Death From The Skies: U.S. Kills 13 In Pakistan In Three Separate Drone Attacks

To celebrate the end of Ramadan, President Barack Obama ordered some drone attacks on Pakistan:

A flurry of US drone attacks pounded northern Pakistan over the weekend, killing 13 people in three separate attacks, officials and witnesses said on Sunday.

The attacks came as Pakistanis celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan with the festival of Eid al-Fitr.

A drone killed five people and injured two in North Waziristan early on Sunday morning, an intelligence official said.

He said the death toll was based on intercepted conversations between the militants.

Later on Sunday, another drone attack killed two people and injured two others near the site of the previous attack, said two intelligence officials.

On Saturday, a drone attack killed six people and injured two.

The dead were local Taliban and fighters from the southern province of Punjab, said security officials and a tribal source.

Sure they were local Taliban fighters.

I believe everything my government tells me.

Except when they, you know, lie and cover things up.

Notice how they pick celebratory times so they can maximize the killing?

Or better yet, how they pick funerals of drone bomb victims as perfect opportunities for another drone bomb strike?

Or best yet, how they target the rescuers who flood the scene of a drone attack to help the victims?

What great American efficiency! Kill the people who show up at the scene of a drone attack with another drone attack!

Remind me again how the murderous fucker in the White House won a Nobel Peace Prize?

Actually I guess he fits in with another murderous fucker who won the Nobel Peace Prize - Henry Kissinger.

Comparing Obama's Drone Bombing Campaign To Nixon's Bombing Of Cambodia And Laos

Barack Obama continuing an age-old American policy of bombing as many black and brown people as possible:

Last October I was at a jirga in Islamabad where 80 people from Waziristan had assembled to talk about the US Predator drones that buzz around overhead, periodically delivering death by Hellfire missile. A jirga is the traditional forum for discussing and resolving disputes, part parliament, part court of law. The turbaned tribal elders were joined by their young sons on a rare foray out of their region to meet outsiders and discuss the killing. The isolation of the Waziris is almost total – no western journalist has been to Miranshah for several years.

At our meeting I spoke as the representative westerner. I reported the CIA claim that not one single innocent civilian had been killed in over a year. I did not need to understand Pashtu to translate the snorts of derision when this claim was translated.

During the day I shook the hand of a 16-year-old kid from Waziristan named Tariq Aziz. One of his cousins had died in a missile strike, and he wanted to know what he could do to bring the truth to the west. At the Reprieve charity, we have a transparency project: importing cameras to the region to try to export the truth back out. Tariq wanted to take part, but I thought him too young.

Then, three days later, the CIA announced that it had eliminated "four militants". In truth there were only two victims: Tariq had been driving his 12-year-old cousin to their aunt's house when the Hellfire missile killed them both. This came just 24 hours after the CIA boasted of eliminating six other "militants" – actually, four chromite workers driving home from work. In both cases a local informant apparently tagged the car with a GPS monitor and lied to earn his fee.

Last week officials in the Obama administration talked to the New York Times about the "Secret Kill List" drawn up for drone assassinations. Democratic strategists in an election year calculate that the article will prove a vote-winner, dispelling any notion that Barack Obama is soft on terror. The administration voices wanted to leave the impression of an involved and committed president who reads Thomas Aquinas's theory of the "just war" in between personally vetting the kill list.

...

It is easy to understand how the CIA slaughtered Tariq and many other innocent victims. Those who press the Hellfire buttons are 8,000 miles away in Nevada and are dependent on local "intelligence". Just as with Guantánamo Bay, the CIA is paying bounties to those who will identify "terrorists". Five thousand dollars is an enormous sum for a Waziri informant, translating to perhaps £250,000 in London terms. The informant has a calculation to make: is it safer to place a GPS tag on the car of a truly dangerous terrorist, or to call down death on a Nobody (with the beginnings of a beard), reporting that he is a militant? Too many "militants" are just young men with stubble. At least 174 have been children.

The New York Times reports that Obama first embraced a policy of taking no prisoners in order to avoid the embarrassing sore of Guantánamo. Then he accepted a method for assessing casualties that "counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants" unless there is explicit posthumous proof of their innocence – because they are probably "up to no good".

While Obama's policies may go down a treat in the US, they are fomenting radicalism abroad, the very policy not only undermining our way of life but provoking an extremist hydra with many more heads.

Some sane voices penetrate the gloom. Starting last summer, Cameron Munter, Obama's ambassador to Islamabad, was required to give a thumbs up or down assessment of each drone attack on Pakistani turf, as if he were an emperor in the Colosseum. "He didn't realise his main job was to kill people," said a colleague. Munter is quitting his job early this month because his diplomatic mission has been rendered impossible.

The dearth of US domestic criticism is astounding. The last time a president indulged in an illegal bombing campaign in the sovereign territory of allies (Richard Nixon in 1969, in Cambodia and Laos), the policy nearly got included in the articles of impeachment. We should remember that history, as the Vietnamese capitalised on the backlash, helping to impose the genocidal Khmer Rouge on Cambodia, and a single-party regime that endures 40 years later in Laos.

Can you imagine if George W. Bush were engaging in this kind of slaughter?

How about if Nixon and Kissinger were engaging in it?

Or Reagan?

But this is the Nobel Peace Price Winning Barack Obama, so mostly what we get from the liberal left is silence on this, or worse, rationalization.

I'll say it again - Obama belongs in Gitmo with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Yoo, et al.

These are evil people doing evil deeds for their own ends.

Obama hold a Terror Tuesday meeting each week and invites his political team to it.

Then they leak details of the meetings and how "cool and collected" Obama is while ordering these drone killings.

It's all a political calculation to sell Obama as a "strong leader".

So what if some 12 year olds are killed in the process.

They're just foreigners anyway.

Probably will grow up to be terrorists in any case.

Ah, the irony of Obama finally making a note how Trayvon Martin could have been his own son on the same weekend he orders U.S. drones to kill black and brown kids in Yemen and Pakistan.

These are truly, truly evil people, no better than the war criminals in the Nixon, Reagan or Bush administrations.

Obama Kills 12 People This Weekend

Our Nobel Peace Prize Winning President continues to slaughter "terrorists":

Ten more people have been killed by a US drone strike against suspected militants in Pakistan, with the aircraft firing its missiles into a gathering mourning one of two fighters killed in a similar atttack the previous day.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials say four missiles were fired at the village of Mana Raghzai in South Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan on Sunday morning.

At the time of the attack, suspected militants had gathered to offer condolences to the brother of a militant commander killed during another US unmanned drone attack on Saturday. The brother was one of those who died in the Sunday morning attack. The Pakistani officials said two of the dead were foreigners and the rest were Pakistani.

It brought to 12 the total number of people killed in two days and was the sixth American drone strike over the last two weeks. The US government considers the drone campaign a vital tool in the war against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Paul Harris of The Guardian puts the president's slaughter of civilians in some context:

Yet it is the drone programme and "kill list" that have emerged as most central to Obama's hardline national security policy. In January 2009, when Obama came to power, the drone programme existed only for Pakistan and had seen 44 strikes in five years. With Obama in office it expanded to Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia with more than 250 strikes. Since April there have been 14 strikes in Yemen alone.

Civilian casualties are common. Obama's first strike in Yemen killed two families who were neighbours of the target. One in Pakistan missed and blew up a respected tribal leader and a peace delegation. He has deliberately killed American citizens, including the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September last year, and accidentally killed others, such as Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman.

The drone operation now operates out of two main bases in the US, dozens of smaller installations and at least six foreign countries. There are "terror Tuesday" meetings to discuss targets which Obama's campaign manager, David Axelrod, sometimes attends, lending credence to those who see naked political calculation involved.

Yet for some, politics seems moot. Obama has shown himself to be a ruthless projector of national security powers at home and abroad, but the alternative in the coming election is Republican Mitt Romney.

"Whoever gets elected, whether it's Obama or Romney, they are going to continue this very dangerous path," said Radack. "It creates a constitutional crisis for our country. A crisis of who we are as Americans. You can't be a free society when all this happens in secret."

Those of you prepared to re-elect Barack Obama because he is the lesser of two evils in an election match-up with Mitt Romney should note that even the lesser of two evils is still "evil."

And given the slaughter Barack Obama orders on a weekly basis, given the Bush administration surveillance state apparatus Obama has expanded, given the fascistic and secretive tendencies this man has, he is most definitely evil and belongs in a Gitmo jail cell next to George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld.

Axelrod, the political operative, attending the "Terror Tuesday" meetings.

That tells you everything you need to know about the policy and the people involved.

How Come?

How come when Osama bin Laden plans and carries out an attack that kills 3,000 Americans, he is branded a "terrorist," hunted down by the U.S. after billions of dollars and two wars are started to find him and eventually found and summarily executed mafia style in a compound in Pakistan, but when innocent Pakistanis are wounded or killed in drone attacks ordered by Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama, nobody calls the president a "terrorist"?

I'm glad Osama is not around to plan and carry out more terror attacks.

I bet many Pakistanis will feel the same way when Obama is gone from power.

From McClatchy in December, 2010:

There's been a massive ramp-up in drone strikes under the Obama administration, a weapon the U.S. considers highly effective, particularly against Taliban and al Qaida extremists based across the border from Afghanistan in Pakistan's remote tribal area.

There was no way of verifying the stories of the drone victims who've come forward. They all denied links to militants and claimed that the strikes were hitting mostly civilians. They described a terrifying existence under the drones in North Waziristan, the focus of the strikes.

A 13-year-old boy, Saddam Hussain, said that he lost his 10-month-old niece and sister-in-law in a strike on their house on the night of Oct. 9, in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan. Hussain carried a large picture of the baby girl with him.

"The drones patrol day and night. The sound comes when they fly lower down. Sometimes we see six in the air all at once," Saddam said. "When they come down, people run out of their houses, even at night."

Saddullah, a 15-year-old who goes by one name, also had made the journey from North Waziristan. He lost an eye and both legs in a drone strike last year, near Mir Ali town, he said. Three family members died, including an uncle who used a wheelchair. He said that instead of his three relatives, it was reported at the time that the strike killed three Taliban commanders.

"I was drinking tea with my family ... when it struck," said the shy 15-year-old, who now walks on prosthetic legs.

There was another drone strike Friday, adding to the 107 already recorded this year, according to a tally by the New America Foundation, an independent research organization based in Washington. That compares with 53 hits in 2009 and 34 in 2008. Of the strikes this year, 97 percent have been in North Waziristan, where a witch's brew of jihadist groups are based, including the Haqqani network, possibly the most effective insurgent outfit in Afghanistan.

Since the strikes began in 2004, 1,286 to 1,981 people have died in the bombardment, according to the New America Foundation. At least 32 senior al Qaida, Afghan Taliban or Pakistani Taliban commanders were killed in those strikes. Many of the rest would be midlevel militants and foot soldiers. It's broadly thought that the strikes are often accurate, but the number of civilians who are dying, from faulty intelligence or collateral damage, is unknown.

Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, a U.S.-based human rights group, said in a report this week that unnamed U.S. officials had put civilian deaths from drone strikes at 20 to 30 since the beginning of last year. Yet CIVIC's own small sample of nine strikes uncovered 30 civilian deaths, including at least 14 women and children.

The U.S. estimates of civilian casualties are far too low, said Christopher Rogers, Pakistan field fellow at CIVIC. "There's no accountability, no one is keeping count of the civilian deaths and no compensation is paid."

I guess innocent Pakistani casualties from drone attacks is just the kind of "data" the "data-driven" president doesn't want tracked or released.

As Americans danced over the news of the death of Bin Laden a few weeks back, I couldn't help but think of the drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the innocent people killed in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, the innocents killed in the undeclared actions in places like Pakistan and Yemen, and wonder if the people in those countries wouldn't dance in the street with joy if Bush or Obama were executed the way Osama was.

I bet they would.

UPDATE:

Glenn Greenwald writes how these actions against "terrorists" perpetuate themselves and the Forever War:

The New York Times reports today:

For the second time in three days, a night raid in eastern Afghanistan by NATO forces resulted in the death of a child, setting off protests on Saturday that turned violent and ended in the death of a second boy. . . .

"American forces did an operation and mistakenly killed a fourth-grade student; he had gone to sleep in his field and had a shotgun next to him," [the district's governor, Abdul Khalid]. said. "People keep shotguns with them for hunting, not for any other purposes," Mr. Khalid said.

The boy, [15], was the son of an Afghan National Army soldier . . . When morning came, an angry crowd gathered in Narra, the boy’s village, and more than 200 people marched with his body to the district center. Some of the men were armed and confronted the police, shouting anti-American slogans . . .

The police opened fire in an effort to push back the crowd to stop its advance to the district center. A 14-year-old boy was killed, and at least one other person was wounded, Mr. Khalid said. . . .

On Thursday, a night raid by international forces in Nangahar Province resulted in the death of a 12-year-old girl and her uncle, who was a member of the Afghan National Police.

There's nothing much new to say here, but every now and then, it's worth highlighting not only what we're doing, but what the results are. Just imagine the accumulated hatred from having things like this happen day after day, week after week, year after year, for a full decade now, with no end in sight -- broadcast all over the region. It's literally impossible to convey in words the level of bloodthirsty fury and demands for vengeance that would arise if a foreign army were inside the U.S. killing innocent American children even a handful of times, let alone continuously for a full decade.

It's the perfect self-perpetuating cycle: (1) They hate us and want to attack us because we're over there; therefore, (2) we have to stay and proliferate ourselves because they hate us and want to attack us; (3) our staying and proliferating ourselves makes them hate us and want to attack us more; therefore, (4) we can never leave, because of how much they hate us and want to attack us. The beauty of this War on Terror -- and, as the last two weeks have demonstrated, War is the bipartisan consensus for what we are and should be doing to address Terrorism -- is that it forever sustains its own ostensible cause.

War is Peace and Obama is a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Freedom Bombs

So glad I voted for Change We Can All Believe In - it's such a different governing style than the Compassionate Conservatism that it replaced:

Embattled Libyan despot Moammar Khadafy's youngest son and three of his grandchildren were killed Saturday in a NATO airstrike, officials said.

Sayf al-Arab Khadafy, 29, and the three unidentified grandchildren were inside a large residential villa in Tripoli when it was hit.
Khadafy was also inside the building at the time of the attack, but escaped uninjured, a Libyan government spokesman said.

Spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said the villa was attacked "with full power."

"This was a direct operation to assassinate the leader of this country," Ibrahim told the BBC.

"The leader with his wife was there in the house with other friends and relatives. The leader himself is in good health, he wasn't harmed."

NATO warplanes pounded Libyan targets Saturday after Khadafy called for a ceasefire but refused to step down.

Is Khadafy and his son a murderer?

You betcha.

Should the United States be leading the NATO effort to murder him?

Uh, I can think of better things we could be doing with our time and resources.

But one corporatist president has replaced another and this is all about hanging onto the vestiges of empire.

Hope President Accountability and his kids sleep well tonight in the bosom of that empire.

Maybe they'll go and take a look at his Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow.

Cathie Black and Coca Cola

Union-busting Cathie Black sat on the board of union-busting Coca-Cola and collected hundreds of dollars for her efforts.

Coca-Cola is of course an all-American company that sells an All-American drink and engages in all-American activities like these:

(BOGOTA) - Coca-Cola: to many, it is simply the all-American cola that everyone grew up drinking. Originally created in the late 1800s as a medicine, Coca-Cola eventually evolved into one of the world's most popular soft drinks. Besides being a very unhealthy beverage, Coca-Cola has another dirty secret for which few people are aware; the Coca-Cola Company has been involved in a series of kidnappings involving union leaders and organizers at its Colombia bottling facilities. Many of those kidnapped have been severely tortured and even murdered by company thugs.

As shocking and unbelievable as all of this sounds, there is a trail of documented evidence against Coca-Cola for its crimes against union officials. In fact, back in 2001, the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund, filed a joint lawsuit on behalf of SINALTRAINAL to address the problems in Colombia.

Javier Correa, President of the National Union of Food Industry Workers, and William Mendoza, President of the Barrancabermeja location in Colombia, have joined together with Ray Rogers, Director of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, to bring light to the issue and push for an end to the atrocities.

How did it all start?

Most people recognize that unions are formed to protect workers from unfair treatment and abuse by employers. Though some do not operate as intended, the general idea of unions is to ensure that workers are receiving fair pay for their labor and that they are not being grossly extorted by those for whom they work.

U.S. laws have been designed to protect American workers who form labor unions from being threatened or silenced by the companies for whom they work, and while they are not perfect, their intent was for the best interests of American workers.

When workers at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia began to step up and organize unions, the Coca-Cola Company allegedly began to contract with paramilitary security forces to deal with leaders and organizers, something they would not legally be able to do in the U.S. Even today, these forces are using extreme tactics to silence anyone who would dare attempt to organize workers to form a union. These tactics include violent detention efforts, torture and even murder.

Internal Pentagon records that were eventually required to be made public revealed that Colombian troops connected with Coca-Cola's paramilitary forces were also being trained at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia, to torture and murder those who conduct "union organizing and recruiting", distribute "propaganda in favor of workers", and "sympathize with demonstrators or strikes."

Is this an isolated incident?

This is not the first time, or the first country, in which Coca-Cola has been responsible for severe human rights abuses. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the company was responsible for similar behavior in Guatemala, where eight workers in Guatemala City were murdered or otherwise killed for trying to keep their union alive.

Thanks to massive international protests against Coca-Cola following campaigns that brought the truth to light, the multi-national giant was forced to concede and the Guatemalan union survived. But at the time, even the government of Guatemala was unwilling to address the issue; it took the efforts of concerned citizens around the world to win the battle against Coca-Cola and achieve some sort of justice.

The Coca-Cola Company has also been accused of similar human rights abuses in other countries today, including in developing countries like India and China where it has plants. Because the company is so large and powerful, it exerts considerable sway on governments worldwide that turn a blind eye to its abuses.

You can read more about Coca-Cola's paramilitary thuggery here at Frontline's site.

Does Cathie Black know of Coca-Cola's murderous, union-busting tactics in Columbia?

If she did know, would she care?

I bet she would.

Given who she is and how she makes her money sitting on the boards of the Masters of the Universe, I bet she'd be in favor of these practices.

I'd like to see somebody ask her about what she did on the Coca-Cola board and how she feels about Coke's labor practices worldwide.

Perhaps she wants to employ similar practices here in New York City?

DOE Hides PCB Contamination From Parents And School Staff

If it's Tuesday, another city school must have tested positive for PCB's:

The Environmental Protection Agency says an East Harlem building that houses three city schools has tested positive for PCBs.

The agency says it took a total of 14 samples of lighting ballasts from the building located at 508 East 120th Street.

It currently houses PS 206, PS 37 and PS 112.

The EPA says 12 of the samples came back above the regulatory limit of 50 parts per million.

Parents and teachers say they are shocked because the school did not tell them the EPA discovered the PCBs, which have been linked to cancer.

"It's their safety and the staff that's in there too. It's not just the children. Everyone that's in the building is at risk so I would think people should voice their opinion to get something done," said Parent Tyra King.

"Was it already tested a second time, to make sure it was at acceptable level? I don't know. I never knew the problem in the first place. This is the first I'm hearing of it so I'm hoping the school did the right thing, did the tests, fixed it, corrected it and now the problem is good to go," said Parent Decarlo Stroud.

The EPA says federal law requires immediate removal of the lighting ballasts.

Meanwhile, the Department of Education says the EPA and city Department of Health indicate there is no immediate health risk for students and staff at the buildings.

The DOE also says it took corrective action during the same weekend as the EPA inspection by replacing ballasts as necessary.

The EPA has been checking one city school per week for traces of PCBs. For the past five weeks, a city school has tested positive.

They're hiding the size and scope of the problem to save money and face for Bloomberg.

So what if people die of cancer?

This is money and Bloomberg's face we're talking about.

Maybe the public advocate of NYC could, you know, get off his ass and do something to point out the problem?

Or maybe the state attorney general could take these murderous bastards to court and force them to clean the toxins out of schools?

Because left to their own devices, Shael, Cathie, Moneybags and the rest of the DOE brain trust are going to ignore the problem and spend all of the DOE money they can on test prep and other no-bid contracts for bullshit.

And as usual, the UFT is useless doing anything about this.

How about a commercial that shows all the schools that have tested positive for PCB's that asks how many people will DIE FROM CANCER as a consequence of Bloomberg's refusal to CLEAN UP THE SCHOOLS!!!!!