Category Archives: peace

About | Open Source IMINT – worldwide defense reporting

The Open Source Imagery Intelligence site utilizes open source satellite imagery along with other publicly available resources to provide added value to

. The site is currently maintained by a former imagery analyst.

If you would like to contribute content or discuss any issues offline, you can contact me via email at: editor.osimint@gmail.com

via About | Open Source IMINT.

Kidnappings put Netanyahu back on offense – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

The kidnapping of the three teenage boys suddenly dominated both the media and the public agenda. And it was with the same rapidity that Netanyahu regained his stature as the responsible adult in the room, and the person with the most diplomatic and security mileage in the government and Cabinet.

In an instant, the kidnapping erased any memory of one of the, politically speaking, worst weeks Netanyahu has had in his current term, if not the worst. His unfocused, emotional plotting to thwart the election of his sworn enemy Reuven Rivlin came crashing down around him, and he was forced to congratulate the newly elected president, though he did so without any show of enthusiasm.

via Kidnappings put Netanyahu back on offense – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

South Sudan’s Wildlife Become Casualties Of War and Are Killed to Feed Soldiers and Rebels – Inter Press Service | Inter Press Service

War kills everything in its path!

“Since the start of this conflict we have noticed that poaching has become terrible. Rebels are poaching and the government forces are also poaching because they are all fighting in rural areas and the only available food they can get is wild meat,” Lieutenant General Alfred Akuch Omoli, an advisor to South Sudan’s Ministry of Wildlife Conservation and Tourism, told IPS.

Officials say elephants are being killed for their meat and tusks while migratory animals that move in large numbers, especially the white-eared kob, the tiang (also known as the Senegal hartebeest) and reedbuck, are being killed specifically to provide bush meat.

via South Sudan’s Wildlife Become Casualties Of War and Are Killed to Feed Soldiers and Rebels – Inter Press Service | Inter Press Service.

Caribbean chikungunya cases top 170,000 | CIDRAP

The number of chikungunya cases in parts of the Caribbean continued to surge last week, pushing past 170,000 cases, with the first cases confirmed in El Salvador, west of the main outbreak area, and more imported cases detected in the United States and other countries. {Will not be long before all of Central America is effected and then Mexico, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Florida – all from people visiting the currently effected areas – coming home infected and getting bitten by local mosquitoes!}

The outbreak has grown to 170,566 suspected or confirmed cases of the mosquito-borne disease, which is 35,139 higher than the 135,427 cases reported the previous week, according to a Jun 13 report from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The number of deaths remained the same, at 14.

Over the past few weeks, most new cases are suspected infections reported from the Latin Caribbean countries, such as the Dominican Republic, where suspected cases rose from 52,976 to 77,320 last week. Guadaloupe and Martinique also reported thousands of new cases, but no new case totals were given for Haiti, another country that has recently been hard hit by the outbreak.

In the non-Latin areas that were mainly affected earlier in the outbreak, new cases were reported by Dominica, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the US Virgin Islands.

via Caribbean chikungunya cases top 170,000 | CIDRAP.

President & First Lady Make Historic Trip to Standing Rock Sioux Reservatio Today

Presidential visits to Indian reservations are extremely rare. President Bill Clinton was the last sitting U.S. president to visit an Indian reservation when he did so in 1999 to the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. Prior to President Clinton’s visit, President Franklin Roosevelt visited the Cherokee Nation in North Carolina in 1936.

via President & First Lady Make Historic Trip to Standing Rock Sioux Reservatio Today.

I remember Mosul, but Iraq 3.0 is what happens when you exit a war early | Colby Buzzell | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Sometime in the 2020s, San Francisco

One day my son is going to ask me at the dinner table: Daddy, why did we lose the Iraq war?

I won’t ask him if his teacher put him up to it, because 10 years from now, it will probably be common knowledge that, yes, we did lose the Iraq war. Everybody – teachers and historians, liberals and conservatives – will agree.

I have years to prepare an answer for my son. Right now, this is what I think: We were winning when I was there. We were winning when we were there.

That’s about all I can say. We lost.

Of course, I could also say the same same thing my father thought about his alma mater: A lot of good Americans died in the war.

Period. End of discussion.

What else can you say?

via I remember Mosul, but Iraq 3.0 is what happens when you exit a war early | Colby Buzzell | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

47 years of occupation: Every photo tells a story | +972 Magazine

47 years of occupation: Every photo tells a story

Marking 47 years of the Israeli occupation since 1967, we asked Activestills photographers to choose one photograph from their archive and write about it.

via 47 years of occupation: Every photo tells a story | +972 Magazine.

Bob Bergdahl remains calm at centre of storm over son released by Taliban | World news | theguardian.com

The Berdaghl family made its home in a remote, wind-whipped Idaho valley to keep the world at a certain distance. But two outside forces – the Taliban and US politics – crashed into the idyll.

It says a lot about Bob Bergdahl, 54, and the son he raised that of the two, he appears to have handled the Taliban better.

The former UPS delivery man has intrigued, inspired and infuriated the US public since the release of his son, Bowe, 28, ignited a political firestorm last week.

The ponytail and straggly beard, the phrases in Arabic and Pashto, the refusal to look or sound like a conventional dad, the theories about Bowe’s alleged desertion – all have fuelled the clamour, prompting many to ask: just who are the Bergdahls?

Interviews with friends, neighbours and colleagues in the valley and in Hailey, the nearest town, paint a nuanced portrait of a family that on one hand is sporty, Christian and all-American, fond of horses, hunting, chocolate muffins and Jimmy Fallon; and on the other bookish, private and iconoclastic, carving an individualistic trail in its own private Idaho. That lifestyle bred idealism – and, arguably, naivety.

“Bob almost reads and thinks too much,” said Lee Ann Ferris, a neighbour. “You’d ask him a question and, whoah, what an answer you’d get.”

via Bob Bergdahl remains calm at centre of storm over son released by Taliban | World news | theguardian.com.