Tag Archives: Missile Strikes

Wikileaks has video of Granai Massacre

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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is officially a wanted man. After the arrest of whistleblower Bradley Manning for leaking the Collateral Murder video, the Pentagon announced it is hunting Assange “to talk to him” about 260,000 diplomatic cables which Army Specialist Manning is purported to have passed along as well. Appealing for fans to create Wikileak support groups worldwide, Assange confirmed possession of sensitive material to which he could only allude earlier: the US military’s own video of the “Garani Massacre” (sic), its 2009 airstrike and coverup of the killing of over 140 Afghan civilians, most of them children. Within hours, the claim and Assange’s appeal, were removed from the Wikileaks website.

Assange’s announcement has been propagated by journalists in the Wikileaks email circle, but strangely the call for creating a network of support groups, “Friends of Wikileaks is being given no traction.

The hasty typo of “Garani,” uncorrected, doesn’t serve the cause either. As a keyword, Garani brings up only Assange’s recent Tweet. All news references of the original incident are indexed under “Granai.” Or of course Julian Assange’s earlier codeword, Project G.

That the media is so casual about describing the Wikileaks founder as subject of an “international manhunt” is unfortunately disarming. Assange has had to cancel an appearance in Las Vegas, and a later keynote engagement for 2600 in NYC. Oh hw funny. Pentagon Papers whisleblower Daniel Ellsberg is warning the Assange is facing very real danger of rendition, interrogation, disappearance, even assassination by US drone. The excitement builds?

You can do more than watch Assange dodge missile strikes like Flash Osama. Contact Wikileaks about enlisting as friend or supporter, not just spectator.

Below is the original email from Julian Assange:

WikiLeaks may be under attack.

You were generous enough to write to us, but we have not had the labor resources to respond.

Your support is important to us. Please read all of this email to understand what is going on. We apologize for not getting back to you before. It is not through any lack of interest on our part, but an enforced lack of resources.

One of our alleged sources, a young US intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, has been detained and shipped to a US military prison in Kuwait, where he is being held without trail. Mr. Manning is alleged to have acted according to his conscious and leaked to us the Collateral Murder video and the video of a massacre that took place in Afghanistan last year at Garani.

The Garani massacre, which we are still working on, killed over 100 people, mostly children.

Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy’s engaging in abusive actions all over the world. We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true and we do have a lot of other material that exposes human rights abuses by the United States government.

Mr. Manning was allegedly exposed after talking to an unrelated “journalist” who then worked with the US government to detain him.

Some background on the Manning case:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/06/11/transcript-daniel-ellsberg-says-he-fears-us-might-assasinate-wikileaks-founder/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/state-department-anxious/

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/06/143011.htm

[ note that there are some questions about the Wired reportage, see: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/13/video-wikileaks-foun.html#comment-809677 ]

WikiLeaks a small organization going through enormous growth and operating in an adverserial, high-security environment which can make communication time consuming and the acquisition of new staff and volunteers, also difficult since they require high levels of trust.

To try and deal with our growth and the current difficult situation, we want to get you to work together with our other supporters to set up a “Friends of WikiLeaks” group in your area. We have multiple supporters in most countries and would like to see them be a strong and independent force.

Please write to friends@sunshinepress.org if you are interested in helping with Friends of WikiLeaks in your area. You will receive further instructions.

We also have significant unexpected legal costs (for example flying a legal team to Kuwait, video production. Collateral Murder production costs were $50,000 all up).

Any financial contributions will be of IMMEDIATE assistance.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Support

Please donate and tell the world that you have done so. Encourage all your friends to follow the example you set, after all, courage is contagious.

Julian Assange
Editor in Chief
WIKILEAKS

Osama bin You

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osama-bin-laden-digitally-enhanced-photoSpanish lawmaker Gaspar Llamazares doesn’t accept US apologies for using his likeness in an artist rendition of what the CIA warns its bogeyman Osama bin Laden may look like. The leftist politician finds it hard to believe it’s a simple mistake his mug appears on the latest wanted poster, and wonders what might have been the result if a less-known face had been used. It’s funny enough to laugh at the perceived ineptitude of American intelligence agencies, until you’re stopped at the airport, bundled off to a black site to be tortured, or find yourself a lightening rod for drone missile strikes.

We can ask what were they thinking, or ponder one of the classic traits of state terrorism. Authoritarian brutality applied rationally threatens only the culpable. Harsh consequences meted inexplicably repress everyone.

US extrajudicial reach extends to assassination of spouses and progeny

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In a demonstration that they are closing in on Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, the US military is claiming success with a drone attack on his father-in-law’s Waziristan home, where a missile killed Mehsud’s second wife, three unidentified civilians, and wounded four children.
drone unmanned

The US has posted a $5 million bounty on the head of Mehsud, based on charges he bore responsibility in Benazir Bhutto’s 2007 assassination, and for other suicide bombings. All charges he denies, but the Taliban leader won’t face his accusers long enough for unmanned drones to launch a missile his way.

Zanghra village had been targeted by US drones before, but no bounty had yet been announced for Mehsud’s extended family members. That proved to be no indication that US drone pilots in Nevada would not be carving notches for them.

While American warriors, by doing their missile targeting from the continental US, have made legitimate military targets of Air Force bases in Nevada, California and Colorado. Now they expand the battlefield to include combatant wives, relatives and progeny. As it should be.

(Imagine the relatives and cronies of our economic-war combatants, of our war criminal leaders, and our war industry profiteers; their folks at home contemplating their own culpability and vulnerability to suffer for the crimes by which their benefactors were able to enrich them. You don’t have to be remote piloting the Predators or Reapers, nor raining the Hellfire missiles upon America’s civilian adversaries to merit responsibility — it’s enough to be hollering along to “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue.”)

And, as in the case of Baitullah Mehsud, the extra-judicial assassinations are acceptable for even non-combatants, suspected-of-crimes-only, and their family and extended family.

State terrorist air strike Made in USA

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US droneLatest missile strikes upon Pakistani civilians have been traced to aerial drones flying under markings of the US military. It’s believed the armed pilot-less aircraft are operated from remote control centers in the United States.

As usual, officials for the US deny knowledge of the air strikes.

Terrorism experts know from similar previous acts that the unpredictable and indiscriminate targeting of sovereign citizens is decided from information which originates from torture/interrogation coordinated with client state contractors, ultimately used by gunman at video consoles, operating under cover of state branches of military service.

Do we treat Iraqis worse than dogs?

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Smiling executionerEveryone’s in an uproar about laughing US marines who videotaped themselves throwing an Iraqi pup off the edge of a cliff. I’m so embarrassed Americans can’t show similar alarm for the disposing of Iraqi children or babies. Hopefully this might lead some to be indignant at our soldiers’ equally well reported disrespect for human life.

Dear soldiers, keep the Youtube videos coming. Show us the children you are running over with your convoys, the women and infants you snipers are whacking like moles, the crowds you strafe indiscriminately, the families you bury with missile strikes, the detainees you torture. Put all that on video with your grinning psychopathic smiles. I mean, show us MORE of that. Eventually one of the videos will accidentally include a dog as collateral damage, or a dog losing its owner. Then Americans will empathize.

Is there life after SaveDarfur?

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Update: Retired UN ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi is interviewed on BBC the World: Elder statesmen seek Sudan progress.
Save Darfur from UN peacekeepers of Pax Americana.
If you can’t support the SAVE DARFUR call to arms, where does that leave you?

Is there no “grass roots” non-profit think-tank network supporting financial incentives to encourage benevolent stewardship on the part of the Sudanese government? (Maybe none flush with money.) Is there no one urging US and allies to quit arming those fighting the government forces so that China wouldn’t be called upon to resupply munitions to Khartoum?

That is whose fault?

Is there no congressional representative you can call to suggest legislation laying out diplomatic encouragement in lieu of divestiture and corporate maneuvers to snatch Sudan’s resources from the clutches of the Chinese?

That is whose fault?

Just because an alternative may be a little more complicated than can be explained beneath a compelling poster, is no excuse not to take the high road.

Just because your options are offered as the lesser of two evils: either approve UN peacekeepers or we will have to launch missile strikes, does not mean you have to choose either. Have you only Hillary or Obama to chose for presidential nominee? No you don’t. Would any other candidate stand a chance to be elected? Should you try and see?

Do not ask others to settle for your lack of imagination or stamina.

The War in Iraq

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the war no more
In my opinion, noted chronicler Ken Burns, whom I otherwise respect, does Americans a great disservice to title his multimedia WWII homage THE WAR.

I do resent the President and his enablers admonishing Americans for what may or may not be appropriate behavior “in a time of war.” We were not “at war” during the Cold War or the War on Drugs. And the War on Terror is equally an [existential, so-called] abstraction. Fighting terrorists, including the invasion of Afghanistan, is a police action. If we are talking about apprehension. Missile strikes are extra-judicial assassination. Undeclared military aggression.

But since our soldiers are being sent to war, and there is profound anti-war revulsion, and congress is being asked to collude by providing war funding, and we are detaining combatants which at a minimum should be awarded Prisoner of War status, we cannot escape discussing Iraq as a war, and most notably as an illegal war.

So when Ken Burns calls his WWII tome THE WAR, isn’t it more than slightly dismissive of veterans of all combat since? The Vietnam War lasted three times as long as WWII, to Baby Boomers it was the war. The Korean War, termed a “conflict” to avoid having Congress refuse a declaration of war, is now called the Korean War, even tragically the Forgotten War. World War One before it was The First World War, was known as The Great War, even the War to End All Wars. De facto it WAS THE WAR, but imagine anyone thinking to call it that in the midst of WWII.

Does Burns mean to deny [The] Iraq [War] its significance, even as he might suggest it lacks the legitimacy of WWII, the Just War? As Iraq casualties and atrocities slip from the headlines, it’s hard to see the diversion of WWII nostalgia as helpful.

Iraq may turn out to be simply the opening salvo of THE WAR declared by the corporate west on all of humanity. It deserves its due.

Lebanese rally despite missiles seeking Nasrallah

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Victory rally in BeirutHizb’Allah leader Hassan Nasrallah presided over a Hizb’Allah rally in Beirut today. Was that the headline?
 
Despite Israel’s expressed intent to assassinate Nasrallah, and despite Israel’s ongoing missile strikes on Lebanese and Palestinian political targets, Hassan Nasrallah appears before record breaking numbers of supporters at a victory rally for Hizb’Allah. That’s the headline.