May 2013
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Paul Kagame: I asked America to kill Congo rebel... →
Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, has rejected accusations from Washington that he was supporting a rebel leader and accused war criminal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by challenging a senior US official to send a drone to kill the wanted man.
In an interview with the Observer Magazine, Kagame said that on a visit to Washington in March he came under pressure from the US assistant...
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Deadly Manufacturing Mirage, Green-Red Alternative... →
[T]he fact that American and other global capitalists and their corporations increasingly find the U.S. to be a hospitable environment for manufacturing reflects the declining fortunes of the U.S. workers across the long neoliberal era (1970s to the present). The mass “off-shoring” (export) of formerly U.S.-based manufacturing jobs during that era did not occur because big “American” capital...
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Western leaders study 'gamechanging' report on... →
European governments and the Obama administration are this weekend studying a “gamechanging” report on global drugs policy that is being seen in some quarters as the beginning of the end for blanket prohibition.
Publication of the Organisation of American States (OAS) review, commissioned at last year’s Cartagena Summit of the Americas attended by Barack Obama, reflects growing dissatisfaction...
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Europe presses US on drones – not to cease, but to... →
European countries are piling more pressure on the US to allow them to buy armed Predator and Reaper drones. As we have previously reported Germany wants to buy armed Reaper drones from the US and France too has reported this week that it ‘expects’ the US to allow it to acquire unarmed Reapers as a step towards it aim of acquiring armed drone capability.
Italy meanwhile is getting frustrated...
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Goodale: Pentagon Papers have lessons for AP case... →
[James] Goodale, who was general counsel for the Times during the Pentagon Papers and the architect of the paper’s legal defense—and is a member of CPJ’s board of directors—was quick to relate the current scandal to the precedent-setting case. “Notice [Holder] didn’t tell you why it was the worst national security leak, he didn’t tell you what [the damage was]…The lesson from the Pentagon...
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“Quick, somebody tell CIA Director John Brennan about the handwriting on the...”
– Ray McGovern, Boston Suspect’s Writing on the Wall
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At least four people killed in Yemen drone strike... →
May 18th, 2013
At least four people were killed and a number of others wounded in a drone strike on a vehicle carrying suspected al Qaeda members in southern Yemen, a local official said on Saturday. The official said the strike took place at dawn on Saturday on a road to the north of Jaar in Abyan Governorate, near Aden.
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Worse Than The AP Phone Scandal | Ken Klippenstein →
Before Attorney General Eric Holder oversaw a Justice Department that secretly seized AP journalists’ phone records, he was guilty of something even worse, and closely related to the AP scandal. He argued a little-known case before the Supreme Court called Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, which found that speech (and other forms of nonviolent advocacy) could be construed as material support...
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Syria's Inglorious Basterd | Jadaliyya →
On 13 May 2013, Human Rights Watch released a statement attesting to the authenticity of a disturbing video that circulated first on Syrian pro-regime websites and then on social media. In it, a Syrian man cuts open a dead government soldier’s chest, pulls his heart and lung out, threatens “Alawite dogs” that they will all face a similar fate, and takes a bite of the viscera while addressing...
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Bombs targeting Sunnis kill at least 76 in Iraq |... →
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“When he completed Volume II sixteen years ago, the 78-years-old Allen, in words...”
– Jeffrey B. Perry, Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race
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Benghazi, Petraeus, and the CIA | Horace Campbell →
What Greg Hicks and Representative Darrell Issa did not probe was the role of the CIA and Petraeus in the use of Benghazi as the largest CIA station in North Africa, where they ran militias into Syria. When the information about the attack on the US ‘facility’ in Benghazi was first brought to light, there was confusion because this information had the potential of putting the vaunted military...
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How the U.S. Turned Three Pacifists into Violent... →
On the lengths this goddamned State will go to to silence and punish dissent:
In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism. Now in jail awaiting sentencing for their acts at an Oak Ridge, TN...
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Obama to weaken fracking rules →
climateadaptation:
rtamerica:
The federal government has proposed a new set of national fracking rules that would weaken disclosure requirements. The proposal allows ‘trade secrets’ to remain unknown from the public, which has distressed environmental groups.
I called it. Last month, environmental groups were doing handstands and backflips over Sally Jewell, who is Obama’s pick to lead...
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The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian... →
“The principle of the lesser evil is often presented as a dilemma between two or more bad choices in situations where available options are, or seem to be, limited….Both aspects of the principle are understood as taking place within a closed system in which those posing the dilemma, the options available for choice, the factors to be calculated and the very parameters of calculation are...
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“Those stories don’t attract anywhere near the attention that murders receive....”
– Jonathan Schuppe, NBC reporter & former staff crime reporter @ The Newark Star-Ledger, “Gunshots on Warm Spring Evenings”, New York Times, May 17, 2013 (via auntieimperial)
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“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was...”
– George Orwell - 1984 (via karuihiro)
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Did AP Learn about Fake UndieBomb 2.0 because Real... →
Marcy Wheeler doing work. This is a fascinating story.
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The other IRS scandal | David Cay Johnston →
The burgeoning “scandal” over how the IRS chose for review 75 applicants for tax-exempt status puts on full display an unfortunate tendency in journalism—to quote people accurately without explaining the underlying context. Yes, it is as wrong for IRS employees to select groups to scrutinize based on their names as it is for police to stop and frisk young people based on the color of their...
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Mosque attack kills 38 in Iraq | Al Akhbar →
Two bombs near a mosque north of Baghdad killed 38 people and wounded 55 on Friday, police and a doctor said.
One bomb exploded as worshippers were departing the Saria mosque in the city of Baquba while a second detonated after people gathered at the scene of the first blast, the sources said.
The bombings are the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted both Sunni and Shia places of...
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“That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the ‘war on...”
– Washington gets explicit: its ‘war on terror’ is permanent | Glenn Greenwald
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drawplay asked: I really appreciate your blog. Thanks for the news articles and the art! Who are you American Bear? =)
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thepeoplesrecord:
Hundreds of complaints reporting rigging and irregularities in the May 11 Pakistan parliamentary elections confirmed by EU election monitors have Pakistan youth outraged May 17, 2013
Pakistan’s May 11 parliamentary elections have been hailed by the national and international observers as landmark and historic, but there have also been complaints of rigging and irregularities...
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Pentagon Spec Ops Chief Sees '10 to 20' More Years... →
The war in Afghanistan may be winding down. But the Pentagon’s chief of irregular warfare still sees a war against al-Qaida that will last decades, all over the world — a prospect that prompted astonishment and constitutional debate in the Senate.
Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations...
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DOD Won’t Be Taking Over Drone Strikes Anytime... →
[…] In Pakistan, we’re facing a new Prime Minister in Nawaz Sharif who has claimed to be skeptical of drones. And we’re facing the tensions between Pakistan’s security establishment and its democratic governmentthat necessitate a thoroughly unconvincing kabuki about whether Pakistan consents.
There’s a similar tension in Yemen, too. In addition, I suspect we’re captive to what our drone...
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Guantánamo hunger strike tally hits 102 -... →
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“A top Pentagon official said Thursday that the evolving war against ‘Al...”
– Pentagon Official Urges Congress to Keep Statute Allowing War on Terror Intact
Shorter: “We’ve already perverted the original intent of the AUMF to allow us to kill anyone we want wherever we want for whatever reason we want, so why rock the boat?”
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Guantánamo hunger strike tally hits 102 -... →
U.S. military medical providers counted 102 Guantánamo prisoners as hunger strikers on Thursday, the first increase after three weeks when the number seemed to plateau at 100.
Navy medical workers were tube feeding 30 of the hunger strikers, said Army Lt. Col. Samuel House. Three were hospitalized but none had “any life-threatening conditions,” House said.
Military officials refused...
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“It is not clear whether such a law would have changed the outcome of the...”
– Under Fire, White House Pushes Media Shield Law | NYTimes.com
Well that certainly doesn’t jive with this:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people...
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“Far from condemning the AP or other outlets reporting on the story, the White...”
– AP Scoop That Prompted DOJ Probe Only Ran After CIA Signed Off
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WatchChris Hedges: Monitoring of AP Phones and the State Assault on Press Freedom | Democracy Now!
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absurdlakefront replied to your post:
The fourth amendment is coming to mean nothing, just like the first, fifth and sixth amendments in the face of our paranoid security obsessed state. The eighth has been disregarded at black sites for years. All distressing and the public sleeps.
Tru dat. And beyond the black sites of the GWOT era (continuing under Obama, executive orders...
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“Murder is our national sport. We murder tens of thousands with our industrial...”
– Chris Hedges (via azspot)
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Couple Refuses To Allow Police To Enter Home... →
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Home Secretary strips two more people of British... →
The Home Secretary has stripped at least two additional individuals of their British citizenship in recent months, the Bureau has learned.
In February, an investigation by the Bureau and published with the Independent revealed that Theresa May had signed deprivation of citizenship orders for 16 people between the 2010 election and November 2012, including five British-born individuals. That...
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BP and Shell raided in European commission... →
The London offices of BP and Shell have been raided by European regulators investigating allegations they have “colluded” to rig oil prices for more than a decade.
The European commission said its officers carried out “unannounced inspections” at several oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway to investigate claims they may have “colluded in reporting distorted prices to a price...
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thepoliticalfreakshow:
Bangladesh Walkout: 80% of Bangladesh’s Garment Workers Walk Out Of Work Today To Protest Horrible Working Conditions, Effectively Shutting Down Garment Factories Indefinitely
Bangladesh’s entire renowned garment manufacturing hub has been shut down indefinitely, after 80% of its workers walked off the job. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association...
