From an interview with Jeremy Scahill and Richard Rowley about their new documentary, Dirty Wars. the two have gone underground to view the War of Terrorism first hand:
JEREMY SCAHILL: … So we had read about this night raid that took place, and it was a horrible massacre. And what happened in Gardez was that U.S. special operations forces had intelligence that there were—you know, a Taliban cell was in a—was having some sort of a meeting to prepare a suicide bomber. And they raid this house in the middle of the night, and they end up killing five people, including three women, two of whom were pregnant, and another person that they killed in the house, Mohammed Daoud, turned out to be a senior Afghan police commander who had been trained by the U.S., including by the mercenary—or the private security company MPRI, Military Professional Resources Incorporated. They weren’t even Pashtun, the dominant—the almost exclusive ethnicity of the Taliban. They spoke Dari. And they’re—and what was happening that night was not preparing a suicide bomber; they were celebrating the birth of a child. And they were dancing and had music, and they had women without head covers on.
And they—and so the soldiers raid this house, and they kill these people. And instead of realizing that they had made a horrible mistake and that the intelligence was wrong and it resulted in these people being killed, they actually covered up the killings. And we interview the survivors of this raid, including a man who watched, while he was zip-cuffed, soldiers, American soldiers, digging bullets out of his wife’s dead body. And they then tried to—
AMY GOODMAN: And they did that because?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, so just to finish this part of it, they kill the people, they dig the bullets our of the bodies, then they take into custody all of the men of the house, including a man who has just watched his sister and his wife and his niece killed, and they fly them to a different province, and they’re interrogating them, trying to get them to give up some information that would indicate that the Taliban had a connection to that family. I mean, it shows you how horrid the intelligence is. I mean, these people weren’t even Pashtun. You have a senior police commander. They’re dancing, playing loud music, and they have women without head cover in the house. And what happened is that NATO then issues a press release and made statements anonymously in the media where they said that the U.S. forces had stumbled upon the aftermath of a Taliban honor killing, and they implied that the family—that the women were killed by their own murderous families.And so, in the course of the film, we investigate that night raid, and we learn that the individuals who did that raid were members of the Joint Special Operations Command. And we know that because the then-head of the Joint Special Operations Command, Vice Admiral William McRaven, showed up in this village with scores of Afghan soldiers and U.S. forces. And they—there’s a scene, and we show this in the film, where they offload a sheep, and they offer to sacrifice the sheep to say—you know, ask for forgiveness. It’s an Afghan cultural tradition, and it was meant to be a gesture of reconciliation. And they offload the sheep, and they’re offering to sacrifice it in the very place where the raid had taken place. And then Admiral McRaven goes into the home and says his men were responsible for killing the women and the police commander, and he asks for forgiveness from the head of the family, Haji Sharabuddin. Had a brave photographer named Jeremy Kelly not been there to snap the photographs that you see in our film of Admiral McRaven in Gardez, we may never have known who the actual killers were that day.
And both Jerome Starkey and I have filed Freedom of Information Act requests. We’ve tried to get information out of the U.S. military. My requests have been bounced all around the military. And the most current update I have is months old from them. They said that it’s in an unnamed agency awaiting review. We don’t know if anyone was disciplined for the action. We don’t know if anyone was ever held accountable for the action. All we know is that Admiral McRaven and a bunch of soldiers showed up with a sheep and said, “We did this, and we’re sorry.”
Imagine that terrorists with assault weapons busted up an American party and killed a bunch of people, including pregnant women. Obama would be on TV in a heartbeat to condemn it. I mean, the man gives really good speeches.
Piece of Mindful 
If the slaughter happened in an upscale suburb perhaps. I can think of many locations in the U.S. where Obama will never show his face, regardless of how hideous and violent the living conditions. You can’t fool poor people anymore, so the focus seems to be on middle-class voters. The trick is how to pick their pocket and keep them happy. Speeches still seem to do the trick, bazaar as that may seem. Like Pooh, we’ve circled back to “The Point!” by Harry Nilsson. Young Oblio was the only round-headed person in the land of points, where The Law required that everything had to have a point. Drones and missiles fly, the pep-rally speech is all you’ll ever get.
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Off topic but related to the economy.
I called your dumping of your Apple stock premature, especially before the release of the new I-phone.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-25/apples-flash-dump-last-second-trading-caught-tape
I’m thinking it’ll soon be raining bankers.
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please go back to your last comment elsewhere and explain to us again why fiat currency does not represent real wealth, but that debt represented by fiat currency is real and has to be paid.
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Debt has to be paid in order for this circus to continue. Who the largest debtor? The US, spend 3T takes in 2T borrows 1T.
I’m not going back but weren’t we talking who’s to blame? The banks or government?
Charles Hugh-Smith, author. Quote: Answer these questions before reaching for your ideological blanket:
1. How many banks would loan penniless, near-zero-income students $100,000 if the State did not backstop and ruthlessly enforce its parasitic, exploitive “student loan” programs? Answer: none.
The consequence if the tyrannical State ceased to enforce the debt-serfdom of Student Loans: the Education Cartel would collapse in a odoriferous heap, and the banking Aristocracy would be stripped of a highly profitable State-run business.
2. Under what conditions would banks originate mortgages if the State did not guarantee mortgages via FHA and the other socialized-mortgage agencies? Answer: 30% to 35% down, hefty points and a higher rate of interest than FHA loans.
We can find the answer by examining the conditions banks demand for non-State backed loans. If the State wasn’t backstopping the risk, what bank would be insane enough to originate a 30-year fixed mortgage at 1 point over official inflation and a negative rate when measured in real inflation? It makes no sense without State subsidies and guarantees.
What percentage of the mortgage market is purely private, i.e. not backstopped by FHA et al.? About 5%, and the terms of these private loans are considerably stiffer than those originated under the taxpayer-funded umbrella of FHA.
In other words, debt-serfdom is not possible without the State enabling and enforcing the banks’ power. Blaming the banks for imposing debt-serfdom is like blaming the junkie for picking up a free bag of smack or a shark for wolfing down a seal: the banks will pursue the fattest, easiest profits out of basic self-interest, just like the rest of us.
If the banks can capture the State’s regulatory and political machinery for a modest investment in bribery (oops, I mean political contributions, lobbying and revolving-door positions), then why wouldn’t they do so?
The problem is thus not the banks’ power, it is the State’s power, as the State confers and enforces the banks’ power.
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Swede,
I think you stumbled when you hit “bribery.” Think hard. Who has the greater power, the briber or the bribee, even when both are smiling? The symbiosis is strong as steel, but far from equal. Taxation, for example, a Constitutional right and State essential, is child’s play for evasive, trans-national corporate soverigns like GE or Exxon. Nothing exists in nature quite like K Street.
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Do honorable men take bribes or arrest the briber?
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Swede please explain: You’re saying that non-gold debt currency is worthless, but say that when we denominate debt in this currency it is valuable. You seem to be inserting ideology into your economic outlook. Does fiat currency have value? If not, why does debt matter?
You have to bear down on this now,please.
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Non-gold-debt currency can become worthless thru actions of its controllers. See Zimbabwe.
To truly judge the value of debt try forfeiting it.
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Trying to understand your thoughts here. Your distinction is between gold standard and mere paper. I think you make too much of that. It is real if we decide among ourselves it is real. All currency is at its base faith-based. We cannot operate without it.
Modest inflation is built into the system – they plan for it, and fear deflation like the plague. Massive inflation is only partly a monetary phenomenon. When there is no consumer demand, no borrowing, as we saw in 08 and 09, pumping out currency has no effect, but your Budge said we’d have hyperinflation by 2010. Think about that – he makes a fundamental mistake and needs to rethink his ideas. But he won’t.
It is like pushing a rope. The only control on inflation is at the other end, when the economy heats up, the bankers apply the brakes. Your fears from that standpoint are overstated.
Where debt-based currency has real devastation is the illusion of “debt”, that when the Fed “prints” money, they have to be paid back. That is a control mechanism, and why Greece is under siege – it is not about currency or inflation, but about who controls their government – the people of Greece, or the central bank, or fascism.
Both banks acting alone and governments can abuse currency power. The bubbles we have seen since the late 1990’s are, in case you don’t know the phenomenon, inflation. The stock market went crazy and crashed, the housing market … That is all due to bankers creating money out of whole cloth. The remedy, not totally effective since the world is very complicated, is not a gold standard, but regulation of banks, seizure of control by government. The opposite side of regulation by government is fascism. That is the battle we fight. Gold means nothing. It’s about who controls gold.
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We’re in hyper drive presently.
Quote: When associated with depressions, hyperinflation often occurs when there is a large increase in the money supply not supported by gross domestic product (GDP) growth, resulting in an imbalance in the supply and demand for the money. Left unchecked this causes prices to increase, as the currency loses its value.
1. Small GDP growth, 1 to 2%.
2. US printing money, 902 million in ’09.
3. Real inflation 9%.
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Who the hell are you quoting and why should I give this person any credence?
The Great Recession shrunk the economy by $13 trillion. Reconcile that.
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Investopedia.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hyperinflation.asp#axzz2JDzRMWEG
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Interesting , as it did not happen this time. Or the time before or the time before. Good theory, however.
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Let Banks twist in the wind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51-Jfh6ADH0&feature=player_embedded
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