Judge dismisses case against cop who broke into home with no warrant & killed unarmed man
THE BRONX, NYC, NY — After a year of public outrage and legal proceedings, a judge has simply thrown out the indictment of Officer Richard Haste, who gunned…
Rand Paul Equivocates Confuses on Drones and Due Process
aul’s support from anti-drone libertarians on the left and right, which had soared after the filibuster, seemed to crash down upon him in the wake of these comments. People were angry. So Paul released a statement. Here it is in full:
My comments last night left the mistaken impression that my position on drones had changed.
Let me be clear: it has not. Armed drones should not be used in normal crime situations. They only may only be considered in extraordinary, lethal situations where there is an ongoing, imminent threat. I described that scenario previously during my Senate filibuster.
Additionally, surveillance drones should only be used with warrants and specific targets.
Fighting terrorism and capturing terrorists must be done while preserving our constitutional protections. This was demonstrated last week in Boston. As we all seek to prevent future tragedies, we must continue to bear this in mind.
This is not exactly an illuminating explanation. Saying, “Armed drones should not be used in normal crime situations,” one day after saying, “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash, I don’t care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him,” doesn’t make any sense. He didn’t repudiate his comments on Fox as a misstatement, he just argued the opposite of what he himself said mere hours before.
Reporter Asks White House if U.S. Airstrikes That Kill Afghan Civilians Qualify as 'Terrorism'
by Rania Khalek on April 17, 2013
Matthew Keys, the social media editor at Reuters, posted audio of a reporter asking White House Press Secretary Jay Carney if U.S. bombings that kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan constitute an “act of terror” given the labeling of the Boston Marathon bombing as “terrorism”. She specifically refers to a U.S. airstrike earlier this month that killed 11 children, just the latest in a seemingly endless line of Afghan civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. government.
Carney completely dodged the questions, pointing instead to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to justify U.S. bombings in Afghanistan. After a long-winded answer excusing U.S. conduct, Carney concludes, “ we take great care in the prosecution of this war.”
Tell me, does this look like “great care” to you?The lifeless bodies of Afghan children lay on the ground before their funeral ceremony, after a NATO airstrike killed several Afghan civilians, including ten children during a fierce gun battle with Taliban militants in Shultan, Shigal district, Kunar, eastern Afghanistan, Sunday, April 7, 2013. (AP Photo/Naimatullah Karyab)
I transcribed the exchange in full:REPORTER: I send my deepest condolence to the victims and families in Boston. But President Obama said that what happened in Boston was an act of terrorism. I would like to ask, Do you consider the U.S. bombing on civilians in Afghanistan earlier this month that left 11 children and a woman killed a form of terrorism? Why or why not?
JAY CARNEY: Well, I would have to know more about the incident and then obviously the Department of Defense would have answers to your questions on this matter. We have more than 60,000 U.S. troops involved in a war in Afghanistan, a war that began when the United States was attacked, in an attack that was organized on the soil of Afghanistan by al Qaeda, by Osama bin laden and others and more than 3,000 people were killed in that attack. And it has been the President’s objective once he took office to make clear what our goals are in Afghanistan and that is to disrupt, dismantle and ultimately defeat al Qaeda. And with that as our objective to provide enough assistance to Afghan National Security Forces and the Afghan government to allow them to take over security for themselves. And that process is underway and the United States has withdrawn a substantial number of troops and we are in the process of drowning down further as we hand over security lead to Afghan forces. And it is certainly the case that I refer you to the defense department for details that we take great care in the prosecution of this war and we are very mindful of what our objectives are.
At the very least, this serves as another example of the utter meaninglessness of the word “terrorism”.
* * * *
UPDATE: The reporter who asked the question is Amina Ismail, a journalist at McClatchy. I urge you to thank her for asking it (her twitter handle is @AminaIsmail) because I can’t imagine it was easy given how extremely rare and frowned upon it is to challenge the dominant “war on terror” narrative, especially as a female reporter with an Arab-sounding name. And Amina, if you’re reading this, thanks for kicking ass!
(via ex-ist)
Poor Richard's News: Your daily the-media-is-purposely-ignoring-the-Gosnell-story post
In spite of a week of shaming by social media users, bloggers and a (small) handful of columnists, much of the media we consider “mainstream” has yet to touch the Gosnell story. Take Politico for instance. Despite the fact that 8 of the top 10 Politico search terms were Kermit Gosnell related on Saturday, they have yet to do a story on him or the trial. A search of “Kermit Gosnell” on Politico’s web site yields 2 results, neither of which are stories about him. Rather, they are quotations from other journalists about how the media is ignoring him. How’s that for irony?
Meanwhile, there isn’t one mention of the Gosnell or the trial on CNN’s front web page currently:
Or MSNBC’s:
Or Fox News’:
Or the New York Times’:
Or the Los Angeles Times’:
Or NPR’s:
I could go on and on. This case should be in the headlines of news outlets across the country for weeks to come but instead, it’s still being ignored by most of the media. So while some are claiming that the media is finally coming around to coverage after the public outcry, I can find no evidence of it. They are still choosing to ignore it in hopes that the public isn’t confronted with the realities of an abortion culture.
I encourage you to contact your local newspapers and news stations as well as national news outlets and request that they stop ignoring the Gosnell trial. Remember to be courteous. Also, post about this on your social media outlets. This story can change the abortion debate in America only if people know about it.
A police officer in the suburban Dallas community of Richardson, Texas, shot and killed Emily Krumrei, 32, a woman with outstanding drug arrest warrants as she fled from an attempted traffic stop Monday morning.
According to the Dallas Morning News, citing Richardson police spokesperson Sgt. Kevin Perlich, an officer “was attempting to get a violator to pull over in a parking lot” for reasons that are yet unclear, but Krumrei fled in her Lexus. Shortly thereafter, an officer in a squad car saw her and attempted to stop her, but she refused to pull over.
Krumrei turned onto the southbound frontage road to the North Central Expressway. There, Perlich said, “a third officer near the frontage road was working a traffic accident. He stepped out into the road and tried to get her to stop.” But instead, Perlich said, Krumrei accelerated and clipped the officer. “The officer, in fear for his life, fired upon the vehicle,” Perlich said.
The Dallas NBC affiliate had a slightly, but significantly, different chronology of the shooting. According to NBC, the officer “fired at least one shot at the woman before being struck by the car.”
Read more: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2013/apr/09/police_kill_texas_woman_fleeing
I live about 5 minutes from where this happened.
Is the US Opening Up Another Front in the Drone War on the Iraq-Syria Border?
In response to increasing cross-border collaboration between al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and Jabhat al-Nursa, AQI’s offshoot in the Syrian rebel opposition, the Iraqi government informally requested the US conduct drone strikes against the militants, The Associated Press reports.
Now, the White House has already directed the CIA to increase its cooperation and backing of Iraqi state militias to fight al-Qaeda affiliates there and cut off the flow of fighters pouring into Syria. There are already plenty of problems with boosting support for Iraq’s security forces, which have essentially been used as a secret police force for Maliki to attack, detain, and torture his political opponents.
But “conducting kinetic operations for [Iraq] could quickly draw the United States into creating additional enemies out of what are domestic and regionally-focused terrorist groups,” writes Micah Zenko at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The CIA already serves as the counterterrorism air force of Yemen, and, occasionally, Pakistan. It should not further expand this chore to Iraq,” Zenko adds.
According to the AP report, the Obama administration refused to respond to Iraq’s appeal “until the Iraqi leadership’s top level makes a formal request, which hasn’t happened.”
Aside from the problem of getting even more irreparably mired in regional conflicts that don’t directly concern us, there are several factors that should preclude Obama from taking Baghdad up on its request.
Police gun down 83-year-old woman responding to 911 call she dialed
Delma Towler reported a burglary at her Altavista, Virginia home and attempted to walk to her sister’s house for safety but was “gunned down like she was an animal or a criminal,” according to her daughter.
“If I have to spend every penny, someone’s going to pay,” said Langford. “They took my mama.”
Coming soon to your neighborhood.
For you who voted for Obama, thank you. Because of your votes, we may get our guns taken away and end up in another HOLOCAUST! We unarmed, law abiding citizens will be defenseless as the Jews were when the Nazi’s killed them like animals. Once again, THANK YOU SO FUCKING MUCH!
Cultural Deviancy, Not Guns by Walter E Williams
We live in a society where violence is morally accepted. We live in a society that praises the troops who murder innocent civilians every day. We live in a society who justifies drone strikes that murder innocent civilians every day. We live in a society where it is still morally acceptable to spank and abuse children. We just live in a violent society.
The problem isn’t the guns.
Stop justifying violence and it will greatly decrease.
What percentage of murders, irrespective of race, are committed with what are being called assault weapons? You’d be hard put to come up with an amount greater than 1 or 2 percent. In fact, according to FBI data from 2011, there were 323 murders committed with a rifle of any kind but 496 murders committed with a hammer or a club. But people who want to weaken our Second Amendment guarantees employ a strategy like that of the Paris chief of police. They can’t do much about hammers, clubs, fists or pistols, but by exploiting public ignorance, they might have a bit of success getting an “assault weapon” ban that will have little impact on violent crime.
There are other measures these people employ in an attempt to end violence that border on lunacy. Massachusetts’ Hyannis West Elementary recently warned a 5-year-old’s parents that if their son made another gun from a Legos set, he’d be suspended. Elementary-school children have been suspended or otherwise disciplined for drawing a picture of a gun or pointing a finger and saying, “Bang, bang.” I shudder to think about what would happen to kids in a schoolyard if they played, as I played nearly 70 years ago, “cops ‘n’ robbers” or “cowboys ‘n’ Indians.” Maybe today’s politically correct educators would cut the kids a bit of slack if they said they were playing “cowboys ‘n’ Native Americans.”
What explains a lot of what we see today, which politicians and their liberal allies would never condemn, is growing cultural deviancy. Twenty-nine percent of white children, 53 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of black children are born to unmarried women. The absence of a husband and father from the home is a strong contributing factor to poverty, school failure, crime, drug abuse, emotional disturbance and a host of other social problems. By the way, the low marriage rate among blacks is relatively new. Census data show that a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults from 1890 to 1940. In 2009, the poverty rate among married whites was 3.2 percent; for blacks, it was 7 percent, and for Hispanics, it was 13.2 percent. The higher poverty rates — 22 percent for whites, 35.6 percent for blacks and 37.9 percent for Hispanics — are among unmarried families.
Other forms of cultural deviancy are found in the kind of music accepted today that advocates killing and rape and other vile acts. Punishment for criminal behavior is lax. Today’s Americans accept behavior that our parents and grandparents never would have accepted.
Jeremy Scahill: Assassinations of U.S. Citizens Largely Ignored at Brennan CIA Hearing
The unexplained assassination of at least two American citizens (one being a 16-year old child) without charge or trial has probably been the most shameful incident in American history I’ve reported on since I began blogging. And yet… MSNBC reports that 78% of Americans unquestioningly support drone strikes on domestic soil of Americans deemed to be a threat by the government, stripping them of their right to a trial or sentencing. John Brennan is a disgusting liar and I am ashamed that my taxpayer dollars support a man like him. Your government is lying to you and has actually killed innocent American citizens on foreign soil (including over 176 children and upwards of 500 innocent adults in foreign territory.)
The time is now for you to stop supporting this regime. This is beyond unacceptable- it is murderous. That’s all I have to say.
This is also why I won’t consider dating anyone who isn’t an anti-statist. #libertarianproblems #sorryforhavingmorals
Is America Ensnared in an Endless War? by Patrick J. Buchanan
“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
So said Richard Nixon in his interviews with David Frost. Nixon was talking about wiretaps and surreptitious entries to protect lives and safeguard national security in a violent and anarchic war decade.
The Nixon haters pronounced themselves morally sickened.
Fast forward to our new century. For, since 9/11, we have heard rather more extravagant claims by American presidents.
Under George W. Bush, it was presidential authority to waterboard, torture, rendition and hold enemy aliens in indefinite detention at Guantanamo.
Under Barack Obama, we don’t have a Nixon “enemies list” of folks who are not to be invited to White House dinners. Rather, we have a “kill list” — a menu from which our constitutional law professor president selects individuals to be executed abroad.
Not only in Afghanistan, but Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and who knows where else. And not just foreigners, but Americans, too.
When may Obama order an American killed?
According to a Justice Department “white paper,” any “informed high-level official” can decide a target is a ranking operative of al-Qaida who “poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States,” and if we cannot apprehend him, order him eradicated with a Hellfire missile.
As law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell argues: “For a threat to be deemed ‘imminent,’ it is not necessary for a specific attack to be underway. The paper denies Congress and the federal courts a role in authorizing the killings or even reviewing them afterwards.”
And they called Nixon the imperial president.
As killing a U.S. citizen is a graver deed than waterboarding a terrorist plotter to get information to save lives, Obama, who bewailed Bush’s detention, rendition and interrogation policies, appears guilty of manifest hypocrisy.
But with 3,000 to 4,500 now killed by drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen over 10 years, and an estimated 200 children and other civilians among the “collateral damage,” it is past time for a debate on where we are going in this “war on terror.”
A question raised by Donald Rumsfeld years ago — Are we creating more terrorists than we are killing? — needs re-raising. For if these drone strikes that kill innocent and guilty alike are creating new millions of sympathizers for al-Qaida, and recruiting new thousands of volunteers willing to dedicate their lives to taking revenge against us, we have entered upon a war that may never end.
Al-Qaida in Afghanistan is said to be ravaged and on the run. Yet we read of al-Qaida affiliates cropping up not only in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, but Iraq, Syria, Libya and Mali. How many of these new cells were inspired by past drone strikes to destroy old al-Qaida cells?
The New York Times and The Washington Post have admitted they acceded to White House requests not to publish their discovery that we had established a drone base in Saudi Arabia for attacks in Yemen.
But planting a U.S. drone base on Saudi soil is no small matter. Osama bin Laden gave as a primary cause for his declaration of war on America that we had defiled the sacred soil of Arabia that is home to Mecca and Medina by planting our infidel bases there.
The penalty of murder?
Drew Peterson was just sentenced to 38 years for murdering his third wife. This is wrong. A man who murders a human being should get life or death — but they shouldn’t walk the streets again.
NYPD Kills 21 People In 2012, About 90% Were Black or Latino
According to recent statistics by the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, 21 people were killed by New York’s finest throughout 2012, averaging almost two killings per month. It increased the previous year’s sum by seven fatalities.
Overall, 224 lives have been taken by the NYPD since an unarmed Amadou Diallo was killed in a fusillade in his Bronx building’s vestibule during the first hour of Feb. 4, 1999.
The same stats show that nearly 90 percent of those killed were Black or Hispanic. Activists are demanding accountability for the rampant casualties.
Below is a list of the victims.
- January 12, Duane Brown, 26, Brooklyn (killed in own home)
- January 26, Christopher Kissane, 22, Brooklyn
- January 29, Antwoin White, 17, Brooklyn
- February 2, Ramarley Graham, 18, Bronx (killed in own home)
- February 14, Michael McBride, 52, Manhattan
- March 15, Shereese Francis, 30, Queens
- April 12, Tamon Robinson, 27, Brooklyn
- April 12, Rudolph Wyatt, 23, Manhattan
- May 10, Samuel Rivers, 40, Queens
- June 14, Shantel Davis, 23, Brooklyn
- July 4, Edgar Owens, 46, Queens
- Aug 11, Eddie Fernandez, 28, Bronx
- August 12, Darius H. Kennedy, 51 Manhattan
- Aug 24, Jeffrey Johnson, 58, Manhattan
- Sept 7, Reynaldo Cuevas, 20, Bronx (shot escaping robbery)
- Sept 7, Walwyn Jackson, 27, Queens
- Sept 20, Tyjuan Hill, 22, Queens
- Sept 25, Muhammad Bah, 28, Manhattan
- Oct 5, Noel Polanco, 22, Queens
- Oct 25, Prince James 18, Bronx
- November 4, Ronald Herrera, 20, Bronx (friend of Reynaldo Cuevas who was killed two months earlier by NYPD)
(via ex-ist)
“Global warming” is the cause of the high murder rate in Chicago.
Obama Will Again Thwart UN Investigations of Drone War
Micah Zenko is betting that the latest UN investigation into drone killings by the United States “is unlikely to compel increased transparency from the Obama administration.” Essentially, this is because similar investigations have been going on for about ten years and the Bush and Obama administrations have had the same response to them: “Screw off.”
After the first targeted assassination by drone killed six al-Qaeda suspects in November 2002 in Yemen, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, Asma Jahangir, demanded some answers and indicated this probably violated international law. Jahangir wrote:
The Special Rapporteur is extremely concerned that should the information received be accurate, an alarming precedent might have been set for extrajudicial execution by consent of Government. The Special Rapporteur acknowledges that Governments have a responsibility to protect their citizens against the excesses of non-State actors or other authorities, but these actions must be taken in accordance with international human rights and humanitarian law. In the opinion of the Special Rapporteur, the attack in Yemen constitutes a clear case of extrajudicial killing.
The Bush administration’s response, as Zenko documents, was to have “no comment” on the validity of the reports and to say that humanitarian laws wouldn’t apply to “enemy combatants.” This was of course characteristic of the post-9/11 view that the entire world was a limitless battlefield where the US was unrestrained in what it could do because it was all in self-defense against imminent terrorist attacks. Right.
And when UN special rapporteurs made similar inquiries into Obama’s drone attacks, they were similarly stiff armed. And the Obama administration made the same argument as Bush: these attacks were in self-defense of imminent terrorist attacks and it doesn’t matter that they occurred outside of an official battlefield because the world is our battlefield.
