashed.

And so it came, after years of protracted negotiations, extended deadlines and a diplomatic dance of unprecedented proportions – a deal that could signal a new era for Iran’s relations with the world. From media to academia, commentary ranges from cautious optimism to hawkish condemnation

It seems incredible that a pilot of a passenger airline could be locked out of the cockpit. But analysis from the cockpit voice recorder recovered from Germanwings flight 4U9525 after it ploughed into the Southern Alps in France has revealed that this is what happened and that one of the two pilots had been trying to get into the cockpit before the crash.

We need to define terrorism independently of who is employing it. Terrorism is violence against some innocent people aiming at intimidation and coercion of some other people. This definition says nothing about the identity of terrorists. They can be insurgents or criminals. But they can also be members of the military or of some state security agency.

Lieutenant-General James L. Terry, commander of US forces in Iraq and Syria, recently admitted he had no idea how many civilians have died as a result of coalition airstrikes in the region.

After watching the movie “American Sniper,” I called a friend named Garett Reppenhagen who was an American sniper in Iraq. He deployed with a cavalry scout unit from 2004 to 2005 and was stationed near FOB Warhorse.

After killing 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi were heard proclaiming, “we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad”. Amateur footage also revealed the killers invoking God with the Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar”. This otherwise innocuous everyday religious utterance is frequently usurped as a jihadist battlecry.

by Bartholomew & Mary-Margaret Moore. Find five minutes a day to focus on peace and visualize this planet absolutely radiant, bathed totally in Light, Power, Love, and Harmony. When you do this, you are moving away from limited beliefs into expanded possibilities...

The drums of war are beating once again with U.S. bombers to, in President Obama’s words, “degrade and destroy ISIS.” The Republican Party, led by war-at-any-cost Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain, wants a bigger military buildup which can only mean U.S. soldiers on the ground.

In the wake of a recent Russian-U.S. deal averting American airstrikes, Syria has begun to answer questions about its chemical weapons stockpile. One thing inspectors don't have the mandate to ask is where those weapons came from in the first place.

The Syria situation continues to burn unabated – a conflict which becomes not only consistently more entrenched, violent, embittered and bloody, but which, in its quest for oxygen, has increasingly drawn in regional players like Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon and Iran.

We are on the brink of a tragic decision to strike Syria, because, in the dubious logic of the President, “a lot of people think something should be done,” and American “credibility” is at stake. He and his secretary of state assure us that the strike will be “limited” and “surgical.” The use of chemical weapons against Syrian citizens is abominable, and if Assad’s regime is responsible he should be treated as an international criminal and pariah.

Remember the last time we were told military strikes were needed because a Middle Eastern despot had used weapons of mass destruction? As U.S. political and media leaders prepare for military strikes against Syria, the parallels to the lead-up to the war with Iraq should give us pause.

Pressure for a direct military intervention in Syria by the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Israel and the reactionary Gulf Arab monarchies is reaching a critical point. At any moment, we could hear about drone strikes or attempts to set up a no-fly zone and other acts of war.

Just after Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday — and before Manning’s announcement of a gender transition earlier today — independent journalist Alexa O’Brien sat down with Manning’s attorney, David Coombs,

Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about the evidence presented by Syrian rebels that the government there has used chemical weapons against them and the arguments being made over what the evidence shows.

At least 525 people were killed in Egypt on Wednesday when security forces cracked down on two protest camps filled with supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi. The Muslim Brotherhood says the actual death toll tops 2,000, and has called new rallies for today.

“Collective trauma” happens to large groups of people — attempted genocide, war, disease, a terrorist attack — and can be transmitted down generations and throughout communities. Its effects are specific: fear, rage, depression, survivor guilt, and physical responses in the brain and body that can lead to illness and a sense of disconnection or detachment...

During the occupation of Iraq, the city of Fallujah bore witness to some of the most intense US combat operations since Vietnam, with 2004’s Operation Phantom Fury widely condemned for its ferocity and disregard for international law. Paediatrician Dr Samira Al’aani has worked in the city since 1997. In 2006 she began to notice an increase in the number of babies being born with congenital birth defects (CBD).

The Obama administration has announced it will keep 19 diplomatic posts in North Africa and the Middle East closed for up to a week, due to fears of a possible militant threat. On Sunday, Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the decision to close the embassies was based on information collected by the National Security Agency.

The US government is openly and actively engaged in a reincarnation of the Cold War. Physical assets such as spies and informants have been replaced with zero-day software exploits and network security analysts. Old-school intelligence gathering, while effective to some degree, pales in comparison with the scope of big-data firms such as Endgame and Palantir.

In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.” So who exactly are those associated forces? It’s a secret.

Humanity has come to a defining moment in its two hundred thousand year evolution: we are at a place where we either have to give up or we have to stand up.Last night, amidst a backdrop of fear-creation by the security state, where you either shut up or face the consequences, my wife and I were talking about standing up to empire and what it might mean.

A leaked Pakistani government report has bolstered claims that civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes are far higher than the Obama administration has been willing to admit.

A secret document obtained by the Bureau reveals for the first time the Pakistan government’s internal assessment of dozens of drone strikes, and shows scores of civilian casualties.

Whatever your take on the recent revelations about government spying on our phone calls and Internet activity, there’s no denying that Big Brother is bigger and less brotherly than we thought.

About 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on the private sector. Former NSA Director Michael V. Hayden has described these firms as a quote "digital Blackwater."

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and author Noam Chomsky recently sat down together at Harvard University to discuss Scahill’s groundbreaking new book, "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield." Amy Goodman hosted the discussion, which was sponsored by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and the ACLU of Massachusetts.

A shocking new report by the Pentagon has found that 70 sexual assaults may be taking place within the U.S. military every day.

The United States was dominant in a previously unimaginable way. What could possibly go wrong? What could stand in the way of the greatest power history had ever seen? Rearranging The Deck Chairs On Planet Titanic?

The US President and Congress have involved themselves in one of the most cowardly public displays in US history.

For our national security, the American people must recover control of our runaway, unilateral presidency that has torn itself away from constitutional accountabilities and continues to be hijacked by ideologues who ignore our Founding Fathers’ wisdom regarding the separation of powers...