Roosting Chickens

American Is Held After Shooting of Civilians in Afghanistan

Mustafa Khan/European Pressphoto Agency

Residents sat with the bodies of shooting victims in the village of Panjway in southern Afghanistan. More Photos »

By TAIMOOR SHAH and GRAHAM BOWLEY

Published: March 11, 2012, New York Times

PANJWAI, Afghanistan — A United States service member walked out of a military base in a rural district of southern Afghanistan on Sunday and opened fire on three nearby houses, killing at least 16 civilians, including several children, local villagers and provincial officials said.

The shooting risks further inciting anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan and troubling a relationship that had already been brought to a new low by theburning of Korans at an American military base last month. On Sunday, President Hamid Karzai demanded an explanation from Washington for the shooting. “This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven,” Mr. Karzai said in a statement, according to The Associated Press.

The NATO-led coalition said in a statement on Sunday that a United States service member had been detained after an incident in Kandahar Province, in the south of the country, and that a number of civilians had been killed.

Villagers in Belandi in the Panjwai District of Kandahar, where the shooting took place, said the service member had attacked three houses, killing at least 16 in total. Five other villagers were wounded, they said.

After the killings, villagers collected the bodies, and drove them to a nearby American military base to protest. Burn marks could be seen on some of the bodies, and the villagers said that five of the dead were young girls, age 6 or younger.

Panjwai, a rural suburb of Kandahar, was traditionally a Taliban stronghold. It was a focus of the United States surge in 2010 and was the scene of heavy fighting.

The governor of Kandahar Province, Tooryalai Wesa, condemned the shooting, although he could not immediately confirm the number of people killed. A coalition spokesman in Kabul, Capt. Justin Brockhoff, said that it was not clear what had led to the episode. He said the civilians wounded in the shooting had been taken to a coalition hospital, where they were being treated.

One of the houses attacked in the village belonged to a tribal elder, according to a person from the village. “We don’t know why he killed people,” said the villager, Aminullah, who like many Afghans goes by a single name. Aminullah said the soldier was alone. “There was no fighting or attacks.”

In Washington, the White House National Security Council spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden, said, according to Reuters, that administration officials were “deeply concerned by the initial reports of this incident and are monitoring the situation closely.”

In its statement, the United States military had tried to head off Afghan outrage. “This is a deeply regrettable incident and we extend our thoughts and concerns to the families involved,” the statement said. It went on to say that American forces, in cooperation with the Afghan authorities, would investigate the incident.

In its comments, the American Embassy also sought to ease tensions, offering “its deepest condolences to the families of the victims of today’s tragic shooting.”

In a separate episode, four Afghans were killed and three wounded on Friday when coalition helicopters apparently hunting Taliban insurgents fired instead on villagers in Kapisa province in eastern Afghanistan, according to Abdul Hakim Akhondzada, governor of Tagab District in Kapisa.

Last month, the burning of the Korans touched off nationwide rioting and increased the targeting of American troops, resulting in at least 29 Afghans dead and 6 American soldiers killed.

The results of the official military inquiry into the Koran burnings are still awaited, including any decision on what kind of disciplinary action may be faced by the American service members identified as being directly linked to the incident.

The upheaval provoked by the Koran burnings put a temporary halt to cooperation between the Afghans and Americans, and disrupted planning for the military withdrawal.

But relations seemed somewhat back on track after the two governments on Friday broke an impasse on a long-term strategic partnership deal by agreeing for the Afghans to assume control of the main coalition prison in six months.

In another episode in January, American officials had to contend with the fallout from a video that showed four United States Marines urinating on what appeared to be the corpses of three Taliban members.

In 2010, a rogue group of American soldiers, whose members patrolled roads and small villages, also near Kandahar, killed three Afghan civilians for sport in a series of crimes. The soldier accused of being the ringleader of the group was convicted of three counts of murder by an American military panel in November.

Taimoor Shah from reported from Panjwai, Kandahar Province, and Graham Bowley from Kabul.

Disappeared

Looks like I have some house cleaning to do around here, especially in the blogroll.  Almost all my old collaborators have up and rode away.  

Picking the President

Regal Powers

The RT article below tells of one of the more troubling aspects of the Obama Administration.

Remember when people thought Obama was going to be the Anti-Bush? They thought the pendulum would swing. I think most still do. Three years of ramped up and out of control Executive Power and abuse, misguided economic policy,  the continuous drumbeat of war and the unprecedented erosion of civil-liberties  has taught the American people nothing.

Obama signs anti-protest Trespass Bill. RT News

Published: 10 March, 2012, 00:52

Only days after clearing Congress, US President Barack Obama signed his name to H.R. 347 on Thursday, officially making it a federal offense to cause a disturbance at certain political events — essentially criminalizing protest in the States.

RT broke the news last month that H.R. 347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011, had overwhelmingly passed the US House of Representatives after only three lawmakers voted against it. On Thursday this week, President Obama inked his name to the legislation and authorized the government to start enforcing a law that has many Americans concerned over how the bill could bury the rights to assemble and protest as guaranteed in the US Constitution.

Under H.R. 347, which has more commonly been labeled the Trespass Bill by Congress, knowingly entering a restricted area that is under the jurisdiction of Secret Service protection can garner an arrest. The law is actually only a slight change to earlier legislation that made it an offense to knowingly and willfully commit such a crime. Under the Trespass Bill’s latest language chance, however, someone could end up in law enforcement custody for entering an area that they don’t realize is Secret Service protected and “engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct” or “impede[s] or disrupt[s] the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.”

The Secret Service serves as the police that protects not just current and former American presidents, but are also dispatched to monitor special events of national significance, a category with a broad cast of qualifiers. In the past, sporting events, state funerals, inaugural addresses and NATO and G-8 Summits have been designated as such by the US Department of Homeland Security, the division that decides when and where the Secret Service are needed outside of their normal coverage.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund tells the International Business Times that the Trespass Bill in its current form “means it’s easier to prosecute under ‘knowingly,’”instead of both knowingly and willfully, “which is an issue because someone could knowingly enter a restricted but not necessarily realize they are committing a crime.” Speaking with IB Times, Verheyden-Hilliard tries to lay to rest claims that the Constitution will be crippled by the Trespass Bill, but acknowledges that it does indeed allow law enforcement to have added incentive to arrest protesters who could be causing a disturbance.

“[HR 347] has been described as a death knell for the First Amendment, but that isn’t supported by the facts,” Verheyden-Hilliard adds. “This has always been a bad law.”

Gabe Rottman of the American Civil Liberties Union adds to IB Times, “Bottom line, it doesn’t create any new violations of the law.” So far, however, it has raised awareness of the levels that the US government are willing to go to in order to make it harder to express ones’ self.

Under the act, protesting in areas covered by Secret Service could land a demonstrator behind bars, and the thing about the Secret Service (in case you couldn’t tell by their name), is that they don’t always make it clear where they are. You could even say that the service they provide, at times, is kept secret.

Presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are now officially covered under Secret Service protection, making it a federal offense to disrupt a campaign stop. That means whether it’s by way of a glitter bomb protest or causing a disturbance on the same Holiday Inn hotel floor that Santorum is staying in, doing such could cause a bit of a legal battle for the persons involved.

Although the G-8 Summit originally scheduled for Chicago this spring would have made much of the Windy City a protected area where crimes could easily be tacked on to arrested protesters, the event was moved this week to the presidential retreat at Camp David. In turn, many have suggested that the White House is only going out of their way to limit protesting rights. While a Chicago summit would have meant the Trespass Bill could have been enforced in the same area where thousands of demonstrators were expected to protest, moving the event to a heavily fortified rural location will instead deter protesters from likely coming close atto the meeting at all.

And before you forget, the president can now detain you for getting too close to his front yard, order your assassination if the country considers you a threat and lock you away for life with no charge if you’re alleged to be a terrorist. You, on the other hand, can’t yell obscenities at Newt Gingrich without risking arrest.

Back in the saddle.

After four years away I’ve decided to return to WordPress. My hiatus from blogging is attributed to being overwhelmed by the reality and news of that day. I needed a break from the open air analysis and debate of the Bush Administration. I needed some time to just observe and read. I needed time to practice and I needed time to have a couple kids. It’s been a good four years. Many hurdles and accomplishments have been met. I’ve attempted to be active in the Facebook realm and tried to share as much important news as possible. But Facebook is not the place for great debate. It is a place for cat memes.

Hello, old friends.

Finally, some news worth reading.

FRANKFURT, Oct 27 (Reuters) – Protesters entered the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on Monday, shouting slogans and waving banners denouncing financial markets.

The protesters from the anti-establishment Attac movement, who hung a banner over the stock exchange’s big board displaying a graph of Germany’s benchmark DAX index, were inside for a few minutes, a Reuters photographer on the scene said.

He said there were about 15 protesters and that three security guards escorted them from the building in the heart of Frankfurt’s banking district.

Stock exchange operator Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said nobody had been injured and that trading had not been halted.

The group had registered as visitors and launched the action from the visitors’ gallery, Deutsche Boerse said in a statement, adding that security measures for visitors would be tightened.

“Disarm the financial markets,” read one Attac banner. “Put people and the environment above shareholder value.”

A trader on the stock exchange floor said the protesters had time to throw around “thousands” of leaflets.

“The financial crisis is a symptom of a deeper rooted sickness: of an economic system that even when it is performing correctly subordinates all social goals to shareholder value and the profits of investors at the expense of jobs, social equality and environmental protection. It has to end. The casino should be closed,” Attac said in a statement about the protest in which it said 25 activists had taken part.

Attac recently staged a protest outside the Frankfurt stock exchange demanding an end to “casino” capitalism. (Additional reporting by Tyler Sitte and Peter Starck) (Reporting by Kai Pfaffenbach; writing by Peter Starck)

Kaptur and Kucinich on ‘The Bailout’.