The Ruthless Truth blog

Jason Ditz
AntiWar.com
Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:37 EST

As the fighting in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province continues to pick up, US forces have killed 16 people described as "suspected militants" in a pair of drone strikes on opposite sides of the province.
The larger of the attacks came in the town of Now Zad, once described as a "ghost town" by NATO and declared "liberated" in a December invasion. The US Predator Drone fired a Hellfire missile into what officials are describing as a "crowd of suspects" killing 13 and wounding three.

Comment: Translation: "Crowd of suspects" is US military-speak for "unarmed civilians terrorised by the presence of foreign troops killing people."

Exactly what made the reportedly unarmed crowd a "crowd of suspects" is unclear, but Marines that attacked the town at roughly the same time claim to have found ammunition and a "Taliban torture cell." US forces seemed quite pleased with the attack on the crowd, declaring "we caught them with their pants down."
A smaller attack claimed three others, whom officials described as "armed fighters." A separate incident in Helmand Province yesterday also claimed 13 civilians, when NATO and Afghan forces opened fire on protesters in Garmsir village.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/201219-Butchering-Afghan-protests-US-drones-now-targeting-public-demonstrations-latest-missile-strikes-kill-16

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Last updated: 12/31/2009 14:03:30

The Pre-Ball-Dropping-New Year’s Eve Bad News Dump begins: Judge Dismisses Charges in Blackwater Shooting 31 Dec 2009 3:49 P.M. ET A federal judge dismissed all charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards charged in a deadly Baghdad shooting. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said Thursday that the Justice Department overstepped its bounds and wrongly used evidence it wasn’t allowed to see. He said the government’s explanations have been contradictory, unbelievable and not credible. Blackwater contractors terrorists were hired to guard State Department diplomats in Iraq. Prosecutors say the guards fired on unarmed civilians in a busy intersection in 2007, killing innocent people.

Allegation: Blackwater hiring youths in Peshawar to carry out attacks and suicide bombings –Just as the CLG has asserted from the get-go. Wait until Blackwater gets hold of one of Pakistan’s nukes, detonates it, blames ‘al-Qaeda’ and plunges the US into WWIII. I am thinking the lucrative contract for Xe to ‘clean up’ in the aftermath of the nuclear explosion has already been drafted. Blackwater needs to be eliminated before they become as big as Goldman Sachs and Citi – ‘too big’ to destroy. –Lori Price

Mufti Usmani holds Blackwater responsible for blast 31 Dec 2009 Contrary to the claim and media reports by the media about Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan taking responsibility of the Ashura bomb blast, Mufti Mohammed Rafi Usmani held US agency Blackwater responsible for the gory incident that claimed more than 40 lives. Addressing a news conference along with Muhammed Taqi, Mufti Muhammed Naeem, Maulana Tanver-ul-Haq and others on Wednesday, Mufti Usmani said that Blackwater was involved in the killing of innocent people in the Muharram procession. He said that soon after the blast, shops in the city’s economic hub were set ablaze which proved that the attack was "pre-planned and organized". Mufti Usmani said that the incident was a conspiracy against Islam and the government totally failed to control the situation, as it was the responsibility of the government to provide security to the citizens and to protect the property… He alleged that Blackwater was hiring youths in Peshawar to carry out attacks and suicide bombings.

Western troops accused of executing 10 Afghan civilians, including children 31 Dec 2009 American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead. Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed. Western military sources said that the dead were all part of an Afghan terrorist cell [yeah, the eight-year-olds] responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have claimed the lives of countless soldiers and civilians. [They don't 'hate us for our freedoms' -- they hate us for our war crimes. --Lori Price]

New: Airline bomber suspect studied in Houston 31 Dec 2009 The Nigerian man accused of trying to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day over Detroit attended an intensive, Islamic education seminar in Houston last year designed for top student scholars, an organization confirmed Wednesday. Shaykh Waleed Basyouni, vice president for the AlMaghrib Institute in Houston, said 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was living in London in the summer of 2008 when he attended the nonprofit institute’s annual "IlmSummit" with about 150 other students.

‘I’m Alive,’ Says Yemen Radical Anwar Awlaki Despite U.S. Attack –Denies Ties to al Qaeda As U.S. Officials Probe His [Alleged] Ties to Christmas Day Bomb Attempt and Fort Hood Shooting 31 Dec 2009 A week after U.S. and Yemeni officials said the radical Yemen cleric Anwar Awlaki may have been killed in a U.S.-backed Christmas eve air strike, a Yemeni journalist says Awlaki has surfaced to proclaim, "I’m alive." "He said the house that was attacked was two or three kilometers away from him and he was not there," the journalist, Abdulelah Hider Shaea, told ABC News. He said he talked to Awlaki on the phone and recognized his voice from previous interviews. [Abdulelah Shaea needs to watch his back. The US/Blackwater target is *journalists,* not their al-CIAduh hirelings. --LRP]

US pledges $16 bn for training Afghan security forces [so they can kill more US soliders] 31 Dec 2009 The United States has pledged $16 billion to spend on training and equipping Afghanistan’s army and air force, but the country needs more to build a force that can guarantee stability, an Afghan army official said on Wednesday… Part of the US cash is likely to cover planned spending on over 150 aircraft — including helicopters, and reconnaissance, combat and transport planes. [See: Soldier killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan 21 Dec 2009.]

Was the Afghan Bomb Attack an Inside Job? Possibility Arises that Someone Working with U.S. Forces was on the Side of the Terrorists 30 Dec 2009 It all happened at a well-fortified combat outpost in Eastern Afghanistan. Somehow a suicide bomber was able to bring his explosives on the base, walk up to a group of American civilians and blow himself up. It will take an investigation to determine how he did it. But the outpost is located in the middle of a notorious stronghold for Afghan insurgents near the border with Pakistan, reports CBS News. Afghan soldiers and civilians are present at almost every American outpost since one of the chief principals of the U.S. strategy is to partner with the Afghans. According to Christine Fair of Georgetown University, some of them may actually be working for the Taliban.

Afghanistan suicide bombing kills 8 CIA officers –The Taliban takes responsibility for the explosion at a U.S. base in Khowst province where the agency has a major presence. 31 Dec 2009 A bomber slipped into [?!?] a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday and detonated a suicide vest, killing eight CIA officers in one of the deadliest days in the agency’s history, current and former U.S. officials said. The attack took place at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khowst province, an area near the border with Pakistan. An undisclosed number of civilians were wounded, the officials said. A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the CIA had a major presence at the base, in part because of its strategic location.

Eight US ‘CIA agents’ killed in Afghanistan bomb attack 31 Dec 2009 Eight CIA agents have been killed in a suicide bomb attack in south-eastern Afghanistan, US reports say. A bomber was wearing an explosive vest managed to enter Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost Province, on the border with Pakistan. Several other people were reported injured by the blast.

Two French journalists kidnapped in Afghanistan 31 Dec 2009 Two French reporters have been kidnapped north-east of the Afghan capital Kabul, Afghan officials say. They say the journalists were seized in Kapisa province, along with three Afghans travelling with them. French Defence minister Herve Morin, who is visiting Afghanistan, said he had had no news of two journalists since Wednesday. Media sources in Paris said they work for the French TV Channel FR3.

5 Canadians killed in Afghanistan, including 1 journalist 31 Dec 2009 Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang and four Canadian soldiers were killed by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan on Wednesday. She was covering the war for the Canwest News Service.

Explosion blasts against NATO troops in S Afghanistan 30 Dec 2009 A powerful explosion blasted against NATO-led forces in Dand district of Kandahar province, south Afghanistan on Wednesday evening, causing panic among the locals, Xinhua’s scribe in Kandahar said. The blast took place 10 km south of Kandahar city, the capital of Kandahar province, at 05:00 p.m. local time. Security personnel cordoned off the area and did not allow journalists to get access to the site.

Iraqi governor seriously injured in double suicide attack 30 Dec 2009 The governor of the Iraqi province that was the battleground of a lethal three-year insurgency was seriously injured today in a double suicide bombing that killed 23 people and wounded more than 100, prompting fresh fears that public order across the country is again decaying. Qassim Mohamed was caught up in a second bomb attack at the scene of an explosion that he had just left his office in Ramadi to inspect. Officials were trying to verify reports that the suicide bomber had been part of the Anbar province governor’s security detail.

Iraq blasts kill at least 27 31 Dec 2009 A car bomb and a suicide bomber struck a government building in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, yesterday, killing at least 27 people and wounding the governor of Anbar province, police officials and witnesses said. The bombs, detonated outside the provincial government building, exploded after the release of a British hostage who had been held in Iraq since 2007.

TSA Threatens Blogger Who Posted New Screening Directive 30 Dec 2009 Two bloggers received home visits from Transportation Security Administration agents Tuesday after they published a new TSA directive that revises screening procedures and puts new restrictions on passengers in the wake of a recent bombing attempt by the so-called underwear bomber. Special agents from the TSA’s Office of Inspection interrogated two U.S. bloggers, one of them an established travel columnist, and served them each with a civil subpoena demanding information on the anonymous source that provided the TSA document.

US aware ‘Nigerian’ prepared for terror attack 30 Dec 2009 The US was aware that "a Nigerian" in Yemen was being prepared for a terrorist attack – weeks before an attempted bombing on a US plane. ABC News and the New York Times say there was intelligence to this effect, but its source is unclear. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab flew from Lagos to Amsterdam before changing planes for a flight to Detroit on which he allegedly tried to detonate a bomb.

‘We assume here that New York is the No. 1 terrorist target in America.’ Extra Security in Times Square for New Year’s Eve 01 Jan 2010 For two hours on Wednesday, Times Square morphed into a militarized zone as the police swarmed an unoccupied van with blacked out windows and no license plates parked in an area set aside for Thursday’s New Year’s Eve celebration… Officers with rifles will patrol on rooftops. Others, in plainclothes, will mingle with the crowds to search for pickpockets or would-be terrorists. Meanwhile, in an out-of-sight command center staffed by the F.B.I., information and intelligence will be shared among the New York Police Department, the police of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and "numerous other agencies," said Special Agent Richard Kolko, an F.B.I. spokesman in New York.

Citizens For Legitimate Government

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by Tun. Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

Global Research, September 8, 2009

Intifada-Palestine.com

We all remember the brutal Israeli attacks against Gaza last year. Many of us were outraged by the killings of some 1,300 Gazan Palestinian, men, women, the disabled, the children, the sick and the maimed.Hospitals and schools were destroyed.

The condemnation of this brutal assault had forced the Israelis to stop the massive retaliation against alleged Hamas rocket attacks against Israel.

Many of the rich countries pledged billions in aid for the rebuilding of Gaza.

After that, things became quiet. There was hardly any report in the press on what was happening. I suppose most people assume that the reconstruction of Gaza was proceeding apace.

But the reality is far different. The Egyptians limited the medicine and the building materials from entering Gaza from its territory. The sea is blockaded illegally by the Israelis.The people of Gaza have literally been made prisoners by these actions.

The Free Gaza Movement led by Huwaida Arraf was set up in order to send needed supplies to beleaguered Gaza.But after five small boats were successful in delivering much needed supplies, the Israeli navy began to intercept them and forcing them to abort their humanitarian aid.

One small boat with a number of Palestinians, Arabs, European and American (a U.S. Congresswoman) was rammed by Israeli warships. The people in the boat, all civilians were thrown into the sea. Luckily they survived.

Recently another little boat, loaded with food, medicine, stationery for school use and toys, with 25 unarmed civilians including a Nobel Peace Laureate from Ireland and the American women candidate for presidency of the U.S. was fired at by Israeli commandos, who then boarded the boat, giving rough treatment to the people on board.

Repeated shouts on the loudhailer that there were only unarmed civilians and the boat carried no arm failed to stop the commandos. The boat was steered by the commandos to an Israeli port and the people on board were thrown into Israeli jails.

The people of the Free Gaza Movement have now been released. They are determined to carry on sailing from Cyprus to Gaza to bring relief.

Winter is coming and it will be bitterly cold in Gaza. A great number of the Gazans whose houses were destroyed by the Israelis have no shelter and would suffer terribly in the winter.

Modern civilization is supposedly very concerned about human rights. It is only right that we care for those heroes and heroines who are standing up to oppressive Governments.

But shouldn’t we also be concerned and caring for the 1½ million people of Gaza, who had lost 1,300 fellow inhabitants, whose houses, schools and hospitals have been destroyed, who do not have water or sanitary facilities, who will be without shelter from the coming winter.

It is sad that Governments who had pledged aid have so readily allowed the Israelis to blockade Gaza. It is disgusting that Israel can break international laws with impunity.

I went to Cyprus to meet these brave members of the Free Gaza Movement. I was shocked at how tiny was the only fishing boat that they still have for future trips to Gaza.

I had been sailing in a much bigger yacht and I know how rough was the sea. Yet 25 people dare to sail in this tiny boat, sleeping on the open deck, being seasick, being without proper food, and being made to face Israeli attacks. We really live in an uncivilized world where the fate of one or two people, useful for condemning certain Governments are constantly played up, yet the suffering, the freedom of 1½ million Gazans are ignored. I admire the Gazans whose main concern is for their right to be a free people, free that is from Israeli oppression, supported by the rich people who talk a lot about human rights and freedom.

I don’t think I would be able to endure the kind of discomfort and dangers faced by the activists of the Free Gaza Movement. All I can do is to give moral support to them.

Malaysians who wish to do so may volunteer to sail with these intrepid people. But if they cannot, then they can contribute towards their need to buy a bigger boat as no one would rent boats to them.

The PGPO (Perdana Global Peace Organisation) would like to appeal for donations in aid of the Free Gaza Movement members to purchase a small ship to carry cement and building materials apart from medicine and food etc.

All contributions by cheque can be issued to: KLFCW (Gaza Fund).KLFCW stands for the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War. The cheques can be addressed to the KLFCW c/o Perdana Global Peace Organisation, 5th Floor, 88, Jalan Perdana, Taman Tasik Perdana, 50480 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.Cash contributions can be channeled to KLFCW Maybank Account: 5123 3430 6634.

Mahathir Mohamad is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Mahathir Mohamad

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This video was shot on 29 July 2009 at Camp Ashraf where Iraqi Forces presumably on Tehran orders attacked the unarmed civilians in the Camp. American-made Humvees were used by the Iraqi Forces to run over people, as a result of the attack, 11 Camp Ashraf residents were killed and nearly 500 injured, some critically.

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Global Research, July 13, 2009

WorldNews.com

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Nobel peace prize winner, Mairead Maguire, at a press conference following her abduction, by the Israeli Navy, from a boat delivering aid to Gaza. (LONDON) – The House of Commons will tonight be debating the interception of a boat in international waters by the Israeli Navy and the abduction of six British civilians on board. The debate[1] will be led by Emily Thornberry, MP, and constituent MP for Alex Harrison, a human rights worker who was one of those abducted.

On June 30th 2009 a small ferry, carrying 21 unarmed civilians and a small amount of humanitarian aid, was forcibly boarded by armed Israeli commandos as it sailed towards the partially destroyed seaport of Gaza city, in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The boat, the Spirit of Humanity, was in international waters at the time it was taken. Through the night prior to the boarding, the boat had been sailing only by compass after its navigational systems had been jammed by Israeli war ships which had surrounded and trailed the boat. The Navy had also threatened to fire on those on board. Following the boarding, in which the Al Jazeera journalists on board had their cameras taken, and in which at least one passenger was assaulted, the boat, its cargo and the 21 were forcibly taken to Israel, where they were then charged with illegally entering the country. The British film maker on board, Ishmahil Blagrove, managed to retain footage of the night’s events.[2]

The voyage was the latest attempt by the international Free Gaza movement[3] to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, which results in the imprisonment of the 1.5 million population and conditions of desperate poverty and siege conditions for the civilian population.

"People in Gaza are being made to live in subhuman conditions. Children are dying, and governments are silent. It is important to continue sending boats to Gaza to challenge the criminal blockade enforced by the Israeli military," said Huwaida Arraf, Free Gaza organiser and who was on board the Spirit.

Amongst the human rights workers on board was Nobel peace prize winner, Mairead Maguire, Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman from Georgia and award winning British film maker Ishmahil Blagrove. Six of those on board, including the Captain, were British, and after almost a week in Israeli custody the six were deported to Britain.

British supporters of Free Gaza contrast the silence of the British Foreign Office over the abduction and false imprisonment of six of its citizens with their very public reaction to the arrest of British Embassy staff in Iran. The Free Gaza movement is most concerned, however, with what the abduction in international waters reveals about Israeli determination to enforce its illegal blockade, to prevent any attempt by human rights workers to travel to Gaza, and by the silence of international governments, including the British Government, to Israeli actions.

Free Gaza movement www.freegaza.org

[1] Debate, ‘The interception of the boat The Spirit of Humanity’, is due to take place at approximately 10 p.m. Monday 13th July 2009.

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSFy-pkKtZU

[3] The Free Gaza Movement, a human rights group, sent two boats to Gaza in August 2008. These were the first international boats to land in the port in 41 years. Since August, four more voyages were successful, taking Parliamentarians, human rights workers, and other dignitaries to witness the effects of Israel’s draconian policies on the civilians of Gaza. On December 30, their boat, the DIGNITY was rammed in international waters, on its way to deliver emergency medical supplies to the people of Gaza, while they were under the infamous attack by Israel. Contact them at www.freegaza.org. For photos, please check www.flickr.com/photos/29205195@N02/

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