Pakistani security force convoy attacked in Turbat, one killed in Rakhni

Occupied Balochistan: According reports reaching from Turbat a convoy of Pakistani FC was attacked near National Bank Turbat, as a result six soldiers have been killed and several others sustained injuries. Eight Baloch have been injured after FC opened indiscriminate fire, alleged an eye-witness. Whereas another report carried out by Daily Tawar claimed that 11 Baloch have been randomly rounded up after the attack. Meanwhile Doda Baloch who identified himself has a spokesman of Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) has informed news agencies that fighters from his organisation attacked the FC convoy near National Bank Turbat, Balcohistan. He said that it was a remote controlled attack which killed six Pakistani soldiers and injured several others. He also claimed that his organisation killed one personnel of government Task Force in Jaal Baar region of Turbat on Monday morning. Strongly rejecting the recent notions of negotiations with the government he said that there will be no negotiations with Pakistani rulers unless Pakistan withdraws its troop from the occupied land of Balochistan. “Pakistan’s PM’s statements are just a show off and in reality they want to counter Baloch freedom struggle but we want to make it clear that Baloch liberation struggle is not dependent on personalities or individuals; it a collective struggle of entire people of Balochistan under a collective command”, explained Doda Baloch. Mr Doda said Governor Magsi and CCPO Quetta’s statements in favour of tit-for-tat target killings are a prove of their failure, and the victory of the Baloch sarmachaars. The government has failed to implement their write hence they want to target kill innocent Baloch to avenge their defeat. Separately, a truck loaded with coal was attacked on DG Khan – Loralai road at Chang Nadi area. As a result of attack one person Mohammd Saleem of Nawan Killi Quetta was killed and another man Atta Mohammad suffered injuries. The truck was taking Coal from Balochistan to Punjab. Source: DailyTawar

Ex-army man, two others ‘abducted’ in Balochistan

Ex-army man, two others ‘abducted’

on 2010/5/9 2:00:00 (154 reads)

y Faraz Khan KARACHI: Former Pakistan Army colonel Anisur Rehman, who had been serving as a special pilot for Frontier Constabulary (FC) director general’s helicopter, was allegedly kidnapped from Gadap Town along with two of his friends-cum-business partners on Saturday night. Following the incident, Sindh Inspector General of Police (IGP) Sultan Salahuddin Babar Khattak formed three separate police teams that have initiated investigation in collaboration with the Anti-Violent Crime Unit (AVCU), the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) and intelligence agencies. As per details, Rehman, Arshad Lodhi and Khalid Soori were kidnapped from the Super Highway in Gadap City police precincts after returning from Rehman’s farmhouse located eight kilometres from the highway. As per sources, the victims were in a Suzuki Alto car (registration No APK-049), which was later discovered in Gulshan-e-Maymar near the Afghan Camp police post. Sources added that Rehman had last contacted his family around 7:30pm on Saturday and was not heard from since. Gadap City Station House Officer (SHO) Raja Aslam said the police had registered first information report No 108/10 against unidentified suspects on the complaint of Lodhi’s nephew. This case has also been referred to the AVCU for further investigation. The Gadap City police, the AVCU and the CPLC have initiated further investigation, but the whereabouts of the victims are yet to be ascertained. The officials are depending on the kidnappers’ call for ransom or other demands, so they could determine the whereabouts of the culprits by tapping the phone calls. SHO Aslam said Rehman, a lieutenant colonel in Balochistan FC, was a resident of Shadman Town, while Lodhi and Soori lived in Federal B Area. The SHO added that Lodhi was a Sui Southern Gas Company contractor and owned around six CNG stations along the Super Highway, while Soori was in the diary farm business. It should be mentioned here that as many as 28 traders and industrialists have been abducted from January to April this year and, according to CPLC officials, all the victims had been safely recovered. The officials also claimed to have busted five major gangs of kidnappers. CPLC chief Ahmed Chinoy said his department and the police investigators had initiated investigation and the victims would be recovered soon. Lodhi’s nephew said the families had informed the police and other departments concerned about the kidnapping. The kidnappers have not tried contacting the families yet, he added. It is pertinent to mention here that one of the teams formed by the IGP would be led by East Zone Investigation Senior Superintendent of Police Farooq Awan and these teams would work under the supervision of the Capital City Police Officer Waseem Ahmed. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20105\10\story_10-5-2010_pg12_1 Transporter kidnapped in Dhadar QUETTA: A transporter was kidnapped in front of Tehsil Nazim office in Dhadar on Saturday. According to detail, Karim Lehri was taken hostage and whisked away by five armed men. They took the hostage to an unknown place. Local officials confirmed. Police registered a case against of unknown persons and started a search for the kinapped transporter. Police believed that the transporter was whisked away for ransom. Source: The Baloch Hal

Residue of German Torpedo Found In Cheonan Forensic Investigation–Part II.

[SEE:Residue of German Torpedo Found In Cheonan Forensic Investigation]

Torpedo explosive detected in sunken ship: official

SEOUL, May 7 (Yonhap) — An explosive substance, traces of which were found in the wreckage of a sunken South Korean naval ship, has been identified as a powerful bomb ingredient used in making torpedoes, a government official said Friday.

The latest finding is expected to further back suspicions that a torpedo attack caused the explosion of the 1,200-ton patrol ship Cheonan near the tense Yellow Sea border with North Korea on March 26. The Cheonan broke in two and sank, killing 46 sailors.

Data picture

“Explosive traces found in the Cheonan’s chimney and the seabed on which the stern’s broken-off side had been lying were all confirmed as those of the high explosive RDX, which is more powerful than TNT,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “This explosive is used in torpedoes, not sea mines.”

RDX, which stands for research department explosive, is a white crystalline solid and is considered the most powerful high explosive and a main ingredient in plastic explosives.

Four metal fragments have also been found in the wreckage, which was salvaged last month, and an analysis has showed that they were an alloy of aluminum and magnesium used in torpedo casings, the official said.

Investigators are also looking into the possibility that a German-made torpedo might have been used, potentially a move by North Korea to disguise the attack, as South Korea uses German torpedoes.

Foreign specialists from the United States, Sweden, Australia and Britain have joined South Korea’s investigation into the sinking, as Seoul has sought to ensure the probe is transparent and objective.

After the investigation is complete, South Korea could invite experts from China and Russia, countries close to North Korea, to provide them with a first-hand look at the ship’s wreckage, Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae said.

Won said the outcome is expected to come before the end of this month.

Earlier this week, President Lee Myung-bak told a conference of top military generals that the sinking was not a “simple accident,” while Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said a “surprise attack” sank the vessel, although neither directly mentioned the communist neighbor.

North Korea has denied any responsibility.

Suspicions of North Korea’s involvement have been strong, as the site of the sinking lies near where the navies of the two Koreas fought deadly skirmishes in 1999, 2002 and most recently in November last year.

On Friday, South Korean and U.S. officials were to hold additional talks on the sinking.

The meeting between Kim Hong-kyun, director of the foreign ministry’s bureau of the peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, and Joseph Donovan, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, comes one day after the countries held their Security Policy Initiative, a regular dialogue aimed at coordinating the allies’ security policies.

The two sides agreed at Thursday’s meeting to work out unspecified “necessary security measures” in accordance with the outcome of the investigation.

South Korea’s Navy, meanwhile, is considering responding more aggressively to North Korean violations of the western maritime border, spending less time on radio warnings before moving on to fire warning shots and then aimed shots, a military source said.

“Up until now, we have taken some time in giving radio warnings when North Korean ships have violated” the sea border, the source said on condition of anonymity. “After the Cheonan incident, we’re considering operating the rules of engagement in a speedier way.”

jschang@yna.co.kr

Iran Intercepts US Drone, Iraqi “Fishermen” During War Games

Iran makes warning to U.S. scout plane

During `Velayat 89′ war games on MondayIran made a warning to the U.S. scout plane, Commander of the Iranian Army Major General Ataollah Salehi said, the Fars news agency reported.

according to him, the U.S. plane approaching to trainings area, left the area after receiving a warning from Iran’s Air Defense.

The third phase of the `Velayat 89′ war games started Saturday in the Persian Gulf, Sea of Oman and the northern Indian Ocean displaying the combat power of speed boat units of the Iranian Army.

The naval exercise kicked off last Wednesday just after the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) completed major war games in the Persiasn Gulf, Sea of Oman and also in the key oil route of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran seizes Iraqi boats, crew

Six Iraqi boats and their 12 crew members have been captured by Iranian border guard forces for illegally entering Iran’s territorial waters in the Arvand River, Press TV reported.

Iranian border guards stopped the Iraqi vessels, which were disguised as fishing boats, and transferred them to an Iranian coastal pier, Fars News Agency reports.

Twelve vessel crews have been escorted to an Iranian border unit base for questioning, said Iranian Boarder Guard Commander Yadollad Sharaffi in an interview. He also reiterated that his forces would not allow anyone to cross into Iranian territory illegally.

The Arvand River is a 200-Kilometer long stretch of water, also known as Shatt-al-Arab in Arabic, at the Iran-Iraq border.

Both countries have long sought to establish a clear marking of their borders along the long stream with a varying width of 400 to 1500 meters.

Technical teams from Iran and Iraq are currently working on the issue. An initial meeting was held last February 20 in the western Iranian border city of Qasr-e-Shirin.

Eight snipers arrested in Kyrgyzstan

11.05.2010 15:38

“In Kyrgyzstan 8 snipers that shot armless people on 7 April have been detained”, stated Deputy Chairman of the interim government Azimbek Beknazarov at the meeting with management of Osh oblast on Tuesday, news agency “24.kg”reported.

According to him, their names will be voiced in the nearest future. “We know who made them shoot at people. Some of officials are coming to us themselves and voluntarily giving evidence on those events”, added Beknazarov.

Note of the NA 24.kg: 86 citizens died from gunshot wounds after 7-8 April in Kyrgyzstan.

Residue of German Torpedo Found In Cheonan Forensic Investigation

[South Korea has nine German submarines; perhaps the S. Koreans sunk their own vessel.  It is possible that it was fired from a German submarine.  The three primary buyers of German arms are: Turkey, Greece and South Africa. Of this group, it is thought that only Turkey is active in the S. Asian power play.  On the other hand, Israel owns five German submarines.  Once again, mysterious submarines, appearing to be Israeli, are involved in sabotaging international relations.  (SEE:  Cutting Cables, Lighting Fuses)  Contrary to conspiratorial and anti-Semitic voices, Israel may influence American foreign policy to a great degree, but in the long run, America pulls Israel’s military strings.  If an Israeli sub sank a S. Korean warship, it could only be described as an American false flag event.]

The last submarine Reich?

The experts found that the South Korean corvette Cheonan, drowned from Germany torpedo

Named the cause of death corvette South Korea

caused the flooding of South Korean corvette “Cheonan” international commission called the explosion of a torpedo that struck the submerged part of the ship. Found that this torpedo weapons were manufactured in Germany. Recall, the ship crashed in late March near the maritime boundary between the two Koreas. North Korea denied speculation that a South Korean ship was subjected to a torpedo attack.

“After the rise of the ship they found in his compartment traces of explosives, which are equipped with torpedoes. From its defeat sank, Cheonan, as a result killed 46 sailors,” – said on May 7 agency Yonhap on the conclusions reached by the experts of Korea and several foreign countries, to investigate the cause of this tragic incident.

According to the Commission, the chemical analysis of explosives indicates that the torpedo weapon was “Made in Germany”. Recall the culprit of this incident, which Seoul informally called neighboring North Korea. However, the Naval Forces of this country are outdated weapons systems of the Soviet and Chinese manufacture, and traces of their use against the South Korean navy ship was found.

Pyongyang is adamant about his innocence in the death of “Cheonan. However, as noted by the South Korean media, the incident with the corvette impede the normalization of relations between the two Korean states and may become an obstacle to the resumption of six-party talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Recall the collapse of the South Korean navy corvette “Cheonan, occurred March 26 in the Yellow Sea. The causes of the shipwreck were not called, but the Western media reported that an explosion occurred aboard the ship, and at the bottom of the hole formed. Then, were rescued about 60 sailors of the ship, more than 40 died. The news of the wreck caused panic among the residents of South Korea, arguing that North Korea has threatened on the eve of the U.S. and its allies by a series of large-scale attacks, began to act.

Kommersant-Online, 07.05.2010

Source – Businessman Permanent Address Article – http://www.centrasia.ru/newsA.php?st=1273546560

Russia and Turkey–in search of an expanding partnership

Russia – Turkey: in search of an expanding partnership

D. Hovhannisyan:

Russia – Turkey: in search of an expanding partnership
on 11 May will be a visit of President Dmitry Medvedev in Turkey.

The volume of trade between the two countries reached the level of over 30 billion dollars, and decided to bring in the five years that figure to 100 billion dollars. Russia has invested in the Turkish economy more than $ 4 billion, Turkey is a leader – more than 6 billion dollars. For its part, Russia provides about 70% of Turkey’s energy resources. The parties also agreed on cooperation in nuclear energy (assuming that Russia will build in Turkey, one or more nuclear power plants). There is a mutual interest in the fact that the territory of Turkey has become one of the main transit routes for Russian energy. In short, the Russian-Turkish relations entered a qualitatively new level.

booming trade and economic and energy cooperation between Russia and Turkey dictates the need for improved relations and also in the political sphere. This, in turn, is the serious problems in Turkish-American and Turkish-Israeli relations. At the same time diplomatic maneuvers Ankara aimed at finding new opportunities to increase its geopolitical importance in the Black Sea-Caspian region.

a special place in Medvedev’s talks in Ankara will take the problems of regional security and stability for the South Caucasus. The role of this region is the most important transit territory, connecting / disconnecting it mainly for the Eurasian communication system of three seas, through which, one way or another, are, or should undergo oil and gas pipelines, highways, after the outbreak of conflict in the Balkans sites seriously increased.

The subject of discussion Russian and Turkish leaders to become such an initiative as a “platform of stability and cooperation in the Caucasus” initiative launched by Turkey during his visit to Russia, Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, the country’s August 13, 2008 According to the Turkish prime minister, it “implies the creation of an international organization that will focus its efforts on creating a common security in the Caucasus region, cooperation in energy supplies. The organization should include the five countries of the region – Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. According to Erdogan, a union founded on the principles of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe / OSCE /, would be able to prevent any conflicts in the region.

“Platform of Stability and Cooperation” at the time of her nomination she had, at least four serious drawbacks:

a) It does not take into account all the negative consequences of expulsion from Iran,

b) it does not take into account the degree of confidence in Armenia to any Turkish initiatives;

a) It does not take into account the policy of Azerbaijan in respect of any proposals and projects, including possible cooperation with Armenia,

d) it is not take into account the effects of war in August.

However, this initiative clearly shows the primary objective of Ankara – to turn Turkey into regional power both in the Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East and thus recover once belonged to her great-power status. As pointed out recently, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu, the main objective of Turkish foreign policy in this century – the Ottoman Balkans is flourishing as a center of world politics.

It should look closely at the changes in the policies of Ankara within the framework of bilateral relations of Turkey with Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Russia and Armenia.

In October 2009, Turkey abandoned its long-planned participation in the exercises of the Air Force with Israel, which has made the tension in bilateral relations. Almost simultaneously the visit of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to Tehran. Turkey and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding on oil and gas sector. According to this document, Turkey will be eligible to sell 17.5 billion cubic meters of gas a year with the largest deposits in the world of South Pars.

After the signing of this agreement, Iranian gas left in the first place as a major resource base for Nabucco, surpassing the Turkmen, Iraq and Azerbaijan. Experts note that the first phase of the project to fill the Nabucco will be sufficient that the gas that Turkey intends to purchase from South Pars. This means that the pipeline, designed to create a route to the EU carry natural gas from the Caspian region to bypass Russia, can get a reliable resource base.

It can be assumed that during the visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Ankara will be actively discussed a wide range of issues of regional security.

While the interests of Russia and Turkey on a number of international policy, as well as their approaches to issues of national security, differ in many respects, there are a number of tasks that these partner nations will certainly face together.

__________________________
David Hovhannisian – Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia, professor, director of research problems of culture and civilization of the Yerevan State University.

The article is published in the reduction.

10.05.2010

Source – Strategic Culture Foundation

Azerbaijan Meets With AIPAC Over Armenian Issue

Ilham Aliyev is trying to make friends with the Jewish lobby

in the U.S.

Aliyev’s special envoy traveled to Israel for the Jewish lobby in the U.S.

Last week, the special envoy of President of Azerbaijan held talks in Israel with the head of the Jerusalem office of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Baku is trying to enlist the support of the influential Jewish lobby at Congress and the Senate.

Last week, on 6 May, Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov met with the head of the Jerusalem office of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Wendy Singer. As the portal IzRus spokesman representation AIPAC in Israel, David Trevelman, their meeting was private in nature, and for this reason of it there were no reports in the media. He declined to disclose the contents of the conversation Asimov and Singer, noting only that such a meeting was conducted “on an ongoing basis.” In turn, competent sources in Jerusalem reported that the talks dealt with issues of support to Azerbaijan AIPAC lobbyists at the Congress and the Senate. Separately, the interaction of some Jewish organizations in the United States with the Armenian lobby.

Incidentally, the neutralization of the Armenian influence in recent years actively engaged in the Turkish Ambassador in Washington (a former ambassador to Israel), Namik Tan. He has contacts on the issue with the American Jewish Committee, American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.

Araz Azimov is considered one of the most powerful figures in the diplomatic department of Azerbaijan, as well as the special envoy of President Ilham Aliyev on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. During his visit to Israel, he also met with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and his deputy, Danny Ayalon. Director of Central Europe and Eurasia FM Pini Avivi said portal IzRus, that these meetings were discussed issues concerning bilateral relations and regional policy in the Middle East and the South Caucasus. According to him, the meeting of this format twice a year – the last time he Avivi visited Baku in December 2009.

05/10/2010 Alexander Goldenshteyn

Source – IzRus Permanent address article – http://www.centrasia.ru/newsA.php?st=1273559820

OIC meeting in Turkey to discuss Israeli damages in holy city

Israel’s damaging the holy structure of Jerusalem by opening new settlement units will top the agenda of the meeting.

The second extraordinary meeting of the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)-member states (PUOICM) will take place in Istanbul on Monday.

Turkey’s Parliament Speaker Mehmet Ali Sahin will preside the meeting at Istanbul’s Conrad Hotel.

Sahin held bilateral talks with Yemeni Parliament Speaker Yahya al-Raee, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and Syrian Parliament Speaker Mahmoud Al Abrash in Istanbul on Sunday.

Parliament speakers from 14 countries, deputy parliament speakers from 6 countries and parliamentarians from 8 countries will be in attendance at the meeting.

Israel’s damaging the holy structure of Jerusalem by opening new settlement units will top the agenda of the meeting.

Parliament Speaker Sahin, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Parliamentary Union of the OIC Secretary-General Mahmut Erol Kilic and OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu will make opening remarks of the meeting.

Established in 1969, OIC is an international organization with 57 member states from the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Caucasus, Balkans, and South America. The Parliamentary Union of the OIC member states was established in Iran in 1999 and its headquarters is situated in Tehran.

The Poetry of Death: Patterns of State Terror

The Poetry of Death: Patterns of State Terror Chris Floyd May 10, 2010 The found poetry of state terror continues its strange mutilations of the English language. The bizarre verbal heavings of Donald Rumsfeld, for example, are rightly celebrated as choice examples of the genre. And noted English playwright David Hareonce fashioned a whole play built largely on the “thought-tormented music” wrought from verbatim transcripts of the principal authors of the war crime in Iraq. In this regard, as in almost every aspect of the Terror War, “continuity” has been the hallmark of the Obama Administration. But we would do the progressive, forward-looking president a grave disservice if we were to imply that this dynamic, historic figure has confined himself to mere continuity. No, in field after field of governmental endeavor, Barack Obama has striven mightily not just to uphold the many authoritarian and militarist innovations of the Bush Administration, but to expand them — increasing their scope and depth, codifying, normalizing and making permanent many practices which his predecessors had enshrouded with ambiguity, deception and deliberate murk. Bush and Cheney were afflicted with a vestigial embarrassment at the howling illegality and constitutional subversion of many of their Terror War policies, and seemed to fear these acts would provoke some kind of public outcry or political controversy — or even prosecution — should they be made too explicit. But our cool, savvy and thoroughly post-postmodern president carries none of that dead lumber from our long-vanished past. Where Bush was content with smirks and hints about his assassination program, Obama is bold, sending his security chief to declare openly before Congress that the president now has the unrestricted right and power to murder anyone, Americans included, in cold blood, by the simple expedient of declaring his victim a suspected terrorist of some vague description. Whereas Bush and Cheney usually resorted to backroom bureaucratic knife-twisting or bombastic but empty public threats to try to silence and cow officials who expose high crimes of state, the Obama Administration brazenly brings down the draconian power offederal prosecution against whistleblowers. Our progressives-in-power will not just take away your government job or bluster at your editors if you give your fellow citizens a glimpse of the blood-soaked sausage-making that goes on behind the imperial curtain; no, they will put you in the penitentiary, to rot away with murderers and child abusers, which is where they rank all such treacherous tellers of truth. So we should not be surprised to find the Obama Administration outstripping its mentors and models from the Bush years in the production of Orwellian nomenclature. Nor is it remarkable that these perversions of language are leading to further perversions of law, morality and plain common sense. We refer to the recent story in the Los Angeles Times about the vast expansion of the CIA’s powers to murder people in Pakistan with missiles fired by robot drones. These remote-control killings were originally aimed at specific, known, named individuals suspected of being top “militant” leaders. But now, people are being targeted not because of any action they are known or alleged to have taken, but simply because they seem to fit an arbitrarily designated “pattern of life” — even if the remote-control killers don’t know the victim’s name. This “pattern” is put together from clumps of data gathered by surveillance robots hovering high in the sky above Pakistani towns and villages, watching people as they go about their ordinary business, and from whatever bits of local gossip the CIA can glean from paid operatives raking through their neighbor’s private lives. Naturally, the CIA refuses to describe “the standards of evidence” by which it decides to kill unknown, defenseless people with missile strikes on houses, compounds and neighborhoods. And of course, the Agency claims it is targeting only “militants” (however that infinitely elastic term is being defined these days). Yet at the same time, the Terror War operatives cannot resist boasting that they are sweeping up so much information that they can determine “the characteristics of individual people.” And since is it the pattern of observed daily life that yields the designation of a person as a “militant,” the CIA must inevitably be tracking countless numbers of innocent people as well. Otherwise, how could they discern specific “patterns of life” that indicate the existence of a hitherto unknown “militant” within a given population? You can only get such data by observing that population as a whole. In other words, the program, for all its technological whizbangery, is essentially a crude KGB-style rape of the privacy of individual human beings, whose lives are a forced open book, with every action and interaction being judged by a remorseless spy, holding the power of life and death in his hands. People who act “suspiciously” — by unknown criteria, determined in secret — can be killed without warning, without trial, without charge, without even their names being known to their killers. But here, of course, our thoroughly modern president outstrips the KGB, which usually picked off its victims piecemeal, quietly, individually. Nowadays, we send heavy missiles screaming through the sky to destroy whole buildings and city streets in order to kill one unnamed, unknown suspect who has somehow exhibited the wrong “pattern of life.” In almost every case, many people — sometimes dozens — die with the victim, regardless of the “pattern of life” they displayed for the deadly peeping toms on the Potomac. As the Times notes, this particular tactic of state terror was initiated in the last year of the Bush Administration, but has been greatly expanded and “even streamlined” by the Bush Administration. The result has been the deaths of hundreds of people. As the Times reports: Of more than 500 people who U.S. officials say have been killed since the pace of strikes intensified, the vast majority have been individuals whose names were unknown, or about whom the agency had only fragmentary information. In some cases, the CIA discovered only after an attack that the casualties included a suspected terrorist whom it had been seeking.‬ The CIA was directed by the Bush administration to begin using armed drones to track Osama bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda figures, as well as Taliban leaders who fled to Pakistan’s tribal areas after the Sept. 11 attacks. President Bush secretly decided in his last year in office to expand the program. Obama has continued and even streamlined the process, so that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta can sign off on many attacks without notifying the White House beforehand, an official said. Missile attacks have risen steeply since Obama took office. Note the telling little details. In some cases, it is only after an attack that our CIA guardians (or more likely, their paid private contractors) discover there was a suspected militant among the smoking, stinking pile of dead bodies that their drones have left behind. And the “vast majority” of these officially claimed 500 victims (the true number of dead is much greater, of course) were killed on the basis of “only fragmentary information” at best. What’s more, the LAT reports that these deadly attacks are being carried out in Pakistan at the rate of one every three and a half days. Let’s be clear. A program like this, conducted on such a broad and relentless scale, is in no way aimed solely at eliminating individual “militant leaders” or even “insurgent networks.” It is, quite demonstrably and unarguably, a terrorist campaign, designed to terrorize the target populations into acquiescence with the attacker’s agenda. Again, despite its use of advanced technology and sophisticated Orwellian techniques — Big Brother in the sky, with a bomb — it is no less primitive, morally and politically, than a carload of fireworks and fertilizer left to explode on a city street. The only result of the program will be to engender more hatred of the United States (and of the vaunted “civilized values” the United States purports to represent), and to provoke more retaliation, more bloodshed, more extremism. This is the “pattern of death” that a system based on terror, violence and dominationwill inevitably produce. You can pervert the language that surrounds it, cloaking it with security-geek jargon, or fine phrases about freedom and security; you can tell jokes about it, turning stone-cold mechanized killing based on “fragmentary information” into a jolly jape to titillate sycophantic journalists and vacuous celebrities. You can do anything you like to disguise the reality of your terrorist campaign — but you cannot change that reality on the ground where it is occurring, nor stop the reverberations from your evil and idiotic actions from spreading their turbulence in ways you have never foreseen, and can never control.

:: Article nr. 65843 sent on 10-may-2010 18:35 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=65843

Link: www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/1967-the-poetry-of-death-patterns-of-
state-terror.html