Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Israel urged to release satellite TV director

Ma’an – 23/05/2012

BETHLEHEM – Israeli authorities should release the director of a new Palestinian satellite broadcaster who has been detained since Thursday, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.

“Israeli authorities should consider the message they are sending by imprisoning the head of a station that covers news about prisoners,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ’s coordinator for Mideast issues.

“Authorities should not be holding Bahaa Khairi Moussa, and certainly not without explanation. He should be released immediately, and the station’s equipment should be returned.”

Moussa, the general director of the Palestine Prisoner Channel, was arrested Thursday in Jenin. Soldiers confiscated his station’s equipment during the raid, his colleagues said.

Reporters Without Borders, meanwhile, strongly condemned the arrest.

“Such abuses aimed at stifling the Palestinian media must cease,” the group said Monday.

“This is the third time since the start of 2012 that the Israeli authorities have victimized a Palestinian media organization. We call for the immediate release of Baha Mousa and the return of all confiscated equipment,” the Paris-based group said in a statement.

It called the raid “illegal under international law” because it took place in Palestinian territory.

In April, soldiers shut down the officers of a new broadcaster in occupied East Jerusalem and in February, soldiers raided two Palestinian TV stations, Watan and Al-Quds TV in Ramallah.

Related articles

May 23, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

BLM fails to justify Press TV ban

Press TV – May 20, 2012

German media regulatory body BLM has failed to provide legal justification for its decision to ban Press TV, after the channel files a lawsuit against the organization.

Press TV’s legal team says it has very strong evidence against BLM’s decision to ban the channel from a satellite platform in Europe.

It also says BLM has provided the court with a poor defense in which it has failed to provide any legal justification for its controversial move. The channel has called the ban “illegal.” And, in the lawsuit, Press TV has claimed compensation.

BLM took Press TV off the SES Astra satellite platform in early April. The media regulator claimed Press TV had no license to broadcast. However, the channel’s legal team has submitted documents to the court that prove Press TV can broadcast under German law.

An administrative court in Germany has accepted Press TV’s argument and the legal procedures have begun. The court has not yet specified a date for the hearings, but they are expected to start soon.

The channel has learned that the satellite platform is also taking legal action against BLM. Press TV has criticized German authorities for their attempt to silence the voice of the alternative news channel.

Press TV was taken off the air in Britain earlier this year, almost two years after the British government’s media regulatory body, Ofcom, launched a politically-charged battle against the channel.

According to Wikileaks’ cables, American and British officials discussed ways of limiting the operations of Press TV in a London meeting in 2010.

Related articles

May 20, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

No Freedoms to Hate Us For Anymore

Who Are the Evil Ones?

By MISSY BEATTIE | CounterPunch | May 18, 2012

Remember that they (the evil ones) hate our freedoms.

Remember, too, that in the aftermath of 9/11, the war criminals told us this repeatedly.  Here’s an example from George W. Bush:

They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

And another:

We must be strong and we must be decisive. We must stop the evil ones, so our children and grandchildren can know peace and security and freedom in the greatest nation on the face of the Earth… We know we’re one people; we know we’re one country. We’re united from coast to coast by a determination and a firm resolve to see that right prevails.

Remember, too, that this freedom, inspiring all that hatred, is enshrined in the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Remember that the words “freedom” and “evil ones” also are enshrined in the language of corporate media “stars” and politicians.

Recall the words Barack Obama spoke during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.  We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will.  We have done so out of enlightened self-interest — because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

There’s the word “freedom” again. But in this paragraph, it refers to providing liberty to those whose countries we invade and occupy because we “seek” whatever (?) good transpires from granting “freedom and prosperity” to others.

Now, make note that the United States has departments and legislation to protect freedom to prevent the evil ones from inflicting harm. Here’s a list:

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Transportation Security Administration (TSA)

Total Information Awareness (TIA)

Patriot Act

Military Commissions Act

Homegrown Terrorism Act

House Resolution 347

National Defense Authorization Act

And think about the NATO Summit in Chicago—May 20th and 21st.   But first read an article by John LaForge for a stomach-lurching look at NATO’s “mission accomplishments”.

I just took a break from writing this, checked my mail, and read the following from Free Press:

Whether you’re a credentialed journalist, a protester or a bystander  with a smartphone, you are guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of access to information.  Your right to document public events must also be protected.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees it this way. Conflicts are escalating between those trying to bear witness on one side and local police and government officials on the other.  All too often, the First Amendment is caught in the middle.

As protests and election-year events unfold in 2101, we must guard these rights and protect the networks that help us voice our political beliefs. Our First Amendment right to record must extend to everyone.

But Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has put his official boot on this prerogative (the freedom for which the evil ones hate us) with certain ordinances that will remain in force after the summit:

  • Authorization for the Mayor to purchase and deploy surveillance cameras throughout the city, without any type of oversight.
  • Restrictions on public activity, including amplified sound and morning gatherings.
  • Restrictions on parades, including the requirement to purchase an insurance policy worth $1 million and to register every sign or banner that will be held by more than one person.
  • The power to deputize many different types of law enforcement personnel other than the Chicago Police Department.

After 9/11, fear and loss-of-liberty threats became a perfect petri dish for the corporatocracy and a miasma of secrecy, surveillance, intimidation, punitive measures, and endless war.

Pay close attention to the “Police Forces” section in the Wikipedia piece.  Along with this and all of the above, the truth about this freedom-hating propaganda strobe lights the impoverishment of loss. So many of the hallowed freedoms have been eliminated by the real enemies—Wall Street criminals and their puppets who reside in US government positions of “leadership.”

If “they” attacked us only because they hated our freedoms, there’s nothing to hate anymore.

Missy Beattie lives in Baltimore, Maryland.  She can be reached at: missybeat@gmail.com

May 18, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Congress still okay with indefinite detention and torture of Americans

RT | 18 May, 2012

Even after a federal court deemed the NDAA unconstitutional, the US House of Representatives refused to exclude indefinite detention provisions from the infamous defense spending bill during a vote on Friday.

An attempt to strike down any provisions allowing for the US military to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge from next year’s National Defense Authorization Act was shot down Friday morning in the House of Representatives.

Following discussions on an amendment to the 2013 NDAA that was proposed by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington) and Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan), House lawmakers opted against passing the law by a vote of 182-238. Had the Smish-Amash amendment passed, military detention for terror suspects captured in the US would have been excluded in the annual defense spending bill. Provisions that allow for that power, Sections 1021 and 1022, were inserted into the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2012. President Barack Obama signed that legislation on New Year’s Eve, essentially authorizing the US Armed Forces to detain Americans indefinitely at military facilities over only allegation of ties with terrorists and subject them to enhanced interrogation tactics on par with torture.

On Thursday night, Rep. Amash took to his Facebook page to address the amendment with his followers. “No matter how much I am slandered or my positions are demagogued, I will NEVER stop fighting to defend your liberty and the Constitution,” wrote the congressman.

Back on Capitol Hill, Rep. Amash circulated a document to his fellow lawmakers on Thursday outlining his proposed amendment. In urging his colleagues to vote yes on the Smith-Amash amendment, the representative from Michigan explained to Congress that the proposal would offer protection to non-citizens of the United States and is the only amendment up for discussion that would guarantee Americans a charge and trial.

Elsewhere in the paper, Rep. Amash harped on a decision out of a federal court earlier this week that ruled that the NDAA violated the US Constitution.

“Our constituents demand that we protect their right to a charge and a trial — especially after the NDAA was ruled unconstitutional this week,” wrote Rep. Amash.

That decision came Wednesday when United States District Judge Katherine Forrest shunned the NDAA’s indefinite detention provision, saying it had a “chilling impact on First Amendment rights.”

“An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so,” wrote Judge Forrest, who then cited complaints for American journalists who were concerned that they’d be imprisoned without charge solely for speaking with alleged terrorists.

Attorney Carl Mayer represented the plaintiffs in this case and spoke with RT after Judge Forrest’s decision. Mr. Mayer revealed that while the Obama administration can — and most likely will — file an appeal, “we are suggesting that it may not be in their best interest because there are so many people from all sides of the political spectrum opposed to this law.”

Although that opposition has indeed been widespread since even before this year’s NDAA was signed by President Obama on December 31, it was absent on Capitol Hill this Friday when the Smith-Amash amendment was shot down.

Moments before the amendment went up for vote, Rep. Amash wrote on Facebook, “We know the NDAA’s detention provision is unconstitutional. The House will vote on one substantive solution.”

“Will we fix it? And if we don’t, how will we explain that to our constituents?”

May 18, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel ‘arrests TV director, confiscates equipment’

Ma’an – May 17, 2012

JENIN – Israeli forces arrested the director of a Jenin-based satellite channel on Thursday after raiding his home, the executive director of the channel said.

Saher Qassem, chief of the Al-Asir channel, told Ma’an that a group of soldiers arrested Baha Khayri Ata Musa, 32, after raiding his home in Mirka village.

Soldiers confiscated the TV station’s broadcasting equipment from Musa’s home, preventing the channel from being able to continue its coverage, Qassem said.

Al-Asir, or ‘the prisoner’, channel also has offices operating in Bahrain, Qassem said.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said one person was detained in Jenin overnight, but could not provide the identify of the person.

In late February, Israeli forces raided Watan TV and Al-Quds Educational TV’s offices in Ramallah, confiscating broadcasting equipment.

Related articles

May 17, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Empire Holds Its War Council in Chicago

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | May 16, 2012

If anyone has doubts about what it means here at home when the U.S. seeks to militarily dominate the world, take a trip to Chicago, this week. There, you’ll see the Chicago police, the second largest force in the country, reinforced by cops from Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, and backed up by two high decibel noise machines that were first used against American civilians in Pittsburgh to blow out the eardrums of protesters, back in 2009. Overall security for the NATO summit meeting is overseen by the FBI and the Secret Service, who in recent months have been given unprecedented police state powers, thanks to President Obama and a bipartisan Congress.

With dignitaries on hand from the more than 50 countries that have done Washington’s bidding in Afghanistan, there will be lots of opportunities for the feds to invoke their new powers to put demonstrators in prison for up to ten years if they set foot on property containing any person under the protection of the Secret Service. That could include huge chunks of the city. And, of course, who knows what kinds of plots the FBI is conjuring up through its squads of agent provocateurs embedded in the ranks of demonstrators. Thanks to the preventive detention without trial legislation signed into law by President Obama this past New Year’s Eve, every American has lost her Constitutional right to due process of law. Which means that a reconfigured and far more principled U.S. anti-war movement now confronts a growing fascist infrastructure here at home, as it opposes imperial crimes, abroad.

The Chicago police claim they don’t plan to turn the eardrum-busting sound cannons on full volume against the demonstrators – just loud enough to convey “messages” to the crowd. The protesters are sending their own message, one that has become far more popular and general than could have been imagined, a year ago. Since the emergence of the Occupy movement, last October, millions of Americans have come to understand what Latin American peasants have always known: that the nexus of war in the world is Wall Street, and the Pentagon is its servant – as is the White House and most of the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. War is waged for the purpose of global economic subjugation and, therefore, peace can only be won by dethroning the financial bad guys: the Lords of Capital. So, much of the peace movement now sees itself as an expression of the 99 Percent, against the warlike and greedy 1 Percent.

Once that lesson is learned, it cannot be shouted out by police sound-blasters.

President Obama has made skillful use of NATO, to make it appear that he is not a go-it-alone cowboy, like George Bush. Obama has drawn closely to his side the old imperialists of Europe, who looted and pillaged the earth for five hundred years, establishing the planetary racial hierarchy that has only recently begun to crumble. The Black man in the White House is seen, ironically, as the last best hope of the old colonial racial order and the rule of capital. The Global One Percent can only be maintained in power by the U.S. war machine. Ultimately, the world needs only one thing from the American people: that they dismantle the machine.

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Related articles

May 16, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Empire Holds Its War Council in Chicago

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | May 16, 2012

If anyone has doubts about what it means here at home when the U.S. seeks to militarily dominate the world, take a trip to Chicago, this week. There, you’ll see the Chicago police, the second largest force in the country, reinforced by cops from Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, and backed up by two high decibel noise machines that were first used against American civilians in Pittsburgh to blow out the eardrums of protesters, back in 2009. Overall security for the NATO summit meeting is overseen by the FBI and the Secret Service, who in recent months have been given unprecedented police state powers, thanks to President Obama and a bipartisan Congress.

With dignitaries on hand from the more than 50 countries that have done Washington’s bidding in Afghanistan, there will be lots of opportunities for the feds to invoke their new powers to put demonstrators in prison for up to ten years if they set foot on property containing any person under the protection of the Secret Service. That could include huge chunks of the city. And, of course, who knows what kinds of plots the FBI is conjuring up through its squads of agent provocateurs embedded in the ranks of demonstrators. Thanks to the preventive detention without trial legislation signed into law by President Obama this past New Year’s Eve, every American has lost her Constitutional right to due process of law. Which means that a reconfigured and far more principled U.S. anti-war movement now confronts a growing fascist infrastructure here at home, as it opposes imperial crimes, abroad.

The Chicago police claim they don’t plan to turn the eardrum-busting sound cannons on full volume against the demonstrators – just loud enough to convey “messages” to the crowd. The protesters are sending their own message, one that has become far more popular and general than could have been imagined, a year ago. Since the emergence of the Occupy movement, last October, millions of Americans have come to understand what Latin American peasants have always known: that the nexus of war in the world is Wall Street, and the Pentagon is its servant – as is the White House and most of the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. War is waged for the purpose of global economic subjugation and, therefore, peace can only be won by dethroning the financial bad guys: the Lords of Capital. So, much of the peace movement now sees itself as an expression of the 99 Percent, against the warlike and greedy 1 Percent.

Once that lesson is learned, it cannot be shouted out by police sound-blasters.

President Obama has made skillful use of NATO, to make it appear that he is not a go-it-alone cowboy, like George Bush. Obama has drawn closely to his side the old imperialists of Europe, who looted and pillaged the earth for five hundred years, establishing the planetary racial hierarchy that has only recently begun to crumble. The Black man in the White House is seen, ironically, as the last best hope of the old colonial racial order and the rule of capital. The Global One Percent can only be maintained in power by the U.S. war machine. Ultimately, the world needs only one thing from the American people: that they dismantle the machine.

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Related articles

May 16, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation authority renews administrative detention of MP Rejoub for fourth time

Palestine Information Center – 15/05/2012

AL-KHALIL — The Israeli occupation authority has renewed the administrative detention of MP Nayef Al-Rejoub for six months for the fourth time running, his son said on Monday.

He said that the Negev prison administration informed his father of the decision despite the fact that his past detention order still ends after 17 days on 1st June.

He said that the early decision was a clear indication that the Israeli prison service was eluding the agreement announced earlier on Monday with the Palestinian prisoners, who have been on hunger strike for four weeks, not to renew administrative detention among other articles.

The IOA had arrested MP Rejoub in 2010 and renewed his administrative detention, without charge, on three previous occasions each time for a period of six months.

A PIC reporter said that the Negev prison administration had renewed the administrative custody of a number of other prisoners.

Related articles

May 15, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Tel Aviv University imposes restrictions on Nakba Day events

MEMO | May 11, 2012

Tel Aviv University has imposed policies and procedures intended to restrict those Arab students who wish to organise Nakba commemorative events on campus. Palestinians remember the Nakba (Catastrophe) on 15th May every year, the date on which the state of Israel was created on their land.

According to a report in Haaretz newspaper, the presidency of the university has told the organisers of Nakba Day activities to provide the necessary funding for hiring at least six security guards from the university’s own security company to maintain control and order. The university wants to prevent any disturbances or riots during the ceremony scheduled for next week.

The event organisers must provide the required sum of money two days ahead of the proposed date of the programme, failing which it will be cancelled. The university has also banned the use of flags, banners and loud PA systems even though the Nakba Day commemoration has been approved by the students’ council, considered widely to be the first time such permission has been granted.

The organisers of the ceremony told Haaretz that the purpose behind the event is to introduce to non-Arab students the facts about the disaster that befell the Palestinians in 1948. In doing so, they also hope to influence Israeli public opinion and remind all citizens of the loss and human tragedy experienced by the Palestinians as a result of the Israeli occupation of their land.

Related articles

May 13, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Sniffing Out Privacy Issues That May Be In Our future

By Jay Stanley | ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project | May 11, 2012

MIT’s Technology Review has an article today on research that is underway to make extremely sensitive and rapid molecular sensors—aka “artificial noses”—that are so thin they could even be integrated into paper or textiles.

The use of particle detectors and chemical sensors to identify tiny amounts of chemicals or odors is an area that we’ve been keeping an eye on for a while—something we file under “possible future privacy-invasive technologies.” As Technology Review describes it, this technology

rapidly detects volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—gases in our surrounding environment that are produced by a wide variety of sources, everything from household paints to a person’s own skin. Many do not have an odor, but an electronic sensor could alert a user to the presence of harmful chemicals or perhaps indicate that something is off-kilter with a user’s health.

The main context in which Americans have encountered chemical sensors so far is in bomb detection—mainly at the airport when they or their belongings are swabbed and tested for traces of explosives. A “puffer machine” that blows air on passengers standing inside a booth was also tested for a while but found to be so far impractical for mass deployment. We’ve never had a problem with particle detectors; as long as they are tuned only to look for explosives, they do not raise substantial privacy concerns, as explosives are not something people normally have. (We have pointed out that there can be questions about their effectiveness, and the importance of treating people who “alarm” properly given that false negatives are probable.)

But such deployments may be only the beginning. Here are some other chemical detection efforts that we have seen already:

• DHS has been working on a scheme to place chemical sensors in cell phones so that every American becomes a roaming chemical sensor able to alert the authorities to the release of chemical toxins resulting from accidents or terrorist plots.

• Companies are selling sensitive drug-sniffing products that go way beyond breathalyzers, such as contactless hand-held scanners that claim to be able to detect trace amounts of drugs on virtually all surfaces, including skin and clothing.

• DHS is also researching the use of body odor as a unique identifier or “odor fingerprint.” In theory, if that panned out, cheap and pervasive sensors could identify you everywhere you go.

• As part of the same project, DHS is also researching their use “as an indicator of deception”—in short, they are pursuing that perennial chimera, a lie detector. While lie detection is a fool’s errand, it’s possible that odor detectors could reveal very crude facts about people’s emotional state.

• Researchers are developing techniques for detecting medical conditions including cancer, asthma, and many other diseases by detecting “trace amounts of distinctive biomarkers in their breath.” (Sounds great in the hands of your doctor; used secretly during a job interview or bank loan application, not so much.)

• Under a pilot program spearheaded by the White House’s “drug czar” in 2006, the government tested sewage from treatment plants in the Washington, D.C. area to measure the amount of trace cocaine that was present. This was done in an effort to estimate the level of drug use in those communities. It did not reveal anything about specific individuals.

The breadth of activity in this area makes it clear that if this technology continues to advance rapidly and becomes cheap and widespread as so many other technologies have in recent years, we will be facing an entirely new set of privacy issues. A whole new range of facts about ourselves (health conditions; emotional state; drug, alcohol and pharmaceutical use; our identity) could become open to unwelcome scrutiny by others (government, employers, insurance companies, nosy neighbors).

Sometimes such technologies get scary very fast; other times they don’t turn out to be a problem. We’ll be watching closely.

Related articles

May 12, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

License Plate Tracking Spreads beyond Criminal Suspects

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | May 08, 2012

From Tennessee to the District of Columbia, police are using mobile and stationary surveillance cameras to collect and store license plates of residents who have committed no crime—so that they can be found if they ever do.

In Tennessee, police utilize cameras mounted atop patrol cars that can capture thousands of license numbers each day. The information is then loaded into an ever-expanding database, which can help officers locate a vehicle in the event its owner is suspected of criminal behavior. The program is now expanding to include stationary cameras mounted next to busy roads.

“I’m sure that there’s going to be people out there that say this is an invasion of privacy,” Detective James Kemp of Gallatin County told The Tennessean. But “the possibilities are endless there for solving crimes. It’s just a multitude of information out there—to not tap into it to better protect your citizens, that’s ludicrous.”

In Washington D.C., local police make use of 250 cameras set up around the city that can capture license plates. Last year they claimed that the cameras led to an average of one arrest a day. DC reportedly has the highest concentration of cameras per square mile in the United States for spotting criminals on the move or just ordinary citizens going about their lives.

Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union’s technology and liberty program, expressed concern over D.C.’s “large database of innocent people’s comings and goings.” He told The Washington Post: “The government has no business collecting that kind of information on people without a warrant.”

Others predict that the technology will be declared constitutional because license plates are displayed in public, so there is no invasion of privacy.

To Learn More:

May 8, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Analysis: Little Caution Used in U.S. Drone Assassinations

By Sherwood Ross | May 7, 2012

Although President Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser says caution is exercised when making drone attacks, official US announcements often state that suspects are killed. This very word betrays the fact that every drone attack is a crime because it is illegal in any civilized society to kill suspects. The Pentagon and CIA killings are murder, pure and simple. (Only last week, Washington announced it killed four “suspected militants” by drone attack in Pakistan, resulting in a formal protest from Islamabad “strongly condemning” the killings. “Such attacks are in total contravention of international law and established norms of interstate relations,” the Pakistan statement underscored.)

Moreover, the Washington Post quoted a Pakistani government official who reminded: “When a duly elected democratic Parliament says three times not to do this, and the U.S. keeps doing it, it undermines democracy.”

Presidential adviser John Brennan told a group of academicians at the Woodrow Wilson Center, “We only authorize a strike if we have a high degree of confidence that innocent civilians will not be injured or killed, except in the rarest of circumstances,” Charlie Savage of The New York Times reports in the April 30th edition.

But Brennan acknowledged “instances when — despite the extraordinary precautions we take — civilians have been accidentally injured, or worse, killed in these strikes. It is exceedingly rare, but it has happened. When it does, it pains us and we regret it deeply, as we do any time innocents are killed in war.”

Exceedingly rare? As Juan Cole of the University of Michigan observed in The Nation magazine, the Britain-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism(BIJ) found “not only are civilians routinely killed by U.S. drone strikes in northern Pakistan” but “often people rushing to the scene of a strike to help the wounded are killed by a second launch.” Presumably, some of these victims may include medical personnel and relatives.

The BIJ estimates the US has killed some 3,000 people in 319 drone strikes. Of these, 600 were civilian bystanders and approximately one in four of those were children.

“At the very time Brennan made his speech, there emerged further confirmation of CIA “signature strikes’ that were launched at people who allegedly may be engaged in a pattern of activity that could somehow suggest their involvement in some form of terrorism on the basis of dubious intelligence,” said Francis Boyle, the distinguished professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign.

“These “signature strikes’ are indiscriminate and thus illegal and war crimes. And the fact that all these drone strikes constitute widespread and systematic war crimes mean they also constitute Crimes against Humanity as defined by the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court and customary international criminal law,” Boyle added.

“Obama, Brennan, Petraeus and the CIA operatives involved must be held criminally accountable for these war crimes and Crimes against Humanity in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, inter alia,” said Boyle, author of “Tackling America’s Toughest Questions” (Clarity).

Obama, who presents himself as the doting father of two daughters, is systematically and criminally taking the lives of other parents’ children in his blind passion to destroy his enemies. He has radically stepped up drone attacks over his predecessor, George W. Bush, and makes no apologies for their commission. The drones are now so “hot” in the Pentagon arsenal that manufacturers cannot keep pace with the demand for them. The US has 7,000 unmanned aerial vehicles, Cole writes, which it has deployed in strikes in six countries under direction of the CIA and Pentagon.

Cole points out the drone strikes are largely carried out in places where no war has been declared; neither has any Status of Forces Agreement been signed. “They operate outside the framework of the Constitution, with no due process or habeas corpus, recalling pre-modern practices of the English monarchy, such as declaring people outlaws, issuing bills of attainder against individuals who offend the crown and trying them in secret Star Chamber proceedings.”

“The only due process afforded those killed from the air is an intelligence assessment, possibly based on dubious sources and not reviewed by a judge,” Cole writes. “There is no consistency, no application of the rule of law. Guilt by association and absence of due process are the hallmarks of shadow government.”

Of the 3,000 slayings in Pakistan by drone strikes, writes Bill Van Auken, only 170 victims have been identified as “known militants.”

According to Van Auken, Brennan told his Woodrow Wilson Center audience, “The constitution empowers the president to protect the nation from any imminent threat of attack” but that assertion “is a lie.” Van Auken explained, “As US officials acknowledged, Sunday’s attack in Pakistan was directed at elements who were allegedly preparing not to attack the US, but rather to resist the US military occupation of Afghanistan.”

The accelerating drone strikes are only one aspect of the emerging covert operations that were once a minor arrow in the national security quiver, The Nation writer Cole states, but today are “the cutting edge of American power.”

“Drone strikes, electronic surveillance and stealth engagements by military units such as the Joint Special Operations Command, as well as dependence on private corporations, mercenary armies and terrorist groups, are now arguably more common as tools of US foreign policy than conventional warfare or diplomacy,” Cole writes.

Related articles

May 7, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »