Stealth, distance, cover of darkness — U.S. reign of terror

Nighttime raids, drones 50 to 1, double standards

Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Occupy Wall Street
Evicted in Late Night Raid
Lawyers Secure Injunction to
Reopen Zuccotti Park
November 15, 2011
 MWC image

Night raids USA

At the New York “occupy wall street” space, Judge Karen Smith said last week on Democracy Now,  she arrived wearing a bright colored hat imprinted with the words ‘National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer.’

She arrived “around 1:30 in the morning,” she said. She “got out and walked to Dey and Broadway streets. The police were in full riot gear… a paramilitary operation …, which sets off … what we call a stealth eviction.…

“All of a sudden, there was like a cordon of police pushing everybody into Dey Street between Broadway and Church and it seemed like they were setting everybody up to get arrested.…

“1:30 in the morning, they were lined up two blocks on either side from the park so that nobody could get near this solid wall of police.…

“…There was a ‘them and us.’ … It is a system that is being set up of ‘us and them.’”

U.S. drone

Night raids AFGHANISTAN PAKISTAN

Thanksgiving Day USA reports from Afghanistan

U.S.-led military forces last night attacked a residential area in southern Afghanistan that left at least seven civilians — mostly children — dead.

The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force reportedly had launched an air strike in Zhari district of Kandahar Province.

This morning in Afghanistan’s western province of Farah, a security firm came under an attack that left 12 “personnel of the private company” dead. Another nine people suffered injures.

“Afghan civilians,” Press TV contextualized consequences of this U.S. war, “have paid a heavy price since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2001.”

Insecurity increases and deepens. An estimated 130,000 people were displaced by the conflict in the first seven months of 2011 — an increase of nearly two-thirds over the same period in 2010.

The monthly average of security incidents recorded for the year through the end of August rose nearly 40 percent, according to UN figures. Civilian casualties, already at record levels in the first six months of the year, rose 5 percent between June and August 2011.

Pakistanis protest U.S. drone strikes

PAKISTAN PROTESTS "Playstation" mentality

UN special envoy on extrajudicial killings said in a report in late October 2010 that the U.S. drone attacks “were undermining the rules designed to protect the right of life.”

Philip Alston said he “feared that the drone killings by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency could develop a ‘playstation’ mentality.”

U.S. Thanksgiving week from Pakistan

Wednesday in the northwestern tribal region clashes between Pakistani “militants” and Pakistani “soldiers” left 22 dead and 3 “troops” missing.  

U.S. drone

Late yesterday in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Agency, a bomb explosion destroyed an oil tanker carrying fuel for U.S.-led foreign troops in neighboring Afghanistan. No loss of life was reported.

Night raids Pakistan — 50 to 1

“Casualty figures indicate that the aerial bombings have led to the loss of hundreds of Pakistani civilian lives. According to Pakistani sources, the U.S. drone strikes leave some 50 civilians dead for every militant killed.”

Also in this week’s reports was Pakistan’s announced intention “to complain to UN Human Rights Council about non-UN-sanctioned U.S. drone strikes in its northwestern tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan.”

This country’s parliament intends “to collect data about civilian deaths caused by U.S. assassination drone strikes against Pakistan’s territory” and then [Press TV attributes antiwar dot com] use the data in lodging a complaint about the terror attacks.

Aerial [drone] attacks begun during the George W. Bush administration have increased under the current U.S. president. Regularly the United States carries out attacks by unmanned aircraft on Pakistan’s tribal regions — strikes that local people report claim the lives mostly of civilians.

Bahrain protest
U.S.-allied regime

“Pro-Taliban militants” in striking back argue that their “assaults are in retaliation for non-UN-mandated U.S. assassination drone airstrikes on Pakistan’s tribal regions.”

  

PROTESTS AND BRUTAL BACKLASH CONTINUED ACROSS U.S.-ALLIED REGIME nations of BAHRAIN, SAUDI ARABIA, YEMEN; AND IN NORTH AFRICA (U.S.-allied military against civilians in EGYPT; Kenyan and Ethiopian military and U.S. drone strikes against devastated SOMALIA)

  

Africa - Red Sea
Middle East

Geopolitics’ Schizophrenia

This week Deutsche Welle reports on the U.S.-led West’s “dangerous balance” dealing with Egypt’s military.

Red Sea

The United States — as well as a number of European states — has continued to supply the oppressive Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) with “the military hardware, tear gas and rubber bullets being used against the crowds in Tahrir Square,” the report said.  “Much the same way as it supplied over $60 billion in unconditional aid to the Egyptian military during [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak’s 30-year reign of corruption and oppression.”

U.S. war, occupied
Indian Ocean:
Australia-Asia-Africa

Behind this support for oppression, “some experts believe … are elements in the U.S. political system that see the retention of power by the SCAF as the lesser of multiple evils and are privately supportive out of fear of the alternative.

The West’s continuing support for Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces [not unlike relations with Libya’s Transitional National Council], North Africa/Middle East expert Kristian Ulrichsen told Deutsche Welle, “‘is sending irreparably damaging signals to the pro-democracy movements in Egypt and across the region.

Asia, Africa
under
U.S. threat, war, occupation

“‘It reinforces perceptions,’” she said, “‘that the West would rather see a narrow change of elites than a thorough revolution based on ideas of equality, dignity, social justice and democracy.’”

Sources and notes

ows

NIGHT RAIDS USA

“Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on Paramilitary Policing From WTO to Occupy Wall Street [Karen Smith, retired New York Supreme Court judge, acting as a legal observer on the night of the raid on Occupy Wall Street],” Thursday, November 17, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/17/paramilitary_policing_of_occupy_wall_street

KAREN S. SMITH

Karen S. Smith is an acting justice for the New York County Supreme Court, Civil Term in the 1st Judicial District of New York, appointed to the position in 2004. She is also Judge, Civil Court of the City of New York, New York County, elected 1996, term ending 2016

Judge Smith’s professional experience and credentials also include New York State Attorney General, Real Estate Finance Bureau-Enforcement (1984- 1995); District Council 37 AFSCME, Associate General Counsel (1976-1983); NYS, Appellate Division, First Department (1977); District of Columbia, Court of Appeals, (1976);  Catholic University Law School (J.D., 1975); Reed College (B.A., 1970), http://www.nycourtsystem.com/applications/judicialdirectory/Bio.php?ID=7026750; http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Karen_Smith

NIGHT RAIDS AFGHANISTAN

“U.S.-led forces kill 7 Afghan civilians,” November 24, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211898.html

“Militant attack kills 12 in Afghanistan,” November 24, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211884.html

NIGHT RAIDS PAKISTAN

“22 killed in NW Pakistan clashes,” November 24, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211759.html

“NATO oil tanker torched in Pakistan,” November 24, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211827.html

Pakistan to take U.S. drone attacks to UN,” November 24, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211864.html

Geopolitics’ Schizophrenia— U.S.-led West in Africa and Asia

EGYPT AND WEST

“West strikes dangerous balance in dealings with Egypt’s military” (Deutsche Welle), November 22, 2011, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15546334,00.html

“The latest street battles between demonstrators demanding the end of military rule and armed members of the security services under the command of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) have reopened barely healed wounds just 10 months since President Hosni Mubarak was forced out of power by similar protests,” Deutsche Welle reports.

 “‘The SCAF represents the old military guard that propped up the Mubarak regime and its leadership is embedded within the networks of crony capitalists that are proving so hard to dislodge,’” says Dr. Kristian Ulrichsen, a North Africa and Middle East expert at the London School of Economics.

MUSLIM COUNTRIES

Muslims predominate in some 30 to 40 countries, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and along a belt that stretches across northern Africa into Central Asia and south to the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent.

Arabs account for less than one-fifth of all Muslims, more than half of whom live east of Karachi, Pakistan. Despite the absence of large-scale Islamic political entities, the Islamic faith continues to expand, by some estimates faster than any other major religion.

Some Muslim countries in Asia and Africa: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia, Turkey, Nigeria, Iran, Pakistan

Caption Miami Workers Center

Occupy Wall Street Evicted in Late Night Raid; Lawyers Secure Injunction to Reopen Zuccotti Park, November 15, 2011,  http://www.miamiworkerscenter.org/index.php/en/news/7-national-news/108-occupy-wall-street-evicted-in-late-night-raid-lawyers-secure-injunction-to-reopen-zuccotti-park

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