US And Western mainstream Media focus on suicide bombing in Afghanistan while ignoring or making excuses for the deaths of some 18 Afghanistan civilians during a NATO /USA bombing attack . Once again these civilians are dismissed as being mere "collateral Damage " whereas the killing of civilians by the Taliban
"NATO's Afghan Airstrike Reported…Sort Of by Peter Hart at FAIR( Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting ) June 7, 2012
Yesterday reports emerged about a NATO airstrike in Logar province that, according to local officials, killed 18 civilians—the vast majority women and children.
Readers of the Washington Post could learn about this (6/7/12) by flipping to page 10 and looking for this headline:
Afghanistan Suicide Blasts Kill at Least 22 Civilians
A suicide attack gets top billing. Next comes word that "overall levels of violence have dropped" in the country. Following that, a helicopter crash that killed two NATO troops. Then finally:
Separately, there were conflicting accounts about the killing of civilians in a NATO-led airstrike overnight in Logar province, south of Kabul.
The New York Times was better (which would not be difficult). The front-page photo shows the aftermath of the airstrike, along with the caption "Confusion in the Rubble of a NATO Airstrike."
Like the Post, the Times led with news of the suicide attack, followed by a passage noting the decline in civilian deaths. The paper's account then went on to offer more details about the NATO airstrike—before getting back to the apparently more newsworthy Taliban suicide attack.
Because an official enemy killing civilians is always more important than your own government killing civilians—right?
So much for the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights as President Obama like President Bush sees the US constitution and the Bill of Rights as obstacles he believes he must get around or even delegitimize
NDAA banned: Indefinite detention of Americans 'unconstitutional'
Published on 8 Jun 2012 by RussiaToday
A Federal judge in the US has ruled Washington cannot indefinitely detain Americans suspected of having terrorist ties unless they have been found in connection with the September Eleventh attacks. It comes just six months after President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which would have allowed American citizens to be held without trial or charge. The judge initially ruled the act was unconstitutional last month, but the Obama administration asked her to reconsider the ruling. Attorney Carl Mayer says the act threatened Americans' basic freedoms.
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As Noam Chomsky points out in a recent article that the killing of innocent civilians is classified as atrocities when the acts are committed by America's enemies but not when the acts are committed by American forces or its allies.
Dissidents are also praised by the US governemnt and media when the dissidents are active in nations considered US enemies. And yet American and even European home grown activists and dissidents are treated as "traitors" and /or "domestic terrorists" and as giving aid and comfort to America's and Europe's current "enemy lists"
So as we have seen since last October the US government and municipalities and the Mainstream Media treat the Occupy Movement's activists as being unAmerican or anti-American forming a fifth column to undermine the US government. Having been designated as "traitors" and domestic terrorists" all the restraints on police forces under normal circumstances have been removed so the police can do as they please in controlling these "enemies of the state".
We also can point to the case of the heroic whistleblower Bradley Manning who leaked government documents to Wikileaks who has been imprisoned indefinitely and was abused by officials by putting him in prolonged solitary confinement and deprived of sleep for prolonged periods and doped up using various drugs all reminiscent of how dissidents were treated in the former Soviet Union. So dissidents in the USA have as much to fear as those in the former Soviet Union or currently in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain or Yemen or Israel etc.
Chomsky: America's Rank Hypocrisy -- Why Is it Only an "Atrocity" When Other Countries Do It?
How America's worst crimes are ignored, while we lecture others on human rights.By Noam Chomsky at Alternet.org,June 4, 2012
In his penetrating study “Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-Opted Human Rights,” international affairs scholar James Peck observes, “In the history of human rights, the worst atrocities are always committed by somebody else, never us” – whoever “us” is.--------------
...On May 10, the Summer Olympics were inaugurated at the Greek birthplace of the ancient games. A few days before, virtually unnoticed, the government of Vietnam addressed a letter to the International Olympic Committee expressing the “profound concerns of the Government and people of Viet Nam about the decision of IOC to accept the Dow Chemical Company as a global partner sponsoring the Olympic Movement.”
Dow provided the chemicals that Washington used from 1961 onward to destroy crops and forests in South Vietnam, drenching the country with Agent Orange.
These poisons contain dioxin, one of the most lethal carcinogens known, affecting millions of Vietnamese and many U.S. soldiers. To this day in Vietnam, aborted fetuses and deformed infants are very likely the effects of these crimes – though, in light of Washington’s refusal to investigate, we have only the studies of Vietnamese scientists and independent analysts.
Joining the Vietnamese appeal against Dow are the government of India, the Indian Olympic Association, and the survivors of the horrendous 1984 Bhopal gas leak, one of history’s worst industrial disasters, which killed thousands and injured more than half a million.
Union Carbide, the corporation responsible for the disaster, was taken over by Dow, for whom the matter is of no slight concern. In February, Wikileaks revealed that Dow hired the U.S. private investigative agency Stratfor to monitor activists seeking compensation for the victims and prosecution of those responsible.
Another major crime with very serious persisting effects is the Marine assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004.
Women and children were permitted to escape if they could. After several weeks of bombing, the attack opened with a carefully planned war crime: invasion of the Fallujah General Hospital, where patients and staff were ordered to the floor, their hands tied. Soon the bonds were loosened; the compound was secure.
The official justification was that the hospital was reporting civilian casualties, and therefore was considered a propaganda weapon.
Much of the city was left in “smoking ruins,” the press reported while the Marines sought out insurgents in their “warrens.” The invaders barred entry to the Red Crescent relief organization. Absent an official inquiry, the scale of the crimes is unknown.
If the Fallujah events are reminiscent of the events that took place in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, now again in the news with the genocide trial of Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, there’s a good reason. An honest comparison would be instructive, but there’s no fear of that: One is an atrocity, the other not, by definition.
As in Vietnam, independent investigators are reporting long-term effects of the Fallujah assault.
Medical researchers have found dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia, even higher than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Uranium levels in hair and soil samples are far beyond comparable cases.
One of the rare investigators from the invading countries is Dr. Kypros Nicolaides, director of the fetal-medicine research center at London’s King’s College Hospital. “I’m sure the Americans used weapons that caused these deformities,” Nicolaides says.
So if the US forces backed by the US government and Pentagon in the seige of Fallujah in Iraq were justified to treat hospitals and their staff as if they were the enemy then it is not surprising that the Obama regime refuses to chastise the government of Bahrian when the Bahraini authorities allowed military and police to search for wounded activists inside hospitals and then proceeded to jail and prosecute doctors and other hospital staff of promoting anti-government activities by providing medical care to protesers and activists who were injured by the police and military during the government crack down on protesters.
In the American bombardment of Fallujah there is plenty of evidence of the US forces using white phosphorus and other chemical or radioactive weapons on the mostly civilian non-combatant residents of Fallujah.
The use of these weapons are prohibited by international laws and agreements but the USA says bluntly these laws and agreements are meant for other nations and not the USA or its allies. Further they add the USA is a force for the good and for God and therefore by definition anything it does has been sanctioned by US exceptionalism and by the Christian God. Yes even President Obama judged by his own actions or policies believes America can do no wrong.
So when the USA forces in Iraq,Afghanistan , Pakistan, Yemen or Libya they do so to get the bad guys. Those innocent civilians killed in these attacks are dismissed as unimportant though regretable "collateral damage".
To lessen the number of innocent civilians killed in these attacks the Obama Regime has decided to classify as "Militants" any male of military age without any evidence of these men being enemy combatants. So the whole issue of collateral damge is just a book keeping problem easily resolved by widening the definition of "militants" and "enemy Combatants".
Also see :
On Obama's war on whistleblowers and other American activists and dissidents note the ongoing legal battle over whistleblower Bradley Manning :
Judge Allows 'Vague' Bradley Manning Charges to Stand
Trial pushed back to 'November or January' by Common Dreams staff, June 8, 2012
A U.S. military judge is refusing to dismiss eight of the 22 counts against Bradley Manning, the US Army private charged in a leak of US government secrets.
Law-Abiding Murder: How the Obama Administration Uses 'Just War' Theory to Rationalize 'Kill Lists' by ray McGovern at Consortium News via Alternet.org, May 30,2012
It is a moral and legal impossibility to square “kill lists” for extrajudicial murders with traditional legal and moral American values.
U.S. Again Bombs Mourners The Obama policy of attacking rescuers and grieving rituals continues this weekend in Pakistan By Glenn Greenwald June 04, 2012 "Salon" via Information Clearing House
What Does It Say About America That We Jail Teens for Having Sex or Being Late to School? The case of an honors student in Texas shines light on a national problem: teens going to jail for absurd reasons.by Sarah Seltzer at Alternet.org,June 5, 2012
Last week, the country was riveted by the story of young Diane Tran, a high school junior age 17, who was tossed in jail for a night because she was missing too much school.
...The issue of youth incarceration and an overly punitive attitude toward teen offenses in general isn't confined to cases like Tran's. It affects everyone from young teens of color on the streets of New York targeted by stop and frisk to the Michigan teenager, a high school senior, arrested for sleeping with his underage girlfriend, a freshman.
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