Yet More Evidence Of War Crimes

“On a sultry evening in August 2012, five men gathered under a cluster of date palms near the local mosque in Khashamir, a village of stone and mud houses in southeastern Yemen,” Letta Tayler writes for Foreign Policy. “Two of the men were locals and well known in their community. The other three were strangers.
“Moments later, U.S. drones tore across the sky and launched four Hellfire missiles at the men. The first three missiles killed four of the men instantly, blasting their body parts across the grounds of the mosque. The final strike took out the fifth man as he tried to crawl to safety.
“Yemen’s Defense Ministry described the three strangers as members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a group that the United States calls al-Qaeda’s most active branch. The men were killed, ministry officials said, while ‘meeting their fellows.’
“But these two ‘fellows’ had no known links to AQAP. Rather, they were precisely the kind of Yemenis that the United States has sought as allies in its fight against al-Qaeda. One, Salim Jaber, was a 42-year-old cleric and father of seven who preached against violence committed in the name of Islam. The other was the cleric’s 26-year-old cousin Walid Jaber, one of the village’s few police officers.
“Just three days before his death, Salim Jaber had delivered a particularly adamant sermon against AQAP at the Khashamir mosque. The three strangers then showed up in the village in search of the cleric, relatives of the Jabers said. Fearful that the men might be seeking revenge for his sermon, Salim met with them only after his cousin offered to accompany him for protection.
“Salim Jaber is yet another innocent casualty in America’s covert war on terror. His case is one of six that I document in a new report for Human Rights Watch about the toll of America’s largely unacknowledged air strikes in Yemen. All six strikes were so-called targeted killings, the deliberate slaying of a specific person by a government under color of law. All six raise questions about the legality of the Obama administration’s targeted killing program. All six help explain why many Yemenis fear the United States more than they fear AQAP.”

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Posted on October 23, 2013

By Charles Ornstein/ProPublica

Last week, Ryan Lizza, a Washington correspondent with the New Yorker, did what I and many other journalists have done in the past three weeks: He attempted to sign up for an account on healthcare.gov, the federal government’s health insurance marketplace site.
And like me, at least, he initially thought he had succeeded. What follows is an instructive lesson in the speed of the news cycle and how incorrect information takes on a life of its own.
Here’s what happened:

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Posted on October 22, 2013

By Steve Rhodes

Remember when Barack Obama was going to restore our relations with the rest of the world? It hasn’t quite worked out that way.
*
“The U.S. National Security Agency swept up 70.3 million French telephone records in a 30-day period, according to a newspaper report that offered new details of the massive scope of a surveillance operation that has angered some of the country’s closest allies,” AP reports.
France is pissed.

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Posted on October 21, 2013

By Natasha Julius

Governor Pat Quinn’s blue-ribbon commission on transit reform is due to issue its first report by Friday. This week we’ll give you four recommendations of our own that just might fix this mess.
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Suggestion #1: Kill Metra.
Suggestion #2: Look At A Fucking Map.
Suggestion #3: Invest In What’s Already Here.
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Suggestion #4: Put the Public in Public Transit.
The demise of the Jackson Park Green Line has been in the news recently due to Mayor Emanuel’s proposal to rename Stony Island Avenue in honor of Bishop Arthur Brazier. Most of these stories have focused on the 1997 demolition of the elevated structure east of Cottage Grove. However, the struggle over the last leg of track began much earlier.
In a sense, the Jackson Park line was always disposable. Built to serve the World’s Fair in 1893, the tracks originally extended into the park itself. The line was awkwardly and unceremoniously hacked off at Stony Island shortly after the Fair ended, and Stony remained the terminal for nearly 90 years.

View Former Jackson Park Line in a larger map

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Posted on October 18, 2013

By Natasha Julius

Governor Pat Quinn’s blue-ribbon commission on transit reform is due to issue its first report by Friday. This week we’re presenting four recommendations of our own that just might fix this mess.
–
Suggestion #1: Kill Metra.
Suggestion #2: Look At A Fucking Map.
–
Suggestion #3: Invest In What’s Already Here.
There is a set of train tracks running in front of the Cook County Court building along 26th. Remnants of an elevated embankment cut across the city’s midsection south of Pershing. In Chicago and the near suburbs, abandoned rail lines form an elaborate web of disintegrating infrastructure all around us. The potential of these resources to galvanize our transportation system is enormous; wherever possible, they should be given over for public use.
The reclamation of rail rights-of-way is not a new idea. The CTA’s Orange Line and Metra’s North Central were built using existing freight tracks. Planned extensions of the Orange, Red and Yellow lines would use similar strategies. Existing corridors within the city could alleviate the paucity of decentralized connections. They could add tremendous capacity to our mass transit systems without diminishing capacity on surface roads.
Determining which existing lines are eligible for redevelopment is a daunting task. Often abandoned tracks are mixed in with others that are still in use. Trying to sort out which tracks are owned by whom quickly leads you into a black hole of railroad consolidation history. The suggestions given below involve only rights-of-way that have been acknowledged as abandoned in the public record, or those that show visible signs of advanced deterioration. There may be many more; all should be pursued.

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Posted on October 16, 2013

By Natasha Julius

Governor Pat Quinn’s blue-ribbon commission on transit reform is due to issue its first report by Friday. This week we’re presenting four recommendations of our own that just might fix this mess.
–
Suggestion #1: Kill Metra.
–
Suggestion #2: Look At A Fucking Map
Maps may be humanity’s defining achievement. Other species use tools, communicate with complex language and mourn their dead. But who else draws abstract pictures that represent their relationship to their surroundings?
Maps show more than just where things are. They show where things were and where things might be; how the disparate parts of a whole are linked; and how new parts will be added. If you look very closely, sometimes you can also see the missed connections, the regions that the shapers of that reality neglected. The unfulfilled potential of a place.
Looking at a map of Chicago’s mass transit system is both exhilarating and infuriating. Few other places boast the wealth of infrastructure we have here. And yet, outside the Loop, none of these resources connect with each other in any meaningful way. Great varicose tangles of rail twist their way past one another, never interacting, never offering their passengers the benefit of the other’s riches.
Truly strong public transit systems support the communities through which they pass and offer maximum flexibility. They don’t just dump everyone in the middle of town and forget about them. The Loop is a natural hub in Chicago due to its central location. But if you look at a map, if you spend a few minutes applying your imagination, a second tier of local mini-hubs begins to emerge. With fairly modest changes, these areas could offer innovative new ways to travel throughout the Chicagoland area. Every single decision-maker at CTA and Metra should be forced to stare unblinking at a map of Chicago every day until these Magic Eye patterns pop out at them.

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Posted on October 15, 2013

By Cora Currier/ProPublica

The United States is loosening controls over military exports, in a shift that former U.S. officials and human rights advocates say could increase the flow of American-made military parts to the world’s conflicts and make it harder to enforce arms sanctions.
Starting today, thousands of parts of military aircraft, such as propeller blades, brake pads and tires, will be able to be sent to almost any country in the world, with minimal oversight – even to some countries subject to U.N. arms embargoes.

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Posted on October 15, 2013

By Charles Ornstein/ProPublica

Since the federal health insurance exchange has launched, top federal officials have told interviewers that they do not know how many people have been able to enroll using the healthcare.gov website.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Oct. 4, President Obama said: “Well, I don’t have the numbers yet.”
Then, appearing on the Daily Show on Oct. 7, the Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she didn’t have the information either. “I can’t tell you because I don’t know.”

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Posted on October 15, 2013

By Natasha Julius

Governor Pat Quinn’s blue-ribbon commission on transit reform is due to issue its first report by Friday. This week we’ll give you four recommendations of our own that just might fix this mess.
Suggestion #1: Kill Metra
There are two Metras: the commuter rail system that serves millions of people in the Chicagoland area, and the obtuse, intensely political, hopelessly anachronistic corporate behemoth that serves the interests of a few well-connected individuals. In order for the former to thrive, the latter must be destroyed.

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Posted on October 14, 2013

Another Beachwood Special Report

* Too hard to pronounce.
* No one wants a faster way to Indiana.
* Late momentum for Hawk Harrelson Expressway instead.
* Required stop at John Mellencamp’s house not deemed efficient.
* They refuse to move the cemeteries, only the headstones.
* It’s just too ill.

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Posted on October 12, 2013