03/09/12

Permalink FBI wouldn’t exclude extrajudicial killings in the US

United States Attorney General Eric Holder recently explained how the president can order the assassination of his own citizens abroad. But did his rationalization justify executions within the US? Apparently, the FBI wouldn’t exclude it. - Responding to a congressional inquiry this week on the rationale of assassinating Americans, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller affirmed that he himself isn’t too clear on the what Holder explained. The attorney general addressed an audience at Northwestern University in Chicago this week with an explanation for US President Barack Obama’s killing of three American citizens overseas last year. Alleged terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki and two other US-born citizens were executed in a drone strike last year in Yemen, a kill that the White House has been reluctant to discuss in detail until just recently. Speaking from Northwestern this week, Holder insisted, however, that the details the president acted on were "sufficient under the Constitution for the United States to use lethal force against a US citizen abroad.”


Permalink USA #1? 40 Embarrassing Things That America Is The Best In The World At

Is the USA still #1? Well, there are many things that America is still the best in the world at, but unfortunately a lot of those categories are nothing to be proud of. Once upon a time the United States was the greatest nation on earth, but now we are a nation that is in a horrific state of decline. Just consider a few of the embarrassing things that America leads the world in: obesity, crime, divorce, teen pregnancy, child abuse deaths and government debt. The statistics that you are about to read below are incredibly disturbing. Most people that write these kinds of articles about the decline of America hate this country. But that is not the case with me. I was born and raised in America and I love this nation deeply. It is time to realize that we will never be able to start fixing our problems until we take a really good look in the mirror and realize just how far we have fallen. America is not the country that it once was. America is a complete and total mess and just "tweaking" a few things here and there is not going to return this nation to its former glory. We have forgotten the things that once made us great, and if we do not return to them we will continue to fall apart as a nation. With that being said, the following are 40 embarrassing things that America is the best in the world at....


Permalink US Drone Strike Kills 13 in South Waziristan

A US drone has attacked a house and a vehicle in the Mandao District of Pakistan’s South Waziristan Agency, killing at least 13 people and wounding three others. The slain have not been identified but were termed “suspected militants” by Pakistani officials commenting on the situation. The attack is the eighth US drone strike in 2012, and the deadliest since mid-February, when a pair of US drone strikes killed 21 people in neighboring North Waziristan Agency. The video also condemned the Pakistani government for backing the US drone strike program. Publicly, Pakistan’s government condemns the US strikes, which are enormously unpopular domestically, but privately has cooperated in the strikes.

Wayne Madsen: Next Stop is Pakistan
Bill van Auken: US threatens wider war in Pakistan


Permalink Who counts Helmand's lost children?

It is important to honour the hundreds of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, but appallingly, we don't even record civilian deaths.

It is now exactly six years since the catastrophic British intervention in Helmand. It was in March 2006 that 16 Air Assault Brigade deployed to the province in force. Prior to its move to the south of Afghanistan the British had had five fatal casualties. In Helmand itself neither the small US army force, nor the occasional SAS patrol had taken any casualties at all. The few Taliban were contained by the governor and his militia and Helmand was one of the wealthiest provinces, largely due to its opium crop. Exactly five years on and 404 military personnel British armed forces have been killed, and the US marines who entered the province to bale them out have taken several hundred more. The death of six British soldiers are of life-shattering consequence to their families. For Helmandis they will have little significance. They are concerned at the risk to themselves, from Taliban and indeed British and Nato forces. Yet civilian casualties inflicted by UK or Nato forces in the province are not reported or even counted by the MoD or Nato. We will know the names of our dead soldiers. We will never know who was the 404th Helmandi civilian to die. What we can be sure of is that it was a long time ago. When I served in Helmand, as a civilian adviser, the only dead person I saw was a six-month old child killed by a British soldier in an accidental shooting. In the few months I was in the province in 2007 the numbers of civilian casualties in Helmand exceeded by orders of magnitude all foreign military casualties. In just two Nato "collateral damage" attacks in Baghran and Hyderabad, both Helmandi villages, well over 100 people were killed. Matters have only become worse since then.


Permalink Study: Hate of Obama fuels 755% growth in extremist groups

Fears that the nation’s first black president will be re-elected has fueled the dramatic growth extremists groups in the U.S. over the past year, according to a report from a civil rights organization that tracks these groups. - The number of groups in the anti-government “Patriot” movement have sky rocketed 755 percent since President Barack Obama has been elected, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) yearly report found. “These groups are becoming more and more aware as they watch the primary season unfold that Obama is fairly likely to win and some of them are having meltdowns over this,” Southern Poverty Law Center senior fellow Mark Potok told Raw Story. “They’re looking at four more years under a very hated black president — hated by them. So, we’re seeing signs of real anger over that. People saying we’re at war already, saying go out and buy AK-47s and hollow-point bullets, get tools to derail trains.”


Permalink Russia says 15,000 foreign terrorists are in Syria

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is battling al Qaeda-backed "terrorists" including at least 15,000 foreign fighters who will seize towns across Syria if government troops withdraw, a Russian diplomat said on Thursday. - Russia is a staunch defender of Syria despite international condemnation of the crackdown by Assad's forces and evidence of human rights abuses against unarmed civilians. Addressing a one-day humanitarian forum on Syria at the United Nations in Geneva, Russia's deputy ambassador Mikhail Lebedev said rebels had recently committed large-scale attacks against Syrian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals. "Rebel groups attack, kill, torture and intimidate the civilian population. The flow of all kind of terrorists from some neighboring countries is always increasing," Lebedev told the forum.

Russia Today: Syrian rebels dismiss UN dialogue - Video
Uruknet: Syria Protests March 8, 2012 : A Video Roundup
AWIP: Wikileaks document reveals: US-led NATO troops operate inside Syria


Permalink Marseille, the new drug empire

France’s second city will be European capital of culture in 2013. But for the moment, news from Marseille is dominated by feuds among Kalashnikov toting drug dealers who hold sway over entire neighbourhoods.

As night falls, an unmarked anti-criminal brigade police car relentlessly patrols the neighbourhoods of northern Marseille. In each of the cités or housing projects, the ritual is the same. With the arrival of the police, shouts ring out from block to block, from building to building, and from stairwell to stairwell. The lookouts, children no more than 15 years old, are there to carefully supervise the drug trade. On occasion, the police are escorted by one or two motor scooters until they leave the area. Font-Vert, Clos la Rose, Castellane are just some of the many districts that are organised and structured by drug trafficking. Over the last three years, the cités have engaged in a war that has brought blood to the streets of Marseille. In his office in the city’s main police station, known as l'Evêché (in honour of the building’s past as bishop’s palace), judicial police chief Roland Gauze reels off the figures: “In 2010, there were 54 murders and attempted murders in Marseille, including 17 drug feud killings. In 2011, there were 38, of which 20 were caused by drug feuds.”


Permalink Britons fund own Orwellian future? - Video

The British government is pushing through an anti-terror law that will enable it to monitor all private electronic communication, including social media. Ironically, people to be watched are set to pay for the privilege. - Britain is already one of the most-watched societies in the world. With an estimated 2 million surveillance cameras, it has more CCTV per person than almost any other nation on Earth. Being in the UK means being watched non-stop. And now the government is planning to cast its intrusive eye over online activity, phone calls and text messages, all under the guise of an anti-terror law. They will not only know which websites a person visits, they will even snoop on private Facebook messages. The new law specifies that it is not just private calls and messages that will be kept. The government will know exactly to whom a person speaks, when and where. Whoever one might be, all his personal data will be stored for a year by landline and mobile phone companies, and internet service providers. Obviously, the security services will have real-time access to these databases at the click of a button – secretly living your life with you.


Permalink Bank shysters milking Greece dry

Some hedge funds have found a legal loophole they believe will force Greece to repay some of its debt in full, three sources close to the matter said on Thursday, in a move that would intensify the standoff between the country and its debtors. - Greece closed a bond swap offer to private creditors on Thursday after clearing the minimum threshold of acceptance to push the biggest sovereign debt restructuring in history. Government officials said more than 75 percent of eligible bonds had already been committed resulting in losses of some 74 percent on the value of the debt in a deal that will cut more than 100 billion euros from Greece's crippling public debt. But because of a provision written into one particular bond, some hedge funds believe that Athens has already defaulted on that bond by asking bondholders to exchange their debt for new paper with a much lower value, according to the sources. The funds are now trying to buy up enough of the bond -- issued by state-owned Hellenic Railways and guaranteed by the government -- to force Greece to repay them in full, to the tune of some 400 million euros.

PressEurop: Shipwreck has been avoided


Permalink South Korean protesters in streets of Cheju island

Tensions soared on the South Korean island of Jeju on Thursday as hundreds of residents, activists and priests protest against the building of a naval base. - About 500 supporters of the project also arrived Thursday on the second day of key construction work. Crews have blown up rocky areas with dynamite to prepare for a caisson and other structures that will help with the construction of the docks. Protests against the building of the naval base started seven years ago over fears of damage to the environment and nature on the island. Protesters say it would also threaten the peace on the island, parts of which are UNESCO world heritage sites, and affect tourism.


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