Uludere airstrike massacre, INFO was transmitted from American Predator drone.

Uludere airstrike massacre, INFO was transmitted from American Predator drone. (Spiegel).

On a December night in 2011, a terrible thing happened on Mount Cudi, near the Turkish-Iraqi border. One side described it as a massacre; the other called it an accident.

Several Turkish F-16 fighter jets bombed a caravan of villagers that night, apparently under the belief that they were guerilla fighters with the separatist Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK).

The group was returning from northern Iraq and their mules were loaded down with fuel canisters and other cargo. They turned out to be smugglers, not PKK fighters. Some 34 people died in the attack.

An American Predator drone flying overhead had detected the group, prompting US analysts to alert their Turkish partners. The reconnaissance flight -- which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in 2012 -- and its tragic consequences provided an important insight into the very tight working relationship between American and Turkish intelligence services in the fight against Kurdish separatists.

Although the PKK is still considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, its image has been improved radically by its recent success in fighting the Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq and Syria. PKK fighters, backed by US airstrikes, are on the front lines against the jihadist movement there, and some in the West are now advocating arming the group and lifting its terrorist label.

Documents from the archive of US whistleblower Edward Snowden that SPIEGEL and The Intercept have seen show just how deeply involved America has become in Turkey's fight against the Kurds.

For a time, the NSA even delivered its Turkish partners with the mobile phone location data of PKK leaders on an hourly basis. The US government also provided the Turks with information about PKK money flows and the whereabouts of some of its leaders living in exile abroad. Hmmm....Back in 2012 i already was asking if a US drone gave the info for the strike? It seems i was right.

Related: Turkish PM Erdogan gave order in Uludere air strike, BDP co-chair says

New Yorker Magazine: ‘Can The President Use Drones On Journalists?’

New Yorker Magazine: ‘Can The President Use Drones On Journalists?’

HT: NewYorker. In thinking about drones strikes and targeted killings, it can be instructive to picture them hitting people you know, either deliberately or as collateral damage. Doing so may not even be much of a stretch, nor should it be. (It’s already the case for people living in parts of Pakistan and Yemen.) Last week, I moderated a live chat on the ethics of drone warfare with Michael Walzer, the author of “Just and Unjust Wars”; Jeff McMahan, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers, who has also written about just-war theory; and The New Yorker’sJane Mayer, who is a master of the subject. The discussion took some interesting turns, touching on the idea of a secret committee that the President would be asked to check with before killing an American and the question of whether China would ever assert the right to call in a drone strike on a dissident living in San Francisco. After Walzer and McMahan suggested some criteria for strikes—criminality, risk of American lives—I asked them this:

Doesn’t a journalist working abroad who is about to release classified information about a war crime—thus committing a crime—that will provoke retribution or a break with allies—endangering Americans—fit this definition of a target?

Walzer didn’t initially think that it did. The danger to Americans, he said, had “to come directly not indirectly from the target before he can be a target.” McMahan had a different view:

If the release of classified information really would seriously endanger the lives of innocent people and the only way to prevent the release of the information was to kill the journalist, then the journalist would be liable to attack. But the evidential standards in such a case would be very high and would be unlikely to be satisfiable in practice.

“So Michael wouldn’t kill the journalist but Jeff just might…” I posted, and the chat moved on. But the question of the journalist is worth dwelling on, because it gets at some of the fundamental problems with the targeted-killing program. Who is “dangerous”? And who decides? A Justice Department white paper laying out the circumstances in which the President can kill Americans talks not only about Al Qaeda but also about “associated forces,” not clearly defined. Michael Crowley, of Time, pointed out that Jeh Johnson, the former Pentagon general counsel, has said that “Our enemy does not include anyone solely in the category of activist, journalist, or propagandist,” and I don’t mean to say that the current Administration has adopted the logic that it does, though that “solely” can do a lot of work. The vagueness could easily increase with the passage of time, as targeted killings shift from a policy to a precedent. The logical chain, as illustrated in our chat, can move very quickly.Read the full story here.

Turkish PM Erdogan gave order in Uludere air strike, BDP co-chair says

Turkish PM Erdogan gave order in Uludere air strike, BDP co-chair says.(HD).Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered the Air Force to strike 34 people in Uludere last year based on intelligence that there was a high-profile militant among the group, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş said today.
“It was said that there was a high-profile PKK [outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party] member among [the group], but information about other civilians was also given to the prime minister,” Demirtaş said during protests in the southeastern district on the incident’s first anniversary, daily Radikal has reported.
Demirtaş also said then-District Gov. Naif Yavuz had claimed the evidence pointing to those responsible seemed fairly obvious in the matter but that the official was banished to western Turkey after the incident.
The Chief of General Staff was also informed about the raid, the BDP co-chair added.
Some 34 civilian Kurdish villagers were killed in the air strike on Dec. 28, 2011, when they were allegedly mistaken for PKK militants as they were smuggling oil from northern Iraq into Turkey.
An official says thousands are protesting the government on the first anniversary of a botched Turkish military air strike aimed at suspected members of outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party that instead killed 34 civilians, The Associated Press reported.
Protesters are denouncing the government’s failure to keep a promise to investigate the incident and hold those responsible to account for the attack that struck a group of smugglers - most of them youngsters - who were crossing the border into Turkey from Iraq with mules.
Kurdish legislator Nazmi Gür said several thousand people were marching Friday to a cemetery near the border with Iraq. Dogan news agency video footage showed protesters shouting anti-government slogans.
The New-York based Human Rights Watch has also called on the government to launch "an effective and transparent inquiry" into the attack.Read the full story here.

• .Hmmm....Once again i ask "Was it a US Spydrone or a Turkish Spydrone that gave the go Ahead info?If so then it was on OBAMA his Watch!Will he take 'credit' for it like for Osama Bin Laden?34 Kurdish civilians were killed as a result of this info.

Related: Turkish army denies US report on Uludere intel.Flashback 31 th Dec 2011.MFS: "Once again i ask "Was it a US Spydrone or a Turkish Spydrone that gave the go Ahead info?

Video - Charles Krauthammer: Shoot down a drone, become an American hero.

Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer has found a novel approach to handling the whole drone surveillance dilemma that has Americans worried that the government will soon watch their every move from the sky. Speaking out against the future of aerial eavesdropping Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Fox on Tuesday, “The first American patriot that shoots down one of these drones that comes too close to his children in his backyard will be an American hero.”
Congress is currently working alongside defense contractors, the Federal Aviation Administration and local law enforcement agencies across the country, among others, to draft plans to put unmanned aerial aircraft into US sky in the near future. The FAA believes that, at this rate, 30,000 small, remote-controlled drones could be above the homes of every American. Even just recently, higher ups within the US Air Force admitted that drones might collect imagery that “may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent.”
Local law enforcement agencies already have drones at their disposal ready to be used as soon as Congress and the FAA can figure out how to use the crafts without disrupting air traffic. Judge Napolitano warns that, even if it sounds like an impossible science fiction fantasy gone awry, Americans should be more than just a bit weary. If the past is any precedent, it wouldn’t be above Congress to have the crafts licensed and launched at any moment.“The same Congress that let the president bomb Libya is going to let his Air Force spy in our backyards and like potted plants, they’ll look the other way.” Judge Napolitano said this week.
“The Third Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment and the Ninth Amendment were written to guarantee us the right to be left alone … Suddenly the government, silently, from 30, 000 feet above is violating those amendments.” In recent weeks, we’ve reported at RT on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and now CISPA — the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
In each one of these cases, the federal government has circumvented the American public’s concerns over civil liberties. Now while CISPA still awaits further congressional voting and perhaps an eventual approval from the president himself, another hotbed issue involving the civil liberties of each and every American is on the table. Even if the next major threat to civil liberties isn’t just on Capitol Hill — but thousands of feet off the ground — Judge Napolitano said this week any American that takes up arms to attack drones is an alright person in his book. Those are the only people on the planet that should be worried, either. Aside from the continuous deployment of combat drones across the world, surveillance crafts are now making their way north of the border into Canada too.

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Turkish army denies US report on Uludere intel.Flashback 31 th Dec 2011.MFS: "Once again i ask "Was it a US Spydrone or a Turkish Spydrone that gave the go Ahead info?

Turkish army denies US report on Uludere intel.Flashback 31 th Dec 2011.MFS: "Once again i ask "Was it a US Spydrone or a Turkish Spydrone that gave the go Ahead info?(HD).The Turkish army today denied media reports that the intelligence that led to the bombing of 34 civilians was received from United States’ drones, repeating that images of the smugglers’ caravan were taken by Turkish military’s unarmed aerial vehicles. “The report does not reflect the reality,” the Chief of General Staff said in a short written statement posted on its website late yesterday. It also added that detailed information about the incident has been sent to necessary institutions. The military’s statement came after a nearly two hour-long meeting between Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A Wall Street Journal report on May 16 suggested that the initial intelligence about a crowded group’s mobility from northern Iraq to Turkey was taken by a U.S. drone and suggested that Turkish officers did not accept U.S. offers to provide better images from the Predator. The army’s statement did not mention this claim. The government and the military came under renewed pressure to explain how the botched air raid at Uludere unfolded following the report, with the opposition parties harshly criticizing the government for lying. Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ said the report was not officially confirmed. “Judicial and administrative investigations are going on. The investigations will provide the ultimate answer to the questions,” he said. Both the military and the a specially authorized prosecutor launched separate probes into the incident only a few days after the attack took place on Dec. 28, but no results have yet been made public. The office of the Diyarbakır-based specially authorized prosecutor, in the meantime, said the newspaper’s report would not change the course of the investigation, which could seek further information from the military upon the evaluation of documents provided by the army. Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which has long claimed that intelligence coming from foreign sources prompted the raid, accused Prime Minister Erdoğan of “lying” and urged him to publicly apologize. CHP deputy chair Birgül Ayman Güler recalled that Erdoğan had insisted the intelligence for the strike came from national sources. “There is a prime minister who deceives people. He must correct his lie by apologizing,” she said.Flashback : 31 th Dec 2011.MFS - The Other news: "Once again i ask "Was it a US Spydrone or a Turkish Spydrone that gave the go Ahead info?"If so then it was on OBAMA his Watch!Will he take 'credit' for it like for Osama Bin Laden?34 Kurdish civilians were killed as a result of this info.Read the full story here and here.Update More here

Video: Armed MQ-1 Predator drone quietly flying at low altitude 40 miles from Chicago - Elgin, Illinois.

Video: Armed MQ-1 Predator drone quietly flying at low altitude 40 miles from Chicago - Elgin, Illinois. Filmed in Elgin, Illinois about 40 miles from Chicago, the following video (uploaded to Youtube on May 13) shows what seems to be an MQ-1 Predator drone. Armed with AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles. Noteworthy the drone is flying quite low (maybe to remain in visual contact with the ground below the clouds). Even if someone believes the video is not genuine, the robot could be involved in a surveillance mission in anticipation of NATO meeting that will be held in Chicago on May 20 – 21. Although not even comparable with what we have seen in London for next summer’s Olympic Games security, an armed drone over the U.S. territory is at least an uncommon sight.Hmmm..........The 'Obama fist' in the sky?Makes you wonder Who and When will the First American be talen out on U.S. Soil?Source : TheAvionist.

Update: In the Comment section 'Tom' mentions that the video is a fake.

This is the original image used to fake the video.

 http://wemeantwell.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/state-drone.jpg

 http://thehoaxkiller.com/forum/index.php?topic=102.0

She never saw it coming !

Barack Obama says the drone attacks he authorises are targetted only at named people on a list of active terrorists who are a direct threat to America.
MFS:"The reason i posted the Video is to accentuate the following post" from Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research.

"Now, US policy, with its frantic search for a deal with the Taliban, is about to complete another orbit. Indeed, the Qatar-based negotiations highlight why the US political leadership has deliberately refrained from decapitating the Taliban. The US military has had ample opportunities (and still has) to eliminate the Taliban’s Rahbari Shura, or leadership council, often called the Quetta Shura because it relocated to that Pakistani city.
Yet, tellingly, the US has not carried out a single drone, air, or ground strike in or around Quetta. All of the US strikes have occurred farther north, in Pakistan’s tribal Waziristan region, although the leadership of the Afghan Taliban and of its allied groups, like the Haqqani network and the Hekmatyar band, is not holed up there. Source : No Escape from Empire’s Graveyard.