Japanese "Authorities" Finally Admit A Cancer Case Caused By Fukushima "Accident"

The Japanese bosses have conceded a single cancer case attributed to the massive Fukushima nuclear reactor complex disaster. One whole case. One of the worker-drones dragooned into "cleaning up" the radioactive site has leukemia.

Actually there's been a huge increase in children getting thyroid cancer as a result of the disaster. But so far, Japanese officialdom won't admit it.

The infatuation of national bosses all around the world with nuclear power is mostly undiminished by this latest nuclear catastrophe. Their ardor undimmed, rulers in China, Britain, India, and elsewhere are going ahead with building more of these inherently dangerous, ticking time bombs. As far as I know, only one major country, Germany, took the hint from Fukushima and is phasing out its nuclear power plants.

Germany has also proven that renewable energy sources- wind, solar, hydropower- can in fact provide a large percentage of a country's electrical needs.

Murderer Oscar Pistorius Released From Prison Early, Will Serve Rest of Sentence in Mansion-Detention

Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee athlete and former international media darling and icon who essentially beat a murder rap for executing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, as she cowered, terrified and screaming, in the bathroom of his home (he fired four shots through the locked door to kill her) has gotten more kid-glove treatment from the South African “justice” system, freed after only 12 months of a five year sentence for a conviction on a much lesser charge. He spent his jail time in a cell he had all to himself in the prison hospital wing, where he wouldn't be bothered by other prisoners or sadistic guards. He'll do the rest of his sentence under mansion-arrest. He even got out an extra day early, so he wouldn't have to face the media, his jailers literally sneaking him out at night.

But there was something for the media from the Pistorius family: "The family is happy that Oscar is at home," family spokeswoman Anneliese Burgess announced to reporters clustered outside the mansion gates of one of Oscar's relatives, in the expensive Pretoria suburb Waterkloof. (I think that's Dutch for “sewer water” or something like that.)

That's nice, Anneliese. [1]
 

Anneliese Burgess tossing fresh scraps of offal to the hungry dogs of the media.

Pistorius will be crammed into his uncle Arnold's three-story mansion for the remainder of his five-year “term,” where he'll be subjected to the indignities of a pool, a gym, and a large, luscious lawn, among other hardships. He will be forced to choose from among only a dozen bedrooms as his “cell.” Of course there will be electricity and clean running water and indoor plumbing, things many South Africans lack. South African is a civilized country, after all.

Pistorius' new crash pad. Oh man, that pool isn't even Olympic-size! How can 

anyone live like that? 

Well, there is a fence around it, with bars, so it kinda looks like a prison. 

A little.... If you squint real hard….

Since Pistorius is such a trustworthy fellow, he will not be required to wear an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor his whereabouts. (No doubt he will be repeatedly violating his parole conditions and getting away with it. Just wait and see.)

Oh, I almost forgot. He's supposed to perform some kind of “community service.” Not sure what “service” that could be. His lawyers will cook up some image-rehabilitating scam for him, I guess.

A Pistorius family statement moaned about the “strict conditions” of his parole, namely the up to 300 hours of “community service” he's supposed to perform over, not a month....no, not over a year…over four years. That means that out of the next 35,040 hours of poor Oscar's life, the state might rip as much as 300 hours out of it, making him pretend to do some good.

Wow! That's rough! They don't kid around in South Africa! Commit a serious felony there, and your wrist might end up all red from the slapping.

And Oscar has to see a psychotherapist, which the family complained was unnecessary. And he can't have a gun. (Now that is really going to cramp his style!)

Oh, and there's another thing. He has to meet with his victim's parents. If they want to. I guess so that he can lie again and “explain” to them that he thought that screaming woman he chased into his bathroom was really a burglar, and he's sorry about the “accident.” Or “mistake.” Or “boo-boo.” Whatever.

That's should make them feel a lot better. “Aid in the healing process,” as the banal and overused-to-death cliché goes.

But I'm being too “cynical.” As “correctional services” minister Michael Masutha explained, the goal of such a meeting would be to help Barry and June Steenkamp cope with their loss.

Right. By having to listen to a self-centered, self-pitying, over-privileged, violent thug lie through his teeth right into their faces.

I know that would make me feel better, coming from my daughter's murderer. You too, right?

Is this how the South African state makes up for letting the killer off easy? Giving the parents the “opportunity” to have a little chat with the murderer?

Bizarre.

But then, it's no stranger than that whole “reconciliation” thing, whereby the victims of the fascist apartheid regime were supposed to let bygones be bygones. “Hey, you who tortured me, who blew off my hands and eyes with a letter bomb, who beat me and chained me naked in the back of a pickup and drove around until I died, who castrated me, who murdered my friends and family, who subjected me to decades of awful repression and exploitation of every kind-- let's kiss and make up!”

That's called “pragmatism.” And the people who arranged it are great “statesmen.”

South African correctional services minister Michael Masutha 

only has the Steenkamp family's best interests at heart.

Hey, don't look at me. I thought my girlfriend was a burglar.

Anyway....Oscar Pistorius had a long history of violence, including firing guns at people, before he murdered Reeva Steenkamp. This apparently made no difference to the trial judge, or to the parole board that freed him.

Ignoring the testimony of police, of neighbors who heard Steenkamp's screams, and the forensic evidence, the trial judge, Thokozile Masipa, contemptuously dismissed the murder case brought by the prosecutors and instead found Pistorius guilty of a lesser charge, “culpable homicide,” equivalent to criminally negligent homicide, for being “reckless,” and sentenced him to “five years,” which in reality we see is really “12 months.” (The trial was a bench trial, that is, a non-jury one. Smart move on the part of Pistorius' lawyers.) Under South African law, a prisoner with a sentence of no more than five years can be released after serving only a sixth of the sentence. (Another gift from the judge.) But she did sock him with a three year sentence on top of the five, for a firearms charge- suspended.

So a violent, dangerous criminal with a history of assaultive behavior, is soon to be loosed on society thanks to celebrity privilege.

The other distinguishing feature of the Pistorius case is that while most violence in South Africa arises from the base of society, this example arose from within the fortress walls of the privileged sector of society.

Pistorius apparently is some kind of a romantic, only one with a dark twist- he executed Steenkamp on Valentine's Day in 2013. Or maybe he was displaying a sardonic sense of humor- Reeva was to give a speech at a school later that day on the topic of domestic violence. (Good one, Oscar! That'll shut the bitch's mouth!)

Pistorius is also free to participate in professional sport competitions in South Africa. However, the International Paralympics Committee has banned him from international competition until.....

2019. When he'll be allowed out of the house.

Ouch! Talk about zero tolerance!

But Pistorius may not be out of the woods yet. Prosecutors are appealing the verdict to the South African Supreme Court of Appeals, where a panel of five judges will rehear the case November 3^rd. If Pistorius is convicted of murder this time, he faces a minimum sentence of 15 years (minus early release). He's 28 now, so conceivably he could spent the last decade of his youth incarcerated.

Reeva, of course, didn't get to live out the rest of her youth, or any of the rest of her life. She was 29 when Pistorius chased her into the bathroom, where she locked the door to escape his violence.

Unfortunately, the door wasn't bulletproof.

Maybe he wasn't such a great catch, huh Reeva?

Peek-a-boooo, who's that hiding in the baath-rooom? 

I think I'll shoot a few holes in the door and find out!

 June Steenkamp, Reeva's Mom, sitting through “evidence” presented 

in court by Pistorius' lawyers. Her husband Barry is on the right.

You can't really blame the judge. It's obvious that those alien 

creatures colonizing her scalp took over her brain.

 Oscar “Pistol” Pistorius- Happy At Last.

1] Oscar's kinfolk have been quite aggressive in backing him all the way, from the day he murdered Steenkamp until today. Two weeks ago they were whining that he hadn't yet been released on parole, as he was “entitled” to be after 10 months. In fact, he was going to be released August 20, but public indignation forced the government to stall for two months. See “Pistorius family: Oscar's rights [sic!] being undermined,” Chicago Tribune, October 6, 2015.

I already analyzed the original trial. “Murderous Athlete and Erstwhile Media Darling Oscar Pistorius Beats Murder Rap,” September 13, 2014.

Terror Bombing of Peace Rally in Turkey: Terrorism or STATE Terrorism?

That's the question that has been avoided so far in the latest terrorist attack on a peaceful demonstration in Turkey. But anyone familiar with modern Turkish history would be dishonest to evade a serious consideration of it.

What NPR, for example, dismisses as ”conspiracy theory” on the part of presumably paranoid Turks, is in fact reasonable theorizing about the crime. [1]

So far, the evidence is mixed. But this much is already clear: Whoever is behind it are mass murdering scum.
The Turkish regime of autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will only admit to 97 deaths, whereas the true number is apparently 128 or more, according to the rally organizers. Another 250 people or so were wounded in the suicide bombings. The bombings occurred at the start of a peace march including Kurds.

Some bodies were blasted beyond recognition.

The vicious attack was cunningly planned. After the first bomb went off, people ran into the second explosion timed for seconds later, and apparently placed with murderous precalculation.

Police then immediately attacked the survivors with tear gas. And the Turkish media was banned from reporting the event.

The editor of the main English-language Turkish journal was arrested the same day for "insulting" Erdogan in a tweet. One man interviewed said his friend died when police prevented him from taking his friend to a hospital. The police blocked ambulances from reaching the scene for 45 minutes. [2]

These facts, together with the political context, throw the gravest suspicion on the Erdogan regime.

Many think the government allowed the attacks to occur, or at a minimum were negligent. Given the violent assault on the survivors, and the repression imposed simultaneously, at the very least there seems to be government foreknowledge.

Turkish governments have a long history of domestic terrorism and alliances with gangsters. For a time a major fascist organization, the Grey Wolves, was used to murder large numbers of progressives and suppress their organizing, with the complicity of the secret police and military. (As always with right-wing terror states, the U.S. looked kindly on these events, and generously supplied the Turkish military with arms and ordnance. The CIA played its usual malign role.)

So far Erdoğan and his minions have been blaming both the Kurds and ISIS. (This obvious contradiction doesn't seem to faze them. It can't be both, of course, plus the Kurds and ISIS are in a war to the death with each other in Syria and Iraq, which would rule out a cooperative terrorist plot.)

In trying to unravel the mystery of who the culprits are, we must ask the question, Cui bono? Who benefits?

The bombings occurred three weeks before new parliamentary elections Erdoğan imposed because he's a sore “loser.” He expected to win a super-majority in the parliamemtary elections that were held in June, but the opposition and heavily-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) won 13%, depriving him of a Hitler-Reichstag style legislature that would rubber-stamp new dictatorial powers he seeks by mutilating the Turkish constitution. The HDP organized the peace march that was just bombed before it could even get underway.

The night before the June 7 elections there was another terrorist bombing, for which there was never “a proper investigation,” according to BBC Newsday. That adds to the suspicion that Erdoğan is behind these events. Erdoğan benefits, or hopes to, by presenting himself as the protector of the nation against the mysterious terrorists planting bombs and rallying people around him as the symbol of the nation and of law and order.. He also terrorizes Kurds and opponents, which might depress their participation in voting.

This terrorism on Turkish soil is occurring in the context of Erdoğan renewing war against the armed Kurdish Workers' Party, long the bête noire of the Turkish state which caused the guerrilla movement by its decades of oppression of Kurds, including even outlawing the Kurdish language. The PKK is deemed a “terrorist” organization by Turkey's allies, the U.S. and the ducks that reliably line up behind the U.S. on international political matters, the Europeans. (The U.S. has dominated Europe since World War II, and that has even increased since the Soviet Union suddenly shattered into pieces.) Erdoğan used the cover of claiming to attack ISIS in Syria to launch aerial bombing attacks against Kurdish camps there. In response, a Kurdish peace rally on the Syria border was organized, which also was terror-bombed. Somebody's been busy! Cui bono? Who benefits from suppressing rallies against Erdoğan's renewed warfare against the Kurdish PKK? Who stands to gain if peacniks are terrorized from the streets? Why, Erdoğan does!

This type of terror fits the classic pattern of the so-called “strategy of tension,” whereby hidden and malign political forces seek to create a crisis atmosphere in society. We saw it in Europe under the Gladio program, for example. The aim there and in some other cases is for fascist forces within the state to grab more power. It occurred in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. The fact that the Erdoğan regime has barred journalists from even reporting on the terror attack, much less trying to investigate, can only constitute damning evidence against him and his regime as plausible if not probable culprits in this latest atrocity against those who want peace.

1] NPR being the U.S. government domestic radio propaganda network. It goes without saying that the      U.S. corporate media is completely disinterested in investigating and exposing the possible role of the Turkish government. In fact they won't even report the police attacks on the survivors, and very little about media repression in Turkey. This should be no surprise. The U.S. media is always only interested in repression in enemy states, such as Russia and Iran.

2] “Shock & Panic in Turkey: Deadliest Terrorist Attack in Country’s History Leaves as Many as 128 Dead,” Democracy Now!, October 12, 2015.

Bernard Sanders Says 'No' In 52 Words

[From the Democratic presidential contenders' debate on CNN October 13.]

 

[Anderson] COOPER: You don’t consider yourself a capitalist, though?

SANDERS: Do I consider myself part of the casino capitalist process by which so few have so much and so many have so little by which Wall Street’s greed and recklessness wrecked this economy? No, I don’t. I believe in a society where all people do well. Not just a handful of billionaires. [I.e., “No.”]

(APPLAUSE) [From Sanders' supporters in audience.]

[Then Cooper goes fishing for more Commies.]:

COOPER: Just let me just be clear. Is there anybody else on the stage who is not a capitalist?

[Hillary] CLINTON: Well, let me just follow-up on that, Anderson, because when I think about capitalism, I think about all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in our country for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families. And I don’t think we should confuse what we have to do every so often in America, which is save capitalism from itself. And I think what Senator Sanders is saying certainly makes sense in the terms of the inequality that we have. But we are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America. And it’s our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so that it doesn’t run amok and doesn’t cause the kind of inequities we’re seeing in our economic system. But we would be making a grave mistake to turn our backs on what built the greatest middle class in the history...

COOPER: Senator Sanders?

CLINTON: ... of the world.

(APPLAUSE) [From Clinton's supporters in audience.]

SANDERS: I think everybody is in agreement that we are a great entrepreneurial nation. We have got to encourage that. Of course, we have to support small and medium-sized businesses. But you can have all of the growth that you want and it doesn’t mean anything if all of the new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent. So what we need to do is support small and medium-sized businesses, the backbone of our economy, but we have to make sure that every family in this country gets a fair shake...

COOPER: We’re going to get...

SANDERS: ... not just for billionaires.



Notice how both Clinton and Sanders spin it both ways rhetorically. Not that anything they say is necessarily “wrong.” Just that it's ass-covering.

Clinton wants to pull people leaning towards Sanders to her, without alienating other people. Sanders has a foot in two rowboats, claiming to be a socialist while praising capitalism of the “good” kind- small and entrepreneurial, also trying to appeal to a disenchanted but multifarious electorate.

But I noticed something a bit suspicious. Lincoln Chafee, Martin O'Malley, and James Webb didn't respond to Cooper's question. They didn't volunteer that yes indeed, they are capitalists. Could they be secret communists? Perhaps even members of the same covert cell?

This is a job for the Department of Homeland Security! (I would have said the FBI, but they're busy finding teenage hotheads and mentally ill people to frame-up as Islamic terrorists.)

Taliban Retreat from Kunduz, Declare Victory

The battle for Kunduz, Afghanistan, has apparently ended (for the time being) after 15 days of in-city combat. The Taliban, dishonest curs that they are, pretended they simply withdrew because they achieved all of their goals.

Let's see what some of those "goals" were:

Murdering people with government jobs: Check.
Destroying government offices: Check.
Destroying facilities for women and children: Check.
Hunting down to murder women who run those facilities: Check.

Dragging the entire country back into the seventh century: Pending.

So these totalitarian feudalist barbarians still have some work to do- and Allah (and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) willing, they will achieve them.

I hope not.

On evaluating what happened in Kunduz, the glass is either half empty or half full. It's undoubtedly a sign of Afghan weakness that these terrorists could take over a major city for a fortnight. On the other hand, Afghan government forces were willing to fight, and ultimately drive out the invaders. (With U.S. military help, it needs to be noted.)

What is clear is that Afghanistan will be a Western dependency for years to come, unless the West wants to risk having it dragged back down into the Islamofascist swamp.

U.S. Throws in Towel On Its 5-Man Syrian "Army"

The U.S. just announced that it's giving up on creating a Mighty Army of "moderate" Syrian mercenaries to fight ISIS and ONLY ISIS and leave Assad alone. Now the half billion dollar program will be "repurposed" in U.S.-government-speak to "support" "moderate" Syrians, who will be tasked with spying on ISIS for the U.S. and to spot targets for U.S. aerial attack. [1]

This comes in the wake of aggressive Russian military intervention in Syria on behalf of the awful Assad dictatorship. The dictatorship still holds 25% of Syrian territory, but has 60% of the populace under its malign sway, some of whom were driven into those areas by Assad's bombardments of civilians.

Russia recently moved strike aircraft into Syria, and is conducting bombing raids on rebel-held areas. They claim to be targeting ISIS, but the U.S. asserts that over 90% of Russian airstrikes are hitting what the U.S. calls moderate Syrians. (Let us take that to mean non-Jihadist.) The U.S. is also claiming that four Russian cruise missiles, fired from the Caspian Sea 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from Syria and presumably aimed at rebel areas, landed instead in Iran. Whoops!

Iran is another Assad ally that has sent fighting forces into Syria to prop up the sagging Assad regime, as well as having its Lebanese Hezbollah clients sent in fighters. (An Iranian general was also just killed in Syria. Good riddance.)

Turkey has complained that Russia aircraft locked on Turkish planes with their radar, which is potentially a step before shooting down an airplane. (When Assad actually shot down two Turkish military jets a few years ago, there was no apparent retaliation.)

It's a shame that the U.S. didn't aid the rebellion in the first year, as I called for, when it could have made a difference. After that, it was basically too late, plus Jihadists like al-Nusra front and later ISIS got ever stronger. For the past four and more years the U.S. has been half-assed and feckless. Its now officially defunct scheme to train up 5,400 Syrians to be a client U.S. force fighting ONLY ISIS, the wheels having fallen off that wagon, is the latest faux policy to be exposed as mostly just going through the motions (while wasting untold hundreds of  millions of dollars).

If morality guided U.S. foreign policy, a vigorous intervention at the start of the uprising might have been successful. The false "pragmatism" of amorality once again proves that it is unrealistic, and moral behavior represents genuine realism. Because morality is embedded in the fabric of existence. The irony is that the U.S. could have gotten what it claims to want (Assad's removal) by behaving morally and supporting people rising up against a brutal tyrant. (Oh, and it would also have been backing what it claims to "stand for," freedom and democracy.)

The struggles of empire to gain more power and wealth have always benefitted the few, while retarding the development of better lives for the bulk of humanity. Maybe some day enough people will realize that to finally put an end to the Age of Imperialism, which has lasted thousands of years and is overdue for burial in the graveyard of history.

1] See U.S. Deploys Mighty Army of “4 or 5” Soldiers to “Degrade” Islamic State aka ISIS; also Obama's “ISIS Czar” Bails Out; and U.S. Funnels More Weapons To Its Enemies.  

What Happens When One Nobel Peace Prize Winner Bombs Another Nobel Peace Prize Winner?

Well, one thing that doesn't happen is the Norwegian Nobel Committee doesn't revoke the prize. [1]

Barack Obama (Nobel Peace Prize 2009) the commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces, is ultimately responsible for (and for all we currently know, had foreknowledge of) the war crime bombing of the hospital run by the Swiss-based charity Médecins Sans Frontières (Nobel Peace Prize 1999) or MSF- Doctors Without Borders- in Kunduz, Afghanistan, on October 2nd.

What does happen is that, five days after the crime, a few hours after the victims public call for an investigation under the terms of the Geneva Convention, the Bomber-in-Chief calls to apologize, and trots out his official mouthpiece (a fratboy type named Josh Earnest) to inform the world of the apology. Which is supposed to get the Nobelist and his military off the hook morally. Hey, he said he was sorry! And besides, the attackers are going to investigate themselves. What more could a reasonable person possibly want?

You can shoot up a hospital operating room and still be a respectable felllow.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the attack has apparently more than doubled. The confirmed dead number 22; 12 medical personnel and 10 patients, including 3 children. MSF has announced that another 24 of its people are missing. We should presume them dead, now that six days have passed since the savage assault.

If you find it spooky that a Nobelist would kill Nobelists, consider this: the official designation for the type of warplane that committed the crime, the AC-130U gunship, is “Spooky II.” [2]

1] The Nobel Committee consists of five people appointed by the Norwegian parliament to award the five Nobel prizes established by Swedish industrialist, armaments maker, and inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel in his will. A sixth prize, the Sham Nobel, is in “economics” and was created by ideological hustlers piggybacking on the prestige of the real Nobels. It was established 73 years after Nobel's death by the Swedish central bank, which gave money to the Nobel foundation to administer it.

2] It's also referred to as “Spectre.” Ooh, so scary. See among numerous sources, “USAF Project Gunship II, The Aviation Zone, “Home of the Heavies,” a military fetishism site.

 More barrels, the better to butcher you with.

WikiLeaks Invites Obama to Bomb It

In effect, that is. It's certainly not their intent to be subjected to a murderous U.S. attack.

WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization and website founded by Julian Assange, offered a $50,000 reward for military records of the U.S. war crime of bombing the Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, on October 2^nd. [1] And they asked for some very specific material that the U.S. no doubt will refuse to release. Here's their ask:

“The AC-130 records its attacks with high resolution gun cameras. According to military procedure, this footage should have been retained along with the cockpit audio. A post-massacre inquiry report referred to as an ‘AR 15-6’ should have also been commissioned. We are raising a U.S. $50,000 bounty to obtain the footage, the cockpit audio, the inquiry report and other relevant materials.” [2] [3]

Wow! Talk about tickling the throat of the tiger. That sure got the attention of the U.S., I'll bet.

The U.S. has already taken extreme measures to destroy WikiLeaks. It arranged for credit card companies and Paypal to bar donations to WikiLeaks. It has launched numerous computer attacks against the organization and unleashed the whole panoply of secret police repressive and close surveillance against the group. Most notoriously, it arranged a long-running criminal “investigation” of Assange by Sweden, and now has him trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Ecuador has granted Assange political asylum, a decision Britain refuses to respect. It has a police cordon around the Embassy, and planted a listening device inside, violating diplomatic sovereignty. And the U.S. has a secret indictment of Assange. It is licking its chops waiting for an opportunity to seize him and imprison him for decades, if not life. There is an ongoing grand jury “investigation” of WikiLeaks, a standard political repression weapon the U.S. uses.

WikiLeaks incited the enduring hatred of the U.S. government and some U.S. elites (a number of whom publicly called for Assange's murder) by exposing, among other things, one of the most blood chilling U.S. war crimes, the murder of Reuters journalists in Iraq by a murderous U.S. helicopter crew, who also fired on a van full of children whose father had stopped to aid the journalists after they had been gunned down in the street.

WikiLeaks was given the helicopter's video and audio recording of the murders anonymously by U.S. Army private Chelsea Manning, who was turned in by FBI secret police informer Adrian Lamo, in whom Manning unwisely confided in online. Manning was then kept naked for a year in a Marine brig (despite being an Army private), court-martialed, and sentenced to 35 years in prison. The murderers of course suffered no consequences at all. [See the collateral murder video.]

The U.S. is used to getting its way and will break any law to get it.

It took the extreme measure of forcing down the presidential plane of Bolivian president Evo Morales and had it searched when it suspected that Edward Snowden was onboard. Snowden is the man who exposed some of the massive NSA global surveillance programs.

To show their displeasure with al-Jazeera, the Qatari news outfit, they bombed its offices four times in Kabul and Baghdad, and kidnapped one of its employees, who they imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, where they tried to force him to be a spy inside al-Jazeera for them.

Considering the U.S.' willingness to commit any crime, I have an idea! Why not a drone strike on the Ecuadorean embassy in London? It's the next logical step after bombing a hospital run by an internationally renowned organization. What do you think, Barack? It's not like you'd be technically bombing London. The embassy is Ecuadorean national territory by law. You could always say it was a “mistake,” issue an “apology,” and announce an “investigation” afterwards if the squawking got too loud.
Ecuador does have a left-wing government now, after all. And the president is (falsely) accused of attacking press “freedom.” You could say bombing their embassy strikes a blow for freedom. That's no more far-fetched than a lot of U.S. propaganda, such as support for fascist death squad terror states is “defending freedom and democracy.”

But Obama did “apologize” to Médecins Sans Frontières....five days after the war crime, and a few hours after MSF publicly called for an independent of the crime under the Geneva Convention. Guess he thought he could dissuade them with a “sorry.”

1] “Afghanistan: MSF staff killed and hospital partially destroyed in Kunduz,” and “Kunduz Hospital Airstrike,” Médecins Sans Frontières.

2] “Wikileaks Offers to Pay $50,000 for Kunduz Bombing Footage,” Time magazine, October 8, 2015. You could go to the WikiLeaks website, but the U.S. government will trap your IP address and plant spyware and maybe worse on your computer. You could try using the Tor browser and a vpn, but there's no guarantee that would provide absolute protection. I suppose you could use a computer in an Internet cafe or library, so it won't be your computer- but if you use your actual name to use it, they might find out your name, depending on how fanatical they are. (Pretty fanatical, generally speaking.) Living in a global police state gets to be a real pain in the ass....

Interestingly, Time referred to WikiLeaks as “Transparency activist group Wikileaks” I was surprised by that non-derogatory, accurate description from a U.S. establishment media organ.

3] The AC-130 is the murderous flying gunship the U.S. unleashed on the hospital- it has also been used in El Salvador, Vietnam, and other poor countries victimized by the U.S., generally against people who have no defense against it. It is a cargo plane reconfigured with rapid-fire cannons to blow people on the ground to bits. It also carries air-to-ground missiles. There are plans to add a laser weapon. It also helped murder 4,000 Panamanians when the U.S. invaded that country on the orders of Bush the Elder.
There's an amoral description of the plane and its history at Wikipedia.

Standard weapons are two 20mm cannons, a 25mm Gatling gun that fires 1,800 rounds per minute, a 40mm cannon that fires 100 rounds a minute, and a large 105mm cannon that can fire 10 shells a minute. It is also packed with various surveillance and electronic equipment. See Federation of American Scientists for specs.

My, what Big Bullets you Butchers have! 40mm munitions on the flying abattoir.

AC-130 gunship with air to ground 
missiles on wingpod.

Lockheed Martin manufactures the killer aircraft. Note cannons protruding from fuselage.

Black Americans can enjoy the benefits of 

slaughtering people too.

You've come a long way, Baby- 

you've got your own gun now.

  That's what I call progress!

 After awhile one does gets blase about butchery.

 Blast away, Boys!

Obama won't unleash this on ISIS or on Assad's forces- but a hospital makes a perfect target. Hospitals can't shoot back!

[Scroll down to earlier essays for details on the hospital bombing and its aftermath, and the ever-changing series of smarmy U.S. lies.]

U.S. Military Changes Its Story- Again- On Bombing Doctors Without Borders Hospital

As I covered in my previous essay (below this one), the U.S. military committed a vicious war crime on Saturday (October 2) when it unleashed an hour-long aerial bombardment of a hospital run by the French humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières- MSF) in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

Commencing immediately afterwards, the U.S. military has cycled through a number of bogus, sickening lies. This is the same behavior we see after every atrocity it commits. It starts with flat denials, then like a criminal under police interrogation, digs itself in deeper and deeper with changing versions that obliquely acknowledge bits of reality while twisting them to try and craft "innocent" explanations. But the contradictions and facts pile up and inevitably trap the lying criminal.

The latest story was trotted out by the U.S./NATO commander in Afghanistan, General John Campbell. The previous tale was that U.S. airpower was supporting U.S. Special Forces troops fighting the Taliban in Kunduz. Now he says it was Afghan soldiers who called in the air attack. (The U.S. at first denied it attacked the hospital at all. Who, us? Wasn't us!)

You'd think it wouldn't take several days to ascertain just who called in the strike. The whole thing stinks of slimy prevarication. Of course, when at first you deny the strike at all, that kind of dents your credibility.

Campbell, delivering the latest clumsy lies to reporters at the Pentagon, relegated the murders of medical personnel and patients to half a sentence- the last half too. And he refused to acknowledge they were medical personnel and patients, referring only to "civilians." Here's the quote, which has gotten wide play in U.S. media:

"We have now learned that on October 3, Afghan forces advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support from U.S. forces," he said. "An airstrike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat, and several innocent civilians were accidentally struck."

Yeah, that can happen when you attack a hospital. And get him: "We have now learned." Like the U.S. command are just a bunch of passive witnesses, not perpetrators who ordered the commission of a war crime. They're just trying to figure this out. What, somebody claims their hospital was bombed? When did you say this was? Couldn't have been us, because that's not who we are.

And Campbell still won't even admit it's wrong to attack a hospital!

"If errors were committed, we will acknowledge them. We will hold those responsible accountable, and we will take steps to ensure mistakes are not repeated."

IF errors were committed! (Forget about "crimes.")

Of course the MSF hospital wasn't a Taliban position. Although it apparently was an "enemy position," meaning that MSF is regarded as an enemy. Firing from the hospital is a complete fabrication, and probably no more than 1% of the world's population believe that.

MSF had a worthy reply to Campbell's smarmy, grotesque statement:

"Today the U.S. government has admitted [finally!]  that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz and killed 22 patients and MSF staff," the statement read. "Their description of the attack keeps changing -- from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government. 

"The reality is the U.S. dropped those bombs. The U.S. hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The U.S. military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition. There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the U.S. and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical."

This isn't going away as quickly as the U.S. military and it's Commander-in-Chief, Barack Obama, no doubt calculated it would. That's because part of the international and even U.S. media aren't playing along. (Despicably, such propaganda fonts as NPR and Yahoo! "News" are acting as auxiliary propagandists for the Pentagon- for the most part in NPR's case, and entirely in Yahoo's, which actually rewrote a Reuters piece to drain it of all human detail for a coldly distant and exiguous account.) MSF has been able to get their people into the media. Even Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General who is supposed to be a U.S. puppet, has strongly denounced the attack.

Here's a key fact from MSF. The hospital is actually located in the middle of a compound, surrounded by other buildings. Only the hospital was attacked. Furthermore, the operating room and intensive care unit were specifically blasted. Helpless patients were burned alive in their beds.

This belies the claim of some kind of accident. It certainly puts the lie to the claim that the Taliban were firing from the hospital. They would have had to be in buildings along the perimeter of the compound. 

The New York Times already let slip in a map they published that the street fighting was nowhere near the hospital compound. (See essay below.) We also know from the surviving staff that there was no fighting in the vicinity.

General Campbell, man of great heart that he is, offered his "deepest condolences." This follows a statement concocted by Pentagon propagandists and dumped on the world in Campbell's name October 3:

"While we work to thoroughly examine the incident and determine what happened, my thoughts and prayers are with those affected."

You already know "what happened," because YOU DID IT. And "my thoughts and prayers are with those affected," is standard boilerplate of the most banal and common kind. In fact, the parents of the murderer who shot to death nine people at an Oregon community college last Thursday issued the exact same words, "our thoughts and prayers are with" the families etc. That exact language, "our thoughts and prayers are with," are routinely trotted out after tragedies and crimes in America. The fact that it is mere boilerplate proves the insincerity of the issuers of the statements.

And what could be more distincing and minimizing than referring to the victims as "those affected"? That sounds like people caught in a traffic jam: "We are doing routine maintenance and we apologize to all those affected and thank you for your patience" while we conduct our "investigations." 

The U.S. wants everyone to know that they're conducting not one, not two, but THREE, count 'em, three "investigations." (NPR Pentagon transmission belt Tom Bowman for one made sure we knew this.) So rest assured! The Pentagon is investigating (itself), NATO (which is just the U.S. and the ducks that line up behind it) is investigating, and the Afghanistan government is investigating. You know, the people who falsely claim the Taliban were shooting at them from the hospital. The ones who hate MSF, who planted pistols in another MSF hospital in Helmand province a few years ago and raided it with British forces in tow, arresting staff. That Afghanistan government. I'm sure they'll get to the bottom of this.

Campbell made sure to repeat to the assembled scribes at the Pentagon the news of the triple "investigations." So who can doubt their seriousness? And if three investigations all find the same thing, it must be right. Right?

I could list all the past Pentagon and U.S. whitewashes- OOPS, I meant to say "investigations"- that were, let us say, less than convincing. But an exhaustive list would take up quite a bit of time to compile. So we'll let that go.

I would just reiterate a point that should be too obvious to need making- accused parties shouldn't be investigating themselves. 

MSF has been repeatedly calling for an actually independent investigation.

Chiming in with the Pentagon killers, Obama's chief mouthpiece, Josh Earnest, emitted the predictable disgusting lies which are the precise opposite of reality, claiming, absurdly, against centuries of evidence, that:

"There is no country in the world and no military in the world that goes to greater lengths and places a higher premium on avoiding civilian casualties than the United States Department of Defense." 

Oh. You could have fooled me.

Let's see: the Iraq invasion (est. dead at least 105,000 up to 1 million), Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia (combined dead 4-5 million), razing of hundreds of cities in World War II, two atomic bombings- I think that's enough to make the point.

But that's funny. I thought the Israeli army has no equal in avoiding killing civilians. At least that's what the Israelis always say after every assault on Gaza. (Excuse me, I mean every time they "mow the lawn," as they call the culling of the Palestinian population.)

As for the destroyed hospital, that was the only trauma care facility in that part of Afghanistan. So far the U.S. hasn't offered to pay to rebuild it. Or offered to pay compensation for the 22 innocent people it murdered. (12 medical staff and 10 patients, including 3 children. Plus 37 people wounded.) So more people will die from lack of medical care in the future. (No victim of the U.S. ever gets a dime without suing. And of the tiny minority who manage to sue, most lose in U.S. courts.)

Nation-building, U.S. style! 

[Quotations source: "Civilians 'accidentally struck' in Afghan hospital bombing, U.S. commander says," CNN, October 6, 2015.]

Why Did the U.S. Launch a Sustained Aerial Bombardment of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital?

In the latest in an unending series of U.S. atrocities (a series that goes back to the nation's founding, actually), the U.S. military launched an hour-long aerial bombardment of a hospital run by the French humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The aerial bombardment, which lasted an hour, commenced in the middle of the night around 2 am local time on October 3rd. The duration and repetitive nature of the attack is important to keep in mind, as the Western media is using the words“bombed” and “bombing,” which implies a single strike, even a single munition. This misimpression slides right into the “accident” alibi lie, which is sure to come next.

After days of evasions and lies in which the U.S. military denied it bombed the hospital, while simultaneously contradicting itself by saying maybe the hospital was “collateral damage,” and putting it about that there was fighting with the Taliban “in the area of the hospital,” a claim seized on and repeated by media, implying right next to the hospital, by noon (Washington, D.C. time) on October 5 the U.S. government domestic propaganda radio network NPR announced that the U.S. military admitted it bombed the hospital, justifying it by saying that their Afghan proteges had requested the strike. The Afghans have been falsely claiming that the Taliban were firing from the hospital. (None other than NPR's own Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman pointed out the day before that even if true, attacking the hospital would still be illegal and possibly a war crime. MSF has vigorously denied the claim. If armed men took over one of their facilities they would have ceased operations there, they explained.) [1]

The Afghans propped up by the West as a putative government apparently have it in for MSF, Several years ago they arranged to plant a couple of pistols in an MSF hospital in Helmand province, which they then proceeded to raid along with British troops, arresting staff. Maybe they can't stand the example MSF sets of providing medical services to the Afghan population, something the “government” utterly fails to do. (Hell, they don't even provide care for their own wounded troops! And the scum who run the military hospitals steals the medicines and supplies and sell them, according to bourgeois media reports.)

The U.S. media luckily has a useful distraction they can focus on- the killings of 9 people last week in Oregon by an unhappy asshole. This, 5 days later, is still a much bigger story than the story of the MSF hospital bombing, done not by a lone malcontent, but by the United States Government.

[Another egregious atrocity barely mentioned at all in the U.S. was the Saudi bombing of a wedding party in Yemen last week, killing 130 people, In fact it was bombed twice- with U.S.-supplied warplanes and munitions. This is part of a more than 6 month old terror campaign which has targeted markets, mosques, and homes, killing over 1,000 civilians so far, with U.S. support and virtual silence by the U.S. media. The Iran bogeyman is invoked as justification. But man, we're getting the full sad violin treatment for 9 people shot in Oregon.]

Meanwhile, the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military, Barack Obama, acts as if he is a mere bystander to all this, with no responsibility. This is a common dodge with him. He did the same with climate change, granting Shell Oil drilling rights in the Arctic while simultaneously giving a speech about how something must be done about climate change. Or decrying mass incarceration as if he himself has no power or responsibility for how many people are locked up. The pattern is he commits a crime or immoral act, and then exhorts others to remedy the “problem,”

His War Secretary, Ashton Carter, has been uttering vague and anodyne statements.

But let us back up and review the evidence that from the start demonstrated this was obviously a premeditated, deliberate assault, and not an “accident” or “mistake,” words already being bandied about (such as by the New York Times, still the premiere voice of the American bourgeois establishment).

The following facts are all from early BBC reports, which dribbled in over the first few hours after the crime. NPR and most U.S. media ignored these facts, at least at first:

-MSF repeatedly provided the precise GPS coordinates of the hospital to all sides in the conflict prior to the attack, including on September 27. Once the bombing commenced, frantic calls were made to NATO in Kabul and even to Washington. The bombing continued for another half hour anyway.

-The bombing occurred for an hour at 15 minute intervals.

-The U.S. military provided no explanation or apology to MSF.

-The U.S. military issued smarmy, ambiguous statements about them bombing “in the area” and “there may have been collateral damage,” obviously hedging and keeping their options open about whether they would go with a full-fledged, brazen denial, or an “oops, sorry, it was an accident” cover story. In fact, NPR reported just hours after the attack that “the U.S. is investigating whether” the U.S. bombed the hospital. What, you don't even know what you bomb? With all your “precision” targeting and “surgical” bombing? In fact, if you're doing close-in air support of ground operations, you're going to be quite accurate.

It looked at first as if the U.S. took advantage of the “cover of war” to attack an institution it has some beef against. My immediate suspicion was that the U.S. thought (or feared) that MSF was treating wounded Taliban. This hunch had added weight later by part of a New York Times article on the attack. [2] Here are paragraphs 20 and 21 of the article, a safe place to relegate a possible motive to:

“Accounts differed as to whether there had been fighting around the hospital that might have precipitated the strike. Three hospital employees, an aide who was wounded in the bombing and two nurses who emerged unscathed, said that there had been no fighting in the hospital’s immediate vicinity and no Taliban fighters in the hospital.

“But a Kunduz police spokesman, Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, said Taliban fighters had entered the hospital and were using it as a firing position. The hospital treated the wounded from all sides of the conflict, a policy that has long irked Afghan security forces. In a Twitter post, Arjan Hehenkamp, director of Doctors Without Borders in the Netherlands, denied that Taliban fighters had been in the hospital, saying that only staff, patients and caretakers had been inside. [My emphasis.]”

The article also mentions that the Afghans used attack helicopters in Kunduz, so it's possible the Afghans were the criminal attackers. But paragraph five cites an anonymous U.S. official saying that “the attack may have been carried out by an American AC-130 gunship that was supporting Special Operations forces on the ground in Kunduz,” in the Times words. And U.S. Special Forces are notorious for their unrestrained, immoral violence and ruthlessness. And the scale of damage, coupled with the duration of the attack, would point towards the AC-130 gunship, an extremely destructive “weapons platform.”

Moreover, the fact that the U.S. wasn't vociferously denying that they did it, and instead pointed their fingers at the Afghans, was in and of itself almost proof positive that the U.S. military were the culprits.

In this context it bears remembering the times the U.S. attacked al-Jazeera offices from the air. George Bush was even going to bomb their headquarters in Doha, Qatar, until Tony Blair (British prime minister at the time and accomplice to Bush's invasion of Iraq) talked him out of it.

Oh, just thought I'd mention; bombing a hospital is a war crime. It's even prohibited under the Geneva Conventions, a treaty the U.S. is a signatory to. On the other hand, the U.S.' signature on a piece of paper is worth the same as a piece of paper- namely zilch. We see that constantly, for example in its violation of the anti-torture treaty it signed. And its conduct during its Indochina war. And its atrocites against civilians just about whenever it wages war. All that is so routine and unremarked upon that it is actually forgotten. Indeed, I saw no mention of the statutorily criminal nature of attacking a hospital in any establishment media reporting- not BBC, NY Times, Reuters, etc. They don't want people to know it's a war crime.

But what a nitpicking cavil that all is, eh?

But the NY Times should get credit for another article that describes what actually happened inside the hospital as the bombs rained down and burned people alive in their beds, the “human story” that is essential to get through to people and provoke the necessary emotional reaction. [3]

The story quotes the local head of MSF in that part of Afghanistan:

“Over the next hour, witnesses said, what unfolded was a relentless air assault that put patients, doctors and the Kunduz hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders at the center of a bull’s-eye, leaving no possibility of escape.

“The bombing began at 2:08 a.m. and continued until 3:15, Mr. Nagarathnam said. 'The bombs hit and then we heard the plane circle around,' he added. 'There was a pause, and then more bombs hit. The main hospital building was engulfed in flames,' he said.”

Meanwhile, Obama Sheds Crocodile Tears

 The adept politician Barack Obama immediately made the obvious (and cynical) political move one would expect from a competent political boss. He issued a statement (didn't show his face) referring to “the tragic incident” and announced he would say nothing more pending the U.S. military's own verdict on what it did or didn't do: “we will await the results of that inquiry before making a definitive judgment as to the circumstances of this tragedy,” the statement emitted from the White House in his name read.

So the U.S. military, the probably perpetrators of the attack, will be investigating itself. I would venture to say, just as a general principle, that having the accused do the investigating of the allegations against themselves, is probably not the best way to arrive at the truth. Wouldn't you agree?

But self-investigating by guilty state parties is standard procedure in the U.S., whether its police murders of citizens, U.S. war crimes, or whatever. The only exceptions arise out of the competition for power between the Democratic Party faction of the political elite and the Republican Party one. So there you can get a partisan inquisition type investigation with a political motive, such as the Benghazi “investigations” by the Republicans in Congress.

That's not to say there are never useful genuine investigations here. But the results of those are generally put on a shelf to gather dust, such as the investigation into the Attica prison massacre ordered by then-New York State Governor and plutocrat Nelson Rockefeller (of the Rockefeller oil fortune) or the Kerner Commission report on racial unrest, or the report that rightly called the police repression around the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago a “police riot.” Those don't matter because they are ignored. By the time they come out, the issue is cold, at least in the establishment media's eyes.

Finally, here are accounts from MSF's website:

Twelve staff members and at least seven patients, including three children, were killed; 37 people were injured including 19 staff members. This attack constitutes a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law. [The death toll is now 22.]

The bombing took place despite the fact that MSF had provided the GPS coordinates of the trauma hospital to Coalition and Afghan military and civilian officials as recently as Tuesday 29 September, to avoid that the hospital be hit. As is routine practice for MSF in conflict areas, MSF had communicated the exact location of the hospital to all parties to the conflict.

 

From 2:08 AM until 3:15 AM local time today, MSF’s trauma hospital in Kunduz was hit by a series of aerial bombing raids at approximately 15 minute intervals. The main central hospital building, housing the intensive care unit, emergency rooms, and physiotherapy ward, was repeatedly hit very precisely during each aerial raid, while surrounding buildings were left mostly untouched.

 

“The bombs hit and then we heard the plane circle round,” said Heman Nagarathnam, MSF Head of Programmes in northern Afghanistan. “There was a pause, and then more bombs hit. This happened again and again. When I made it out from the office, the main hospital building was engulfed in flames. Those people that could had moved quickly to the building’s two bunkers to seek safety. But patients who were unable to escape burned to death as they lay in their beds.” [4]

In fact, MSF probably provides more health care for Afghans than their so-called government, or the foreign “nation builders.” Here's their brief description:

MSF is an international medical organisation and first worked in Afghanistan in 1980. MSF opened Kunduz Trauma Centre in August 2011 to provide high quality, free medical and surgical care to victims of trauma such as traffic accidents, as well as those with conflict related injuries from bomb blasts or gunshots. In Afghanistan, MSF supports the Ministry of Public Health in Ahmad Shah Baba hospital in eastern Kabul, Dasht-e-Barchi maternity in western Kabul and Boost hospital in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province. In Khost, in the east of the country, MSF runs a maternity hospital. MSF relies only on private funding for its work in Afghanistan and does not accept money from any government.

 

As for the tremendous harm the U.S. has done to the populace by attacking the hospital in Kunduz, MSF notes:

MSF’s hospital is the only facility of its kind in the north-eastern region of Afghanistan. For four years it has been providing free high level life- and limb-saving trauma care. In 2014, more than 22,000 patients received care at the hospital and more than 5,900 surgeries were performed.

So the U.S. just took out “the only facility” in an entire region of the country where critical trauma care can be had. (Perhaps they meant the only free facility- but knowing Afghanistan, probably not. Outside of Kabul, Afghanistan is a very primitive society in every respect.)

But if you're wondering what MSF's crime was, here it is, in their own statement:

“MSF treats all people according to their medical needs and does not make any distinctions based on a patient’s ethnicity, religious beliefs or political affiliation.”
Which of course is unacceptable to the U.S. Because in the immortal words of the former Emperor Bush: “Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists.” And being “with us” requires that you be hostile to all those the U.S. is hostile to.

If you know what's good for you.

That is the ethos of a gangster empire.


1] The New York Times published a map showing the location of the hospital and the locations of fighting that we were intended to be duped were “near” the hospital. Even though the Times omitted a scale of distance on the left hand map, you can see by counting the blocks that the skirmishes were quite far from the hospital. As the map makes clear, the Taliban were nowhere near the hospital. Judging by the block lines visible on the map on the left, it appears they were at least a half mile away.

 The New York Times|Source: Doctors Without Borders (Location of hospital); Satellite image by DigitalGlobe via Bing Maps

2] “Airstrike Hits Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan,” New York Times website, October 3, 2015.

3] “Survivors Tell of Kunduz Hospital in Flames,” New York Times website, October 3, 2015.

4] “Afghanistan: 'I have no words to express this. It is unspeakable.'” Médecins Sans Frontières,

"Afghanistan: MSF demands explanations after deadly airstrikes hit hospital in Kunduz."

"Afghanistan: MSF staff killed and hospital partially destroyed in Kunduz,”