Mark Ames - Feb 13, 2013

LAS VEGAS, NV: It’s hard to have a serious conversation about America’s drone assassination policy when no one seems to have a basic grasp of recent history. This cultural amnesia epidemic is starting to get me down— which is partly my fault for paying more than two minutes’ attention to Twitter at a single go.

The problem starts with Reagan, as problems so often do. Most people on the left take for granted that Reagan’s executive order 12333 “banned assassinations” — which is not just a false interpretation, but really awful mangling of one of the dark turning points in modern American history.

That same ignorance of the history of assassination policy runs right through today, with the repetition of another myth: That President Obama’s extrajudicial drone-assassinations of American citizens is “unprecedented” and “radical” and that “not even George Bush targeted American citizens.”

The truth is a lot worse and a lot more depressing.

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Glenn Greenwald - Oct 1, 2010

Last week, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights released a comprehensive report detailing its findings regarding the May, 2010, Israeli attack on the six-ship flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Israel-blockaded Gaza.  The report has been largely ignored in the American media despite the fact (or, more accurately:  because) it found that much of the Israeli force used “was unnecessary, disproportionate, excessive and inappropriate and resulted in the wholly avoidable killing and maiming of a large number of civilian passengers”; that “at least six of the killings can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions“; and that Israel violated numerous international human rights conventions, including the Fourth Geneva Conventions (see p. 38, para. 172).

Even more striking in terms of U.S. media and government silence on this report is the fact that one of the victims of the worst Israeli violations was a 19-year-old American citizen. As Gareth Porter documents in an excellent article at The Huffington Post, the report “shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.” In particular:

The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.

The report says Dogan had apparently been “lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time” before being shot in his face.

The forensic evidence that establishes that fact is “tattooing around the wound in his face,” indicating that the shot was “delivered at point blank range.” The report describes the forensic evidence as showing that “the trajectory of the wound, from bottom to top, together with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the bullet exit point, is compatible with the shot being received while he was lying on the ground on his back.”

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Six senior doctors have begun legal action to force a new inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, the scientist who died days after being exposed as the source of a controversial BBC story on the Iraq war.

Andrew Alderson - 05 Dec 2009

The action is being taken because six doctors are convinced that the original verdict of suicide is unsafe and should be overturned.

Some suspect that Dr Kelly, 59, was murdered shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC story which alleged that evidence against Iraq had been “sexed up” by the Government in order to justify the 2003 invasion.

The body of Dr Kelly, who was a UN weapons inspector, was found more than six years ago in woods near his Oxfordshire home after he went out for a walk. His wrist had been slashed. He also had painkillers in his bloodstream, although not at a lethal level.

At the time of his death, Dr Kelly was under pressure because it had emerged that he had provided confidential information for the BBC story.

However, in a 13-page dossier prepared as the basis for the legal action, the doctors argue that the bleeding from Dr Kelly’s ulnar artery in his left wrist is “highly unlikely” to have caused his death. They say a number of studies have shown that it is unusual for a patient to die from a single deep cut to the wrist.

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Why are we not more shocked that Dr David Kelly may have been murdered?

(more…)

Michael Gaddy - April 27, 2009

The 60s were a tumultuous time in America. There were the Vietnam War and its subsequent peace movement; the Kennedy assassinations; the Martin Luther King assassination, and the mass shooting at the University of Texas by Charles Whitman. The high-profile assassinations and the mass shooting prompted the government to lobby for stronger gun control, leading to the passage of the unconstitutional, NRA supported, 1968 Gun Control Act.

With the exception of the Vietnam War and its protest activity, all of the above events played into the hands of the state and its never-ending efforts to disarm private citizens. While the only common denominator in the University of Texas shooting involved the use of mind altering drugs by the shooter, the three assassinations were similar in accusations of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) involvement was alleged in each of them.

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Eric Black - Mar 11 2009

At a “Great Conversations” event (MP3) at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”

Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn’t written about yet.

In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were “an honest response to a question” from the event’s moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”

Hersh didn’t take back the statements, which he said arise from reporting he is doing for a book, but that it might be a year or two before he has what he needs on the topic to be “effective…that is, empirical, for even the most skeptical.”

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