சுரங்கத் தொழிலாளர்களைச் சுட்டுப் பொசுக்கும் மண்டேலாவின் ``சுதந்திரம்``!

 

 

சுரங்கத் தொழிலாளர்களைச் சுட்டுப் பொசுக்கும் மண்டேலாவின் ``சுதந்திரம்``

* தம் நாட்டு மூலவளம் மீது தன்னுரிமையற்ற தென்னாபிரிக்க மக்கள்.

* அந்நிய ஏகபோக கம்பெனிகளுக்கு கட்டற்ற அதிகாரம்.

* தொழிலாளர் மீது பாயும் `நிற வெறி` ஆதிக்க கறுப்புச் சட்டங்கள்.

* வேலை நிறுத்தம் சட்டவிரோதம் எனப் பிரகடனம்.

* போராடிய பல்லாயிரக்கணக்கான தொழிலாளர்கள் வேலை நீக்கம்.

* தொழிற்சங்கத் தலைவர் படுகொலை.

* அந்நிய ஏகாதிபத்திய நலன்காக்க, சொந்த நாட்டு தொழிலாளர் மீது அடக்குமுறையை ஏவும், `கறுப்பின அரசு`, `கறுப்பதிகார பொலிஸ்`.

 

Massacre at Marikana: the fight continues in South Africa

 

Mineworkers of the Marikana diamond mine in South Africa are continuing their strike. Their perseverence comes after violent police efforts to suppress the strike, efforts culminating in a horrendous bloodbath on 16 August, when police machinegunned protesting miners, killing 34 and arresting at least 250 of them.

 

[Note: this is the article I wrote for the September issue of Freedom; of course, it's best to buy the issue itself. Here, I publish the version I sent in, with footnotes that did not make it into the printed version. ofcourse, the article is dated because so much has happened since.Author]

 

On 10 August, 3.000 of the 28.000 Marikana miners went on strike to support a wage demand. The strikers belonged to a category of very low-paid miners doing arduous, risky work deep down below. The National Union of Miners (NUM), belonging tot the mainstream union federation COSATU, neglected these workers and their needs. Another union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) took a more militant pose and tried to make itself into the voice of the angry miners. Soon the strike was accompanied by violence between strikers on the one hand, police, security, and NUM supporters being attacked by strikers on the other.

 

But it would be very wrong to blame it all on 'inter-union rivalry'. AMCU sounds more militant and is more in touch. But the battle line is not AMCU versus NUM; the frontline is angry workers pressing a wage demand against management that refuses. A violent impasse followed. Then, police – encouraged by NUM and COSATU – moved into action.

 

They attacked the strikers who had assembled on a nearby hill , some of them armed with nives and the likes, encircled them, tied to disperse them by teargas. A group of strikers refused to disperse and, according to the police version, attack their attackers. Police opened fire with machine guns and shot 34 miners dead in the most ferocious repression against protesting workers in post-Apartheid South Africa. It reminded people of the violence the apartheid regime meted out against protests, for instance in Sharpeville, 1961 and Soweto, 1976. The skin colour of the state-funded murderers had changed, but no much more.

Since the massacre, government-linked progressives like the South African Communist Party (SACP) have supported the police repression, calling the event “not a massacre”, but “a battle”, and the police operation “admirable” (1). Defending capital, the state and the police is more important to these so-called leftists than defending workers in struggle. Different reactions are coming from opoor people in struggle against the authorities, as a solidarity declaration of a slum dwellers organisation shows (2). Meanwhile, Lomnin, the mine owning company, tried to force the miners back to work with an ultimatum that they later softened. However, at the moment of writing – 28 August - the strike is still continuing, while reports of arrested workers having been mistreated by police are now surfacing (3). The angry miners have not been defeated by the massacre. There is more resistance to come.

(1): “The Marikana Massacre: a premeditated killing?”, Benjamin Fogel,, on Libcom.org, 24 August
 (3): “Solidarity with mine workers at Marikana Platinum”,on Libcom.org, 17 August.
 (3): “Tensions as S. African miners continue strikes”, Aljazeera, 27 August.
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South African union leader shot dead near Lonmin mine - NUM

Striking platinum miners wait behind a police cordon at the site where violent clashes overnight left one person dead near the Anglo American Platinum (AMPLATS) mine in Rustenburg in South Africa's North West Province, October 5, 2012.

 

Credit: Reuters/Mike Hutchings

JOHANNESBURG | Fri Oct 5, 2012 9:29pm BST

 

 

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A branch leader of South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was shot dead on Friday near a mine run by platinum producer Lonmin as labour unrest sweeps the mining sector.

 

NUM spokesman Lesiba Seshoka told Reuters the union leader had been killed "execution style" in the evening hours but gave no further details.

 

Earlier on Friday Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) fired 12,000 wildcat strikers, a high-stakes attempt by the world's biggest platinum producer to push back at the illegal stoppages in Africa's biggest economy.
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S.Africa's Amplats fires 12,000 strikers, union leader shot

 

* Amplats fires 12,000 wildcat strikers

* Local NUM leader shot dead near Lonmin

* "Platinum belt" death toll nears 50

* Rand falls as labour unrest spreads

* Shell declares "force majeure"

 

By Agnieszka Flak

 

JOHANNESBURG, Oct 5 (Reuters) - South Africa's Amplats fired 12,000 wildcat strikers on Friday, a high-stakes attempt by the world's biggest platinum producer to push back at a wave of illegal stoppages sweeping through the country's mining sector and beyond.

 

Later on, a trade union leader was shot dead near a mine run by platinum producer Lonmin in a potentially explosive escalation of the two-month-old violent labour unrest that took the death toll to 49.

 

National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) spokesman Lesiba Seshoka said the NUM branch leader had been killed "execution style" in the evening but gave no further details.

 

A six-week stoppage at Lonmin in August and September erupted out of a turf war between the NUM and the more militant Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which accuses the NUM of acting for its government allies rather than its members.

 

The hefty hikes won by workers from that saga has been a red rag to others while anger has been stoked by the killing of 34 miners in a hail of police bullets outside Lonmin's Marikana mine in an incident that evoked apartheid-era shootings.

 

 

The sackings at Amplats (Anglo American Platinum) on Friday triggered a sharp fall in South Africa's rand as investors dumped the country's assets.

 

The rand fell as much as 4 percent to 3-1/2 year lows after Johannesburg markets closed, adding to the mounting toll inflicted on Africa's biggest economy.

 

Strikes have spread beyond the mining sector, with Shell saying on Friday it would not be able to honour contracts to deliver fuel near Johannesburg because of a trucking strike.

 

The unrest is causing political trouble for President Jacob Zuma and his ruling African National Congress (ANC), the veteran liberation movement with long-standing ties to labour unions.

 

"You fire 12,000 people, and it's like 'Oh my god, what happens now?'" one Johannesburg-based currency strategist said.

 

When rival Impala Platinum fired 17,000 workers on an illegal strike rooted in the NUM/AMCU struggle, it led to a violent six week stoppage in which the company lost 80,000 ounces in output and platinum prices jumped 21 percent.

 

The wage deal that followed the killings at the Marikana mine in August triggered copycat demands in gold and iron ore.

 

"Amplats had been giving signals that it was going to hold the line after Lonmin had folded - but it's a huge gamble," said Nic Borain, an independent political analyst.

 

"Someone had to take it on the chin or this would have kept on unravelling and spread through the economy. It's difficult to know whether this causes the unrest to spread or whether it takes some of the sting out of it. It could go either way."

 

Speaking to South Africa's e-News television channel, one dismissed worker said Amplats was "starting a war".

ZUMA UNDER PRESSURE

The ANC Youth League, a fierce critic of Zuma, lashed out at Amplats, which it said "has made astronomical profits on the blood, sweat and tears of the very same workers that today the company can just fire with impunity".

 

"Amplats is a disgrace and a disappointment to the country at large, a representation of white monopoly capital out of touch and uncaring of the plight of the poor," it said.

 

Zuma tried to put a positive spin on the situation in a speech to business leaders late on Thursday, stressing that since the end of white-minority rule South Africans have shown "the capacity to overcome difficulties when we work together".

 

"We should not seek to portray ourselves as a nation that is perpetually fighting," he said.

However, with an ANC leadership run-off looming in December, Nelson Mandela's 100-year-old liberation movement is preoccupied with its own divisions. Zuma is seen as unlikely to take any action that could upset his political allies in the unions.

 

"In the build-up to the election, the government is unlikely to come out with any clear policy directives," said Simon Freemantle, an analyst at Standard Bank in Johannesburg.

 

Reflecting such concerns, Moody's cut South Africa's credit rating last week. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has already said he will have to cut his 2.7 percent growth forecast for 2012 when he delivers an interim budget on Oct. 24.

 

MINER SHOT

 

More than 75,000 miners, or 15 percent of the workforce in a sector that accounts for 6 percent of output, have been out on unofficial strikes, and tensions with security forces and mining bosses were running high even before the mass Amplats sackings.

 

Near the "platinum belt" city of Rustenburg, 120 km (70 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, workers said a miner was killed by a rubber bullet fired by police on Thursday night.

 

Police would not confirm the cause of the death, although the ground nearby was strewn with spent rubber-bullet shell casings and teargas canisters after clashes the previous night.

 

On Friday, protesters in a shanty town near the Amplats mine barricaded streets with rocks and burning tyres as more than 30 riot police backed by armoured vehicles stood nearby.

 

AngloGold Ashanti, South Africa's biggest bullion producer, has lost virtually all local production due to wildcat strikes, while rivals Gold Fields and Harmony Gold have also taken a hit. Around 300 strikers at Kumba Iron Ore have also blockaded the company's giant Sishen mine in the remote Northern Cape province.

 

Apart from the mining sector, a strike with more potential to damage the wider economy is brewing in transport, with 20,000 truckers on a two-week authorised stoppage to demand higher pay.

 

Shell said on Friday it could not honour fuel delivery contracts around Johannesburg, declaring "force majeure" to free itself and customers from existing obligations.

 

"There is fuel available across the country, so the issue is not fuel supply, but the challenge is delivering it safely to our retail sites," the oil major said. Other petrol companies are holding their breath, especially around the commercial hub Johannesburg, but have not yet followed Shell's move.

Raising the stakes, transport union SATAWU said it wanted workers at railways and ports to strike next week, a development that would affect coal and other mineral shipments.

Solidarity ship launches to Gaza with calls for freedom for Sa’adat and Palestinian prisoners

Solidarity ship launches to Gaza with calls for freedom for Sa’adat and Palestinian prisoners

Posted: 08 Oct 2012 09:51 AM PDT

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine congratulated solidarity activists in Naples, Italy and around the world on the launch of the “Estelle,” the Ship to Gaza organized by Swedish solidarity activists, from Naples to Gaza after a tour of several months through European ports building for its journey to break the siege. The Estelle launched on October 6, 2012 from Naples.

Three days of events took place in Naples leading to the launch of the ship, including marches in solidarity with Palestine and its people, including Palestinian prisoners and in particular Comrade Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned Palestinian national leader and General Secretary of the PFLP.

Solidarity activists held a concert in Naples to support the Palestinian cause, in which they raised the images of Palestinian prisoners, including Comrade Sa’adat. Mayor Luigi de Magistres came to the ship’s berthing to show support for the ship and its mission, and evening screenings and discussions brought many people to see the ship before its departure.

On Saturday morning, over 2000 rallied in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in support of the ship’s mission to break the siege on Gaza, as the ship prepared to depart in the evening. 17 activists from Sweden, Norway, Canada and the US are traveling on the ship; it will take approximately one to two weeks to reach Gaza. This is the first attempt to break the blockade by sea since the Tahrir’s sailing in November of last year, and the occupation military is once again threatening to storm the ship and detain its crew and passengers as it has with previous solidarity ships to Gaza. In August and October 2008, two ships successfully broke the blockade; since that time, solidarity ships have been attacked by the Israeli army including the attack on the Mavi Marmara in May 2010, when occupation forces killed nine solidarity activists as they sailed to challenge the blockade of Gaza.

On the Day of the Heroic Guerilla, we remember Che Guevara - PFLP

On the Day of the Heroic Guerilla, we remember Che Guevara
Posted: 09 Oct 2012 01:03 AM PDT

On October 8, 2012, the Day of the Heroic Guerilla, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) remembers Comandante Ernesto “Che” Guevara, revolutionary leader, fierce fighter, and principled struggler whose true commitment to internationalism and liberation lives on in the struggles of peoples around the world for freedom, justice and socialism.

Following the revolutionary victory in Cuba in 1959, Che’s commitment to international revolution did not diminish, and he joined Bolivian revolutionaries in 1966. On October 8, 1967, Che and his comrades were captured and surrounded by the US-backed Bolivian military, and executed.
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“Let us sum up our hopes for victory: total destruction of imperialism by eliminating its firmest bulwark: the oppression exercised by the United States of America…And if we were all capable of uniting to make our blows stronger and infallible and so increase the effectiveness of all kinds of support given to the struggling people – how great and close would that future be!… Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine-guns and new battle cries of war and victory.”
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Nine days later, Fidel Castro spoke, memorializing Che and commemorating October 8 as the Day of the Heroic Guerilla, saying “Che died defending no other interest, no other cause than the cause of the exploited and oppressed of this continent. Che died defending no other cause than the cause of the poor and humble of this earth … Before history, people who act as he did, people who do and give everything for the cause of the poor, grow in stature with each passing day and find a deeper place in the heart of the people with each passing day.”

In Palestine, Che’s spirit, his commitment to liberation, rises in the streets of our occupied homeland. We mourn and honor our Guevara Gaza, Mohammad al-Aswad, and the thousands of Palestinian Guevaras, the eternal martyrs, who have struggled, fought, sacrificed and died for the liberation of Palestine, and the thousands of Palestinian Guevaras still to come, to hold high the banner of the resistance until the day of victory is ours.

On the 45th anniversary of Che’s death, we remember him as one of the martyrs of Palestine, a great martyr for the freedom of the oppressed of the world. And we continue to live his words: “Let us sum up our hopes for victory: total destruction of imperialism by eliminating its firmest bulwark: the oppression exercised by the United States of America…And if we were all capable of uniting to make our blows stronger and infallible and so increase the effectiveness of all kinds of support given to the struggling people – how great and close would that future be!… Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine-guns and new battle cries of war and victory.”

Che Guevara Presente! Viva viva Palestina!

Murder by drone: the U.S. terror war in Pakistan

''Obama is just as criminal as the terrorists he claims to fight!''

===========================

Murder by drone: the U.S. terror war in Pakistan

8 October 2012. A World to Win News Service. As American drones occupy the skies across Pakistan's North Waziristan, the U.S. is continuing to lie about the many hundreds of ordinary people blasted to pieces or incinerated and the terrorizing of the entire population.

Most recently, an American embassy official in Pakistan insisted that protests against the drone strikes were unjustified in light of "the extreme process that is undertaken to avoid what is very sadly called 'collateral damage.'" Although not allowed to reveal classified information, he said, the number of civilian casualties is "quite low" – "in the two figures." (Guardian, 7 October) This statement was meant to counter international news coverage of a convoy of  hundreds of people from all over Pakistan and dozens of Western antiwar activists (including women from the U.S. group Code Pink) heading for a town in South Waziristan to demonstrate against the drone attacks and the Pakistani government's complicity.

The report Living Under Drones issued by two U.S. academic research groups in September paints a very different picture.

"[F]rom June 2004 through mid- September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children... These strikes also injured an additional 1,228-1,362 individuals" (According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent non-profit news reporting agency based at City University in London whose data and methodology the report reviewed and found valid.)

The discrepancy is partially explained by the fact that "for the purpose of tracking civilian casualties, the [U.S.] government presumes that all military-age males killed in drone strikes are combatants." The report demonstrates that this is not true. Yet even the most narrow interpretation of Washington's claim, that it has recorded a "quite low" number of civilian casualties, may be a lie within a lie, since the exact figures, the identities of the human beings they represent and the circumstances of their death are all cloaked in secrecy.

Who was killed and how they died was the aim of an investigation project by law clinics at the Stanford Law School in California and the New York University Law School. Their report (available at livingunderdrones.org) was based on "nine months of intensive research – including two investigations in Pakistan, more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and  review of thousands of pages of documentation and media reporting".

Their conclusions are moderate to a fault. Instead of calling for an end to the drone war, "this report recommends that the U.S. conduct a fundamental re-evaluation of current targeted killing practices, taking into account all available evidence, the concerns of various stakeholders, and the short and long-term costs and benefits." 

"Costs and benefits" for who and for what goals? By arguing on this basis, the report ignores the question of the purpose and legitimacy of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and the drone war in neighbouring North Waziristan that is a consequence and adjunct to that occupation. It also avoids the broader question of the ensemble of open and covert wars that the U.S. ruling classes are waging or threatening to wage throughout the "Greater Middle East" to protect and extend their global empire, no matter which party is in office.

By way of analogy, if someone were to reason that strikes on civilians in the West go against Al-Qaeda's overall (also reactionary) aims, this would be considered a cynical calculation and few people would be impressed by its moral stance.

But whether those involved in this report really believe in this "costs and benefits" approach or just feel that this is the only way their arguments will have impact, their careful review of the facts and first-hand accounts provide not only a damning account of the cruelty of U.S. conduct, but also evidence that this cruelty has a political purpose – that these deaths are not just "collateral damage" but rather part of a war-fighting strategy based on terrorizing the people of an entire region with no distinctions among them.

Living under drones describes a 2006 drone attack on a religious school in Bajaur that killed more than 80 people, 69 of them children. In another section, it reveals what really happened in what authorities described as a strike against a militant "house" where "a group of some three dozen alleged Taliban fighters were meeting".

"According to those we interviewed, on March 17 [2011], some 40 individuals gathered [in an open-air bus depot] in Datta Khel town centre. They included important community figures and local elders, all of whom were there to attend a jirga – the principal social institution for decision-making and dispute resolution in [the region]... convened to settle a dispute over a nearby chromite mine. All of the relevant stakeholders and local leaders were in attendance, including 35 government-appointed tribal leaders known as maliks, as well as government officials, and a number of khassadars (government employees administered at the local level by maliks who serve as a locally recruited auxiliary police force). Four men from a local Taliban group were also reportedly present, as their involvement was necessary to resolve the dispute effectively. Malik Daud Khan, a respected leader and decorated public servant, chaired the meeting...

"Though drones were hovering daily over North Waziristan, those at this meeting said they felt 'secure and insulated' from the threat of drones, because in their assessment at the time, 'drones target terrorists or those working against the government.' ...the maliks had even taken care to alert the local military post of the planned jirga ten days beforehand.

"At approximately 10:45 am, as the two groups were engaged in discussion, a missile fired from a U.S. drone hovering above struck one of the circles of seated men. Ahmed Jan, who was sitting in one of two circles of roughly 20 men each, told our researchers that he remembered hearing the hissing sound the missiles made just seconds before they slammed into the centre of his group. The force of the impact threw Jan's body a significant distance, knocking him unconscious, and killing everyone else sitting in his circle. Several additional missiles were fired, at least one of which hit the second circle. In all, the missiles killed a total of at least 42 people. One of the survivors from the other circle, Mohammad Nazir Khan, told us that many of the dead appeared to have been killed by flying pieces of shattered rocks.

"Another witness, Idris Farid, recalled that 'everything was devastated. There were pieces – body pieces – lying around. There was lots of flesh and blood.'...'None of the elders who had attended had survived.''' All their family members "could do was 'to collect pieces of flesh and put them in a coffin.'"

Other incidents described involve drones firing at cars and taxis, killing people so often for reasons unknown to local people that any travel is considered dangerous.

People in North Waziristan, a tribal area where most people work in subsistence agriculture or trading, have come to avoid all public gatherings, such as mosques and even funerals, which seem to be a particular target. People are afraid to sit together outside; even children cannot play together and few people venture out at night. Many parents no longer let their children attend school for fear of drone strikes.

A humanitarian aid worker in Waziristan told the investigators, "Do you remember 9/11? Do you remember what it felt like right after? I was in New York on 9/11. I remember people crying in the streets. People were afraid about what might happen next. People didn't know if there would be another attack. There was tension in the air. This is what it is like. It is a continuous tension, a feeling of continuous uneasiness. We are scared. You wake up with a start to every noise."

Not only are people terrorized by what seems like random killings, they cannot forget the danger for a second because of the constant presence of drones, sometimes three or four visible at once. They circle in the sky, buzzing, all day, except when it rains. No one knows when they will fire, nor at whom.

One reason for the relatively low number of casualties in relation to deaths seems to be that the Hellfire missiles these drones shoot are thermobaric, far more destructive than ordinary explosives. The pressure wave produced by the blast alone may blow people apart in a circle as much as 20 metres in every direction, but the spray of burning aluminium and metal fragments can kill at an even greater distance. Often there is little left of the victims.

The nature of these missiles alone discredits the U.S. government's claim that these are "surgical" strikes. But the whole way targeting works also needs to be more widely understood. There are supposedly two types, "personality" and "signature".

"Personality" targets are when the U.S. puts particular individuals on a death list based on all sorts of "intelligence", including paid local informers who may have their own agenda. This was the main focus of drone strikes in Pakistan under the Bush administration.

Since Barack Obama took office, there has been a radical increase in the number of drone strikes (45-52 under Bush in 2001-09, 292 in just three and a half years under Obama). He has taken personal charge of approving who is on the kill list and all decisions to go ahead whenever the CIA does not have "a 'near certainty' that there will be zero civilian deaths."

At the same time, under Obama's leadership there has been what Living Under Drones calls "a reported expansion in the use of 'signature' strikes," which it also calls "profiling" and "guilt by association." Under the "pattern of life analysis", groups of men whose identities are not known but who meet certain "defining characteristics" can be killed on sight. These "signature characteristics" are secret, but seem to involve being "in an area of known terrorist activity", being in the vicinity of someone considered a "top Al-Qaeda operative" (which, as the strike on  the jirga at Datta Khel demonstrates, can include the many, many thousands of people who might find themselves, at one time or another, at a gathering, a market or a street where someone linked to the many armed Islamist groups might also be found), or even, according to knowing jokes repeated in the report, "three guys doing jumping jacks" or "young men with stubble."

There is another element in this picture indicating that civilian deaths are not just accidental "collateral damage" but the deliberate result of U.S. policy: what American authorities cynically call "double tapping", the practice of following up on one missile strike with another one or more, minutes or even hours later, with the clear intent of killing relatives and neighbours frantically searching through the rubble for survivors and loved ones, "looking for the children in the beds", and trained rescue workers.

The report says, "According to a health professional familiar with North Waziristan, one
humanitarian organization had a 'policy to not go immediately [to a reported drone
strike] because of follow up strikes. There is a six hour mandatory delay.' According
to the same source, therefore, it is 'only the locals, the poor, [who] will pick up the
bodies of loved ones.'"

The authors emphasize that "attacks on first responders may constitute war crimes." But their report also provides factual ammunition for the argument that not only this particularly repulsive aspect but the U.S.'s whole drone war in Pakistan in general (along with the use of drones in Yemen and Somalia) is a war crime.

First of all, many careful readers of the report will conclude that killing non-combatants is not just an accidental result of policy but an American policy in itself. Secondly, even if certain known individuals are in some way tied to armed groups, the fact that their names can remain on a "kill list" for a long time means that targeting them runs counter to the international law that apologists for the U.S. government cite to justify these killings. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter considers the use of force in or against another country to be justifiable self-defence only when it is a response to an ongoing armed attack or an imminent threat, which is described as "instant, overwhelming and leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation."

There is no moral justification for the U.S. drone war in Pakistan, and no apparent legal justification for it either. (The Obama government claims that it has a written legal opinion authorizing its actions, but its contents are secret!)  The U.S. is not legally at war with Pakistan. This is why the drone war is being waged by the CIA and not the regular armed forces, and why the American government has to treat it as secret, even though everyone in Pakistan knows, as does everyone in the U.S. and elsewhere who wants to know.

In fact, the U.S. is still mainly allied with the Pakistani government (and especially the Pakistani military), despite serious contradictions. For the first three years of the drone war in Pakistan, then President Pervez Musharraf publicly pretended that the strikes were "either Pakistani military operations, car bombs, or accidental explosions." Since then it has found itself caught between outraged public opinion demanding an end to the strikes and an unyielding U.S. government.

One of the most damning, though little noticed, parts of this report is a timeline that correlates the intensity of U.S. drone activity with friction between the two governments, especially around Pakistan's arrest of CIA contractor Raymond Davis for gunning down two men in the street. At first the U.S. halted the drones "to avoid angering a population already riveted by Davis' arrest"; then, when negotiations between the Musharraf and Obama governments stalled, it launched 11 strikes in succession until the Pakistani government finally released Davis. Relying on the U.S. Congressional Research Service, the report cites this as one of three incidents in which "[m]essaging to Pakistan appears to continue to be part of the [drone] programme's intent."

In other words, at least part of the reason why the U.S. is killing people in Pakistan has little to with even perceived military necessity but is in fact aimed at pressuring Pakistani "deciders", not because the Pakistani ruling classes and armed forces care about the lives of ordinary Pakistanis or anyone else, but because when the U.S. kills civilians in their country it makes their government look bad and provokes popular anger.

If terrorism is defined as the deliberate killing of civilians for political ends, this is an unmistakable  "signature" of a terrorist operation.

The "cost" and "downside" of the drone strikes, the report warns, is that they "have facilitated recruitment to violent non-state armed groups, and motivate attacks against both U.S. military and civilian targets." This is undoubtedly true. It is also undeniably true, as the report says, that these armed Islamic fundamentalists are doing great harm as they seek to impose their rule over the people.

This report should help us understand that what the U.S. is doing in Pakistan and around the world is actually helping propel the jihadi movement. At the same time, however, although it exposes the harm caused by the U.S. with its drone war, the report does not take into account the even greater harm done by the American occupation of Afghanistan and decades-long domination of Pakistan, including its support for Pakistan's military and ruling classes and the Islamization of the country that was initially meant to make U.S. domination palatable. For both of these reasons, we should be very clear that the U.S. is the biggest terrorist of all.
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