Fond of obscurity since 1991

thepeoplesrecord:

Source

luzfosca:

Gerald Waller

A New Possession: A six-year-old orphan from Austria (above) ecstatically embraces a brand-new pair of shoes just given to him by the Red Cross, 1946

thepeoplesrecord:

“What is left is just pieces of bodies & cloth”: New report details horror of living under drones in Pakistan
September 25, 2012

On the morning of March 17, 2011, Ahmed Jan joined over 40 other people at a bus station in Datta Khel, North Waziristan in Pakistan to settle a community issue in a large meeting, or jirga. The group split up into two circles, about 12 feet apart from each other, and despite the drones buzzing overhead, those present later described feeling “secure and isolated” from the drones. It was a sanctioned meeting and Pakistani authorities had been made aware of it.

Jan was sitting in one of those circles when he heard a “hissing sound.” An instant later a drone-fired missile struck the middle of his group, sending his body flying and killing everyone around him.

At least one more missile was fired, hitting the second group. Another witness, Idris Farid, said, “Everything was devastated. There were pieces - body pieces - lying around. There was lots of flesh and blood.”

At least 42 people were killed that day, many of them civilians. The Obama administration claims, to this day, that all those killed were insurgents.

This information comes from a new report jointly released by human rights attorneys from Stanford and New York University (NYU) that details with disturbing clarity the horror that it is to live in a drone-patrolled region.

The report, which draws on over 130 interviews of Waziris the researchers conducted, is in many ways the clearest evidence yet that the US drone program is not the precise, limited, restrained program US citizens are meant to believe it is. Rather, those interviewed describe a panopticon in which simple acts like going to school, going to the market, even simply gathering in a group in someone’s house, become life-threatening.

“The presence of drones and knowledge that drones can strike anywhere, at any moment, leads civilians to feel routinely anxious about potential strikes,” said Professor Sarah Knuckey, a human rights lawyer at NYU, and former advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, as well as one of the report’s authors, in an interview with Truthout. “They feel helpless to protect themselves.”

Weddings and especially funerals have become nearly impossible to attend. The US often targets funerals for drone strikes, one of many practices associated with the drone program that are very possibly in violation of international law, according to the report’s authors. Those who do attend funerals for those killed by drones, report a nightmarish scene of anonymous body parts buried together because the bodies have been so completely blown apart.

The report states, quoting Idris Farid again:

“The community had to collect [the victims’] body pieces and bones and then bury them like that,” doing their best to “identify the pieces and the body parts” so that the relatives at the funeral would be satisfied they had “the right parts of the body and the right person.”

Khalil Khan, who was at the bazaar when the strike occurred, said when he got to the scene he couldn’t identify body parts. Unsure of what else to do, Khan said he “collect[ed] pieces of flesh and put them in a coffin.”

The report also details the practice referred to as a “double tap,” in which the same target is struck multiple times in quick succession. The result is that locals trying to provide help, and sometimes official humanitarian aid workers, are hit in the follow-up attacks. The authors conclude:

Evidence uncovered by our research team that humanitarian actors may not attend to strikes immediately because of second-strike fears is especially troubling. As UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Christof Heyns observed, “[I]f civilian ‘rescuers’ are indeed being intentionally targeted, there is no doubt about the law: Those strikes are a war crime….”

Pakistan has been the main country where drones have been used, though hardly the only one. Haykal Bafana, a lawyer in Yemen, described his two young daughters’ reaction to seeing a drone. “My daughters were jumping up and down shouting, ‘Aeroplane! Aeroplane!’” he said to me in an email. “I found that extremely disturbing, as I could picture the same scene in other parts of Yemen or Somalia, even as the drone fires a Hellfire missile. Terrifying thought.”

For many in North Waziristan and Yemen, that terrifying thought is an inescapable part of life. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has reported that between 474 and 884 civilians have been killed as a result of drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004. Of those, 176 are children. The report quotes Feroz Ali Khan, whose father-in-law’s home was hit, who described the aftermath of a missile strike: “Whatever is left is just little pieces of bodies and cloth.”

Drones are a bipartisan issue. You can’t cast a vote for a viable candidate in 2012 who won’t continue to - in the words of the report - “terrorize” the people of Pakistan, of Yemen, of Somalia, with flying robots. The ACLU has called the drone program the “centerpiece of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.” Mitt Romney has promised to continue the program on the off-chance he’s elected, andhas even gone so far as to say Pakistanis are “comfortable” with drones.

Beyond that, critics like Glenn Greenwald have argued that the establishment media has served primarily as a tool the Obama administration has used to display its so-called strength in going against accused terrorists. Greenwald and others have argued that nearly all that the public knows about the program comes from leaks that serve to show Obama’s warrior power, while the CIA still refuses to acknowledge the program based on what they call national security grounds.

As a result, people in the US have a hugely favorable view of drones. One survey conducted in June of this year showed a 62 percent approval for drones, while another from February showed an approval rating of 83 percent.

To the extent that we talk about drones at all in this country, we talk about the accused terrorists they ostensibly target. At least one of the reasons those poll numbers are so high is the complete absence of the stories of the people in North Waziristan. This report, which Sarah Knuckey described to Truthout as “intended to insert the stories of those who bear the brunt of US drone strike policies - civilians in North Waziristan - into US public and policy-maker debates,” takes an important step toward achieving that goal.

Source

President Obama has escalated the drone war in several countries to an unforeseen extent. Then we call them savages or terrorists when they fight back & ferociously protest at US embassies.

The US promised freedom & democracy, but all we are doing is destroying entire communities & killing innocent civilians.  

loopez:

I am by no means one of the 12/21/12 fanatics.  However it does seem like this planet really isn’t headed in a positive direction these days.  Awareness and concern are being summarily subjugated by ignorance and denial.  Passive entertainment is replacing intelligent activism.  We’re burying our heads, not in the sand, but in The Real Housewives Of Sand County.  I find myself enjoying a bitter chuckle for a second at the Douglas-Adamsness of it all, if for some reason the world really does end this December 21st - not because of some prophecy, but due to man-made strife or Mother Earth ridding herself of this parasitic infection called consciousness - and while the world burns, we’ll have just enough time to look back over the past year and recall all the apocalypse-themed movies and TV shows and conspiracy theories and jokes we devoted our time to, rather than making the most of our last year of existence.  This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a meme.

(Source: lovingbomber)

thedailywhat:

This Is All Kinds Of Wrong of the Day: TDW reader Chelsey tipped us off to this doozy: Just after 1 a.m. Sunday in Surf City, NC, a U.S. Marine got into a dispute with a cab driver, Charles Hawkesworth; beat him to a pulp; and put him in the hospital with multiple fractures to his face. 

The whole incident was caught on video (Not Safe For Work — language, graphic violence), and the Marine has been identified as 30-year-old Gunnery Sgt. John Adam Kinosh. 

But get this — Kinosh won’t be charged with a felony. 

He checked himself into a psychiatric hospital following the attack, and Island Taxi owner Rex Bowen believes it is to avoid being served with warrants for misdemeanor assault inflicting serious injury, assault inflicting serious injury, and communicating threats. (Since Kinosh used only his fists, he can’t be charged with felony-level offenses.) 

Meanwhile, Hawkesworth is recuperating slowly and will require extensive surgery:

I have several facial fractures and it’s from my sinuses to my eye socket to my cheek bones; it’s a triangular area that has been broken off from the rest of my skull and they need to do reconstructive surgery and reattach that piece of my skull with 3 or 4 steel plates.

A Help Charles donation website has been established in anticipation of upcoming medical bills. 

[thanks, chelsey!]

thepeoplesrecord:

Eleven years later, we are still at war
September 11, 2012

Eleven years later, we are still at war. Bullets, mortars and drones are still extracting payment. Thousands, tens of thousands, millions have paid in full. Children and even those yet to be born will continue to pay for decades to come.

On a single day in Iraq last week there were 29 bombing attacks in 19 cities, killing 111 civilians and wounding another 235. On Sept 9th, reports indicate 88 people were killed and another 270 injured in 30 attacks all across the country. Iraq continues in a seemingly endless death spiral into chaos. In his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for President, Obama claimed he ended the war in Iraq, well… not quite.

The city of Fallujah remains under siege. Not from U.S. troops, but from a deluge of birth defects that have plagued families since the use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus by U.S. forces in 2004. No government studies have provided a direct link to the use of these weapons because no government studies have been undertaken, and none are contemplated.

Dr. Samira Alani, a pediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, told Al Jazeera, “We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine. There are not even medical terms to describe some of these conditions because we’ve never seen them until now.” The photographs are available on line if you can bear to look at what we have wrought. George W. Bush will loudly proclaim his “Pro-life” bona fides, and he’ll tell you he believes “that every child, born and unborn, ought to be protected in law and welcomed into life.” Apparently, “every child” doesn’t apply to the children of Fallujah, and the “law” doesn’t apply to George W. Bush.

Our soldiers, some physically damaged by IED’s, some mentally destroyed by PTSD, will pay for these wars for the rest of their days. Drug and alcohol abuse is out of control. Suicide among the troops is an epidemic. 2,916 Americans were lost in the towers on that fateful day, many, many more have perished in the intervening years.

Today we will be asked to honor the men and woman of our armed forces, but what does honoring the veterans entail? In its most recent report, The Veterans Administration estimates about 107,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. Mental illness plagues 45% of homeless vets and 70% suffer from some kind of substance abuse. So how do you honor our veterans? Are “Support Our Troops” ribbons still in vogue? How does our government honor our veterans other than use them as political pawns in stump speeches and cannon fodder for their wars?

84,000 American troops remain in Afghanistan. While the occupation is rarely mentioned in the U.S. mainstream media, that doesn’t mean the killing has stopped. On average, one U.S. soldier dies everyday. Not an enormous sum, unless it is your mother, father, son or daughter that has perished. Few Americans notice. Afghan loses are not reported. They have loved ones who grieve as well.

Source

thepeoplesrecord:

26 states cut their education budgets for this year
September 5, 2012

States have made deep cuts to their education budgets in the years since the Great Recession, and as their budgets remained crunched by lower levels of tax revenues, more than half are spending less on education this school year than they did last year, a new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found. Overall, 26 states will spend less per pupil in fiscal year 2013 than they spent in 2012, while 35 are still spending less than they did before the recession.

As the chart from CBPP shows, Alaska, Alabama, and Washington are leading the way in education cuts, reducing funding by at least $200 per student.

Education spending isn’t back to its pre-recession levels in nine additional states, including Florida, which is boosting per pupil funding by $273 this year. Over the previous four years, however, Florida cut per pupil spending by $569. Seventeen states, according to CBPP, have cut their education budgets by at least 10 percent over the last five years.

These cuts actually helped make the economic downturn worse, as they forced states and localities to layoff teachers and other education-sector workers. Since 2009, more than 200,000 teaching jobs have vanished.

But the cuts also have damaging effects on America’s education system as a whole. Cutting education budgets forces school districts to scale back services and programs. The cuts, as CBPP notes, can undermine education reform efforts, and since they are often disproportionately targeted at low-income school districts, education cuts can also exacerbate the education gap thatalready exists between low- and high-income students.

Source

Fund education, not wars. 

thepeoplesrecord:

18 US veterans kills themselves each day
September 5, 2012

The month of July set a record high for the number of suicides in the U.S. military. An Army report reveals a total of 38 troops committed suicide last month, including 26 active-duty soldiers and 12 Army National Guard or reserve members — more soldiers than were killed on the battlefield.

The reasons for the increase in suicides are not fully understood. Among explanations, studies point to combat exposure, post-traumatic stress, misuse of prescription medications and personal financial problems. Army data suggest soldiers with multiple combat tours are at greater risk of committing suicide.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta addressed the issue in June at the annual conference on suicide prevention in the military, saying, “Despite the increased efforts, the increased attention, the trends continue to move in a troubling and tragic direction.” We speak with Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard, whose new book is called “The Invisible Wounds of War: Coming Home from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

AMY GOODMAN: The month of July set a record high for the number of suicides in the U.S. military. An Army report revealed a total of 38 troops—26 active-duty soldiers, another 12 National Guard or reserve members—are believed to have committed suicide in July, the highest rate recorded in a month since the Army started tracking detailed statistics on such deaths. More U.S. soldiers died in July by taking their own lives than on the battlefield.

We recently spoke to Iraq War veteran  Aaron Hughes  about suicides in the military.

AARON HUGHES: Every day in this country 18 veterans are committing suicide. Seventeen percent of the individuals that are in combat in Afghanistan, my brothers and sisters, are on psychotropic medication. Twenty to 50 percent of the individuals that are getting deployed to Afghanistan are already diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, military sexual trauma or a traumatic brain injury. Currently one-third of the women in the military are sexually assaulted. It’s clear that these policies of the global war on terror has had a profound effect on the military, my brothers and sisters, while simultaneously perpetuating a failed policy. And unfortunately, we have to live with that failed policy on a daily basis, and we don’t want to be a part of that failed policy anymore.

Full interview

“Support our troops” really does end when they are no longer soldiers.