Dirty Wars - Jeremy Scahill

A new docudrama, Dirty Wars, about the Joint Special Operations Command, a division of the US Military that does global assassinations, is coming to San Diego. We have a unique opportunity to screen this film in San Diego, on May 2nd, at Hoover High School Auditorium. Event starts at 7PM, be early. 

As Scahill digs deeper into the activities of JSOC, he is pulled into a world of covert operations unknown to the public and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress. In military jargon, JSOC teams “find, fix, and finish” their targets, who are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits for the “kill list,” including U.S. citizens.

Jeremy Scahill - "Dirty Wars"

The World Is a Battlefield: Obama’s Expanding Drone Attacks

Amy Goodman interviews Jeremy Scahill on his new book "Dirty Wars"
and exposes the heroism of Bradley Manning and Wikileaks.

American Death Squads in Iraq

The CIA’s “Mystery Man” in Baghdad: Salvador-Style Death Squads in Iraq

Documentary on death squads, torture, secret prisons in Iraq

By William Boardman

Global Research, April 08, 2013

Consortiumnews 7 April 2013

Region: Latin America & Caribbean, Middle East & North Africa

Theme: Crimes against Humanity, Media Disinformation,US NATO War Agenda

In-depth Report: IRAQ REPORT

 20 

  15  1 

 

  39

Image: Retired Col. James Steele

Official Washington has long ignored the genocide and terrorism that Ronald Reagan inflicted on Central America in the 1980s, making it easier to genuflect before the Republican presidential icon. That also helped Reagan’s “death squad” tactics resurface in Iraq last decade.

A recent British documentary Death squads, torture, secret prisons in Iraq, and General David Petraeus are among the featured atrocities in a new British documentary – “James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq” – the result of a 15-month investigation by Guardian Films and BBC Arabic, exploring war crimes long denied by the Pentagon but confirmed by thousands of military field reports made public by WikiLeaks.

Drone Man Protest

Apparently, it is OK for the US Government to use drones to assassinate US Citizens, but you need a permit to fly your own drone over the the 'Drone Man' in La Jolla.

Early Friday, about 40 protesters organized by the group CodePink descended on an upscale La Jolla neighborhood to stage a street demonstration in front of the home of Neal Blue, chief executive officer of General Atomics, which manufactures the Predator drone.

At Blue’s gated home, protesters had to abort plan to fly a small, drone-like vehicle equipped with a camera of the house. San Diego police stopped the craft’s operator, saying no permit for such a flight had been secured.
The group conducted a similar demonstration later Friday at General Atomics La Jolla offices before moving to Northrop Grumman in Kearny Mesa, whose products include the Global Hawk.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/apr/05/drones-protest/

Reprinted for Posterity: Bradley Manning's Statement

everything below is reprinted from Alex O'Brian's blog, see more ...

Pfc. Bradley E. Manning's Statement for the Providence Inquiry

By Alexa O'Brien on February 28, 2013 11:59 AM | 

For more information on the lack of public and press access to United States v. Pfc. Manning, visit the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed a petition requesting the Army Court of Criminal Appeals (ACCA) "to order the Judge to grant the public and press access to the government's motion papers, the court's own orders, and transcripts of proceedings, none of which have been made public to date."

IMPORTANT UPDATE

The statement below was read by Private First Class Bradley E. Manning at the providence inquiry for his formal plea of guilty to one specification under Article 92 with a substituted time frame for the offense, and nine specifications for lesser included offenses under Article 134. Below is a transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O'Brien at the Article 39(a) session of United States v. Pfc. Bradley Manning on February 28, 2013 at Fort Meade, MD, USA and published on March 1, 2013. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications.

On March 11, 2013, Manning's providence inquiry statement was officially released. See below. On March 12, 2013, leaked audio of Manning reading his statement was published by The Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Judge Lind: Pfc. Manning you may read your statement.

Pfc. Bradley Manning: Yes, your Honor. I wrote this statement in the confinement facility. Start now. The following facts are provided in support of the providence inquiry for my court martial, United States v. Pfc. Bradley E. Manning.

Personal Facts.

I am a twenty-five year old Private First Class in the United States Army currently assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, HHC, US Army Garrison (USAG), Joint Base Myer, Henderson Hall, Fort Meyer, Virginia.

My [exodus?] assignment I was assigned to HHC, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, NY. My primary military occupational specialty or MOS is 35 Foxtrot intelligence analyst. I entered active duty status on 2 October 2007. I enlisted with the hope of obtaining both real world experience and earning benefits under the GI Bill for college opportunities.

Facts regarding my position as an intelligence analyst. 

The Shock Doctrine: Disaster Capitalism - Naomi Kline

Understanding the problem is the first step toward a solution. Read The Shock Doctrine

The Shock Doctrine

In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998. 

Gillibrand Presses Military Officials on Sexual Assault

During yesterday's Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee hearing on military sexual assault, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand refused to accept rhetoric over reality, taking military leaders to task for claiming that commanders need convening authority--the definitive power to determine when to hear cases of sexual assault and when to overturn convictions--to maintain good discipline and order.