![Scahill: Obama Has ‘Murdered’ People With Drone Strikes
Upset over President Barack Obama’s “kill list” and continued usage of drone striking throughout his administration, The Nation‘s national security correspondent Jeremy Scahill called the commander-in-chief’s actions “murderous.”
Appearing on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes, Scahill argued for the justification of labeling President Obama’s decisions to authorize the strikes as “murder,” specifically the drone attack on al-Qaeda America figure Anwar Al-Awlaki’s son in Yemen in 2011 recently covered by PBS’ Frontline.
“If someone goes into a shopping mall in pursuit of one of their enemies and opens fire on a crowd of people, and guns down a bunch of innocent people in a shopping mall, they’ve murdered those people,” Scahill said.
“If you go to Yemen where I was, and you see the unexploded cluster bombs, and you have the list and photographic evidence, as I do, of women and children that represented the vast majority of deaths in the first strike that Obama authorized on Yemen, those people were murdered by President Obama, on his orders, because there was believed to be someone from al-Qaeda in that area. There’s only one person that’s been identified that had any connection to al-Qaeda there. And 21 women and 14 children were killed in that strike.”
“And the U.S. tried to cover it up and say it was a Yemenize strike. And we know from the Wikileaks cables that David Petraus conspired with the president to lie to the world about who did that bombing. It’s murder, it’s mass murder. When you say, ‘We’re going to bomb this area because we believe a terrorist is there,’ and you know that women and children are there, [then] the United States has an obligation to not bomb that area if they believe women and children are there. That’s murder.”
Scahill added: “The most dangerous thing that the U.S. is doing, besides murdering innocent people in many cases, is giving people in Yemen or Somalia, or Pakistan, a non ideological reason to hate the United States, to fight the United States. Non-ideological reasons, meaning personal vendetta, is much more powerful than, ‘We hate your freedom, we hate your McDondalds, we have your Christianity, that’s real to them.”
Source](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m50qp10z7Y1r4vpxio1_500.png)
Scahill: Obama Has ‘Murdered’ People With Drone Strikes
Upset over President Barack Obama’s “kill list” and continued usage of drone striking throughout his administration, The Nation‘s national security correspondent Jeremy Scahill called the commander-in-chief’s actions “murderous.”
Appearing on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes, Scahill argued for the justification of labeling President Obama’s decisions to authorize the strikes as “murder,” specifically the drone attack on al-Qaeda America figure Anwar Al-Awlaki’s son in Yemen in 2011 recently covered by PBS’ Frontline.
“If someone goes into a shopping mall in pursuit of one of their enemies and opens fire on a crowd of people, and guns down a bunch of innocent people in a shopping mall, they’ve murdered those people,” Scahill said.
“If you go to Yemen where I was, and you see the unexploded cluster bombs, and you have the list and photographic evidence, as I do, of women and children that represented the vast majority of deaths in the first strike that Obama authorized on Yemen, those people were murdered by President Obama, on his orders, because there was believed to be someone from al-Qaeda in that area. There’s only one person that’s been identified that had any connection to al-Qaeda there. And 21 women and 14 children were killed in that strike.”
“And the U.S. tried to cover it up and say it was a Yemenize strike. And we know from the Wikileaks cables that David Petraus conspired with the president to lie to the world about who did that bombing. It’s murder, it’s mass murder. When you say, ‘We’re going to bomb this area because we believe a terrorist is there,’ and you know that women and children are there, [then] the United States has an obligation to not bomb that area if they believe women and children are there. That’s murder.”
Scahill added: “The most dangerous thing that the U.S. is doing, besides murdering innocent people in many cases, is giving people in Yemen or Somalia, or Pakistan, a non ideological reason to hate the United States, to fight the United States. Non-ideological reasons, meaning personal vendetta, is much more powerful than, ‘We hate your freedom, we hate your McDondalds, we have your Christianity, that’s real to them.”
A Palestinian protester throws back a tear gas canister at Israeli soldiers during a demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel near the West Bank city of Nablus on June 1, 2012.
(via socialuprooting)
14 Occupiers arrested trying to save a house from foreclosure
May 31, 2012In the latest incident in an ongoing showdown, officers violently arrested occupiers peacefully defending the Cruz family home from foreclosure Wednesday night. Fourteen were arrested defending 4044 Cedar Avenue Wednesday night, only 24 hours after Mayor Rybak’s office, facing mounting public pressure, issued a news release declaring “the City is not in the foreclosure business.” In the statement, City Attorney Susan Segal is quoted saying “The City plays a limited role to protect public safety. The property is the responsibility of its owner… In this case, the City has fulfilled its legal obligation to secure the property.”“We hoped Mayor Rybak would stick to his word, but today’s police violence shows Rybak and his police protect and serve the banks, not our communities,” said Martha Ockenfels-Martinez, an organizer with Occupy Homes MN and representative of the Cruz family.The 14 arrests Wednesday at the Cruz home bring this week’s total to 23 during 5 eviction attempts.
(via amodernmanifesto)
Report finds rise in anti-gay murders -
A report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects has found that the number of anti-LGBT murders rose last year - 11 percent higher than the previous year. The Washington Blade outlines the findings pretty clearly:
The NCAVP’s annual report documents 30 anti-LGBT homicides across the county. While it showed that incidents of anti-LGBT hate violence decreased 16 percent from 2010, the number of anti-LGBT murders in 2011 is the highest that the agency has documented since it began to issue it began to issue its annual report in 1996.
NCAVP further noted that 87 percent of the 30 anti-LGBT homicide victims in 2011 were LGBT people of color—trans women comprised 40 percent of those who lost their lives to anti-LGBT bias-motivated crimes.
This is incredibly frightening and entirely too real, particularly in light of the hostile anti-gay messages coming from some churches and organizations all across the country.
How do we address this? What people, groups or policies should be responsible for ending this terrifying trend?
From the Feminist Majority Foundation today:
We have just 13 days to defeat North Dakota Measure 3, which will be on the state’s primary ballot June 12th. It is a state constitutional amendment that simply goes too far and could deny a woman basic medical care such as birth control. We need your help.
This dangerous amendment states that “The right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief may not be burdened unless the government proves it has no compelling governmental interest…” We need your help because if this state constitutional amendment passes, it will certainly move to other states and it could have far reaching and alarming consequences:
• A man could claim domestic violence or child abuse laws don’t apply to him because his religious beliefs give him the right to beat his wife and children.
• An employer could deny birth control coverage or other needed medical treatment to a woman under its health plan on basis of the employer’s religious belief.
• A pharmacy could refuse to fill a birth control prescription on the basis of its religious belief.
Help the campaign to defeat Measure 3 and put an end to this so-called “religious freedom” amendment that could endanger women’s health. If passed, Measure 3 will spread - we cannot allow this to happen. Say NO to 3!More here.
(via stfuconservatives)
Chinese Women Faces Life Sentence In America For Suicide Attempt That Killed Fetus
On December 23 2010, Bei Bei Shuai became so depressed after she had been abandoned by her boyfriend – a married Chinese man who broke his promise to set up a family with her – that she decided to end her life. She consumed rat poison, and after confessing to friends was rushed to the Methodist hospital.
Doctors took steps to save her, but on December 31 there were signs that the baby, then at 33 weeks gestation, was in distress and a Caesarian was performed. On the second day the baby was found to have a massive brain haemorrhage and on January 2 was taken off life support.
March 14th last year, Shuai was arrested and taken into custody in the high-security Marion County prison, where she was held for the next 435 days, charged with murdering her fetus and attempted feticide. If convicted of the murder count she faces a sentence of 45 years to life.
Bei Bei Shuai is at the sharp end of the creeping criminalization of pregnancy across America. Women who lose their unborn babies – whether in cases of maternal drug addiction or in Shuai’s case a failed suicide attempt – are increasingly finding themselves accused of murder.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Shuai told the Guardian she is determined to defend herself as she prepares for a murder trial scheduled for December. “I have a strong desire to stay in America,” she said, three days after she had been released from jail on $50,000 bail. “I want to stay and fight this case. I have the best legal team, and I’m not afraid anymore to face the charges.”
100,000 Flee ‘Extreme Violence’ In Congo In Less Than Two Months
Villagers and townspeople in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo are facing “extreme violence”, with mass executions, abductions, mutilations and rapes being committed almost daily, according to aid workers in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.
Fighting between the government army, the FARDC, and a group of mutineers led by a fugitive UN war crimes indictee, Bosco Ntaganda, has escalated since April. Militias including the notorious FDLR, a Rwandan rebel group based in Congo, have joined the fray in a multi-fronted battle for territory, money and power. But the violence has received relatively little international attention.
“The crisis in Congo is the worst it has been for years. The activity of armed groups has exploded, with militias making the most of the chaos to prey on the local population,” said Samuel Dixon, Oxfam’s policy adviser in Goma. “Large areas of Kivu are under the control of armed groups – some villages are being terrorised from all sides, with up to five groups battling for power.
“Local people are bearing the brunt of extreme violence, facing the risk of massacre, rape, retaliation, abduction, mutilation, forced labour or extortion. In less than two months, more than 100,000 people in North Kivu have been forced to flee,” Dixon said.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said the violence had sent tens of thousands of refugees spilling over the border into Rwanda and Uganda, while many more people were internally displaced.
Anonymous asked: Do you know any good browsers and search engines that don't track you?
Mozilla (FireFox) and DuckDuckGo does not track you.
I suggest you avoid anything associated with Google (Chrome, search engine, Youtube, Gmail, etc.) if you do not want to have your activity logged.
12 Syrians Workers Killed Marking The Third Massacre This Week
Evidence of a new massacre — the third in a week — surfaced Friday in Syria as a called for an “international, transparent, independent and prompt investigation” of mass killings last week in the township of Houla that left more than 100 people dead, mostly women and children slaughtered in their homes.
Both sides in the conflict reported Friday that the bodies of a dozen workers at a government-run fertilizer factory had been found dumped in a field near the central town of Qusair, all apparently shot.
The slayings fit a disturbing pattern of motorists and bus passengers being yanked from their vehicles at checkpoints and executed, apparently because of their sect or perceived allegiance, or lack of allegiance, to the government of President Bashar Assad.
Government and rebel checkpoints now mark many roads in Syria, especially in conflict zones such as the central province of Homs, where the latest reported mass killing occurred. Some checkpoints have become killing zones or kidnapping sites, according to both sides in the conflict.
The slayings of the factory workers again raised fear that Syria is plunging into a cycle of tit-for-tat sectarian massacres and a possible civil war, concern voiced this week by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, among others.
The killers in Syria’s escalating series of massacres typically remain anonymous as each side blames the other, a scenario that unfolded again after the latest incident.
Anonymous asked: Is the government spying policy still happening today?
Of course. Check my tags for a list of articles:
Government Surveillance, Monitoring, Spying
Drone Strikes
theholyinnocent asked: Wait you're gay? and socially conscious? Why aren't we together again?
Because I only exist on the internet. Offline I am poor and insignificant.
The New York Times has revealed President Obama has waged a major cyberweapons operation against Iran since the early days of his administration. The program, known as “Olympic Games,” has been used to sabotage the computer systems at Iran’s nuclear facilities. It began under the Bush administration, but was significantly expanded when Obama took office in 2009.
Obama decided to continue with the program in 2010 even after part of it became public when it accidentally unleashed a computer worm known as Stuxnet across the global internet. Developed with the help of Israeli intelligence, Stuxnet is said to have destroyed some of Iran’s centrifuges, but the full extent of the damage is unclear. The Obama administration’s cyber-campaign in Iran is believed to be the first sustained effort by one country to destroy another’s infrastructure through computer attacks.
(Source: occupyallstreets)
June 1, 2012, by Glenn Greenwald
Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone and ends the lives of Muslims, American media outlets dutifully trumpet in
headlines that the dead were ”militants” – even though those media outlets literally do not have the slightest idea of who was actually killed. They simply cite always-unnamed “officials” claiming that the dead were “militants.” It’s the most obvious and inexcusable form of rank propaganda: media outlets continuously propagating a vital claim without having the slightest idea if it’s true.
This practice continues even though key Obama officials have been caught lying, a term used advisedly, about how many civilians they’re killing. I’ve written and said many times before that in American media discourse, the definition of “militant” is any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates (that term was even used when Anwar Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen two weeks after a drone killed his father, even though nobody claims the teenager was anything but completely innocent: “Another U.S. Drone Strike Kills Militants in Yemen”).
This morning, the New York Times has a very lengthy and detailed article about President Obama’s counter-Terrorism policies based on interviews with “three dozen of his current and former advisers.” I’m writing separately about the numerous revelations contained in that article, but want specifically to highlight this one vital passage about how the Obama administration determines who is a “militant.” The article explains that Obama’s rhetorical emphasis on avoiding civilian deaths “did not significantly change” the drone program, because Obama himself simply expanded the definition of a “militant” to ensure that it includes virtually everyone killed by his drone strikes. Just read this remarkable passage:
Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.
This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.
But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.
“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”
[…]
Note Anonymiss Express: WUT?
Our president is an abomination.