West worsens conditions in Africa

U.S. spy drone crashes in Somalia [Monday]

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

A U.S. unmanned spy plane crashed on Monday in southeastern Somalia near the Somali port city of Kismayo as it reportedly was helping Kenyan troops monitor the port city [Press TV correspondent attributes  Somali military officials].

Displaced woman and child
at the Horn or Africa

Somalia is the sixth country, where the United States has used the aircraft to launch deadly missile strikes.  The U.S. military has also used the drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen.  Though U.S. officials claim drone airstrikes target militants, most of these attacks have resulted in civilian casualties.

Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally displaced people in the world.

Last month, U.S.-allied Kenya dispatched soldiers to Somalia and began air and ground 

offensives against al-Shabab fighters. Tension has been growing between the Somali government backed by Kenyan troops and al-Shabab fighters since they engaged in fierce battle over control of towns in south Somalia. 

Sources and notes

“U.S. spy drone crashes in Somalia,” November 8, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/209011.html

SOMALIA 2006 background

Area: 637,000 sq km (246,000 sq mi), including the 176,000-sq-km (68,000-sq-mi) area of the unilaterally declared (in 1991) and unrecognized Republic of Somaliland

Population: (2006 est.): 8,496,000 (including 3,700,000 in Somaliland); at the beginning of the year, more than 250,000 refugees were in neighbouring countries, and an additional 100,000 resided in Europe or the United States

Capital: Mogadishu; Hargeysa is the capital of Somaliland

Head of state and government: Somalia’s government under President Abdiqassim Salad Hassan was barely functioning in 2006; a new transitional government comprised President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, assisted by Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Ghedi (as of February 26, in exile in Baidoa).

After a decade of stagnation, 2006 was a year of revolutionary upheaval in Somalia, featuring the dramatic rise and fall of the Council of Islamic Courts of Somalia (CSIC).

Fears of renewed conflict in Somalia triggered a humanitarian crisis in Kenya as thousands of Somalis poured across the border, seeking asylum.

By October, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had counted more than 30,000 new arrivals, and the flow continued at over 1,000 per day.

In December, following Islamist attacks on government positions near the Somali town of Baidoa, Ethiopian forces intervened in support of the TFG [Transitional Federal Government], routing the CSIC militias and seizing control of Mogadishu and Kismayo.

The turmoil in southern Somalia seemed likely to lend impetus to the self-declared Republic of Somaliland’s efforts to obtain international recognition. Somaliland’s achievements toward peace, stability, and constitutional democracy (all three levels of Somaliland’s government were elected) were met with growing acknowledgment from the international community.

In June, Somaliland Pres. Dahir Riyale Kahin paid official visits, for the first time, to Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia, and Uganda. This diplomatic breakthrough, however, was offset on the home front by economic stagnation and a political deadlock between an opposition-controlled House of Representatives and a pro-government Gurti (upper house). Britannica 2006 update

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire

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Obama CIA Drone kills youth aspiration, fuels militancy, extremism

How many kids killed today?

Edited by Carolyn Bennett

Tariq Aziz’s car was hit as he and cousin drove from their home to a nearby village to pick up Aziz’s aunt.  Just 200 meters [656 feet] from his aunt’s house, a drone missile reportedly struck their car. These youngsters were alone and there was nothing to suggest that either of them had anything to do with terrorism.

A week earlier, Tariq Aziz had attended a Jirga (a council concerned with collecting physical evidence on drone strikes). According to the London-based organization Reprieve, this young man “had been planning to join a Reprieve project aimed at ensuring greater transparency in the CIA process. He had agreed to take pictures of the aftermath of drone strikes to help document the damage caused by the strikes and to seek to bring an end to them through peaceful means.”

Trumped up pretext for murder

Typical of statements by the global invaders, the strike that killed Tariq Aziz and his cousin Waheed Khan “was first reported as having killed ‘four militants,’ according to unnamed ‘Pakistani security officials’ who briefed the media.

“This statement was false. The strike near Mirali had in fact killed only Tariq and his football teammate and cousin Waheed Khan.

Reprieve’s director, Clive Stafford Smith, said he had met Tariq Aziz a week earlier and “he [Aziz] was no more a terrorist than my mother.” Smith said, “It is tragic that the CIA did this, and it seems highly likely — and typical of the shoddy intelligence in these cases — that some local informant attached a tracking device to Tariq’s car and then told the CIA that the vehicle belonged to a terrorist.

 

“It’s high time the CIA stopped this dirty and illegal war.”

Tariq Aziz was 16 years old, his cousin, Waheed Khan, 12 years old when they became one of the latest civilian casualties, innocents cut down by U.S. CIA drones.  The two boys died when a missile fired by one of the United States’ remotely operated drones hit their vehicle near their home in North Waziristan last Monday (October 31). A few days earlier Aziz with his father had visited Islamabad for dialogue concerning the CIA’s unmanned attack aircraft in the Pakistan border region.

On the previous Friday, Tariq had attended a Jirga or council in Islamabad at which the elders of communities in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) met for the first time with Western lawyers from London-based charity Reprieve to discuss the CIA’s secret bombing campaign in their area, which has claimed hundreds of civilian lives.

Destroying the young, the future, prospects for peace

“I remember talking with Tariq on the phone a few weeks ago,” said Shahzad Akbar of the Islamabad-based Foundation for Fundamental Rights. “He was enthusiastic about the cameras for the transparency project and was eagerly telling me about his computer skills and how he could upload pictures online.

“I believe we have lost someone who could have helped to show us what is really happening in that part of the world. It makes it twice as tragic that the CIA has killed a kid who wanted to work for justice and the rule of law.

“It is acts such as this that are fueling militancy and extremism among the young people of the tribal areas.”

Sources and notes

“Teenage anti-drone protester killed by CIA strike in Pakistan,” November 6, 2011, Http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/2011_11_06_Tariq_CIA_drone_Waziristan/

U.S. drones on Somalia update

At least 99 people have been killed in a single day in the airstrikes carried out by the U.S. assassination drones in southern Somalia, Press TV reported. November 6, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/208633.html

REPRIEVE

With 25 full-time staff in London, five Fellows in the USA, two Fellows in Pakistan and countless volunteers around the world, Reprieve investigates, litigates and educates, works on the frontline providing legal support to prisoners unable to pay for legal counsel. Reprieve promotes the rule of law around the world and secures each person’s right to a fair trial.

The organization prioritizes cases of prisoners accused of the most extreme crimes, such as acts of murder or terrorism, as it is in such cases that human rights are most likely to be jettisoned or eroded. Reprieve focuses on cases involving the world’s most powerful governments, especially those that should be upholding the highest standards when it comes to fair trials.

From death row to Guantánamo Bay, Reprieve uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, http://www.reprieve.org.uk/about/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire
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U.S.’s “one-sided violence,” suffering and backlash

Edited, re-reported with comment by Carolyn Bennett

Violence in U.S. foreign relations we know of —

ARMS to Bahrain India Israel Saudi Arabia

DRONES on Afghanistan Iraq Libya Pakistan Somalia Yemen

Washington officials’ aggression against peoples of — Afghanistan Bahrain Colombia Cuba Eritrea Haiti Honduras

Iraq Iran Kashmir Mexico Nigeria/Niger Pakistan Palestine (Gaza, West Bank, Jerusalem) Somalia Syria USA Yemen

The United States has deployed its drones for aerial attacks in at least six countries:  Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia.

One-sided violence — hegemony’s war against defenseless nations, peoples, individuals

In “Torture, War, and the Limits of Liberal Legality,” chapter five in The United States and Torture, U.S. activist and Princeton professor emeritus Richard Falk writes this.

When he returned to the United States from Vietnam in 1968, what struck him most “was the total disinterest in … the one-sided nature of the war and its horribly inhumane effects on a poor peasant society of the sort that existed in Vietnam”— a perplexing indifference that continues in the present day, Falk writes.  “It bears on what is a most dangerous and unacceptable ‘disconnect’ between condemning a reliance on torture while silently accommodating, or at least not vigorously protesting, the tactics and actualities of one-sided warfare …

“What never became problematic in assessing the lessons of the Vietnam War — and should have been the most troubling reflection — was the magnitude of Vietnamese casualties (estimated to be 3-5 million) and the ratio of loss on the two sides.…

“…The United States, and some of its allies, rely on and seek to sustain and enhance a posture of military dominance enabling the pursuit of political goals throughout the world; and this dominance basically relies upon American technological superiority in warfare that enables it to inflict limitless devastation on a foreign country anywhere on earth without fearing retaliations at home.… It is this contrast between the helplessness of the victim and the total control of the perpetrator that properly causes … moral revulsion.”

A mask worn by American leaders in the aftermath of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki (as with U.S. officials and contemporary torture) let them “hide one of the worst of modern atrocities — one that was generally accepted by the liberal mainstream.…” Former President Harry Truman “lent his authority to such a rationalization of criminality.” 

It never stops — Murder Premeditated

A program in which names are added to a list through a secret bureaucratic process and remain there for months at a time plainly goes beyond the use of lethal force as a last resort to address imminent threats, and so goes beyond what the Constitution and international law permit. Lawyers and analysts at the Center for Constitutional Rights were concerned with the case of the U.S. Executive branch and Anwar Al-Aulaqi. Under international human rights law, lethal force may be used in peacetime only when there is an imminent threat of deadly attack and when lethal force is a last resort. 

“Targeting individuals for killing who are suspected of crimes but have not been convicted — without oversight, due process or disclosed standards for being placed on the kill list — poses the risk that the government will erroneously target the wrong people,” CCR wrote.  Since 9/11, the U.S. government has detained thousands of men as ‘terrorists,’ only for courts or the government itself to discover later that the evidence was wrong or unreliable and release them.

“In early July 2010, CCR and the ACLU were retained by Nasser al-Aulaqi, the father of U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, to bring a lawsuit in connection with the government’s decision to authorize the death of his son, who [had been] placed on kill lists maintained by the CIA and the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) …. The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury then [on July 16, 2010] labeled Anwar al-Aulaqi a ‘specially designated global terrorist,’ which makes it a crime for lawyers to provide representation for his benefit without first seeking a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).”

The Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union sought a license and the government failed to grant a license, despite the urgency created by an outstanding authorization for Al-Aulaqi’s death.

Then on August 3, 2010, then CCR and ACLU filed suit against Treasury and the OFAC challenging “the legality and constitutionality of the licensing scheme requiring them to obtain a license to file suit concerning the government’s asserted authority to carry out targeted killings of individuals — including U.S. citizens — far from any battlefield.” At the end of that month, CCR and the ACLU filed suit on behalf of Dr. Nasser Al-Aulaqi against U.S. President Barack Obama, CIA Director Leon Panetta, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates challenging their decision “to authorize the targeted killing” of Nasser Al-Aulaqi’s son, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, “in violation of the U.S. Constitution and international law.”

This week drones ordered by U.S. President Barack Obama reportedly killed the son of Dr. Nasser Al-Aulaqi.

Murdered victims, whether citizens or not citizens of the United States, off or on a “battlefield” cannot face their murderers, tell their side of the story, or challenge murderous acts of impunity.  This is another example of U.S. lawlessness.

PERSIAN GULF (Arabian Gulf)

A shallow marginal sea of the Indian Ocean that

Lies between the Arabian Peninsula and southwestern Iran

Bordered on the north, northeast and east by Iran;

On the southeast and south by part of Oman and by the United Arab Emirates;

On the southwest and west by Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia; and

On the northwest by Kuwait and Iraq

The term Persian Gulf sometimes refers not only to Persian Gulf proper but

Also to its outlets —

The Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, which open into the Arabian Sea

Authoritarians: Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia; occupied Iraq, Palestine

BAHRAIN (U.S-allied with despots)

Another anti-government protester is killed in Bahrain due to tear gas inhalation. Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters have continued to take to the streets demanding freedom and democracy in Bahrain.

Yesterday’s demonstrations organized by the country’s main opposition group, al-Wefaq, called again for ending the four-decade rule of the Al Khalifa dynasty. The day before, hundreds of Bahraini women staged a protest rally in the village of Maqsha condemning the imprisonment of medical personnel.

For having treated anti-government protesters, a military court sentenced each of 20 medics to up to 15 years in prison, after convicting them of conspiracy to overthrow the regime. The special security court, in a separate case, sentenced a protester to death over the alleged killing of a police officer. The same court upheld life sentences handed to eight opposition leaders convicted of having vital roles in the anti-government protests in the country and upheld sentences of up to 15 years on 13 other activists.

Protesters called on the international community to stand by the Bahraini people.

JORDAN (U.S-allied with despots)

King Abdullah II announced some concessions in June in an attempt to appease protesters in this country. Among the promises was the formation of future governments based on an elected parliamentary majority rather than government appointed by the monarch. However, the monarch delayed, saying the changes might take two to three years to put an elected government in place.

Friday, nearly 4,000 anti-government protesters took to the streets of Amman, Jordan’s capital, accusing the government of Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit and lawmakers of ‘protecting corruption’ and demanding the resignation of Bakhit and dissolution of the lower house of parliament.

Protests came after the lower house had approved a bill to criminalize corruption allegations: people who “publicly accuse officials of corruption without proof will be fined between 30,000 and 60,000 dinars ($42,000-$85,000).”

SAUDI ARABIA (U.S-allied with despots)

Human Rights Watch says more than 160 dissidents have been arrested since February as part of the Saudi government’s crackdown on anti-government protesters. Saudi-based Human Rights First Society (HRFS) reports detainees have been subjected to physical and mental torture. 

Saudi activists say there are more than 30,000 political prisoners, mostly prisoners of conscience, in jails across the Saudi Kingdom.

Families of political prisoners have repeatedly pleaded with the ruling monarchy to give their loved ones at least a fair trial but, according to the families, for years the king has ignored their calls.

Despite tight security and a strict ban on all anti-government rallies, hundreds of anti-government protesters poured into the streets in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province yesterday. They were demanding the immediate release of political prisoners. Demonstrators in the cities of Qatif and Awamiyah also expressed solidarity with anti-government protesters in neighboring Bahrain and condemned Manama’s violent crackdown on peaceful protesters.

Activists say most of the detained political thinkers are being held without trials or legitimate charges, that they have been arrested “for merely looking suspicious.”

IRAQ (U.S. is occupier)

Iraq has experienced bombing attacks, roadside bombs, and shootings on an almost daily basis since the US-led invasion of this oil-rich country in 2003.

One of the deadliest recent attacks came on Monday (September 25), when twin bombings rocked the southern Iraqi city of Karbala. Twenty-five people died and dozens suffered injuries.

Yesterday, at least 18 people died and 48 others suffered wounds when a large bomb exploded near a mosque. Whoever detonated the bomb was reportedly targeting people mourning the death of a local sheikh in the city of Hillah in central Iraq, 60 miles from Baghdad.

On Thursday, two women and a man died and 76 people were wounded in a truck explosion incident in front of a bank in Kirkuk. Police officers were reportedly collecting their monthly salaries. In clashes in Baghdad and north of the capital in Tarmiyah, a police officer and a U.S. soldier died and others were injured.

PALESTINE (U.S. allied with occupier)

Acting PA Chief Mahmoud Abbas officially submitted his bid for UN recognition of a Palestinian state to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on September 23.

After Palestine went to the UN for full member state status, Israel committed its usual tactic to continue putting off the resolution of conflict with Palestinians and in the greater Middle East. The interior minister approved construction of more than 1,100 homes in the contested Gilo neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

Palestinians had initially agreed to negotiate, but only if Israel freezes all construction on Palestinian lands.

The economy minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) said this week, “No matter what the Palestinian people achieve by our own efforts, the occupation prevents us achieving our potential as a free people in our own country.”

A report the PA released this week says “Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has deprived the Palestinian economy annually of an estimated $4.4 billion.” Moreover, the majority of costs have no “relationship with security concerns but rather come from the heavy restrictions imposed on the Palestinians in the access to their own natural resources — including water, minerals, salts, stones and land — many of which are exploited by Israel itself.”

If not for the illegal occupation, the report found, “the Palestinian economy could have been nearly twice as large. Current losses amount to some 85 percent of the current Palestinian GDP” [Ma’an News Agency].

Also this week Press TV interviewed Valentine Azarov with Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization, who said, “There are ongoing violations of international laws [by Israel] that constitute international crimes that the ICC has jurisdiction over — the basis for going to the International Criminal Court already exists.

“That is irrefutable. There is sufficient material in the hands of the prosecutor that he has received over the last year, specially since the Operation Cast Lead happened, and that indeed has been indicated by him to civil society and international organizations as enough to look into certain cases.

“The reason the court has not accepted Palestinian declaration from January 2009 is largely political. The court has not made a decision on whether Palestine is a state for the purpose of the Rome Statute. That is why this is a very important moment to push forward the declaration and also to open the opportunity for the state of Palestine to become a member of the court to ratify Rome Statute.”

Today in Tehran the 5th International Conference on Palestinian Intifada opened. It focuses on “the restoration of Palestinian rights, including their right of return and to determine their fate as well as the liberation the  territories occupied by Israel.”

In an opening address, the leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, criticized U.S. President Barack Obama for considering Israel’s security as his red line. He said the president’s “red line would be crossed by the awakened Muslim nations.”

“Muslim nations,” the Ayatollah Khamenei said, “will no longer want or allow the U.S., Europe, or their puppets to rule over their countries.”

GULF OF ADEN

A deepwater basin that forms a natural sea link between the

Red Sea and the Arabian Sea

Named after the seaport of Aden, in southern Yemen,

The gulf lies between the coasts of Arabia and the Horn of Africa

YEMEN (U.S-allied with despots)

Hundreds of people died during regime-ordered crackdowns on anti-government protests. Since President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s return last Friday, more than 170 protesters have died in newly revived brutal campaigns against popular demonstrations in the Yemini capital, Sana’a.

Yesterday, crowds of Yemenis again took to the streets of Sana’a, Press TV reported, “to condemn Saleh for seeking the approval of scholars to crush the country’s  popular uprising.” Tribal leaders and opposition figures said anyone giving such approval would be brought to justice for aiding the Saleh regime in killing civilians.

Ali Abdullah Saleh had been in Saudi Arabia since a June rocket attack on the presidential palace in which he and other senior officials were seriously injured. Saleh returned to Yemen on September 23.

HORN OF AFRICA — SOMALIA (U.S. stands against)

Somalis are suffering from lack of food and are contending with disease, including malaria, measles and pneumonia. Their famine is compounded by armed conflict in Somalia and the United States is bombing the country.

Free Speech Radio News reports this week that the expanding U.S. presence in Somalia is also giving rise to questions among rights groups about the U.S. role in detention and interrogation in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and a rise in drone attacks throughout the Middle East and Horn of Africa region.

Somali officials yesterday confirmed that a U.S. spy drone had crashed near the port city of Kismayo. Somalia is the sixth country where the US military has engaged in unauthorized aerial bombing campaigns through the use of its remote-controlled aircraft.

The United States has also deployed its so-called drones for aerial attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen.

Officials in Washington claim the airstrikes target militants but these drone attacks have mostly resulted in civilian casualties.

WARS ORDERED FROM WASHINGTON, U.S. CONSEQUENCES

In an interview with Press TV this, retired U.S. General John Adams expressed outrage at U.S. spending “on unnecessary wars when we have people hurting in our country and other countries.” Talking from the U.S. perspective, he said, “[there are people] who can’t get jobs, are running out of the ability to pay for their medical care, have to look to the next paycheck just to be able to figure out if they can put food on the table — and we’re spending this kind of money on wars of choice. It’s staggering, it’s really outrageous to me.”

Since 2001, “we spent 7.5 trillion dollars on defense and security, a staggering amount of money and opportunities lost.”  

In his first of a four-point conclusion to his chapter “Torture, War, and the Limits of Liberal Legality,” Falk urges this.

The ethical resemblance between one-sided warfare and torture [both one-sided violence] must be acknowledged and addressed.

Sources and notes

Notes from The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse edited by Marjorie Cohn. New York: New York University Press, 2011, pp. 119-129

Chapter 5: “Torture, War, and the Limits of Liberal Legality” by Richard Falk

U.S. Targeted killings

“CCR and the ACLU v. OFAC and Al-Aulaqi v. Obama,” http://ccrjustice.org/targetedkillings

U.S.-involved aggression

KINGDOMS

“Tear gas claims another Bahraini life,” September 30, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/202057.html

“Bahrainis rally for freedom,” September 30, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/202025.html

“Jordanians call for resignation of PM,” September 30, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/202002.html

“Saudis want political prisoners released,” September 30, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/202062.html

U.S. in Iraq

“Funeral turns into bloodbath in Iraq,” September 30, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/202032.html

“U.S. soldier killed in northern Iraq,” September 29, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/201880.html

U.S. in Palestine

“U.S.-armed Israel expands settlement construction in Palestinian territory,” September 28, 2011, http://fsrn.org/

“Occupation costs Palestine $4.4bn per yea,” September 30, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/201953.html

“‘Ample evidence to take Israel to ICC,’” September 30, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/201970.html

“Leader blasts Obama red line, Israel,” October 1, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/202118.html

U.S. in Yemen

“Yemenis protest govt. crackdown,” September 30, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/201935.html

“Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh says that the United States intelligence apparatus is closely following up and keeping a close eye on the situation in the country — He said Washington was investigating a June attack on the presidential palace that inflicted serious injuries on him as well as other Yemeni officials,”  Press TV interviews Ian Williams, from Foreign Policy in Focus,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/201945.html

U.S. in Somalia

“U.S. role in Somalia questioned as drone attacks, interrogation step up,” September 28, 2011, http://fsrn.org/

“Al Shabab’s power shifting as famine spreads in Somalia,” September 28, 2011,

“The crisis in the Horn of Africa continues, with aid agencies warning that 750,000 people are at risk of dying by the end of the year. … Earlier this summer, the militant group Al-Shabab withdrew from Mogadishu but the capitol is still war-ravaged and militants still have a strong presence in other areas,” audio/us-role-somalia-questioned-drone-attacks-interrogation-step/9199

“U.S. spy drone crashes in Somalia,” September 30, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/201984.html

A U.S. General on U.S. endless wars

“‘U.S. wasting the citizens’ money on wars,’” September 20, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/200215.html

U.S. in Pakistan

From Pakistan: “We are not afraid of the U.S. threats; we are ready to protect our country at all costs if the American forces attack us” [a protester]

Pakistanis have staged nationwide rallies to condemn the United States’ threats of unilateral attacks on Pakistan’s tribal belt in an alleged hunt for the militant Haqqani network. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, has denied U.S. accusations against the Pakistani intelligence agency. She says “the Haqqani network was once the ‘blue-eyed boy’ of the CIA.”

On Friday, days after Washington claimed Pakistan’s intelligence agency was supporting the Taliban-allied Haqqani network, activists from religious parties took to streets.

“Pakistanis rally against U.S. threats, October 1, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/202102.html

“Pakistan: Haqqani network, CIA agents,” September 27, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/201398.html

Falk

Notes from The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse edited by

Marjorie Cohn. New York: New York University Press, 2011, pp. 119-129

Chapter 5: “Torture, War, and the Limits of Liberal Legality” by Richard Falk

Richard Anderson Falk (b. 1930) is U.S. professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and author or co-author of 20 books, editor or co-editor of another 20 books. He is a speaker and activist on world affairs; and has held United Nations positions on the Palestinian territories.

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire

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Seven days in blood

U.S. foreign and domestic force, fatalities, occupation
Compiled and edited by Carolyn Bennett

HOMELAND USA

U.S. soldiers
Free Speech Radio News last week reported a 25 percent increase in suicides in the United States military. “Military suicides continue to reach record levels. According to the Defense Department, 343 soldiers, Army civilians, and family members committed suicide in 2010,” a 25 percent rise compared with 2009 figures.

Detroit shooting
A shooter walked into a Detroit police station Sunday and opened fire wounding Sgt. Carrie Schulz, Commander Brian Davis, Sgt. Ray Saati and Officer David Anderson. The shooter was then shot dead. According to the Detroit Free Press, “Sunday’s shooting was not the first time a gunman has attacked Detroit police on their own turf.”

St. Petersburg shootings
Two police officers died and a U.S. Marshal suffered wounds today during a shootout with a man in St. Petersburg, Florida. Miami today buried two Miami-Dade County police officers shot and killed last week by a “fugitive murder suspect” [also killed].

U.S. detainees
The American Civil Liberties Union has released new documents showing widespread abuse and unjustified homicide of detainees at U.S.-run jails in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The records show autopsy reports revealing that many detainees who had died “from interrogation” had “injuries to their bodies.… In at least one case a person was frozen to death when he was held naked outside (Afghanistan is a cold place) and cold water was put on him.”

One hundred and ninety (190) detainee deaths have been detailed in the records. The recently available information results from an ACLU lawsuit against the U.S. military under the Freedom of Information Act.

SOUTHWEST ASIA – MIDDLE EAST

AFGHANISTAN
Two Taliban leaders died Friday in eastern Afghanistan. “The international military alliance” is reported saying “its forces killed the Taliban shadow administrator for Nangarhar province’s Hisarak district in a strike last Friday [and] a Taliban operative in Logar province’s Pul-e-Alam district in a strike on Sunday.

NATO had previously announced the strike but said they were unsure if Maulawi Anwar had been killed; about the Sunday’s killing, the coalition said the man killed, Abdul Bari, helped Taliban leaders get weapons and vehicles.

AFGHANISTAN
Twenty civilians died (among them six women, 13 children) Wednesday when a roadside bomb exploded in southeastern Afghanistan. These deaths bring the four-day total to 28 Afghan civilians killed in three roadside bombings.

Three days before the Wednesday bombings, nine civilians (including six women, two men and a child) died when a roadside bomb exploded in northern Afghanistan. These civilians had been travelling to a wedding on a road often used by foreign forces. “Afghan officials say that last year 2,043 civilians died as a result of Taliban attacks and military operations targeting the fighters.”

PAKISTAN
“Thousands of people have rallied in northwestern Pakistan to protest ongoing U.S. drone attacks that killed scores of civilians. On Sunday, demonstrators in the city of Peshawar blocked a main road and held a vigil to mourn drone attack victims. According to Agence France-Presse, U.S. drone attacks doubled in the North Waziristan region last year, with over 100 drone strikes killing more than 670 people. At least 13 people were killed in three recent attacks.”

PAKISTAN
Two “suspected foreign fighters” died in U.S. drone strikes on Sunday in northwestern Pakistan. “Sunday’s attack came several hours after a drone fired two missiles at a vehicle and a house in Doga Mada Khel village, located near North Waziristan's main town of Miranshah, killing at least five armed fighters. A similar strike killed at least three people in North Waziristan on January 12. A string of attacks killed at least 15 people and destroyed a Taliban compound on January 1.

A tally conducted by the AFP news agency shows “the covert campaign doubled missile attacks in the tribal area last year. “More than 100 drone strikes killed over 670 people in 2010 compared with 45 strikes that killed 420 in 2009.”

IRAQ
Twelve people died and 150 suffered wounds Monday when car bombs exploded near Iraq’s shrine city of Karbala. Pilgrims were involved in religious rituals. A home-made bomb killed Brigadier General Thamer Hassan Saleh who worked for services linked to the office of Iraq’s prime ministers.

Also on Monday two anti-Qaeda militiamen in the northern city of Kirkuk and a military officer in Baghdad died and a military officer and two guards, an intelligence official and eight civilians suffered wounds when shooters open fire or roadside bombs exploded.

The past week saw “a surge of violence in Iraq… which included suicide bombs, blasts killing around 130 people and wounding scores more.” In the whole of December, Agence France Presse reports, “a total of 151 people were killed.”

U.S.-led WAR DEAD

Casualty sites reporting January 24, 2011

(accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 207]

Wounded 32,965-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides estimated: 18 a day

Latest update on this site: January 17, 2011

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

• Iraq Body Count (civilian deaths from violence) figures:

‘We don’t do body counts’— General Tommy Franks

Documented civilian deaths from violence

99,393 – 108,514

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

• ICasualties figures:

IRAQ: 4,436 U.S.; 4,754 Coalition

AFGHANISTAN: 1,466 U.S.; 2,308 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Sources and notes

“4 Detroit police officers shot, gunman dead in ‘horrifying’ attack” (also “Detroit police ID gunman who shot four officers”), January 24, 2011, http://www.freep.com/article/20110124/NEWS05/101240382/4-Detroit-police-officers-shot-gunman-dead-in-horrifying-attack
http://www.freep.com/article/20110124/NEWS01/110124019/1318/Detroit-police-ID-gunman-who-shot-four-officers

“Two police killed in St. Petersburg, Florida, ST. PETERSBURG, Florida” (Reuters), January 22, 2011, http://newas.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110124/us_nm/us_florida_shooting_3

“U.S. interrogators on killing spree” (Interview with Paul Wolf, Human rights and international lawyer in Washington), January 23, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/161603.html

“NATO: 2 Taliban leaders killed in east Afghanistan,” KABUL, Afghanistan January 24, 2011,
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/ap/20110123/twl-as-afghanistan-38359fb.html

“Afghan civilians killed in blast — an improvised explosive device explodes as a rickshaw passes over it, killing women and children,” January 19, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/01/20111199305332564.html
4436 179 139 4754

“Thousands Protest U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan,” Democracy Now January 24, 2011,
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/24/headlines

“‘US drone strikes’ claim lives — The attacks are the first since Friday’s protest rally in Pakistan condemning civilian deaths in U.S. drone strikes, January 24, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/01/201112335951391718.html

“Triple attacks on Shiite pilgrims in Iraq kill 12” (KARBALA, Iraq, AFP), January 24, 2011, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20110124/twl-iraq-unrest-575b600.html

“Thousands demonstrate against U.S. drone strikes,” PESHAWAR (Xinhua) Tehran Times, January 22, 2011, http://www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=234534

“Death toll in Iraq bombing rises to 56 — Ayatollah Sistani criticizes Iraqi security forces”
(BAGHDAD, AP, http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=234520



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Week’s geopolitics: looming U.S. Asia conflict

June 13 update ─ The report on Pakistani intelligence (below) leaves no other conclusion than that the United States government ─ while claiming to fight “an enemy” and killing and traumatizing thousands of Afghanis, Pakistanis, Americans and sundry foreign nationals ─ is simultaneously funding (with debt and taxes) the very group it insists is a mad “extremist” bent on destroying “the West’s way of life.”
Compiled and edited with comment by Carolyn Bennett

Without constantly factoring in these engagements, theaters, and proxies, which critically affect social, educational, governmental, structural policy and action in every sense ─ often looming silenced in a room ─ any talk about U.S. foreign or domestic conditions and relations is nothing more than empty rhetoric.

MIDDLE EAST

Israel’s “Double game”
“When dealing with world superpowers, Israel has long played a double game whenever its relationship with the U.S. permitted it. In the 1990s, Israel tried to help China out of its global isolation following the Tiananmen massacre. It even tried to lobby Washington for Chinese interests. The Israelis have long boasted of lobbying the U.S., the White House, Congress and media in favor of countries of little importance to the United States; countries with poor human rights records; or merely need U.S. support.… Eventually many tapped Israel and its U.S. lobby for help in return of better relations with a country long considered an international pariah.…One wonders if boasting that its lobby has major influence in Washington doesn't indirectly fuel anti-Semitic claims of Jewish influence and control.…

“The Netanyahu government’s aggressive policies and settlement expansion in occupied Palestinian lands following his predecessor’s war on Lebanon and Gaza is driving Israel further to isolation. The only regional issue that has kept Israel in the loop is the Iranian nuclear issue.…” [“Israel shakes down China,” (Marwan Bishara in Imperium on June 10th, 2010), http://blogs.aljazeera.net/Israel shakes down China Al Jazeera Blogs].

Palestine
A Palestinian died Friday when Israelis opened fire in occupied East Jerusalem. “Palestinian witnesses said the man was standing on the side of the road when Israeli police officers started firing indiscriminately, killing him and seriously injuring a young woman.” Israelis said the man had attempted to ram his car into two Israeli police officers. It remained unclear whether the incident was an accident or a deliberate attack. Israeli security forces were deployed across East Jerusalem in large numbers in anticipation of possible unrest. Israeli police had announced a policy of limited-access for under-40-year-old Palestinian men travelling from East Jerusalem to the al-Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers. Tensions between Israelis and Arabs in East Jerusalem remained high [“Israeli police kill Palestinian man,” June 11, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/201061116939579309.html].

Iraq blowback
June 8
Video footage from a helicopter cockpit shows a deadly aerial strike carried out in 2007 in the Iraqi capital. Twelve civilians died in the attack among them two Reuters’ journalists.

Twenty-two-year-old U.S. Army Specialist Bradley Manning deployed at a base near Baghdad last year allegedly leaked the classified combat video to a whistleblower website Wikileaks. Manning was arrested last month after he reportedly bragged online about leaking the video and U.S. diplomatic cables. The U.S. military is reported to have issued a statement saying the soldier currently in Kuwait is in “‘pre-trial confinement for allegedly releasing classified information’” [“U.S. solider arrested over Iraq video,” June 8, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/20106815818808270.html].

Yemen
June 7
Fifty-five people among them 14 women and 21 children died in this attack. Amnesty International released photographs on Monday apparently showing parts of a U.S. cruise missile and cluster munitions gathered from the site of the military strike last December in the village of al Ma'jalah in southern Yemen.

After the rights group published what is said to be new evidence of U.S. involvement in the strike, the United States faces fresh questions concerning its role in the 2009 attack on an alleged al-Qaeda camp in Yemen. Fourteen alleged al-Qaeda members also died.

“The Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program said, ‘A military strike of this kind against alleged militants, without an attempt to detain them is, at the very least, unlawful.… The fact that so many of the victims were actually women and children indicates that the attack was in fact grossly irresponsible, particularly given the likely use of cluster munitions’” [“‘U.S. missile’ used in Yemen strike,” June 7, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/20106653442608341.html].

Yemen
June 12
Tribal fighters in eastern Yemen today blew up an oil pipeline in retaliation for an army raid on the home of one of their leaders accused of harboring al-Qaeda operatives. “The sabotage targeted a section of the pipeline that runs about six kilometres east of Maarib, capital of the province of the same name” [“Oil pipeline blown up in Yemen,” June 12, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/20106126547917129.html].

SOUTHWEST ASIA
AF/PAK

Afghanistan
June 9
Four foreign soldiers died Wednesday in Afghanistan when their helicopter was shot down in the south of the country.

U.S. and British forces stationed in southern Afghanistan are planning major operations in the Kandahar area where the U.S. president has said 30,000 more U.S. troops will be deployed. Following the plane hijacking of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government accused Taliban of harboring al-Qaeda in the area and invaded Afghanistan [“NATO troops killed in Afghanistan,” June 9, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/20106911642572476.html].

Afghanistan
June 10
More than 40 people in a wedding party in Kandahar died on Wednesday. Dozens suffered wounds. Afghan president Hamid Karzai called the incident ‘a crime of massive inhuman proportions.’

Rising deaths among foreigners (nearly 300 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001) and rising costs straining already stretched public finances “are eroding the UK's public support for the war” [“Karzai condemns Kandahar bombing,” June 10, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/201061010921894475.html].

Afghanistan
June 11
Eleven civilians (among them women and children) and two U.S. soldiers died Friday in violence across southern Afghanistan. Taliban fighters have increased attacks ahead of the planned U.S.-NATO operation. Nine of the civilian deaths occurred when a roadside bomb struck a minibus in the city of Kandahar. The other two civilians died in Zabul, a province neighboring Kandahar, when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in a shopping area of Shahjoy district. Sixteen people suffered wounds [“Many killed in Afghan blasts,” June 11, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/201061174818697945.html].

Pakistan
June 11
Fifteen people have died in two U.S. drone attacks launched “against alleged Taliban strongholds.” Carried out 12 hours apart, these attacks hit “west and east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, a tribal region near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.” U.S. policy prohibits confirming drone attacks but “the U.S. army and Central Intelligence Agency are the only forces in the region with access to pilotless drones.”

More than 900 people among them many civilians have died “in nearly 100 drone raids on Pakistan since August 2008 and there have been at least 35 suspected drone attacks so far this year. This is a large increase over previous periods.”

Commenting on these drone killings the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions issued a report this month questioning the legality of CIA-directed drone attacks and calling them ‘license to kill without accountability.’ Moreover, critics have called these attacks “extra-judicial killings that create a ‘video-game warfare’ mentality … where civilian lives are not seriously valued” [“Deaths in Pakistan drone attacks,” June 11, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/201061113424264165.html].

EASTERN EUROPE/WESTERN ASIA

U.S.-Russia-Afghanistan Connection
NATO is said to have begun moving military supplies to Afghanistan through Russia after its convoys moving through Pakistan faced deadly attacks from the local Taliban. … Cargo had previously been shipped to the Pakistani port of Karachi and then transported into Afghanistan. The Alliance “cannot ship supplies through Iran’s southeastern port of Chahar Bahar due to the political dispute over Iran’s nuclear program [and] the Chinese route through the Wakhan Corridor is impractical “because the dirt road is blocked by snow for much of the year” [“NATO route opens through Russia,” June 12, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/2010611204927850979.html].

EAST ASIA

Koreas
Following the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, South Korea has put up loudspeakers in 11 locations along the tense border in order to resume anti-Pyongyang broadcasts, suspended since 2004. The North Koreans are calling the move ‘a direct declaration of a war’, a ‘flagrant violation’ of the inter-Korean declaration for peace and reconciliation signed in 2000. North and South Korea technically have remained at war since the end of the 1950-53 conflict and each side has waged cross-border propaganda campaigns during and since the end of the Cold War [“S Korea warned over loudspeakers,” June 12, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/06/20106124113542531.html].

Notes and more sources
“Yemen, an international quagmire,” Inside Story, January 5, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2010/01/20101562037795156.html
“Threats from al-Qaeda frightened the U.S. and the UK into indefinite closure of their embassies in Yemen. According to the U.S. embassy website, the danger is that the group’s Yemen-based offshoot, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is growing stronger and planning attacks on Western targets.”
Al Jazerra report May 30, 2010
A UN report released in January of this year revealed that at least 2,412 civilians had died in the Afghan conflict in 2009. The figure represented a 14 per cent increase over the previous year. NATO and Afghan government forces were responsible for 25 per cent of the deaths; and of those, about 60 per cent were due to airstrikes [“U.S. crew faulted in drone deaths,” May 30, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/05/201053034934522302.html].

Casualty sites reporting

June 12, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)
• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 177]

Wounded 31,844-100,000;

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000;

Suicides 18 a day

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

• Iraq Body Count figures:

96,663 – 105,409,

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,405 U.S., 4,723 Coalition;

AFGHANISTAN: 1,114 U.S., 1,823 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/oif/

AF/PAK/IRAQ
UPDATE ─ UK
Iraq
June 13
“Baghdad bombings hit central bank,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_east/10304652.stm
Twelve people died today when bombs went off within a few minutes of each other in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The attacks come on the eve of the Iraqi parliament’s first day in its new session.

Britain/Afghanistan
June 13
“[UK] Armed forces chief to quit early - Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup is to quit as head of the armed forces in the autumn, before the end of his term in April 2011.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/default.stm
Britain’s most senior military officer Jock Stirrup will cut short his tenure and leave his position in the autumn. As Air Chief Marshal, Jock Stirrup has been chief of the defense staff since 2006. The previous Labour government had asked him to extend his term. The UK Ministry of Defense civil servant Bill Jeffrey will also leave his position.

“British troops joined a U.S.-led coalition that invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban in that country were accused of providing a sanctuary for al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.” Approximately 295 British service personnel have died in Afghanistan since military operations began in 2001.

June 13
Pakistan
“Pakistani agents ‘funding and training Afghan Taliban’ ─ Pakistan's links with the Taliban could go much deeper than thought,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/default.stm
“Pakistani intelligence gives funding, training and sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban on a scale much larger than previously thought, a report says. London School of Economics authors of the report suggest that support for the Afghan Taliban was ‘official ISI policy.’

“The ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] first became involved in funding and training militants in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979. Since 2001 the ISI has been a key U.S. ally, receiving billions of dollars in aid in return for helping fight al-Qaeda.”

Wikipedia ref. note: “The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (also Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI) is the largest intelligence service in Pakistan. It is one of the three main branches of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.”

The report on Pakistani intelligence leaves no other conclusion than that the United States government ─ while claiming to fight “an enemy” and killing and traumatizing thousands of Afghanis, Pakistanis, Americans and sundry foreign nationals ─ is simultaneously funding (with debt and taxes) the very group it insists is a mad “extremist” bent on destroying “the West’s way of life.”