Drone Murder 222

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I had a half-formed post in mind to work on this morning, but then I read Glenn Greewald’s latest and concluded that if you are going to devote ten minutes of your day, nothing I could write would be as profitable as your reading him.

I would only add the obvious fact that Blair had already done to New Labour precisely what Obama has done to the Democrats; and that western “democracy” has lost its meaning because the institutionally entrenched parties offer no actual policy choice to voters, but are all neo-conservative.

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222 thoughts on “Drone Murder”

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  • N_

    @Mary – did you see my comment here? I’d be very interested to hear your view on the hypothesis I presented there. I’m just thinking you may have missed the post, because like a lot of my posts, it got moderated, and then when it appeared, it appeared a few rungs up from the bottom because of the time-stamp. (Currently got a ‘Bernays’ post in the pipeline too.)

    @Mods – is it possible to have a ‘preview posts’ function? It would be a help to those of us who sometimes mess up our tags, and could also save you some work, because I’ve noticed that sometimes when I’ve got my tags in a twist, a mod has been kind enough to correct them! 🙂

  • Mary

    N_Off out for the day so will reply properly later. This is what we tried to change unsuccessfully in 2007.

    http://www.redress.cc/stooges/slittlewood20120819

    I agree that an edit facility here would be useful. Mainly to correct my many recent typos.

    I hear that La Clinton does not like ‘whining’ esp from career women like Anne- Marie Slaughter. I assume she tolerates the whining from the women and children killed and maimed by her drones.

    {http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/}

  • Mary

    Jim Manly of the Estelle is back home in Vancouver. A former Canadian politician of integrity. Also a vicar.

    “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord,” the former Member of Parliament bellowed at Vancouver International Airport Thursday to a crowd of supporters, re-enacting his defiant words to the Israeli navy as it boarded Manly’s Gaza-bound ship, the Estelle.

    The Lord’s words were correct!

    http://www.theprovince.com/Gaza+blockade+runner+Manly+home+safe+sound/7448798/story.html#ixzz2AOcg80Qu

  • Komodo

    Good question, Tony. It hasn’t actually blocked anything yet. And the article is unclear about whether the US is lobbying to use US bases in the UK and on British territory abroad (Diego Garcia) or UK ones. What our government appears to be doing is making the right noises, while a nod and a wink will be provided when the time comes.

    Iran may well take some action against the UK in the event of the US getting jiggy on Israel’s behalf, and that will then justify us joining in without breaching international law.

    And if Iran shows no inclination to fall into that sucker trap, then I am sure the combined resources of the US, UK and our peaceful democratic friends in the non-apartheid state whose name we never mention, can make it look as if it did.

  • Komodo

    We bought Diego Garcia for £3M. We rented it to the Yanks in exchange for a £14M discount on Polaris. Result, eh?

  • OldMark

    ‘We are used to hearing about killings of nuclear physicists, weapons inpsectors and the like but this is the first of an oil executive that I can remember. ‘

    Brussels is a good place to carry out a spook related murder & get away with it- possibly even better than London (cf Gareth Williams). No one was ever bought to book for the murder of Gerald ‘Supergun’ Bull at his Brussels flat in March 1990.

  • Hitman

    re. OldMark at 1.14pm : true, nobody was brought to book for Bull’s murder, but then the Belgian police is not necessarily the most efficient – the “Brabant killers” of the 1980s have still not been identified either for that matter. And, more mundanely, only a (very) small percentage of burglars and muggers are apprehended in the UK and elsewhere…

  • Komodo

    Cyprus….but Assad hasn’t been degraded NEARLY enough for that to be a safe option. And safety (see drones) is all.

  • Dreoilin

    *infographic, above, not ‘inforgraphic’

    sheesh …

    BTW, Michael Stephenson
    25 Oct, 2012 – 10:20 pm

    You sound a wee bit self righteous with your “my real name and real ip and real email address” and “most others are hiding their identity”. (And there was me thinking you were concerned for our security/privacy …)

    I’m posting with my default email address and real IP address, and I’m withholding my real name, as I found when I Googled it a few years ago that it’s already all over the internet from previous activities (blogging on group blogs, etc.)

    Given that, unlike Governments who put pressure on Google, it’s pretty much impossible for us to get our names or our details deleted from search results, I see no reason to add to what’s out there already. And I believe my bona fides is established here.

  • Mary

    I did know that Hitman. I was just saying that there are many big players in the oil game. It is being said that the murder has something to do with the Iran sanctions but we will never know as in so many other cases of extra judicial killing which is not as it being portrayed in the visual media. Killed for money and the car???

  • Hitman

    Certainly not killed for money and the car! Carjackers usually close in outside the target’s home. Actually, I think I was doing the Belgian police an injustice when I said they weren’t necessarily very effective: with the best will in the world, what do they have to go on? Two men, one of whom might have been holding a motorcycle helmet. The population of greater Brussels is around 1,4 million, that of Belgium around 10 million, that of open-border Europe….. and even if there is a vague description, unless the guys had highly unusual physical characteristics they would look like hundreds of thousands of others.
    As I said earlier, how many burglars or muggers are caught in the UK and elsewhere unless there just happens to be a policeman on the spot?

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Re. ‘Drones’, both the US/NATO MIC and the supporters of the Pakistan Milbus (‘Military-Business’) which is the backer of the Taliban and the other Islamist paramilitaries in the region like to keep the focus of political confrontation solely on the subject of drones. This helps to deflect from broader analysis and tends to reduces complex problems to a ‘you are either with us or against us’ type of discourse – which suits both military complexes and allows both to dominate other power groupings – and of course, the people – within their own respective societies. It is as though all geopolitical argument were distilled down to a ferocious discussion on the shape of the bullets being used. Jonathan Swift, yet again.

  • nevermind

    The hit on Exxon Mobil exec looks very professional, making out that they were random and after money and their car, but then getting away on a motorcycle.

    The sort of method usually used to assassinate nuclear physicists. Snatching the wife handbag as they ran away was the ‘mugging’. Just as the bombing of Sudan’s arms complex and facilities, this action is designed to stir, rather than to deter.

    Not that it matters much, the resolve seems to be for war and strife.

    The prognosis by Herr Professor forgot to mention his own life prognosis in his forecast of economic collapse, which is not down to the Euro, but to the unsustainable systems we have created since Bretton Woods.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Nevermind at 12:05am, 27.10.12

    Totally agree, on both points.

    **********

    On Pashtuns/Afghans, it might instructive to recall that when given the chance, and when they are progressive, Pashtuns/Afghans tend to be very politically progressive. Don’t forget that Afghanistan was a Communist country for 15 years (1977-1992) and that the previous, Daud, regime (1973-1977) was Leftist in orientation (which is why the CIA tried constantly to destabilise it).

    I’m not talking now about authoritarianism/Stalinism, etc., simply about things like health provision, education, the emancipation of women and so on. There was a disconnect b/w urban and rural populations – with hindsight, a gradualist approach might have been better.

    So, when one analyses/criticises the Malala phenomenon, as well looking at its instrumentalisation by, and the double standards of NATO/US-UK MIC and its largely genuflective, courtier MSM, one must also be cognisant of this history. In other words, Afghans/Pashtuns must be given agency.

    Now, here is a link from RAWA – The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a site I’d recommend as a counterweight to all the MIC’s propaganda:

    http://www.rawa.org/index.php

  • doug scorgie

    From the BBC:

    Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s party will run alongside that of his ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, in January’s election.

    Watch-out Iran; Gaza and West Bank!!!

  • Mary

    Imran Khan detained and ‘interrogated over drone views’ by US immigration
    Posted by MikeD on October 27, 2012, 3:32 pm

    Imran Khan detained and ‘interrogated over drone views’ by US immigration

    Former cricket captain turned politician detained on flight from Canada to New York to be questioned over his views on jihad

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/27/imran-khan-detained-flight

    the former Pakistan cricket captain turned politician, was taken off an international flight from Canada to New York and questioned by US immigration officials over his views on drone strikes and jihad.

    Khan, who has been at the forefront of a high-profile campaign as leader of the Pakistan Movement for Justice party (PTI) to end US drone strikes in northern Pakistan, had been in Canada to give a speech and was on his way to a fundraising dinner in the US on Friday.

    Khan recently attempted to lead a high-profile march into south Waziristan which included US peace activists from the Code Pink group with some 15,000 of his supporters.

    He claims that the drone strikes kill large numbers of innocent civilians – a claim denied by the US.

    ~~~

    Earlier he wrote in the Information Clearing House.

    Pakistan’s Imran Khan Slams U.S. War On Terror
    {http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32874.htm}

    ‘A military solution is a disaster for the U.S.,’ Khan tells CBC’s Evan Solomon

    ~~~~~

    Both links from Medialens Message Board

  • nevermind

    Suhayl thanks for the RAWA link, my most popular movement in Afghanistan. It was the women of RAWA who opposed the stupidity of leaving children uneducated and in bad health. Amidst the Russians, Mujaheddin and then Taliban they kept secret schools and hospitals o[pen, they were the one’s that kept the services of Afghanistan intact when men could think of nothing else but fighting.

    Rawa should be put in charge of Afghanistan’s Government, not Karzai, he’s toast anyway.

    @ Mary, looks like Imran Khan is making a rapid transition from jet set cricket playboy to much haunted and feared politician.

    I hope that they ask US officials coming to Afghanistan the same awkward questions,
    ‘ excuse me sir, what do you think of breaching Pakistans sovereign rights and the indiscriminate ‘discriminate’ use of drones?’

  • Mary

    12 of these are missing stolen from a stationary train at Warrington which was transporting them from DMC Longtown Cumbria to Didcot.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L9_Bar_Mine

    Note the use to which they are being put.

    ‘The British Army has since been using bar mines simply as demolition charges, for instance to blow holes in tough compound walls in Afghanistan and Iraq.[3]’

    How kind of the British army to be adding these extra ventilation holes to the dwellings of the local people.

  • Dreoilin

    You’d think from reading/watching/listening to MSM that there were Taliban “compounds” every 500yds or so.

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