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.