Tag: Pakistan

More Black Sites, More Drones

July 25, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

As the the U.S. Congress and President negotiate about whether to pay its bills and which social programs to cut, funding for secret prisons and killer robots continue unabated.

Jeremy Scahill recently broke a story about a CIA secret prison in Mogadishu, where “terror suspects” are rendered for extra-legal storage and interrogation.

As usual following such stories exposing imperial wrongdoing, “news” media sycophants are then deployed to spin the facts by uncritically quoting anonymous government officials.

This Mogadishu CIA black site prison is just part of the larger story of the “Global War On Terror”, began by Bush 43 and continued by Obama, albeit without reference to Bush’s absurd title.

Sauron’s gaze now turns to the not-so-green pastures of Yemen and Somalia, sending forth riderless fell-beasts to spy on and kill those within proximity of those suspected of standing against the Imperial Will:

The Obama administration has escalated the existing drone program and begun a new CIA drone campaign in Yemen (one that just killed numerous people over the weekend); it also, contrary to public denials, provided the arms to Saudi Arabia to attack a rebel group in Northern Yemen.  Yemen is also the justification for Obama’s attempt to institutionalize a due-process-free assassination program aimed at U.S. citizens.  The administration just commenced a separate drone campaign in Somalia.

Presumably, these not-so-new targets of U.S. beneficence will suffer the same drone inflicted civilian slaughterings that regularly transpire (despite denials by government spokesliars) in the other terror war fronts.

Buried at Sea…

May 6, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

After the Gulf of Tonkin, Iraqi Aluminum Tubes, Nigerian Yellowcake, The Escape of Jessica Lynch, The Death of Pat Tillman, and many other war justifying and glorifying fictions, it is unreasonable not to look askance at U.S. Government announcements regarding Imperial Threats and Milestones — especially when elements of these announcements are demonstrated at once to be false, or at least embarrassingly incoherent.

Curiously, several false claims regarding the Assassination of bin Laden had to be publicly corrected by the Government itself, even after establishment media had dutifully parroted them: No, actually bin Laden wasn’t armed. No, he did not use his wife as a human shield. No, there was no 40 minute gun battle, only one armed man in a guest house. (But maybe not even that.)  And no, this wasn’t a “capture or kill mission” but a “kill mission”.

But enough questions about the killing!

Other claims fell to minimal scrutiny.  The claim that bin Laden was buried at sea “in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition” could be easily debunked by anyone who bothered to look up what the Qu’ran actually says.  And why, in any case, would the U.S. go out of its way to respect bin Laden’s religious sentiments, especially after putting two holes in his head?

Another absurdity: That the U.S. won’t release documentary photos of bin Laden’s body, so as not to incite violence –  “because that’s not who we are” — as if the world (outside of the U.S.) is not regularly exposed to photographic evidence of civilians slaughtered as a result of U.S. military operations.

But perhaps the most insidious lie was uttered by the President himself, who asserted that assassinating an old man in his pajamas “is a testament to the greatness of our country” — despite the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and the decade of misdirected, proliferating war leading up to this glorious event.

Other notes:

Reuters did manage to acquire some photos of the bodies left behind by the kill team in the hours following the assassination:

Remember when Bush rejected a Taliban offer to surrender bin Laden way back at the beginning of the Terror War?

Do the Gitmo Files show that the U.S. knew where Osama was since 2005?

And, for good measure, some embarrassing morons:

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Enough about Assange: What WikiLeaks has Revealed

December 29, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

By focusing on the personalities or philosophy behind Wikileaks, in addition to the Imperial and Corporate reactions to its successes thus far, it is easy to lose focus on the actual substance of the leaks themselves. So here is an incomplete list of significant revelations emerging from Wikileaks in 2010, summarized from a list of headlines compiled by G. Greewald:

UPDATE: Here is another round-up of what Wikileaks revelations, compiled by CBS news.

Nuclear Explosions

November 16, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has made a beautiful and terrifying video mapping the 2053 nuclear explosions that have taken place on our planet between 1945 and 1998. Enjoy!

I wonder if this has anything to do with cancer rates?

(video via C&L)

The Leader of the Free World

July 27, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Julian Assange is a superhero genius who looks like a Batman villain, and this press conference is world historical:

Wikileaks, holding it down.

July 25, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Wikileaks released “The Afghan War Diaries” Today:

The Afghan War Diaries an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.

The Afghan War Diaries is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but this archive reveals locations and key events behind each of these individual deaths. We hope the impact will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and modern warfare in general.

Three newspapers were given early access on the condition the they would not publish about them until today.  Lots to read:

The Guardian (U.K.)

Spiegel (Germany)

New York Times (U.S.):

5 (Plus) Front Terror War

January 2, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

5_Front_War

Now that Yemen has been added to the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s list of military targets, the United States is bombing and shooting people in 5 predominately Muslim countries. Greenwald elaborates here:

…if you count our occupation of Iraq, our twice-escalated war in Afghanistan, our rapidly escalating bombing campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, and various forms of covert war involvement in Somalia, one could reasonably say that we’re fighting five different wars in Muslim countries — or, to use the NYT‘s jargon, “five fronts” in the “Terror War” (Obama yesterday specifically mentioned Somalia and Yemen as places where, euphemistically, “we will continue to use every element of our national power”). Add to those five fronts the “crippling” sanctions on Iran many Democratic Party luminaries are now advocating, combined with the chest-besting threats from our Middle East client state that the next wars they fight against Muslims will be even “harsher” than the prior ones, and it’s almost easier to count the Muslim countries we’re not attacking or threatening than to count the ones we are.

The U.S. strike on Yemen, which included raids by Yemeni forces and which witnesses say killed as many an 120 civilians, including women and children, was in order to preempt “an imminent attack against a U.S. asset”.

To hear an extended interview with someone who seems to know a lot about the internal politics of Yemen, go here. A transcript of this interview is here. Time magazine takes a look at developments in Yemen here, with some photos here.

AF-PAK ADVENTURE

December 8, 2009: J. Rosencrantz

Here is a basic primer on the Af-Pak Adventure, courtesy of the inestimable LLoyd Dangle of Troubletown:

And for an elaboration of the final panel, see Tom Engelhardt’s essay, “Meet the Commanded-in-Chief.”

MILITARY SOLUTIONS

December 3, 2009: J. Rosencrantz

In the video on the right, hear lesser known voices – veterans, scholars and Afghans themselves – on Obama’s plans for a military escalation in Afghanistan.

Or check TRRN‘s interview with Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Colin Powel, who discusses the less than enthusiastic expressions on the faces of the West Point Cadets and calls Obama’s decision “pure politics“.

Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary for the Treasury under Reagan, argues that when it comes to the choice to escalate in Afghanistan “Obama is irrelevant” – that he is just following the orders of a too-powerful military industrial coplex.

In any case, it is not just Afghanistan that is going to suffer an escalation. The NYT is reporting that the C.I.A. is expanding drone air-strike program in Pakistan – a program which has been known to end the lives of collateral toddlers.

CONTINUITIES 4 (OF JULY)

July 4, 2009: J. Rosencrantz

To commemorate the 4th of July, here is another update on some of the many ways Obama has proven continuous with Bush:

Civil Liberties
Foreign Policy
Environment
Transparency
Sense of Humor
Gay Rights

And for the fuck of it, here is Howard Zinn questioning the necessity and value of the U.S. War of Independence.

(And btw – the Bush/Obama digital mash-up face is not mine. I just jacked it and placed it in the 4th of July context. I would credit, but I can’t find the original artist. And here is another good image on the same topic.)