Civilians

Blackwater Guards Finally To Be Tried For Killing 14 Iraqi Civilians

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– Blackwater Guards Finally to be Tried for Killing 14 Iraqi Civilians (AllGov, April 13, 2014):

One of the darkest episodes during the U.S. occupation of Iraq last decade is finally resulting in the prosecution of private American security guards who killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in a single incident.

The name Blackwater became famous after the 2007 event in which guards from the security firm’s Raven 23 unit opened fire in Baghdad’s Nisour Square on September 16. The shootings, which the Iraqi government said were unprovoked, killed 14 people and wounded 20 others.

The guards claimed they came under attack from insurgents while carrying out their duties for the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), which had hired the firm that has since undergone multiple name changes (Blackwater Worldwide, then Xe Services, now Academi).

Read moreBlackwater Guards Finally To Be Tried For Killing 14 Iraqi Civilians

Amnesty International: ‘Trigger-Happy’ Israeli Army And Police Use Reckless Force In The West Bank, Killing Dozens Of Palestinian Civilians, Incl. Children

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– ‘Trigger-happy’ Israeli army and police use reckless force in the West Bank (Amnesty International, Feb 27, 2014):

Israeli forces have displayed a callous disregard for human life by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank over the past three years with near total impunity, said Amnesty International in a report published today.

The report, Trigger-happy: Israel’s use of excessive force in the West Bank, describes mounting bloodshed and human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) as a result of the Israeli forces’ use of unnecessary, arbitrary and brutal force against Palestinians since January 2011.

In all cases examined by Amnesty International, Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers did not appear to be posing a direct and immediate threat to life. In some, there is evidence that they were victims of wilful killings, which would amount to war crimes.

Read moreAmnesty International: ‘Trigger-Happy’ Israeli Army And Police Use Reckless Force In The West Bank, Killing Dozens Of Palestinian Civilians, Incl. Children

U.S. Military Changes Drone Rules To Make Targeting Of Civilians Easier

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– U.S. Military Changes Drone Rules To Make Targeting Of Civilians Easier (Liberty Blitzkrieg, Dec 7, 2013):

The drone issue is just another topic in which President Barrack Obama has proven himself to be a world-class liar and master of deception. Despite his claims that drone strikes do little damage to civilian populations, in July we discovered that “of the 746 people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan from 2006-2009, an incredible 20% were civilians and 94 (13% of the total) were children.”

I suppose that number just isn’t good enough, because The Pentagon has decided to change the rules of engagement when it comes to drone strikes, now making it easier to target civilians.

From The Washington Times:

The Pentagon has loosened its guidelines on avoiding civilian casualties during drone strikes, modifying instructions from requiring military personnel to “ensure” civilians are not targeted to encouraging service members to “avoid targeting” civilians.

Read moreU.S. Military Changes Drone Rules To Make Targeting Of Civilians Easier

Vladimir Putin’s New York Times Op-Ed On Syria: A Plea For Caution From Russia

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– A Plea for Caution From Russia (New York Times, Sep 11, 2013):

By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN

What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria

MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

Read moreVladimir Putin’s New York Times Op-Ed On Syria: A Plea For Caution From Russia

Missiles That Brought Down TWA Flight 800

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FYI.

David Swanson is an American activist, blogger and author. He served for a year as media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association. In May 2005, Swanson helped make the Downing Street memo known in the United States and discussed in Congress. He co-founded After Downing Street and led an ongoing campaign to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Swanson continues to work closely with the peace movement and often leads campaigns to end the Iraq War and punish those involved in launching that war. His Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works as Campaign Coordinator for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.

– Missiles that brought down TWA Flight 800 (PressTV, Aug 10, 2013):

If the US public began to raise a fuss about US missile strikes that blow up large numbers of civilians at wedding parties abroad, it’s not beyond the realm of the imaginable that the US government would begin blaming the explosions on faulty candles in the wedding cakes.

A similarly implausible excuse was used to explain the 1996 explosion of TWA flight 800 off Long Island, New York, and the US public has thus far either swallowed the story whole or ignored the matter.

If you watch Kristina Borjesson’s new film, TWA Flight 800, you’ll see a highly-persuasive case that this passenger jet full of passengers was brought down by missiles, killing all on board.

A CIA propaganda video aired by US television networks fits with none of the known facts, makes the claim that there were no missiles, and offers no theory as to what then did cause the explosion(s) and crash into the sea.

Read moreMissiles That Brought Down TWA Flight 800

The Illuminati Depopulation Agenda (Veterans Today)

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– The Illuminati Depopulation Agenda (Veterans Today, June 17, 2013):

by Dean Henderson

While the global elite construct underground bunkers, eat organic and hoard seeds in Arctic vaults; the global poor are being slowly starved thanks to high commodity prices and poisoned with genetically modified (GMO) food. Austerity measures aimed largely at the poor are being imposed on all the nations of the world. Weather events grow more deadly and brushfire wars more frequent. An AK-47 can be obtained for $49 in the markets of West Africa. The depopulation campaign of the inbred Illuminati bankers is accelerating.

In 1957 President Dwight Eisenhower, who later warned of a “military-industrial complex”, commissioned a panel of scientists to study the issue of overpopulation.  The scientists put forth Alternatives I, II and III, advocating both the release of deadly viruses and perpetual warfare as means to decrease world population.

Read moreThe Illuminati Depopulation Agenda (Veterans Today)

U.S. Army Sergeant Pleads Guilty To Murdering 16 Afghan Civilians

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– Soldier pleads guilty to murdering 16 Afghan civilians (Reuters, June 7, 2013):

A U.S. Army sergeant who killed 16 Afghan civilians in cold blood last year pleaded guilty on Wednesday to premeditated murder and other charges under a deal with military prosecutors that spares him from the death penalty.

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a decorated veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, admitted to leaving his Army post in the Afghan province of Kandahar last March to gun down and set fire to unarmed villagers, mostly women and children, in attacks on their family compounds.

“As far as why, I’ve asked that question a million times since then,” Bales said, in a calm, steady voice, when the judge pressed him for an explanation. “There is not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things that I did.”

Read moreU.S. Army Sergeant Pleads Guilty To Murdering 16 Afghan Civilians

Former US Drone Pilot Quits Over Killing Civilians And Children

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– Former US drone pilot quits, regretting bombing innocents, including children (PressTV, May 20, 2013):

A former US assassination drone pilot says he quit the force after feeling “numb” about seeing a child and other civilians blown away in his remote bombing of targets in Afghanistan and realizing he has unconsciously developed a desire to kill.

Read moreFormer US Drone Pilot Quits Over Killing Civilians And Children

‘Israel Used Depleted Uranium Shells In Air Strike’ – Syrian Source (RT)

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From the article:

“Countries using depleted uranium weapons insist that the material is toxic, but not dangerously radioactive, as long as it remains outside the body.“

And here are some ‘easy’ precautions to prevent toxic DU dust from entering into the body for people who live in the contaminated areas of  Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Lebanon and now Syria:

1. Wear a gas mask at all time (for as long as you are still breathing)!

2. Don’t drink and eat anything (for as long as you live)!

3. Don’t touch anything (for as long as you live)!

Best of luck!

Anybody who still believes that complete BS that depleted uranium is not dangerous should watch this:

– MUST-SEE: Former Head Of Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project Dr. Doug Rokke On Depleted Uranium (Video)

Yes, this is GENOCIDE! (More info on DU down below.)

– ‘Israel used depleted uranium shells in air strike’ – Syrian source (RT, May 5, 2013):

Israel used “a new type of weapon”, a senior official at the Syrian military facility that came under attack from the Israeli Air Force told RT.

“When the explosion happened it felt like an earthquake,” said the source, who was present near the attack site on the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday morning.

“Then a giant golden mushroom of fire appeared. This tells us that Israel used depleted uranium shells.”

Read more‘Israel Used Depleted Uranium Shells In Air Strike’ – Syrian Source (RT)

Drones Visualization: Every U.S. Drone Strike In Pakistan Since 2004 (GRAPHIC)

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– Drones Visualization: Every U.S. Drone Strike In Pakistan Since 2004 (GRAPHIC) (Huffington Post, March 26, 2013):

Pitch Interactive, a Berkeley-based data visualization unit, has created a graphic tracking every drone strike the United States has carried out in Pakistan since 2004. Wesley Grubbs, who created the visualization, joined HuffPost Live host Ahmed Shihab-Eldin Tuesday to explain the motivation behind the visualization.

“We want to shock people,” Grubbs said. “What we tried to do though with this was not just shock people with the number of casualties, but to shock people with the amount of information that we really don’t know.”

The visualization, seen below, tracks the victims of the strikes using data from the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, specifically noting children and civilian collateral damage. Note the sharp uptick after President Obama takes office in 2009:

View the visualization at Pitch Interactive.

The President of Perpetual War

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– The President of Perpetual War (Truthdig, Jan 25, 2013):

Four years into his presidency, Barack Obama’s political formula should be obvious. He gives fabulous speeches teeming with popular liberal ideas, often refuses to take the actions necessary to realize those ideas and then banks on most voters, activists, reporters and pundits never bothering to notice—or care about—his sleight of hand.

Whether railing on financial crime and then refusing to prosecute Wall Street executives or berating health insurance companies and then passing a health care bill bailing out those same companies, Obama embodies a cynical ploy—one that relies on a celebrity-entranced electorate focusing more on TV-packaged rhetoric than on legislative reality.

Never was this formula more apparent than when the president discussed military conflicts during his second inaugural address. Declaring that “a decade of war is now ending,” he insisted that he “still believe(s) that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.”

The lines generated uncritical applause, much of it from anti-war liberals who protested against the Bush administration. Living up to Obama’s calculation, few seemed to notice that the words came from the same president who is manufacturing a state of “perpetual war.”

Read moreThe President of Perpetual War

U.S. Drone Wars And Dogs On Two Legs

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– Dreams in Infrared – The Woes of an American Drone Operator (Der Spiegel, Dec 16, 2012):

A soldier sets out to graduate at the top of his class. He succeeds, and he becomes a drone pilot working with a special unit of the United States Air Force in New Mexico. He kills dozens of people. But then, one day, he realizes that he can’t do it anymore.

Egypt: President Mohammed Morsi Gives Army Police Powers, Right To Arrest Civilians

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– Morsi gives Egypt’s army police powers, right to arrest (France 24/AFP, Dec 10, 2012):

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on Monday granted the army police powers, including the right to arrest civilians, ahead of a controversial December 15 referendum on a draft constitution that has sparked more than two weeks of protests.

President Mohamed Morsi has ordered Egypt’s army from Monday to take on police powers — including the right to arrest civilians — in the run-up to a divisive constitutional referendum that has triggered mass street protests.

The decree, published in the government gazette, takes effect on the eve of mass rival protests on the referendum and follows street clashes that have left seven people dead and hundreds injured.

Read moreEgypt: President Mohammed Morsi Gives Army Police Powers, Right To Arrest Civilians

US Intel Agencies Killing Innocents Around The Globe

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Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, a combat infantryman, and Senior Editor at Veterans Today. His career has included extensive experience in international banking along with such diverse areas as consulting on counter insurgency, defense technologies or acting as diplomatic representative for UN humanitarian and economic development efforts. Gordon Duff has traveled to over 80 nations. His articles are published around the world and translated into a number of languages. He is regularly on TV and radio, a popular and sometimes controversial guest.

– US intel agencies killing innocents around the globe (PressTV, Dec 5, 2012):

There has been a war inside the American intelligence community between two factions. On one side, a war between the “technogeeks,” those who spy from afar, who plot, who fabricate, who imagine, who create intelligence, not based on the reality of the world but on the needs of the powerful, the need to “certify lies” and those who would restore a human equation.

If it serves “money” and power for the “geek squad” to say Iran is making nuclear weapons or that a man in a cave defeated America’s air defenses, if it serves “money” to talk of weapons that don’t exist and terror groups that “never were,” the “geek squad” simply makes it up.

This is what the CIA has become, a largely privatized system of “brown nosers” and paid liars, manufacturing a reality that never existed, sending America’s vast military power spinning in circles, eventually toward ruin and defeat.

Read moreUS Intel Agencies Killing Innocents Around The Globe

U.S. Drone Strikes Are Causing Child Casualties: Video And Report

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YouTube

– U.S. Drone Strikes Are Causing Child Casualties: Video and Report (Huffington Post, Dec 1, 2012):

?During my recent trip to Pakistan as part of our upcoming documentary film, Drones Exposed, I was struck most by the stories told to me by children who had experienced a U.S. drone strike firsthand. The impact of America’s drone war in the likes of Pakistan and Yemen will linger on, especially for the loved ones of the 178 children killed in those countries by U.S. drone strikes.

War Costs’ latest video (with accompanying report) brings attention to the children who have died as a result of drone strikes. The video names some of the children who perished in these strikes, and points out the obfuscation tactics of American officials who will not own up to the significant amount of civilian casualties that have occurred due to this legally- and morally-dubious policy.

Read moreU.S. Drone Strikes Are Causing Child Casualties: Video And Report

THE LAND GRABBERS STRIKE AGAIN (Veterans Today)

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– THE LAND GRABBERS STRIKE AGAIN (Veterans Today, Nov 19, 2012):

“I don’t travel. If I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel. I remember how it was in 1948 when Israel was being established and all my Jewish friends were ecstatic. I was not. I said: What are we doing? We are establishing ourselves in a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea. The Muslims will never forget nor forgive. And Israel, as long as it exists, will be embattled. I was laughed at, but I was right. I can’t help but feel that the Jews didn’t really have the right to appropriate a territory only because 2000 years ago, people they consider their ancestors, were living there. History moves on and you can’t really turn it back.” — Jewish writer Isaac Asimov

Nasrallah urged the 57 Muslim nation-states to sever all form of relations with the US while calling upon Cairo, Amman and Ankara to break diplomatic relations with the Zionist entity. He also claimed that the Zionist regime is taking revenge for its failure to bring regime changes in Syria and Lebanon by attacking the coastal enclave.

Hizballah is the only Arab millitia which defeated the Jewish Army in the summer of 2006.

Read moreTHE LAND GRABBERS STRIKE AGAIN (Veterans Today)

Gilad Sharon, Son Of Former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon: ‘We Need To Flatten Entire Neighborhoods In Gaza’ – ‘Flatten All Of Gaza’

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Here are some pictures for those who want to flatten all of Gaza:

Gaza Children 2012 (Google)

And here is one of them:


Source: Bloodiest day yet in Gaza (The Nation/AFP/Reuters, Nov 19, 2012)

More info (not on killed children) down below.


Gilad Sharon

– Gilad Sharon, Son Of Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Writes Op-Ed: ‘We Need To Flatten Entire Neighborhoods In Gaza’ (Huffington Post, Nov 18, 2012):

Gilad Sharon, son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, wrote an op-ed on Sunday calling for even more aggressive Israeli strikes in Gaza.

“We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza,” states Sharon in The Jerusalem Post.

Read moreGilad Sharon, Son Of Former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon: ‘We Need To Flatten Entire Neighborhoods In Gaza’ – ‘Flatten All Of Gaza’

Israel Pounds Gaza With Overnight Air Strikes (Video)

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– Israel pounds Gaza with overnight air strikes – video (Guardian, Nov 16 ,2012):

Description:

Plumes of smoke rise over cities in Gaza as Israel steps up its offensive overnight on Thursday and on Friday morning. Israel pounded Gaza with around 150 air strikes as military tanks massed on the border. Meanwhile on Thursday evening, two rockets from Gaza crashed near Tel Aviv, the first such attack in 20 years

Former Head Of Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project Dr. Doug Rokke On Depleted Uranium (Video)

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MUST-SEE!!!

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YouTube Added: 23.01.2009

Description:

Talk by Dr. Doug Rokke, former head of the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project speaking about depleted uranium November 16, 2002 at University Baptist Church in Seattle.

UN: US Drone Strikes ‘Could Be War Crimes’ And Set Risky Precedent

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‘Statistics on the number of civilian deaths’?

No problem:

– Obama Regime Re-Defined ‘Militant’ To Mean ‘All Military-Age Males In A Strike Zone’ To Avoid Counting Civilian Deaths


Undated file photo courtesy of the U.S. Navy shows a RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle conducting tests over Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. (Reuters/U.S. Navy/Erik Hildebrandt/Northrop Grumman/Handout)

– US drone strikes ‘could be war crimes’ and set risky precedent – UN (RT, June 22, 2012):

The use of drone strikes by the US to combat terrorism flouts international law and may encourage other nations to follow suit, a UN rapporteur says. He stressed that some of the attacks may constitute war crimes.

Christof Heyns, the UN special investigator on extrajudicial killings told a UN conference in Geneva that the US needs to be held legally accountable for the use of armed drones.

“Are we to accept major changes to the international legal system which has been in existence since World War Two and survived nuclear threats?” he said.

He also requested that the Obama administration publish statistics on the number of civilian deaths caused by strikes on suspected terror leaders in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

Read moreUN: US Drone Strikes ‘Could Be War Crimes’ And Set Risky Precedent

Obama Regime Re-Defined ‘Militant’ To Mean ‘All Military-Age Males In A Strike Zone’ To Avoid Counting Civilian Deaths

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And …

‘War is Peace’

To avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama re-defined “militant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone”

– “Militants”: media propaganda (Salon, May 29, 2012):

Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone and ends the lives of Muslims, Americanmediaoutletsdutifullytrumpetin

headlines that the dead were ”militants” – even though those media outlets literally do not have the slightestideaof whowasactually killed. They simply cite always-unnamed “officials” claiming that the dead were “militants.” It’s the most obvious and inexcusable form of rank propaganda: media outlets continuously propagating a vital claim without having the slightest idea if it’s true.

This practice continues even though key Obama officials have been caught lying, a term used advisedly, about how many civilians they’re killing. I’ve written and said many times before that in American media discourse, the definition of “militant” is any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates (that term was even used when Anwar Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen two weeks after a drone killed his father, even though nobody claims the teenager was anything but completely innocent: “Another U.S. Drone Strike Kills Militants in Yemen”).

This morning, the New York Times has a very lengthy and detailed article about President Obama’s counter-Terrorism policies based on interviews with “three dozen of his current and former advisers.” I’m writing separately about the numerous revelations contained in that article, but want specifically to highlight this one vital passage about how the Obama administration determines who is a “militant.” The article explains that Obama’s rhetorical emphasis on avoiding civilian deaths “did not significantly change” the drone program, because Obama himself simply expanded the definition of a “militant” to ensure that it includes virtually everyone killed by his drone strikes. Just read this remarkable passage:

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Read moreObama Regime Re-Defined ‘Militant’ To Mean ‘All Military-Age Males In A Strike Zone’ To Avoid Counting Civilian Deaths

John Pilger: You Are All Suspects Now. What Are You Going to Do About It?

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See also:

– Interview With Jim Marrs, Author Of ‘The Trillion Dollar Conspiracy’ (Video)

– ‘We Are This Far From A Turnkey Totalitarian State’ – Big Brother Goes Live September 2013 … And Nobody Cares

– You Are All Suspects Now. What Are You Going to Do About It? (truthout, April 28, 2012):

You are all potential terrorists. It matters not that you live in Britain, the United States, Australia or the Middle East. Citizenship is effectively abolished. Turn on your computer and the US Department of Homeland Security’s National Operations Center may monitor whether you are typing not merely “al-Qaeda,” but “exercise,” “drill,” “wave,” “initiative” and “organization”: all proscribed words. The British government’s announcement that it intends to spy on every email and phone call is old hat. The satellite vacuum cleaner known as Echelon has been doing this for years. What has changed is that a state of permanent war has been launched by the United States and a police state is consuming Western democracy.

What are you going to do about it?

In Britain, on instructions from the CIA, secret courts are to deal with “terror suspects.” Habeas Corpus is dying. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that five men, including three British citizens, can be extradited to the US even though none except one has been charged with a crime. All have been imprisoned for years under the 2003 US/UK Extradition Treaty which was signed one month after the criminal invasion of Iraq. The European Court had condemned the treaty as likely to lead to “cruel and unusual punishment.” One of the men, Babar Ahmad, was awarded 63,000 pounds compensation for 73 recorded injuries he sustained in the custody of the Metropolitan Police. Sexual abuse, the signature of fascism, was high on the list. Another man is a schizophrenic, who has suffered a complete mental collapse and is in Broadmoor secure hospital; another is a suicide risk. To the Land of the Free they go – along with young Richard O’Dwyer, who faces ten years in shackles and an orange jump suit because he allegedly infringed US copyright on the Internet.

Read moreJohn Pilger: You Are All Suspects Now. What Are You Going to Do About It?