Category: State Terrorism

The blood of Dresden

Following is an extract from Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut in which he describes the scenes  of ‘obscene brutality’ he witnessed as a prisoner of war in Dresden which inspired his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

Dresden before the allied bombing

It was a routine speech we got during our first day of basic training, delivered by a wiry little lieutenant: “Men, up to now you’ve been good, clean, American boys with an American’s love for sportsmanship and fair play. We’re here to change that.

“Our job is to make you the meanest, dirtiest bunch of scrappers in the history of the world. From now on, you can forget the Marquess of Queensberry rules and every other set of rules. Anything and everything goes.

“Never hit a man above the belt when you can kick him below it. Make the bastard scream. Kill him any way you can. Kill, kill, kill – do you understand?”

His talk was greeted with nervous laughter and general agreement that he was right. “Didn’t Hitler and Tojo say the Americans were a bunch of softies? Ha! They’ll find out.”

And of course, Germany and Japan did find out: a toughened-up democracy poured forth a scalding fury that could not be stopped. It was a war of reason against barbarism, supposedly, with the issues at stake on such a high plane that most of our feverish fighters had no idea why they were fighting – other than that the enemy was a bunch of bastards. A new kind of war, with all destruction, all killing approved.

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The murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad

I’ll be reviewing Syed Saleem Shahzad’s book here shortly. Meanwhile here is ‘Pakistan: The most dangerous place to report from,’ an episode of  Al Jazeera’s Listening Post which focuses on his assassination.

The Specter of Syrian Civil War

PULSE editor Robin Yassin-Kassab was on the BBC’s Radio 4 last night to comment on the situation in Syria. You can read his recent post on the subject here.

UPDATE: Jeb Sharp of the BBC interviews Robin for PRI’s The World.

Bahrain’s brutal regime targets medics and schoolgirls

The second part of Al Jazeera’s exclusive report on Bahrain looks at the abuse of medical workers as part of the government’s crackdown on dissent.

In first of five exclusive reports, Al Jazeera has unearthed evidence that sheds light on kingdom’s brutal crackdown.

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The Predators: Where is Your Democracy?

by Kathy Kelly

On May 4, 2011, CNN World News asked whether killing Osama bin Laden was legal under international law.  Other news commentary has questioned whether it would have been both possible and advantageous to bring Osama bin Laden to trial rather than kill him.

World attention has been focused, however briefly, on questions of legality regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden.  But, with the increasing use of Predator drones to kill suspected “high value targets” in Pakistan and Afghanistan, extrajudicial killings by U.S. military forces have become the new norm.

Just three days after Osama bin Laden was killed, an attack employing remote-control aerial drones killed fifteen people in Pakistan and wounded four. CNN reports that their Islamabad bureau has counted four drone strikes over the last month and a half since the March 17 drone attack which killed 44 people in Pakistan’s tribal region. This most recent suspected strike was the 21st this year.  There were 111 strikes in 2010. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that 957 innocent civilians were killed in 2010.

I’m reminded of an encounter I had, in May, 2010 ,when a journalist and a social worker from North Waziristan met with a small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation in Pakistan  and described, in gory and graphic detail, the scenes of drone attacks which they had personally witnessed:  the carbonized bodies, burned so fully they could be identified by legs and hands alone, the bystanders sent flying like dolls through the air to break, with shattered bones and sometimes-fatal brain injuries, upon walls and stone.

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Saudi-backed Bahraini regime continues to torture and kill

Bahrain’s totalitarian regime continues to kill, torture and harass and yet coverage in the international media remains rare.

Also see Physicians for Human Rights report on Bahraini persecution of doctors.

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Beyond bin Laden

Tariq Ali, Fazwaz Gerges and Vali Nasr discuss Usama bin Laden’s assassination on Al Jazeera’s Empire with Marwan Bishara.

Osama bin Laden is dead. The world’s most wanted man has finally been killed after a hunt that lasted more than a decade, triggered global wars, and cost the lives of tens of thousands of people. What does it mean for US wars in the Muslim world? And will the US actions unleash a new wave of attacks around the world?

Khirbat Tuqu’ & the Silent World

It must have been late at night when this rare, short, late-night segment on Channel 10 sneaked by the editors:

Between Judea and Samaria & the West Bank

While I’m astonished that an Israeli mainstream news service would even address this story at all, let alone report in a considerably balanced manner; There are many very basic questions that this 2-and-a-half minute segment whizzes through, that I’d like to comment on.
Continue reading “Khirbat Tuqu’ & the Silent World”

You don’t protect children by killing children

Nato is now engaged in open terrorism. Having failed in its ostensible mission to protect the civilians of Ben Ghazi and Misurata, it is now raining bombs on civilians in Tripoli, including a disabled childrens’ school, in a manner not dissimilar to Gaddafi’s. In a clear breach of the UN mandate, it has also tried to assassinate Gaddafi, instead killing his son and grandchildren.

Meanwhile, according to sources on the ground, Misurata’s Qasr Ahmed neighbourhood remains under intense assault from Gaddafi’s Grad rockets.

Srebrenica on the Mediterranean

Two days after Gaddafi promised that he’ll show ‘no mercy’, his troops are bombarding, some entering, Benghazi. The UN Security Council had passed a resolution declaring a no-fly zone over Libya. Thus far, the sky belongs to Gaddafi. There was a point where Gaddafi could have been thwarted, had his armoured columns been checked by the presence of hostile air power. No need to bomb them, just bomb the road ahead. Check their advance, send a message. Instead, the troops have been allowed to enter Benghazi. Now they cannot be attacked without inflicting high casualties on civilians. The UN forces will likely excuse themselves by claiming that tanks can’t be attacked because now they are in the city. Western forces are also reluctant because since 2003, Gaddafi has been a reliable economic parter and Libya has been a favoured destination for rendition flights. (Remember where Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi died?)

The UN could still salvage the situation by threatening Gaddafi’s supply lines. But I fear we are about to see another Srebrenica. In that instance, the UN forces delayed intervention till the Serbs had encircled the enclave and then declined to intervene because they said it would put their own peacekeepers lives at risk. Meanwhile the slaughter continues.