New Events

International

no events posted in last week

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

Anti-Empire >>

The Saker

Indymedia ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Army Sergeant Travis Decker Murdered His Three Children After Being Denied Mental Health Care at JBL... Sat Jun 07, 2025 04:52 | JBLM Whistleblowers
A corrupt military police force and incompetent Commander who denied emergency mental health care and crisis counseling to an American service member resulted in the murder of the sergeant's three young daughters

offsite link Gaza doctor grieves her nine children killed in Israeli strike Sun May 25, 2025 20:00 | imc
Israeli regime continues it's slaughter
'The children were completely charred'

Paediatrician Alaa al-Najjar was treating victims of Israeli attacks when her children were killed by an Israeli strike on their home

offsite link British doctors working in Gaza describe territory as a ?slaughterhouse? Sat May 24, 2025 00:23 | imc
There?s no food getting in so people are starving,? surgeon Tom Potokar says
British doctors working in Gaza have described the territory as a ?slaughterhouse,? where the patients they are treating are severely malnourished.

Plastic surgeons and orthopedic specialists from the UK are based at the Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis in the south of the territory.

Dr. Tom Potokar, a plastic surgeon specializing in burn injuries, has worked in Gaza 16 times but said this mission had revealed a level of destruction far greater than his last visit in 2023,

offsite link It is time to talk about the Out of Control Immigration. Mon Mar 31, 2025 22:12 | imc
For the last few years since the CV19 scamdemic undocumented immigration into Ireland has surged. No one is allowed discuss it because they do not want any rational debate about it. If you do you are labelled an extremist. However this out of control immigration is fully facilitated by the Irish government and the EU and the shady figure behind the Neo Con movement pushing for endless war, wokeism and globalist agenda.

offsite link [Dublin] National Demonstration for Palestine: End Israeli Apartheid & Genocide Thu Mar 06, 2025 22:35 | ipsc
Sat, 22 March 2025, 13:00 Assemble at the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin 1
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, supported by over 150 Irish civil society organisations, has called another National Demonstration for Palestine on Saturday 22nd March.

The march will begin at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm and finish outside the D?il on Molesworth Street/Kildare Street to bring our demands to the Irish government?s doorstep.

The Saker >>

Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

Public Inquiry >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

Voltaire Network >>

YOUTUBE - Jeremy Scahill Speech on Obama Administration and the Use of Drones in a Policy of Assassination

category international | anti-war / imperialism | other press author Tuesday May 01, 2012 06:52author by Ciaron Report this post to the editors

Obama’s Death Panels: Jeremy Scahill at the Drone Summit [VIDEO]

Jeremy Scahill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Scahill author of "Blackwater" is a former New York Catholic Worker now a writer for "The Nation" Magazine.

YOUTUBE - Jeremy Scahill Speech on Obama Administration and the Use of Drones in a Policy of Assassination

Excellent viewing.... http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/04/29/obamas-deat...ideo/

Obama’s Death Panels: Jeremy Scahill at the Drone Summit [VIDEO]
By: Kevin Gosztola Sunday April 29, 2012 10:28 am

Jeremy Scahill at the Drone Summit

Activists, lawyers, human rights advocates, civil liberties defenders and others came together for a major international summit on drone warfare and the issues created by drone use yesterday. The summit was co-organized by CODEPINK, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Reprieve. An exceptional lineup of speakers addressed participants detailing salient and significant aspects around the Obama administration’s expansion of the covert drone wars in countries like Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

The day wrapped up with a speech from Jeremy Scahill of The Nation, who has been one of the few journalists to actually travel to these countries where the covert drone war is playing out. Scahill has produced reports on Yemen and Somalia that show how the US is carrying out its “war on terrorism” and using drones to target and kill people.

Scahill opens his speech by saying, “The real death panels that we have in this country were unleashed on our own citizens. Republicans like to talk about death panels having to do with health care. President Obama is the one that is operating secret death panels” that include United States citizens and often include non-US citizens. The vast majority of the victims of this policy around the world are not US citizens.

He strongly condemns the al-Majalah massacre that was authorized by Obama and was a brutal massacre, more brutal than anything that has been done in Yemen in the past decade. The strike was authorized on a Bedouin village because “intelligence” showed it was an al Qaeda training facility at the time. “Cruise missiles and cluster bombs rained down.” The US was not mentioned and did not take credit for the attack. Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a journalist, who is now imprisoned by order of the Obama administration, went and took photos. His photos gave human rights groups evidence that weapons used were not weapons the Yemen government had. And then WikiLeaks released cables that “confirmed” what was suspected—that there was a coverup. General David Petraeus conspired with Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh to prevent anyone from knowing the US was bombing Yemen.

Noting how the Obama administration has approved expanded authority for the CIA to carry out “signature strikes,” which basically is profiling, he explains:

The “signature strikes” are anything but surgical. The idea of the signature strikes is that you can develop a pattern of life and you can study a pattern of life being engaged in by certain people in Yemen and you can determine without knowing their identity or knowing that they’ve had any connection to terrorism whatsoever that they are a terrorist – because of how they act, because of who they associate with. And that once you develop that pattern of life, you then create a very efficient pattern of death for those people, which is to bring in the drones and take them out.

He mentions how Anwar al-Awlaki was not an al-Qaeda leader. Only after he was killed was he the “head of external operations” for al Qaeda. Obama was able to get away with this because of the Authorized Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was passed under President George W. Bush and is still in effect. Al-Awlaki was killed by the President of the United States, who served as “judge, jury and executioner.”

Scahill then gives a stirring account of a meeting he had with the mother of Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike that killed al-Awlaki.

She told me about how disturbed he was when he saw the images that came out of Abu Ghraib in the mid-2000s and he started blogging about US policy and eventually he went to Yemen to study Arabic and somehow he got hooked up with Anwar al-Awlaki. But, the reason I am bringing up is this: the FBI began visiting that family in 2007, when Samir Khan was still living in the United States, and they were concerned about his speech. They visited Samir Khan’s mother and father to express concern about his blogging and the things that he was saying. And they were very clear with the Khans. They said he’s engaged in First Amendment-protected activities. And they were sort of incredulous. “Well, then why are you here?” Well, we’re just concerned about your son.

And then they got in touch with them multiple other times when Samir was in Yemen. And each time the FBI came to the Khans, they told them that they have no evidence that he had done anything criminal and that he was engaged in First Amendment-protected activities. The next time they heard from the United States government was the State Department calling them to tell them that Samir had been killed in Yemen. When they asked who killed them, they said we can’t talk about that.

The critical nature of this anecdote from Scahill cannot be overstated. Tarek Mehanna, who refused to become an FBI informant, was charged and convicted of “terrorism” for venting his frustrations with US policies. The FBI has spied on Muslims looking for “suspicious” speech. They have manipulated impoverished and sometimes mentally unstable Muslims and pushed those who have engaged in aggressive rhetoric against the US to take that rhetoric to the next level and engage in “plots” against the US.

The FBI has also targeted activists like Hatem Abuddayeh, who engages in Palestinian solidarity activism. Abuddayeh is one of twenty-three activists in the Midwest to have his home raided by the FBI. He was given a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury. He also has had his bank account frozen by the Treasury Department. This is presumably all because of the “First Amendment-protected activities,” which the FBI has “concern” about.

Here is Scahill’s speech, up on YouTube in four parts:

--

© 2001-2025 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy