TBR News July 4, 2016
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. July 4, 2016: “On a Trump commentary about Hillary Clinton, there was a red Star of David with while text. Immediately a shrill cry of ‘Antisemitism!’ went up and the star became a red circle. Inside the Beltway, it has long been known that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s family background was Jewish. Her ancestors came from Lodz in Poland and went to England. The family moved to the United States, changed their name to an English one and became Methodists. Hillary’s brother married the daughter of Barbara Boxer and the Boxers are Jewish. Media pictures exist showing the brother in a beanie, stomping on wine glasses. Her daughter married a Jewish man. Hillary is well-known as an intelligent but thoroughly dishonest person and very vicious and pro-Israel. Her election would be a disaster for the United States both economically and politically.”
The Müller Washington Journals 1948-1951
At the beginning of December, 1948, a German national arrived in Washington, D.C. to take up an important position with the newly-formed CIA. He was a specialist on almost every aspect of Soviet intelligence and had actively fought them, both in his native Bavaria where he was head of the political police in Munich and later in Berlin as head of Amt IV of the State Security Office, also known as the Gestapo.
His name was Heinrich Müller.
Even as a young man, Heini Müller had kept daily journals of his activities, journals that covered his military service as a pilot in the Imperial German air arm and an apprentice policeman in Munich. He continued these journals throughout the war and while employed by the top CIA leadership in Washington, continued his daily notations.
This work is a translation of his complete journals from December of 1948 through September of 1951.
When Heinrich Müller was hired by the CIA¹s station chief in Bern, Switzerland, James Kronthal in 1948, he had misgivings about working for his former enemies but pragmatism and the lure of large amounts of money won him over to what he considered to be merely an extension of his life-work against the agents of the Comintern. What he discovered after living and working in official Washington for four years was that the nation¹s capital was, in truth, what he once humorously claimed sounded like a cross between a zoo and a lunatic asylum. His journals, in addition to personal letters, various reports and other personal material, give a very clear, but not particularly flattering, view of the inmates of both the zoo and the asylum.
Müller moved, albeit very carefully, in the rarefied atmosphere of senior policy personnel, military leaders, heads of various intelligence agencies and the White House itself. He was a very observant, quick-witted person who took copious notes of what he saw. This was not a departure from his earlier habits because Heinrich Müller had always kept a journal, even when he was a lowly Bavarian police officer, and his comments about personalities and events in the Third Reich are just as pungent and entertaining as the ones he made while in America.
The reason for publishing this phase of his eventful life is that so many agencies in the United States and their supporters do not want to believe that a man of Müller¹s position could ever have been employed by their country in general or their agency in specific.
Sunday, 22. April, 1951
A long and very interesting talk today. Viktor and his wife came down, leaving the children with a governess, and we had a pleasant lunch with Bunny and Arno also at the table. Afterwards, the two ladies went off somewhere and the three of us went out onto the terrace for a pleasant afternoon talk.
This turned on the CIA, its motives and more especially, its overall effectiveness in its job. This agency was set up to keep an uninformed President current with world affairs. It has not done this. What it has done is to attempt, sometimes with success, to influence the President to support its own goals.
And what are these goals? Quite frankly, like the SD in Germany, they have their world-view and because they have it, it must be a correct view and the President must be made to support it.
And what is this world-view? Nothing at all. They have no real knowledge of anything outside inter-office politics and their social life. For example, I know of very few CIA leaders who understand one word of Russian or who have even the slightest idea of the history of that country and the dynamics of the communist movement that now runs it. They have no real knowledge of Stalin who to them is nothing but a shadow puppet with which to frighten the President and his advisors, as well as the American public, into believing that the CIA and that agency alone is capable of protecting this country against the military adventures of Josef Stalin.
For another example, somewhat more distant but nevertheless very indicative, (Allen W. ed.) Dulles was the OSS chief in Switzerland during the war. I have direct knowledge of his activities, have read through many of his reports from the period and had the opportunity of talking to him. He is thoroughly ignorant of what he was supposed to be dealing with, is not proficient in German, was hoodwinked by a number of my people and in general was worth at least a battalion to me.
Now, he poses as a master spy who defeated Hitler!
These people (the CIA, ed.) have a great deal in common. They are all members of the Establishment who know each other or have mutual friends or family connections. Most of them went to Yale, Harvard or Princeton, were members of exclusive student clubs and inter-married with each other’s cousins, sisters or whatever.
They do not understand their putative enemy and never will. It is true that many are very intelligent but there is a great canyon between education and intelligence.
They actually have no agenda other than to achieve supreme power where they can implement their ill-planned schemes that sound to both Viktor and myself like Karl May novels (Karl May was a 19th century German writer who wrote about American cowboys and Indians and was very popular in Germany. Although exciting reading, May had no real knowledge of his subjects. ed).
The men of the NKVD, as witness Viktor, are very often quite fluent in English, very clever and possess a great understanding of the American psyche. There is no question that the CIA has never penetrated their ranks but there is also no doubt that the NKVD has penetrated theirs. Many OSS men were very pro-communist and worked closely with the Soviet intelligence during the war and a significant number of these OSS men went directly into the new CIA.
What the young Harvard men like is the sense of intellectual power. Although it would be beneficial to everyone if the United States and Russia were to downplay their animosities, it is not to the liking of these Young Turks to permit this.
Stalin, after all, views America as a nation that once supported him wholeheartedly and now seeks to destroy him. Stalin needs money and trade to help him rebuild his country but that is something he will never get here. Stalin sees America as trying to destroy him and being Stalin, fights back. He does this with probing attacks or simulated attacks as witness the Berlin blockade and the current war in Korea.
There is no doubt Stalin egged on the Chinese and North Koreans to carry out a proxy war for him. He is an expert at testing people. If they resist, he will back down as long as he can save face in the process.
This country has now been drawn into a war that is not popular and a war that eventually will destroy Truman’s reputation. Stalin was pleased with Roosevelt, although he viewed him personally with great contempt, because R. gave him what he wanted without presenting any kind of a bill. Truman immediately began to discuss the bill when he became President by default and Stalin can never forgive him for that.
I am supposed to be an expert on anti-Soviet counterintelligence but I find the people I work with under the assumption that I am an expert on Soviet political intentions! I am in and out of my office but always there is someone who wants to ask me some idiotic questions about oil production at Baku or the latest Soviet tank model!
I cannot possibly answer these stupid questions and it’s like using a surgeon’s scalpel to cut wood with. No one, except the President, bothers to read my papers and since I have no interest in attending their drunken dinners and mindless attendance at school football games, they are more or less leaving me alone.
Never mind. Thanks to my new connections, I am making a fortune on the stock market and have cut back on the art business. Some day, some horse-faced idiot will come forward and screech that this or that painting was stolen from his grandmother’s house. Then there will be trouble with the auction houses or the galleries and I will have to get Arno to pay the owners a visit at home and shut them up. Or more to the point, as Arno says, visit the squealer and send him down to see Charon with his penis instead of a coin in his mouth. For a well-educated and pleasant young man, Arno can be very unpleasant at times. He even frightens Viktor once in a while but Viktor likes his intelligence and probably thinks Arno is having him on.
He is not.
Arno wants to get married to Heini’s lovely sister and I think it would be a good idea. She will have to come down here to live because Arno has no interest in going to Iowa and living in a farm community. I did tell him that he could make a good living killing hogs with his knife but he would rather take extra classes at Georgetown.
All in all, it was a pleasant afternoon and we shall have to do it again.
Tuesday, 24. April, 1951.
Truman has now swung over to the right and is going to permit the discharge of governmental employees if their loyalty is in question. It’s about time they started to clean out these Augean stables. Since these pogroms have begun (actually before I got here) thousands have resigned and about three hundred have been fired. Hoover is chasing after perverts and they are quaking in their boots over at State.
We are going to get to get together in the near future with some of the Chrysler family who live in the neighborhood and Bunny knows through school. Also, we are having some friends of Bunny’s down who are descended from the Ramsay family that founded Alexandria as well.
I find the old aristocratic families much better to take than the crass, pseudo- intellectuals of the government services.
An interesting sidelight from Bunny.
Back in the 1860s, there was a businessman and banker named Levi Z. Leiter. He was a Jew and involved in all kinds of businesses, including a clothing business in Chicago. (Field and Leiter, later Marshall Field and Co., ed.) Part of the family lived in Washington and cut a swath in local society. One of them was direct ancestor of Winston Churchill! Now one can see why Churchill hates the Germans so much. Roosevelt had the same sort of background. His ancestors were Sephardics from Spain named Campo Rosso (or ‘Field of Roses’) who fled to Germany after Ferdinand and Isabella took over Spain and forced all the Jews to convert. In Germany, near Aachen, the Campo Rossos became ‘Rosenfelds.’ In the early 17th century, one of them, an Isaac Rosenfeld, was burnt by an ecclesiastical court for breaking into a church and profaning the Host. The rest of the family fled to Haarlem in the Netherlands and changed their name once more to ‘Rosenvelt’ which, again, means the same thing. One of them came to America, changed his name and his religion and produced two Presidents!
Again, one understands Roosevelt’s animosity towards the Germans. However, in spite of his background, he personally hated Jews and did everything he could to keep them from coming into this country when we were trying to chase them out of Germany.
This self-hatred is well known and has produced a great deal of sorrow in the world.
The war in Korea marches on. Behn is having a private dinner at the Metropolitan Club for a few influential friends and I have been invited. Clark Clifford is sniffing around me, trying to break into various circles I am connected with but so far, I have managed to elude his wiles. I do not like nor trust the man although Truman thinks that the sun shines out of his asshole (as Angleton said last week).
Trump tweet attacking Clinton employs image of Jewish star
July 2, 2016
by Emily Flitter
Reuters
NEW YORK-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday tweeted an image of rival Hillary Clinton alongside hundred-dollar bills and a Jewish star bearing the words “most corrupt candidate ever!”, prompting outrage and bafflement on social media.
Two hours after his initial tweet, Trump tweeted a similar image in which the six-pointed Star of David – which appears on Israel’s flag and which Jews were forced to wear on their clothing by the Nazis during the Holocaust – was replaced by a circle. The original tweet was deleted.
Critics said the image featuring the star harkened back to centuries-old anti-Semitic stereotypes, such as the belief that Jews are greedy.
“Just saw #DonaldTrump’s Star of David tweet. I’m impressed by his ability to find a way to insult literally every kind of human being,” screenwriter Cole Haddon wrote on Twitter.
“A Star of David, a pile of cash, and suggestions of corruption. Donald Trump again plays to the white supremacists,” wrote Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host who has been critical of Trump.
The tweets originated from Trump’s account, @realDonaldTrump, and no other users were mentioned in them. It was not clear whether someone inside Trump’s campaign made the image or whether he found it somewhere else. Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trump, did not respond to a request for comment.
The presumptive Republican nominee has been trying to assuage fears within his own party that he is alienating potential voters with offensive statements about Muslims, Latinos and women. Last month, Trump fired his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and began delivering speeches using a teleprompter, an abrupt change in style that was seen as an attempt to appear more presidential ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
Saturday’s tweet was a reminder of the unrestrained side of Trump. The candidate has mocked a disabled newspaper reporter, referred to undocumented immigrants from Mexico as “rapists” and recently pointed to a black man in the crowd at one of his rallies and called him “my African-American.”
(Reporting by Emily Flitter; Editing by Mary Milliken and James Dalgleish)
Can Hillary Clinton overcome her trust problem?
July 3, 2016
by Anne Gearan
The Washington Post
Hillary Clinton’s weekend interview with the FBI stands as a perfect symbol of what is probably her biggest liability heading into the fall election: A lot of people say they don’t trust her.
Clinton sat for an interview of more than three hours as part of a Justice Department investigation into the privately owned email system she operated off the books when she was secretary of state. The timing — less than three weeks before she will claim the Democratic presidential nomination — is an attempt to make the best of a situation that would look bad for any candidate but is particularly damaging for Clinton.
That the interview at FBI headquarters was voluntary does not expunge the whiff of suspicion surrounding the entire email affair that, for many voters, confirms a long-held view that Clinton shades the truth or plays by her own rule
In opinion polls and focus groups, even many people who say they plan to vote for Clinton say they think she has lied or has something to hide. Her poor marks for trustworthiness have much to do with her long and sometimes messy public life, and very little to do with Republican opponent Donald Trump. Both front-runners are deeply unpopular with voters, but Clinton elicits a more visceral mistrust.
It didn’t help matters last week when her husband, Bill Clinton, met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch for an impromptu discussion on an airport tarmac in Phoenix, sparking suspicions among Republicans and head-slapping among Democrats. Lynch has said the meeting was innocent but regrettable.
“Trust is the glue that holds our democracy together,” Clinton said last week as part of a direct effort to address the issue in this small lull between the end of primary voting and the start of full-on campaigning for the fall vote.
“I take this seriously, as someone who is asking for your votes, and I personally know I have work to do on this point,” Clinton told a friendly audience. “A lot of people tell pollsters they don’t trust me. I don’t like hearing that, and I’ve thought a lot about what’s behind it.”
As she has before, Clinton blamed smears by her political opponents for setting the tone, but she also acknowledged her own mistakes.
“You know, you hear 25 years worth of wild accusations, anyone could start to wonder,” Clinton said. “Political opponents and conspiracy theorists have accused me of every crime in the book. None of it’s true, never has been,” but it also never goes away, Clinton said.
“And it certainly is true that I’ve made mistakes. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t,” Clinton continued. “So I understand that people have questions.”
She promised to try to resolve those doubts through hard work and dedication, and she held up the example of her 2000 election to the Senate. New York voters had doubts, too, but came to know her as a hard worker and effective representative, she said.
“You can’t just talk someone into trusting you. You’ve got to earn it,” Clinton said.
The longtime front-runner is trying to swab the decks of a messy and bitter primary ahead of the Democratic convention and ahead of a week of high-profile campaigning with President Obama and Vice President Biden.
Biden, in an NPR interview Sunday, said a goal in campaigning for Clinton was to “vouch” for her. The two will appear together Friday in Scranton, Pa., which is Biden’s beloved home town and also where Clinton’s father grew up. Her story of the family lace factory there is a staple of her stump speech.
“The hardest thing is vouching. When you vouch for them you say ‘I’m putting my reputation on the line. I believe this person is a good person, has character,” Biden said in the interview for NPR’s “Weekend Edition.” “You’re putting your rep on the line. You’re saying, ‘I think this person has character,’ and that’s what I’m prepared to do for Hillary.”
Character is exactly Clinton’s trouble spot, according to polls that have charted an increase in the number of people who say they don’t like and don’t trust her as the campaign has marched ahead.
In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in late June, 69 percent of respondents said they were concerned that Clinton has a record or reputation as untrustworthy. A CBS News poll in June found 62 percent saying Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, while 33 percent said she is. Her ratings on this were similar to Trump’s (63 percent not honest, 32 percent honest). But on a separate measure of being forthcoming, 33 percent of registered voters said Clinton says what she believes while 62 percent said she does not. By contrast, 56 percent said Trump says what he believes.
People are far more likely to say Clinton is well prepared for the job, while rating Trump as unsuited for the White House, said pollster Peter D. Hart, who oversaw the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll. Where she falls down is on the more nuanced question of character and trust, he said.
“For Hillary Clinton it’s all personal and about values,” Hart said. “It’s, ‘Can I trust her? Do I feel comfortable with her?’ ”
This is somewhat familiar territory for Clinton, who overcame discomfort over her hands-on role as first lady in the 1990s and mistrust of her motives in the 2000 Senate campaign.
“When she won election to the Senate, she had to overcome skepticism in the minds of some voters in certain parts in New York,” campaign press secretary Brian Fallon said in an interview. “She went on to impress everyone with her work ethic and her ability to reach across the aisle, and then managed to win reelection by an even wider margin in 2006. So we know that while the political season brings out all kinds of personal attacks and unfair questioning of her motives, the reality is, once in the job, she never fails to work her heart out and earn respect from even her critics.”
Still, although the old scandals and investigations of the Bill Clinton administration have faded in memory, they are at the core of many voters unease with Hillary Clinton. Trump, in his name-calling style, hits a political nerve with his constant reference to Clinton as “Crooked Hillary.”
Her well-regarded tenures as senator and secretary of state are also years behind her, meaning her campaign must seek to remind voters of the positive elements from those periods.
Clinton’s campaign is trying to address the trust deficit in two main ways. First, through Clinton’s own words and actions — including her remarks on the topic at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition gathering in Chicago last week and in what her backers say was a forthright attempt to provide information to the FBI.
Clinton had volunteered to sit for an interview months ago and has said she is cooperating completely in an inquiry that could result in criminal charges for her or aides who sent and received classified material on a system that operated in parallel to government email accounts.
From the campaign’s perspective, the interview is medicine best swallowed now, before the full heat of the head-to-head campaign with Trump. The issue clouds the campaign nonetheless, since there is no word yet on whether anyone will face charges or discipline. An interview with the most significant potential target of the investigation is often the last step before a decision on whether to issue indictments, so it is possible that the legal matter is near an end. Lawyers have said charges against Clinton are unlikely.
The Republican-led House investigation into the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, when Clinton was secretary of state, ended last week with little new or politically damaging information. Clinton backers assert that the tragedy is no longer politically useful for Republicans.
Second, the campaign is spending millions on television advertising that charts Clinton’s background as an advocate for children and families and portrays her as a stalwart fighter. The positive ads airing in battleground states are running much more frequently than an attack ad about Trump.
The idea is that there is an opportunity now to reset voter opinions about Clinton as a stand-alone proposition as opposed to someone in contrast with Trump. Clinton allies note that Trump’s negative ratings are higher than Clinton’s and have concluded they are less likely to change than Clinton’s positive ratings. To Clinton backers, that means it is more cost-efficient to try to raise her stature now than to further damage his.
The Revolt Against Globalism
Why the elites are in a panic
July 4, 2016
by Justin Raimondo
AntiWar
There was William Galston at the European Council on Foreign Relations, listening to his fellow elitists and foreign policy honchos caviling about the rise of Donald Trump and bemoaning the fate of the European Union (EU) at the hand’s of Britain’s Euro-skeptics. As the assembled luminaries had a collective sad in their five-star hotel, wondering how the proles could’ve gotten so far out of hand, Galtson – longtime Democratic party hack, former domestic advisor to Bill Clinton, and a senior fellow at the “centrist” Brookings Institution – heard a call to arms. It was almost as if Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist and original founder and financier of the Council on Foreign Relations, had spoken to him from on high – or, rather, from below – and commanded him to spread the Word far and wide:
“I realized that the stakes in the U.S. presidential election are even higher than I had thought. The fate of the entire postwar order hangs in the balance, and with it the prospects for democracy world-wide. Without vigorous American leadership, the prospects are not bright.”
Oh, yes, those shortsighted Little People are “turning inward,” and “this is understandable,” but, hey, “liberal internationalism is back on its heels” and the dreaded “ethno-nationalist populism” – i.e. resistance to the One World “global governance” schemes of Galston and his comrades – “is on the march.” What’s a globalist to do?
And it’s not just the English-speaking world that’s resisting the globalist agenda. Those Frenchies are getting restive, too, and the rest of Europe is balking at “the obvious candidate for continental leadership” for “historical reasons.” After all, everyone remembers the last time the Germans tried to impose “union” on the Europeans, so there’s that. See how prejudiced the Little People can be? They just don’t have the foresight to worry about the New Hitler – Vladimir Putin, if you even have to ask – who “senses a historic opportunity to exploit Europe’s divisions for his own purposes.” Why, he actually wants to trade with Europe, and that would undermine the war plans of the CFR types, who are fixated on restarting the cold war. Of course, they don’t actually say that in so many words, but the intent is clear enough. They put it like this:
“If Europe doesn’t hold together when facing a rearmed and resurgent Russia, the gains for democracy and free markets since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union may well be rolled back.”
You know, “democracy” – like in Ukraine, where EU–inspired mobs overthrew the elected President and the coup leaders immediately launched a vicious war against their own people in east Ukraine, killing many thousands and unleashing neo-Nazi regiments like the Azov Battalion on those who dared to resist. That’s “democracy” for you! And alarm bells should go off whenever you hear a top advisor to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Walter Mondale hail “free markets.” It’s a signal for the looting to begin.
As usual, everything depends on the United States – as inheritor of Rhodes’ beloved British empire – but, alas, the “ethno-nationalist” contagion has spread across the Atlantic, and it may be that the Yanks are not coming:
“Now is the worst possible time for the US to pull back and, as Donald Trump would have it, to reframe America’s relations with Europe as a transaction to be terminated if the sums don’t come up right. Franklin Roosevelt understood that a democratic Europe was a vital national interest of the US So did Ronald Reagan and every other postwar president. US diplomacy in 2017 and beyond must reflect this core reality.”
In the transaction preferred by Galston and his ilk, America always comes out the loser. That’s because we have a Mission, and it doesn’t matter how much it costs: we must bear the weight of Empire on our shoulders without complaint and without regard for the welfare of our own citizens. After all, anything less would be selfish: no, we mustn’t succumb to the requirements of common sense and fiscal sanity. It’s our sacred duty to police the world, so people like Galston can sit around in the Hague and determine the fate of entire peoples.
Forget Asia: we can’t “pivot” eastward while the Poles are pining for American aid and arms and the Romanians are unhappy with their lot. If we pay too much attention to where more than a third of the world’s population resides, as opposed to focusing on Estonia (population under two million) we’ll miss out on a real opportunity to start World War III with Russia. And let’s stop with the “complaints about insufficient European military and diplomatic burden-sharing” since these “have proved ineffectual in the past.” Just like that good-for-nothing uncle who keeps coming to you for “loans” that are never repaid, you just have to buck up and keep handing out the cash – because your own ineffectuality is your best friend.
As for those trade agreements which are mislabeled “free trade” but are really just protectionist trade blocs meant to “integrate” us into supranational entities – it’s really a shame the two presidential candidates have bowed to pressure from the Little People and come out against them. But it’s not too late to shore up the failing EU by signing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Galston and the globalists are frightened to death: their plans for a world-spanning Empire on which the sun never sets seem to be sinking beneath the same waves that have overwhelmed all the empires of the past. But they aren’t giving up their grand plans just yet: far from it. As Galston puts it:
“None of this can succeed unless the American people are persuaded that outward-facing military, diplomatic and economic arrangements are consistent with their own well-being. Increased defense spending, which enhances job-creation as well as national security, may well be needed. New measures to cushion vulnerable Americans against the wage and employment shocks created by trade are essential.”
All this “America first” nonsense has to be dispensed with, and fast: Americans must be weaned away from their selfish parochial concerns and made to see that we’re all citizens of the Global Village. And if all this “outward-facing” policy means pouring our wealth into renovating some ramshackle Ukrainian hamlet until it meets the standards of a typical American slum, well then let’s create jobs on the home front by arming to the teeth – after all, we’ll be needing a lot more bombs if we’re going to be fighting the Russians. Just keep those government printing presses rolling!
And here’s the punch line you’ve been waiting for, where the Galstonian agenda is revealed for all to see:
“Given current circumstances, robust internationalism is inconsistent with the fiscal austerity imposed by budget sequestration, let alone Paul Ryan-style proposals for retrenchment in the social programs that working Americans rely on for what is left of their security. Whatever its proponents may say, a smaller government at home means retreat abroad. This is the road to disaster, and we must not take it.”
Galston has understood what the National Review crowd and the Ted Cruz conservatives refuse to acknowledge. As that Old Right prophet and polemicist Garet Garrett put it:
“Between government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people.”
More than fifty years after those word were written, the people are rising up against the globalist agenda – against Galston and his fellow World Planners – and demanding that the issue be put to a vote of the people. The Republican party, long a fortress of internationalism, has been breached and taken by self-avowed America First nationalists, and our British cousins have thrown off the shackles of a supranational super-State -in-the-making, reasserting their sovereignty and inspiring rebels on the continent to follow their example.
The revolt against globalism is going global – and that’s a good thing for libertarians and for all opponents of Empire. Whatever the contradictions and ideological idiosyncrasies of the various anti-globalist forces now on the move, their victory is a precondition for the recovery of liberty in America. Because Galston is perfectly correct to say that “a smaller government at home means retreat abroad.” He understands what the leadership of the post-World War II conservative movement has spent decades evading – and, more importantly, now the rank-and-file are beginning to understand how they’ve been lied to all these years, and why the promises of their leaders have all come to naught.
This is a great step forward for libertarians: the consciousness of the masses is being raised to new heights. Our task now is to engage them, educate them, and recruit them as soldiers in the fight to take our country back from Señor Galston and the regnant elites he represents.
‘EU at high risk of fragmenting after Brexit, Austria could be next’
July 4, 2016
RT
Far-right parties across Europe are trying to gain a greater level of federalism and autonomy inside of the EU by putting a referendum on the agenda, as it would give them leverage against Germany, says political writer and journalist Mark Bergfeld.
Speculation has begun that the EU could have a second departure on its hands with the media saying Austria will follow Britain’s lead. That is as the far-right Austrian presidential candidate, who lost in May’s election, has been given a second chance after the country’s top court overturned the result.
Recently the president of the Czech Republic said he wants to follow the same approach. Milosh Zeman says that he is personally against leaving the EU, but would do everything to allow people to express their will.
A survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations said that Brexit could start a political tsunami with referendums being used as a way to challenge established parties on issues such as EU membership and migration.
RT: Critics say the presidential re-run in Austria could be another blow for the EU. Do you agree?
Mark Bergfeld: The EU is at high risk of fragmenting after the Brexit vote. It is clear that Austria is a high-risk country potentially leaving the EU, given that it didn’t follow Merkel’s course in summer 2015 when the Schengen and Dublin agreement were defunct and it closed its borders unilaterally. With the re-run we will see whether this will become another topic – Austria potentially leaving the European Union.RT: If the far-right candidate Norbert Hofer wins in September, what’s next for Austria and Europe as a whole?
MB: I think that Hofer, who is on the very far-right, who has launched his campaign against Muslims, who has launched his main party platform against immigrants, is very unlikely to win these elections, to begin with, I think that many people in Austria were very shocked by the initial result that we have seen where he came very close to beating the Green Party candidate.
What we will see is that a lot of people will unite behind the Green Party candidate instead of Hofer because it came as a real shock to Austria. And what effectively threatened their position inside of Europe as well. I think the Austrians are very well aware of the fact that electing someone like Hofer would damage the country’s reputation, especially their tourism, and also their close relationship with Germany.
RT: Hofer himself says he doesn’t want to leave the Union, but he wants it reformed. How realistic is that?
MB: I think there are two tendencies at this moment in time to see the future of the EU. On the one hand, we can see how continuing crisis throughout the European Union has led to a greater degree of centralism. So, if you look at the Greek crisis as well as the border crisis, you see how it led to greater integration of the different European states into the European framework.
What you also can see on the other hand is greater calls for federalism inside of the EU. And so what Hofer effectively is trying to do and what the right-wing parties across Europe are trying to do at this moment in time is trying to attain a greater level of federalism and autonomy inside of the framework of EU by putting referendum on the cards because it would give them greater leverage against the German superpower inside of Europe.
RT: A survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations says alternative parties across Europe are calling for dozens of referendums. Will Brussels take notice of this?
MB: I personally believe that there is a lot to criticize about the EU. First of all, the very fact that it is a neoliberal institution and a neo-liberal framework which does not allow for progressive economic policies that benefit the vast majority of people. We can criticize it for its bureaucracy and its unaccountability as well. And so the far-right and the right-wing and the eurosceptics are using these arguments time and again. What they aren’t effectively doing is representing the very people they claim to represent.
So, if you look at the funding they receive, at the way they are backing up big businesses doesn’t chime with the kind of rhetoric that they are putting forward. Brussels, in effect, constitutes itself out of its different membership states. And because the membership states are stronger together against the US as well as against the new BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), will continue to remain inside of the EU and Brussels will adapt according to the political pressure coming from its member states.
Erdogan’s lawyer says has acted to get entire poem mocking Erdogan banned
July 2, 2016
Reuters
BERLIN – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s lawyer said on Saturday he had filed a complaint in a bid to get a satirical poem mocking his client banned in its entirety after a court issued a preliminary ruling in May banning re-publication of parts.
Comedian Jan Boehmermann recited a poem on television in March suggesting Erdogan engaged in bestiality and watched child pornography.
Lawyer Michael-Hubertus von Sprenger said he had filed the complaint to a court in Hamburg and wanted to get a full injunction to replace the preliminary one as well as get sections that the court did not ban in May prohibited.
When the court ruled in May to ban sections of the poem, it said this was based on the need to find a balance between preserving the right to artistic freedom and the personal rights of Erdogan. The six verses the court did not ban include references to Turkey’s treatment of minorities.
The court in Hamburg and a spokesman for Erdogan were not immediately available for comment.
Separately, in the western city of Mainz, preliminary proceedings against Boehmermann are underway as he is suspected of insulting a foreign leader. The German government had given prosecutors the green light to pursue the case against Boehmermann – a move which brought Merkel strong criticism.
German-Turkish ties have been strained – both by the case and by Turkey’s outrage over a resolution passed by Germany’s parliament declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces to be a genocide. That comes at a time when Germany is banking on Turkey’s help in stopping the flow of illegal migrants.
(Reporting by Michelle Martin in Berlin; additional reporting by Ece Toksabay in Ankara; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
The Naughty-No-No Erdogen Poem
by Harry von Johnston, PhD
„Sod-dumb, cowardly and hesitant
Is Erdogan the President
His boner smells like Döner
Even a pig’s fart smells finer
He’s the man who punches girls
while wearing a bloody rubber mask
Things he loves the most
is shagging goats
and oppressing minorities
Kicking Kurds, beating up Christians
while watching child porn
And in the evening instead of a nap
Fellatio with a hundred sheep
Erdogan is all things considered
a President with a tiny wang:
This dumb pig has got shrivel-balls
From Ankara to Istanbul
Everyone knows this man is gay
perverted and zoophil
Recep Fritzl Priklopil
His head as empty as his balls
the star guest on every gang-bang party
until his tiny wang starts to burn while having a piss
That’s Reccep Erdogan“
#Texit #Calexit? Brexit vote inspires long-forgotten movements for independence in US
July 4, 2016
RT
As America celebrates its 240th anniversary of independence from Britain, Texas’ and California’s campaigns to secede from the US have been given a kiss of life. But are they really ready to follow #Brexit and revive their bids to break away from Washington.
#Texit #Texodus
Right after the Brexit success, people in Texas began pushing for a ‘Texit’– a Texas split from the USA – on social media.
Texas was the 28th state to join the Union in 1845, following nine years as an independent republic. According to speculation from the Texas Nationalist Movement, the state could exit the US as early as 2018
“In the Brexit vote, the people of UK felt that they were paying more into EU than were getting out of it. And it’s exactly as it is here in Texas,” Daniel Miller, President of the TNM, told RT.
According to Miller, there is a sense locally that the best people to govern Texas are Texans.
Boasting 261,231 supporters on its website, TNM is calling for more Texans to join and bring pressure on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to allow a vote on independence from the US and its “sprawling Federal bureaucracy.”
And based on its present day $1.6 trillion economy, if it did become a separate nation, it would be among the 10 top economies in the world, Miller said.
The group has more likes on Facebook than the Texas Democratic Party, one of the two major political parties in Texas, with 211,000 ‘likes’ compared to 133,000.
We are here in California subsidizing the other states of this union,” Louis J. Marinelli, president of the Yes, California independence campaign, told RT. “As a result we are losing tens, sometimes hundreds of billions of dollars every year” to other states.
The ‘Yes, California’ Twitter community, which leads the campaign for the Golden State to secede from the United States, already compared the size of California to the EU
Thus, Californians don’t have enough to improve healthcare or education, he added.
“We did an informal poll. We asked 9,000 Californians: ‘Should California become an independent country?’ And our response at that time was 41 percent said ‘Yes’. That’s why we take so much encouragement after what happened in the Brexit vote,” he added.
“We are here in California subsidizing the other states of this union,” Louis J. Marinelli, president of the Yes, California independence campaign, told RT. “As a result we are losing tens, sometimes hundreds of billions of dollars every year” to other states.
Some 7,000 users ‘like’ Yes California on Facebook. The group is organizing a California Independence Rally on the 166th Anniversary of Californian ‘Statehood’ September 9.
California officially joined US back in 1850, becoming its 31st state.
Yet California and Texas are not the only US states eager to exit the union.
Native Americans, who have long struggled for independence status in the US, proposed their own Republic of Lakotah back in 2007. It is, in fact, a virtual state which covers some 200,000 sq km and includes territories of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana.
In the meantime, the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) has been calling to quit the US since 1980s. There is also the so-called Cascadian movement in the US and Canada, which calls to form a country consisting of Washington, Oregon and portions of other US states, as well as British Columbia, Canada.
Hawaii, the most recent state of the US, which received statehood back in 1959, has also had its own independence movements since the 1960s. One of them, the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, says that the archipelago’s annexation was illegal.
However, according to Eugene Volokh, a law professor at University of California, the exit of states from the US, and Texit in particular, won’t happen.
“A state couldn’t legally force the US to let it secede, if the US refused. But if the state and the US agreed, that would be doable. At worst, it would require a constitutional amendment, but most likely an act of Congress, coupled with a majority referendum that the state government views as binding, would suffice,” Volokh told the Dallas Observer
He added that “most Texans ….are proud to be Americans, whether or not they like what the federal government is doing, and they can see the benefits of remaining part of a powerful country that can defend their interests.”
Who had the Worst Week in Washington? Bill and Hillary Clinton.
July 4, 2016
by Chris Cillizza
The Washington Post
For the Clintons, things had been going a little too well of late.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, had blown his six-week general election head start with a series of self-inflicted wounds that he seemed unable or unwilling to fix in anything like a timely manner. The Democratic Party had rapidly united behind Hillary Clinton, and polling suggested she had a mid-to-high-single-digit edge over Trump.
Then this past week happened.
It all started Monday when Bill Clinton, for reasons only he will ever know or understand, decided to pop onto the plane of Attorney General Loretta Lynch as everyone cooled their heels on the tarmac at Phoenix’s airport.
Everyone involved insisted it was purely a social call, chatting about grandkids and the like. But, the idea of the former president of the United States huddling with the nation’s top cop even as the Justice Department continued to investigate Hillary Clinton’s email setup while she was Secretary of State was problematic — at best.
Republicans screamed foul and demanded a special prosecutor be appointed to the case. Lynch, after a week of relentless negative press, announced Friday that she would recuse herself from the matter.
Even as her husband was making trouble for her, Hillary Clinton’s one-time — and sort-of current? — rival Bernie Sanders was taking to national television to cast her as something short of a principled liberal. Asked by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell when he might endorse Clinton, Sanders responded: “It’s not a question of my endorsement. It’s a question of the American people understanding that Secretary Clinton is prepared to stand with them as they work longer hours for low wages, as they cannot afford health care, as their kids can’t afford to go to college.”
Oomph. Thanks for that one, Bernie!
The coup de grace came Saturday when Hillary Clinton submitted to a more-than-three-hour interview with the FBI, a final step in that agency’s long-running investigation into her emails. While Clinton insisted she was happy to spend the time and simply wanted the truth out, the timing of the interview meant that she will likely be dealing with the fallout from the FBI’s final decision in the matter in the immediate leadup to the Democratic National Convention. Not so good.
Trump did his best to create diversions to keep the attention off of the Clintons — but this week, not even The Donald could take the spotlight away from Bill and Hillary.
And, as is often the case when the country is looking squarely at them, the Clintons had the Worst Week in Washington. Congrats, or something.
Drone Strike Statistics Answer Few Questions, and Raise Many
July 3, 2016
by Scott Shane
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The promise of the armed drone has always been precision: The United States could kill just the small number of dangerous terrorists it wanted to kill, leaving nearby civilians unharmed.
But the Obama administration’s unprecedented release last week of statistics on counterterrorism strikes underscored how much more complicated the results of the drone program have been.
It showed that even inside the government, there is no certainty about whom it has killed. And it highlighted the skepticism with which official American claims on targeted killing are viewed by human rights groups and independent experts, including those who believe the strikes have eliminated some very dangerous people.
“It’s an important step — it’s an acknowledgment that transparency is needed,” said Rachel Stohl, an author of two studies of the drone program and a senior associate at the Stimson Center, a research group in Washington. “But I don’t feel like we have enough information to analyze whether this tactic is working and helping us achieve larger strategic aims.”
More broadly, President Obama’s move to open a window on the secret counterterrorism program takes place against a background of escalating jihadist violence that can be called up by a list of cities that includes Paris; San Bernardino, Calif.; Brussels; Orlando, Fla.; Kabul, Afghanistan; Istanbul; Baghdad; and now Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Apart from the dispute over the number of civilian deaths, the notion that targeted drone strikes are an adequate answer to the terrorist threat appears increasingly threadbare.
“There’s a massive failure of strategy,” said Akbar S. Ahmed, a former Pakistani diplomat and the chairman of Islamic studies at American University in Washington. Drones have simply become one more element of the violence in countries like Pakistan and Yemen, not a way to reduce violence, he said.
Among young people attracted to jihadist ideology, “the line to blow yourself up remains horrifyingly long,” he said. “That line should be getting shorter.”
A senior Obama administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified program, said the recent series of major terror attacks in urban areas had all been directed or inspired by the Islamic State.
The classified counterterrorism drone campaign, he said, has targeted other groups, notably Al Qaeda’s old core in Pakistan, its branch in Yemen and the Shabab in Somalia. No attack in the West in the past year has been traced to those groups, suggesting that the strikes have been effective, he said. The drone strikes in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan are, for the most part, carried out by the military in a separate program.
In Friday’s release, the White House made public an executive order laying out policies to minimize civilian casualties in counterterrorism strikes and a plan to start making public the basic statistics on strikes each year.
At the same time, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the first official estimates of those killed during Mr. Obama’s presidency in strikes outside the conventional wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Though the announcement did not say so, the classified strikes took place in Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, and the vast majority used missiles fired from unmanned drone aircraft, though a few used piloted jets or cruise missiles fired from the sea.
Since 2009, the government said, 473 strikes had killed between 2,372 and 2,581 combatants. They are defined as members of groups, like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, that are considered to be at war with the United States, or others posing a “continuing and imminent threat” to Americans.
In the most sharply debated statistics, the statement estimated that between 64 and 116 noncombatants had been killed. Officials said those numbers included both clearly innocent civilians and others for whom there was insufficient evidence to be sure they were combatants.
The numbers were far lower than previous estimates from the three independent organizations that track strikes based on news reports and other sources. The Long War Journal, whose estimates are lowest, counted 207 civilian deaths in Pakistan and Yemen alone. The security policy group New America in Washington estimated a minimum of 216 in those two countries, and the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimated the civilian toll under Mr. Obama between 380 and 801.
With no breakdown by year or country, let alone a detailed strike-by-strike account, the Obama administration’s new data was difficult to assess. For example, according to multiple studies by Human Rights Watch, Yemen’s Parliament and others, an American cruise missile strike in Yemen on Dec. 17, 2009, killed 41 civilians, including 22 children and a dozen women. At least three more people were killed later after handling unexploded cluster munitions left from the strike.
If those 41 are included in the new official count, as appears likely, that would leave only 23 civilians killed in all other strikes since 2009 to reach the low-end American estimate of 64. By nearly all independent accounts, that number is implausibly low. Obama administration officials declined over the weekend to discuss any specific strikes or otherwise elaborate on the statistics.
Scott F. Murray, who retired from the Air Force as a colonel after 29 years, was a career intelligence officer involved in overseeing airstrikes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. He said that while he had not been involved directly in the counterterrorist strikes outside those war zones, the civilian death estimates were “lower than I would have expected.”
He said civilian deaths could result from multiple causes, including incomplete intelligence about the identities of people on the ground, equipment failure and human error.
Perhaps most often, Mr. Murray said, problems arise when civilians enter a target area before drone surveillance begins, or when a civilian suddenly enters the strike zone just before a strike.
“The night you choose to strike, it may be that the in-laws arrived earlier in the day or the children’s birthday party is ongoing and you weren’t watching when everyone arrived,” Mr. Murray said. “Those are the things in war that drive you to drink. You never ever have perfect information.”
Brandon Bryant, who worked on Air Force drone teams from 2006 to 2011 and has become an outspoken critic of the program, recalled one strike in 2007 targeting a local Taliban commander. As the Hellfire missile sped toward the small house, he said, a small child — possibly frightened by the missile’s sonic boom — ran into the house and was killed.
“Those things are burned into my brain — I can’t really forget them,” Mr. Bryant said. He added that he believed total civilian deaths were much higher than the administration’s estimate because of officials’ wishful thinking, rather than deliberate deception. “They’re just deluding themselves about the impact,” he said.
The senior administration official acknowledged the fear and frustration produced by the recent urban attacks and said Mr. Obama’s strategy went far beyond drone strikes, incorporating the military battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, counter-messaging against jihadist groups, and support for allies facing the same enemies as the United States.
American officials strongly defend the necessity of targeted killing, and the president’s executive order suggests that he believes the drone program will endure far beyond his presidency. But deaths from terrorism have risen sharply since 2011, according to the Global Terrorism Index, compiled annually by researchers, and there is worry inside and outside the government that the United States and its allies are winning battles but losing the ideological war.
Of particular concern is the possibility that the rash of attacks carried out in the name of the Islamic State is just the beginning — not because the group is getting stronger but because it is getting weaker. As the United States and its allies uproot the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, its supporters may turn to terrorism wherever they are, many terrorism experts believe. In most of those places, like the cities hit hardest in recent months, no drone strikes will be possible.
Obama drone casualty numbers a fraction of those recorded by the Bureau
July 1, 2016
by Jack Serle
BIJ
The US government today claimed it has killed between 64 and 116 “non-combatants” in 473 counter-terrorism strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya between January 2009 and the end of 2015.
This is a fraction of the 380 to 801 civilian casualty range recorded by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism from reports by local and international journalists, NGO investigators, leaked government documents, court papers and the result of field investigations.
While the number of civilian casualties recorded by the Bureau is six times higher than the US Government’s figure, the assessments of the minimum total number of people killed were strikingly similar. The White House put this figure at 2,436, whilst the Bureau has recorded 2,753.
Since becoming president in 2009, Barack Obama has significantly extended the use of drones in the War on Terror. Operating outside declared battlefields, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, this air war has been largely fought in Pakistan and Yemen.
The White House’s announcement today is long-awaited. It comes three years after the White House first said it planned to publish casualty figures, and four months after President Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, said the data would be released.
The figures released do not include civilians killed in drones strikes that happened under George W Bush, who instigated the use of counter-terrorism strikes outside declared war zones and in 58 strikes killed 174 reported civilians.
Today’s announcement is intended to shed light on the US’s controversial targeted killing programme, in which it has used drones to run an arms-length war against al Qaeda and Islamic State.
The US Government also committed to continued transparency saying it will provide an annual summary of information about the number of strikes against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities as well as the range of combatants and non-combatants killed.
But the US has not released a year-by-year breakdown of strikes nor provided any detail on particularly controversial strikes which immediately sparked criticism from civil liberty groups.
Jamel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union said: “While any disclosure of information about the government’s targeted-killing policies is welcome, the government should be releasing information about every strike—the date of the strike, the location, the numbers of casualties, and the civilian or combatant status of those casualties. Perhaps this kind of information should be released after a short delay, rather than immediately, but it should be released. The public has a right to know who the government is killing—and if the government doesn’t know who it’s killing, the public should know that.”
The gap between US figures and other estimates, including the Bureau’s data, also raised concerns.
Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve said: “For three years now, President Obama has been promising to shed light on the CIA’s covert drone programme. Today, he had a golden opportunity to do just that. Instead, he chose to do the opposite. He published numbers that are hundreds lower than even the lowest estimates by independent organisations. The only thing those numbers tell us is that this Administration simply doesn’t know who it has killed. Back in 2011, it claimed to have killed “only 60” civilians. Does it really expect us to believe that it has killed only 4 more civilians since then, despite taking hundreds more strikes?
“The most glaring absence from this announcement are the names and faces of those civilians that have been killed. Today’s announcement tells us nothing about 14 year old Faheem Qureshi, who was severely injured in Obama’s first drone strike. Reports suggest Obama knew he had killed civilians that day.”
The US government said in a statement: “First, although there are inherent limitations on determining the precise number of combatant and non-combatant deaths, particularly when operating in non-permissive environments, the US Government uses post-strike methodologies that have been refined and honed over years and that use information that is generally unavailable to non-government organsations.”
Evaluating the numbers
The administration has called its drone programme a precise, effective form of warfare that targets terrorists and rarely hits civilians.
With the release of the figures today President Obama said, “All armed conflict invites tragedy. But by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.”
In June 2011 Obama’s then counter terrorism chief, now CIA director, John Brennan made a similar statement. He also declared drone strikes were “exceptionally precise and surgical” and had not killed a single civilian since August 2010. A Bureau investigation in July 2011 demonstrated this claim was untrue.
Most of the Bureau’s data sources are media reports by local and international news outlets, including Reuters, Associated Press and The New York Times.
The US Government says it has a much clearer view of post-strike situations than such reporting, suggesting this is the reason why there is such a gap between the numbers that have been recorded by the Bureau, and similar organisations, and those released today.
But the Bureau has also gathered essential information from its own field investigations.
The tribal areas have long been considered a difficult if not impossible area for journalists to access. However, occasionally reporters have been able to gain access to the site of the strikes to interview survivors, witnesses and relatives of people killed in drone strikes.
The Bureau conducted a field investigation through the end of 2011 into 2012, in partnership with The Sunday Times. Through extensive interviews with local villagers, the Bureau found 12 strikes killed 57 civilians.
The Associated Press also sent reporters into the Fata, reporting its findings in February 2012. It found 56 civilians and 138 militants were killed in 10 strikes.
Access to affected areas is a challenge in Yemen too. But in December 2009 a deputation of Yemeni parliamentarians sent to the scene of a strike discovered the burnt remnants of a camp, which had been set up by several families from one of Yemen’s poorest tribes.
A subsequent investigation by journalist Jeremy Scahill revealed a deception that hid US responsibility for the deaths of 41 civilians at the camp – half of them children, five of them pregnant women.
The reality on the ground flew in the face of the US governments understanding of events. A leaked US diplomatic record of a meeting in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, between General David Petraeus and the Yemeni president revealed the US government was ignorant of the civilian death toll.
Falling numbers of civilian casualties
The White House stressed that it was concerned to protect civilians and that best practices were in place to help reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties.
The Bureau’s data does show a significant decline in the reports of civilian casualties in recent years.
In Pakistan, where the largest number of strikes have occurred, there have been only three reported civilian casualties since the end of 2012. Two of these casualties – Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto – were Western hostages held by al Qaeda. The US, unaware they were targeting the American and Italian’s captors, flattened the house they were being held in.
The accidental killing of a US citizen spurred Obama to apologise for the strike – the first and only time he had publicly discussed a specific CIA drone strike in Pakistan. With the apology came an offer of a “condolence payment to both the families,” National Security Council spokesman Ned Price told the Bureau. However, they have yet to receive any compensation from the US government for their loss.
Families who have lost relatives in Pakistan have not reported been compensated for their loss. In Yemen, money has been given to families for their loss but it is not clear whether it actually comes from the US. The money is disbursed by Yemeni government intermediaries, nominally from the Yemeni government.
Unnamed
Most of the dead from CIA strikes in Pakistan are unnamed Pakistanis and Afghans, according to Naming the Dead – a research project by the Bureau. Over three years the Bureau has painstakingly gathered names of the dead from US drone strikes in Pakistan. The project has recorded just 732 names of people killed since 2004. The project has named 213 civilians killed under Obama.
The fact that so many people are unnamed adds to the confusion about who has been killed.
A controversial US tactic, signature strikes, demonstrates how identities of the dead, and their status as a combatant or non-combatant, eludes the US. These strikes target people based on so-called pattern of life analysis, built from surveillance and intelligence but not the actual identity of a person.
And the CIA’s own records leaked to the news agency McClatchy show the US is sometimes not only ignorant of the identities of people it has killed, but also of the armed groups they belong to. They are merely listed as “other militants” and “foreign fighters” in the leaked records.
Former Deputy US Secretary of State, Richard Armitage outlined his unease with such internal reporting in an interview with Chris Woods for his book Sudden Justice. “Mr Obama was popping up with these drones left, right and down the middle, and I would read these accounts, ’12 insurgents killed.’ ’15!’ You don’t know that. You don’t know that. They could be insurgents, they could be cooks.”