Fuck Obama

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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 23, 2013 8:46 am

when did Alex Jones start writing for Forbes?

1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammo For Homeland Security? It's Time For A National Conversation

The Denver Post, on February 15th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice. It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month. Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years. In America.

Add to this perplexing outré purchase of ammo, DHS now is showing off its acquisition of heavily armored personnel carriers, repatriated from the Iraqi and Afghani theaters of operation. As observed by “paramilblogger” Ken Jorgustin last September:
NRA Winning the Influence Battle Over Gun Control Bruce Rogers Bruce Rogers Forbes Staff
Obama's Gun-Control Laws Would Limit, Not Destroy $32B Firearm Industry Abram Brown Abram Brown Forbes Staff
A Gun-Control Battle That Could Actually Damage The Industry Is Escaping Public Attention Abram Brown Abram Brown Forbes Staff
How To Rescue The Republicans From The Grave Karl Rove Is Digging For Them Ralph Benko Ralph Benko Contributor

[T]he Department of Homeland Security is apparently taking delivery (apparently through the Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico VA, via the manufacturer – Navistar Defense LLC) of an undetermined number of the recently retrofitted 2,717 ‘Mine Resistant Protected’ MaxxPro MRAP vehicles for service on the streets of the United States.”

These MRAP’s ARE BEING SEEN ON U.S. STREETS all across America by verified observers with photos, videos, and descriptions.”

Regardless of the exact number of MRAP’s being delivered to DHS (and evidently some to POLICE via DHS, as has been observed), why would they need such over-the-top vehicles on U.S. streets to withstand IEDs, mine blasts, and 50 caliber hits to bullet-proof glass? In a war zone… yes, definitely. Let’s protect our men and women. On the streets of America… ?”



“They all have gun ports… Gun Ports? In the theater of war, yes. On the streets of America…?

Seriously, why would DHS need such a vehicle on our streets?”

Why indeed? It is utterly inconceivable that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is planning a coup d’etat against President Obama, and the Congress, to install herself as Supreme Ruler of the United States of America. There, however, are real signs that the Department bureaucrats are running amok. About 20 years ago this columnist worked, for two years, in the U.S. Department of Energy’s general counsel’s office in its procurement and finance division. And is wise to the ways. The answer to “why would DHS need such a vehicle?” almost certainly is this: it’s a cool toy and these (reportedly) million dollar toys are being recycled, without much of a impact on the DHS budget. So… why not?

Why, indeed, should the federal government not be deploying armored personnel carriers and stockpiling enough ammo for a 20-year war in the homeland? Because it’s wrong in every way. President Obama has an opportunity, now, to live up to some of his rhetoric by helping the federal government set a noble example in a matter very close to his heart (and that of his Progressive base), one not inimical to the Bill of Rights: gun control. The federal government can (for a nice change) begin practicing what it preaches by controlling itself.

Remember the Sequester? The president is claiming its budget cuts will inconvenience travelers by squeezing essential services provided by the (opulently armed and stylishly uniformed) DHS. Quality ammunition is not cheap. (Of course, news reports that DHS is about to spend $50 million on new uniforms suggests a certain cavalier attitude toward government frugality.)

Spending money this way is beyond absurd well into perverse. According to the AP story a DHS spokesperson justifies this acquisition to “help the government get a low price for a big purchase.” Peggy Dixon, spokeswoman for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center: “The training center and others like it run by the Homeland Security Department use as many as 15 million rounds every year, mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises.”

At 15 million rounds (which, in itself, is pretty extraordinary and sounds more like fun target-shooting-at-taxpayer-expense than a sensible training exercise) … that’s a stockpile that would last DHS over a century. To claim that it’s to “get a low price” for a ridiculously wasteful amount is an argument that could only fool a career civil servant.

Meanwhile, Senator Diane Feinstein, with the support of President Obama, is attempting to ban 100 capacity magazine clips. Doing a little apples-to-oranges comparison, here, 1.6 billion rounds is … 16 million times more objectionable.

Mr. Obama has a long history of disdain toward gun ownership. According to Prof. John Lott, in Debacle, a book he co-authored with iconic conservative strategist Grover Norquist,

“When I was first introduced to Obama (when both worked at the University of Chicago Law School, where Lott was famous for his analysis of firearms possession), he said, ‘Oh, you’re the gun guy.’

I responded: ‘Yes, I guess so.’

’I don’t believe that people should own guns,’ Obama replied.

I then replied that it might be fun to have lunch and talk about that statement some time.

He simply grimaced and turned away. …

Unlike other liberal academics who usually enjoyed discussing opposing ideas, Obama showed disdain.”

Mr. Obama? Where’s the disdain now? Cancelling, or at minimum, drastically scaling back — by 90% or even 99%, the DHS order for ammo, and its receipt and deployment of armored personnel carriers, would be a “fourfer.”

The federal government would set an example of restraint in the matter of weaponry.
It would reduce the deficit without squeezing essential services.
It would do both in a way that was palatable to liberals and conservatives, slightly depolarizing America.
It would somewhat defuse, by the government making itself less armed-to-the-teeth, the anxiety of those who mistrust the benevolence of the federales.

If Obama doesn’t show any leadership on this matter it’s an opportunity for Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, to summon Secretary Napolitano over for a little national conversation. Madame Secretary? Buying 1.6 billion rounds of ammo and deploying armored personnel carriers runs contrary, in every way, to what “homeland security” really means. Discuss.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby elfismiles » Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:42 pm

Image

Latest Homeland Security Armored Vehicle
September 6, 2012 / Ken Jorgustin
http://modernsurvivalblog.com/governmen ... t-sweeper/


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pS9aw5pcJo


Homeland Security Is Serving Warrants Using Mine-Resistant Vehicles

The Department of Homeland Security is using 16 military-style, mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles for use during “high-risk warrants,” according to an official spokesman…

The MRAPs were transferred to DHS from the Department of Defense, free of charge…

The vehicles are modified for use with the DHS Special Response Team — specially trained, fully armored agents dispatched during the most severe and high risk situations…

“[The vehicle] is used in the execution of high-risk warrants — including drug trafficking, smuggling, and contraband,” “We have 16 MRAPs nationwide.”

source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/homeland ... rap-2013-3


seemslikeadream wrote:when did Alex Jones start writing for Forbes?

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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby Nordic » Mon Mar 25, 2013 3:52 am

It's becoming clear that DHS, which was dreamed up along with 911, was created to get around thst pesky "posse comitus" thing.

These people think long term. Anyway, 12 years later the fruits of that particulsr branch of the conspiracy tree are ripening nicely.
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 20, 2013 4:22 pm

Obama DOJ formally accuses journalist in leak case of committing crimes
Yet another serious escalation of the Obama administration's attacks on press freedoms emerges

Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 May 2013 08.16 EDT

Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen had his emails read by the Obama DOJ, which accused him of being a co-conspirator in a criminal leak case. Photo: screen grab
(updated below - Update II - Update III)

It is now well known that the Obama justice department has prosecuted more government leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined - in fact, double the number of all such prior prosecutions. But as last week's controversy over the DOJ's pursuit of the phone records of AP reporters illustrated, this obsessive fixation in defense of secrecy also targets, and severely damages, journalists specifically and the newsgathering process in general.

New revelations emerged yesterday in the Washington Post that are perhaps the most extreme yet when it comes to the DOJ's attacks on press freedoms. It involves the prosecution of State Department adviser Stephen Kim, a naturalized citizen from South Korea who was indicted in 2009 for allegedly telling Fox News' chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, that US intelligence believed North Korea would respond to additional UN sanctions with more nuclear tests - something Rosen then reported. Kim did not obtain unauthorized access to classified information, nor steal documents, nor sell secrets, nor pass them to an enemy of the US. Instead, the DOJ alleges that he merely communicated this innocuous information to a journalist - something done every day in Washington - and, for that, this arms expert and long-time government employee faces more than a decade in prison for "espionage".

The focus of the Post's report yesterday is that the DOJ's surveillance of Rosen, the reporter, extended far beyond even what they did to AP reporters. The FBI tracked Rosen's movements in and out of the State Department, traced the timing of his calls, and - most amazingly - obtained a search warrant to read two days worth of his emails, as well as all of his emails with Kim. In this case, said the Post, "investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material." It added that "court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist".

But what makes this revelation particularly disturbing is that the DOJ, in order to get this search warrant, insisted that not only Kim, but also Rosen - the journalist - committed serious crimes. The DOJ specifically argued that by encouraging his source to disclose classified information - something investigative journalists do every day - Rosen himself broke the law. Describing an affidavit from FBI agent Reginald Reyes filed by the DOJ, the Post reports [emphasis added]:

"Reyes wrote that there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, 'at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator'. That fact distinguishes his case from the probe of the AP, in which the news organization is not the likely target. Using italics for emphasis, Reyes explained how Rosen allegedly used a 'covert communications plan' and quoted from an e-mail exchange between Rosen and Kim that seems to describe a secret system for passing along information. . . . However, it remains an open question whether it's ever illegal, given the First Amendment's protection of press freedom, for a reporter to solicit information. No reporter, including Rosen, has been prosecuted for doing so."

Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment's guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ - that a journalist can be guilty of crimes for "soliciting" the disclosure of classified information - is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act of investigative journalism itself. These latest revelations show that this is not just a theory but one put into practice, as the Obama DOJ submitted court documents accusing a journalist of committing crimes by doing this.

That same "solicitation" theory, as the New York Times reported back in 2011, is the one the Obama DOJ has been using to justify its ongoing criminal investigation of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange: that because Assange solicited or encouraged Manning to leak classified information, the US government can "charge [Assange] as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them." When that theory was first disclosed, I wrote that it would enable the criminalization of investigative journalism generally:

"Very rarely do investigative journalists merely act as passive recipients of classified information; secret government programs aren't typically reported because leaks just suddenly show up one day in the email box of a passive reporter. Journalists virtually always take affirmative steps to encourage its dissemination. They try to cajole leakers to turn over documents to verify their claims and consent to their publication. They call other sources to obtain confirmation and elaboration in the form of further leaks and documents. Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau described how they granted anonymity to 'nearly a dozen current and former officials' to induce them to reveal information about Bush's NSA eavesdropping program. Dana Priest contacted numerous 'U.S. and foreign officials' to reveal the details of the CIA's 'black site' program. Both stories won Pulitzer Prizes and entailed numerous, active steps to cajole sources to reveal classified information for publication.

"In sum, investigative journalists routinely — really, by definition — do exactly that which the DOJ's new theory would seek to prove WikiLeaks did. To indict someone as a criminal 'conspirator' in a leak on the ground that they took steps to encourage the disclosures would be to criminalize investigative journalism every bit as much as charging Assange with 'espionage' for publishing classified information."

That's what always made the establishment media's silence (or even support) in the face of the criminal investigation of WikiLeaks so remarkable: it was so obvious from the start that the theories used there could easily be exploited to criminalize the acts of mainstream journalists. That's why James Goodale, the New York Times' general counsel during the paper's historic press freedom fights with the Nixon administration, has been warning that "the biggest challenge to the press today is the threatened prosecution of WikiLeaks, and it's absolutely frightening."

Indeed, as Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler noted recently in the New Republic, when the judge presiding over Manning's prosecution asked military lawyers if they would "have pressed the same charges if Manning had given the documents not to WikiLeaks but directly to the New York Times?", the prosecutor answered simply: "Yes, ma'am". It has long been clear that this WikiLeaks-as-criminals theory could and would be used to criminalize establishment media outlets which reported on that which the US government wanted concealed.

Now we know that the DOJ is doing exactly that: applying this theory to criminalize the acts of journalists who report on what the US government does in secret, even though there is no law that makes such reporting illegal and the First Amendment protects such conduct. Essentially accusing James Rosen of being an unindicted co-conspriator in these alleged crimes is a major escalation of the Obama DOJ's already dangerous attacks on press freedom.

It is virtually impossible at this point to overstate the threat posed by the Obama DOJ to press freedoms. Back in 2006, Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales triggered a major controversy when he said that the New York Times could be prosecuted for having revealed the Top Secret information that the NSA was eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without warrants. That was at the same time that right-wing demagogues such Bill Bennett were calling for the prosecution of the NYT reporters who reported on the NSA program, as well as the Washington Post's Dana Priest for having exposed the CIA black site network.

But despite those public threats, the Bush DOJ never went so far as to formally accuse journalists in court filings of committing crimes for reporting on classified information. Now the Obama DOJ has.

This week, the New Republic's Molly Redden describes what I've heard many times over the past several years: national security reporters have had their ability to engage in journalism severely impeded by the Obama DOJ's unprecedented attacks, and are operating in a climate of fear for both their sources and themselves. Redden quotes one of the nation's best reporters, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, this way:

It's a huge impediment to reporting, and so chilling isn't quite strong enough, it's more like freezing the whole process into a standstill."

Redden says that "the DOJ's seizure of AP records will probably only exacerbate these problems." That's certainly true: as surveillance expert Julian Sanchez wrote in Mother Jones this week, there is ample evidence that the Obama DOJ's seizure of the phone records of journalists extends far beyond the AP case. Recall, as well, that the New York Times' Jim Risen is currently being pursued by the Obama DOJ, and conceivably faces prison if he refuses to reveal his source for a story he wrote about CIA incompetence in Iran. Said Risen:

I believe that the efforts to target me have continued under the Obama Administration, which has been aggressively investigating whistleblowers and reporters in a way that will have a chilling effect on the freedom of the press in the United States."

If even the most protected journalists - those who work for the largest media outlets - are being targeted in this way, and are saying over and over that the Obama DOJ is preventing basic news gathering from taking place without fear, imagine the effect this all has on independent journalists who are much more vulnerable.

There is simply no defense for this behavior. Obama defenders such as Andrew Sullivan claim that this is all more complicated than media outrage suggests because of a necessary "trade-off" between press freedoms and security. So do Obama defenders believe that George Bush and Richard Nixon - who never prosecuted leakers like this or formally accused journalists of being criminals for reporting classified information - were excessively protective of press freedoms and insufficiently devoted to safeguarding secrecy? To ask that question is to mock it. Obama has gone so far beyond what every recent prior president has done in bolstering secrecy and criminalizing whistleblowing and leaks.

Goodale, the New York Times' former general counsel, was interviewed by Democracy Now last week and said this:


AMY GOODMAN: "You say that President Obama is worse than President Nixon.

JAMES GOODALE: "Well, more precisely, I say that if in fact he goes ahead and prosecutes Julian Assange, he will pass Nixon. He's close to Nixon now. The AP example is a good example of something that Obama has done but Nixon never did. So I have him presently in second place, behind Nixon and ahead of Bush II. And he's moving up fast. . . .

"Obama has classified, I think, seven million — in one year, classified seven million documents. Everything is classified. So that would give the government the ability to control all its information on the theory that it's classified. And if anybody asks for it and gets it, they're complicit, and they're going to go to jail. So that criminalizes the process, and it means that the dissemination of information, which is inevitable, out of the classified sources of that information will be stopped.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: "What about the—

JAMES GOODALE: "It's very dangerous. That's why I'm — I get excited when I talk about it."

That was before it was known that the Obama DOJ read James Rosen's emails by formally labeling him in court an unindicted co-conspirator for the "crime" of reporting on classified information. This all just got a lot more dangerous.

UPDATE

Even journalists who are generally supportive of Obama - such as the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza - are reacting with fury over this latest revelation:
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby justdrew » Mon May 20, 2013 4:44 pm

If you want him to not follow the law, the law has to be changed. Congress. the american people demanding it. etc

I remember more than 20 years ago there was a campaign for a journalism shield law. A generation has gone by, and now a president is following the law as it's written. He can't sit there and ignore this stuff. If people want change they have to demand it and elect reps who will do it.


and you know why we NEVER got the shield law?

republicans. :hrumph
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 20, 2013 5:09 pm

justdrew wrote:If you want him to not follow the law, the law has to be changed. Congress. the american people demanding it. etc

I remember more than 20 years ago there was a campaign for a journalism shield law. A generation has gone by, and now a president is following the law as it's written. He can't sit there and ignore this stuff. If people want change they have to demand it and elect reps who will do it.


and you know why we NEVER got the shield law?

republicans. :hrumph



Do you think Obama is breaking the law by ordering drone strikes that kill innocent civilians?
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby justdrew » Mon May 20, 2013 5:18 pm

seemslikeadream wrote:
justdrew wrote:If you want him to not follow the law, the law has to be changed. Congress. the american people demanding it. etc

I remember more than 20 years ago there was a campaign for a journalism shield law. A generation has gone by, and now a president is following the law as it's written. He can't sit there and ignore this stuff. If people want change they have to demand it and elect reps who will do it.


and you know why we NEVER got the shield law?

republicans. :hrumph



Do you think Obama is breaking the law by ordering drone strikes that kill innocent civilians?


not as long as AUMF is in effect. I would guestimate most drone strikes are not against a valid target and shouldn't be done, particularly the 'signature strikes'

legally wrong no, morally, yes, most of them at least are.
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 20, 2013 5:24 pm

some people think he has committed war crimes


Did the U.S. sign Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter?

Peshawar High Court Rules US Drone Strikes in Pakistan Are Illegal, Comprise War Crimes
Posted on May 9, 2013 by Jim White
In a remarkable ruling (pdf), the Peshawar High Court has ruled that US drone strikes carried out within Pakistan are illegal, that they are war crimes and that they must be stopped immediately. The court also directed Pakistan’s military to intervene should drones enter Pakistan air space.

As described by Alice Ross at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, this ruling comes in a case brought by the son of one of the tribal elders killed in the March 17, 2011 drone strike that killed as many as 40 innocent elders gathered to discuss mineral rights:

The judgment applies to a lengthy case against the CIA brought by the Foundation for Fundamental Rights on behalf of Noor Khan, a tribesman whose father was among dozens of civilians killed in a drone strike on a gathering of tribal elders on March 17 2011. Last year, Noor Khan also attempted to bring legal action against the UK government for providing information that could lead to deaths in drone strikes, in a case backed by legal charity Reprieve. The attempt was refused but he is appealing.

Lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who argued the Peshawar case, said: ‘It is a landmark judgment: drone victims in Waziristan will now get some justice after a long wait. This ruling will also prove to be a test for the new government as if drones continue and government fails to act, it will run the risk of contempt of court.’

The Independent described the case and ruling further:

In what activists said was an historic decision, the Peshawar High Court issued the verdict against the strikes by CIA-operated spy planes in response to four petitions that contended the attacks killed civilians and caused “collateral damage”.

Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan, who headed a two-judge bench that heard the petitions, ruled the drone strikes were illegal, inhumane and a violation of the UN charter on human rights. The court said the strikes must be declared a war crime as they killed innocent people.

“The government of Pakistan must ensure that no drone strike takes place in the future,” the court said, according to the Press Trust of India. It asked Pakistan’s foreign ministry to table a resolution against the American attacks in the UN.

“If the US vetoes the resolution, then the country should think about breaking diplomatic ties with the US,” the judgment said.

For more background on the Peshawar High Court itself, this web page describes its jurisdiction and also has links to its history and other relevant information.

The ruling itself runs 22 pages. It begins by reciting the facts and requests provided by the petitioners to the court (emphasis added):

i. “to order the respondents to immediately assert its State Sovereignty and convey forcefully to the US in clear terms that no further drone strikes will be tolerated on its sovereign territory;

ii. to order the respondents to protect the ‘right to life’ of its citizen and use force if need be to stop extrajudicial killings with drones;

iii. to provide redress for the criminal offences committed by those involved inside and outside Pakistan in drone operations and in particularly involved in the strike on 17th March 2011 by directing the relevant authorities that criminal charges, under the relevant laws of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan be registeredagainst those responsible;

iv. to order the respondents to immediately contact the Security Council of the United Nations for violation of Pakistan’s territorial sovereignty, protected by Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter and demand the adoption of a resolution condemning drone strikes and requiring the US to stop the strikes in Pakistan;

v. to order the respondents to gather DATA of victims of drone strikes and encourage any such victims to come forth for the wrong done to them and approach the UN Human Rights Council and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions for launching their complaint;

vi. to order the respondents to use its ‘right to reparation’ for the wrongful act under the customary international law and under the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on State Responsibility and seek remedies available under Draft Articles of International Law Commission and any customary International Law.

Any other relief that this Hon’ble Court deems fit may also kindly be granted.

After that lengthy list of petitions, the decision launches immediately into a description of the situation, pulling no punches as it does so. It starts with a stunning sentence:

The serial killing of local civilians both of North & South Waziristan Agency, adjoining Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province through drone strikes visibly commenced from the year 2008 which is still continuing unabated.

Later, it hits very hard on the process the US has used to claim its drone strikes are legal while decrying the low number of militants killed compared to civilians:

The United States through self framed opinion labeled these foreign elements as their enemy. The U.S decision making troika, the President, Pentagon & CIA have joined hands to carryout drone strikes in these areas on spy information to hit & kill these elements, however, the ratio of killing of foreign elements is negligible while local civilians, non-combatants, casualties are shockingly considerable, beside damage caused to the properties of the local population, their households and other moveable properties including cattle heads, in great number, is a painful phenomena. The most shocking, gruesome & goriest side of these ruthless strikes is that the degree of precision is hardly maintained and why the figures, given above, would prove that these are carried out at random and innocent civilians casualties mostly of infant babies, pre-teen & teenage children, women & others including their properties are hundred times greater than those, killed alleged to be militants.

Signature strikes in particular are regarded as problems:

Mary O Connell in “Unlawful Killing with Combat Drones” based on the case study of Pakistan SSRN, 2004-2009, has clearly pointed out that since a majority of drone strikes in Pakistan fall under “signature strikes”, these would not be proportionate under the Geneva Conventions and thus, is illegal under International Law. The forming of an opinion by the CIA that these strikes target groups of men, who are militants having links with terrorist groups, is based on figment of imagination and till date no tangible, reliable & convincing proof has been furnished to that effect by the U.S Authorities including CIA.

Oh my. That paragraph is going to leave a mark on the author of US signature strike policy, John Brennan.

There also is reference to the practice of killing first responders:

The international observers’ analysis unrebuttably proved that through drone strikes in Pakistan territory residential houses, vehicles, worshippers in mosques, mourners in funeral procession and even rescue personnel have been attacked with brutality.

The decision concludes with a long “holding” (emphasis added):

Under the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 particularly Article 199 thereof put this Court under tremendous obligation to safeguard & protect the life & property of the citizen of Pakistan and any person for the time being in Pakistan, being fundamental rights, hence, this Court is constrained to hold as follows: -

i. “That the drone strikes, carried out in the tribal areas (FATA) particularly North & South Waziristan by the CIA & US Authorities, are blatant violation of Basic Human Rights and are against the UN Charter, the UN General Assembly Resolution, adopted unanimously, the provision of Geneva Conventions thus, it is held to be a War Crime, cognizable by the International Court of Justice or Special Tribunal for War Crimes, constituted or to be constituted by the UNO for this purpose.

ii. That the drone strikes carried out against a handful of alleged militants, who are not engaged in combat with the US Authorities or Forces, amounts to breach of International Law and Conventions on the subject matter, therefore, it is held that these are absolutely illegal & blatant violation of the Sovereignty of the State of Pakistan because frequent intrusion is made on its territory/airspace without its consent rather against its wishes as despite of the protests lodged by the Government of Pakistan with USA on the subject matter, these are being carried out with impunity.

iii. That the civilians casualties, as discussed above, including considerable damage to properties, livestock, wildlife & killing of infants/suckling babies, women and preteen children, is an uncondonable crime on the part of US Authorities including CIA and it is held so.

iv. That in view of the established facts & figures with regard to civilians casualties & damage caused to the properties, livestock of the citizens of Pakistan, the US Government is bound to compensate all the victims’ families at the assessed rate of compensation in kind of US dollars.

v. The Government of Pakistan and its Security Forces shall ensure that in future such drone strikes are not conducted & carried out within the sovereign territory of Pakistan. Proper warning be administered in this regard and if that does not work, the Government of Pakistan and State Institutions particularly the Security Forces shall have the right being under constitutional & legal obligations to shutdown the drones, attacking Pakistani territories or when these enter the airspace of Pakistan Sovereign territory.

vi. The Government of Pakistan is directed to take the matter seriously before the Security Council of the UNO and in case it does not succeed there if VETTO (sic) power is unduly exercised by the US Authorities then, urgent meeting of the General Assembly be requisitioned through a written request to resolve this menace in an effective manner.

vii. The Government of Pakistan shall also file a proper complaint, giving complete details of the losses sustained by the Pakistani civilians citizens both to life & properties due to drone strikes, making a request to the UN Secretary General to constitute an independent War Crime Tribunal which shall have the mandate to investigate & enquire into all these matters and to give a final verdict as to whether the same amounts to War Crime or not and in the former case to direct the US Authorities/Government to immediately stop the drone strikes within the airspace/territory of Pakistan and to immediately arrange for the complete & full compensation for the victims’ families of the civilians of Pakistan both for life & properties at the rate & ratio laid down under the international standards.

viii. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is directed to prepare draft resolution/complaints and requisition for doing the needful within a minimum possible time in line of the above guidelines given by the Court, also asking & requiring the Security Council and the General Assembly, as the case may be, to pass a resolution condemning the drone strikes, flown by the CIA/US Authorities and violating the sovereign territory of Pakistan in violation of UN Charter and various Conventions of the UNO, referred to above.

ix. In case the US Authorities do not comply with the UNO Resolution, whether passed by the Security Council or by the General Assembly of UNO, the Government of Pakistan shall severe all ties with the USA and as a mark of protest shall deny all logistic & other facilities to the USA within Pakistan.

The underlying drone strike of March 17, 2011 had bothered me for a long time and was the basis for my thoughts that a number of strikes carried out by the US were more political retaliation than strikes aimed at militants. Such strikes that looked political to me occurred several times.

This ruling reads as a long criminal indictment of Obama’s signature tool for the US Great War on Terror. If the ruling gains any traction, a number of US officials could find themselves in significant legal trouble and the entire US policy on fighting terrorism will need a complete reset.

It will take quite a while for this to play out, especially since Pakistan goes to the polls on Saturday to elect a new government. Given the internal violence already leading up the election, it would seem like the new government will need quite a bit of time to settle in before it even can address and begin to implement the ruling, should it choose to do so.

Meanwhile, expect stone silence from the US press and the Obama administration even though it is likely a number of people now realize they could be facing huge problems arising from the policies they have developed and implemented.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby justdrew » Mon May 20, 2013 5:35 pm

we've been committing war crimes for a long time, at last since the Korean War (well, can't forget the Philippine invasion). It's one of our national disgraces. Unfortunately, we have a nation that seems to support, even demand such disgraceful behavior. I don't really get it. I see some hope of this phase being the last phase. I fear a truly changed country is still 10 - 20 years away.
By 1964 there were 1.5 million mobile phone users in the US
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 20, 2013 5:41 pm

justdrew wrote:we've been committing war crimes for a long time, at last since the Korean War (well, can't forget the Philippine invasion). It's one of our national disgraces. Unfortunately, we have a nation that seems to support, even demand such disgraceful behavior. I don't really get it. I see some hope of this phase being the last phase. I fear a truly changed country is still 10 - 20 years away.


yes that is true but you say Obama has to follow the law...is that all laws or just the ones he feels like?
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby DrVolin » Mon May 20, 2013 8:49 pm

justdrew wrote:we've been committing war crimes for a long time, at last since the Korean War...


Don't forget how the west was won, either.
all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

--Guns and Roses
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby elfismiles » Mon May 20, 2013 9:13 pm

AmeriKKKa: Founded On Genocide ... and continuing this hallowed horrific history.

So, yeah, Obama is following laws you say? Pick and choose. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. Until the Empire Ends - FUCK HIM AND THE BANKERS / INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEXES HE RODE IN ON.
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon May 20, 2013 9:35 pm

And we honor the first to utilize germ warfare to commit mass murder by naming a town and university after them. We raise statues to memorialize warriors and the wars they fought in, but teachers... not so much.
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby Belligerent Savant » Mon May 20, 2013 11:08 pm

elfismiles wrote:AmeriKKKa: Founded On Genocide ... and continuing this hallowed horrific history.

So, yeah, Obama is following laws you say? Pick and choose. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. Until the Empire Ends - FUCK HIM AND THE BANKERS / INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEXES HE RODE IN ON.


Damn right. A stooge like the many before him.

What's the title of this thread again? Yea - that.
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Re: Fuck Obama

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 21, 2013 9:59 am

WEB ONLY// FEATURES » MAY 21, 2013
How the Government Targeted Occupy
A new report reveals that the U.S. spent millions of dollars spying on Occupiers and other anti-corporate activists.
BY LISA GRAVES
Little evidence has emerged, in the years since the horrific violence of 9/11, of any widespread threat from al-Qaeda within the United States. Nevertheless, politicians have used that potent memory to fund an enormous domestic surveillance infrastructure.

Freedom of conscience is one of the most fundamental human freedoms. This freedom is not merely about one’s ability to choose to believe or not believe in religion or a particular philosophy. In a democracy, freedom of conscience is about the ability to be critical of government and corporations, and to be free from the chilling fear that being critical will subject you to government surveillance.

Freedom of conscience is not fully realized in isolation. Without the ability to share one’s thoughts, to speak out about injustice, or to join with others in peaceably assembling to petition for redress of grievances, this core freedom is not truly free. Americans should be able to exercise these most sacred rights in free society without worry of being monitored by the government.

In our new report, “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street,” written by Center for Media and Democracy contributor and DBA Press publisher Beau Hodai, we detail several ways in which our tax dollars are being squandered on law enforcement—or so-called “homeland security”—personnel monitoring Americans who dare to voice dissent against the extraordinary influence that some of the world's most powerful corporations have on on our elected officials.

Through this investigation we have documented:

How U.S. Department of Homeland Security-funded “fusion center” personnel have spent endless hours gleefully monitoring their fellow Americans though Facebook and other social media, and how fusion centers nationwide have expended countless hours and tax dollars in the monitoring of Occupy Wall Street, bank activists and civil libertarians concerned about national security powers.
How some of these “counter terrorism” government employees applied facial recognition technology, drawing from a state database of driver's license photos, to photographs found on Facebook in the effort to profile citizens believed to be associated with activist groups.
How corporations have become part of the “information sharing environment” with law enforcement/intelligence agencies through various public-private intelligence sharing partnerships—and how, through these partnerships, the homeland security apparatus has been focused on citizens protesting these corporations.
How private groups and individuals, such as Charles Koch, Chase Koch (Charles' son and a Koch Industries executive), Koch Industries, and the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have hired off-duty cops—sometimes still armed and in police uniforms—to perform the private security functions of keeping undesirable people (reporters and activists) away from them. As was the case in an incident involving protests of ALEC, off-duty officers working on behalf of ALEC and the resort in which an ALEC conference was being held, led riot-gear-clad officers in the pepper spraying and arrests of several peaceful, law abiding protestors.
How law enforcement agencies in Phoenix, Arizona dispatched an undercover officer to infiltrate activist groups organizing both ALEC demonstrations and the launch of Occupy Phoenix—and how the work of this undercover infiltrator officer benefited ALEC and the private corporations that were the subjects of these activist demonstrations.
How “counter terrorism” personnel monitored the protest activities of citizens opposed to the “indefinite detention” language contained in National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (which CMD has filed an amicus brief against).
How the FBI applied “Operation Tripwire,” an initiative originally intended to apprehend domestic terrorists through the use of private sector informants, in their monitoring of Occupy Wall Street groups.
Even if the amount of money being wasted were small—and it’s not, we're talking millions of dollars heaped into the coffers of local law enforcement agencies annually—the notion that we the people should tolerate the deployment of police, ostensibly hired to protect us, to spy on us without any criminal predicate is an outrage. The money spent spying on Americans could be spent strengthening our public schools, providing access to life-saving medicine for our neighbors or helping to achieve the Constitution’s promise of forming “a more perfect union.”

Little evidence has emerged, in the years since the horrific violence of 9/11, of any widespread threat from al-Qaeda within the United States. Nevertheless, politicians have used that potent memory to fund an enormous domestic surveillance infrastructure. The result of this trough of money and excess capacity—the turning of “counterterrorism” resources against law-abiding American citizens—was utterly predictable.

It has been more than 30 years since Congress acted with deep skepticism regarding government agents deployed to spy on Americans. The last thorough and truly independent investigation was after Watergate, when the Church and Pike Committees spent months intensively investigating the ways in which prior administrations had violated Americans' privacy and trampled civil liberties under the guise of national security.

In 1976, then-Attorney General Edward Levi promulgated the “Levi Guidelines,” investigative guidelines developed in response to domestic surveillance abuses, such as COINTELPRO, perpetrated by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Since the Carter administration, however, there has been an accelerating erosion of protections from domestic surveillance. The “Levi Guidelines” were later largely countermanded through changes by John Ashcroft and his successors at the Justice Department.

With the post-9/11 shift from enforcing the law to “intelligence gathering,” numerous public rules as well as secret guidelines were altered to maximize the gathering of information about Americans without requiring any criminal predicate. The new rule appears to be that almost everything is fair game without probable cause, except for home searches and phone taps (but even the rules for electronic surveillance and the acquisition of intelligence information are now subject to enormous loopholes due to changes pushed into law in 2008 by Director of National Intelligence-turned-Booz Allen Hamilton Vice Chairman Mike McConnell, with help from AT&T, Verizon, and others).

It was a stroke of misfortune that, on 9/11, then-Vice President Dick Cheney served as the de facto head of the national security hierarchy. Cheney's “dark side” approach created a climate in which longstanding rules intended to protect basic rights were replaced with array of questionable, if not absurd, interpretations of domestic and international law.

As President Ford’s chief of staff, Cheney, with the aid of then-Deputy Attorney General Laurence H. Silberman, tried to thwart essential reforms of surveillance agencies. Silberman was later appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and, at the urging of his former law clerk, then-Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, helped facilitate legal opinions instrumental to the George W. Bush administration's expansion of domestic surveillance activities by redefining Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.

Unfortunately, much of this backsliding has been embraced and further entrenched by the Obama administration.

The federal government, in general, claims to abide by a long-standing rule that a person will not be investigated based “solely” on protected First Amendment activity. But what does that amount to in reality? In Arizona, it appears fusion center personnel used the prospect of anarchist involvement in protests of banks, other corporations, and/or ALEC as a hook for dispatching at least one undercover officer to infiltrate groups of Americans organizing peaceful protests. Fusion center personnel even cited past instances of “violent tactics” perpetrated against ALEC in other states, when, in reality, there had only been one prior incident of graffiti (spray paint) at an ALEC event.

Quite frankly, there is no way to know if groups of American anarchists have been infiltrated by law enforcement or intelligence agents acting as agent provocateurs, urging more aggressive action. It is worth noting that, in the case of the Phoenix infiltration, the undercover officer apparently claimed to be affiliated with an alleged Mexican anarchist group that claimed to have committed acts of arson.

The idea that the prospect of graffiti can trigger months of infiltration and surreptitious surveillance of citizens exercising their freedom of conscience exposes that the idea our government will not monitor citizens based solely their exercise of First Amendment rights is little more than a joke. And that joke is on us.

Read the full report on SourceWatch.

Read the full report and view document archive on DBA Press.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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