February 5, 2012

Source: Washington Post

Source: Washington Post

Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?

This inattention to civilian deaths in America’s wars isn’t unique to Iraq. There’s little evidence that the American public gives much thought to the people who live in the nations where our military interventions take place. Think about the memorials on the Mall honoring American sacrifices in Korea and Vietnam. These are powerful, sacred spots, but neither mentions the people of those countries who perished in the conflicts.

The major wars the United States has fought since the surrender of Japan in 1945 — in Korea, Indochina, Iraq and Afghanistan — have produced colossal carnage. For most of them, we do not have an accurate sense of how many people died, but a conservative estimate is at least 6 million civilians and soldiers.

Our lack of acknowledgment is less oversight than habit, a self-reflective reaction to the horrors of war and an American tradition that goes back decades. We consider ourselves a generous and compassionate nation, and often we are. From the Asian tsunami in 2004 toHurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Haiti earthquake in 2010, Americans have been quick to open their pocketbooks and their hearts.

However, when it comes to our wars overseas, concern for the victims is limited to U.S. troops. When concern for the native populations is expressed, it tends to be more strategic than empathetic, as with Gen. David H. Petraeus’s acknowledgment in late 2006 that harsh U.S. tactics were alienating Iraqi civilians and undermining Operation Iraqi Freedom. The switch to counterinsurgency, which involves more restraint by the military, was billed as a change that would save the U.S. mission, not primarily as a strategy to reduce civilian deaths.

Read More…

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January 20, 2012

Source: Anti-War

A new report has been released by three Middle Eastern human rights groups to detail the results of a “fact-finding mission” to post-Gadhafi Libya. The report was unique in looking not only at human rights violations by the former regime, but also by the NATO forces that attacked the nation.

And as has been the case on those rare occasions when an NGO has cared to look, NATO’s behavior in Libya is far less rosy than the alliance claims it to be. The report points to major human rights violations and war crimes committed during the hostilities.

The deadliest single incident considered a war crime was in Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte, where NATO warplanes killed “approximately 47 civilians” in an attack on September 15. They also faulted NATO for listing public schools and food distribution centers as “military targets” and then bombing them.

In addition to the killings by NATO, the report also faulted the National Transitional Council (NTC) on a number of fronts, particularly the destruction of the town of Tawergha, once 30,000 people, which is now a ghost town since its capture by Misrata rebels.

Read More…

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Smoke rises from an explosion at a Revolutionary Guard ammunition depot outside Tehran, which, according to Iranian officials, killed at least 15 people on
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2099376,00.html#ixzz1dfE4eF4f

Editor’s Note: This is reminiscent of the Israel attack on the Syria reactor. Syria didn’t want to lose face just like Iran today. The Iranian regime tries to force its citizens view the world through their funhouse mirrors. That ridiculous propaganda they released to the news media over the weekend would make a real propagandist like Willy Munzenberg roll in his grave. 

Israeli newspapers on Sunday were thick with innuendo, the front pages of the three largest dailies dominated by variations on the headline “Mysterious Explosion in Iranian Missile Base.” Turn the page, and the mystery is answered with a wink. “Who is Responsible for Attacks on the Iranian Army?” asks Ma’ariv, and the paper lists without further comment a half-dozen other violent setbacks to Iran’s nuclear and military nexus. For Israeli readers, the coy implication is that their own government was behind Saturday’s massive blast just outside Tehran. It is an assumption a Western intelligence source insists is correct: The Mossad — the Israeli agency charged with covert operations — did it. “Don’t believe the Iranians that it was an accident,” the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. “There are more bullets in the magazine,” the official says.

The powerful blast or series of blasts — reports described an initial explosion followed by a much larger one — devastated a missile base in the gritty urban sprawl to the west of the Iranian capital. The base housed Shahab missiles, which, at their longest-range, can reach Israel. Last week’s report from the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran has experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device. Iran says the explosion was an accident that came while troops were transferring ammunition out of the depot “toward the appropriate site.”(See why ties are threatened between the U.S. and Iran.)

The explosion killed at least 17 people, including Maj. Gen. Hassan Moqqadam, described by Iranian state media as a pioneer in Iranian missile development and the Revolutionary Guard commander in charge of “ensuring self-sufficiency” in armaments, a challenging task in light of international sanctions.

Coming the weekend after the release of the unusually critical IAEA report, which laid out page upon page of evidence that Iran is moving toward a nuclear weapon, the blast naturally sharpened concern over Israel’s threat to launch airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Half the stories on the Tehran Times website Sunday referenced the possibility of a military strike, most warning of dire repercussions.

But the incident also argued, maybe even augured, against an outright strike. If Israel — perhaps in concert with Washington and other allies — can continue to inflict damage to the Iranian nuclear effort through covert actions, the need diminishes for overt, incendiary moves like air strikes. The Stuxnet computer worm bolloxed Iran’s centrifuges for months, wreaking havoc on the crucial process of uranium enrichment.

And in Sunday’s editions, the Hebrew press coyly listed whatYedioth Ahronoth called “Iran’s Mysterious Mishaps.” The tallies ran from the November 2007 explosion at a missile base south of Tehran, to the October 2010 blast at a Shahab facility in southwestern Iran, to the assassinations of three Iranian scientists working in the nuclear program, two last year and one in July.(See photos of the semi-official view of Iran.)

At the very least, the list burnishes the mystique of the Mossad, Israel’s overseas spy agency. Whatever the case-by-case reality, the popular notion that, through Mossad, Israel knows everything and can reach anywhere is one of the most valuable assets available to a state whose entire doctrine of defense can be summed up in the word “deterrence.” Which doesn’t mean Israel is the only country with a foreign intelligence operation inside Iran. The most recent IAEA report included intelligence from 10 governments on details of the Iranian nuclear effort. And in previous interviews, Western security sources have indicated that U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have partnered with Israel on covert operations inside Iran. Sometimes the partner brings specific expertise or access. In other cases, Iranian agents on the ground who might harbor misgivings about Israel are allowed to believe they are working only with another government altogether.

Saturday’s blast was so powerful it was felt 25 miles away in Tehran, and so loud that one nearby resident with combat experience thought he had just heard the detonation of an aerial bomb. “Frankly it did not sound like an arms depot from where I was because when one of those goes off, it is multiple explosions over minutes, even hours depending on the size of the facility,” the resident says. “All I heard was one big boom. I was sure from the quality of the noise that anyone in its immediate vicinity was dead. Something definitely happened but I would not trust the [Revolutionary] Guards to be absolutely forthcoming as to what it was.”

With reporting by Aaron J. Klein/Tel Aviv

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November 12, 2011

Source: AP / MSNBC

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Sukant Chandan

October 31, 2011 Gadafi fights until the end with our Black Brothers in Africa, for Africa Never before has the world witnessed empire and its mercenaries (in the form of the pro-nato Libyan rebels) perform such a public gruesome crucifixion of a leader of the world anti-imperialist movement. The lynching of Gadafi, whose videos are being paraded throughout the empire media shows us that at this moment of growing war against the Global South the empire is sending us clear message of white supremacy and wars of aggression. Saddam Hussein was afforded better treatment, he was caught, tried in a kangaroo court, executed, his body was then handed to his family for burial in his home town. Gadafi gets a different treatment, a treatment given the green light by the empire in the form of Hilary Clinton’s advocacy of his murder days before. Why the different treatment for Gadafi? Because he is considered the vanguard leader of Africa by people like Nelson Mandela, and Julius Malema? Is it because Gadafi represents African liberation, a liberation that the west fears more than most and has kept down more than most? Libya is known as the ‘shield of Africa’ due to its fundamental role in the freeing, uniting and the development of a united Africa. It is also well known that Libya has the best living standards in all of Africa for its people, and the infant mortality and life expectancy rivals many ‘developed’ nations. Therefore, the message from the empire in the celebration of the lynching of Gadafi is that any people of the Global South, especially Africans, should expect this if they are to defy, let alone successfully defy them. The anti-nato Jamihiriya forces in Libya are in the leadership of the world struggle against this new round of attempted recolonisation of Africa, and the pro-nato rebels are Arab white supremacists who have joined up with nato white supremacists in this attack on Africa and especially darker skinned Libyans and darker-skinned African migrants in Libya. The war in Libya reflects the Black Liberation struggle of Africa in the forces of the resistance, and for these reasons darker skinned people have fought disproportionally in the resistance, and have been targeted disproportionally by nato and their allies. In the videos of Gadafi’s lynching, there are several Black people who are tied to the back of pro-nato rebel pick-up trucks. One of them, the first below, is immediately in the vicinity of Gadafi being lynched. The second photo is taken from THIS clip from Al-Jazeera English, which is a piece about the lynching of Gadafi. This is a screen print, although the camera stays on this scene for 9seconds and then cuts straight to another two people in the back of pro-nato rebel trucks, including what looks like a very young black man of around 20yrs old with a lighter skinned middle aged Libyan man with an Islamic skull cap on. The AJE piece makes no comment on this footage, which is unsurprising, as AJE and its Arabic channel have led the racist story of ‘African mercenaries’ fighting for Gadafi (to date no evidence has been provided, admitted by western media and ngos), which has helped facilitate the mass lynching of darker skinned people in Libya, including the complete destruction of the town of 25,000 mostly darker skinned Libyans in Tawergha. As far as I am aware, I have been the only one who has commented on these images in THIS interview on Russia Today. I would encourage others to raise their voices. A small point, I was mistaken that I thought one of the black brothers was tied to vertical poles, he is actually tied to a mounted heavy artillery gun barrel on the pick-up truck which is at a 45 degree angle. He is clearly terrified and bloodied. Why arent these images being commented on more in the media and by commentators etc? Has the lynching of black people become so acceptable? The war against Africa for its recolonisation is on. Empire has its sights clearly on Algeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Somalia, and all of these countries are countries to overthrow, control and dominate, and empire’s plans for them are well under way. (please see previous posts on Sons of Malcolm for reports, analysis and articles about this). For Africa’s part, Africa needs a leadership like Gadafi who will fight until the end, shoulder to shoulder, in the land of his foremothers and forefathers in the face of empire aggression. Unity of the Global South, especially with Brazil, India, Russia and China, as well as developing a military self-defence capability in line with assymetrical warfare and the arming and politicisation of the masses in anti-imperialist liberation ideology, are the other fundamental factors necessary for not only resisting, but achieving gains and victory against empire. I will be writing a longer article on Gadafi’s lynching and martyrdom in the coming week. By Sukant Chandan, Sons of Malcolm Source

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Libya: Massacre of Black people by « democratic rebels » – Investig’Action had met the victims.

Investig’Action

October 30, 2011 The Associated Press coldly announced the massacre of a group of Black people who were settled in a camp in front of the Libyan official residence. Dozens of dead bodies were found, hands tied behind their backs. The American news agency pointed out that these people were not combatants. Michel Collon and the delegation who went to Libya in July had met these men who loved Libya. Michel Collon : « I have met these people while on mission in Tripoli. I talked with some of them. Contrary to what the media and the rebels proclaimed, they were in no way « mercenaries ». Some were black skinned Libyans – as a matter of fact, a major part of the population in Libya is composed of Black African people – the others were civilians who came from sub-Saharan African countries and who had been living in Libya for a long time. They all supported Gaddafi for the very reason that he opposed racism and treated Arabs and Africans as equals. Unlike the « rebels » of Benghazi, who are well-known for their anti-Black racism and who made themselves guilty of dreadful and systematic atrocities from the very first days of the war. What is paradoxical is that NATO says it wants to bring democracy but allies itself with a Libyan branch of Al Qaeda and with a group of KKK-like racists ! » All the team of Investig’Action is deeply distressed by this sad news. Simon de Beer, a member of Investig’Action, in the camp. Simon de Beer, a historian and member of Investig’Action : « Thousands of Black African people live in Libya. I had the opportunity to talk with many of them, particularly in the Bab Al Aziziya camp. Most of them regard Gaddafi as one the fathers of Africa. They even compare him with Lumumba and Sankara. From an outsider point of view, it may seem incredible, but one has to bear in mind that in the poorest continent of the planet, Libya is an exception : the Libyan life expectancy is 75 years ; water, electricity, health care and education are free ; and filling up barely costs more than one euro…That is why millions of Africans heavily support Gaddafi. I was shocked to hear of the brutal death of those who, as a sign of solidarity, camped peacefully in front of Gaddafi’s residence. Their murder is a gratuitous act of barbarity. How dare we still call the rebels « democratic forces » ? Map indicating the Human Development Index in 2009, according to the United Nations. In Africa, Libya is the only country which level of development is close to the one of developed countries. For this reason, many African people emigrate in Libya in order to work and live there. Mohamed Hassan, an observer of Africa, with an African leader. Read his interview about the mission in Tripoli. Tony Busselen, a journalist for the weekly newspaper Solidaire, took part in the mission a few weeks ago : « Our photos show that these people were unarmed civilians, there were even many women and children. I talked with them, they joined forces against the war and did not understand what Europe wanted. They told me : « Libya is working well, the achievements are far better than in Africa, it is very good for us, and Europe is this country ! It’s beyond understanding. » They were quite willing to defend Libya because they could compare it to their home country. It is really barbarous to murder unarmed people, hands tied behind their backs, they were simply people, workers who came spontaneously to defend their new homeland. This is truly terrifying and I saw photographs showing the same deeds committed in Benghazi by the « rebels » who are clearly using terror. So, when I see people in Tripoli « applauding » the rebels, I believe that they are simply terrorized. NATO is bringing dread. A mercenary ? Where are these women and children now ? Ilse Grieten : « I cannot believe these things when I see them. We had already heard of so many accounts of atrocities committed by the rebels, and they are the very ones whom we help and arm ?! Again, I’m furious, everyday ! These people are so decent, hundreds of them representing so many African countries, they all had been standing inside and around their tents for months, convinced that they must support Gaddafi and Libya as a model for Africa. I can still hear them say : « Libya is the mother of Africa. » They clearly showed us what African unity was. They all wanted to speak to make us understand that this was simply an attack against Africa and its raw materials. Libya is the gate to Africa. I hope their voice will be heard at last. Why did NATO and the rebels refuse the peace proposal of the African Union (53 countries) ? Why haven’t we heard about it until now ? For them, Gaddafi is the symbol of African unity, the man who protects his own plundering against neocolonial plundering. The man who did more for Africa than any of its own leaders. » Soon we will publish the testimony of these men and women. Screenshot of a Reuters video, which dare say they do not know who committed this massacre yet. The following pictures were found on the Facebook profile of supporters of the NTC (the National Transitional Council of Libya). The places and dates can hardly be definable. But what is sure is that the men who were arrested are not combatants but are threatened, if not already murdered as these pictures are being published. All this thanks to the UN, NATO, the members of the European parliament and their evil special correspondent – Bernard-Henri Levy – on the pretence of protecting the populations and establishing democracy. How could you hold a weapon with one arm in plaster ? Le Figaro (French newspaper) justifies the massacre. « Cornered in the Eastern gate, the last followers of the Guide take off their uniforms, get dressed in plain clothes and vanish in Tripoli. Some are arrested, among whom are African mercenaries. » Photograph took in Benghazi by Pierre Piccinin. Source

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Evidence found of pro-NATO massacre in Sirte, Libya
NTC government turning back the clock on women’s rights

By Derek Ford

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The killing of Awlaki’s 16-year-old son

By Glenn Greenwald *

October 20, 2011 (updated below) Two weeks after the U.S. killed American citizen Anwar Awlaki with a drone strike in Yemen — far from any battlefield and with no due process — it did the same to his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, ending the teenager’s life on Friday along with his 17-year-old cousin and seven other people. News reports, based on government sources, originally claimed that Awlaki’s son was 21 years old and an Al Qaeda fighter (needless to say, as Terrorist often means: “anyone killed by the U.S.”), but a birth certificate published by The Washington Post proved that he was born only 16 years ago in Denver. As The New Yorker‘s Amy Davidson wrote: “Looking at his birth certificate, one wonders what those assertions say either about the the quality of the government’s evidence — or the honesty of its claims — and about our own capacity for self-deception.” The boy’s grandfather said that he and his cousin were at a barbecue and preparing to eat when the U.S. attacked them by air and ended their lives. There are two points worth making about this: (1) It is unknown whether the U.S. targeted the teenager or whether he was merely “collateral damage.” The reason that’s unknown is because the Obama administration refuses to tell us. Said the Post: “The officials would not discuss the attack in any detail, including who the target was.” So here we have yet again one of the most consequential acts a government can take — killing one of its own citizens, in this case a teenage boy — and the government refuses even to talk about what it did, why it did it, what its justification is, what evidence it possesses, or what principles it has embraced in general for such actions. Indeed, it refuses even to admit it did this, since it refuses even to admit that it has a drone program at all and that it is engaged in military action in Yemen. It’s just all shrouded in total secrecy. Of course, the same thing happened with the killing of Awlaki himself. The Executive Branch decided it has the authority to target U.S. citizens for death without due process, but told nobody (until it was leaked) and refuses to identify the principles that guide these decisions. It then concluded in a secret legal memo that Awlaki specifically could be killed, but refuses to disclose what it ruled or in which principles this ruling was grounded. And although the Obama administration repeatedly accused Awlaki of having an “operational role” in Terrorist plots, it has — as Davidson put it — “so far kept the evidence for that to itself.” This is all part and parcel of the Obama administration’s extreme — at times unprecedented — fixation on secrecy. Even with Senators in the President’s own party warning that the administration’s secret interpretation of its domestic surveillance powers under the Patriot Act is so warped and radical that it would shock the public if they knew, Obama officials simply refuse even to release its legal memos setting forth how it is interpreting those powers. As EFF’s Trevor Timm told The Daily Beast today: “The government classified a staggering 77 million documents last year, a 40 percent increase on the year before.” And as I wrote about many times, the Obama administration even tried — and failed — to force The New York Times‘ James Risen to reveal his source for his story about an inept, disastrous CIA effort to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program, but as Politico‘s Josh Gerstein reports today, the Obama DOJ is now appealing the decision in Risen’s favor. Gerstein writes: The executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy Dalglish, said the appeal was troubling for First Amendment advocates, but not unexpected. “I’m not surprised at all,” Dalglish said “The Obama administration has made it absolutely clear they detest leakers and they are going to be very aggressive against leakers.” Since Obama took office, his administration has initiated five prosecutions of alleged leakers under the Espionage Act — a sum roughly equal to the total number of such prosecutions in all prior administrations combined. . . . “It’s really looking like they want to put Risen in prison,” [the defendant's lawyer Edward] MacMahon said in a brief interview. . . . “For the journalists in the world, it’s quite a significant First Amendment appeal.” You can offer the ability to citizens to choose from one of the two parties and elect their leaders as much as you want. But “democracy” is an illusion — a sham — if the most significant acts taken by those leaders are kept concealed from the citizenry. Dana Priest and William Arkin wrote a multi-part series, and followed it up with a book, describing “Top Secret America”: the sprawling, secret government/private-sector apparatus accountable to nobody. Leaks and whistleblowers are the only real avenue remaining for citizens to know what their government does, and it’s why the Obama administration is so obsessed with persecuting whistleblowers, crushing WikiLeaks, and now even trying to imprison one of the nation’s best investigative journalists. For many people, this type of secrecy is not bothersome because — when their party controls the White House — they trust their leader to be honest and act properly; that’s what Bush followers who viewed Bush as a good, earnest Christian constantly said in response to objections over radical secrecy, and it’s what many Obama followers say now (if Obama says someone is a Terrorist, I don’t need to see evidence: I’m sure he is – if Obama says Iran is behind a Terrorist plot, I don’t need to see evidence: I’m sure they are). But that obviously isn’t a healthy mindset when forming expectations of political leaders. More so, you can’t have a functioning democracy if the government refuses even to discuss its most radical and significant acts. The Obama administration is just off waging a secret war in Yemen, killing its own citizens from the sky, and refusing to account to anyone for what it’s doing. If you accept that level of secrecy, what don’t you accept? (2) Every now and then it’s worth pausing to reflect on how often we talk about the killing of people by the U.S. Literally, the U.S. government is just continuously killing people in multiple countries around the world. Who else does that? Nobody — certainly nowhere near on this scale. The U.S. President expressly claims the power to target anyone he wants, anywhere in the world, for death, including his own citizens; he does it in total secrecy and with no oversight; and this power is not just asserted but routinely exercised. The U.S., over and over, eradicates people’s lives by the dozens from the sky, with bombs, with checkpoint shootings, with night raids — in far more places and far more frequently than any other nation or group on the planet. Those are just facts. What’s most striking about this is how little effort is needed to induce America’s political and media elites to acquiesce to it. The government need do nothing more than utter empty nationalistic phrases such as “we’re at war” and “Terrorist!” and this unparalleled, endless state violence all becomes instantly justified. Yesterday, Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen wrote about the Awlaki killings: “Many Yemenis can understand (if disagree) killing the father, few can understand killing the son,” and pointed to this Facebook entry from a young Yemeni as illustration of what he meant; read the text:   I have no doubt that many Americans, probably most, would consider this comparison to be outrageous hyperbole, even offensive and slanderous. I have just as little doubt that many Americans, probably most, would be saying things quite similar to this if it were another country, engaging in far more violence than all others, routinely zapping innocent teeangers, children, women and men out out of existence on American soil using sky robots and cluster bombs (just look at America’s ongoing reaction to a single, one-day attack on its soil a full decade ago). But the U.S. does this so often, and has for so long, that most of the citizenry has either concocted or ingested mental and intellectual strategies for pretending this doesn’t happen or justifying it when they can’t. So we just killed an American teenager and his teenage cousin by drone-bombing them to death? They merely join a very long list of similar recent victims — a list that, paradoxically, makes less of an impact the longer it becomes.   UPDATE: Those who believe evidence and transparency in such matters are unnecessary because the government under Obama — unlike under Bush — would never issue false claims about such things and can be trusted without accountability should review this and this. Source

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Andy Worthington

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October 19, 2011

Source: Corbett Report – James Corbett

Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein has declinedto hold the CIA in contempt for destroying videos that it had been ordered by the courts to preserve.

The case revolves around 92 videos, depicting hundreds of hours of interrogations of detainees. The tapes allegedly contained evidence of torture, and the CIA was ordered by numerous courts to produce the videos in relation to lawsuits arising from torture allegations. The 9/11 Commission also demanded that the tapes be produced. Instead, the agency destroyed them.

Although the Obama Justice Department had already decided last year that no criminal charges would be filed for this blatant obstruction of justice, Judge Hellerstein’s recent ruling insures that the agency will not even face civil sanctions or so much as a contempt order for willfully breaking the law.

In his ruling, Judge Hellerstein, the very judge who had ordered the CIA to produce the tapes in September of 2004, notes that the agency had instead provided a description of what they say was on the tapes and “implemented new protocols” to insure that they don’t destroy evidence again, so there is no need to hold them accountable in any way.

Judge Hellerstein’s decision is not without precedent.

In 2010, Obama’s Office of Legal Council wrote a memo arguing the legality of Obama’s secret list of assassination targets, a list that apparently includes American citizens who have not been convicted or even charged of a crime. The memo was used as the legal justification for the extrajudicial assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen who the President ordered murdered early last year.

Now, the Obama White House is arguing that they don’t even have to show the justification for ordering the unconstitutional assassination of one of its own citizens.

Still, concerned citizens are attempting to challenge the Obama regime’s power grabs in court.

Earlier this year, Senator Wyden revealed that the federal government has a secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act that allows the government much more power than is suggested by the wording of the act itself.

When Charlie Savage of the New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the interpretation, he was denied on the basis that the interpretation is classified.

Last week, Savage and the Times sued the federal government for refusing to release the documents. The case is currently before Judge William Pauley of the US District Court.

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October 14, 2011 – Palestinian community leaders have blamed a refusal by the Israeli government to condemn increased incitement to racial hatred for a recent surge in extremist violence by settlers and other Zionists. “The problem here is the way the Israeli government is dealing with all the brutal acts of the settlers in the West Bank and now inside the Green Line [Israel as it is recognized internationally]. The Israeli government is doing nothing in order to stop these racist people, and this fact gives this bunch of racists a green light to do anything they want,” said Sami Abu Shehadeh, a Jaffa resident and member of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipal council. “We are really worried. Now these people are attacking holy places; tomorrow they could also hurt people,” explained Abu Shehadeh, during a demonstration on 8 October against the recent desecration of Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Jaffa by suspected Jewish-Israeli extremists.   continua / continued

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Rebel Claims of Libya ‘Mass Graves’ Come Up Empty, Again

Jason Ditz

Link: news.antiwar.com/2011/10/06/rebel-claims-of-libya-mass-graves-come-up-empty-agai

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October 6, 2011

Source: Reuters

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October 3, 2011

Source: Fox News

The U.S. Justice Department gave the approval to the CIA to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, the charismatic U.S.-born cleric who orchestrated Al Qaeda recruitment from Yemen, by justifying his killing as an act of self-defense, a U.S. official told Fox News.

The official said Sunday that a secret memo between the DOJ and CIA placed al-Awlaki on a kill or capture list, which laid out the case that al-Awlaki was not entitled to the same protections as a U.S. citizen, but rather a combatant targeting U.S. citizens.

Al-Awlaki, who was killed Friday in a CIA-led drone strike, has been described as an operational planner with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. But President Obama said he was the leader of “external operations” for the Al Qaeda affiliate.

As such, Obama said, the U.S.-born radical cleric “took the lead” in planning attacks on Americans and called on others to take part in the “murderous agenda.”

Al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, was believed to be key in turning Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen into what American officials have called the most significant and immediate threat to the United States. The branch, led by a Yemeni militant named Nasser al-Wahishi, plotted several failed attacks on U.S. soil — the botched Christmas 2009 attempt to blow up an American airliner heading to Detroit and a foiled 2010 attempt to send explosives to Chicago.

The killing, however, drew some rebuke from civil liberties groups and a few politicians who say the U.S. should not perform these types of strikes.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, joined Rep. Paul, R-Texas, in condemning the killing

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/02/justice-department-gave-cia-approval-to-kill-al-awlaki/#ixzz1ZkLGYTXD

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