The People's Record

U.S. Military ‘Power Grab’ Goes Into Effect: Pentagon Unilaterally Grants Itself Authority Over ‘Civil Disturbances’
May 14, 2013

The manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects offered the nation a window into the stunning military-style capabilities of our local law enforcement agencies. For the past 30 years, police departments throughout the United States have benefitted from the government’s largesse in the form of military weaponry and training, incentives offered in the ongoing “War on Drugs.” For the average citizen watching events such as the intense pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers on television, it would be difficult to discern between fully outfitted police SWAT teams and the military.

The lines blurred even further Monday as a new dynamic was introduced to the militarization of domestic law enforcement. By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled“Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.

Click here to read the new rule

The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of “civil disturbances.” According to the rule:

Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.

Bruce Afran, a civil liberties attorney and constitutional law professor at Rutgers University, calls the rule, “a wanton power grab by the military,” and says, “It’s quite shocking actually because it violates the long-standing presumption that the military is under civilian control.”

A defense official who declined to be named takes a different view of the rule, claiming, “The authorization has been around over 100 years; it’s not a new authority. It’s been there but it hasn’t been exercised. This is a carryover of domestic policy.” Moreover, he insists the Pentagon doesn’t “want to get involved in civilian law enforcement. It’s one of those red lines that the military hasn’t signed up for.” Nevertheless, he says, “every person in the military swears an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States to defend that Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

One of the more disturbing aspects of the new procedures that govern military command on the ground in the event of a civil disturbance relates to authority. Not only does it fail to define what circumstances would be so severe that the president’s authorization is “impossible,” it grants full presidential authority to “Federal military commanders.” According to the defense official, a commander is defined as follows: “Somebody who’s in the position of command, has the title commander. And most of the time they are centrally selected by a board, they’ve gone through additional schooling to exercise command authority.”

As it is written, this “commander” has the same power to authorize military force as the president in the event the president is somehow unable to access a telephone. (The rule doesn’t address the statutory chain of authority that already exists in the event a sitting president is unavailable.) In doing so, this commander must exercise judgment in determining what constitutes, “wanton destruction of property,” “adequate protection for Federal property,” “domestic violence,” or “conspiracy that hinders the execution of State or Federal law,” as these are the circumstances that might be considered an “emergency.”

“These phrases don’t have any legal meaning,” says Afran. “It’s no different than the emergency powers clause in the Weimar constitution [of the German Reich]. It’s a grant of emergency power to the military to rule over parts of the country at their own discretion.”

Afran also expresses apprehension over the government’s authority “to engage temporarily in activities necessary to quell large-scale disturbances.”

“Governments never like to give up power when they get it,” says Afran. “They still think after twelve years they can get intelligence out of people in Guantanamo. Temporary is in the eye of the beholder. That’s why in statutes we have definitions. All of these statutes have one thing in common and that is that they have no definitions. How long is temporary? There’s none here. The definitions are absurdly broad.”

The U.S. military is prohibited from intervening in domestic affairs except where provided under Article IV of the Constitution in cases of domestic violence that threaten the government of a state or the application of federal law. This provision was further clarified both by the Insurrection Act of 1807 and a post-Reconstruction law known as the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (PCA). The Insurrection Act specifies the circumstances under which the president may convene the armed forces to suppress an insurrection against any state or the federal government. Furthermore, where an individual state is concerned, consent of the governor must be obtained prior to the deployment of troops. The PCA—passed in response to federal troops that enforced local laws and oversaw elections during Reconstruction—made unauthorized employment of federal troops a punishable offense, thereby giving teeth to the Insurrection Act.

Together, these laws limit executive authority over domestic military action. Yet Monday’s official regulatory changes issued unilaterally by the Department of Defense is a game-changer.

Source

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Israel & Mexico swap notes on abusing rights
May 22, 2013

Earlier this month, Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca, Mexico’s newly-appointed secretary of public security in Chiapas, announced that discussions had taken place between his office and the Israeli defense ministry. The two countries talked about security coordination at the level of police, prisons and effective use of technology (“Israeli military will train Chiapas police,” Excelsior, 8 May [Spanish]).

Chiapas is home to the Zapatistas (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), a mostly indigenous Maya liberation movement that has enjoyed global grassroots support since it rose up against the Mexican government in 1994. The Zapatistas took back large tracts of land on which they have since built subsistence cooperatives, autonomous schools, collectivized clinics and other democratic community structures.

In the twenty years since the uprising, the Mexican government has not ceased its counterinsurgency programs in Chiapas. When Llaven Abarca was announced as security head in December, human rights organizations voiced concerns that the violence would escalate, pointing to his history of arbitrary detentions, use of public force, criminal preventive detentions, death threats and torture (“Concern about the appointment of Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca as Secretary of Public Security in Chiapas,” Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas (Frayba) Center for Human Rights,14 December 2012 [PDF, Spanish]).

Aptly, his recent contacts with Israeli personnel were “aimed at sharing experiences,” Abarca has claimed. This may be the first time the Mexican government has gone public about military coordination with Israelis in Chiapas. Yet the agreement is only the latest in Israel’s longer history of military exports to the region, an industry spawned from experiences in the conquest and pacification of Palestine.

Weapons sales escalate

The first Zionist militias (Bar Giora and HaShomer) were formed to advance the settlement of Palestinian land. Another Zionist militia, the Haganah — the precursor to the Israeli army and the successor of HaShomer — began importing and producing arms in 1920.

Israeli firms began exporting weapons in the 1950s to Latin America, including to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic under the Somoza and Trujillo dictatorships. Massive government investment in the arms industry followed the 1967 War and the ensuing French arms embargo. Israeli arms, police, military training and equipment have now been sent to at least 140 countries, including to Guatemala in the 1980s under Efraín Ríos Montt, the former dictator recently convicted of genocide against the Maya.

Mexico began receiving Israeli weaponry in 1973 with the sale of five Arava planes fromIsrael Aerospace Industries. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, infrequent exports continued to the country in the form of small arms, mortars and electronic fences. Sales escalated in the early 2000s, according to research that we have undertaken.

In 2003, Mexico bought helicopters formerly belonging to the Israeli army and Israel Aerospace Industries’ Gabriel missiles. Another Israeli security firm, Magal Security Systems, received one of several contracts for surveillance systems “to protect sensitive installations in Mexico” that same year, The Jerusalem Post reported.

In 2004, Israel Shipyards sold missile boats, and later both Aeronautics Defense Systems and Elbit Systems won contracts from the federal police and armed forces for drones for border and domestic surveillance (“UAV maker Aeronautics to supply Mexican police,”Globes, 15 February 2009). Verint Systems, a technology firm founded by former Israeli army personnel, has won several US-sponsored contracts since 2006 for the mass wiretapping of Mexican telecommunications, according to Jane’s Defence Weekly.

Trained by Israel

According to declassified Defense Intelligence Agency documents [PDF] obtained via a freedom of information request, Israeli personnel were discreetly sent into Chiapas in response to the 1994 Zapatista uprising for the purpose of “providing training to Mexican military and police forces.”

The Mexican government also made use of the Arava aircraft to deploy its Airborne Special Forces Group (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, or GAFE). GAFE commandos were themselves trained by Israel and the US. Several would later desert the GAFE and go on to create “Los Zetas,” currently Mexico’s most powerful and violent drug cartel (“Los Zetas and Mexico’s Transnational Drug War,” World Politics Review, 25 December 2009).

Mexico was surprised by the Zapatistas, who rose up the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. The Mexican government found itself needing to respond to the dictates of foreign investors, as a famously-leaked Chase-Manhattan Bank memo revealed: “While Chiapas, in our opinion, does not pose a fundamental threat to Mexican political stability, it is perceived to be so by many in the investment community. The government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy.”

Full article

TW: Sexual assault - This is Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski. He is the head of the US Air Force’s anti-sexual assault unit.

He was arrested & charged with sexual battery on Sunday after he drunkenly grabbed a woman’s breasts & buttocks in a parking lot near the Pentagon. 

Pentagon officials were preparing to release its annual report on sexual assault in the military as this incident happened. The number of sexual assaults - reported & not reported - are estimated at about 19,000 each year. 

Read more on this scumbag here. 

+ if you haven’t already, watch The Invisible War, a documentary on sexual assault in the military. It’s on Netflix.

Iraq War costs US more than $2 trillion
March 14, 2013

The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said.

The war has killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have contributed to the deaths of as many as four times that number, according to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

When security forces, insurgents, journalists and humanitarian workers were included, the war’s death toll rose to an estimated 176,000 to 189,000, the study said.

The report, the work of about 30 academics and experts, was published in advance of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.

It was also an update of a 2011 report the Watson Institute produced ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks that assessed the cost in dollars and lives from the resulting wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

The 2011 study said the combined cost of the wars was at least $3.7 trillion, based on actual expenditures from the U.S. Treasury and future commitments, such as the medical and disability claims of U.S. war veterans.

That estimate climbed to nearly $4 trillion in the update.

The estimated death toll from the three wars, previously at 224,000 to 258,000, increased to a range of 272,000 to 329,000 two years later.

Excluded were indirect deaths caused by the mass exodus of doctors and a devastated infrastructure, for example, while the costs left out trillions of dollars in interest the United States could pay over the next 40 years.

The interest on expenses for the Iraq war could amount to about $4 trillion during that period, the report said.

The report also examined the burden on U.S. veterans and their families, showing a deep social cost as well as an increase in spending on veterans. The 2011 study found U.S. medical and disability claims for veterans after a decade of war totaled $33 billion. Two years later, that number had risen to $134.7 billion.

FEW GAINS

The report concluded the United States gained little from the war while Iraq was traumatized by it. The war reinvigorated radical Islamist militants in the region, set back women’s rights, and weakened an already precarious healthcare system, the report said. Meanwhile, the $212 billion reconstruction effort was largely a failure with most of that money spent on security or lost to waste and fraud, it said.

Former President George W. Bush’s administration cited its belief that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s government held weapons of mass destruction to justify the decision to go to war. U.S. and allied forces later found that such stockpiles did not exist.

Supporters of the war argued that intelligence available at the time concluded Iraq held the banned weapons and noted that even some countries that opposed the invasion agreed with the assessment.

“Action needed to be taken,” said Steven Bucci, the military assistant to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the war and today a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think-tank.

Bucci, who was unconnected to the Watson study, agreed with its observation that the forecasts for the cost and duration of the war proved to be a tiny fraction of the real costs.

“If we had had the foresight to see how long it would last and even if it would have cost half the lives, we would not have gone in,” Bucci said. “Just the time alone would have been enough to stop us. Everyone thought it would be short.”

Bucci said the toppling of Saddam and the results of an unforeseen conflict between U.S.-led forces and al Qaeda militants drawn to Iraq were positive outcomes of the war.

“It was really in Iraq that ‘al Qaeda central’ died,” Bucci said. “They got waxed.”

Source

IDF targets Palestinians,  journalists, human rights supporters, peaceful protesters and anyone who stands in the way of colonialism in the West Bank
March 7, 2013

Several international journalists have suffered from teargas and brutal treatment as IDF have launched teargas bombs at the media crews outside Ofer Prison, West Bank. In recent weeks protests outside the facility have left scores of injured, as Israeli Defense Forces continue to subject all who stand in their way to human rights violations.

The RT crew, together with other international teams were documenting nonviolent protests near Ofer prison, which has been the site of numerous clashes with Israeli authorities in recent months, leading to hundreds of injuries. A recent Palestinian prisoner’s death has instigated an escalation in already-bitter relations.

On Thursday the activists had been peacefully demonstrating against the death of a young Palestinian man, who sustained injuries during clashes in the village of Abud, north of Jerusalem, and had unfurled banners and were waving flags.

“The rally was not numerous. No one was going to throw stones or initiate clashes,” RT’s correspondent Yafa Staiti said.

IDF forces asked both the journalists and protesters to retreat 60 meters, and without waiting, as the journalists began to stand back, Israeli elements started to fire the teargas at both them and the protesters.

The RT crew says that after their withdrawal, the forces proceeded to fire teargas at the car carrying them off, as injuring innocents seems to be a priority of IDF.

“There was no necessity to use teargas. As a result our cameraman and dozens of other people, among those there have been correspondents of Maan and Sky News, as well as others sitting in TV crews’ cars, suffered from suffocation after teargas grenades exploded,” Staiti added.

On Wednesday, 15 civilians were also wounded when police attempted to shoot as many Palestinians & allies of human rights as they could with rubber bullets. Local press also reported the use of teargas against the media and anyone who dared to document the human rights atrocities that Israel commits. Among those injured included the head of Palestinian Prisoners Society, Qaddura Fares.

RT’s correspondent said they suppose “A day of Palestinian rage” may take place Friday “as well as [a] mass march during [the] funeral of that young man after Friday’s prayer.”

“It can end, as it often happens, with clashes between demonstrators and IDF.”

Over 2,000 Palestinians are currently being detained in Israeli jails and several are on a long-term hunger strike and becoming increasingly weak.

Many Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are in ‘administrative detention,’ which is a practice whereby a suspect can be held indefinitely without charge or the chance to face trial.

Source

In spending $60 billion to rebuild Iraq, the US has wasted more than $9 billion in taxpayer funds. 
March 7, 2013

One decade after the US invaded Iraq, the reconstruction effort has been largely deemed a failure. In his final report to Congress, a 171-page assessment titled “Learning from Iraq”, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen concluded that the costs of the war far surpassed the results.

“You think if you throw money at a problem, you can fix it. It was just not strategic thinking,” Kurdish government official Qubad Talabani, son of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, told auditors of the report.

“You can fly in a helicopter around Baghdad or other cities, but you cannot point a finger at a single project that was built and completed by the United States,” Iraq’s acting interior minister told Bowen, who said that dumping so much money into a warzone simply created a “triangle of political patronage” that instigated further corruption.

Bowen interviewed numerous American and Iraqi officials, many of whom criticized the US for taking on too many large projects without consulting Iraqis. When American troops withdrew, many of these projects were largely abandoned and Iraq continues to look as broken as before.

Additionally, Americans “wore out [their] welcome” by planning to “do it all and do it our way” – all while wasting taxpayer dollars, Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns told the inspector general.

The US has spent more than $60 billion in reconstruction grants, which comes out to about $15 million for each day of the conflict. A $2.4 billion fund set up by Congress to rebuild Iraq’s water and electricity systems and to provide food, healthcare and governance was largely wasted. President George W. Bush asked for $20 billion more just a few months after the March 2003 invasion to accomplish these goals.

Abandoned projects include a 3,6000-bed prison that cost $40 million but was never finished or used and a $108 million wastewater treatment center that still remains unfinished. The US also spent millions repairing infrastructure they blew up, including a $75 million pipeline and a $29 million bridge in north-central Iraq. Contractors were also found to have overcharged the US government for supplies, with one contractor charging the Pentagon $900 for a $7 control switch.

“Waste and fraud at the levels we saw are a symptom of a failure to have a structure in place to effectively plan for stabilization and reconstruction operations, execute such operations and be held accountable for them,” Bowen said in an interview with Business Week.

The failures in Iraq have raised concern over the future of Afghanistan after the 2014 withdrawal of US troops. The US government has spent $90 billion on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan over the course of 12 years, which US officials are afraid could go to waste if oversight isn’t coordinated better.

Ten years after the American invasion of Iraq, the country remains impoverished and plagued by near-daily deadly bombings. Few people have access to electricity and clean water, and some projects that the US spent millions on have been reduced to nothing but rubble.

“If we had better controls and better planning, better oversight, better quality assurance, better quality control all in place, we would have wasted less – for sure. There is no doubt about that,” Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Bowen.

Source

The point of the construction contracts was never to build anything; the objective was to funnel expensive contracts into the pockets of friends & families & owners of the political entities that awarded the contracts. Mission accomplished.

An international call to action: Nearly 40 events will mark Pfc. B. Manning’s 1,000 day imprisoned without trial across the world - show your support for the WikiLeaks whistleblower & exposing war crimes this Saturday, February 23. 

U.S. Events

Tucson, AZ     Feb 23, 11am-5pm

Tempe, AZ     Feb 23, 5:30-6:30pm

Guerneville, CA     Feb 23, 12-1pm

Cahuenga (L.A.), CA     Feb 23, 9-11am

Los Angeles, CA     Feb 23, 5:30-6:30

Long Beach (L.A.), CA 
Feb 23 at 1pm until Feb 24 at 2pm

Montrose (L.A.), CA     Feb 23, 5:30-7pm

Studio City (L.A.), CA     Feb 22, 6:30-7:30pm

San Francisco, CA     Feb 23, 1-4pm

San Diego, CA     Feb 23, 7-9pm

Denver, CO     Feb 23, 12-3:30pm

Washington, DC     Feb 24, 6:30-9pm

Ft. Lauderdale, FL     Feb 23, 12-1:30pm

Pensacola, FL     Feb 23, 5:30-6:30pm

Tallahassee, FL     Feb 23, 12-1pm

Honolulu, HI     Feb 22, 4-5:30pm

Chicago, IL     Feb 23, 12-1:30pm

Ft. Leavenworth, KS     Feb 23, 1-3pm

Boston, MA     Feb 23, 1-2pm

Augusta, ME     Feb 23, 11:30am-12pm

Portland, ME     Feb 23, 12pm

Detroit, MI     Feb 23, 3-8pm

Minneapolis, MN     Feb 23, 9:30am-12pm

New York, NY     Feb 23, 2-4pm

Toledo, OH     Feb 23, 12pm

Corvallis, OR     ongoing

Philadelphia, PA     Feb 23, 2-4pm

Seattle, WA     Feb 23, 12-4pm

International Events

Melbourne, Australia     Feb 22, 2-4pm

Sydney, Australia     Feb 23, 11am-2pm

Vancouver, Canada     Feb 23, 1-5pm

London, England     Feb 23, 2pm

Yorkshire, England     Feb 23, 11am

Fairford, Gloucestershire      Feb 23, 9:30am-12pm

Cardiff, Wales     Feb 23, 10:30am-2:30pm

Berlin, Germany      Feb 23, 12:30-3pm

Rome, Italy      Feb 23, 4-5pm

Scotland     ongoing

Ireland     ongoing

Slovakia

Spread the word. FREE MANNING NOW! 

Protesters say European Union doesn’t deserve Peace Prize
December 9, 2012

Around a thousand members of left-wing and human rights groups marched in Oslo on Sunday to protest against the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union.

Around 50 organisations held the torch-lit march on the eve of the award, arguing that the EU is undemocratic and maintains a large military even as its people suffer an economic downturn.

“Alfred Nobel said that the prize should be given those who worked for disarmament,” Elsa-Britt Enger, 70, a representative of Grandmothers for Peace said. “The EU doesn’t do that. It is one of the biggest weapons producers in the world.”

Past prize winners Desmond Tutu, Adolfo Perez Esquivel and Mairead Maguire have also said the EU does not deserve the award. Norway’s Socialist Left party, part of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s government, joined the march.

The Oslo-based Nobel peace committee gave its 2012 prize to the EU for uniting the continent following two world wars and to give it a boost as it tries to overcome its economic crisis.

“The EU brings lasting peace among former enemies who fought… among others two world wars,” EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Sunday.

Barroso, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Parliament President Martin Schulz will accept the prize on behalf of the EU on Monday.

Source

US military facing fresh questions over targeting Afghan children
December 7, 2012

The US military is facing fresh questions over its targeting policy in Afghanistan after a senior army officer suggested that troops were on the lookout for “children with potential hostile intent”.

In comments which legal experts and campaigners described as “deeply troubling”, army Lt Col Marion Carrington told the Marine Corp Times that children, as well as “military-age males”, had been identified as a potential threat because some were being used by the Taliban to assist in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.

“It kind of opens our aperture,” said Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. “In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.”

In the article, headlined “Some Afghan kids aren’t bystanders”, Carrington referred to a case this year in which the Afghan national police in Kandahar province said they found children helping insurgents by carrying soda bottles full of potassium chlorate.

The piece also quoted an unnamed marine corps official who questioned the “innocence” of Afghan children, particularly three who were killed in a US rocket strike in October. Last month, the New York Times quoted local officials who said Borjan, 12, Sardar Wali, 10, and Khan Bibi, eight, from Helmand’s Nawa district had been killed while gathering dung for fuel.

However, the US official claimed that, before they called for the strike on suspected insurgents planting improvised explosive devices, marines had seen the children digging a hole in a dirt road and that “the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission”.

Last year, Human Rights Watch reported a sharp increase in the Taliban’s deployment of children in suicide bombings, some as young as seven.

But the apparent widening of the US military’s already controversial targeting policy has alarmed human rights lawyers and campaigners.

Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah specialising in counter-terrorism, said Carrington’s remarks reflected the shifting definitions of legitimate military targets within the Obama administration.

Guiora, who spent years in the Israel Defence Forces, including time as a legal adviser in the Gaza Strip, said: “I have great respect for people who put themselves in harm’s way. Carrington is probably a great guy, but he is articulating a deeply troubling policy adopted by the Obama administration.

“The decision about who you consider a legitimate target is less defined by your conduct than the conduct of the people or category of people which you are assigned to belong to … That is beyond troubling. It is also illegal and immoral.”

Guiora added: “If you are looking to create a paradigm where you increase the ‘aperture’ – that scares me. It doesn’t work, operationally, morally or practically.”

Guiora cited comments made by John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism chief, in April, in which he “talked about flexible definitions of imminent threat.”

Pardiss Kebriaei, senior attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a specialist in targeted killings, said she was concerned over what seemed to be an attempt to justify the killing of children.

Kebriaei said: “This is one official quoted. I don’t know if that standard is what they are using but the standard itself is troubling.”

The US is already facing criticism for using the term term “military-aged male” to justify targeted killings where the identities of individuals are not known. Under the US definition, all fighting-age males killed in drone strikes are regarded as combatants and not civilians, unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary. This has the effect of significantly reducing the official tally of civilian deaths.

Kebriael said the definition was reportedly being used in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. “Under the rules of law you can only target civilians if they are directly participating in hostilities. So, here, this standard of presuming any military aged males in the vicinity of a war zone are militants, already goes beyond what the law allows.

“When you get to the suggestion that children with potentially hostile intent may be perceived to be legitimate targets is deeply troubling and unlawful.”

Children in conflict zones have additional protections under the law.

Kebriael, who is counsel for CCR in a lawsuit which seeks accountability for the killing of three American citizens – including a 16 year old boy – in US drone strikes in Yemen last year, said that the piece also raised questions over how those killed in that incident were counted. “Were they counted as military-aged males or were they counted as children with potentially hostile intent or were they counted as the innocent bystanders they were?”

In a speech in April setting out the context for the US programme of targeted killings, White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan spoke about a threshold of “significant threat’, which was widely seen as introducing a lower criteria than “imminent threat”.

Brennan said: “Even if it is lawful to pursue a specific member of al-Qaida, we ask ourselves whether that individual’s activities rise to a certain threshold for action, and whether taking action will, in fact, enhance our security. For example, when considering lethal force we ask ourselves whether the individual poses a significant threat to US interests. This is absolutely critical, and it goes to the very essence of why we take this kind of exceptional action.”

An Isaf spokesman, Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, told the Marine Corp Times that insurgents continue to use children as suicide bombers and IED emplacers, even though Taliban leader Mullah Omar has ordered them to stop harming civilians.

There have been more than 200 children killed in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen by the CIA and Joint Special Operating Command, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Source

This is the horrifying reality of the US presence in the Middle East. It’s also important to note that these figures are mostly inaccurate because of how civilian deaths are reported (if at all).

Bradley Manning: A tale of liberty lost in America
December 3, 2012

Over the past two and a half years, all of which he has spent in a military prison, much has been said about Bradley (also known as Breanna) Manning, but nothing has been heard from him. That changed on Thursday, when the 23-year-old US army private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks testified at his court martial proceeding about the conditions of his detention.

The oppressive, borderline-torturous measures to which he was subjected, including prolonged solitary confinement and forced nudity, have been known for some time. A formal UN investigation denounced those conditions as “cruel and inhuman”. President Obama’s state department spokesman, retired air force colonel PJ Crowley, resigned after publicly condemning Manning’s treatment. A prison psychologist testified this week that Manning’s conditions were more damaging than those found on death row, or at Guantánamo Bay.

Still, hearing the accused whistleblower’s description of this abuse in his own words viscerally conveyed its horror. Reporting from the hearing, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington quoted Manning: “If I needed toilet paper I would stand to attention and shout: ‘Detainee Manning requests toilet paper!’” And: “I was authorised to have 20 minutes sunshine, in chains, every 24 hours.” Early in his detention, Manning recalled, “I had pretty much given up. I thought I was going to die in this eight by eight animal cage.”

The repressive treatment of Bradley Manning is one of the disgraces of Obama’s first term, and highlights many of the dynamics shaping his presidency. The president not only defended Manning’s treatment but also, as commander-in-chief of the court martial judges, improperly decreed Manning’s guilt when he asserted in an interview that he “broke the law”.

Worse, Manning is charged not only with disclosing classified information, but also the capital offence of “aiding the enemy”, for which the death penalty can be imposed (military prosecutors are requesting “only” life in prison). The government’s radical theory is that, although Manning had no intent to do so, the leaked information could have helped al-Qaida, a theory that essentially equates any disclosure of classified information – by any whistleblower, or a newspaper – with treason.

Whatever one thinks of Manning’s alleged acts, he appears the classic whistleblower. This information could have been sold for substantial sums to a foreign government or a terror group. Instead he apparently knowingly risked his liberty to show them to the world because – he said when he believed he was speaking in private – he wanted to trigger “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms”.

Compare this aggressive prosecution of Manning to the Obama administration’s vigorous efforts to shield Bush-era war crimes and massive Wall Street fraud from all forms of legal accountability. Not a single perpetrator of those genuine crimes has faced court under Obama, a comparison that reflects the priorities and values of US justice.

Then there’s the behaviour of Obama’s loyalists. Ever since I first reported the conditions of Manning’s detention in December 2010, many of them not only cheered that abuse but grotesquely ridiculed concerns about it. Joy-Ann Reid, a former Obama press aide and now a contributor on the progressive network MSNBC, spouted sadistic mockery in response to the report: “Bradley Manning has no pillow?????” With that, she echoed one of the most extreme rightwing websites, RedState, which identically mocked the report: “Give Bradley Manning his pillow and blankie back.”

As usual, the US establishment journalists have enabled the government every step of the way. Despite holding themselves out as adversarial watchdogs, nothing provokes their animosity more than someone who effectively challenges government actions.

Typifying this mentality was a CNN interview on Thursday night with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange conducted by Erin Burnett. It was to focus on newly released documents revealing secret efforts by US officials to pressure financial institutions to block WikiLeaks’ funding after the group published classified documents allegedly leaked by Manning, a form of extra-legal punishment that should concern everyone, particularly journalists.

But the CNN host was completely uninterested in the dangerous acts of her own government. Instead she repeatedly tried to get Assange to condemn the press policies of Ecuador, a tiny country that – quite unlike the US – exerts no influence beyond its borders. To the mavens of the US watchdog press, Assange and Manning are enemies to be scorned because they did the job that the US press corps refuses to do: namely, bringing transparency to the bad acts of the US government and its allies around the world.

Bradley Manning has bestowed the world with multiple vital benefits. But as his court martial finally reaches its conclusion, one likely to result in the imposition of a long prison term, it appears his greatest gift is this window into America’s political soul.

Source

Glenn Greenwald is a great source on the Manning case. He’s a former civil liberties lawyer & has been covering WikiLeaks/Manning for several years now. Subscribe to him via the Guardian.

For transgendered soldiers, Dont’ Ask Don’t Tell carries on
October 29, 2012

On an afternoon in January 1998, Monica Helms walked into a building in Phoenix, Arizona, where she lay her reapplication papers on the counter in front of her and waited for the reaction she knew was coming.

She had been a member of her hometown’s chapter of the United States Submarine Veterans since around 1980, but not under the name “Monica.” Back when she joined, she’d been a man, as all submariners had been at the time, and was unconditionally accepted into a select group within the military. But now, dressing full-time as a woman and six months into the process of becoming physically female, this routine reapplication quickly became more complicated.

The chapter president called up the national organization, which bounced the problem right back to him, saying it was a local issue. So the Phoenix group of about a dozen tried to push her into a generic veterans’ organization for women. She said no. They asked if they could list her as her former name, with “Monica” in parentheses. No. 

After months of this, she called the national chairman, who said that if Phoenix wouldn’t let her back in, she could rejoin as an at-large member; after all, the only two requirements for admission were an honorable discharge and prior work on a submarine. Monica registered and asked her hometown group to vote on whether they wanted to see her at meetings. They did.

U.S. Submarine Veterans is now a coed group, and Monica, 61, swells with pride when she says she was the first woman to join. She only wishes this kind of inclusion were the norm for transgender people who are currently serving in the armed forces.

***

Monica is the president of a tiny organization called Transgender Veterans of America. The group has made receiving medical care at veterans organizations a much more pleasant experience for many transgender vets, but the situation for their active-duty counterparts remains the same — if the military finds out, you’re gone.

The armed forces were applauded for promoting equality when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed in 2010. But transgender military members were still excluded, and now that the gay community has achieved equality in the armed forces, they feel that their previous momentum has slowed.

There are around 140,000 transgender veterans in the U.S., says Dr. Gary Gates of the Williams Institute, a research organization dedicated to law and public policy in sexual orientation and gender identity. He estimates that there are roughly 700,000 transgender people in the country, and a recent National Transgender Discrimination Survey showed that 20 percent of them have been a part of the military at some point. (In contrast, only 10 percent of the general population has served.)

There are two general reasons why the military won’t allow transgender people to serve, says Norman Spack of Boston Children’s Hospital, where he cofounded the gender management service clinic, the first to treat pubescent transgender people in the Western hemisphere. First, members of the military don’t want to be in a professional environment with anyone who is gender variant. Second, they don’t know how to classify a transgender person with respect to housing, rooming, or whatever else.Despite this, if the U.S. armed forces discover a transgender individual in their ranks, he or she is dishonorably discharged — in contrast with the United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, and other nations where they can serve freely. Being transgender, according to the U.S. military, is a psychological disorder, and it renders an individual unfit for service.

Which is to say that many military members are afraid of what they don’t understand.

“Many people don’t necessarily come from very large cities or other parts of the country where there will not just be more understanding, but more tolerance of this sort of thing,” Spack said.

The struggle for equal rights for the transgender community in the armed forces will inevitably be compared to the effort to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, but there are key differences.

A main concern for transgender veterans is that they simply don’t have enough numbers to drive a policy change. It’s estimated that transgender people make up 0.6 percent of the 21.8 million US veterans. That’s barely one in 200.

While overcoming the math may turn out to be a major obstacle, the transgender community also has a huge advantage that the gay community did not — they don’t have to deal with Congress. The policy barring transgender individuals from the armed forces is just that; a policy, not a law.

But Michael Segal, a neurologist who is also heavily involved with the military through the Advocates for ROTC program, cautions that a 180 degree change might not be the way to go.

“Even a lot of transgender people will say that they don’t think someone who’s actively going through a transition at that time should be in the military,” Segal said. “I don’t think you’re going to get the same pressure for an all-or-nothing thing.”

Whether or not the fight is for a complete change of policy, though, the transgender community’s struggle for equal rights in the military may begin far away from the armed forces.

Full article

US military deaths in Afghanistan hit 2,000; Afghan deaths pass 20,000
October 1, 2012

U.S. military deaths in the Afghan war have reached 2,000, a cold reminder of the human cost of an 11-year-old conflict that now garners little public interest at home as the United States prepares to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014.

The toll has climbed steadily in recent months with a spate of attacks by Afghan army and police — supposed allies — against American and NATO troops. That has raised troubling questions about whether countries in the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan will achieve their aim of helping the government in Kabul and its forces stand on their own after most foreign troops depart in little more than two years.

On Sunday, a U.S. official confirmed the latest death, saying that an international service member killed in an apparent insider attack by Afghan forces in the east of the country late Saturday was American. A civilian contractor with NATO and at least two Afghan soldiers also died in the attack, according to a coalition statement and Afghan provincial officials. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity because the nationality of those killed had not been formally released. Names of the dead are usually released after their families or next-of-kin are notified, a process that can take several days. The nationality of the civilian was also not disclosed.

In addition to the 2,000 Americans killed since the Afghan war began on Oct. 7, 2001, at least 1,190 more coalition troops from other countries have also died, according to iCasualties.org, an independent organization that tracks the deaths.

According to the Afghanistan index kept by the Washington-based research center Brookings Institution, about 40 percent of the American deaths were caused by improvised explosive devices. The majority of those were after 2009, when President Barack Obama ordered a surge that sent in 33,000 additional troops to combat heightened Taliban activity. The surge brought the total number of American troops to 101,000, the peak for the entire war.

According to Brookings, hostile fire was the second most common cause of death, accounting for nearly 31 percent of Americans killed.

Tracking deaths of Afghan civilians is much more difficult. According to the U.N., 13,431 civilians were killed in the Afghan conflict between 2007, when the U.N. began keeping statistics, and the end of August. Going back to the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, most estimates put the number of Afghan civilian deaths in the war at more than 20,000.

Source

The US-led coalition still has 108,000 troops in Afghanistan, 68,000 from the US. 

The war began on Oct. 7, 2001. Here are some actions planned for the 11 year anniversary. Have some to add? Let us know. 

NATO strike kills women & girls gathering firewood
September 16, 2012

A NATO airstrike killed eight women and girls in eastern Afghanistan, local officials reported. The alliance said the strike targeted 45 armed insurgents but admitted some civilians may have been killed.

The women were gathering firewood when they were killed by the strike, spokesperson for the Laghman provincial government Sarhadi Zewak said. Several women were also injured during the NATO strike, he added.

Villagers brought the victims’ bodies to the local governor’s office on Sunday in the wake of the attack, amid cries of“Death to America!” said Zewak.

Seven females are now in nearby hospitals receiving treatment, some of whom are as young as ten years old, AP reports.

Initial reports claimed that as many as 45 armed insurgents were killed in a “precision air strike,” NATO spokesperson Jamie Graybeal said. However, Major Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the Isaf later told the BBC that between five and eight civilians may have been caught in the crossfire in a “tragic loss of life.”

The issue of frequent civilian deaths in NATO military operations is another point of contention between Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and the US. 

Last year, some 400 Afghan civilians were killed in operations conducted by international and Afghan troops, the UN reported. This year’s estimates suggested that the number of Afghan civilians killed and injured in the first half of 2012 fell 15 percent.

Source

NATO is a war machine.