The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a new lawsuit against the Obama administration over continued secrecy surrounding its controversial use of armed drones to carry out lethal strikes and assassinations across the globe.
The Guardian was the first to report news of the fresh lawsuit earlier on Monday.
According to journalist Spencer Ackerman, who was given advance notice of the suit, the ACLU is seeking disclosure from the White House of legal documents and internal memos relating to Obama’s use of drones, with specific attention to how individuals end up on what has become known as the president’s “kill list.”
“Over the last few years, the US government has used armed drones to kill thousands of people, including hundreds of civilians. The public should know who the government is killing, and why it’s killing them,” Jaffer told the Guardian.
The official complaint filed by the ACLU is here and the original FOIA request referenced in the suit is here.
Though the ACLU has filed previous lawsuits and requests for disclosures regarding the administration’s drone program—operated largely by the CIA but also the military’s Joint Special Operations Command—the latest effort to obtain legal justification for the program follows continued secrecy and ongoing “stonewalling” by White House lawyers and other agencies.
In a blog post on Monday, ACLU legal fellow Matthew Spurlock explained why the new suit was needed:
The new lawsuit, reports Ackerman, describes how numerous agencies under Obama’s authority—including the State and Justice Departments, the Pentagon, as well as the CIA—have been stonewalling the ACLU for nearly 18 months.
According to Spurlock, one of the most key aspects of the new lawsuit “is that it covers more recent documents, including the Presidential Policy Guidance under which the targeted killing program likely now operates.”
While lawyers for the Obama administration have argued that national security prevents further disclosures and President Obama has said that internal changes have enhanced the safeguards surrounding the selection of targets and the execution of drone strikes, the ACLU argues the level of secrecy around a program of such profound importance is simply unacceptable in a representative democracy.
As Jaffer explained, there is no “legitimate justification” for the Obama administration to keep secret the number of civilian casualties and the procedures by which individuals, including U.S. citizens, can find themselves on a secret government “kill list.”
“The categorical secrecy surrounding the drone program doesn’t serve any legitimate security interest,” Jaffer told the Guardian. “It serves only to skew public debate, to obscure the human costs of the program, and to shield decision-makers from accountability.”
And as Spurlock concluded, “The government’s drone program lives far too deep in the shadows. As long as the government continues its campaign of secret, unacknowledged lethal strikes across the globe, we will fight to subject this policy to the scrutiny and debate it deserves.”
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An investigation released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch adds to mounting evidence that U.S.-backed forces in Iraq are fueling sectarianism and committing atrocities against Sunnis in the ongoing war on ISIS.
The 31-page report (pdf) focuses on the aftermath of an early September offensive by Iraqi military forces, Shiite militias, and volunteer fighters, directly supported by U.S. airstrikes, which was aimed at clearing ISIS forces in and around the town of Amerli, in northern Iraq. The administration of President Barack Obama touted the operation as a a success story and even called it an “important humanitarian mission.”
However, the HRW investigation tells a different story: of revenge attacks and, according to key witnesses, ethnic cleansing.
For at least two months after ISIS fled the area, Iraqi forces and militias raided Sunni-majority towns near Amerli in Salah al-Din and Kirkuk provinces. This included stealing civilians’ possessions and destroying buildings—and entire villages—through arson, explosives, and demolition. Researchers say at least 11 men were abducted. However, they note, “local residents said many other men of fighting age had gone missing.”
The report states that motives included “revenge attacks against civilians believed to have collaborated with ISIS, and collective punishment against Sunnis and other minorities on the basis of their sect.”
The scale of destruction was staggering, interviews with witnesses and reviews of photo, video, and satellite evidence show.
Satellite imagery reveals arson and demolitions in 30 out of 35 villages within 500 square kilometers of Amerli. However, key witnesses told researchers they believe that at least 47 predominantly Sunni villages fell within this wide path of destruction. Researchers identified more than 3,800 destroyed buildings in 30 towns, including 2,600 ruined by arson and 1,200 destroyed by heavy machinery and explosives. At least two villages were entirely wrecked, and thousands of people were displaced.
A resident of Hufriyya Kabira, identified as J.M., told researchers that, when he returned to his home on September 23, he “saw the village was completely destroyed, from the health center to the newer brick houses, which they destroyed with explosives. They [Iraqi government aligned combatants] also blew up the Asiacell [mobile phone company] tower. The mud houses were burned along with the belongings in the homes and some had been destroyed by bulldozers.”
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Perhaps most telling was that witnesses, displaced people, Peshmerga commanders, and combatants who took part in the operation said that the destruction was “methodical and driven by revenge and intended to alter the demographic composition of Iraq’s traditionally diverse provinces of Salah al-Din and Kirkuk,” according to researchers.
“This report confirms what many people have suspected in the past: that there is a systemic ethnic cleansing campaign that is being led by the Iraqi government and the ethnic and sectarian militias that are fighting alongside Iraqi government forces,” Raed Jarrar, Policy Impact Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, told Common Dreams. “Amerli is nothing more than the tip of the iceberg.”
“This unfortunately is happening with U.S. government support,” Jarrar added. “I don’t think the us should double down and continue supporting an ongoing campaign of war crimes and ethnic cleansing.”
This is not the first time such abuses in the war on ISIS have been unearthed.
In November, HRW documented a massacre by pro-government militias and security forces on a mosque in Diyala province that killed 34 people. And in October, Amnesty International found that Shiite militias, backed by the Iraqi government, are “taking advantage” of a climate of violence and impunity to abduct, execute, and disappear scores of Sunni civilian men.
In addition, there have been numerous reports that the 2,881 U.S. and allied air strikes over the past seven months have killed civilians in Iraq, as well as Syria, but the Pentagon has repeatedly refused to publicly disclose basic information about who is dying under its bombs.
The HRW report is released in the midst of an ongoing massive offensive by Iraqi forces and Shiite militias on the city of Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad.
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The U.S. Department of Energy says it has identified a key culprit behind a radiation leak last year at its underground nuclear dump in southeastern New Mexico: one of the drums contained “chemically incompatible contents,” including the wrong kind of cat litter.
The finding is included in a 277-page report, the product of a year-long investigation into an accident at the federally-owned Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) that released radiation into the air, exposing at least 22 workers, alarming residents of nearby Carlsbad, and leading to a suspension of operations at the site.
According to the investigators, Drum 68660 was the source of the “radioactive contamination” released. It had been packaged with incompatible contents at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico and then sent to the WIPP facility for disposal.
These contents included nitrate salt residues, neutralization agent (triethanolamine), and organic sorbent—an organic brand of cat litter known as Swheat Scoop.
“Experiments showed that various combinations of nitrate salt, Swheat Scoop®, nitric acid, and oxalate self-heat at temperatures below 100°C,” states a summary of the report. “Computer modeling of thermal runaway was consistent with the observed 70-day birth-to-breach of Drum 68660.”
According to NPR, cat litter is widely used at nuclear laboratories because the “absorbent material is great at soaking up liquid nuclear waste.” However, Los Alamos National Laboratory had apparently switched to using the organic brand of litter, which caused the problem.
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And it was no small breach.
Last fall, the DOE estimated that the disaster cost at least $240 million dollars and that it could be years before the site is fully functional.
The incident raised concerns about the safety and sustainability of the dump, which forms the bedrock of the U.S. government’s current approach to dispose of military-generated plutonium-contaminated transuranic waste from decades of nuclear bomb production and testing.
The facility, which stores nuclear waste deep beneath the earth’s surface in salt formations, is the only underground repository for materials above the lowest level of radiation.
The Department of Energy claims on its website that “WIPP has set the standard for safe, permanent disposal of long-lived radioactive defense wastes.”
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Emails expressing opposition to the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules may have been faked by a right-wing group led by a former policy and legislative strategist for the Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity, according to reporting by Politico.
The dark money group American Commitment, led by conservative operative Phil Kerpen, has advocated in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline and against the Affordable Care Act and efforts to decrease hazardous emissions from coal-fired plants. The organization also operates the website ALECpetition.com, which urges people to “reject anti-ALEC bullying.”
“Faking the identities of people is no way to organize a popular campaign. But such underhanded tactics are typical of Net Neutrality opponents.” —Tim Karr, Free Press
On Monday, American Commitment claimed to have mobilized more than half a million people to send 1.6 million pre-written letters asking Congress to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules that reclassify the Internet as a public utility.
But according to Politico‘s senior technology reporter Tony Romm, “a number of messages to lawmakers purporting to be from average constituents…don’t appear to have come from people within their districts.”
Romm writes:
American Commitment denied any wrongdoing.
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But that did little to placate Speier, who declared in a statement: “The idea that an outside group could use consumer data to impersonate constituents suggests an attempt to hijack the important feedback members of Congress need to truly represent their districts.”
She continued: “This is identity theft, but instead of impersonating for financial gain, the originators of this theft are striking at the heart of our representative democracy.”
For Free Press, which is leading the fight for an open Internet and net neutrality protections, the revelations are unsurprising.
“There’s a relatively small community of organizations fighting against net neutrality,” Free Press senior director of strategy Tim Karr said in a statement to Common Dreams. “Most have substantial financial ties to the phone and cable lobby and other monied interests. Few, including Kerpen’s group, aren’t willing to reveal these ties to the public.”
Karr continued: “Over the years, this crowd has made several attempts to demonstrate genuine grassroots opposition to net neutrality and the open Internet. They routinely fail at this, as evidenced by American Commitment’s latest ‘astroturfing.'”
In the wake of the FCC’s vote, Republicans and the anti-net neutrality lobby have launched what Politico previously described as “an all-out political offensive” aimed at undoing the commission’s actions.
As that offensive unfolds, net neutrality supporters are likely to encounter similarly desperate moves, Karr said.
“Faking the identities of people is no way to organize a popular campaign,” he said. “But such underhanded tactics are typical of net neutrality opponents. Theirs is largely a top-down effort, flowing from the coffers of powerful phone and cable companies and anti-democratic billionaires like the Koch brothers, who’d rather see control of the Internet in the hands of a few powerful elites.”
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For the first time, a robot entered the highly radioactive primary containment vessel (PCV) of Reactor 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Friday, in order to investigate the state of its dangerous and damaged interior, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has said.
The plant was heavily damaged by the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated northern Japan. Determining the state of the uranium fuel that powered the station is key to dismantling of the plant, a process expected to take decades.
The Japan Times reports:
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According to the Shanghai Daily:
Robots are being used to explore the site because the task would prove fatal for humans due to lethal levels of radioactivity.
“The radiation level is very high inside the PCV and we assume that the maximum time for investigation is five to six hours each time, though the robot can investigate for 10 hours,” Tomohisa Ito, a spokesman for the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, told IDG News Service via email.
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As Canada’s provincial and territorial leaders meet Tuesday in Quebec City to develop a national energy strategy in the face of federal inaction on climate change, a new report warns that tar sands megaprojects like the Energy East pipeline could hinder the country’s ability to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
“Canada’s premiers have an opportunity to collaborate and provide leadership through a Canadian Energy Strategy,” said Erin Flanagan, an analyst with the Pembina Institute and author of the report, (pdf). “But to achieve shared climate objectives, the provinces will have to address carbon-intensive megaprojects and their consequences in terms of emissions.”
In particular, the think tank singles out tar sands operations, which the report notes are “Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and, as such, the largest barrier to achieving national climate objectives.”
TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline proposal, for example, “would provide an outlet for expanded [tar sands] production at a time when emissions are not adequately regulated—locking Canada in to more emissions growth,” the report reads. The crude oil production needed to fill Energy East could generate up to 32 million tons of carbon emissions each year, the researchers add, an amount roughly equal to the emission reductions Ontario made by phasing out coal-fired power in its province.
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With international climate negotiations set to take place in Paris this December, 2015 is “set to be a significant year for governments around the world working to address climate change,” the report declares, adding that “Canada will have to work hard to overcome its dismal record on climate.”
In an October 2014 report, the auditor general’s office stated that Canada was not on track to meet its international emissions targets because the federal government’s plan to reduce carbon pollution “has been ineffective and the action it has taken has been slow and not well coordinated” among provinces. Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper is known for his dismal record on climate change; in 2014, Jamie Henn of 350.org called the Harper administration “just another member of the carbon cartel.”
It’s up to the country’s premiers to fill the “leadership vacuum” left by Harper’s administration on climate change, the researchers say—and to do so they must “urgently reduce” the climate impacts of continued tar sands development.
“For a multi-province strategy to be credible and effective,” the report reads, “it must take the full emissions footprint of fossil fuel projects into account.”
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A toxic chemical used in the controversial drilling practice known as fracking has been detected in the drinking-water supply of Pennsylvania homeowners, according to a paper published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the chemical—2-Butoxyethanol or 2BE, known to have caused tumors in rodents—showed up as “white foam,” which one researcher “likened to dishwashing suds.”
The PNAS study, , suggests that drilling fluid escaped the narrow, vertical borehole while crews were first drilling the gas well, and then moved laterally along intermediate depth fractures to the aquifer used as a potable water source.
“This is the first case published with a complete story showing organic compounds attributed to shale gas development found in a homeowner’s well,” said Penn State geoscientist Susan Brantley, one of the study’s authors.
Explaining further, she told Lancaster Online: “This is the first documented and published demonstration of toxic compounds escaping from uncased boreholes in shale gas wells and moving long distances” into drinking water.
In other words, Andy Rowell explained in a blog post for Oil Change International, “the scientists believe that the pollution may come from a lack of integrity in the well which passes through the drinking aquifer and not the actual fracking process below.”
Rowell continued:
On Twitter, environmental groups and activists said the news confirmed what fracking opponents already know—that the drilling practice is bad for public health and local ecosystems.
Just last month, researchers in Pennsylvania discovered that the prevalence of radon—a radioactive and carcinogenic gas—in people’s homes and commercial buildings close to fracking sites has increased dramatically over the last decade.
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What better way to advertise military culture—and recruit teenagers—than by staging heartfelt salutes to “hometown heroes” at professional football games in front of thousands of fans?
That, apparently, is what Department of Defense officials thought when they shelled out at least $5.4 million of U.S. taxpayer’ money to 14 NFL teams between 2011 and 2014—to pay them to promote the military on and off the field.
The vast majority of this money was disbursed by the National Guard, journalists Christopher Baxter and Jonathan D. Salant of New Jersey Advance Media revealed in an article published Thursday.
The New York Jets, for example, accepted at least $377,000 between 2011 and 2014 to stage public salutes to veterans. A formal “Statement of Work” agreement between the Jets and the New Jersey National Guard exposes some of the team’s commitments, made between 2012 and 2013, in exchange for money. The following items are quoted from the deal:
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The list of advertising and promotion commitments goes on, as does the roster of teams that have agreed to such deals. The Indianapolis Colts and Baltimore Ravens are among the NFL teams that have engaged in similar transactions with the National Guard.
U.S. Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has jumped on the revelations as examples of “egregious and unnecessary waste of taxpayer dollars by the New Jersey Army National Guard.”
But Matt Stys, an Iraq veteran and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War based in Colorado, told Common Dreams that the revelations point to something far more insidious: the permeation of military propaganda into every aspect of U.S. life.
“I think it’s detrimental to the youth, specifically, seeing these images on a television of the NFL supporting the military,” said Stys. “It indicates to them that adults think this is right.”
“Should we be perpetuating war or should we be looking at peace, understanding, and education?” Stys asked. “We’re not defending our country or freedom—we’re destroying other countries and other countries’ freedoms.”
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Marking the third straight day of demonstrations, tens of thousands protested in Okinawa, Japan on Sunday against the presence and expansion of U.S. military bases on the island.
The massive rally “aimed to pressure Tokyo to halt building work for the military base that has continued despite vehement opposition from the local government in Okinawa,” Al Jazeera reports.
Held in the Okinawa Cellular Stadium, which Stars and Stripes notes is “usually reserved for professional baseball teams, including Major League all-stars when they visit the island,” the event was called ‘Seventy Years After the End of WWII—Stop Construction of a New Military Base at Henoko.’
Okinawa is home to more than half of the 47,000 U.S. service personnel stationed in Japan as part of a defense alliance—a proportion many of the island’s residents have for decades said is too high.
The U.S. military announced plans to move Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in 1996, hoping to ease tensions with the host community after the gang-rape of a schoolgirl by servicemen. A new runway, being built into Oura Bay at the more remote Camp Schwab base near Henoko, is necessary to facilitate the closure of Futenma, which is located in a densely populated urban area of central Okinawa.
But locals have pushed to block the relocation of the base within the island, insisting the facility should be fully removed instead.
“The government says we are to blame that the issue has stalled for 19 years and they tell us to find an alternative place [for the base relocation]. That is outrageous,” shouted the anti-US base mayor of the Okinawa city of Nago, Susumu Inamine. “The government is thrusting their responsibility on us.”
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Agence France Presse notes that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month insisted the current re-location plan was “the only solution,” while anti-base Okinawa governor Takeshi Onaga hit back saying that three recent popular votes in Okinawa all showed overwhelming opposition to the move.
“The current government is pushing the plan. Is it really a democratic country?” said protester Kiku Nakayama, 86, who as a teenager worked as a nurse for soldiers towards the end of World War II. She added: “We have to remove the risks of exposing Okinawa to war again.”
Onaga, who ran on an anti-base platform, reportedly plans to visit Washington, D.C. from May 31 to June 4, in order to voice his concerns to U.S. government officials. He and many protesters say this fight is emblematic of the Abe administration’s creeping militarism.
“Under the ‘proactive pacifism’ endorsed by the Abe’s administration, how long should Okinawa continue to sacrifice itself for the Japan-U.S. defense alliance?” Onaga asked the crowd on Sunday.
As Stars and Stripes reports:
According to journalist Ashoka Jegroo writing at Waging Nonviolence, Sunday’s protesters “dressed in blue to symbolize the sea of Henoko and the Oura Bay. The organizers, who include politicians, labor leaders and members of the business community, vowed to send representatives to Tokyo later this month to deliver a resolution to Abe’s office.”
Separate marches took place on Friday and Saturday in other cities around the island of Okinawa.
View image | gettyimages.com
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In another instance of the “revolving door” between business and politics, it was announced on Tuesday that former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who often distinguished herself as Democrat who openly supported the interests of the Big Oil, will be joining the lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman, which represents some of the industry’s worst offenders.
Sen. Landrieu, in a failed attempt to secure reelection during last year’s runoff vote, pushed for the Senate to force the passage of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. After the announcement Tuesday, observers quickly noted that Van Ness Feldman represents TransCanada, the Canada-based energy company behind the pipeline.
“I am proud to join Van Ness Feldman,” Landrieu said in a statement. “I have always respected the firm and worked closely with them during my 18 years in the Senate.” She will be joining the firm as a Senior Policy Advisor, charged with advising clients on “various public policy, strategic, and regulatory issues with an emphasis on energy, natural resources, and infrastructure matters.”
Responding to the news, Alex Lazar with the money-in-politics disclosure site OpenSecrets.org noted that “the love affair has been mutual.”
“In the 2014 election cycle,” Lazar continues, “Van Ness gave more money to Landrieu in both total donations ($14,350) and from its PAC ($7,500) than to any other member of Congress; the former senator, who lost her seat in a December runoff, collected about 17 percent of the $129,800 the firm’s PAC and employees gave out.”
Though laws prohibit Landrieu from lobbying Congress for two years after her tenure ended in January 2015, she told the Times-Picayune that in the interim she can “lobby members of the executive branch, and is free to provide Van Ness Feldman clients with strategic advice.”
Further, “Landrieu said the job will provide her with the ‘flexibility’ to continue her work for the Walton Family Foundation, advocating on education issues, such as support for charter schools in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and nationally.”
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