Tag Archives: Snipers

White mass shooters are not terrorists. They present no pretext for retaliation. Remember, the Global War On Terror?

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Stephen Paddock sniper nest in Mandalay Bay Hotel Las Vegas
Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock is not a terrorist. That’s not because you or anyone is a racist for thinking only darker-skinned Jihadists are terrorists. “Terrorism” is a bureaucratic contrivance, as in, The Global War On Terror. It means nothing, but apparently provides legal justification to enforce American global hegemony with military strikes on “supporters of terror”. Of course it doesn’t. It’s artifice. Naturally the public wants to see the charge of terrorism applied equitably to all mass murderers who terrorize the public. Like they want to see police brutality applied liberally to white crime suspects not just black. Like they want to see children charged as adults when the media is fomenting their anger.

Terrorism is a semantic contrivance. It’s how we denounce US adversaries and their desperate means to counter our asymetric military superiority. Our bombs don’t terrorize, their hand delivered bombs do. The Nazis accused resistance fighters of being terrorists.

“Hate Speech” is another contrivance. Priests used to be allowed to burn parishoners for it, priests called it blasphemy. Secular indignants avoid calling it heresy. The Enlightenment was supposed to mark the west’s transcendance of the fear of heretics. Hate Speech is how Americans dismiss unsavory opinion. Fortunately the courts have struck down hate speech laws for what they always were, violations of the First Amendment, but the concept is still a litmus test by which the public wants to pin the ears of irritating speakers.

Likewise the term “genocide”. THAT’S a crime only other nations commit. And only when retaliation suits our agenda. After Rwanda, the UN contrived that charges of genocide mandate international action. As a result, genocide doesn’t mean genocide unless somebody wants to invade. Oil interests are currently eyeing Burma.

Terrorism, hate speech, and genocide are real things, but they are real offenses of which our government is far more culpable than you, or the random deviant individual white male mass shooter.

Does it matter then, if individuals are accused of terrorism when the state is not? I’ll offer you two examples of other contrivances. Conspiracy and racketeering. Both are heavily trafficked by our corporations and government, but easily applied to people whose enterprise authorites want to deem criminal. I just witnessed the trial of two legal reform activists, charged and convicted of both counts. When the law applies to you and not to those enforcing the law, it’s time to stop cheerleading for the prosecution.

Stephen Paddock terrorized, but who do you really fear now that he’s dead –another random white man with too many guns? I’ll wager you’re afraid of the too many guns, their too wide availability, or the purveyors, who keep assault rifles legal in the US to obfuscate the mass manufacture of guns for international arms trafficking. The weapons industry terrorizes.

Judged by intent, the common wife beater is a terrorist. No question, but see? The distinction is unhelpful. How about we call Stephen Paddock a SNIPER. He was that. The Route 91 concert venue was his paramilitary free-fire zone. Paddock may now hold the world record for most American citizens sniped, but his feat pales as uniformed North American white male snipers go.

A hero does not shoot an unarmed man in the back, then pose for trophy photo.

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SORRY, NO. And I’ve seen this composition before. Abu Ghraib. Or any of the trophy shots found on the digital cameras of US soldiers in free fire zones. These officers are holding up for display a critically injured man struggling to breathe. Shortly he’ll be interrogated while still in intensive care, while America pretends this is justice.

Sergeant Jay Cook saw escapee David Sweat running for the dense woods. No, shooting an unarmed man in the back does not fall within rules of engagement, neither for border patrol nor fugitive manhunt. Sergeant Cook was among a posse of thousands, including all variety of aircraft and vehicles. Though Sweat had evaded capture for 21 days, this was the first direct sighting. Cook was too porcine to make chase, but did he think the prisoner could outrun everything else? Shooting Sweat twice in the back was an act of cowardice, like that of snipers or drone pilots. Jay Cook is an American Hero for the Police State.

When Michael Moore said snipers are cowards, he gave Americans a pass

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Michael Moore criticized AMERICAN SNIPER for glamorizing snipers, because they are in essence cowards who shoot victims in the back. It hit home, no doubt because exploiting the unfair advantage, shooting people unseen, doesn’t just apply to soldiers who carry sniper rifles. The act of targeting people who can’t fight back is carried out by many more specialists than snipers. It applies to helicopter gunners, soldiers who shoot civilians, soldiers who use night vision goggles, drone operators, bomber pilots, and of course the entire Chair-Force and Navy, whose every shot is taken from afar. America’s war machine is designed to target the lesser-abled. In the title AMERICAN SNIPER, I’m not sure the second word describes cowards more than the first.

NE Patriots are serial cheaters, so are their namesakes. The unfair advantage is an essential of Capitalism.

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First the New England Patriots got caught spying on their adversaries, now they’ve been tweaking the air-pressure of their game balls to sneak a ballistic handling advantage. Rules be damned, Patriot quarterback Tom Brady prefers his ordnance two pounds psi shy, hollow-points –if you will– which are also against regulation. For how long have the Patriots been manipulating advantages? And how else? They weren’t satisfied with the home field advantage on Sunday. Maybe officials should bring protractors to investigate the Boston gridiron. A level playing field doesn’t likely suit the Patriots either.

OF COURSE it doesn’t. Who expects sportsmanship from “patriots?!” Patriotism is the antisocial insistance on your own cultural superiority. American exceptionalism is an endorsement of tactical superiority, covert war, disproportionate force, drones, extrajudicial assassination, death squads, snipers, collateral damage, and torture. Formal US policy is to FLAUNT international law. American materialism profits from insider trading, extortion, usury, and corporate hegemony uber alles! Why would our surrogate Sunday warriors pretend there is honor among thieves?

Of course America underinflates footballs to best our opponents. We also diligently deploy inspectors to ensure our intended defeatees can’t recallibrate theirs. Meanwhile our leaders dissemble when plausible deniability stretches thin.

Of course NFL officials are not discussing a Super Bowl disqualification for the recidivist Patriots. Instead they’re weighing minor penalties, no doubt manageable, if not tax deductible. If America’s best cheaters don’t advance to the Super Bowl, the outcome would be hypocritical. Go Team! America Fuck Yeah!

I’m kidding of course. Sack the quarterback, disqualify the Patriots, send whoever else to the Super Bowl, then march the entire US defense and offense departments to the Hague.

UPDATE 1/23:
While fans and media try to belittle the scandal (ie. “Deflate-gate” and “Ballghazi”), statisticians have noted a damning anomaly relating to the advantage gained from underinflated footballs. After the rules were changed to allow offensive teams to use their own footballs –Brady was among the quarterbacks lobbying for the change– New England’s ball handling superiority grew beyond the realm of probability.

Probably all teams know that well-inflated footballs fly further but underinflated balls are easier to grab. Maybe the purpose of making a personalized array of game balls available is so offensive teams can exploit alternate characteristics as needed. Maybe the NFL understood this when they granted the rule change. Maybe the Patriots just couldn’t pass up every opportunity to cheat, until the statistics made plain their greed. Whether by hubris or head-injury numbskulledness, Tom Brady and his receivers thought they coud break PT Barnum’s rule too.

The American Dream hinges on equality of opportunity and fair play, but of course Capitalism idealizes the unfair advantage.

Btw I abhor the theatre of corporate sports, but when it exposes the reek of America’s national character, I like to make sure to smell it.

Je suis a manipulated photo, like statue of Saddam toppled by fake Iraqi crowd

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HEY! Where are the Parisian masses supposed to have been marching behind the World Leaders?! Media images were cropped to suggest the Euro cabal headed the populist march, but a long shot establishes the illusion to have been a lie. It turns out the forty figureheads held their own parade for Charlie Hebdo in a vast no man’s land of high security. Video footage shows the leaders surrounded by only media, beckened to move hither and forth to simulate an advance, marching in place more or less like a chorus line of marionettes.

The photo-op is disgracefully contrived, the subjects looking cluelessly right and left at imaginary onlookers, waving occasionally at what are probably only government snipers on the rooftop. An audio track records applause generated by a small number of determined clappers, while stage managers bark cadences to prompt the line forward, repeating “Vite, vite, vite” and “Ein, Zwei, Drei.”

The complicity of the international press recalls the iconic toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue by US marines, flanked by an entourage of Iraqi collaborators made to look like jubulant masses by means of judiciously cropped camera angles, unmasked in the alternative press by under-populated far shots. Even if the leaders’ isolation is dismissed as pragmatic, what does a complicit media tell you about whose agenda is rolling out the JE SUIS CHARLIE offensive?

The impromptu summit had media waxing that Paris at that moment was the “Capitol of the World.” An Anglo-Capitalist Putsch, yes. The march in Paris was a self-congratulatory televised re-declaration of the War On Islam. President Obama’s non-attendance is a red herring, and points to another missed opportunity. Had Obama been any kind of people’s hero he could have sent a drone in his stead to dispatch this Islamophobic assembly like just another Afgan wedding party.

Can we hope the Ukraine government snipers hit OTPOR & CIA provocateurs egging on the fascist suppremacists?

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Protesters are being killed in Kiev, and revolutionaries enthusiasts are buying into the Western Media narrative. Even Democracy Now is parroting the theme, describing the demonstrations as opposing their government’s rejecting closer ties to the European Union. “Closer ties?” Ukraine was rejecting growing indebtedness to EU banks, favoring a bailout from Putin instead. Let’s remember that Senator John McCain jetted to Kiev to rally the uprising, seeing it as part of the rolling “freedom movement” not coincidentally encircling Russia, the former Soviets now no longer foe to Capitalism but rival. Unfortunate developments have led to government snipers firing at the “rebels” many of whom are dupes but many too are supremacist fascists not particularly misguided about US-EU hegemony. Perhaps we can find consolation in the hope that Ukrainian snipers were able to hit the OTPOR and CIA provocateurs coordinating the urban warriors.
 
I support all popular uprisings, but unfortunately US covert ops have picked up on our game. The only way to insulate rebellions against Western provocateurs is to build movements around political ideology they will not embrace. For the onlooker, ideology is also the means to discern destabilitation projects parading as protest. If the offending government is anti-Western-Capitalism, our counterinsurgency ops are there. Of course Socialist, Islamic, or non-World Bank client regimes are not imune to being authoritarian, but hardly more so than the Capitalist empire. Often US adversaries are forced to authoritarian measures by US covert ops working to destabilize them.

Fake sign language interpreter gets it right at Mandela memorial, speeches were gibberish

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Everyone’s in an uproar about the sign language interpreter at the memorial for Nelson Mandela. Apparently he was illiterate, but what about the speeches he was tasked to translate, were they not gibberish? I guess the hearing-impared missed President Obama criticizing the use of prison walls and snipers. They would have suspected an authentic interpretation of Obama admonishing other leaders for not tolerating voices of dissent. Apparently also, critics faulted the imposter for his emotionless delivery: “He also used no facial expression to convey the emotions of the leaders.” So he got that right too.

No! No War On Syria! Bad Dog of War! Bad Dog! Off my leg you ill-mannered Yankee cur!

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STAY OUT OF SYRIAThe carnage in Syria should “shock our conscience” really? It’s fraternity hazing compared to US collateral atrocities. And how simply grotesque for an American statesman to accuse anyone of “moral obscenity”. Is the USG so sure another Maning or Snowden isn’t going to unveil the real agents behind the “chemical attack” and the unidentified snipers firing on UN inspectors? And using Kosovo as a precedent for an air war to depose Bashar Assad, we’ve seen it before, and it was illegal then.

Should the London Olympics remember the 1972 Munich Holocaust? Do you?

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America can’t memorialize the 1972 Munich hostage killings, because that act of terrorism was not unlike our own airstrikes or special ops raids, against purported enemy combatants, off the field of combat, except we don’t even try to kidnap them alive.
 
Of course the Israeli Olympic wrestlers and weightlifters killed in Munich in 1972 should be memorialized. But to call the deaths a massacre pretends the German police meant their ambush to kill everyone.* What happened at the 1972 Olympics is being recalled as the “Munich Massacre” but even the propagandists tweaking the Wikipedia entry don’t have the temerity to doff the disclaimer that “massacre” is the informal name. Shall we recall what happened? On September 5, 1972, PLO terrorists infiltrated the Olympic village and tried to kidnap Israeli hostages to exchange for 234 Palestinians held by Israel. Two Israelis fought back and were killed. Next the eight gunman and their nine captives were led into an ambush at a military airfield. After a 1 & 1/2 hour gun battle on the tarmac, trapped under the helicopters by police snipers, the PLO killed four of their captives. A police investigation revealed the remaining five captives may have died in sniper crossfire. This detail is disputed, but a secret financial settlement was sought and reached with German authorities. So, was Munich a massacre or a botched hostage rescue? Do words matter? The Mossad’s retaliatory murder of an innocent Moroccan waiter in Norway, mistaken for the Munich mastermind, is trivialized as the Lillehammer Affair.

Proponents want an Olympic tribute to the Munich Massacre “so that it never happens again.” Boy does that ever have a familiar ring to it. Look out for an Elie Wieselish re-tailoring of the original narrative, Steven Spielberg’s Munich being only a recent example of a myth-makeover remembrance.

To begin with, the PLO kidnappers were a faction of the PLO called the Black September Brigade, named after the Black September purge of the PLO from Jordan. This ouster, aided by the US and fought by Syria, was initiated by Israel’s attack on the village of Karameh, in which the PLO suffered 200 killed, to the IDF’s 28. Not a massacre because 150 PLO fighters were taken captive. Wikistorians taking liberties with translation are calling the PLO group “Black September”, with the effect of obfuscating the event which preceded the Munich operation.

The Munich raid to seize hostages was actually named “Operation Iqrit and Kafr Bir’im” after the Christian villages of Kafr Bir’im and Iqrit, ethnically cleansed by Israel in 1948. Villagers were granted right of return by Israel’s supreme court, but overruled by the military. An attempt to return had been repulsed by police as recently as August 1972, as the Olympics began.

Next, the identity of the Israeli athletes is always left incomplete. With the exception of the 18 year old Russian immigrant, all the Israeli hostages were IDF soldiers who’d participated in military acts against Palestine, Egypt, lebanon, Jordan, or Syria, and so are not exactly the innocent civilians of current retellings.

Who killed the Israeli captives during the gun battle with German police? An immediate investigation found that sniper fire may have hit the captives, as it had also severely wounded a fellow policeman. A cover-up long obscured the official reports. While this could be pretended to protect the German participants, it also kept the blame on the PLO gunmen, which would have been critical to justify Israel’s “eye for an eye” revenge killings.

Did the gunman strafe their hostages with bullets upon seeing the arrival of the police armored reinforcements? The only witness accounts come from the German authorities. We might accept that the lead PLO gunman lobbed a grenade into the first helicopter with the intention of killing the four hostages it contained, if they were still alive. An autopsy revealing that one of the Israelis died from the flames is used the emphasize that the grenade, and thus a PLO terrorist, certainly killed him.

Though the German police admitted potential culpability for the deaths of the five hostages in the second helicopter, a later analysis put convenient blame on a particular gunman, one of them ones captured and who eventually escaped justice by being released. Certainly this narrative would be critical if Israel hoped for popular support for their effort to hunt the gunman down.

Many of Israel’s revenge killings involved car bombs which risked collateral deaths and injuries. Assassinating the “mastermind” killed eight others, including a nun, and injured 18 more.

Whether the PLO gunmen killed the Israelis or not, even the operation’s planners can’t be said to have intended it. No one masterminded a massacre.

Of the PLO participants in Munich, five gunman were killed, and three were captured. Those three were released weeks later to meet the demands of a subsequent hijacking. Israel’s Mossad boasted of having tracked them down and assassinated them shortly thereafter. But accounts vary, and one of them was interviewed decades later for a documentary. What’s known is that Israel implemented an “eye for an eye” operation that over 20 years hunted and killed 20-35 Palestinian targets. They weren’t sought out to take hostage but to murder, and most of them were unconnected to the Black September Brigade. The Mossad long-arm-of-the-law theme was less about revenge than deterrence, because anyone who might have masterminded or abetted the Munich plot was planning a kidnapping not a murder.

If a massacre is measured by an imbalance of casualties, let’s look at the numbers. After 11 Israelis were murdered, Israel retaliatory airstrikes killed 200 in Syria and Lebanon, an IDF raid killed up to 100 in Lebanon, and the Mossad targeted up to 35 in subsequent assassinations. Here’s an accounting:

Sept 5-6, 1972
11 Israeli athletes, coaches former IDF
(2 killed by BSB in initial break-in, 9 killed during the ambush rescue attempt, possibly by crossfire)
1 German police
5 PLO gunmen

Sept 8, 1972
IAF retaliatory airstrikes on PLO bases in Syria and Lebanon.
200 Palestinians killed, including women and children

IDF Operation “SPRING OF YOUTH” raid on Lebanon, April 1973
3 PLO suspected planners
12-100 PLO members
1 PLO wife
1 Italian woman
2 Lebanese policemen
Unknown number of Lebanese civilians

Mossad Operation “WRATH OF GOD”, (20-35 targets over 20 years)
PLO translator of disputed BSB involvement, Oct 1972
PLO senior official, December 1972
Palestinian activist “expertly” pushed under bus, London, 1972
Jordanian Fatah rep, January 1973
Law professor at Am Univ of Beirut, April, 1973
Replacement for Fatah rep, Athens, April 1973
(2 BSB minor members injured, Rome, April 1973)
PLO director of operations for BSB, June 1973
Moroccan waiter, mistaken identity, Norway, July 1973
3 Arab-looking men, Switzerland, January 1974
Arab security guard, Spain, August 1974
PLO rep, blamed on the Abu Nidal Org, London, January 1978
2 PLO reps, Paris, August 1978 (3 injured)
PLO suspected “mastermind”, car-bomb, January 1979, also killed:
4 Bodyguards
1 British student
1 German nun
2 Lebanese passersby (also 18 injured)
PLO military head, Cannes, July 1979
2 Palestinians, December, 1979
PLO rep, Brussels, June 1981
2 PLO senior figures, car bomb, Rome, June 1982
PLO senior official, car bomb, Paris, July 1982
PLO senior official, drive-by, Athens, August 1983
PLO Secretary-General, drive-by, Athens, June 1986
PLO official, car bomb, Athens, October 1986
2 Palestinians, car bomb, Cyprus, February 1988 (1 other wounded)
PLO suspected head of intelligence, June 1992

What’s that? The ratio is 11 to 335 and the Israelis want to call it a massacre? If you count the Palestinians killed in the initial Black September attack on the PLO in Jordan, the comparison becomes irrelevant.

But the Munich ratio is nothing compared to the 1,500 Gazans killed in Operation Cast Lead. Now there’s a massacre.

*ON THE OTHER HAND. The botched hostage rescue in Munich might very well have been a massacre. Do we really want to go there? The German snipers who initiated the gun battle at Furstenfeldbruck Airbase may really have behaved with a total disregard to the fate of the Israeli hostages. With the antisemitism that prevailed in Europe, and still prevails there among the working classes, it’s very likely the policemen looked at the gunmen and their captives with equal scorn. If the bound Israelis weren’t hit in the crossfire, it could certainly be held that the sniper attack provoked their killing. The coverup and subsequent private financial settlement reached between Germany and the Israeli survivors suggests a culpability of the like. In that respect, if European Jews look back at Munich 1972 and say it was a massacre, I believe them.

Step on up folks, He-Who-Shoots-From-Cover Indian name hits nerve with identity-obscuring internet trolls

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A little bird tells me there’s been a discussion on Facebook, an overnight marathon of name-calling about ME. Alias-extrovert Agent Doubt offered a beer or coffee to whoever could come up with the best quip to counter my Indian-name for Chairforce pilots and other US soldiers who wield disproportionate force: He Who Shoots From Cover. I guess this sobriquet hit too close to home for identity-concealing internet snipers too. In any case, it looks like Doubt’s outsourcing his creativity again, and sneaking the makings of a date on an unsuspecting winner.

Semper Fido Bitches

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Semper FidelisCOLO. SPRINGS– Tough crowd at this week’s antiwar bannering: the usual plentiful honks of support, but now intermittent servicemen heckling in crew-cutted indignation. And we haven’t yet inaugurated our WARMONGERS GO TO HELL banner. The best the driver of a white van-load of them could muster was “Semper Fi” so they must have been Marines because they shout it like it means “America! Fuck Yeah!” Are they taught it’s abbreviated Latin for Always Faithful? I believe Fidelis is the root of Fido.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Man’s faithful companion, the original boot-licker.

Faithful to what honestly? Not the Constitution, or law, liberty or the will of the American People. The US military boot-licking dogs pledge an oath to big oil and the rest of the corporate monied interests. Semper Bitches.

Another soldier-driver asked me with smug arrogance, where was my sign that read “Support the Troops?” Huh? I don’t support the troops. Does he support baby killers, rapists, torturers, drone-pilot-cowards and snipers? WTF. We parted calling each other names. Hippie. Blimp-neck enabler. Dirty hippie. Moron.

Do the other branches of the Defense Department resent the Marines because they don’t have their own pithy Latin je-ne-sais-quoi –literally– to represent their own mistaken-self identity? The Navy and Air Force already have a Native American name, he-who-shoots-from-cover. US Army GIs can modify the USM slogan: Semper Fuckers.

Crowd builds in Al Tahrir Square, Cairo, two million defy Mubarak intimidation

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Al Jazeera has reasserted live footage in Cairo today, for the Friday demonstration billed as “Day of Departure” meant to depose dictator Mubarak. Already gone are the US major network talking heads, fleeing in advance the predicted mayhem as if to dot the exclamation point of their Chaos in Egypt meme. Alas, they won’t be here to offer color commentary on the hundreds of dozens of demonstrators of indeterminate religious-political orientation massing for Egyptian on Egyptian rioting. For the rest of us, this is a veritable revolution before our eyes. Perhaps the monumental event of our lifetime. Regardless the outcome, most of us are probably so estranged from reality to recognize it. This is what Democracy looks like.

We only know representative democracy, warped beyond recognition by an electoral college system only a statistician’s mother could love. Switzerland is the only direct democracy we’re taught in school. But democratic participation in Switzerland is not much more complicated than a homeowners association in an affluent neighborhood. People power taking to the street, denouncing the illegitimacy of its authoritarian masters, leaderless, allied, that’s real democracy.

What a shame the American celebrities are missing the party. Williams and Couric fled with the expat community, Amanpour is already giving her veneer of respectability to the next interviewee, Zuckerberg not Assange, because the corporate media wants to call this a Facebook revolution sooner than Wikileaks’. Anderson Cooper is cowering on the hotel floor of an undisclosed location, unafraid to confess that he’s fearing for his life, working that [brown] people-are-revolting angle.

On the heroic independent media side, Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous spent the night in Tahrir Square, sleeping among the activists, half of them with bandaged heads, waking at intervals by the alarm sounding for anticipated stone-throwers.

None of the network journos showed any hesitation to criticize the harassment they encountered on the streets, though blaming Mubarak’s thugs was never explicit, and none of them veered from celebrating the riots as “Egypts killing each other.” Even Al Jazeera pretended to confuse the Pro and Anti sides, failing to discriminate between the side which was armed from the side taking cover, the knife wielders from desperate stone throwers trying to keep their attackers at bay.

Finally this morning an AJ text crawl mentioned 300 fatalities since the protests began January 25th, otherwise there has been scant mention of innocent civilians killed, some of them shot in the head by nighttime snipers.

All of the networks, even Al Jazeera express their incredulity that the demonstrators project no central leadership, failing to speculate why that may be.

Al Jazeera takes care to mention, every time they consult one of their three correspondents on the ground, that they omit speaker identities “for their own safety.” Even when they interview activists, the AJ anchors thank them for being brave enough to reveal their real names. Not discussed is the certain probability that calling out a demonstration leader will direct the security apparatus to deploy their snipers, summary arrest, or detention of family members. As the media wax horrific the barbarity of Cairo’s street culture chaos, they maintain a rudely unrealistic civil pretense to mask Egypt’s cruel police state.

My nightmare scenario, now that I’m looking over millions of peaceful undaunted Egyptians chanting for deliverance from their uncaring dictator? I worry about the US advisors reported to have flown into Cairo this morning, reassuring their cabby, it was reported, that everything was going to be fine.

I worry that Washington has spot on advice to offer Mubarak about how to respond to a “million man march.” After all, that’s old hat for DC. Let ’em eat waffle cake.

American protesters get the same response from Obama as they did from Bush 43. Praise for the glorious display of citizens exercising their constitutional rights. Talk away, shout it to the rooftops. Feel better? I hear you America. Thank you for your faith in the system. You are the change you’ve been waiting for. Please collect your refuse on the way out. Be sure to leave something in the hat to cover the expense of the Port-a-Johns. Thank you America, I’m honored, really. Yes we can, see you at the polls in 2012. Thank you for flying Air of Democracy. Bu’bye.

DC Sniper John Allen Muhammad was early post-911 Muslim Avenger

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john allen muhammad beltway sniperWhat morbid fortuity that as President Obama heads to Fort Hood to commemorate the victims of renegade Nidal Malik Hasan, preparations are being made for the execution of another Islamic avenger, the Beltway sniper. As Americans satiate their blood lust against Muslims in the person of John Allen Muhammad who is scheduled to die tonight by lethal injection, perhaps comparisons to Major Hasan will draw attention to the ideological motives behind the 2002 shooting spree. We don’t have to like them, but it would obviously pay us to listen.

Not to excuse the Washington DC killings, nor suggest that the Gulf War veteran and convert to Islam is any less a cold-blooded murderer, but TV crime shows have painted he and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo as sadistic serial killers, completely burying the sociopolitical elements which tie the snipers to the Global War On Terror/Islam, the legacy of the African American struggle, and its extreme incarnation as the Black Liberation Army.

Muhammad maintains his innocence, primarily because the evidence implicating him remains circumstantial. He was convicted on the strength of partner Malvo’s testimony, and recently lost a Supreme Court appeal. In his testimony, Malvo described three phases to Muhammad’s murderous plans. First was to be the sniper killings, which the two calculated could claim six victims a day. Phase two involved plans to murder a policeman and set bombs at the site of his funeral, to claim an unprecedented toll of police casualties. With money extorted from the government in return for a cessation to the killings, Muhammad and Malvo planned to retreat to Canada, where they planned to build a Utopian community for other disenfranchised African American men, where they would be trained for bigger and more numerous missions against the US.

While I can understand US public figures having to distance themselves from Muhammad, I’m not sure why the organizations speaking out for US political prisoners weren’t showing their solidarity for his motives. Were Muhammad’s ambitions much different from the freedom fighters of the EZLN? Does the rejection of Muhammad reflect the post 9/11 pallor of insurrection in word only?

The case against Major Hasan proceeds apace with the usual unofficial press leaks. I heard reporters site sources who don’t want to be identified by name, in deference to the legal constraints of the ongoing investigation. The accusations they make against Hasan, however, for the benefit of the media outlets, reflects not a concern for Hasan’s due process, but rather their fear for getting themselves in trouble. But the media is eating it up.

Who killed Neda Agha-Soltan?

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neda soltaniThe video footage is shocking. An attractive young woman watching the demonstrations in Tehran is struck by a sniper’s bullet and dies before several video cameras. The tragedy is projected unto Facebook and Youtube, with advocates hoping it will galvanize (American) public support for the brave reform movement in Iran. News accounts blame “Basij snipers” on the rooftops. Other protesters have been killed in confrontations with Iranian riot police, without the benefit of video witnesses, much like two million Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis et al. Poor 27-year-old bystander Neda Soltani stood at the quite improbable convergence of bullet and camera –correction– cameras. I don’t have to suggest the scene was staged; whether or not the triggerman was an American is immaterial.

Think about just the improbability of your seeing this video. When was the last time the mainstream press has circulated a snuff film? The average person is embarrassed to watch a person die. It’s exploitive. Even when America was fixated on beheaded hostages, our television gatekeepers refused to broadcast the footage. Many horrific war killing moments have found their way unto Youtube, which antiwar activists could only hope would find wider distribution, if only to bring home the inhumanity of our soldiers’ deeds. It never happens.

The western press is running with this story because it demonizes the apparently naked inhumanity of Islam. Muslims stone women, hang gays, look: the bastards shoot their own people arbitrarily. Curiously our media doesn’t make hay with the hapless victims of US snipers.

neda salehi agha soltanThe Neda Soltani snuff footage hit internet shores prepackaged with a smiling mug, and a name that translated means “the voice.” Could a casting director have picked a better title character to represent Iran’s repressed? The western press is even poised to outdo the Muslims in indignant piety, already lauding Neda as a martyr, whom we are informed should launch a thousand Shiite funeral processions. Western pundits compare Neda to the first Shiite martyr, the grandson of Mohammed himself.

Of course, also showing excessive Islamic sensitivity, western reporters readily dismiss the vanishing of Neda’s body, to the Muslim tradition of hasty burials. For the record, in case you missed it, Neda dies onscreen from an apparent gunshot. We do not see the bullet strike, nor now can anyone habeas corpus.

If the scenario was acted entirely, given the success with which the girl’s face is being made into an icon, young Neda’s life is probably as utterly expendable now as already depicted. You think you’re mourning Neda now, imagine her fate if this is a hoax.

OR the gunman could just as well have been a US black-op hit-man who had his eye on the videographers approaching innocent Neda. The US military has long admitted that special forces are already operating in Iran. If the Iranian forces are shooting civilian protesters, what’s the harm of helping them out where there’s a camera ready?

When we’re not meant to see it, the soldiers shoot the cameramen too.

It could be the work of Moussavi henchmen, who are our henchmen.

The Green Revolution, or TwitterTM Revolution, rebranded a “Social Media Revolution,” is a fabrication of the US pro-democracy agents working to destabilize Iran. They are hard at work in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Bolivia, and everywhere regimes threaten US globalization by enslavement. Remember the Orange Revolution? Any movement that is color-coded is the work of organizers reading US how-to manuals or attending OTPOR training seminars.

Where are the international voices decrying election fraud in Iran? No one other than the US and its stooges is asserting that populist leader Ahmadinejad did not win by a landslide. Only Iran’s urban middle class has taken to the streets of Tehran. And to protest what? Their minority standing in Iran?

The reformists in Iran are protesting democracy, not the failure of democracy. They are protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard line against irreligious western economic and colonial policies which traditionally benefit the secular urban elite. “Pro-Democracy” is neoliberal for pro-capitalist plunder.

See: Shah’s Son Backs Iranian Protesters.

Like the “dissidents” of Cuba, the Green greenback-seekers are marching on the CIA’s dime, and being meted the fate of foreign provocateurs. I have no doubt the majority are idealists and are well-intended, but like the Kurds who rose against Saddam Hussein, the US has set them up for slaughter, the sooner to motivate western support for military aggression against their evil regime.

Our media pundits point out that the protest banners are written in English, a sign that the Iranians are desperate to appeal to American viewers. They dismiss Iranian accusations of the demonstrations being US-backed as pure paranoia, and ignore the most simple explanation behind the English slogans, and the websites and networks amplifying the message to English speakers: these materials are being crafted by USAID advisers. This is a propaganda campaign aimed at Western ears, to call for regime change in Iran.

Neda’s Theme is tried and true: Jessica Lynch, Roxana Saberi, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, Neda Salehi Agha Soltan. Onward Christian Soldiers.

Neda Agha Soltan iranian martyr victim of US sniperThe American public won’t believe another fiction about Kuwaiti babies dumped from incubators, or of Belgian children impaled on the bayonets of the evil Hun. So Madison Avenue has upped the amperage. Today’s television armchair adjudicators have to see innocent young women snuffed on film before our eyes. Provided to us by a press too otherwise prurient to show us the mass of death we deal everyday.

The Iranians in the streets, and poor pretty Neda, are being sacrificed by heartless US strategists. I doubt even an errant Iranian bullet can match the American military for cruelty.

Black Pirates meted Southern Justice

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US Navy Seals recover captive lifeboat from the USS Maersk Alabama
Dutch NATO forces rescued 20 hostages off the coast of Africa last week without loss of life. They thwarted a pirate attack, confiscated the booty, but must release the captured pirates owing to International Maritime Law. Contrast this with American cowboy rules of engagement.

Several US Navy warships faced a solitary lifeboat on which three teenage Somali pirated held hostage Maersk Alabama captain Richard Phillips. The covered lifeboat remained tethered to the stern of one of the Navy ships while negotiations, we’re told, progressed.

Going into day three, before the American TV audience could lose interest, US Navy Seals rescued the captive Phillips at a cost of a 100% casualty rate to the pirates. Although the DoD did not initially want to reveal its anti-pirate tactics, spokesmen have admitted that the “daring rescue” was in effect three precisely-simultaneous sniper shots to the heads of the three captors. The fourth pirate already having been entrusted to the US ship’s custody for medical care. The captain freed, the wounded pirate’s collateral was thus gone, and his grant of safe-passage was rescinded.

The official story is that US infrared imagery revealed that the American captive’s life was in danger. One of the pirates was holding a gun to his head, and this act prompted the snipers to intervene. Negotiations, apparently, were not proving fruitful. I’m guessing that this account reflects the exact opposite of what happened. The navy snipers had been holding their fire until the moment Captain Phillip was NOT in a pirate’s crosshairs.

Although the Somali pirates were just teens, I bet they knew from brutal experience, what most of us know from violent television, that holding your gun to a hostage’s head is the only way to prevent your rivals from gunning you down. Trapped in a lifeboat, the pirates knew that high powered US weaponry would be trained upon each of their heat silhouettes. The moment their captive was not in the predicted trajectory of the crossfire, nor threatened by a collateral death-spasm squeeze of a trigger, the pirates would be toast.

The rescue operation began with a greater-than-three number of US snipers aiming weapons at the little boat. The more the better, to assure that at every instant, complicated by the rocking and turning of the lifeboat in the waves, at least one sniper could claim one pirate, without the hostage laying vulnerable to leeward bullets. The images in the sniper scopes were wired to a director’s console, where the determination could be made when all three targets were spoken for, and the order could be given to fire. The last hurdle remained for the pirate who held his gun on the hostage to drop his guard for just an instant, lest he squeeze off a round into the hostage. Wanna bet that’s what happened?

Great marksmanship, no question. Plenty of training no doubt. We can take nothing away from the heroism shown in braving responsibility for jeopardizing Captain Phillip’s life. It is probably also a common law enforcement strategy. Although that doesn’t make it legal.

Unless the US Navy releases the targeting footage, we are unlikely to confirm the true sequence of events. But where the pirate’s gun was pointing makes a difference. The Navy is explaining that it acted because Phillips’ life was at stake. Otherwise, shooting people who are not shooting at you is considered underhanded.

The Dutch navy forces bay have bellyached that they had to turn loose their captured pirates, instead of leaving them imprisoned somewhere, but the Dutch had seized them in Somali waters, where the pirates operate as their nation’s only Coast Guard. The Dutch NATO commandos prevented an attack, and liberated the detainees being held by the de-facto Somali border agents, and their directive ended there.

The US on the other hand, executed three “Somali Pirates,” regardless the varying degree of culpability the individuals might have had.

Without a day in court, that’s extra-judicial murder. If you consider these were three African youths, it looks like a lynching.

Let’s take note, by whose account to we know what happened out on the high seas? Do we know even that these were pirates? Says who? I am simply playing devil’s advocate. Do we know these four youth weren’t stowaways? Perhaps they had been Shanghaied and attempted an escape via the Maersk Alabama’s lifeboat. Do we know what happened really? That’s what courts are there to decide.

Everything the American TV audience knows is from the mouths of the US military. What do we know? These youths might have been human-trafficking cargo, en route to or from war zones. They might have broken free, running straight into the Maersk’s convenient cover story that all inconvenient incidences can be labeled pirate attacks. Have we anybody’s word who has not been lying to us about war crimes everywhere, about the use of torture, about the true magnitude of renditions and secret prisons?

These black youths might just as well have been the captive sex slaves of the porky white contractor mercenaries who were planning to kill them while in the act of buggering them, but the damn Negroes slipped free. So the Navy Seals had to come play cleaner to the embarrassing mess. I exaggerate to emphasize: what the fuck do YOU know?!

“This is how the USA handles pirates” was basically our statement. Americans stateside cheered and grabbed their dicks. But overseas, and on the seas, the sentiment is much more wary. The US Navy has escalated the war on piracy. Now the rules of engagement for both sides is going to be shoot first, ask questions later.

Are the Somalis quaking in their pirate boots? When the news hit about what the Navy Seals did, the self-styled privateers of the Somali Coast redoubled their attacks on foreign ship traffic.

Bush, McCain and the Romney Boys owe us one…

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The former Commander in Thief and his anointed replacement, who would have been President until Palin figured a way to Get Rid of him….
Both made “The Troops” a pledge, Bush told them that “if only my Wife and My Dawg support me, WE will remain in Iraq”

And an hour of carefully scripted photo-ops later he took his wife, his Dawg and the “he” part of “we” and got smuggled out of Iraq the same way he’d been smuggled in. He made a similar promise to the guys in Afghanistan, admiring their “Romantic” mission and wishing that he could join them, but, alas and alack, (wiping crocodile tears from his beady little chimpanzee eyes) he had a Prior Commitment in Washing Tundy Sea.

McCain echoed the sentiments, and went for a “casual’ photo-op stroll to a bazaar very near the Green Zone, to prove that it was just the same as walking to the mall in Indianapolis or wherever the hell…

Just as safe as one could be, so long as he had a platoon of soldiers, snipers standing by, a helicopter or two, and wearing body armor.

And of course, the Romney Demon-spawn saying that the reason their Big, Healthy, ChickenHawk collective arse wasn’t getting shot off in Iraq or Afghanistan was because they were on a More Important Mission, to help Daddy become the ChickenHawk Führer-in-Chief.

Funny thing, now that they got their collective arse handed to them in the election cycle, they still haven’t made good on their promise to put their money, and their arses, where their mouths are and actually LEAVE.

A Military Myth explained.

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When I was making a cage for my pet Guinea Pig, I used crates from an Army dump in Ft Bliss Texas. Had the Red Cross prominently displayed, and the logo:
Lettering on a dynamite box

See, when I was in Boy Scouts, JROTC, Basic Training and Tech School, they kept telling me that the ChinkyGooks (That would be “Asians” to those of us in the More Normal World) had a “paranoid crazy Conspiracy Theory” that American Military would ship Munitions disguised as Medical supplies, and told us that U.S. Army Medics would take the Red Cross off their various uniform parts in order to not be hit by them thar Gawdless Damn Gook Snipers…

Well, apparently, there is a source for this legend.

That lettering says in Mandarin Chinese,
“Red Cross Brand Military Grade Extra Dynamite- 1949”

Apparently, the Chinese were intimately acquainted with the “tricks of the trade” and that dynamite would only have been good during the Korean Conflict which we wound up losing.

I had a friend who speaks Chinese do the translation for me.

Any of y’all who don’t happen to speak or READ Chinese would have thought the package said “Medical Supplies” or something similar, just because of the Red Cross proudly displayed.

And upon finding out that it wasn’t, you would be righteously pissed and never trust anything labelled with a Red Cross again…

But my friend who does the Chinese, ummm… he translated it INTO Chinese for the purposes of this demonstration.

I did mention that I got the crates in question from a UNITED STATES ARMY DUMP, right?

Insurgents, prairie dogs and Laser Tag

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I remember discovering the difference between target shooting and Laser Tag. At a firing range you could look calmly down your gun sight and concentrate without distraction. Same with hunting. But Laser Tag, Paintball, or the doubtlessly misnomered Airsoft, let you experience what it’s like to be shot at. Who would believe aiming a gun is so different under fire?

In Laser Tag, you had to wear an infrared sensor to make yourself a target to your opponent’s fire. We used to wrap the sensor belt around our heads because it seemed the most fair vulnerability. Otherwise it was too easy to obscure your sensor between you and the ground or against whatever you were hiding behind. On your forehead, the sensor would become visible whenever you yourself attempted to poke up your head to take a shot.

I learned to cheat by crawling under cars to obscure my forehead in the undercarriage while my line of sight remained unimpeded. Of course I was a sitting duck when spotted. But from no matter what covered position, I found it much harder to take aim when adversaries were directing their fire at me.

If you’d succeeded in concealing your vantage point, you were free to concentrate on your aim. But now you were challenged with a further trembling sensation in your fingers. Now there was a heightened hesitation to pull the trigger, because the moment you did, your position would be revealed and you’d attract fire.

This is the predicament we discount when we think of military snipers. Though it seems quite plainly cowardly to shoot unsuspecting opponents from a concealed position, often snipers have to operate from hiding places deep in enemy territory. When they finally take their shot, snipers become prey themselves.

I think about this immediate blowback consequence when I think of Iraqis or Afghans who contemplate taking aim at the US military machine. Insurgents face technology and firepower to obliterate the very hill from which they might be shooting. It would seem that anyone who would dare to stand armed against US forces would be a suicide bomber. It’s near certain death to fire a Kalashnikov knowing that US electronics can very quickly extrapolate your location and bring ordinance against you like a fly-swatter against a fly.

In WWII against Japan, we held a sad esteem for the suicide pilots of the last desperate Japanese efforts. The Kamikazes would pilot explosive laden aircraft which had no landing gears in case they changed their minds. It seemed like lunacy, and often they were young, and barely trained.

I wondered if our soldiers accord the Iraqi or Afghan insurgents a similar awed respect. To merely raise your head from the rubble, without Kevlar armor, requires a bravery to defy the gods. What a cost to try to defend your homeland against America’s overwhelming might. I couldn’t do it. You draw almost certain overkill coming from unforeseen points, high in the sky, laser-guided by a team of technicians in climate controlled comfort on the other side of the planet, who are not themselves under fire. We’ve rendered all our adversaries into suicide bombers. How dare our behind-the-lines officers call them cowardly?

Recreate 68 explains diplomatic silence

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Recreate 68
DENVER- From Recreate 68 e-news flash: “We would like to reiterate the fact that, contrary to reports, all of the events coordinated by R-68 are permitted and legal events and are organized with our statement of non-violence and our statement of principles of solidarity in mind.”

R-68 announced its updated schedule for the DNC, and breaks its silence about the over-publicized acrimony between DNC protest organizers.

Before we list the events, R-68 would like to take a moment and address an ever-increasing amount of attacks from the more conservative quarters on the left. Many have asked us to respond to multiple false and inaccurate claims and smear jobs put out by other organizations and individuals.

These types of mis-information campaigns have a long history here in Denver and across this country. When an organization allies with the voices of the oppressed and becomes effective, the attacks escalate. These attacks and counter-organizations started over a year ago but have come and gone. R-68 has always maintained a principled position and refused to engage in this behavior due to our belief that the left needs unity and solidarity now more than ever and this unproductive in-fighting is a distraction to the larger global issues we face.

Our actions and behavior speak louder than words and we will continue to try to set the example of principled behavior for our communities. We will not respond, in kind, to these slanderous attacks, but instead, will maintain our focus to provide a forum for oppressed communities and communities of color and to do what we can to amplify their voices on the political stage. Our events will reflect all of the hard work and commitment to the vision that was shared with us at the beginning of our organizing efforts, a vision that became the foundation and blueprint for our actions from respected voices and leaders in this struggle from the communities mentioned above.

Unfortunately, Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente, two voices for true change in this country, have become targets of some of this unnecessary and unproductive rage that has been perpetuated by what we refer to as spirit snipers. Spirit snipers are people who take shots from afar at others working for change, while doing nothing positive in the community. We applaud the principled stand that Cynthia & Rosa have taken in the face of threats and intimidation to their campaign for the highest office in this land. It is not often that one will find such a morally sound base in a political ticket or individual. So yes, R-68 does support a “black” candidate and a “female” candidate – that is why we support Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente!

…

1. Press Conference
R-68 will be hosting a press conference on Monday, August 18, 2008 at 2pm in Civic Center Park at the Greek Amphitheater. We will be announcing the name and the date of performance of a historic politically driven band that will be joining us for a free concert for the people. In addition, we will be announcing three guest speakers who are well known and respected nationally who have committed to joining us and speaking with our already historic line-up of voices for change. Please come down and support the spokes people.

2. Events
R-68 has assisted certain communities in organizing the logistics for historic events in Denver during the DNC. Below is a list of the events, speakers and music acts that will be occurring each day. Please note that this is not the entire amazing amount of activities that will be occurring during the week. You can go to our welcoming table at any of our events and obtain a copy of a comprehensive schedule that our welcome committee worked hard to produce. The schedule includes events from all other groups in addition to ours in order to maximize the voices of our communities and show solidarity in message. In addition, our welcome table will provide transportation information, logistical information and a list of friendly businesses to visit during your stay.

We would like to reiterate the fact that, contrary to reports, all of the events coordinated by R-68 are permitted and legal events and are organized with our statement of non-violence and our statement of principles of solidarity in mind.

Can Russians do worse than US soldiers?

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I’m listening right now to live alarmist coverage of Russia’s occupation of Georgia. Embeds are reporting to analysts about the panicked Georgians, about forced labor, and about marauding Russian soldiers committing atrocities. A cease fire has been signed, and though we don’t hear any gunfire, American leaders and media hounds are blustering about the Russian disproportionate use of force. When did our DoD decide to recognize that war crime?

It’s only been a few days that the Russians have been tasked with restoring order in the belligerent Georgia. They’re making Georgians help clean the streets and they’re destroying the military facilities which the US-advised Georgian forces just used in their attempt to seize South Ossetia. I’m poised to hear Belgian/Kuwait atrocity fabrications as our talking heads try to prompt Americans to “do something.” The Russian move is being likened to Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, where Americans can have nothing but regret about not having acted to repulse the Soviets.

But we Americans know something about occupations now don’t we? How misbehaved have the Russians been? Are we hearing about Russian Predator Drones zapping unsuspecting civilians? Are we hearing of Russian snipers shooting everything that moves, including toddlers in their back yards? Are we hearing about cars and buses being strafed to a halt at improvised Russian checkpoints? Are Georgian ambulances being shot by helicopters?

America ignores recent Jewish pogroms against Arabs

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Sniper in Israel Defense ForceIDF snipers at work…
 
The US meda and US government is systematically covering up the recent Jewish pogroms in the Middle East. It seems that American elites have plenty of ability to concentrate on the sins of Zimbabwe, China, Sudan, but a total inability to observe themselves and their allies at work. Torture and abuse is Ok for the US and its allies, but then how sanctimonious elite officials and their stooges in the corporate press can get about others!

The whole world is watching! Shame on our society. Jewish pogroms against Arabs are Met with Silence

Also see video coverage of the mis’named ‘Israeli Defense Forces’ summarily executing a Palestinian civilian.

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.

US is not sniping indiscriminantly 1-2-3

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The good news is that US sniper teams may not be shooting at everyone they come across anymore, as has been alleged though seldom reported. After all, the rules of war apply to snipers just as they would ordinary soldiers or paintballers: don’t shoot at someone who’s not a combatant, who’s unarmed, or who’s otherwise surrendering. But under pressure to up their kills, US snipers are defying the Hague Conventions with such innovations as 1) bait/entrapment, 2) getting go-ahead to assassinate, and 3) using fingerprint identification to confirm eligibility for execution.

1. Bait and switch
The Asymmetric Warfare Group issues to US snipers “drop items,” insurgent-type items which may be planted on Iraqis they’ve shot, but much more productively, to use as bait to lure passing Iraqis, tempting empty-handed civilians to become item-wielding insurgents whom you don’t have to get permission to shoot. The Washington Post reports:

“Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,” Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. “Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.”

2. Under suspicion is as good as being condemned
US snipers are executing targets if they can be confirmed as being suspects. With the cross hairs of your sniper scope aimed at your chosen Iraqi or Afghan, you can await authorization to pull the trigger based on learning the person’s identity, whether by informer or a shouted inquiry. Then according to the US rules of engagement you can terminate him. Here’s an example from the International Herald Tribune.

“From his position about 100 yards away, Master Sergeant Troy Anderson had a clear shot of the Afghan man standing outside a residential compound in a small village near the Pakistan border last October. And when Captain Dave Staffel, the Special Forces officer in charge, gave the order to shoot, Anderson fired a single bullet into the man’s head, killing him instantly.

…the shooting, near the village of Hasan Kheyl last October, was a textbook example of a classified mission completed in accordance with the American rules of engagement. The men said such rules allowed them to kill Buntangyar, whom the American military had designated a terrorist cell leader, once they positively identified him.”

3. Coming soon: fingerprint and biometric matching
In early 2008 US snipers will be given a more efficient system for making split decisions about whether their target may be summarily liquidated. Now with the subject in your sights, you can await instructions from an intelligence database about whether your target has a fingerprint, retina scan, or biometric profile in the records as a suspected insurgent. In which case, be he standing idle, detained or captive, you can shoot him. Read this account from the Washington Post about the JEFF:

“…the Joint Expeditionary Forensics Facilities (JEFF) project or “lab in a box,” analyzes biometrics. It will be delivered to Iraq at the beginning of 2008, the Navy said, to help distinguish insurgents from civilians.

…the military has been scanning the irises and taking the fingerprints of Iraqis, feeding a biometrics data base in West Virginia. To date, a few ad hoc labs have processed about 85,000 pieces of evidence taken from weapons caches or roadside devices.

Each collapsible, sand-colored, 20-by-20-foot unit has its own generator and satellite link. If things go as planned, data will beamed to the Biometric Fusion Center to check against more than a million Iraqi fingerprints.

The next stage is to miniaturize, create “a backpack lab,” so that soldiers who encounter a suspect “could find out within minutes” if he’s on a terrorist watch list, [says the JEFF weapon designer] “A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot?”

Silencers

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Did Blackwater sneak silencers into Iraq? That’s a good question, because silencers are used mainly by snipers. Is this the true face of bringing ‘democracy’ to Iraq?

Is sniping using silencers done by a private Pentagon- contracted corporation of death squad personnel what Iraq is all about for the US government at this point? Yes, it is certainly so. What else can one expect from a government that loves ‘water-boarding’ its captives so?

That and rendering. Dictionary meaning of ‘to render’ is ‘to try out oil from fat, blubber, etc., by melting.’ ‘Rendering’, a favorite phrase for US government death squad work. Yes, the US government, Pentagon, and Blackwater would be using silencers, too. America’s face to the world.

Say hello to my little friend

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I have become my dad. I remember when he thought my interests too extreme, when decorum appeared all but lost on my generation. What were the offensive bits? I don’t remember. Comic books? TV? Mr. Bill?

This is one of a popular series on YouTube, and the dead-pan stupidity is pretty funny. It doesn’t work for me when it’s a sniper talking to himself.

Here I am freaking out about generations succeeding mine. Have I a leg to stand on? You tell me if this should be a 13-year-old’s MySpace pick. Is this what comes of already watching violent R-rated movies, and playing first-person-assassin video games like the Godfather?

Shall I describe for you the Godfather game? You’re a hood, working your way up through the ranks by doing jobs for the boss. You shoot cops, shake down merchants, and take out other gangsters, while knocking off anyone in your way. You know these games: shoot first, there is no ask-questions button on the joystick. Now say an innocent bystander witnesses your deed. You kick, punch, or knife him or her until they stop calling for help. You can shoot them if you’re not worried about drawing more attention. Makes sense of course.

The next gangland game coming up? A first-person-shooter based on Brian dePalma’s SCARFACE, which itself staged more gratuitous violence than all of Frances Coppola’s films put together. Already kids are announcing themselves entering the room, air-Uzi in hand, with heavy accent: “Say hello to my little friend!”

Snipers
Really. We have American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan picking off everything that moves through their sniper scopes. Our boys, all they can be, are shooting toddlers like they were bugs to torment, women because they can’t have them, old men out of spite, boys for sport, and babies because nits make lice.

What do we hope to be breeding?