Don’t worry, they’re “just” advisers! And special ops! What could possibly go wrong?
Category: The Regime
Challenging a militarized police state
Great article in Counterpunch:
Critics say the DHS represents a classic case of mission creep, expanding its mission into multiple facets of civilian law enforcement, with its overall budget soaring from $29 billion in 2002 to $61 billion in 2014, according to the Journal.
Even former Bush administration Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge was taken aback by the DHS’ evolution.
“They’ve kind of lost their way..,” Ridge was quoted by the Journal. “I’m trying to figure out why these local communities need Humvees…they could probably use a couple of more patrolman rather than another military vehicle.”
Yet, like the DOD-defense contractor revolving door, money is to be made in the business of policing.
Dubbed Tasergate by some pundits, Albuquerque is now engrossed by the news that former Police Chief Ray Schultz negotiated a deal with Taser International to supply his department with nearly $2 million in equipment prior to the chief’s departure from office last year.
Shortly thereafter, Schultz emerged as a paid consultant to the company, according to local media accounts.
Wave of Activism Against Police Brutality
In Albuquerque, police violence has triggered the biggest wave of activism in the New Mexico city since the early 1970s.
Since the shooting of James Boyd, activists have marched in the streets, packed City Council and DOJ meetings, conducted vigils, organized community forums, and prepared petitions to remove the mayor and convene grand juries that will indict officers. Citizens are participating in the DOJ’s current goal of writing a consent decree that will impose new recruitment standards, training, oversight policies, and standard operating procedures on the APD.
Street protests have drawn hundreds of young people who are cutting their teeth in activism and civil disobedience.
At an April forum held at the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, activists formulated nearly 40 short-term and long-term demands. Significantly, the proposals call for the demilitarization of the policing, zero tolerance for racial profiling and citizen oversight of the police department.
Only a few hours away on the U.S.-Mexico border, groups like the ACLU’s Regional Center for Border Rights likewise call for independent oversight of the Border Patrol.
The UNHRC’s report on the state of human rights in the U.S., affords the CBP “an opportunity for comprehensive reform if they’re serious about preventing unnecessary deaths and injuries,” says Regional Center Director Vicki B. Gaubeca.
In the wider context, last month’s Albuquerque meeting highlighted structural changes urgently needed: adequate services for returning veterans and other people with mental health issues; increased funding for social services like substance abuse prevention and treatment; the right to housing; the full funding of schools; and an end to the school-to-prison pipeline.
Two weeks later, speaking at the site where her former student, 19-year-old Mary Hawkes, was shot to death by the APD on April 21, Albuquerque educator Carolina Acuna-Olvera summed up the sentiment of many in the movement:
“We’re already spending billions of dollars going to war around the world, but can’t feed kids.”
The events in Albuquerque bring into sharp focus many fundamental issues as part and parcel of an inseparable package. Whether activists will be successful in winning changes is still far from certain, given the historic impunity connected to police shootings and instances of brutality.
While the City of Albuquerque has paid out nearly $30 million in wrongful death and excessive force lawsuits during the past few years, no police officer has gone to jail for a shooting. And in the seven weeks following James Boyd’s shooting, the same number of additional officer-involved shootings-three of them fatal-have shaken Albuquerque and nearby Los Lunas.
Besides APD officers, New Mexico state policemen and U.S. marshals have been behind the triggers in the latest shootings.
Still, many residents say the city has a historic opportunity to change the course of police-community relations, reassert democratic controls over law enforcement and respond to a deluge of worsening social problems that threaten to tear society apart.
“This is widespread,” said Nora Tachias-Anaya of the October 22 Coalition, one of the groups participating in the Albuquerque movement. “This is national, and we know it, but I strongly believe New Mexico is going to make the difference.”
They were terrorists, not children
What a dance of rhetorical bullshit. Jodi Roduren has made it clear she believes her job is to support Israel. Apparently her bosses are okay with that:
On August 5, The New York Times published a highly problematic article “Civilian or Not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead from Gaza Conflict”, that presented information supporting dubious Israeli government claims that 900 Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza, or around half of all Palestinian killed in Gaza in Israel’s current offensive, were “terrorists.” This assertion flies in the face of consensus reporting over the last month indicating much higher Palestinian civilian casualty figures.
Yet another example of bad New York Times’ reporting on Gaza, the article by Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren deserves debunking on many levels. It is built on unsupported claims by the Israeli government about whom Israel killed. Rudoren’s article fails to explain consensus positions in international law on who is a combatant, or explain Israel’s position on them. It also presents information in a way that profiles all Palestinian males age 15 – 60 as possible terrorists potentially deserving of death, and inappropriately limits the age of children to 0-14 years. More broadly, Jodi Rudoren’s article supports an Israeli government PR push to revise the history of Israel’s attack on Gaza to make Israel look better by asserting that Israel killed far more combatants and far fewer children than has been widely reported.
Seems like old times
Defense contractors really like it when we bomb shit, since it means we have to buy more bombs to replace them. Win/win! Well, all those dead people, but…
Why is this not a big frickin’ deal?
They just asked for an apology? WTF? Still think the CIA wasn’t behind our political assassinations?
WASHINGTON — An internal investigation by the C.I.A. has found that its officers penetrated a computer network used by the Senate Intelligence Committee in preparing its damning report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program.
The report by the agency’s inspector general also found that C.I.A. officers read the emails of the Senate investigators and sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department based on false information, according to a summary of findings made public on Thursday. One official with knowledge of the report’s conclusions said the investigation also discovered that the officers created a false online identity to gain access on more than one occasion to computers used by the committee staff.
The inspector general’s account of how the C.I.A. secretly monitored a congressional committee charged with supervising its activities touched off angry criticism from members of the Senate and amounted to vindication for Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s Democratic chairwoman, who excoriated the C.I.A. in March when the agency’s monitoring of committee investigators became public.
H/t Thomas Soldan.
Why Israel lies
All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality. And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories—required under the rules of American journalism—although we know they are untrue.
I saw small boys baited and killed by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis. The soldiers swore at the boys in Arabic over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep. The boys, about 10 years old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle and the soldiers opened fire, killing some, wounding others. I was present more than once as Israeli troops drew out and shot Palestinian children in this way. Such incidents, in the Israeli lexicon, become children caught in crossfire. I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets dropped 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs on overcrowded hovels in Gaza City. I saw the corpses of the victims, including children. This became a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. I have watched Israel demolish homes and entire apartment blocks to create wide buffer zones between the Palestinians and the Israeli troops that ring Gaza. I have interviewed the destitute and homeless families, some camped out in crude shelters erected in the rubble. The destruction becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists. I have stood in the remains of schools—Israel struck two United Nations schools in the last six days, causing at least 10 fatalities at one in Rafah on Sunday and at least 19 at one in the Jebaliya refugee camp Wednesday—as well as medical clinics and mosques. I have heard Israel claim that errant rockets or mortar fire from the Palestinians caused these and other deaths, or that the attacked spots were being used as arms depots or launching sites. I, along with every other reporter I know who has worked in Gaza, have never seen any evidence that Hamas uses civilians as “human shields.”
There is a perverted logic to Israel’s repeated use of the Big Lie—Große Lüge—the lie favored by tyrants from Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin to Saddam Hussein. The Big Lie feeds the two reactions Israel seeks to elicit—racism among its supporters and terror among its victims.
By painting a picture of an army that never attacks civilians, that indeed goes out of its way to protect them, the Big Lie says Israelis are civilized and humane, and their Palestinian opponents are inhuman monsters. The Big Lie serves the idea that the slaughter in Gaza is a clash of civilizations, a war between democracy, decency and honor on one side and Islamic barbarism on the other. And in the uncommon cases when news of atrocities penetrates to the wider public, Israel blames the destruction and casualties on Hamas.
George Orwell in his novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” called this form of propaganda doublethink. Doublethink uses “logic against logic” and “repudiate[s] morality while laying claim to it.” The Big Lie does not allow for the nuances and contradictions that can plague conscience. It is a state-orchestrated response to the dilemma of cognitive dissonance. The Big Lie permits no gray zones. The world is black and white, good and evil, righteous and unrighteous. The Big Lie allows believers to take comfort—a comfort they are desperately seeking—in their own moral superiority at the very moment they have abrogated all morality.
I guess we should pretend to be surprised?
The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S. and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza.
Over the last decade, the NSA has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians. In many cases, the NSA and ISNU work cooperatively with the British and Canadian spy agencies, the GCHQ and CSEC.
The relationship has, on at least one occasion, entailed the covert payment of a large amount of cash to Israeli operatives. Beyond their own surveillance programs, the American and British surveillance agencies rely on U.S.-supported Arab regimes, including the Jordanian monarchy and even the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, to provide vital spying services regarding Palestinian targets.
The new documents underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the U.S. government and its key allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters.
President Obama, in his press conference on Friday, said ”it is heartbreaking to see what’s happening there,” referring to the weeks of civilian deaths in Gaza – “as if he’s just a bystander, watching it all unfold,” observed Brooklyn College Professor Corey Robin. Robin added: ”Obama talks about Gaza as if it were a natural disaster, an uncontrollable biological event.”
Who shot down MH17?
Why the answer isn’t as clearcut as some would have you believe.
‘We are in the realm of accountability’
UNRWA Christopher Gunness breaks down in tears on live TV after attack on UN school in Gaza. Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. called for Gunness’ immediate suspension.
STATEMENT BY UNRWA COMMISSIONER-GENERAL PIERRE KRÄHENBÜHL
Jerusalem
Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.
We have visited the site and gathered evidence. We have analysed fragments, examined craters and other damage. Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school, in which 3,300 people had sought refuge. We believe there were at least three impacts. It is too early to give a confirmed official death toll. But we know that there were multiple civilian deaths and injuries including of women and children and the UNRWA guard who was trying to protect the site. These are people who were instructed to leave their homes by the Israeli army.
The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army seventeen times, to ensure its protection; the last being at ten to nine last night, just hours before the fatal shelling.
I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces.
This is the sixth time that one of our schools has been struck. Our staff, the very people leading the humanitarian response are being killed. Our shelters are overflowing. Tens of thousands may soon be stranded in the streets of Gaza, without food, water and shelter if attacks on these areas continue.
We have moved beyond the realm of humanitarian action alone. We are in the realm of accountability. I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage.
Hate to ruin your lunch…
But Israel declared a ceasefire, then attacked the people who went out to shop at a local market. 17 killed, over 200 injured.
