*A joint statement published on the occasion of Obama’s visit to Athens, Greece by Void Network (https://voidnetwork.gr/) and the CrimethInc. ex-Workers’ Collective (USA)

Today, November 14, outgoing US President Barack Obama arrives in Greece. Speaking from both the United States and Greece, we call on every partisan of freedom to participate in the night demonstration called for Athens on November 15 / starts from Athens Polytechnic at 17.30 .

It is symbolic that Obama is visiting Greece on his farewell tour. The Balkans have served as a laboratory for neoliberalism and US military interventions since the late 20th century; Greece in particular has undergone a global experiment of crisis management and repression. As war draws closer and closer—Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Turkey—the Balkans are expected to serve Europe and the US as a buffer zone while suffering the same abuse as the periphery.

Now that the pipe dream of universal economic growth has come to an end, giving way to a vista of chaos and climate catastrophe, we can see that the new order will only be stabilized by the empty promises of politicians and the brute force of the police and military: by the ballot and the bullet. The buffer zone is getting smaller and smaller, and the United States is not exempt—the same National Guard sent to Iraq have already been deployed in Baltimore. Now is the time to fight, before the situation grows any worse.

In expressing shock and outrage about the election of Donald Trump, many on the Left have obscured the systemic nature of the problem. By taking action against the Democratic favorite of the US, we show that our opposition is not directed against any particular representative, but against the state and capitalism themselves. In the pleas Clinton and Obama have made for a “peaceful transition of power” to a man they declared unfit to rule, we see the collusion of liberals who would rather preserve the apparatus of the state even in the hands of outright fascists than permit real freedom to emerge.

Indeed, as the candidate of supposed “Hope” and “Change,” Obama not only preserved the structures of power, but persuaded many of the people who are most targeted by the system to invest more faith and resources in those structures—which will now be used to repress them more aggressively than ever. Just as we reject the false solutions of Syriza, we understand that Obama’s reputation as a “good” politician has only made him more dangerous to those he purports to protect. Those who promise a more “inclusive” neoliberalism today pave the way for tomorrow’s fascism.

Obama has deported two and a half million people, as many as all the US Presidents of the 20th century combined—turning Mexico and Central America into a detention center for the population capitalism has no use for. Just as we act in solidarity with those targeted by the so-called “migrant crisis,” a crisis imposed by the borders and wars that are endemic to capitalism, we act against Obama in solidarity with all the people of Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and the world. If we don’t tear down the borders that fence other people out today, who will help us tear down the borders that fence us out tomorrow?

As the first Black President, Obama has served the agenda of those who want to convey the impression that white supremacy is a thing of the past. Yet under his reign, a million Black people have languished in prison while police have murdered Black people in the streets with impunity on a daily basis. Over the past months, we have seen indigenous warriors attacked by the same police for defending the water that gives life to their communities. Inspired by the courageous fighters of Ferguson, Baltimore, Oakland, and Standing Rock, we aim to strike blows against racism, prisons, and police everywhere.

These struggles will not be concluded when Obama leaves Greece, nor when he exits office. As President of the most hegemonic state power of our era, Obama represents the interlaced and mutually reinforcing hierarchies that divide humanity—property, citizenship, gender roles, and every other form of authority—yet he himself is merely a cog in a much greater machine. When he is replaced this coming January, the economic interests that have pulled the strings in his administration will move on to utilizing Donald Trump to the same ends, albeit via a more overtly brutal strategy suitable to these times.

We, too, must update our strategies. Today, fewer and fewer people retain the illusion that voting, party politics, or the state could solve the problems we face. The situation is the same the world over. When we take action against politicians, we must not understand ourselves as engaging in mere protest. We are not simply seeking to obtain leverage by militant means. We are developing forms of self-defense in order to open up liberated spaces in which we can experiment with ways to meet our own needs, directly, rather than being experimented upon.

We have to undertake immediate initiatives to create communities of struggle everywhere—opening spaces and social centers, organizing discussions and demonstrations, liberating public spaces, breaking through apathy and isolation, producing free food, shelter, and culture for all. We have to think freedom and enact emancipation.

The blows we strike in Greece will resonate across the world, from all the other peripheries to the very heart of the United States. Together, let us become ungovernable.

*For international coordination and solidarity in the struggle against global capitalism and the state*

*For anarchy, the perpetual reinvention of our relations in pursuit of freedom*

*For freedom, the collective capacity to fulfill our tremendous potential on our own terms*

Jointly composed and signed—
CrimethInc. ex-Workers’ Collective
Void Network [Theory, Outopia, Empathy, Ephemeral Arts]

Καλώς ήρθες στην Αθήνα Ομπάμα

Κοινή δημόσια ανακοίνωση που δημοσιεύθηκε με την ευκαιρία της επίσκεψης του Μπάρακ Ομπάμα στην Ελλάδα από το ΚΕΝΟ ΔΙΚΤΥΟ (Αθήνα) και την “Συλλογικότητα πρώην- Εργαζομένων” Crimethinc (ΗΠΑ)

Σήμερα 14 Νοεμβρίου, ο απερχόμενος πρόεδρος των ΗΠΑ Μπαράκ Ομπάμα φτάνει στην Ελλάδα. Οι συλλογικότητες μας καλούν τόσο από τις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες όσο και από την Ελλάδα κάθε άνθρωπο που αγωνίζεται  για την ελευθερία να συμμετάσχει στη διαδήλωση το βράδυ της Τρίτης 15 Νοεμβρίου 2016 στους δρόμους της Αθήνας με έναρξη το Πολυτεχνείο στις 5.30 μ.μ.μ.

Το γεγονός ότι ο Μπάρακ Ομπάμα επισκέπτεται την Ελλάδα στην αποχαιρετιστήρια περιοδεία του αποκτά έντονους συμβολισμούς. Τα Βαλκάνια έχουν υπηρετήσει ως εργαστήριο πειραμάτων για το νεοφιλελευθερισμό και τις στρατιωτικές επεμβάσεις των ΗΠΑ από τα τέλη του 20ου αιώνα. Η Ελλάδα ειδικότερα έχει υποστεί στις μέρες μας ένα παγκόσμιο πείραμα εφαρμογής μοντέλων διαχείρισης κρίσεων και κοινωνικής καταπίεσης. Καθώς ο πόλεμος πλησιάζει όλο και πιο κοντά, στο Αφγανιστάν, το Ιράκ, τη Συρία, την Ουκρανία και την Τουρκία, τα Βαλκάνια αναμένεται να εξυπηρετήσουν την Ευρώπη και τις ΗΠΑ ως ουδέτερη ζώνη, ενώ θα υπομένουν την ίδια κακοποίηση με όλη την υπόλοιπη περιφέρεια.

Τώρα που η ψευδαίσθηση της καθολικής οικονομικής ανάπτυξης έφτασε στο τέλος της μπορούμε να δούμε ξεκάθαρα ότι η νέα τάξη πραγμάτων θα σταθεροποιηθεί μόνο με τις κενές υποσχέσεις των πολιτικών και την ωμή βία της αστυνομίας και του στρατού: με τα ψηφοδέλτια και τις σφαίρες. Η ουδέτερη ζώνη γίνεται όλο και μικρότερη, και οι Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες δεν εξαιρούνται από αυτή την διαδικασία-η ίδια Εθνοφρουρά που περιπολεί απόψε στο Ιράκ έχει ήδη παραταχθεί και στους δρόμους της Βαλτιμόρης. Τώρα είναι η ώρα να πολεμήσουμε, πριν η κατάσταση γίνεται χειρότερη.

Εκφράζοντας σοκ και οργή για την εκλογή του Donald Trump, πολλοί στην Αριστερά έχουν αποκρύψει τη συστημική φύση του προβλήματος. Με την ανάληψη δράσης ενάντια στον Μπαράκ Ομπάμα, τον αγαπημένο πρόεδρο των Δημοκρατικών στις ΗΠΑ, δείχνουμε ότι η αντίθεσή μας δεν στρέφεται εναντίον κάποιου συγκεκριμένου εκπρόσωπου, αλλά εναντίον του κράτους και του ίδιου του καπιταλισμού. Στους πρόσφατους μετεκλογικούς λόγους τους, η Χιλαρι Κλίντον και ο Ομπάμα μίλησαν για μια “ειρηνική μετάβαση της εξουσίας» σε έναν άνθρωπο που έχουν οι ίδιοι χαρακτηρίσει ως ακατάλληλο να κυβερνήσει, αποκαλύπτοντας τη σύμπραξη των φιλελεύθερων, που με σκοπό να διατηρήσουν τη λειτουργία του κράτους είναι πρόθυμοι να παραδώσουν την εξουσία ακόμη και στα χέρια των απροκάλυπτων φασιστών από το να αποδεχθούν την ανάδυση της πραγματικής ελευθερίας.

Πράγματι, ως υποψήφιος της δήθεν “Ελπίδας” και της “Αλλαγής”, ο Ομπάμα όχι μόνο διέσωσε τις δομές εξουσίας, αλλά και έπεισε πάρα πολλούς ανθρώπους που υπομένουν την πιο στοχευμένη επίθεση από το σύστημα να επενδύσουν περισσότερη ακόμα πίστη και πόρους σε αυτές τις δομές- οι οποίες τώρα θα χρησιμοποιηθούν για να τους καταπιέσουν πιο επιθετικά από ποτέ. Με τον ίδιο τρόπο με τον οποίο έχουμε απορρίψει τις ψεύτικες λύσεις του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, καταλαβαίνουμε ότι η φήμη του Ομπάμα ως “καλός” πολιτικός τον κάνει ακόμα πιο επικίνδυνο για αυτούς που φιλοδοξεί να προστατεύσει. Εκείνοι που υπόσχονται έναν νεοφιλελευθερισμό «χωρίς αποκλεισμούς» σήμερα, είναι αυτοί που ανοίγουν τον δρόμο για τον αυριανό φασισμό.

Ο Ομπάμα έχει απελάσει δυόμιση εκατομμύρια ανθρώπους, ίσο αριθμό με όσους έχουν απελάσει όλοι μαζί οι Πρόεδροι των ΗΠΑ ολόκληρο τον 20ο αιώνα, μετατρέποντας το Μεξικό και την Κεντρική Αμερική σε ένα απέραντο κέντρο κράτησης για τους πληθυσμούς που για τον καπιταλισμό δεν έχουν καμία χρήση. Ακριβώς όπως δρουμε σε αλληλεγγύη με εκείνους που στοχεύονται από τη λεγόμενη “προσφυγική κρίση”, μια κρίση που επιβάλλεται από την ύπαρξη των συνόρων και των πολέμων που είναι ενδημικοί στον καπιταλισμό, δρούμε εναντίον Ομπάμα σε αλληλεγγύη με όλους τους ανθρώπους του Μεξικού, της Νικαράγουας, της Ονδούρας, του Ελ Σαλβαδόρ και όλου του κόσμου. Αν δεν γκρεμίσουμε μαζί τα σύνορα που φυλακίζουν άλλους ανθρώπους σήμερα, ποίοι θα ενωθούν μαζί μας για να γκρεμίσουμε αύριο τα σύνορα και τους φράχτες που κρατάνε εμάς φυλακισμένους;

Ως ο πρώτος μαύρος πρόεδρος, ο Ομπάμα έχει υπηρετήσει την ατζέντα όσων θέλουν να δοθεί η εντύπωση ότι η ρατσιστική “λευκή υπεροχή” είναι ένα πράγμα του παρελθόντος. Ωστόσο, στο πλαίσιο της βασιλείας του, ένα εκατομμύριο μαύροι λιώνουν στις φυλακές, ενώ η αστυνομία δολοφονούσε ατιμώρητη έναν μαύρο στους δρόμους των Η.Π.Α. κάθε μέρα. Κατά τη διάρκεια των τελευταίων μηνών, έχουμε δει πολεμιστές αμερικανικών ιθαγενικών πληθυσμών να δέχονται επιθέσεις από την ίδια αστυνομία για την υπεράσπιση του νερού που δίνει ζωή στις κοινότητές τους. Εμπνευσμένοι από τους θαρραλέους μαχητές και τις μαχήτριες του Φέργκιουσον, της Βαλτιμόρης, του Oakland, και του Standing Rock, έχουμε ως στόχο να καταφέρουμε και εμείς ισχυρά χτυπήματα κατά του ρατσισμού, των φυλακών και της αστυνομίας παντού.

Φυσικά αυτοί οι αγώνες δεν θα ολοκληρωθούν όταν ο Ομπάμα φύγει από την Ελλάδα, ούτε όταν θα εγκαταλείψει το προεδρικό μέγαρο. Ως Πρόεδρος της πιο ηγεμονικής κρατικής εξουσίας της εποχής μας, ο Ομπάμα προσωποποιεί όλες τις διαπλεκόμενες και αμοιβαία ενισχυόμενες ιεραρχίες που διαχωρίζουν την ανθρωπότητα -την ιδιοκτησία, την ιθαγένεια, τους ρόλους των δύο φύλων, καθώς και κάθε άλλη μορφή εξουσίας- και όμως, ακόμη και ο ίδιος, δεν είναι τίποτα άλλο πάρα ένα γρανάζι σε μια πολύ μεγαλύτερη μηχανή. Όταν αντικατασταθεί τον ερχόμενο Ιανουάριο, τα οικονομικά συμφέροντα που κρατούσαν τα νήματα της διακυβέρνησης του και καθόριζαν τις επιλογές του θα προχωρήσουν αξιοποιώντας τον Donald Trump με τους ίδιους βασικούς στόχους, έστω και μέσω μιας πιο απροκάλυπτα βίαιης στρατηγικής, κατάλληλης για αυτούς τους χρόνους που μας περιμένουν.

Από μεριάς μας και εμείς επίσης, πρέπει να ανανεώσουμε τις στρατηγικές μας. Σήμερα, όλο και λιγότεροι άνθρωποι διατηρούν την ψευδαίσθηση ότι οι εκλογές, το κόμμα, ή το κράτος θα μπορούσαν να λύσουν τα προβλήματα που αντιμετωπίζουμε. Όταν παίρνουμε μέτρα εναντίον πολιτικών σαν τον Ομπάμα, δεν πρέπει να κατανοούμε τους εαυτούς μας ως συμμέτοχους σε μια απλή διαμαρτυρία. Δεν  επιδιώκουμε απλά να αποκτήσουμε δύναμη με μαχητικά μέσα. Αναπτύσσουμε μορφές αυτο-άμυνας, προκειμένου να δημιουργήσουμε απελευθερωμένους χώρους στους οποίους μπορούμε να πειραματιστούμε με τους δικούς μας τρόπους για να καλύψουμε τις δικές μας ανάγκες, άμεσα, αντί άλλοι να υποβάλλουν τις ζωές μας σε πειράματα.

ΝΑ ΠΑΡΟΥΜΕ ΤΗΝ ΜΟΙΡΑ ΜΑΣ ΣΤΑ ΧΕΡΙΑ ΜΑΣ. Να πάρουμε άμεσα πρωτοβουλίες, να δημιουργήσουμε κοινότητες αγώνα παντού, να ανοίξουμε χώρους, στέκια, καταλήψεις, σημεία συνάντησης, να καταλάβουμε και να απελευθερώσουμε τον δημόσιο χώρο, να ανοίξουμε συζητήσεις, να οργανώσουμε διαδηλώσεις, να παράγουμε ελεύθερη τροφή, στέγη και κουλτούρα για όλους, σκέψη χειραφέτησης και δράσεις απελευθέρωσης, να συμμετάσχουμε στις κοινωνικές δομές του κινήματος, να σπάσουμε την απάθεια και την ιδιώτευση.

Τα χτυπήματα που θα καταφέρουμε εδώ στην Ελλάδα θα ακουστούν σε όλο τον κόσμο, από τις υπόλοιπες περιφέρειες έως την καρδιά των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών.

Μαζί, από όλες τις πλευρές του πλανήτη, να γίνουμε ακυβέρνητοι.

Για τον διεθνή συντονισμό και την παγκόσμια Αλληλεγγύη στον αγώνα ενάντια στο κράτος και τον παγκόσμιο καπιταλισμό.

Για την Αναρχία, την αέναη επανεφεύρεση των σχέσεών μας με σκοπό την άσκηση της ελευθερίας

Για την Ελευθερία, τη συλλογική ικανότητα να εκπληρώσουμε τις τεράστιες δυνατότητές μας με τους δικούς μας όρους

Κοινή διεθνής ανακοίνωση
Κενό Δίκτυο [Θεωρία, Ουτοπία, Συναίσθηση, Εφήμερες Τέχνες] / Αθήνα
και Crimethinc Ex Workers Collective (USA)

The post Welcome to Athens, Obama / Kαλώς ήρθες στην Αθήνα Ομπάμα!: Κενό Δίκτυο & Crimethinc (USA) Common Announcement of Void Network (Athens) and Crimethinc (USA) appeared first on Void Network.

Προσθήκη λεζάντας

In a break with protocol, the soldiers also took photographs of themselves celebrating their kill. In the photos, Morlock grins and gives a thumbs-up sign as he poses with Mudin’s body. Note that the boy’s right pinky finger appears to have been severed. Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs reportedly used a pair of razor-sharp medic’s shears to cut off the finger, which he presented to Holmes as a trophy for killing his first Afghan.

Morlock posing with an Afghan child. The photos collected by soldiers included many shots of local children, often filed alongside images of bloody casualties. At one point, soldiers in 3rd Platoon talked about throwing candy out of a Stryker vehicle as they drove through a village and shooting the children who came running to pick up the sweets.

Another photo of Afghan children. According to one soldier, members of 3rd Platoon also talked about a scenario in which they “would throw candy out in front and in the rear of the Stryker; the Stryker would then run the children over.”

During the first five months of last year, a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan went on a shooting spree, killing at least four unarmed civilians and mutilating several of the corpses. The “kill team” – members of the 5th Stryker Brigade stationed near Kandahar – took scores of photos chronicling their kills and their time in Afghanistan. Even before the war crimes became public, the Pentagon went to extraordinary measures to suppress the photos, launching a massive effort to find every file and pull the pictures out of circulation before they could touch off a scandal on the scale of Abu Ghraib. The images – more than 150 of which have been obtained by Rolling Stone – portray a front-line culture among U.S. troops in which killing innocent civilians is seen as a cause for celebration. “Most people within the unit disliked the Afghan people,” one of the soldiers told Army investigators. “Everyone would say they’re savages.” Many of the photos depict explicit images of violent deaths that have yet to be identified by the Pentagon. Among the soldiers, the collection was treated like a war memento. It was passed from man to man on thumb drives and hard drives, the gruesome images of corpses and war atrocities filed alongside clips of TV shows, UFC fights and films such as Iron Man 2. One soldier kept a complete set, which he made available to anyone who  By Mark Boal MARCH 27, 2011 10:00 PM ET http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327?print=true Early last year, after six hard months soldiering in Afghanistan, a group of American infantrymen reached a momentous decision: It was finally time to kill a haji. Among the men of Bravo Company, the notion of killing an Afghan civilian had been the subject of countless conversations, during lunchtime chats and late-night bull sessions. For weeks, they had weighed the ethics of bagging “savages” and debated the probability of getting caught. Some of them agonized over the idea; others were gung-ho from the start. But not long after the New Year, as winter descended on the arid plains of Kandahar Province, they agreed to stop talking and actually pull the trigger. Bravo Company had been stationed in the area since summer, struggling, with little success, to root out the Taliban and establish an American presence in one of the most violent and lawless regions of the country. On the morning of January 15th, the company’s 3rd Platoon – part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, based out of Tacoma, Washington – left the mini-metropolis of tents and trailers at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in a convoy of armored Stryker troop carriers. The massive, eight-wheeled trucks surged across wide, vacant stretches of desert, until they came to La Mohammad Kalay, an isolated farming village tucked away behind a few poppy fields. To provide perimeter security, the soldiers parked the Strykers at the outskirts of the settlement, which was nothing more than a warren of mud-and-straw compounds. Then they set out on foot. Local villagers were suspected of supporting the Taliban, providing a safe haven for strikes against U.S. troops. But as the soldiers of 3rd Platoon walked through the alleys of La Mohammad Kalay, they saw no armed fighters, no evidence of enemy positions. Instead, they were greeted by a frustratingly familiar sight: destitute Afghan farmers living without electricity or running water; bearded men with poor teeth in tattered traditional clothes; young kids eager for candy and money. It was impossible to tell which, if any, of the villagers were sympathetic to the Taliban. The insurgents, for their part, preferred to stay hidden from American troops, striking from a distance with IEDs. While the officers of 3rd Platoon peeled off to talk to a village elder inside a compound, two soldiers walked away from the unit until they reached the far edge of the village. There, in a nearby poppy field, they began looking for someone to kill. “The general consensus was, if we are going to do something that fucking crazy, no one wanted anybody around to witness it,” one of the men later told Army investigators. The poppy plants were still low to the ground at that time of year. The two soldiers, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working by himself among the spiky shoots. Off in the distance, a few other soldiers stood sentry. But the farmer was the only Afghan in sight. With no one around to witness, the timing was right. And just like that, they picked him for execution. He was a smooth-faced kid, about 15 years old. Not much younger than they were: Morlock was 21, Holmes was 19. His name, they would later learn, was Gul Mudin, a common name in Afghanistan. He was wearing a little cap and a Western-style green jacket. He held nothing in his hand that could be interpreted as a weapon, not even a shovel. The expression on his face was welcoming. “He was not a threat,” Morlock later confessed. Morlock and Holmes called to him in Pashto as he walked toward them, ordering him to stop. The boy did as he was told. He stood still. The soldiers knelt down behind a mud-brick wall. Then Morlock tossed a grenade toward Mudin, using the wall as cover. As the grenade exploded, he and Holmes opened fire, shooting the boy repeatedly at close range with an M4 carbine and a machine gun. Mudin buckled, went down face first onto the ground. His cap toppled off. A pool of blood congealed by his head. The loud report of the guns echoed all around the sleepy farming village. The sound of such unexpected gunfire typically triggers an emergency response in other soldiers, sending them into full battle mode. Yet when the shots rang out, some soldiers didn’t seem especially alarmed, even when the radio began to squawk. It was Morlock, agitated, screaming that he had come under attack. On a nearby hill, Spc. Adam Winfield turned to his friend, Pfc. Ashton Moore, and explained that it probably wasn’t a real combat situation. It was more likely a staged killing, he said – a plan the guys had hatched to take out an unarmed Afghan without getting caught. Back at the wall, soldiers arriving on the scene found the body and the bloodstains on the ground. Morlock and Holmes were crouched by the wall, looking excited. When a staff sergeant asked them what had happened, Morlock said the boy had been about to attack them with a grenade. “We had to shoot the guy,” he said. It was an unlikely story: a lone Taliban fighter, armed with only a grenade, attempting to ambush a platoon in broad daylight, let alone in an area that offered no cover or concealment. Even the top officer on the scene, Capt. Patrick Mitchell, thought there was something strange about Morlock’s story. “I just thought it was weird that someone would come up and throw a grenade at us,” Mitchell later told investigators. But Mitchell did not order his men to render aid to Mudin, whom he believed might still be alive, and possibly a threat. Instead, he ordered Staff Sgt. Kris Sprague to “make sure” the boy was dead. Sprague raised his rifle and fired twice. As the soldiers milled around the body, a local elder who had been working in the poppy field came forward and accused Morlock and Holmes of murder. Pointing to Morlock, he said that the soldier, not the boy, had thrown the grenade. Morlock and the other soldiers ignored him. To identify the body, the soldiers fetched the village elder who had been speaking to the officers that morning. But by tragic coincidence, the elder turned out to be the father of the slain boy. His moment of grief-stricken recognition, when he saw his son lying in a pool of blood, was later recounted in the flat prose of an official Army report. “The father was very upset,” the report noted. The father’s grief did nothing to interrupt the pumped-up mood that had broken out among the soldiers. Following the routine Army procedure required after every battlefield death, they cut off the dead boy’s clothes and stripped him naked to check for identifying tattoos. Next they scanned his iris and fingerprints, using a portable biometric scanner. Then, in a break with protocol, the soldiers began taking photographs of themselves celebrating their kill. Holding a cigarette rakishly in one hand, Holmes posed for the camera with Mudin’s bloody and half-naked corpse, grabbing the boy’s head by the hair as if it were a trophy deer. Morlock made sure to get a similar memento. No one seemed more pleased by the kill than Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, the platoon’s popular and hard-charging squad leader. “It was like another day at the office for him,” one soldier recalls. Gibbs started “messing around with the kid,” moving his arms and mouth and “acting like the kid was talking.” Then, using a pair of razor-sharp medic’s shears, he reportedly sliced off the dead boy’s pinky finger and gave it to Holmes, as a trophy for killing his first Afghan. According to his fellow soldiers, Holmes took to carrying the finger with him in a zip-lock bag. “He wanted to keep the finger forever and wanted to dry it out,” one of his friends would later report. “He was proud of his finger.” After the killing, the soldiers involved in Mudin’s death were not disciplined or punished in any way. Emboldened, the platoon went on a shooting spree over the next four months that claimed the lives of at least three more innocent civilians. When the killings finally became public last summer, the Army moved aggressively to frame the incidents as the work of a “rogue unit” operating completely on its own, without the knowledge of its superiors. Military prosecutors swiftly charged five low-ranking soldiers with murder, and the Pentagon clamped down on any information about the killings. Soldiers in Bravo Company were barred from giving interviews, and lawyers for the accused say their clients faced harsh treatment if they spoke to the press, including solitary confinement. No officers were charged. But a review of internal Army records and investigative files obtained by Rolling Stone, including dozens of interviews with members of Bravo Company compiled by military investigators, indicates that the dozen infantrymen being portrayed as members of a secretive “kill team” were operating out in the open, in plain view of the rest of the company. Far from being clandestine, as the Pentagon has implied, the murders of civilians were common knowledge among the unit and understood to be illegal by “pretty much the whole platoon,” according to one soldier who complained about them. Staged killings were an open topic of conversation, and at least one soldier from another battalion in the 3,800-man Stryker Brigade participated in attacks on unarmed civilians. “The platoon has a reputation,” a whistle-blower named Pfc. Justin Stoner told the Army Criminal Investigation Command. “They have had a lot of practice staging killings and getting away with it.” From the start, the questionable nature of the killings was on the radar of senior Army leadership. Within days of the first murder, Rolling Stone has learned, Mudin’s uncle descended on the gates of FOB Ramrod, along with 20 villagers from La Mohammad Kalay, to demand an investigation. “They were sitting at our front door,” recalls Lt. Col. David Abrahams, the battalion’s second in command. During a four-hour meeting with Mudin’s uncle, Abrahams was informed that several children in the village had seen Mudin killed by soldiers from 3rd Platoon. The battalion chief ordered the soldiers to be reinterviewed, but Abrahams found “no inconsistencies in their story,” and the matter was dropped. “It was cut and dry to us at the time,” Abrahams recalls. Other officers were also in a position to question the murders. Neither 3rd Platoon’s commander, Capt. Matthew Quiggle, nor 1st Lt. Roman Ligsay has been held accountable for their unit’s actions, despite their repeated failure to report killings that they had ample reason to regard as suspicious. In fact, supervising the murderous platoon, or even having knowledge of the crimes, seems to have been no impediment to career advancement. Ligsay has actually been promoted to captain, and a sergeant who joined the platoon in April became a team leader even though he “found out about the murders from the beginning,” according to a soldier who cooperated with the Army investigation.ked. Read all the article and see the photos and the videos here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327?page=1

The post “The Kill Team // How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses – and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon” a report by Rolling Stone magazine appeared first on Void Network.