(Reuters) - NATO is abusing a United Nations resolution to protect Libyan civilians from Muammar Gaddafi's forces in order to pursue regime change and political assassinations, South African President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday.
Zuma, who has visited Libya twice since March on behalf of the African Union (AU) to seek a solution to the civil war, said NATO had overstepped the UN Resolution, passed in March and authorising the use of military force to protect civilians.
We have spoken out against the misuse of the good intentions in Resolution 1973," he said in parliament.
"We strongly believe that the resolution is being abused for regime change, political assassinations and foreign military occupation."...
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According to new research, the coalition is working well, but the Liberal Democrats could do better
After the major defeats for the Liberal Democrats in the recent Council Elections and the AV referendum, many commentators have expressed concerns over potential ‘fractures’ in the coalition government. Robert Hazel finds that while Nick Clegg’s party does face challenges, the coalition is actually working remarkably well...
READ FULL ARTICLE: According to new research, the coalition is working well, but the Liberal Democrats could do better
Terrorist-Criminal Pipelines and Criminalized States: Emerging Alliances
Transnational criminal organizations, networks, and terrorist groups are increasingly helping each other move products, money, weapons, personnel, and goods. They accomplish this through an informal network or series of overlapping pipelines.
These pipelines can be best understood as recombinant chains with links that can couple and decouple as necessary to meet the interests of the networks involved. Many operate in “alternatively governed” spaces outside of direct state control or within criminal state enterprises. A criminal state counts on the integration of the state's leadership into the criminal enterprise and the use of public services such as licensing, issuance of official documents, regulatory regimes, border control for illicit purposes.
A further variation of the criminal state occurs when a state franchises part of its territory to non-state groups, with the protection of the central government or a regional power sharing the profits. The author shows that understanding and addressing these threats requires capacity building in human intelligence collection and prosecuting transnational criminal organizations...
READ FULL ARTICLE: Terrorist-Criminal Pipelines and Criminalized States - Emerging Alliances
