Fault Lines

C.I.A. Leaves Pakistan Base Used for Drone Strikes

“C.I.A. Claim of No Civilian Deaths from Drones Is Disputed,” NYT, August 11, 2011.

WASHINGTON — On May 6, a Central Intelligence Agency dronefired a volley of missiles at a pickup truck carrying nine militants and bomb materials through a desolate stretch of Pakistan near the Afghan border. It killed all the militants — a clean strike with no civilian casualties, extending what is now a yearlong perfect record of avoiding collateral deaths.

Or so goes the United States government’s version of the attack, from an American official briefed on the classified C.I.A. program. Here is another version, from a new report compiled by British and Pakistani journalists: The missiles hit a religious school, an adjoining restaurant and a house, killing 18 people — 12 militants, but also 6 civilians, known locally as Samad, Jamshed, Daraz, Iqbal, Noor Nawaz and Yousaf.

“C.I.A. Leaves Pakistan Base Used for Drone Strikes,” NYT, December 11, 2011.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Central Intelligence Agency has vacated an air base in western Pakistan that it had been using for drone strikes against militants in the country’s tribal areas, the Pakistani military said on Sunday.

Pakistan had ordered the C.I.A. to leave the Shamsi air base in protest over NATO airstrikes that killed at least 25 Pakistani soldiers near the border with Afghanistan on Nov. 26. Pakistan has also blocked all NATO logistical supplies from crossing the border into Afghanistan since the clash.

Pentagon and Obama administration officials declined to comment publicly on the departure from the Shamsi air base.

But a senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the drone operations at Shamsi were classified, said that vacating the base would not end American counterterrorism operations in Pakistan. “The United States retains robust capabilities to fight Al Qaeda and its militant allies,” the official said. “Our operations will continue.”

Our Fault Lines episode on drones, “Robot Wars,” airs Monday, December 26, 2011 at 2230 GMT/5:30p EST. Watch online.

Source: The New York Times

For eight months, starting last November, [Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed] was the prime minister of his native country, Somalia, one of the most chaotic nations on earth. And then, as suddenly as he had left, he was back in his cubicle at the Transportation Department [in Buffalo, NY), where he makes sure the department’s contracts and contractors comply with nondiscrimination and affirmative action requirements.

After Serving as Somalia’s Prime Minister, Back to Work in Buffalo - NYTimes.com (via taylordavidson)

Here’s our episode on Somalia and the current famine crisis from last week and how those issues are related to and impacted by US policies.

(via taylordavidson)

In Colombia, New Gold Rush Fuels Old Conflict

elizadoolittle:

The New York Times published this report a few days after I’d started looking into the high price of gold for the next episode of Fault Lines. We discovered the gold rush was consuming not only Antioquia, but the entire country — especially lands historically belonging to the afro-Colombians, descendants of slaves. The next air date is July 4, 22:30GMT — that’s 6:30EST.

- #aje
- #ajenglish
- #aljazeera
- #colombia
- #gold
- #rush
- #journ
- #reporting
- #news
- #NYT
- #antioquia
- #ajfaultlines
1 year ago > elizadoolittle
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Murder Rate and Fear Rise in Puerto Rico

LOÍZA, P.R. — As people strolled past the Alambique liquor store here recently, the puddle of blood and the bullet-shattered storefront behind it scarcely merited a glance. Yet another young man had been shot. Yet another tally would be added to the record books.

For Roberto Clemente, who lives down the street from the crime scene, such casual acceptance illustrates just how deeply Puerto Ricans have been shaken by the island’s murder wave.

“Enough is enough,” said Mr. Clemente, 59, who works for the town doing cleanup duties, as he motioned toward the liquor store. “We live unsafely in our homes. The cops know who did what, but there are no witnesses. Even if you see who did it, you stay quiet.”

Read the NYT article from June 20, 2011.

The Fault Lines episode on the economic situation and the ensuing conditions first airs Monday, June 27, 2011 2230 GMT on Al Jazeera English online.

Source: The New York Times

- #aje
- #ajenglish
- #ajfaultlines
- #nyt
- #puerto rico
- #murder
- #fear
- #news
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Jimmy Carter: Call Off the Global Drug War

In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.

This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.

The commission’s facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment “with models of legal regulation of drugs … that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.” For effective examples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.

But they probably won’t turn to the United States for advice. Drug policies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other democracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations. At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million. There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole — more than 3 percent of all American adults!

(via progressivelyminded-deactivated)

Drug Bust

Friday marks the 40th anniversary of one of the biggest, most expensive, most destructive social policy experiments in American history: The war on drugs.

On the morning of June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon, speaking from the Briefing Room of the White House, declared: “America’s public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive. I have asked the Congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of an offensive. This will be a worldwide offensive dealing with the problems of sources of supply, as well as Americans who may be stationed abroad, wherever they are in the world.”

So began a war that has waxed and waned, sputtered and sprinted, until it became an unmitigated disaster, an abomination of justice and a self-perpetuating, trillion-dollar economy of wasted human capital, ruined lives and decimated communities.

…

An effort meant to save us from a form of moral decay became its own insidious brand of moral perversion — turning people who should have been patients into prisoners, criminalizing victimless behavior, targeting those whose first offense was entering the world wrapped in the wrong skin. It feeds our achingly contradictory tendency toward prudery and our overwhelming thirst for punishment.

Last week, the Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a 19-member commission that included Kofi Annan, a former U.N. secretary general; George Shultz, President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state; and Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, declared that: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the U.S. government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.”

read the rest of “Drug Bust” by Charles M. Blow, NYT, June 10, 2011

Source: The New York Times

C.I.A. Leaves Pakistan Base Used for Drone Strikes

In Colombia, New Gold Rush Fuels Old Conflict

Murder Rate and Fear Rise in Puerto Rico

Jimmy Carter: Call Off the Global Drug War

Drug Bust

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