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Almost 2,500 Now Killed in Obama's Drone Murder Spree

At least 2,464 people have now been killed by US drone strikes outside the country’s declared war zones since President Barack Obama’s inauguration six years ago, the Bureau’s latest monthly report reveals.

Of the total killed since Obama took his oath of office on January 20 2009, at least 314 have been civilians, while the number of confirmed strikes under his administration now stands at 456.

Research by the Bureau also shows there have now been nearly nine times more strikes under Obama in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than there were under his predecessor, George W Bush.

And the covert Obama strikes, the first of which hit Pakistan just three days after his inauguration, have killed almost six times more people and twice as many civilians than those ordered in the Bush years, the data shows.

‘Group-Thinking’ the World into a New War

If you wonder how the lethal “group think” on Iraq took shape in 2002, you might want to study what’s happening today with Ukraine. A misguided consensus has grabbed hold of Official Washington and has pulled in everyone who “matters” and tossed out almost anyone who disagrees.

Part of the problem, in both cases, has been that neocon propagandists understand that in the modern American media the personal is the political, that is, you don’t deal with the larger context of a dispute, you make it about some easily demonized figure. So, instead of understanding the complexities of Iraq, you focus on the unsavory Saddam Hussein. ...

From the start of the Ukraine crisis in fall 2013, the New York Times, the Washington Post and virtually every mainstream U.S. news outlet have behaved as dishonestly as they did during the run-up to war with Iraq. Objectivity and other principles of journalism have been thrown out the window. The larger context of both Ukrainian politics and Russia’s role has been ignored.

Again, it’s all been about demonized “bad guys” – in this case, Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s elected President Vladimir Putin – versus the “pro-Western good guys” who are deemed model democrats even as they collaborated with neo-Nazis to overthrow a constitutional order.

Again, the political is made personal: Yanukovych had a pricy sauna in his mansion; Putin rides a horse shirtless and doesn’t favor gay rights. So, if you raise questions about U.S. support for last year’s coup in Ukraine, you somehow must favor pricy saunas, riding shirtless and holding bigoted opinions about gays.

Anyone who dares protest the unrelentingly one-sided coverage is deemed a “Putin apologist” or a “stooge of Moscow.” So, most Americans – in a position to influence public knowledge but who want to stay employable – stay silent, just as they did during the Iraq War stampede.

The Real Reason the US Military Was So Secretive About Afghanistan

Last week, the New York Times broke a three-month old story on the classification by the American military of previously unclassified Afghan National Security Forces data. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) requested the information as part of an audit of Department of Defense expenditures on Afghan forces. SIGAR, which releases quarterly reports, was asking questions like how much money had been spent on literacy training for the Afghan army, or how many aircraft were currently in the Afghan air force.

In SIGAR's latest report, that information was moved to a classified index available only to officials with certain security clearances. Why? General John F. Campbell, commander of all foreign forces in Afghanistan, wrote in a latter responding to the report: "I cannot comment upon the precise reason why certain information was considered unclassified in the past. However, I am compelled to also protect the lives of those individuals who could be put at risk by the release of sensitive information."

Campbell doesn't want anyone to know how badly things are going in Afghanistan. So he's classified any information related to the capacity of Afghan forces, including how much money is being spent to build the Afghan army. Given the amount of taxpayer dollars that have been funneled into Afghan reconstruction over the years, decreased transparency on how it's being spent is worrisome.

But Campbell's main motivation isn't hiding money. It's hiding people.

Based on the numbers publicly reported last fall, by the end of this year there won't be an Afghan National Army (ANA) left to fight the insurgency. In their reporting on the ANA, the Americans define attrition as "killed in action, death, dropped from rolls, retirements, and separations." Dropped from rolls in this case means "Oh that guy? He quit showing up." The ANA has tended to lose almost 1/3 of its personnel every year to attrition. This isn't a new problem, and it's one that the US has admitted to publicly in the past. But it's getting worse.

Campbell doesn't care if people know how much America spent on literacy training, or how many planes are in the Afghan air force. What he cares about is people knowing that the army that's supposedly taking over for the US is disappearing. It's impossible for the ANA to miss troop strength goals this badly and survive.

These numbers are also why Campbell has been reticent to commit to timelines for withdrawal — it's not just because the Pentagon and the White House don't get along. He knows that soon there won't be an army left to defend Afghanistan, and the grand plans put together by the military to make the political plan work are a frightening failure.

Syriza Official Vows to Kill EU-US Trade Deal as 'Gift to All European People'

An official with Greece's newly elected Syriza party may have sounded the death knell for a proposed EU-U.S. trade deal that has faced a mountain of opposition from civil society.

The deal is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), now facing its eighth round of talks between negotiators this week in Brussels.

The TTIP, which would be the biggest trade deal ever, has been criticized as a corporate-friendly deal that threatens food and environmental safety under the guise of "harmonization" of regulations.

Georgios Katrougkalos, now deputy minister for administrative reform, confirmed what he had told EurActiv Greece ahead of his Syriza party's victory last week: that his parliament would not ratify the trade deal.

"I can ensure you that a Parliament where Syriza holds the majority will never ratify the deal. And this will be a big gift not only to the Greek people but to all the European people," EurActiv reported Monday.