a war crime a day, and obama’s okay!

US Drone Strikes Kill 33 in 24 Hours in Pakistan

by Jason Ditz, June 03, 2012

A pair of US drone strikes against Pakistan’s South Waziristan Agency have killed at least 33 people, 16 in South Waziristan and 17 in North Waziristan and wounded four others in the past 24 hours. The majority of the slain “suspects” were unidentified.

The one identified person was Malang Jan, killed in South Waziristan. Jan is identified as an “associate” of Maulvi Nazir, a warlord in South Waziristan who has remained on good terms with the Pakistani government, but who is frequently targeted by the US. Another attack targeted his funeral.

Pakistan’s government has regularly demanded that the US halt all drone strikes, warning that it is fueling massive amounts of militancy in the tribal areas and making matters worse. The US has spurned this demand, insisting that the missile attacks are a vital part of the ongoing war.

The strikes have had an impact well beyond the tribal areas on which they are launched as well. The significant number of civilian deaths, and the overwhelming number of people killed who are just never identified, have added fuel to a growing anti-US backlash across both Pakistan and the rest of the region.

from anit-war.com

PAKISTAN CONDEMNS DRONE STRIKES

Pakistan on Monday strongly condemned a jump in U.S. drone strikes on its territory, using language that could increase tension between strategic allies already in dispute over military supply routes for NATO that Pakistan has closed.

Three drone strikes in as many days on suspected militants have killed at least 27 people, Pakistani intelligence officials say.

The foreign ministry called the attacks “illegal” and said they violated the South Asian country’s sovereignty.

Washington and Islamabad are deadlocked in negotiations over the re-opening of overland supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Islamabad blocked the supply routes in November after 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed by cross-border “friendly fire” from NATO aircraft.

The supply lines are considered vital to the planned withdrawal of most foreign combat troops from Afghanistan before the end of 2014.

The NATO attack plunged relations between Washington and Islamabad to their lowest point in years, and prompted Pakistani leaders to review ties.

Pakistan’s parliament called for an end to U.S. drone strikes, and the foreign minister told Reuters in an interview in April that the United States was ignoring Islamabad’s demands for an end to the operations.

Publicly, Pakistani officials condemn the use of the drones, saying they violate Pakistan’s sovereignty and warning the Americans they are driving angry Pakistanis into the arms of militant groups.

But analysts say successful drone strikes, especially those that kill senior militants, would not be possible without help from Pakistani intelligence agencies.

It is not clear how much intelligence the two sides have shared in recent months.

The recent drone strikes have focused on the North Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border. U.S. officials believe members of the Haqqani network, one of the most dangerous Afghan insurgent groups, is based there.

via Pakistan condemns U.S. drone strikes- swissinfo.

more details below;

US drone kills up to 17 people in north Waziristan, the third such attack on targets in Pakistan in as many days

A Pakistani intelligence official said Monday’s missile attack flattened a mud house in Hasokhel, a hamlet to the east of Miranshah, North Waziristan’s capital.

He said: “We have reports that there were some Uzbek militants among the dead, but we cannot be certain in our identification as the bodies were badly charred.”

The frequency of US drone attacks is still a long way from its 2010 peak, but it has picked up since the Nato conference in Chicago last month which failed to persuade Pakistan to reopen its borders to Nato traffic. Supply lines into Afghanistan have been severed for six months. The American defence secretary Leon Panetta last week described diplomatic conditions between Washington and Islamabad as “up and down”, noting “this is one of the most complicated relationships we have had”.

Bill Roggio, an analyst who runs the Long War Journal website, said the attacks underlined “just how bad Pakistan and US relations are at the moment”. “These last eight strikes all occurred after the Nato summit,” he said. “The strikes were halted in an attempt to get the Pakistanis on board to reopen the supply lines but when they didn’t happen they turned the programme back on.”

Prior to the recent spate of attacks, the Obama administration’s drone campaign had appeared suspended after lobbying from diplomats, particularly the US ambassador in Islamabad, who argued that the CIA programme was preventing the two sides from burying their differences. Pakistan closed its borders to Nato supply vehicles in November after US forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a border incident. Despite signs that Islamabad would relent, including in the runup to last month’s Nato conference, Pakistan continues to demand an apology for the killing of its soldiers, an end to drone attacks and a sharp increase in the tariff paid by Nato for moving cargo across Pakistani territory as conditions to reopen them.

The increase in the number of drone attacks comes as the US assistant defence secretary, Peter Lavoy, prepares to visit Islamabad in an effort to persuade Pakistan to end its blockade.One sticking point is reportedly close to being fixed. On Monday Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported the US had finally agreed to pay Pakistan $1.8bn as recompense for its efforts fighting militancy along its western border.

The two sides are running out of time to complete negotiations on the Nato supplies as the US Congress, which goes on a summer recess on 4 July, requires two weeks’ notice to approve any new deal.

In the border areas some people agreed that Pakistan was being punished by the US for its intransigence. “Also, the summer fighting season has already started in Afghanistan,” said Mir Nawaz, a tribesman from Miranshah. “The US wants to keep the militants under pressure.”

The third US drone strike in as many days in Pakistan has raised the three-day death toll in the aerial attacks to at least 27, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.

Monday’s strike in the Hesokhel village of North Waziristan’s tribal areas, was said to have targeted a hideout for fighters, officials said.

The latest strike, which officials said had killed 15 people, was the seventh in a span of less than two weeks.

Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab reports from Islamabad.

syrian rebels massacred government supporters in houla – not syrian government

BBC immediately changed the narrative back to the “correct” tract, after syrian businessman says rebel group massacred civilians in Al-Hula

BBC’s Newsnight last night interviewed a London based Syrian businessman who stated that the families murdered by terrorists in Houla were supporters of the Syrian government, not the opposition.

If correct this would make it highly unlikely that the narrative pushed by the mainstream media is true, and suggests the opposite is the case: the atrocity was committed not by the Assad regime but by the insurgents, supported by NATO, Al Qaeda and the gulf arab dictators, and reported to be covertly armed by Turkey’s Muslim Brotherhood linked government.

The official story of the Houla massacre has changed substantially since it first broke, with unconfirmed reports from insurgents (routinely described on the BBC as activists).

• Version one, corroborated by at least one BBC corespondent, had it that the victims were killed by heavy weapons of the Syrian army.
• Version two was that villagers had been randomly killed by militias sponsored by the Assad government.
• Version three, the current version, concedes that most of the victims came from a few extended families.

It should not be difficult to establish who the families were loyal to: the insurgents or the Syrian government. The Syrian businessman on Newsnight stated they were related to an MP elected in recent elections which the insurgents have boycotted.

It was not clear whether the information from the Syrian businessman was expected in this live TV show. The potential bombshell was ignored by hawkish presenter Gavin Essler and high profile warmonger Paul Wolfovitz, who demanded a military attack on Syria. A UN spokesman refused Essler’s invitation to confirm that the Houla victims were killed by Syrian government forces.

If we now hear less and less about the massacre with no further details, many will conclude that the prima facie suspects for the atrocity are the insurgents, backed by NATO and the Gulf arab dictators, aided and abetted by the mainstream media, including the BBC.

via Houla Massacre Victims ‘Were Supporters of Syrian Government’ – Salem-News.Com.

ANNA News Journalist Marat Musin about Houla Massacre

In the weekend of May 25, 2012, at about 2 PM, big groups of fighters attacked and captured the town of Al – Hula of the Homs province. Al-Hula is made up of three regions: the village of Taldou, Kafr Laha and Taldahab, each of which had previously been home for 25-30 thousand people.

The town was attacked from the north-east by groups of bandits and mercenaries, numbering up to 700 people. The militants came from Ar-Rastan (the Brigade of al-Farouk from the Free Syrian Army led by the terrorist Abdul Razak Tlass and numbering 250), from the village of Akraba (led by the terrorist Yahya Al-Yousef), from the village Farlaha, joined by local gangsters, and from Al Hula.

The city of Ar-Rastan has long been abandoned by most civilians. Now Wahhabis from Lebanon dominate the scene, fueled with money and weapons by one of the main orchestrators of international terrorism, Saad Hariri, who heads the anti-Syrian political movement “Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal” (“Future Movement”). The road from Ar-Rastan to Al-Hula runs through Bedouin areas that remain mostly out of control of government troops, which made the militant attacks on Al Hula a complete surprise for the Syrian authorities.

When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children. Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of the AbdulRazak. Many of those killed were “guilty” of the fact that they dared to chang from Sunnis to Shiites. The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something that was not verified by any marks on their bodies.

The idea that the UN observers had heard artillery fire against Al-Houla in the Safir Hotel in Homs at night… I consider nothing short of a bad joke. 50 kilometers lie between Homs and Al-Houla. What kind of tanks or guns has this range? Yes, there was intensive gunfire in Homs until 3 am, including heavy weapons. But, to give an example, on the night of Monday to Tuesday shooting was due to an attempt by law enforcement to regain control for a security corridor along the road to Damascus, Tarik Al-Sham.

After a visual inspection of Al Hula it is impossible to find traces of any of fresh destruction, bombing and shelling. During the day, several attacks by gunmen are made on the last remaining soldiers at the Taldou checkpoint. Militants used heavy weapons and snipers are active from among professional mercenaries.

Note that once, the exactly same provocation failed at Shumar (Homs) and 49 militants and women and children were killed, when it was organized just before a visit of Kofi Annan. The last provocation was immediately exposed as soon as it became known that the bodies of the previously kidnapped belonged to Alawites. This provocation also contained serious inconsistencies – the names of those killed were from people loyal to the authorities, there were no traces of bombings, etc.

However, the provocation machine is running all the same. Today, the NATO countries directly threat to bomb Syria, and a simultaneous expulsion of Syrian diplomats has begun … As of today, there are no troops within the city of Al Hula, but there are regularly heard bursts of automatic fire, nonetheless. Moreover, it is unclear whether the militants are fighting with each other, or whether supporters Bashar al-Assad are being cleaned out. Militants opened fire on virtually everyone who tries to get closer to the border town. Before us a UN convoy was fired upon and two armored jeeps of the UN observers were damaged, when they tried to drive up to an army checkpoint in Tal Dow.

see more of this story, form the salem news.com

The Houla Hoaxsters

It was supposed to be another “Benghazi moment” – an incident so horrific that it would spark Western military intervention in Syria’s increasingly violent civil war. The massacre at Houla was reported to be just such a moment: Syria’s security forces stand accused of killing 32 children under ten years of age, and more than 60 adults, by bombing the rebel-held village of Houla. Photos of the massacre soon appeared on Twitter: and on YouTube, videos of the slaughter, uploaded by anonymous “activists,” appeared on cue. There was just one problem with this “evidence” of a massacre committed by the Syrian government – much of it was completely made up.

Take the photo the BBC used to illustrate the atrocity: it showed a young boy jumping over piles of corpses neatly laid out in preparation for burial. Very dramatic, and very disturbing – except it wasn’t a photo of anything that happened in Houla. Instead, it was a photo taken by Marco Di Lauro in Iraq, in 2003, and appropriated from his web site. The stolen photo was accompanied by a caption that read:

“Photo from Activist. This image – which cannot be independently verified – is believed to show bodies of children in Houla awaiting funeral.”

“Somebody is using illegally one of my images for anti [S]yrian propaganda on the BBC web site front page,” Di Lauro says, “I almost fell off my chair when I saw it.” When confronted by Di Franco, BBC editors took it down, and, by way of explanation, pointed to the caption as somehow exonerating.

The BBC’s falling for – or enabling – “activist” fakery is hardly the only such incident: there was the case of “Syria Danny,” whose on-camera antics were exposed in flagrante delicto as he staged a Syrian army “attack” for the benefit of CNN. And don’t forget the fake “blogger” who purported to be “Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari,” a 35-year-old lesbian living in Damascus, supposedly kidnapped by the Syrian regime and abused. “Amina” turned out to be a middle-aged married American schmuck and “Middle Eastern activist,” one Tom MacMaster, studying for a degree at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. The cause of “Amina” was taken up by those ubiquitous Syrian “activists” and trumpeted by their online propaganda apparatus – which has sprung up with weed-like rapidity. That’s what a healthy infusion of money from Western governments will buy you.

Yet even all that money apparently can’t buy competent sock-puppets, with amateurs like MacMaster, “Syria Danny,” and whoever supplied the BBC with Di Lauro’s photo running wild.

Speaking of running wild with enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars, the rebels – already receiving cash, arms, and other emoluments from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Gulf sheikdoms – have already handed a $12 billion bill for “post-Assad development” to the Western “Friends Group,” led by Germany. That, you can be sure, is just the beginning. With the Eurozone going down into the economic abyss, and the Germans berating their Greek (and now Spanish and Italian) partners as unproductive free riders, one has to wonder about German priorities. The British, too, are on the hook, having just upped the amount they’re sending – at a time when government subsidies to the very needy are on the chopping block. And of course there’s no telling how many American tax dollars have been funneled in “non-lethal” aid to the rebels-who-couldn’t-get-their-lies-straight, but one thing is clear: their American trainers and advisers have their work cut out for them.

from anti-war.com

suspected necrophiliac cannibal porn star arrested in germany

A man suspected of murdering and dismembering a student in Montreal has been arrested in a Berlin internet cafe, German police have confirmed.

Interpol issued an arrest warrant last week for Luka Rocco Magnotta, a 29-year-old Canadian, who faces first-degree murder charges over the videotaped death of Jun Lin, 33, a Chinese exchange student whose body parts were posted to political parties in the Canadian capital, Ottawa.

Police in Canada said last week Magnotta had probably left the country for France. However, detectives have since confirmed the suspect had taken refuge in Paris before boarding a bus to Berlin at the weekend.

Magnotta was spotted by a cafe owner in Berlin’s Neukölln district on Monday, police said. “Today, at about 1.30pm, a witness recognised Mr Magnotta in an internet cafe,” said Guido Busch, a spokesman for the city’s police. “Seven officers went into the cafe and immediately overpowered Magnotta, who tried at first to give a false name. The officers didn’t buy it.”

German television quoted the owner of the cafe as saying Magnotta had spent an hour surfing the internet before officers entered and took him into custody.

Magnotta is expected to appear in court on Tuesday, Busch added.

French police say the suspect fled to France on 26 May and was hiding in a hotel in a Parisian suburb as late as last Friday. Detectives raided his hotel room where they found pornographic magazines, according to reports.

In a crime scene Montreal police say is the worst they have seen, Magnotta’s flat contained a bloody mattress and pools of blood on the floor and in the refrigerator. Detectives said a janitor found a torso with no head or limbs in a suitcase in an alley behind the building.

Authorities believe a decomposing foot sent to the Conservative party headquarters on Tuesday and a hand found inside a package at a postal depot belong to the same person.

Magnotta has left a bizarre internet trail, portraying himself as an alleged kitten killer and bisexual porn star.

via Murder suspect Luka Rocco Magnotta arrested in Berlin | World news | guardian.co.uk.

Obama officials admit u.s. developed “unstoppable malware,” now out of its control

Given the unofficial confirmation Friday that the United States was behind Stuxnet—the malware designed to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program—political and technical experts suggest that this may effectively put the United States in a more dangerous foreign policy position.

“This is the end of plausible deniability on Stuxnet,” said Chris Bronk, a former State Department official, who is now a research fellow at Rice University. “Cyber is a dangerous place to play. This makes me very nervous that we don’t understand the entire set of consequences of releasing malware into the wild.”

In other words, he told Ars, it sets a potentially dangerous precedent for other countries looking to develop or expand their own clandestine operations.

“Countries realize that cyber espionage is a heck of a lot easier than anything else,” he said. “Now the question is: to what degree [will we have] malware that is designed to impact the physical world? When is that going to become a more widely utilized capability?”

via Stuxnet admission likely to have foreign policy consequences | Ars Technica.

more:

Undercutting “Internet Freedom”

Indeed, things could not be more contentious with Iran right now than they already are—both countries, along with other major world powers are set to meet in Moscow later this month for the third round of the “P5+1″ negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.

“[This revelation won’t] help the atmosphere,” said Nader Entessar, a professor of political science and Iran expert at the University of South Alabama. “These are contentious negotiations to begin with. What is missing in this whole process is confidence-building measures. These things do not add to the positive side of the ledger.”

Another problem with admitting to being behind Stuxnet is that experts say it may damage the oft-touted “21st Century Statecraft” and “Internet Freedom” agenda that the United States Department of State has been promoting in recent years.

“I think this undercuts the Internet Freedom agenda in a big way,” Bronk, the former State Department official, added. “[It shows that the US] is willing to use the digital agora as a weapon whenever we need to. I think that’s playing both sides of the fence.”

Finally, some even wondered if the Stuxnet situation will be used as an excuse to keep a closer eye on Iran’s domestic Internet use.

“[Iran is] going to use this as a justification for further clampdowns, that ‘we’re not trying to deny average citizens access, but all we’re trying to do is [ensure that the] Internet is not used as a means of warfare against Iran,’” Entessar told Ars. “It [becomes] a national security issue, as opposed to freedom of information issue.”

Report: Obama Ordered Stuxnet to Continue After Bug Caused It to Spread Wildly

Despite an error in the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran’s uranium enrichment program, which caused the malware to spread wildly out of control and infect computers outside of Iran in 2010, President Barack Obama ordered U.S. officials who were behind the attack to continue the operation.

That was despite the fact that Stuxnet was spreading to machines in the United States and elsewhere and could have contained other unknown errors that might affect U.S. machines.

The information comes in a new report from The New York Times, which asserts that an error in the code led it to spread to an engineer’s computer after it was hooked up to systems controlling the centrifuges at Iran’s uranium enrichment plant near Natanz. When the engineer left the Natanz facility, he spread it to other machines, writesTimes reporter David Sanger, based on a book he has written that will be released next week.

Sources told Sanger that they believed the Israelis introduced the error in the code.

“We think there was a modification done by the Israelis,” an unidentified U.S. source reportedly told the president, “and we don’t know if we were part of that activity.”

also from wired: Report: Obama Ordered Stuxnet to Continue After Bug Caused It to Spread Wildly

FBI entrapment schemes target marginalized people, rather than long-time activists

Over the past month, the FBI has initiated a spate of entrapment operations designed to frame anarchists as “terrorists.” Significantly, they have not targeted longtime organizers, but rather people who are relatively peripheral to anarchist communities.

In response, we’ve prepared a pamphlet suitable for a wide readership explaining how this entrapment strategy works, and an analysis exploring why the FBI has adopted it. Please circulate these widely.

Reading PDF [550kb]
Imposed PDF for Printing [550kb]

The Latest Trend in Repression

Not so long ago, it seemed that the FBI focused on pursuing accomplished anarchists: Marie Mason and Daniel McGowan were both arrested after lengthy careers involving everything from supporting survivors of domestic violence to ecologically-minded arson. It isn’t surprising that the security apparatus of the state targeted these activists: they were courageously threatening the inequalities and injustices the state is founded upon.

However, starting with the entrapment case of Eric McDavid—framed for a single conspiracy charge by an infiltrator who used his attraction to her to manipulate him into discussing illegal actions—the FBI seem to have switched strategies, focusing on younger targets who haven’t actually carried out any actions.

They stepped up this new strategy during the 2008 Republican National Convention, at which FBI informants Brandon Darby and Andrew Darst set upDavid McKay, Bradley Crowder, and Matthew DePalma on charges of possessing Molotov cocktails in two separate incidents. It’s important to note that the only Molotov cocktails that figured in the RNC protests at any point were the ones used to entrap these young men: the FBI were not responding to a threat, but inventing one.

Over the past month, the FBI have shifted into high gear with this approach. Immediately before May Day, five young men were set up on terrorism charges in Cleveland after an FBI infiltrator apparently guided them into planning to bomb a bridge, in what would have been the only such bombing carried out by anarchists in living memory. During the protests against the NATO summit in Chicago, three young men were arrested and charged with terrorist conspiracy once again involving the only Molotov cocktails within hundreds of miles, set up by at least twoFBI informants.

Undercover informants “Mo” and “Gloves” (aka “Nadiya”) from the NATO entrapment cases

None of the targets of these entrapment cases seem to be longtime anarchist organizers. None of the crimes they’re being charged with are representative of the tactics that anarchists have actually used over the past decade. All of the cases rest on the efforts of FBI informants to manufacture conspiracies. All of the arrests have taken place immediately before mass mobilizations, enabling the authorities to frame a narrative justifying their crackdowns on protest as thwarting terrorism. And in all of these cases, the defendants have been described as anarchists in the legal paperwork filed against them, setting precedents for criminalizing anarchism.

Why Entrapment? Why Now?

Why is the FBI focusing on entrapping inexperienced young people rather than going after seasoned anarchists? Isn’t that just plain bad sportsmanship? And why are they intensifying this now?

For one thing, experienced activists are harder to catch. Unlike anarchists, FBI agents work for money, not necessarily out of passion or conviction. Their reports often read like second-rate homework assignments even as they wreck people’s lives. Agents get funding and promotions based on successful cases, so they have an incentive to set people up; but why go after challenging targets? Why not pick the most marginal, the most vulnerable, the most isolated? If the goal is simply to frame somebody, it doesn’t really matter who the target is.

Likewise, the tactics anarchists have actually been using are likely to be more popular with the general public than the tactics infiltrators push them towards. Smashing bank windows, for example, may be illegal, but it is increasingly understood as a meaningful political statement; it would be difficult to build a convincing terrorism case around broken glass.

Well-known activists also have much broader support networks. The FBI threatened Daniel McGowan with a mandatory life sentence plus 335 years in prison; widespread support enabled him to obtain a good lawyer, and the prosecution had to settle for a plea bargain for a seven-year sentence or else admit to engaging in illegal wiretapping. Going after disconnected young people dramatically decreases the resources that will be mobilized to support them. If thepoint is to set precedents that criminalize anarchism while producing the minimum blowback, then it is easier to manufacture “terror” cases by means of agents provocateurs than to investigate actual anarchist activity.

Above all, this kind of proactive threat-creation enables FBI agents to prepare make-to-order media events. If a protest is coming up at which the authorities anticipate using brutal force, it helps to be able to spin the story in advance as a necessary, measured response to violent criminals. This also sows the seeds of distrust among activists, and intimidates newcomers and fence-sitters out of having anything to do with anarchists. The long-range project here, presumably choreographed by FBI leadership rather than rank-and-file agents, is not just to frame a few unfortunate arrestees, but thus to hamstring the entire anti-capitalist movement.

How to Destroy a Movement

As we saw in the Green Scare, FBI repression often does not begin in earnest until a movement has begun to fracture and subside, diminishing the targets’ support base. The life cycle of movements passes ever faster in our hyper-mediatized era; the Occupy phenomenon peaked in November 2011 and has already slowed down, emboldening the authorities to consolidate control and take revenge.

As anarchist values and practices become increasingly central to protest movements, the authorities are anxious to incapacitate and delegitimize anarchists. Yet in this context, it’s still inconvenient to admit to targeting people for anarchism alone—that could spread the wrong narrative, rallying outrage against transparently political persecution. Likewise, they dare not initiate repression without a narrative portraying the targets as alien to the rest of the movement, even if that repression is calculated to destroy the movement itself.

Fortunately for the FBI, a few advocates of “nonviolence” within the Occupy movement were happy to provide this narrative, disavowing everyone who didn’t affirm their narrow tactical framework. Journalists like Chris Hedges took this further by framing the “black bloc” as a kind of people rather than a tactic—despite even the Chicago Sun-Times comprehending the distinction. Hedges led the charge to consign those who actively defended themselves against state repression to this fabricated political category—in effect, designating them legitimate targets. It is no coincidence that entrapment cases followed soon after.

“The individuals we charged are not peaceful protesters, they are domestic terrorists,” [state attorney Anita] Alvarez said. “The charges we bring today are not indicative of a protest movement that has been targeted.”

The authorities swiftly took up this narrative. In a recent Fox News article advancing the FBI agenda, we see the authorities parroting Chris Hedges’ talking points—“they use the Occupy Movement as a front, but have their own violent agenda”—in order to frame the black bloc as a “home-grown terror group.” The article also describes the Cleveland arrestees as “Black Bloc anarchists,” without evidence that any of them have ever participated in a black bloc.

The goal here is clearly to associate a form of activity—acting anonymously, defending oneself against police attacks—with a kind of people: terrorists, evildoers, monsters. This is a high priority for the authorities: they were able to crush the Occupy movement much more quickly, at least relative to its numbers, in cities where people did not act anonymously and defend themselves—hence Occupy Oakland’s longevity compared to other Occupy groups. The aim of the FBI and corporate media, with the collusion of Chris Hedges and others, is to ensure that when people see a masked crowd that refuses to kowtow to coercive authority, they don’t think, “Good for them for standing up for themselves,” but rather, “Oh no—a bunch of terrorist bombers.”

To recapitulate the FBI strategy:

• divide and conquer the movement by isolating the most combative participants
• stage-manage entrapments of vulnerable targets at the periphery
• use these arrests to delegitimize all but the most docile, and to justify ever-increasing police violence.

What Comes Next

The authorities are explicitly announcing that there will be more of these “sting operations” at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Tampa. We can expect more and more “unsportsmanlike” entrapments in the years to come.

For decades now, movements have defended themselves against police surveillance and infiltration by practicing security culture. This has minimized the effectiveness of police operations against experienced activists. However, it can’t always protect those who are new to anarchism or activism, who haven’t had time to internalize complex habits and practices, and these are exactly the people that the FBI entrapment strategy targets.

Three years ago, we called for a collective security culture that could protect even newcomers against infiltrators. In a time of widespread social ferment, however, even this is not sufficient to thwart the FBI: we can’t hope to reach and protect every single desperate, angry,vulnerable person in our society. Infiltrators need only find one impressionable young person, however peripheral, to advance their strategy. These are inhuman bounty hunters: they don’t balk at taking advantage of any weakness, any need, any mental health issue.

If we are to protect the next generation of young people from these predators, our only hope is to mobilize a popular reaction against entrapment tactics. Only a blowback against the FBI themselves can halt this strategy. This will not be easy, but there is no better alternative.

Don’t stop speaking out, organizing, and fighting—that won’t stop them from repressing us or entrapping people. Retreating will only embolden them: we can only protect ourselves by increasing our power to fight back, not by withdrawing, not by hiding, not by behaving.

The best defense is a good offense. So long as capitalism is unstable—that is to say, until it collapses—there will be repression. Let’s meet it head on.

Map of the Zombie Apocalypse thus far

Map: Signs of the Zombie Apocalypse?

May 31, 2012 12:36 AM EDT

From Miami’s recent case of roadside cannibalism to flesh-eating bacteria and a blood-spitting anesthesiologist, a bout of twisted cases are fueling fears of the walking dead. The Daily Beast maps where the past month’s freakish incidents have gone down. Watch out, Florida! Plus, see photos of signs of the zombie apocalypse.

via Map: Signs of the Zombie Apocalypse? – The Daily Beast.

nice google map featuring gruesome events over the past weeks…this interactive map (click on image or link above to go to actual map) focuses on the u.s.. here are a couple of stories i’ve posted about other cannibals in the news:

manhunt for Canadian bisexual, cannibal porn star

Cannibal serial killer arrested in China

Beijing Lusts for Oil in South China Sea

In tropical waters off the coast of the Philippines, a standoff between half a dozen Chinese fishing boats, two Chinese law enforcement vessels and an aging Philippine Navy ship recently attracted a lot of attention in Washington, Beijing and other capitals across Asia.

Superficially, the squabble was over some rare corals, clams and poached sharks that Philippine Navy seamen were trying to retrieve in early April from the fishing boats operating in the Scarborough Shoal of the South China Sea until two Chinese Marine Surveillance craft intervened. After two tense days, the Philippine ship — a refitted Coast Guard cutter sent by the United States last year to beef up its ally’s weak defenses — withdrew.

But the stakes were much larger, as the insistent claims ever since of sovereignty over the shoal by both the Philippine and Chinese governments made clear. The incident intensified longstanding international questions over the strategically critical, potentially energy-rich South China Sea that have become more urgent this year as the long-dominant United States and fast-growing China both seek to increase their naval power in the region.

“We’re just pawns,” said Roberto Romulo, a former foreign secretary of the Philippines who argues that China is flexing its muscles in a bid to gain unimpeded access to vast reserves of natural gas and oil believed to be buried under the South China Sea. “China is testing the United States, that’s all it is. And China is eating America’s lunch in Southeast Asia.”

More recently, a senior Chinese military officer even dismissed any legitimate role for the United States in the South China Sea. “The South China issue is not America’s business,” Gen. Ma Xiaotian, the deputy chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, said in an interview broadcast Monday by Phoenix TV in Hong Kong. “It’s between China and its neighbors.”

The general’s statement appeared to throw down a challenge to the Obama administration, which has sought in the past six months to enhance United States military strength around the western Pacific and East Asia, where the South China Sea serves as an essential waterway for not only the United States Navy but also for a large portion of the world’s trade.

From placing Marines in the northern Australian port city of Darwin to increasing military relations with Vietnam, a country with an uneasy relationship with China, Washington has signaled its intention of staying, not leaving.

In the latest sign of its resolve to stand firm on Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, the administration sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to testify last week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the need for the United States to ratify the United Nations treaty that is intended to govern the world’s oceans.

China is one of 162 countries that has ratified the Law of the Sea treaty. But the United States has not done so, holding back from formal approval ever since President Ronald Reagan refused to sign it when it was completed in 1982.

A major goal of the joint appearance, administration officials said, was to strengthen the legal hand of the United States so that its navy can be assured the freedom of navigation that the treaty recognizes beyond any nation’s territorial limit of 12 nautical miles.

In contrast, Western diplomats say, China argues that freedom of navigation comes into force only 200 nautical miles from a nation’s coast, an argument that contravenes the Law of the Sea and, if put into effect, would basically render the South China Sea Beijing’s private preserve.

While China may have no interest in blocking shipping in the South China Sea, there is also no doubt that it has begun to project its power in the area. Vietnam, for example, claims that Chinese boats twice sabotaged oil exploration efforts last year by deliberately cutting ship cables in its waters. China said one of the cable-cutting incidents was accidental.

Meanwhile, China is expected to deploy its first aircraft carrier this year.

Two-thirds of the world’s natural gas trade passes through the waters of the South China Sea, according to a report by Yang Jiemian, president of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. The sea is the main passageway for oil from the Middle East to China, Japan, South Korea and the rest of Asia.

Now the sea itself is believed to hold a substantial reservoir of energy, with some experts predicting that under the seabed lies as much as 130 billion barrels of oil and 900 trillion cubic feet of gas.

via Beijing Projects Power in Strategic South China Sea – NYTimes.com.

CANNIBALISM updates: Mother eats infant son’s brains; manhunt for Canadian bisexual, cannibal, necrophiliac porn star; cannibal arrested in maryland

Mother Beheads Son & Eats Brains

Otty Sanchez, 33, has been accused by San Antonio police of beheading her 3-week-old infant son using a knife and two swords.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus told reporters Monday, May 28, that Otty Sanchez’s attack on her son, Scott Wesley Bucholtz-Sanchez, was “too heinous” to fully discuss.

Map of the Zombie Apocalypse thus far

To add even more of a horror movie zombie connection, Sanchez claims that she killed her son at the devil’s request.

Sanchez has since been charged with capital murder.

After the attack, according to police, she went on to eat part of the child’s brain and bit off three of his toes.

from the global grind

Former porn actor suspected of mailing body parts to Canadian political parties

A senior police official told Associated Press he was “sure” Luka Rocco Magnotta, believed to have fled Montreal, was in France. Another official said the suspect had apparently flown to Paris last weekend.

Magnotta, born Eric Clinton Newman and also sometimes using the name Vladimir Romanov, is said to know France well, having travelled there in 2010. The actor and model is wanted in a murder case that has seen him dubbed “Canadian Psycho”.

The police investigation was launched on Tuesday after officers found a man’s torso in a suitcase behind Magnotta’s apartment building in Montreal and a severed foot was discovered in a package posted to the Conservative party headquarters in Ottawa. A hand was found in a separate package at a postal facility, addressed to the Liberal party of Canada.

It then emerged that on Friday 25 May that a graphic 10-minute film had been posted on amateur horror sites. The footage showed a man stabbing a naked victim with an ice-pick, as well as performing sexual acts and the dismemberment of the corpse while the song True Faith by New Order played.

Montreal police said they had taken down the film but it kept reappearing online. “It’s horrible. I can’t believe people take advantage of watching this,” Commander Ian Lafreniere said.

Other body parts are missing, and police are investigating the possibility they also may have been put in the mail.

The victim is believed to have been a man Magnotta knew and possibly dated. Police have not identified the victim but Canadian newspapers, including La Presse, said he was a 33-year-old student from China who had been reported missing the day before.

Magnotta, who was born in the Toronto area and speaks English, had been renting a flat in a Montreal neighbourhood. He changed his name from Eric Clinton Newman in 2006, and online posts suggest he had a longtime fascination with identity change and escape.

via French police hunt Canadian porn actor suspected of body parts murder | World news | guardian.co.uk.

see also; Cannibal on run after warning The Sun: I can’t stop killing

in other cannibal-related news:

A 21-year-old college student from Kenya accused of killing a housemate told police he ate the victim’s heart and part of his brain after he died.

Alexander Kinyua hid the head and hands of the dead man in his family’s basement laundry room in a suburb of Baltimore, according to the sheriff’s office. Kinyua, a student at Morgan State University, was charged earlier in May in another attack in which the victim was brutally beaten but survived.

Kinyua is charged with first-degree murder and other charges in the death of 37-year-old Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, of Ghana. He was ordered held without bail.

His public defender did not return a call seeking comment, and a voicemail left at Kinyua’s home was not returned.

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Monica Worrell said the chief medical examiner had not yet officially identified the body parts, but that authorities believe they are those of Kodie, who was reported missing 25 May. His cellphone and wallet were left in the home and police were initially told he had gone for a run.

On Tuesday, Kinyua’s father, Antony Kinyua, called detectives and reported that another son, Jarrod, found what he thought were human remains in the house where they all lived in Joppatowne.

Jarrod found two metal tins, which held a human head and two human hands. Police say Jarrod confronted his brother, who said the remains were animals’.

According to charging documents, Jarrod and his father went to the basement, where Jarrod “observed that the items he observed were gone and Alex Kinyua was cleaning the container he observed them in”.

Detectives obtained a search warrant and found the head and hands in the house. Police say Alexander Kinyua admitted to killing Kodie by cutting him up with a knife and eating his heart and part of his brain.

see more, from the guardian: Maryland murder suspect tells police he ate heart and brain of victim

latest:

suspected necrophiliac cannibal porn star arrested in germany