The People's Record

Sister Assata -  This is what American history looks like 
By Alice Walker

I don’t know why, given where we are with dronefare, but I didn’t expect the man making the announcement about Assata Shakur being the first woman “terrorist” to appear on the FBI’s most wanted list to be black. That was a blow. I was reminded of the world of “trackers” we sometimes get glimpses of in history books and old movies on TV. In Australia the tracker who hunts down other aboriginals who have, because of the rape and murder, genocide and enslavement of the indigenous (aboriginal) people, run away into the outback. He shows up again in cowboy and Indian films: jogging along in the hot sun, way ahead of the white men on horseback, bending on his knees to get a better look at a bruised leaf or a bent twig, while they curse and spit and complain about how long he’s taking to come up with a clue. And then there were the “trackers” who helped the pattyrollers during our four hundred years of enslavement. When pattyrollers (or patrols) caught run-away slaves in those days they frequently beat them to death. I’ve often thought of the black men whose expertise at tracking fugitives helped bring these terrors, humiliations and deaths about. When I was younger I would have been in a rage against them; not understanding the reality of invisible coercion, and mind and spirit control, that I do now. Today, only a few years older than Assata Shakur, and marveling at the unenviable state of humanity’s character worldwide, I find I can only pray for all of us. That we should be sinking even below the abysmal standard early “trackers” have set for us: that the US government can now offer two million dollars for the capture of a very small, not young, black woman who was brutally abused, even shot, over three decades ago, as if we don’t need that money to buy people food, clothes, medicine, and decent places to live.

What is most distressing about the times we live in, in my view, is our ever accelerating tolerance for cruelty. Prisoners held indefinitely in orange suits, hooded, chained and on their knees. Like the hunger strikers of Guantanamo, I would certainly prefer death to this. People shot and bombed from planes they never see until it is too late to get up from the table or place the baby under the bed. Poor people terrorized daily, driven insane really, from fear. People on the streets with no food and no place to sleep. People under bridges everywhere you go, holding out their desperate signs: a recent one held by a very young man, perhaps a veteran, under my local bridge: I Want To Live. But nothing seems as cruel to me as this: that our big, muscular, macho country would go after so tiny a woman as Assata who is given sanctuary in a country smaller than many of our states.

The first time I met Assata Shakur we talked for a long time. We were in Havana, where I had gone with a delegation to offer humanitarian aid during Cuba’s “special period” of hunger and despair, and I’d wanted to hear her side of the story from her. She described the incident with the New Jersey Highway Patrol, and assured me she was shot up so badly that even if she’d wanted to, she would not have been able to fire a gun. Though shot in the back (with her arms raised), she managed to live through two years of solitary confinement, in a men’s prison, chained to her bed. Then, in what must surely have been a miraculous coming together of people of courageous compassion, she was helped to escape and to find refuge in Cuba. One of the people who helped Assata escape, a white radical named Marilyn Buck, was kept in prison for thirty years and released only one month before her death from uterine cancer. She was a poet, and I have been reading her book, Inside/Out, Selected Poems, which a friend gave me just last week. There is also a remarkable video of her, shot in prison, that I highly recommend.

This is what solidarity can look like.

The second time I saw Assata, years later, I was in Havana for the Havana Book Fair. Cuba has a very high literacy rate, thanks to the Cuban revolution, and my novel, Meridian, had recently been translated and published there. However, this time we did not talk about the past. We talked about meditation. Seeing her interest, and that of Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly, and others, I decided to offer a class. There under a large tree off a quiet street in Havana, I demonstrated my own practice of meditation to some of the most attentive students I have ever encountered. The mantra: Breathing in: “In,” breathing out: “Peace.”

I believe Assata Shakur to be a good and decent, a kind and compassionate person. True revolutionaries often are. Physically she is beautiful, and her spirit is also. She appears to hold the respect, love and friendship of all the people who surround her. Like Marilyn Buck they have risked much for her freedom, and appear to believe her version of the story as I do.

That she did not wish to live as an imprisoned creature and a slave is understood.

What to do? Since we are not, in fact, helpless. Nor are we ever alone.

I call on the Ancestors 
by whose blood 
and DNA 
we exist 
to accompany us 
as always 
through this lengthening 
sorrow.
And to bear witness 
within us 
to all that we are 
aware.

FBI billboards not about Assata Shakur; it’s about repressing the black community
May 5, 2013

Following the ludicrous announcement that the Obama administration has placed Assata Shakur on its “most wanted terrorist list”, the FBI has erected billboards in Newark, New Jersey announcing its recently increased $2 million dollar reward. However, any critically thinking person knows that these billboards are not about capturing Assata Shakur but sending a message to the rest of us. Interestingly, perhaps just a coincidence or not, Newark, New Jersey is the place where a theater co-owned by Shaquille O’Neil, recently reneged on an agreement to show a popular independent film about the life of another former member of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Is Assata Shakur in New Jersey? No, she is not and the FBI and the Obama administration know exactly where she is, in Cuba where she has lived since being granted political asylum by its government in 1979 after escaping from prison.

This is not about Assata Shakur, it is about sending a message to the Black community and those that live within it who stand up to police violence, oppression and murder of residents, one of the very reasons for the formation of the Black Panthers. It is about the political repression of those who advocate on the behalf of the many political prisons being held by the United States government often in torturous conditions. It is about sending a message to anyone who would take up arms in defense of life, liberty and true freedom in a country that is home to the largest prison population in the world which the federal government and various corporations use as slave labor. It is about sending a message to those that would dare stand up and point out that the US government is the most violent entity on the planet and one that commits acts of terrorism against non-white people and nations on behalf of maintaining the American imperialist status-quo.

Why else would the U.S. government seek to name Assata Shakur as a domestic terrorist after all these decades? We are talking about a woman who was shot twice while attempting to give herself up to police who were co-operating with Federal authorities to target and assassinate or otherwise eliminate members of the Black Liberation movement just as they had done and admitted in a civil lawsuit to doing to Martin Luther King Jr.

The FBI and its corporate media wing fail to report the details of the sham case built against Assata Shakur after failing to win convictions on other trump up charges. The corporate media is failing to point out that a police officer, a state witness against Assata Shakur for the murder of another police officer, has recanted his testimony and admitted to lying on the stand. Medical personnel stated that because of nerves severed by a bullet, Assata Shakur would have been physically prevented from firing a weapon and it was also stated that her wounds indicate her hands were raised when she was shot consistent with her claim that she was giving herself up.

Just as Assata Shakur has pointed out that COINTELPRO utilized and received full cooperation from the corporate media to demonize and alienate freedom fighters from the people who supported them, corporate media today is still fulfilling that role. The concept of a free and independent press in America has always been a fraud and it remains so today.

Source

Read more about Assata Shakur & find a link to her autobiography here.

whykillthemockingbird:

MUST WATCH:

A Yemeni national, Farea Al-muslimi, describes how a US drone fired missiles on his small village of Wessab in Yemen, “What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant: There is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America.” The came can be said of US drone attacks on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Uganda, and beyond.

This testimony is really powerful. Watch it if you haven’t already.

(Source: assangistan, via mademoisellealiyah)

Don’t let them use fear to lock down our rights: How political establishment is trying to exploit the Boston bombings
April 22, 2013

The hunt for the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings is over, but the consequences will continue to be felt, affecting everything from the character of mainstream politics; to the scaremongering about “radical Islam,” both abroad and on U.S. soil; to the question of civil liberties and whether they should be violated if authorities decide there is a “terrorist threat.”

Three days after Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout and brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was wounded and arrested hours later, we still don’t know the motives of the two suspects—whether, as the media implies, based on speculation, that their decision to inflict such terrible carnage was connected in their minds to their identity as Chechens or Muslims or both.

What we do know is that there will be a rush to score political points—and that rush will invariably come at the expense of our rights.

The Boston Marathon bombings were a sadistic attack, designed to maim, and targeted against people who bear no responsibility for the ills of society. But now those bombings are being used as a justification for furthering an agenda of violence and political repression.

It may not be popular to do so, but those who oppose war, racism and injustice need to speak up and question the rush to judge and scapegoat—and challenge those who will try to exploit the horror of the Boston bombings as an excuse to take away our rights.

All of the racist assumptions about “terrorism” that simmer below the surface in the U.S. media and political establishment came bubbling up in the past week.

In general, the media were initially hesitant to label the Boston bombings to be the work of Middle Eastern Islamic extremists. But there were exceptions even in the first days after the tragedy—like CNN anchor John King reporting that the suspected bomber was a “darker-skinned” male with a “possible foreign accent.”

No publication sunk as low as the New York Post, which first falsely reported that a “Saudi national” was in custody for the bombings—and then ran a front cover with an image of two men and the headline “BAG MEN: Feds seek these two.” Those men were not the Tsarnaevs, and had nothing to do with the bombings. But because they had brown skin, the Post felt justified in painting a target on their backs.

The Post later claimed to stand by its story since it “did not identify [the two pictured men] as suspects.” Gawker.com’s Tom Scocca called that excuse “legalistic horseshit.”

Behind it all was the prejudices of the media—and the political establishment beyond them—about what gets called “terrorism”: acts of violence committed by people of Middle East origins who identify as Muslims.

It wasn’t long before the impact was felt. In New York City, on the night of the bombing, Abdullah Faruqu, a Bangladeshi man, was attacked by several men calling him a “fucking Arab.” Heba Abolaban, a young Palestinian doctor and mother, was assaulted in Malden, Mass., two days after the bombing, while walking with her children. Her assailant punched her in the shoulder and shouted, “Fuck you, Muslims!” and “You are involved in the Boston explosions.”

Once the Tsarnaev brothers were identified as suspects—and their background, including their emigration to the U.S. from Chechnya and their Muslim faith, came to light—the racist scapegoating really got underway.

Republicans led the baying for blood, of course. New York Rep. Steve King called for a new McCarthyism, telling the National Review that police must “realize that the threat is coming from the Muslim community and increase surveillance there.” New York state Sen. Greg Ball advocated torturing Dzhokar Tsarnaev, writing, “Who wouldn’t use torture on this punk to save more lives?”

Full article

CIA trains & spies for Syrian rebels – report
March 23, 2013

Some Syrian rebel groups get training and intelligence straight from CIA officers, US officials told media. The helping hand is meant to bolster the secular opposition against both governmental troops and Islamist forces.

The CIA’s increased involvement in Syria is part America’s greater engagement in the war-torn country, according to The Wall Street Journal. The spy agency has selected some small rebel units from the Free Syrian Army to receive combat training and fresh intel they can act upon, the newspaper says, citing unnamed US officials and rebel commanders.

The training is provided by the CIA, working together with British, French and Jordanian intelligence agencies. The rebels are taught to use various kinds of arms, including anti-tank weapons. They are also schooled in urban combat tactics and counterintelligence tactics. The experience will supposedly help them stand against the professional Syrian army, which scores victories against the armed opposition thanks to both more advanced weapons and better organization.

The rebels are also receiving fresh intelligence collected by the CIA, which they can act upon at short notice. The extent of the info provided remains in secret, but the US can potentially provide what they gather trough satellite and signal surveillance as well as intelligence coming through exchanges with Israeli and Jordanian agencies.

The CIA is said to keep this part of dealing with the rebels limited, withholding sensitive types of information, like the suspected locations of Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles.

The US spy agency was previously working in Turkey vetting rebel groups for receiving arms shipments from Gulf monarchies. The effort aimed at preventing the weapons from being funneled to Islamists had mixed results, the WSJ says. The CIA also works with Iraqi counterterrorism units to counter the flow of Islamist militants across the border to Syria.

The White House has been reluctant to send combat-worthy equipment to Syrian rebels, despite calls inside the US and from Gulf and some European countries to do so. It is concerned that those would end up in the hand of the more powerful Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist force, the Nusra Front. Unlike arms, the intelligence from CIA is operationally useful for a short period of time and would not be traded for years to come, a US official explained.Washington’s concern over the growing influence of the Nusra Front was reiterated on Friday by President Barack Obama, as he was visiting Jordan as part of his Middle Eastern tour. 

“I am very concerned about Syria becoming an enclave for extremism because extremists thrive in chaos, they thrive in failed states, they thrive in power vacuums,” Obama said after meeting Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

The Nusra Front is believed to be responsible for the bloodiest bombings in Syria over the past months. The latest such attack was the assassination of Mohammad Buti and influential Sunni preacher and supporter of the Syrian government. Buti was killed on Thursday along with some 50 others when a car bomb was detonated near a Damascus mosque.

The US is reportedly gathering intelligence on Nusra Front commanders and fighters for a possible campaign of targeted drone killing similar to those the CIA wages in Pakistan and Yemen and the Pentagon in Afghanistan.

Source

So this lobbyist (representing weapons/drones companies) testifying to the House Public Safety Committee explains honestly why his group is putting money into making sure that drones are allowed:

My name is Paul Applewhite; I’m on the board of directors for the Pacific chapter of the Association of Unmanned Vehicles Systems International…in the Pacific Northwest we represent about 80 companies, 1,400 employees, about 120 million dollars in taxable revenue…the backlash against unmanned vehicles has just caused the city of Seattle to cancel their unmanned systems. Back in May of 2012, you had Ian Stawicki who ran around and killed 5 people. The longer this man was running around the city of Seattle, the more people he was killing…why are we denying ourselves this great technology that is now available?

…

But now every time you pull this out you have to DOCUMENT IT, which to me discourages the use of it. We give every one of our law enforcement officers lethal force on their hip. We’re saying, give them the judgment to be able to pull this thing out and use it, up to and including lethal force. Why is this technology so much different? 

So, it’s really come to this already. Lobbyists transparently, openly, unapologetically calling to use drone technology to kill Americans on U.S. soil - not that it is any worse or more significant than killing U.S. citizens who are out-of-the-country, like American citizen Anwar Awlaki and his 16-year-old Abdulrahman Awlaki (neither of whom had a history of violence, at all) both of whom were killed by the U.S. without being charged with any crime and without any form of due-process.

But still, that this sort of discourse is now the status-quo, and is now being aggressively pursued by billion-dollar special interests publicly is terrifyingly.

Civil liberties groups order NYPD to stop spying on Muslims
February 5, 2013

The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a motion in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday that aims to stop police in the Big Apple from continuing surveillance that specifically targets practicing Muslims.

In court papers filed by the NYCLU, the civil liberties group asks a federal judge to grant an injunction “against ongoing violations” perpetrated by the NYPD in which officers of the law have spied on local Muslims through the guise of an alleged counterterrorism program. Of particular target is an elusive “Demographics Unit,” a squad of NYPD officers who have surveilled local Muslims in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks but only exposed last year by an expose published by the Associated Press.

The NYCLU insists that surveillance waged at Muslims must stop immediately, as spying on persons not linked to a specific crime violates the terms of a historic 1985 settlement known as the Handschu agreement. In that case, the court sided with plaintiff Barbara Handschu and agreed that the NYPD violated constitutions protections granted under the First Amendment by compiling dossiers of known anti-war protesters and other political activists. Following that ruling, the NYPD has only been allowed to conduct surveillance if it suspects criminal activity.

Last year, Queens, NY resident Shamiur Rahman testified that he served as a paid informant for the NYPD for months, and visited mosques and other Muslim gathering places in order to gather intelligence. Rahman said before court that his NYPD handler, “Steve,” told him that the agency considered being a religious Muslim as an indicator of terrorism. As the AP’s investigation widened, the Demographics Unit was linked to collecting intelligence from masques, community centers, bookshops and cafes across the greater New York region. Rahman claimed that, with his help, the NYPD was handed information

“One of my earliest assignments was to spy on a lecture at the Muslim Student Association at John Jay College in Manhattan,” Rahman testified. “I was told to report any ‘buzz words’ like jihad or revolution by the speaker. I was also told to monitor the student group itself. My NYPD boss Steve told me to take pictures at the group’s events, to determine who belonged to the group and to identify its leadership. I took pictures of people in the group and recorded the license plate numbers of their cars.”

In September, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly insisted, ”As a matter of Police Department policy, undercover officers and confidential informants do not enter a mosque unless they are following up on a lead vetted under Handschu.” In a statement this week, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne added, ”The NYPD adheres to the Constitution in all it does, and specifically the Handschu guidelines in the deployment of undercover officers to help thwart plots against New York City and to identify individuals engaged in support of terrorism.”

The NYCLU thinks otherwise, though, and is asking a federal judge to make sure the NYPD stops immediately. “We think the surveillance of innocent Muslims is an infringement of civil liberties by the police and a violation of the guidelines,” Paul Chevigny, a New York University law professor and one of five attorneys on the Handschu case, tells CNN. “There’s no indication of crime in connection with any of the organizations they’ve infiltrated,” he says.

“Investigations of any community which are not based upon indications of crime create fear and erode the confidence of a community in the power of a legal system to protect it,” Chevigny adds in a statement published by Newsday.

In the motion filed on Monday, the NYCLU writes, “When surveillance is conducted to detect crime, it will stop when the crime is stopped or the danger passes, but a surveillance program of the sort that the NYPD conducts has no end. Its pervasive injurious effects must increase as people become more aware of the surveillance. This is the essence of a police state.”

Source

Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans
February 5, 2013

A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” — even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects abroad, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the  September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes.  

The secrecy surrounding such strikes is fast emerging as a central issue in this week’s hearing of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, a key architect of the drone campaign, to be CIA director.  Brennan was the first administration official to publicly acknowledge drone strikes in a speech last year, calling them “consistent with the inherent right of self-defense.” In a separate talk at the Northwestern University Law School in March, Attorney General Eric Holder specifically endorsed the constitutionality of targeted killings of Americans, saying they could be justified if government officials determine the target poses  “an imminent threat of violent attack.”

But the confidential Justice Department “white paper” introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described  by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches.  It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.    

“The condition that an operational  leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states.

Instead, it says,  an “informed, high-level” official of the U.S. government may determine that the targeted American  has been “recently” involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack and “there is  no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities.” The memo does not define “recently” or “activities.”

As in Holder’s speech, the confidential memo lays out a three-part test that would make targeted killings of American lawful:  In addition to the suspect being an imminent threat, capture of the target must be “infeasible, and the strike must be conducted according to “law of war principles.” But the memo elaborates on some of these factors in ways that go beyond what the attorney general said publicly. For example, it states that U.S. officials may consider whether an attempted capture of a suspect  would pose an “undue risk” to U.S. personnel involved in such an operation. If so, U.S. officials could determine that the capture operation of the targeted American would not be feasible, making it lawful for the U.S. government to order a killing instead, the memo concludes.

The undated memo is entitled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force.”  It was provided to members of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees in June by administration officials on the condition that it be kept confidential and  not discussed publicly.

Although not an official legal memo, the white paper was represented by administration  officials as a policy document that closely mirrors the arguments of classified memos on targeted killings by the Justice Department’s  Office of Legal Counsel, which provides authoritative legal advice to the president and all executive branch agencies. The administration has refused to turn over to Congress or release those memos publicly — or even publicly confirm their existence. A source with access to the white paper, which is not classified, provided a copy to NBC News.

“This is a chilling document,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, which is suing to obtain administration memos about the targeted killing of Americans.  “Basically, it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen. … It recognizes some limits on the authority it sets out, but the limits are elastic and vaguely defined, and it’s easy to see how they could be manipulated.”

In particular, Jaffer said, the memo “redefines the word imminence in a way that deprives the word of its ordinary meaning.”  

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the white paper. The spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler, instead pointed to public speeches by what she called a “parade” of administration officials, including Brennan, Holder, former State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh and former Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson that she said outlined the “legal framework” for such operations.

Pressure for turning over the Justice Department memos on targeted killings of Americans appears to be building on Capitol Hill amid signs that Brennan will be grilled on the subject at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

On Monday, a bipartisan group of 11 senators — led by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon — wrote  a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to release all Justice Department memos on the subject. While accepting that “there will clearly be circumstances in which the president has the authority to use lethal force” against Americans who take up arms against the country,  it said, “It is vitally important … for Congress and the American public to have a full understanding of how  the executive branch interprets the limits and boundaries of this authority.”

Source

I think it’s clear that the executive branch has no limit or boundary when it comes to drone strikes on Americans or any person in a strike zone in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia or Afghanistan.

Obama signs NDAA 2013 without objecting to indefinite detention of Americans
January 3, 2013

President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 on Wednesday, giving his stamp of approval to a Pentagon spending bill that will keep Guantanamo Bay open and make indefinite detention for US citizens as likely as ever.

The president inked his name to the 2013 NDAA on Wednesday evening to little fanfare, and accompanied his signature with a statement condemning a fair number of provisions contained in a bill that he nevertheless endorsed.

The NDAA, an otherwise mundane annual bill that lays out the use of funds for the Department of Defense, has come under attack during the Obama administration for the introduction of a provision last year that allows the military to detain United States citizens indefinitely without charge or trial for mere suspicions of ties to terrorism. Under the 2012 NDAA’s Sec. 1021, Pres. Obama agreed to give the military the power to arrest and hold Americans without the writ of habeas corpus, although he promised with that year’s signing statement that his administration would not abuse that privilege.

In response to the controversial indefinite detention provision from last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) introduced an amendment in December 2012 that would have forbid the government from using military force to indefinitely detain Americans without trial under the 2013 NDAA. Although that provision, dubbed the “Feinstein Amendment,” passed the Senate unanimously, a select panel of lawmakers led by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Michigan) stripped it from the final version of the NDAA two week later before it could clear Congress. In exchange, Congress added a provision, Sec. 1029, that claims to ensure that “any person inside the United States” is allowed their constitutional rights, including habeas corpus, but supporters of the Feinstein Amendment say that the swapped wording does nothing to erase the indefinite detention provision from the previous year.

“Saying that new language somehow ensures the right to habeas corpus – the right to be presented before a judge – is both questionable and not enough. Citizens must not only be formally charged but also receive jury trials and the other protections our Constitution guarantees. Habeas corpus is simply the beginning of due process. It is by no means the whole,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said after the Feinstein Amendment was removed.

“Our Bill of Rights is not something that can be cherry-picked at legislators’ convenience. When I entered the United States Senate, I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. It is for this reason that I will strongly oppose passage of the McCain conference report that strips the guarantee to a trial by jury,” Sen. Paul added.

Although the Pres. Obama rejected the indefinite detention clause when signing the 2012 NDAA, a statement issued late Wednesday from the White House failed to touch on the military’s detainment abilities. On the other hand, Pres. Obama did voice his opposition to a number of provisions included in the latest bill, particularly ones that will essentially render his promise of closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison impossible.

Despite repeated pleas that Gitmo will be closed on his watch, Pres. Obama failed to do as much during his first term in the White House. Thanks to a provision in the 2013 NDAA, the Pentagon will be unable to use funds to transfer detainees out of that facility and to other sights, ensuring they will remain at the top-secret military prison for the time being.

“Even though I support the vast majority of the provisions contained in this Act, which is comprised of hundreds of sections spanning more than 680 pages of text, I do not agree with them all. Our Constitution does not afford the president the opportunity to approve or reject statutory sections one by one,” Pres. Obama writes.

Congress, claims the president, designed sections of the new defense bill “in order to foreclose my ability to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.”

“I continue to believe that operating the facility weakens our national security by wasting resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and strengthening our enemies,” he says.

Elsewhere, the president claims that certain provisions in the act threaten to interview with his “constitutional duty to supervise the executive branch” of the United States.

Before the 2013 NDAA was finalized, it was reported by the White House that Pres. Obama would veto the legislation over the provisions involving Guantanamo Bay. Similarly, the White House originally said the president would veto the 2012 NDAA over the indefinite detention provisions, although he signed it regardless “with reservations” on December 31 of that year.

Since authorizing the 2012 NDAA, the president has been challenged in federal court by a team of plaintiffs who say that the indefinite detention clause is unconstitutional. US District Judge Katherine Forrest agreed that Sec. 1021 of the 2012 NDAA violated the US Constitution and granted a permanent injunction on the Obama administration from using that provision, but the White House successfully fought to appeal that decision.

Commenting on the latest signing, American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero says, “President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before inauguration day.”

“His signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial, as well as the illegal military commissions, will be extended,” adds Romero. ”He also has jeopardized his ability to close Guantanamo during his presidency. Scores of men who have already been held for nearly 11 years without being charged with a crime—including more than 80 who have been cleared for transfer—may very well be imprisoned unfairly for yet another year. The president should use whatever discretion he has in the law to order many of the detainees transferred home, and finally step up next year to close Guantanamo and bring a definite end to indefinite detention.”

Source
Photo

This administration can indefinitely detain you without due process… but don’t worry: President Obama promises not to abuse this privilege. 

Between the continued drone war campaign overseas, GITMO staying open, drone strikes targeting Americans being kept secret & indefinite military detention of Americans without charge or trial, the Obama administration is on a civil liberties slashing spree for 2013. & it’s only January 3. 

Too big to jail: HSBC financed terrorists, narcotics trafficking & walked away scot-free
December 13, 2012

The New York Times reports this week that megabank HSBC has escaped criminal prosecution for money laundering that probably funded terrorists and narcotics traffickers. Why? Because regulators and prosecutors were petrified that an indictment would undermine the entire financial system. The Times quotes anonymous government sources who confessed fears about bringing formal charges because doing so would be a “death sentence” for the bank. So they let it off the hook.

That’s right, HSBC is officially above the law. Too-big-to-fail has become too-big-to-prosecute. 

A year-long investigation found that the British banking giant had blown right past federal laws by laundering billions of dollars from Mexican drug trafficking and processing banned transactions on behalf of Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma. A Wednesday Times article serves up vivid passages about the shady goings-on, including HSBC officials working closely with Saudi Arabian banks linked to terrorist organizations. According to the report, “the four-count criminal information filed in the court charged HSBC with failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, to conduct due diligence on its foreign correpsondent affiliates and for violating sanctions and the Trading With the Enemy Act.”

In a statement, the bank said it “will acknowledge that, in the past, we have sometimes failed to meet the standards that regulators and customers expect.” HSBC apologized and promised never, ever to do it again, scout’s honor.

I’m pretty sure I know what would happen to me if I stole a loaf of bread from the corner store. But a big bank can act as financier to freaking terrorists and never worry about things like jail. Funny how a corporation is a person until it breaks the law.

Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a congressional watchdog panel, observed that “the culture at HSBC was pervasively polluted for a long time.” Now we can be certain it will remain so. Criminal activity has been legitimized. In the world of banking, crime pays, big-time.

A number of recent bank scandals, including the Barclays LIBOR rate-fixing revelation, demonstrate that big banks are behaving with blithe disregard for the law and they are avoiding criminal prosecution by paying fines – the cost of doing shady business. The prosecutors and regulators involved in the decision to let HSBC off with a wrist-slapping fine of $1.9 billion (half a quarter’s profit) have officially declared that they are not working in the public interest. They are being paid by taxpayers to protect big banks. Shouldn’t they be on the banks’ payroll?

Simply saying that a bank is too big to prosecute is a travesty of justice. If prosecutors could not charge HSBC, they could charge individuals within the bank. And if they can’t charge HSBC without killing it and endangering the whole system, then something obviously needs to change. Here’s an idea: break up the big banks.

Full article

Do drugs? Go to prison. Lauder billions for drug cartels? Pay a fine & continue business as usual.

US drone tweets reveal ‘double tap’ tactic to target first responders
December 13, 2012

NYU student Josh Begley is tweeting every reported U.S. drone strike since 2002, and the feed highlights a disturbing tactic employed by the U.S. that is widely considered a war crime.

Known as the “double tap,” the tactic involves bombing a target multiple times in relatively quick succession, meaning that the second strike often hits first responders. 

A 2007 report by the Homeland Security Institute called double taps a “favorite tactic of Hamas” and the FBI considers it a tactic employed by terrorists.

UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Christof Heyns said that if there are “secondary drone strikes on rescuers who are helping (the injured) after an initial drone attack, those further attacks are a war crime.”

The U.S. refuses to discuss the merits of its overtly covert drone program, but the reports featured on @dronestream clearly document that U.S. hellfire missiles have intentionally targeted funerals and civilian rescuers.

And that’s only a 10-month window in Pakistan. It has happened in Afghanistan as well, and the first instance of “explicit intelligence posthumously proving” that an innocent civilian had been killed happened in Yemen.

In September the NYU and Stanford law schools released a report detailing how double taps by U.S. drones affect the Pakistani population, and noted that ”high-level” militants killed only accounted for 2 percent of U.S. drone strike casualties.

Source

The Pentagon has approved a deal to supply 6,900 precision bomb kits to replenish Israel’s weapons stockpiles, diminished by the recent war against Hamas in Gaza. The contract is valued at $647 million.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability,” the Pentagon said in a statement. 

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).