Category: News

At each of the over 200 cities I’ve traveled to this past year with my book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, I ask the audience an easy question: Have they ever seen or heard from drone strike victims in the mainstream US press? Not one hand has ever gone up. This is an obvious indication that the media has failed to do its job of humanizing the civilian casualties that accompany President Obama’s deadly drone program.

This has started to change, with new films, reports and media coverage finally giving the American public a taste of the personal tragedies involved.

On October 29, the Rehman family – a father with his two children – came all the way from the Pakistani tribal territory of North Waziristan to the US Capitol to tell the heart-wrenching story of the death of the children’s beloved 67-year-old grandmother. And while the briefing, organized by Congressman Alan Grayson, was only attended by four other congresspeople, it was packed with media.

Watching the beautiful 9-year-old Nabila relate how her grandmother was blown to bits while outside picking okra softened the hearts of even the most hardened DC politicos. From the Congressmen to the translator to the media, tears flowed. Even the satirical journalist Dana Milbank, who normally pokes fun at everything and everyone in his Washington Post column, covered the family’s tragedy with genuine sympathy.

The visit by the Rehman family was timed for the release of the groundbreaking new documentary Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Foundation. The emotion-packed film is filled with victims’ stories, including that of 16-year-old Tariq Aziz, a peace-loving, soccer-playing teenager obliterated three days after attending an anti-drone conference in Islamabad. Lawyers in the firm pose the critical question: If Tariq was a threat, why didn’t they capture him at the meeting and give him the right to a fair trial? Another just released documentary is Wounds of Waziristan, a well-crafted, 20-minute piece by Pakistani filmmaker Madiha Tahir that explains how drone attacks rip apart communities and terrorize entire populations.

Continue reading “The Victims of Drones Have Come Out of the Shadows”

Up until now, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who initiated unprecedented diplomacy with the U.S., has spoken very positively about the negotiations with Western powers. That has apparently changed, with French media reporting the reformist president saying he is “not optimistic.”

“The government is not optimistic about the Westerners and the current negotiations,” Rouhani was quoted as saying.

“But it does not mean that we should not have hope for removing the problems,” he said referring to international sanctions hurting Iran’s ailing economy.

The fact that the Israel lobby has continued to aggressively push for additional sanctions, and that Congress is just about ready to pull that trigger, might have something to do with Rouhani’s sagging confidence. Republican politicians and right-wing commentators are writing Op-Eds dismissing negotiations as a waste of time and urging the United States to continue with sanctions and even to just cut the bull and bomb Iran. These are not encouraging signals.

During the last round of negotiations, Iran was reported to have made considerable concessions in its proposed deal. These included “a freeze on production of 20% enriched uranium” and “a pledge to convert its stockpile to fuel rods,” in addition to “full monitoring of the underground enrichment plant at Fordow,” and “ratification of the Additional Protocol,” measures which have long been demanded by hardliners in Washington.

In response, the U.S.’s top Iranian negotiator Wendy Sherman went on Israeli television and explained that the expected U.S. response to this Iranian proposal was to “offer very limited, temporary, reversible sanctions relief, but keep in place the fundamental architecture of the oil and banking sanctions” to use as leverage for further Iranian capitulation down the road.

Again, it’s easy to see why Rouhani is turning pessimistic.

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett argue today in The Diplomat that an American refusal to recognize Iran’s nuclear rights under the NPT and to lift sanctions in return for Iranian concessions will result in the collapse of negotiations and a net-loss in terms of Washington’s geopolitical interests.

If Obama does not conclude a deal recognizing Iran’s nuclear rights, it will confirm suspicions already held by many Iranian elites—including Ayatollah Khamenei—and in Beijing and Moscow about America’s real agenda vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic.  It will become undeniably clear that U.S. opposition to indigenous Iranian enrichment is not motivated by proliferation concerns, but by determination to preserve American hegemony—and Israeli military dominance—in the Middle East.  If this is so, why should China, Russia, or rising Asian powers continue trying to help Washington—e.g., by accommodating U.S. demands to limit their own commercial interactions with Iran—obtain an outcome it does not actually want?

Emphasis added. That bolded excerpt is the most important feature of the whole Iran debate. As I’ve written, the U.S. has militarily encircled Iran, threatened military attack, and imposed harsh economic warfare all as punishment for a nuclear weapons program that America’s most informed intelligence agencies say doesn’t exist. Obviously then, the U.S.’s problem with Iran has little to do with nuclear proliferation, but rather with U.S. and Israeli dominance in the Middle East.

Unless that changes, Rouhani’s defeatism may be predictive.

Later this week, Secretary of State John Kerry is going to Israel to follow up on so-called “peace talks.”

“We and the parties remain focused on our goal of achieving a permanent agreement which ends the conflict and all claims, and creates peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” the State Department said last week.

Peace eh? Juan Cole provides a round-up of recent Israeli actions to help illustrate how the government of Benjamin Netanyahu understands “peace” with the Palestinians:

Israel just issued tenders for over 1,700 new homes for Israelis on the Palestinian West Bank. The plan will involve demolishing Palestinian residences…

Israel is planning to dig for oil in the Occupied West Bank, in violation of the Oslo Accords and of the laws governing military occupations. Israel is likewise preventing Palestinians in Gaza from developing their offshore natural gas resources.

The government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is planning to build a ‘security wall’ along the border of Palestine with Jordan. This infrastructure is designed to secure Israel’s security presence along the Jordanian border, where it has no business being, far into the future, yet again detracting from Palestinian sovereignty.

Israel this week destroyed two “residential buildings in Beit Hanina village and 2 rooms in Jabal al-Mukaber neighbourhood” in East Jerusalem, leaving 33 Palestinian civilians homeless” , adding more displaced to the some 400 who have lost their homes in Palestinian Jerusalem in 2013 alone.

Israeli squatters on the Palestinian West Bank in Migdalim just sent bulldozers to the Palestinian village of Qusra, in order to annex more land to the Israeli squatter settlement.

Militant Israeli squatters uprooted and burned 121 olive and almond trees in Nablus and Bethlehem.

That’s a hell of a lot of peace-makin. Everything listed above quite deliberately undermines the prospects for a viable Palestinian state, which is supposedly what negotiations are based upon.

Continue reading “The US-Israeli Idea of ‘Peace’ Looks A Lot Like Conquest”

The UK government is charging Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda with “terrorism” and “espionage” for trying to carry documents leaked by Edward Snowden through a London airport in August.

Reuters:

“Intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity which has the potential to act against the interests of UK national security,” according to the document.

“We assess that Miranda is knowingly carrying material the release of which would endanger people’s lives,” the document continued. “Additionally the disclosure, or threat of disclosure, is designed to influence a government and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism…”

Miranda was transporting documents from journalist Laura Poitras to Glenn Greenwald. His trip was paid for by the Guardian and he was working in that capacity. So when newspapers work to disclose  government secrets…in the newspaper…in order to inform the public, they are engaging in terrorism. Orwell couldn’t have dreamed up a more outrageous satire if he lived to 100.

Writing at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, EFF’s Trevor Timm reacts to the news:

If publishing or threatening to publish information for the purpose “promoting a political or ideological cause” is “terrorism,” than the UK government can lock up every major newspaper editorial board that dares write any opinion that strays from the official government line.

No matter one’s opinion on the NSA, the entire public should be disturbed by this attack on journalism. In fact, this is exactly the type of attack on press freedom the US State Department regularly condemns in authoritarian countries, and we call on them to do the same in this case.

Terrorism is whatever the government says it is.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt on the latest news reported by the Washington Post that the NSA has been going behind the back of Google and Yahoo and infiltrating their data centers around the world. The first few questions in the video below address the issue.

A rough transcript, with help from the WSJ article here.

“It’s really outrageous that the National Security Agency was looking between the Google data centers, if that’s true. The steps that the organization was willing to do without good judgment to pursue its mission and potentially violate people’s privacy, it’s not OK. It’s just not OK. So, in that sense the Snowden have assisted us in understanding that. It’s perfectly possible that there are more revelations to come.”

“…We [Google] have complained to many many people, starting with the National Security Agency, the president, the vice president, you name it, as well as the Congress. There is legislation that’s begin discussed in the Congress. And I think it just doesn’t pass the smell test.

“The NSA allegedly collected the phone records of 320 million people in order to identify roughly 300 people who might be a risk. It’s just bad public policy…and perhaps illegal.”

“You have to take a strong position in favor of privacy. Privacy is really the right to be left alone. Do you really want the government tracking all of those information, especially if you’re just a domestic citizen who is just going about your life?”

“There clearly are cases where evil people exist, but you don’t have to violate the privacy of every single citizen of America to find them.”

A common angle from the mainstream U.S. media is that NSA leaker Edward Snowden will regret his asylum in Russia (rather than life in prison in the U.S.). A quote from ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern was used in support of that theme, but he has asked the New York Times to clarify it.

I was quoted in Steven Lee Myers’s “In Shadows, Hints of a Life and Even a Job for Snowden,” published by the New York Times on Oct. 31, as saying (about former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden), “He’s free, but not completely free” in asylum in Russia.

An unfortunate juxtaposition in the text of Mr. Myers’s piece has led several acquaintances to misinterpret my words. I trust you will agree that the issue is of some importance; thus, my request that you publish this clarification.

Mr. Myers quotes me correctly. Unfortunately, the immediately preceding sentences quote a Russian journalist, who “cautioned” that the appearance of a “happy, open asylum” could be “propaganda,” and that the Russian security services might be waiting to question Mr. Snowden until he becomes “increasingly dependent on them.”

This is not at all what I meant by “not completely free.” For starters, I guess I’m not sure how free you can feel being stateless, the State Department having revoked your passport.

Still more on this issue emerged on Oct. 9, after Mr. Snowden was presented with this year’s Sam Adams Associates Award for Integrity in Intelligence. We four Sam Adams Associates – Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake, Coleen Rowley, and I – chatted into the wee hours with Mr. Snowden and WikiLeaks journalist Ms. Sarah Harrison. (It was Ms. Harrison who facilitated his departure from Hong Kong on June 23. She has been at his side ever since to witness that he is not undergoing at the hands of the Russians what in some Western countries are called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”)

I asked Mr. Snowden whether he was aware that just six days before our Sam Adams award ceremony, Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and the CIA had said publicly that he had “thought of nominating Mr. Snowden … for a different list” – an unmistakable hint that Mr. Snowden be put on President Barack Obama’s infamous “Kill List.” With a wan smile, Mr. Snowden assured me that Yes; he keeps well up on such things.

And did he know that Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, chimed right in with immediate support for Hayden’s suggestion, stating, “I can help you with that?” This time the wan smile gave way to a wince – and another Yes. (Both Hayden and Rogers were speaking at an Oct. 3 conference sponsored by the Washington Post, which, oddly, neglected to report on this macabre/mafia–type pas de deux.)

After the back-to-back wan smile and wince, I resisted the urge to ask Mr. Snowden if he saw reassurance in the official letter of July 23 from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to his Russian counterpart conveying Holder’s promise: “Mr. Snowden will not be tortured … if he returns to the United States.”

In his Oct. 31 article, Mr. Myers includes an instructive remark from Anatoly Kucherena, a Russian lawyer assisting Mr. Snowden. Mr. Kucherena told Myers he would not discuss Mr. Snowden’s life in exile “because the level of threat from the U.S. government structures is still very high.”

THAT’S what I meant by “not completely free.”

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. Ray entered the CIA as an analyst on the same day as the late CIA analyst Sam Adams (a direct descendant of John Adams, by the way), and was instrumental in founding Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.

Reprinted with permission from Consortium News.