Majority Killed by Predator Drones in 2010 Were Civilians

As people in the U.S. expresses outrage over last weekend’s mass shooting in Tucson, we might well ask ourselves: Where’s the outrage over this?

LAHORE: Of the 1,184 persons killed by the American drones in 124 attacks in 2010, around 59 percent were innocent civilians while the remaining 41 percent were terrorists belonging to numerous militant groups based in the Pak-Afghan tribal belt.

According to data gathered by The News primarily from local and international news sources, 703 of those who were perished by the US drones between January 1 and December 31, 2010, were civilians, including women and children, while 481 others were commanders, fighters and activists of different militant groups. The drones hit three types of targets in the tribal belt – terrorists’ compounds, houses sheltering terrorists and vehicles carrying terrorists.

Of the 124 drone strikes, the largest number – 53 (or 43 percent of the total drone attacks) – were directed at alleged terrorists’ compounds, followed by 41 strikes (or 33 percent of the total attacks) targeting houses allegedly sheltering terrorists while the remaining 187 attacks (or 24 percent of the total strikes) were directed at vehicles which were allegedly carrying terrorists. As the velocity of the American drones has increased enormously under the Obama administration, they are now hitting their targets with precision.

Read the rest at The News International.

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U.S. Military Says One Afghan Life Is Worth $2,500

The murder by Predator drone of Afghan civilians has become so drearily predictable that the events now warrant only a brief mention deep inside the New York Times. Perhaps the U.S. military—which in fact is the enforcement arm of the western corporate empire—can systemize financial compensation for such deaths.

Here, take some fiat dollars. That’ll make it all better!

What is the price of a human life?

In Afghanistan, if foreign troops kill an innocent civilian by accident, families may receive compensations of around $2,500.

See video at uruknet.info.

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Blackwater Guards Stole Guns, Went on Drunken Rampage

They’re Blackwater. They can do whatever they want, and that includes murdering civilians in cold blood. Do you think the murderers will pay any consequences? Don’t be silly.

Private American security guards working for the US military in Afghanistan removed hundreds of handguns and automatic weapons from stores intended for the exclusive use of the Afghan police and used them on drunken shooting rampages that killed two Afghan civilians and injured at least two more.

The guards included a former US Marine with a criminal record of assault and battery and a former soldier discharged from the US Army after testing positive for cocaine, Congress heard yesterday.

Justin Cannon, Christopher Drotleff and a guard using the name “Eric Cartman” from the cartoon South Park were employees of a subsidiary of the Blackwater Worldwide group, implicated in a litany of extrajudicial shootings since 2003 in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Cannon and Drotleff have been charged with killing two Afghans and injuring a third in an incident last May when they opened fire on a car carrying four civilians in Kabul, while under the influence of alcohol. The men, who were hired to train Afghan soldiers, had no permission from US authorities to carry guns.

Read more at The Times Online.

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Surprise! Afghanistan Holds Enormous Geological Wealth

And to think there are still people who think the war is about chasing down Al-Qaeda or–even more preposterously–the cartoon strip bad guy known as Osama Bin Laden.

President Karzai says the discovery of vast mineral wealth in Afghanistan is “good news for Afghans,” as if the profits would go to the people instead of Western multinationals. Knock it off, Karzai, you kidder you. My sides are aching!

KABUL (AFP) – Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries, is sitting on mineral and petroleum reserves worth an estimated one trillion dollars, President Hamid Karzai said Sunday.

The war-ravaged nation could become one of the richest in the world if helped to tap its geological deposits, Karzai told reporters.

“I have very good news for Afghans,” Karzai said.

“The initial figures we have obtained show that our mineral deposits are worth a thousand billion dollars — not a thousand million dollars but a thousand billion,” he said.

He based his assertion, he said, on a survey being carried out by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), due to be completed in “a couple of months”.

Read more at Yahoo News.

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