On February 8 (2012), eight young boys were slaughtered by American bombs as they tried to keep warm as they tended sheep. NATO apologized and excused themselves by saying, " “The decision to bomb this group was made because they were seen as adult-sized and moving in a tactical fashion", according to the New York Times. Relatives of the boys said that one boy was 12 and several others were younger. NATO countered this: “Our view is that initial assessment suggests they that they are closer to 15 to 16 with one older.”
This is not an isolated event. While MWC readers know this is not an isolated event, those that rely on mainstream media for their news probably don't know about this and the ongoing NATO atrocities that have been happening with disturbing regularity over the past number of years.
On February 4 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism issued a report entitled, "Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals".
The report states that since Obama took office three years ago, "between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children. A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners."
The report also states that unmanned Predator or Reaper strikes occur in Pakistan averaging one every four days. John Brennan, the president’s top counterterrorism adviser, argues that the US has the right to unilaterally strike terrorists anywhere in the world, not just what he called ‘hot battlefields’. The targeting of rescuers after an initial attack as well as funerals is clearly a deliberate massacre of civilians.
Many legal experts disagree with Brennan. "Naz Modirzadeh, Associate Director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) at Harvard University, said killing people at a rescue site may have no legal justification.
‘Not to mince words here, if it is not in a situation of armed conflict, unless it falls into the very narrow area of imminent threat then it is an extra-judicial execution’, she said. ‘We don’t even need to get to the nuance of who’s who, and are people there for rescue or not. Because each death is illegal. Each death is a murder in that case.’
Between May 2009 and June 2011, at least fifteen attacks on rescuers were reported by credible news media, including the New York Times, CNN, Associated Press, ABC News and Al Jazeera.
Overall, there have been approximately 3,000 killed in drone strikes and 175 of those killed are reported to be children. Of 314 strikes, 262 were carried out by Obama.
The Crime
As human rights abuses go, as war crimes go, as crimes against humanity go, the dropping of bombs on populated areas is among the most egregious methods of mass murder in the history of humanity. Aside from recent drone attacks in Middle Eastern countries, many thousands have been slaughtered by NATO or American bombs in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, Lebanon, Grenada, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and all the watchdogs that have the self appointed responsibility for raising the alarm about human rights abuses seem to overlook the dropping of bombs on civilians. They mention it when its status as a crime is not controversial but considering what is actually happening, perhaps it's fair to say they don't want to rock the American boat. The civilians that are killed in these bomb attacks are dead as surely as the Jews that died in Hitler's ovens. They live in terror as the people of New York felt on September 11, 2001 and they live with it on a daily basis.
If you compare this crime with torture, first degree murder, sex crimes or any conceivable crime, none can compare with the terror and suffering that accompanies the dropping of bombs on populated areas. Serial killers stalk, rape, and murder women and its front page news. Psychopaths cruelly carry out their nefarious deeds and it haunts our nightmares. Yet NATO murders as a matter of habit and we don't even notice.
The most outrageous act that has affected public consciousness in the West was the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York. That was the mother of all terrorist attacks. Those attacks have taken on an air of sanctity, of religious seriousness. There is not much argument from anywhere; those attacks were singularly brutal in their indiscriminate violence and they ripped through the collective consciousness of America. America has been changed by it and unfortunately, that change is not pretty. We are right to view this act with the horror and disgust that is the common reaction to them.
White House Mafia
The President of the United States recently carried out a ‘hit’ on Anwar al Awlaki. And what did he use to kill this American citizen? He used a bomb. He not only killed Awlaki but anybody that was in the vicinity. Did Obama care about anybody that was in the vicinity? No he did not. Did he care that he carried out an illegal murder of an American citizen?
A week later he killed Awlaki's 16 year old son, again with a bomb that killed anybody near the boy that might have been guilty of being Awlaki's son.
There is no member of organized crime families or street gangs that can come close to the psychopathic callousness found among those in the employ of the American state. Their lofty status does not make them immune from prosecution. Those that have attacked civilians and murdered them are guilty of war crimes. President Obama has joined an exclusive club. A club whose current members include but is not exclusive to Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bill Clinton, Paul Wolfowitz.
Given the history, it's not much wonder we've come to expect the murder of civilians as par for the course. But when we consider the open boasting about the current savagery - as Obama basks in the limelight of extrajudicial murder, we may feel as if the most crude 'B' rated movies of late night TV, the movie where a mad man takes over the word, to be prophetic. We don't live in interesting times as much as we live in bizarre times.
To be fair, they do sometimes offer weak justifications for the ongoing mass murders. They will justify it and say that the terrorists are at fault for using human shields. That is why innocent people die. They imagine a scenario where the locals that are defending their invaded homeland (terrorists or 'insurgents) leave the home when the Americans approach, stand in the desert with an AK 47, and let the American bombs rain down on them as they shoot in the general direction of the planes that sail safely through the stratosphere and obliterate them.
Or, they may argue that terrorists live in the village and that the pragmatic utility of killing women and children justify getting the terrorists to save the lives of good clean 'White people'. When arguments are made in such a way, we know we are dealing with rationalizations that are not even vaguely connected to rationality.
In the coming months and years, it is likely that thousands of people; people that are now reading opinion pieces as you are reading this one, people that are being tucked into bed by their parents for a good night's sleep, people that are falling in love and people that are embarrassed because they said something silly, will be slaughtered by American or, NATO bombs. Those people will be guilty of being born in Iran.
References
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror-drones-cia-tactics-in-pakistan-include-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/08/10/google-map/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/world/asia/19pstan.html?_r=1&ref=world
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-28/world/pakistan.drone.strike_1_drone-strikes-drone-attack-tribal-region?_s=PM:WORLD
http://www.dailyamericannews.com/newsnow/x1738176407/Suspected-US-missiles-strikes-kill-11-in-Pakistan
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2010/01/20101613294018697.html
http://www.dannen.com/decision/int-law.html#D
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/world/asia/nato-acknowledges-bombing-killed-eight-young-afghans.html?_r=2
This blog is an archive of articles I've published in MWC News, Indymedia, and on Newsgroups.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Caterpillar: Symptoms of Social Cancer
As surely as cancer rots away the individual body, there are malignant forms of social cancer that sicken and eat away at the social world of human beings. Some forms are fast, violent, and deadly. Other forms of cancer rot away at the collective body, year in, year out. The host becomes progressively ill and eventually, it dies.
There is no way to spend one billion dollars in one lifetime. Yet, the now infamous one percenters have become so addicted to accumulating wealth, they can't seem to stop. A billion isn't enough. Like a virulent virus, like a pernicious addiction, their habit becomes pathological. They will do anything in their grasp to fill the gaping needs of the affliction. Nothing is beyond them. Ethics and morality are not factors. They will wage war, they will destroy communities, they will stop at nothing. Only one thing counts and that thing is profit. They cannot stop. They are utter evil and they are our enemy.
Caterpillar
450 workers in London, Ontario, have just been evicted from their means of living by their employer, Caterpillar Inc. This follows months of negotiations, if that’s what you call it when one side is told; Take a 50% wage cut or you're finished.
Canadian Autoworkers President, Ken Lewenza, said, "We were never in the ring here in a meaningful way." That's understating the obvious to say the least.
Pat Byrne, the managing director heading management consulting at AlixPartners LLP in New York, said labour unions in Canada need to show more willingness to adjust. That is code for: You are serfs. Take it or take nothing. And shut up.
He said, "The labour unions - I'm not sure they really get it in terms of globalization."
He speaks for the ugly capitalist class. He speaks for the Donald Trumps and the Mitt Romneys. The terms of exploitation must be reduced to the lowest possible denominator.
We are well on our way to the world Charles Dickens wrote about in 19th century London. A social cancer has set in and we are in deep trouble. We are in financial and social crisis. And it will get much worse.
As Thomas Walkom points out in the Toronto Star, regarding the abuse of the Caterpillar workers in London:
On Wednesday, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law a so-called right-to-work bill making his state the first in the U.S. industrial north to directly take on private-sector unions.
Two days later, Caterpillar — which is based in next-door Illinois — closed its unionized London plant.
Since it locked out 460 Canadian workers in January, the giant U.S. firm had made little secret of its intent to move their jobs to Muncie, Indiana.
All it was waiting for, apparently, was a signal that the state government there was serious about crippling trade unions.
The London plant closing is not an isolated event. It is part of a coordinated attack across North America on unions and wages.
As Walkom points out in the article, there is a coordinated attack on labour across North America. And it is not only North America. It's global. The current Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, is positioned to help coordinate these attacks on the middle class/working class. Harper doesn't just side with employers in labour disputes. He rubs salt in the wounds as he does it. He, like many right wing ideologues like him is not only callous. He is cruel. His treatment of workers in past disputes with employers display his cruelty in spades.
Class War
This isn't new. It has started in earnest in the 1980s under the reign of Brian Mulroney, Maggie Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. Their neo liberal voo doo economics has since resulted in the devastation of the middle classes in Europe and North America. They were merely in the employ of the same finance capitalists that Bush, Obama, and the Europeans are currently bowing and scraping toward. It is all about ushering in a new era of financial feudalism. The wages, the pensions, the benefits that have provided a decent standard of living for workers and small business is all but dead.
On deck are civil servants and public sector unions. They too will be and are under accelerating attack from the capitalist class. And the capitalist class can justify the attack. They cite record high deficits and bankrupt governments that cannot pay the bills. And the reason they cannot pay the bills is because the wages of auto workers, miners, construction workers and public sector workers had been paying, and now they can't.
And when they are finished with evaporating public sector wages to a pittance, wages that had been demanding goods and services, wages that had been paying taxes to build roads and schools, another shock to our collective system will impact each and every one of us; one way or another.
We are in a protracted class war, a war that is well under way, and we are only now waking up to the fact that the war is on.
The time to fight is here. We cannot continue to tolerate this ongoing abuse of workers and their families. In the past our fight was a fight for wages, for benefits, for decent working conditions. Now the stakes are much higher.
As the workers in London Ontario go home, devastated, with no future. With little hope of retuning to a job with decent pay, business owners in London and their employees will also suffer. Local suppliers of goods and services to Caterpillar will suffer. And so will their families. And when they suffer, the local Tim Hortons, the local pubs - everybody hurts.
London will endure increased violence in homes, alcohol and drug consumption, crime, and those factors will in turn increase crime, drug addiction and so on. It's a downward spiral to purgatory for some, hell for others.
Capitalism, like sugar, cigarettes, gambling and alcohol is an addiction. It is an addiction that sickens and kills the collective body. It is an addiction that has turned to social cancer. A cancer that is promoted and facilitated by the likes of Stephen Harper and his subservient peers. And we have all become dependent on it.
And under capitalism, it is only when the host dies that the cancer dies.
It's about time we work on a better cure than that.
There is no way to spend one billion dollars in one lifetime. Yet, the now infamous one percenters have become so addicted to accumulating wealth, they can't seem to stop. A billion isn't enough. Like a virulent virus, like a pernicious addiction, their habit becomes pathological. They will do anything in their grasp to fill the gaping needs of the affliction. Nothing is beyond them. Ethics and morality are not factors. They will wage war, they will destroy communities, they will stop at nothing. Only one thing counts and that thing is profit. They cannot stop. They are utter evil and they are our enemy.
Caterpillar
450 workers in London, Ontario, have just been evicted from their means of living by their employer, Caterpillar Inc. This follows months of negotiations, if that’s what you call it when one side is told; Take a 50% wage cut or you're finished.
Canadian Autoworkers President, Ken Lewenza, said, "We were never in the ring here in a meaningful way." That's understating the obvious to say the least.
Pat Byrne, the managing director heading management consulting at AlixPartners LLP in New York, said labour unions in Canada need to show more willingness to adjust. That is code for: You are serfs. Take it or take nothing. And shut up.
He said, "The labour unions - I'm not sure they really get it in terms of globalization."
He speaks for the ugly capitalist class. He speaks for the Donald Trumps and the Mitt Romneys. The terms of exploitation must be reduced to the lowest possible denominator.
We are well on our way to the world Charles Dickens wrote about in 19th century London. A social cancer has set in and we are in deep trouble. We are in financial and social crisis. And it will get much worse.
As Thomas Walkom points out in the Toronto Star, regarding the abuse of the Caterpillar workers in London:
On Wednesday, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law a so-called right-to-work bill making his state the first in the U.S. industrial north to directly take on private-sector unions.
Two days later, Caterpillar — which is based in next-door Illinois — closed its unionized London plant.
Since it locked out 460 Canadian workers in January, the giant U.S. firm had made little secret of its intent to move their jobs to Muncie, Indiana.
All it was waiting for, apparently, was a signal that the state government there was serious about crippling trade unions.
The London plant closing is not an isolated event. It is part of a coordinated attack across North America on unions and wages.
As Walkom points out in the article, there is a coordinated attack on labour across North America. And it is not only North America. It's global. The current Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, is positioned to help coordinate these attacks on the middle class/working class. Harper doesn't just side with employers in labour disputes. He rubs salt in the wounds as he does it. He, like many right wing ideologues like him is not only callous. He is cruel. His treatment of workers in past disputes with employers display his cruelty in spades.
Class War
This isn't new. It has started in earnest in the 1980s under the reign of Brian Mulroney, Maggie Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. Their neo liberal voo doo economics has since resulted in the devastation of the middle classes in Europe and North America. They were merely in the employ of the same finance capitalists that Bush, Obama, and the Europeans are currently bowing and scraping toward. It is all about ushering in a new era of financial feudalism. The wages, the pensions, the benefits that have provided a decent standard of living for workers and small business is all but dead.
On deck are civil servants and public sector unions. They too will be and are under accelerating attack from the capitalist class. And the capitalist class can justify the attack. They cite record high deficits and bankrupt governments that cannot pay the bills. And the reason they cannot pay the bills is because the wages of auto workers, miners, construction workers and public sector workers had been paying, and now they can't.
And when they are finished with evaporating public sector wages to a pittance, wages that had been demanding goods and services, wages that had been paying taxes to build roads and schools, another shock to our collective system will impact each and every one of us; one way or another.
We are in a protracted class war, a war that is well under way, and we are only now waking up to the fact that the war is on.
The time to fight is here. We cannot continue to tolerate this ongoing abuse of workers and their families. In the past our fight was a fight for wages, for benefits, for decent working conditions. Now the stakes are much higher.
As the workers in London Ontario go home, devastated, with no future. With little hope of retuning to a job with decent pay, business owners in London and their employees will also suffer. Local suppliers of goods and services to Caterpillar will suffer. And so will their families. And when they suffer, the local Tim Hortons, the local pubs - everybody hurts.
London will endure increased violence in homes, alcohol and drug consumption, crime, and those factors will in turn increase crime, drug addiction and so on. It's a downward spiral to purgatory for some, hell for others.
Capitalism, like sugar, cigarettes, gambling and alcohol is an addiction. It is an addiction that sickens and kills the collective body. It is an addiction that has turned to social cancer. A cancer that is promoted and facilitated by the likes of Stephen Harper and his subservient peers. And we have all become dependent on it.
And under capitalism, it is only when the host dies that the cancer dies.
It's about time we work on a better cure than that.
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