Anti-drone activist kidnapped in Pakistan before he was due to testify in Europe, lawyer claims.

Anti-drone activist kidnapped in Pakistan before he was due to testify in Europe, lawyer claims.(RT).

Kareem Khan was taken from his home in Rawalpindi – a city located just nine miles away from Islamabad in Punjab province – by approximately 20 men. Shahzad Akbar, Khan’s lawyer, told AFP that many of the men were wearing police uniforms, though the affiliation of the kidnappers remains unknown.

Khan was scheduled to depart Pakistan on Saturday to speak with German, Dutch, and British parliamentarians about his experience with drone strikes.

Khan originally hails from the tribal region of North Waziristan and became the first Pakistani man to sue the US government in connection with drone attacks that killed members of his family. Khan’s brother and son were killed in a strike in December 2009.

Akbar now maintains that Khan’s wife and children have not been given any information regarding his location, or why he was taken.
“We lodged a report with the local police but they denied having picked him up,” the attorney said. “It seems to be work of the intelligence agencies.”

Local police have denied any involvement, saying they have no record of a raid on the night in question.
Clare Algar, executive director at Reprieve – a legal charity based in the UK – wrote on the organization’s website that officials are growing concerned.

“We are very worried about Mr. Khan’s safety,” she wrote. “He is a crucial witness to the dangers of the CIA’s covert drone program, and has simply sought justice for the death of his son and brother through peaceful, legal routes. Reports that he was detained by men in police uniforms are of great concern, and we urge the Government of Pakistan to do everything in its power to secure his immediate release.”

He first filed suit in 2010, asserting that drone strikes murder innocent civilians and violate international law by subverting the international prohibition on assassinations away from a battlefield. Khan said he was not home at the time of the strike, but stated that neighbors witnessed a massive blast.

In addition to Khan’s brother and son, a construction worker also died in the strike. Khan’s brother was a teacher with a master’s degree in English, while his son was a staff member at a government school.

Senior US intelligence officials told CNN at the time that Khan was suspected of housing Haji Omar Khan, a notorious Taliban leader who was also killed in the strike. Khan has denied ever knowing Haji Omar Khan, who fought against the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan before developing close ties with Mullah Omar.

Last year, Akbar – who represents a number of Pakistanis affected by drone strikes – and other activists published a letter in which they named the CIA station chief in Islamabad, accusing he and CIA director John Brennan of murder for their role in a drone strike late last year.

While exact figures are murky, AFP estimates that 2,155 Pakistanis have been killed in drone attacks since august 2008. It remains unknown how many of those killed were suspected militants and how many were civilians. Hmmmm......"I can do anything i want?"

New book claims Obama told aides: 'I'm really good at killing people'

New book claims Obama told aides: 'I'm really good at killing people' HT: RussiaToday.

The quote comes from a new book called “Double Down,” by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heileman, which chronicles the inside story of the 2012 election. The Washington Post was the first outlet to expose the quote in its review of the book.

The White House has yet to comment on the alleged quote, but one of the president’s senior advisors, Dan Pfeiffer, rejected many of the book’s claims on ABC’s Sunday show “This Week.” The book also claims that Obama’s political team considered replacing Vice President Joe Biden with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the reelection campaign.

"The president is always frustrated about leaks," Pfeiffer said. "I haven't talked to him about this book. I haven't read it. He hasn't read it. But he hates leaks."

The revelation of the quote comes as the administration’s drone campaign is placed under increasing scrutiny. Since taking office in 2008, and winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, Obama has greatly expanded the use of drones and targeted killings in foreign nations. He oversaw the 2009 surge in Afghanistan, drone operations during NATO’s 2011 involvement in Libya, the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and the most recent strike that killed the Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud.

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, the president has authorized 326 strikes in Pakistan alone. It also estimates that, since George W. Bush took office for his second term in 2004, the strikes have killed anywhere between 2,500 and 3,600 individuals, and that between 416 and 948 of those individuals were civilians.

The White House claims the number of civilians killed by drones is much lower than that, though it has declined to release its own number for national security reasons. The administration considers any “military-age males” within a strike zone to be combatants.

Civilian drone deaths came under the spotlight just recently in Washington, when a Pakistani school teacher and his family testified before Congress on the effects of the program on civilians. According to Amnesty International, the family’s grandmother was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2012, along with 18 other civilians.

 For his part, Obama has argued that the drone program is legal, and that it actually prevents the death of even more civilians at the hands of terrorists.
"Let us remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes," Obama said during a speech earlier this year.Hmmmm......Flashback 2012 :

WHITE HOUSE INSIDER: Barack Obama’s High Tech Snuff Films.

US and Pakistan locked in a 'Ménage à Drones'.

US and Pakistan locked in a 'Ménage à Drones'.HT: RussiaToday.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif hit his meeting with US President Barack Obama in the White House with an overwhelming priority; please, Mr. President, stop your drone war in my country. 

Behind closed doors this Wednesday, Sharif may have stressed Hellfire missile logic made no sense even under the wobbly framework of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) – which the Obama administration, in trademark newspeak, has rebranded Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO). He may have said OCO-enabled droning is in fact the biggest obstacle to peace in Pakistan. 


This is the official White House spin on what Sharif and Obama discussed. It’s not exactly uplifting. The droning is scheduled to go on. Obama didn’t mention “drones” when talking to the media; only vague platitudes about “respecting Pakistan’s sovereignty” and telling Sharif should “check these incidents inside Pakistan and stopping the export of terrorism.” But this does not mean Islamabad blew the meeting.

The leader of the Taliban (or Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, to give the organization its full name), Hakimullah Mehsud, has made it very clear where he is coming from.

Essentially, the Taliban regards Islamabad as a bunch of infidels, and American stooges to boot; that’s why they are at war. It's as if Mehsud had had access to this report, according to which Islamabad has “secretly” backed the CIA drone offensive.


What the Taliban wants is Sharia law, which by the way the absolute majority of Pakistan’s population rejects.

To make it even more complicated, no one knows for sure if the Taliban (which denies it) or some rogue faction is behind a recent wave of suicide and car bombings, including a horrific attack on Qissa Khwani bazaar – the Storyteller’s Market – in Peshawar, the queen of Pashtun cities.

The fact remains that what’s happening now is just a prelude of the jockeying for position ahead of the US alleged withdrawal from Afghanistan in late 2014.  

After meeting with Sharif, Obama’s cryptic emphasis of being “confident” of a solution “that is good for Afghanistan, but also helps to protect Pakistan over the long term” only obfuscates what is already an intractable question.  

The simplistic logic in Washington is that “stability” in Pakistan after 2014 will “protect” Afghanistan from becoming a jihadist paradise again.

At the same time, Washington and Islamabad dream of some sort of power-sharing between whoever succeeds Hamid Karzai in Kabul and the Afghan Taliban. And that would make the Afghanistan-Pakistan cross-border jihad magically vanish.   What this rosy scenario forgets is that the key issue is not jihad, but what the armed Pashtuns on both sides of the artificial, British-invented border want.  

The Afghan Taliban want to get back to power (and may have quite a good shot at it). The Pakistani Taliban want Sharia law (it won’t happen) and don’t have the slightest chance of getting to power. As for the US “managing” what goes on simultaneously in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that’s the biggest joke of the 21st century.   

So let’s grab a cup of green tea, as they do in Peshawar, and see who’s talking to whom.

The Obama administration, following the Pentagon’s most ardent wishes, is praying to reach a security deal with Karzai – which would imply US “forces” on the ground. No wonder Taliban supremo Mullah Omar has already said this is a no-no.

Plan B is some sub-deal reached as part of the ongoing Washington-Tehran honeymoon, assuming it lasts; that would imply a strong Iranian presence in post-NATO Afghanistan, and once again no political space for the Taliban.   


Islamabad, for its part, wants to talk to the Pakistani Taliban – but they aren’t talking. At the same time, Islamabad is terrified that India will have even more influence in post-NATO Afghanistan.

 And here’s where Washington’s true agenda is revealed. Whatever happens, Islamabad will be deemed incapable of helping to “stabilize” Afghanistan, and even itself. So what’s a benign superpower to do? It must, selflessly, remain “involved” in Af-Pak – like, forever.    Read the full story here.

Analyst: Drone strikes are a violation of international law and constitute the supreme war crime under the Nuremberg principles.

Analyst: Drone strikes are a violation of international law and constitute the supreme war crime under the Nuremberg principles.(PressTv).

A US political commentator says CIA assassination drone strikes are a violation of international law and constitute the supreme war crime under the Nuremberg principles.

Dr. Kevin Barrett, who is one of the renowned US critics of Washington’s so-called war on terror, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday, a day after a United Nations report warned that the use of armed drones threatens global security and encourages more states to acquire unmanned weapons.

“These drone strikes are clearly examples of the supreme war crime under the Nuremberg principles, which is the crime of aggression. Attacking another country, that is in any situation other than to stop an imminent attack on one’s own country, is aggression, the supreme war crime,” Barrett said.

“So every single drone strike is an example of this supreme war crime, and I think this UN report is an example of too little too late. They are not coming out and calling it what it is — the supreme war crime. They are simply claiming it is a misguided example of so-called global policing.

“But if some anti-American group would start using drones to blow up wedding parties in the US, it would be called terrorism and these people would be internationally considered outlaws.

“So the Americans who are using this cowardly means of slaughtering innocent civilians all over the world are terrorists and outlaws as well.”

The veteran commentator also said, “I do not think the UN is going to be able to stop these drone attackers from doing their evil deeds. I think it will probably happen gradually as the US Empire slowly loses its power.”

The UN report, which has been submitted to the UN General Assembly by Christof Heyns — the organization’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions — called for states that operate armed drones to be more transparent and publicly disclose how they use them.

“The expansive use of armed drones by the first states to acquire them, if not challenged, can do structural damage to the cornerstones of international security and set precedents that undermine the protection of life across the globe in the longer term,” the report said.

“The use of drones by states to exercise essentially a global policing function to counter potential threats presents a danger to the protection of life, because the tools of domestic policing (such as capture) are not available, and the more permissive targeting framework of the laws of war is often used instead,” it pointed out.

The report also called for international laws to be respected rather than ignored.

“The view that mere past involvement in planning attacks is sufficient to render an individual targetable, even where there is no evidence of a specific and immediate attack, distorts the requirements established in international human rights law,” stated the report.

Countries cannot consent “to the violation of their obligations under international humanitarian law or international human rights law,” it added.

The report noted that “drones come from the sky but leave the heavy footprint of war on the communities they target.”

“The claims that drones are more precise in targeting cannot be accepted uncritically, not least because terms such as ‘terrorist’ or ‘militant’ are sometimes used to describe people who are in truth protected civilians,” it said.

The report is the first of two major papers on drone strikes due to be debated at the UN General Assembly on October 25.

The second, by Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, was published on Friday.

The investigation found that US drone strikes have killed more than 450 civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen over the past decade.

Emmerson said that drone strikes have killed far more civilians than US officials have publicly acknowledged.
He said on Thursday that at least 400 in Pakistan and as many as 58 in Yemen have been killed by the CIA drone strikes, and censured the US for failing to aid the investigation by disclosing its own figures.


Washington uses assassination drones in several countries, claiming that they target “terrorists”. According to witnesses, however, the attacks have mostly led to massive civilian casualties.

Related: RT – Drones - National Debate Coaches Association (PDF).

1. Jeff, Research Analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. .... Under international law, in order for the U.S. government to legally target civilian terror ... including by a non-state actor, would constitute an “armed attack” under Article 51. ...... US drone policies violate UN Basic Principles

Irish Lawmaker Calls Obama a War Criminal and "is this person going for the hypocrite of the century award?"

Irish Lawmaker Calls Obama a War Criminal and "is this person going for the hypocrite of the century award?"HT: Reagancoalition.

President Barack Obama’s use of drones coupled with his decision to provide arms to Syrian rebels prompted one outspoken Irish lawmaker to refer to him as a “war criminal” and “hypocrite of the century,” following his G8 summit visit.

Parliamentarian Clare Daly said Ireland had displayed itself “as a nation of pimps, prostituting ourselves in return for a pat on the head,” according to The Irish Times.

The “unprecedented slobbering” during the president’s visit to Northern Ireland, she said, had even led to speculation that “you were going to deck the Cabinet out in leprechaun hats decorated with a bit of stars and stripes to really mark abject humiliation.”

“We’ve had very little challenging of the fact that [Michelle Obama’s] glad to be home,” she said. “‘Home’ a country she’s been in less than a week and her husband has very tenuous links in.”

After referring to the president’s speech on peace to children in Northern Ireland, Daly asked, “is this person going for the hypocrite of the century award? Because we have to call things by their proper names, and the reality is by any serious examination, this man is a war criminal.”

“This is the man who is in essence stalling the Geneva peace talks by trying to broker enhanced leverage for the Syrian opposition by giving them arms — and to hell with the thousands more who’ll lose their lives, or the tens of thousands who will be displaced,” Daly said.

“This is the man who has facilitated a 200 percent increase in the use of drones which have killed thousands of people, including hundreds of children.”Read the full story here.

U.S. Special Forces Getting Constellation of Mini Satellites To ‘Hunt Down People Considered To Be Dangerous To The United States And Its Interests’

U.S. Special Forces Getting Constellation of Mini Satellites To ‘Hunt Down People Considered To Be Dangerous To The United States And Its Interests’.HT: Wired.

In September, the U.S. government will fire into orbit a two-stage rocket from a Virginia launchpad. Officially, the mission is a scientific one, designed to improve America’s ability to send small satellites into space quickly and cheaply. But the launch will also have a second purpose: to help the elite forces of U.S. Special Operations Command hunt down people considered to be dangerous to the United States and its interests.

For years, special operators have used tiny “tags” to clandestinely mark their prey — and satellites to relay information from those beacons. But there are areas of the world where the satellite coverage is thin, and there aren’t enough cell towers to provide an alternative. That’s why SOCOM is putting eight miniature communications satellites, each about the size of a water jug, on top of the Minotaur rocket that’s getting ready to launch from Wallops Island, Virginia. They’ll sit more than 300 miles above the earth and provide a new way for the beacons to call back to their masters.

Some of the beacons use infrared flashes to signal their location; in 2009, al-Qaida propagandists claimed they found them all over villages that had been hit with U.S. drone strikes. Others are implanted into seemingly-innocent commercial electronics. Under “TTL examples,” Richardson’s presentation (.pdf) showed pictures of a cell phone and a key fob, like the kind used to open a car. Still other tags are affixed to cars or people, and transmit their whereabouts using satellite or CDMA, GPRS, and other cellular networks.

EWA says its technology is being used in “real-world operations with various Department of Defense and national- level agencies.” The company won’t say which agencies or which divisions of the Pentagon, exactly, have used their technologies. But a look in a federal purchasing database shows that the company has signed multi-million dollar contracts in recent years with the Army, Navy, and, of course, U.S. Special Operations Command. Hmmmm......They might get very 'busy' over Washington DC.Read the full story here.

Twelve civilians, including 11 small children and one woman killed in Afghan NATO strike.

                                                             Children enemy combatants?

Twelve civilians, including 11 small children killed in Afghan NATO strike.(RT).The civilians were killed during a joint Afghan-NATO operation late on Saturday night in the Shigal district of Kunar province, which borders Pakistan.

"Eleven children and a woman were killed when an air strike hit their houses," provincial spokesman Wasifullah Wasifi said on Sunday.

Six militants – two of them senior Taliban leaders – and an American civilian adviser to the Afghan intelligence agency were also killed in the operation.

A spokesman for the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan said they were aware of reports regarding civilian casualties and were assessing the incident, Reuters reports.

The spokesman, Captain Luca Carniel, said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had provided “air support” during the operation, but that no ISAF troops were on the ground.

The airstrike had been called in by NATO forces, and not their Afghan allies, he continued.

On Sunday, Five Americans, including three US soldiers, a young diplomat and a US Defense Department contractor were also killed when a car bomb targeted their convoy in the southern province of Zabul.
Provincial governor Mohammad Ashraf Nasery was in the convoy, but was not injured in the attack, local and NATO officials said.

“Our American officials and their Afghan colleagues were on their way to donate books to students in a school in Qalat, the province’s capital, when they were struck by this despicable attack,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement.

The foreign service officer, identified 25-year-old Anne Smedinghoff, was described by Kerry as "vivacious, smart" and "capable."
Four other US diplomats were wounded, one critically, Kerry continued.
Recently, Afghan security forces have been taking the lead in operations against Taliban insurgency in preparation for the final withdrawal of alliance forces in 2014.
US Special Forces were forced to withdraw from two Afghan provinces back in February by the government after a number of reports of “harassing, torturing and murdering innocent civilians.”
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai slammed the US forces for fueling “insecurity and instability” in troubled provinces located close to Kabul.Hmmmm......Great way to make friends with the population.Read the full story here.

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.

DOJ white paper explaining Obama's targeted killing program - Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force.

DOJ white paper explaining Obama's targeted killing program - Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force.HT: BarracudaBrigade.

Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Q... by Mike Riggs

Video - Judge, jury and executioner.

US citizens not exempt from extra judiciary drone strikes under Obama.HT: SunNews.