Re: Positive News from the USA
Posted: 04 Oct 2015 09:18
Consortium of Indian Defence Websites
https://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/
There is no need to wait. The plots are underway.Shanu wrote:Wait till one of those Class 12 students turn the gun on primary students coz i don't know.. may be his GF dumped him.
Always remember, it is people killing people. This has nothing to do with guns.Singha wrote:NBCNews.com
Tennessee Boy, 11, Charged With Killing Girl After Argument Over Puppy
NBCNews.com - 1 hour ago
An 11-year-old Tennessee boy was charged with shooting an 8-year-old girl to death with a 12-gauge shotgun after an argument over a puppy Saturday, NBC affiliate WBIR reported.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... html[quote]Mob hitman James Files claims once again he was the man responsible for President John F. Kennedy's assassination - and that Lee Harvey Oswald never fired a single shot
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z3nzEFMzMg
On October 3, a U.S. AC-130 gunship attacked a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Kunduz, Afghanistan, partially destroying it. Twelve staff members and 10 patients, including three children, were killed, and 37 people were injured. According to MSF, the U.S. had previously been informed of the hospital’s precise location, and the attack continued for 30 minutes after staff members desperately called the U.S. military.
The U.S. first claimed the hospital had been “collateral damage” in an airstrike aimed at “individuals” elsewhere who were “threatening the force.” Since then, various vague and contradictory explanations have been offered by the U.S. and Afghan governments, both of which promise to investigate the bombing. MSF has called the attack a war crime and demanded an independent investigation by a commission set up under the Geneva Conventions.
While the international outcry has been significant, history suggests this is less because of what happened and more because of whom it happened to. The U.S. has repeatedly attacked civilian facilities in the past but the targets have generally not been affiliated with a European, Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian organization such as MSF.
Below is a sampling of such incidents since the 1991 Gulf War.
Infant Formula Production Plant, Abu Ghraib, Iraq (January 21, 1991)
On the seventh day of Operation Desert Storm, aimed at evicting Iraq military forces from Kuwait, the U.S.-led coalition bombed the Infant Formula Production Plant in the Abu Ghraib suburb of Baghdad. Iraq declared that the factory was exactly what its name said, but the administration of President George H.W. Bush claimed it was “a production facility for biological weapons.” Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chimed in to say, “It is not an infant formula factory. It was a biological weapons facility — of that we are sure.” The U.S. media chortled about Iraq’s clumsy, transparent propaganda, and CNN’s Peter Arnett was attacked by U.S. politicians for touring the damaged factory and reporting that “whatever else it did, it did produce infant formula.”
Iraq was telling the truth. When Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, defected to Jordan in 1995, he had every incentive to undermine Saddam, since he hoped the U.S. would help install him as his father-in-law’s successor — but he told CNN “there is nothing military about that place. … It only produced baby milk.” The CIA’s own investigation later concluded the site had been bombed “in the mistaken belief that it was a key BW [Biological Weapon] facility.” The original U.S. claims have nevertheless proven impossible to stamp out. The George W. Bush administration, making the case for invading Iraq in 2003, portrayed the factory as a symbol of Iraqi deceit. When the Newseum opened in 2008, it included Arnett’s 1991 reporting in a section devoted to — in the New York Times’ description — “examples of distortions that mar the profession.”
Air Raid Shelter, Amiriyah, Iraq (February 13, 1991)
The U.S. purposefully targeted an air raid shelter near the Baghdad airport with two 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs, which punched through 10 feet of concrete and killed at least 408 Iraqi civilians. A BBC journalist reported that “we saw the charred and mutilated remains. … They were piled onto the back of a truck; many were barely recognizable as human.” Meanwhile, Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said: “We are chagrined if [civilian] people were hurt, but the only information we have about people being hurt is coming out of the controlled press in Baghdad.” Another U.S. general claimed the shelter was “an active command-and-control structure,” while anonymous officials said military trucks and limousines for Iraq’s senior leadership had been seen at the building.
In his 1995 CNN interview, Hussein Kamel said, “There was no leadership there. There was a transmission apparatus for the Iraqi intelligence, but the allies had the ability to monitor that apparatus and knew that it was not important.” The Iraqi blogger Riverbend later wrote that several years after the attack, she went to the shelter and met a “small, slight woman” who now lived in the shelter and gave visitors unofficial tours. Eight of her nine children had been killed in the bombing.
Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory, Khartoum, Sudan (August 20, 1998)
After al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the Clinton administration targeted the Al Shifa factory with 13 cruise missiles, killing one person and wounding 11. According to President Bill Clinton, the plant was “associated with the bin Laden network” and was “involved in the production of materials for chemical weapons.”
The Clinton administration never produced any convincing evidence that this was true. By 2005, the best the U.S. could do was say, as the New York Times characterized it, that it had not “ruled out the possibility” that the original claims were right. The long-term damage to Sudan was enormous. Jonathan Belke of the Near East Foundation pointed out a year after the bombing that the plant had produced “90 percent of Sudan’s major pharmaceutical products” and contended that due to its destruction “tens of thousands of people — many of them children — have suffered and died from malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases.” Sudan has repeatedly requested a U.N. investigation of the bombing, with no success.
Train bombing, Grdelica, Serbia (April 12, 1999)
During the U.S.-led bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo war, an F-15E fighter jet fired two remotely-guided missiles that hit a train crossing a bridge near Grdelica, killing at least 14 civilians. Gen. Wesley Clark, then Supreme Allied Commander Europe,called it “an unfortunate incident we all regret.” While the F-15 crew was able to control the missiles after they were launched, NATO released footage taken from the plane to demonstrate how quickly the train was moving and how little time the jet’s crew had to react. The German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau later reported that the video had been sped up three times. The paper quoted a U.S. Air Force spokesperson who said this was accidental, and they had not noticed this until months later — by which point “we did not deem it useful to go public with this.”
Radio Television Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia (April 23, 1999)
Sixteen employees of Serbia’s state broadcasting system were killed during the Kosovo War when NATO intentionally targeted its headquarters in Belgrade. President Clinton gave an underwhelming defense of the bombing: “Our military leaders at NATO believe … that the Serb television is an essential instrument of Mr. Milosevic’s command and control. … It is not, in a conventional sense, therefore, a media outlet. That was a decision they made, and I did not reverse it.” U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke told the Overseas Press Club immediately after the attack that it was “an enormously important and, I think, positive development.” Amnesty International later stated it was “a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime.”
Chinese Embassy, Belgrade, Serbia (May 7, 1999)
Also during the Kosovo war, the U.S. bombed the Chinese embassy in Serbia’s capital, killing three staff and wounding more than 20. The defense secretary at the time, William Cohen, said it was a terrible mistake: “One of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map.” The Observer newspaper in the U.K. later reported the U.S. had in fact deliberately targeted the embassy “after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.” TheObserver quoted “a source in the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency” calling Cohen’s version of events “a damned lie.”Prodded by the media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the New York Times produced its own investigation finding “no evidence that the bombing of the embassy had been a deliberate act,” but rather that it had been caused by a “bizarre chain of missteps.” The article concluded by quoting Porter Goss, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as saying he believed the bombing was not deliberate – “unless some people are lying to me.”
Red Cross complex, Kabul, Afghanistan (October 16 and October 26, 2001)
At the beginning of the U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. attacked the complex housing the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul. In an attempt to prevent such incidents in the future, the U.S. conducted detailed discussions with the Red Cross about the location of all of its installations in the country. Then the U.S. bombed the same complex again. The second attack destroyed warehouses containing tons of food and supplies for refugees. “Whoever is responsible will have to come to Geneva for a formal explanation,” said a Red Cross spokesperson. “Firing, shooting, bombing, a warehouse clearly marked with the Red Cross emblem is a very serious incident. … Now we’ve got 55,000 people without that food or blankets, with nothing at all.”
Al Jazeera office, Kabul, Afghanistan (November 13, 2001)
Several weeks after the Red Cross attacks, the U.S. bombed the Kabul bureau of Al Jazeera, destroying it and damaging the nearby office of the BBC. Al Jazeera’s managing director said the channel had repeatedly informed the U.S. military of its office’s location.
Al Jazeera office, Baghdad, Iraq (April 8, 2003)
Soon after the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the U.S. bombed the Baghdad office of Al Jazeera, killing reporter Tarek Ayoub and injuring another journalist. David Blunkett, the British home secretary at the time, subsequently revealed that a few weeks before the attack he had urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to bomb Al Jazeera’s transmitter in Baghdad. Blunkett argued, “I don’t think that there are targets in a war that you can rule out because you don’t actually have military personnel inside them if they are attempting to win a propaganda battle on behalf of your enemy.”
In 2005, the British newspaper The Mirror reported on a British government memorandum recording an April 16, 2004, conversation between Blair and President Bush at the height of the U.S. assault on Fallujah in Iraq. The Bush administration was infuriated by Al Jazeera’s coverage of Fallujah, and according to The Mirror, Bush had wanted to bomb the channel at its Qatar headquarters and elsewhere. However, the article says, Blair argued him out of it. Blair subsequently called The Mirror’s claims a “conspiracy theory.” Meanwhile, his attorney general threatened to use the Official Secrets Act to prosecute any news outlet that published further information about the memo, and, in a secret trial, did in fact prosecute and send to jail a civil servant for leaking it.
Palestine Hotel, Baghdad, Iraq (April 8, 2003)
The same day as the 2003 bombing of the Al Jazeera office in Baghdad, a U.S. tank fired a shell at the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel, where most foreign journalists were then staying. Two reporters were killed: Taras Protsyuk, a cameraman for Reuters, and Jose Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish network Telecinco. An investigation by the Committee to Protect Journalists concluded that the attack, “while not deliberate, was avoidable.”
Leaked documents from CIA director’s email reveal thoughts on torture, Iran, Afghanistan
Published time: 21 Oct, 2015 16:42
WikiLeaks has come into possession of the contents of CIA chief John Brennan's email account. Among the documents, from the period when Brennan worked in the private sector, are reports on Afghanistan and torture, and ideas for US policy towards Iran.
The emails, obtained by a hacker earlier this week, were from Brennan’s private email account, which the CIA chief appears to have used to work on several intelligence-related projects in 2007 and 2008.
READ MORE: CIA chief's e-mail hacked, hackers with pro-Palestinian agenda claim responsibility
Focus on torture
The leaked papers include alleged drafts containing discussions about “challenges for the US Intelligence Community in a post cold-war and post-9/11 world,” as well as proposals regarding “torture methods.”
Among the documents harvested from Brennan’s personal emails is a May 2008 letter from Christopher Bond, vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, proposing a way to ban torture while continuing to interrogate “high-value detainees.”
Both the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and CIA director at the time had objected to proposals limiting interrogation methods to the 19 techniques explicitly authorized in the Army Field Manual (AFM).
“Rather than authorizing intelligence agencies to use only those techniques that are allowed under the AFM, I believe the more prudent approach is to preclude the use of specific techniques that are prohibited under the AFM,” Bond wrote. This would allow the use of interrogation methods not explicitly authorized in the manual, but still considered acceptable under the Geneva Conventions and other laws.
Bond lists the methods that should be prohibited: “forcing the detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; placing hoods or sacks over the head of a detainee and using duct tape over the eyes; applying beatings, electric shock, burns, or similar forms of physical pain; ‘waterboarding;’ using military working dogs; inducing hypothermia or heat injury; conducting mock executions; and depriving the detainee of adequate food, water or medical care.”
Ties with Iran
A note called the Conundrum of Iran, which gave recommendations to “whoever takes up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in January 2009,” emphasized the need for negotiations with Tehran. Brennan gave a history of Iran’s political development over the centuries, criticized the Islamic republic for its support of terrorists, but also praised the efforts of Iranian diplomats in negotiations in post-Taliban Afghanistan. The note was written in 2007, when Brennan worked at The Analysis Corp (TAC), an intelligence and analysis firm he founded.
Earlier this week, an American teenage hacker with pro-Palestinian views claimed that he had broken into the personal email accounts of US top security officials, CIA director Brennan’s among them.
Calling for clear instructions to intelligence community
Another document is a July 2007 draft position paper proposing reforms within the US intelligence community. One of Brennan’s suggestions is to extend the terms of the CIA Director and the Director of National Intelligence to 10 years. This would remove these positions from the “cycle of partisan political appointments” and “ensure needed continuity at the helm of US Intelligence,” he wrote.
“Backroom discussions that result in Presidential directives of dubious legality are not in keeping with our Constitutional foundations,” Brennan wrote, demanding “clear mandates, defined responsibilities, and firm criteria for domestic intelligence operations,” so the intel agencies would know their limits and what is required of them.
Instead, he said, the “ineffective implementation” of the 2004 reforms that created DNI has “resulted in confusion and competition among intelligence agencies.”
The draft peters off while discussing the importance of intelligence operations abroad, leaving unfinished the section on 'Damaging Leaks of Classified Information.'
Stranded without a strategy in Afghanistan
The hacktivist group Anonymous also released fragments of several documents, including an undated report by Louis Tucker, Minority Staff Director at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to Vice-Chairman Bond.
Tucker reports that he traveled to India, Afghanistan and Pakistan with four colleagues, visiting a number of cities and officials. He complained that the US Central Command (CENTCOM) in Bagram, Afghanistan “remained strongly unsupportive” of the trip at every stage.
“Everyone we spoke with on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan confessed that they know of no overall USG strategy for the region,” Tucker wrote. “Rather, we observed quality individuals serving judiciously in their own lanes ungoverned by a coordinated, comprehensive strategy.”
The group concluded this lack of coordination was the greatest contributor to the US failure to achieve regional stability, urging the development of a comprehensive strategy based on clearly defined US goals in the region.
They also recommended the US to avoid cross-border attacks into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, as they risked alienating the Pakistani government and international opinion.
Last, but not least, the group urged the lawmakers to resist the refrain of “send more troops,” as that would be a recipe for disaster without a strategy.
Hacked by 'cracka'
Some of the documents have been posted on Twitter, with edited parts of them reportedly made public by the hacker under the username "cracka." Apart from the CIA chief's email, the teenager claimed to have gained access to Brennan's personal AOL account, which contained the official's own application for top security clearance.
The FBI and Secret Service said they were investigating the situation.
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump joked that women in the Islamic world might prefer to wear burqas because “it lessens the need to apply make-up.”
Referring to the burqa and the veil as the “you know what”, Trump while delivering a riff in New Hampshire about how American foreign policy has destabilised the Middle East spoke about an interview he watched of a woman, during which she was questioned about the burqa.
I saw a woman interviewed. They said, ‘We want to wear them, we’ve worn them for a thousand years. Why would anybody tell us not to?’ They want to!” Trump said. “What the hell are we getting involved for?” he added.
Offering a reason why these women may prefer to wear these coverings, other than as a religious practice, Trump said “Fact is, it’s easy. You don’t have to put on makeup, look how beautiful everyone looks,” the questioning “Wouldn’t it be easier? Right? Wouldn’t that be easy? I’ll tell ya, if I was a woman I don’t want to.”![]()
Islam in the US has become a widely discussed issue among Republican candidates. Republican contender Ben Carson expressed his opinion in September on how he does not believe the country should elect a Muslim president because Islam is inconsistent with the Constitution.
A Pew Research survey last year found in comparison to other religious groups, Republicans and Republican leaners view Muslims much more negatively. The one per cent Muslim population of the country is also viewed most negatively of all religions in the eyes of the general public.
At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire in Septmeber, a man asked Trump, “We have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question, when can we get rid of them?”
“We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things. A lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things,” Trump responded.
Trump considers getting ‘rid of’ Muslims when president
Trump had also agreed with the man when he had stated that Muslims were a problem in the US and that President Barack Obama was himself a Muslim and ‘not even American’.
"Deradicalisation has come to mean making Muslims less Islamic, more Western, more secular, more submissive to secular, Liberal political ... norms," Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Uthman Badar said.
"It is nothing more than an agenda of forced assimilation justified by exaggerated fears of a security threat."
"Hizb ut-Tahrir's views on citizenship are a rejection of our liberal democratic values and a denial of Australian multiculturalism," he said.
"They further confirm this group's extremist agenda."
"There's nothing oppressive about committing to our democracy, abiding by the law, and respecting the rights of others.
"Our multiculturalism means that everyone has a right to express their cultural heritage but also accepts the responsibilities of being an Australian citizen."
The federal government has reportedly abandoned plans under consideration by former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Federal Social Services Minister Christian Porter told Sky News earlier this week the Hizb ut-Tahrir comments were "unhelpful, divisive and fundamentally ill informed"
Muslim children should not be forced to sing national anthem, says Hizb ut-Tahrir
They were told Muslim children should not be forced to sing the Australian anthem and that "deradicalisation" was an agenda of forced assimilation.
"Deradicalisation has come to mean making Muslims less Islamic, more Western, more secular, more submissive to secular, Liberal political ... norms," HuT spokesman Uthman Badar said.
"It is nothing more than an agenda of forced assimilation justified by exaggerated fears of a security threat."
He said Muslim children should not be forced to sing the national anthem."It is nothing more than an agenda of forced assimilation justified by exaggerated fears of a security threat."
He said Muslim children should not be forced to sing the national anthem.
TEHRAN, Iran — The slogan "Death to America" is not aimed at the American people, but rather American policies, Iran's supreme leader said in comments reported on his official website Tuesday.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei discussed the slogan while meeting with Iranian students ahead of the anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. Militant students stormed the compound and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
TEHRAN, Iran — The slogan "Death to America" is not aimed at the American people, but rather American policies, Iran's supreme leader said in comments reported on his official website Tuesday.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei discussed the slogan while meeting with Iranian students ahead of the anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. Militant students stormed the compound and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
She took the "escalation ladder" and threw it out of the window.Mearkle seems to be in a hysterical rage as she shoots the Taser into Kassick’s back. He falls to the ground, shouting and writhing in pain as police sirens blare. She applies the Taser continuously for almost 30 seconds as he was on the ground, while shouting for him to “get on the ground.”
He is, in fact, on the ground. She shouts, “Show me your hands!”
Kassick, face down in the snow after receiving 50,000 volts of electricity, holds his hands forward and says, “I am showing you.”
She continues shouting “Show me your hands!” as he is showing his hands, and then fires the Taser and two bullets into Kassick’s back.
Kassick shouts at the officer in disbelief during his last moments of life. Officer Mearkle continues behaving as if this dying man was some sort of a threat.
The boycott could cost the university more than $1 million if the team forfeits a game scheduled for Saturday.
http://tinyurl.com/GOOD-LITTLE-MAOISTSThe diversity cult of the day is a smokescreen to disguise this fundamental fact of American life: much of black America has simply opted out. They don’t want to assimilate into a common culture — so common culture has been deemed dispensable by the confounded keepers of the common culture’s flame, the university faculty. Much of black America doesn’t want to play along with the speech, manners, rules, or laws of whatever remains of that common culture after its systematic disassembly by the professors, the deans, and their handmaidens in progressive politics — heedless of the damage to the basic social contract. We remain very much a house divided, as Lincoln put it, and he could see clearly what the consequences would be.
Is it racist to try to air these abiding quandaries in the public arena? Apparently so. And why is that? Because of the awful embarrassment of political progressives over the disappointing outcome of the civil rights project. Black news pundits such as Charles Blow of The New York Times constantly call for “an honest conversation about race,” but they don’t mean it. Any public intellectual who ventures to start that conversation is automatically branded a racist. Hey, I couldn’t even have a conversation at a private dinner on the merits of speaking standard English with three college professors whose life-work centers on race. They had a melt-down and used a proxy (who wasn’t even there) to slander me on the Internet.
They are cowards and I am their enemy.