(Article changed on February 11, 2014 at 17:54)
Having already acted as judge, jury and executioner and gotten away with it President Barack Obama, our constitutional law professor in chief is preparing to target yet another American citizen for termination with extreme prejudice. In a flurry of stories on Monday it has been stated that the Obama administration is about to launch another operation to carry out an extrajudicial murder of a so-called threat to America reported to be a member of the now umbrella term that is applied to ALL Islamic militants - Al Qaeda. The as yet unnamed target of the coming murder without a trial is only identified as being a part of "Al Qaeda" which has become a resurgent Manichean devil serving perfectly the interests of a militarist surveillance state that is increasingly losing the war of public opinion for its now obvious lawless and renegade nature.
If the propaganda of the swarthy Muslim menace and their new Islamic caliphate accompanied by the coming activation of thousands of domestic sleeper cells to launch terrorist attacks in our shopping malls and force Americans to heel to Sharia law can just be hammered home to keep the scrutiny at bay while the criminal hydra reconfigures then the pushback can begin in earnest. Pickup lists that are likely already being compiled by the NSA will lead to a flurry of arrests, mass detentions (per Justice Scalia) and the probable extrajudicial murders of domestic "troublemakers' - this is the way that it always works in a nascent totalitarian state.
Obama has already set the precedent with the killing of American born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. Al -Alwaki had at one time been used as an example of a "good Muslim' by the U.S. establishment to the extent that he was featured in a Washington Post puff piece about Ramadan. He however became increasingly radicalized by the vicious anti-Muslim response to the "day that changed everything', September 11, 2001 and began to call for jihad thereby making him a perfect candidate for the Obama "kill list". Not that I condone al-Awlaki's calls for attacks on innocent Americans but that isn't the point - we at least theoretically are a constitutional republic and as such there are certain rights that U.S. citizens are entitled to such as due process.
It is a serious departure from the rule of law when a president is given the unaccountable powers of a king which is increasingly how the head of the executive branch is allowed to operate. When al-Awlaki was murdered instead of being apprehended and brought back to the U.S. to stand trial it was the equivalent of crossing the Rubicon. The Obama regime then followed up that killing with the murder by drone of his teenage son also without due process but very more ominously in what bodes ill for the future of all who oppose the criminal state as a sort of pre-crime form of intervention to prevent the son from avenging the father.
Where does it all end?
The knuckle-dragging thug that is the safely gerrymandered Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers who represents only a fraction of a percentage of the country yet due to our perverse system of government is able to lord it over the majority from his throne as House Intelligence Committee boss mouthed off during a hearing on security threats last week according to a Washington Post story published today:
"Individuals who would have been previously removed from the battlefield by U.S. counter terrorism operations for attacking or plotting to attack U.S. interests remain free because of self-imposed red tape". He added that the new constraints on drone strikes are "endangering the lives of Americans at home and our military overseas in a way that is frustrating to our allies and frustrating to those of us who engage in the oversight of our classified activities."
Rogers is a fascist scumbag-- that much is beyond any reasonable argument-- and a lying one at that, for his belching out of unproven allegations that former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a Russian spy and that journalist Glenn Greenwald is a "thief". The man has an absolute hard-on to do it the John Wayne way and kill both of them and another Obama extrajudicial assassination of a U.S. citizen would bring him all that much closer to realizing that wettest of wet dreams. Rogers is never called out for his bullshit nor asked for evidence to back his allegations but when you happen to hail from a state in which the high-rolling DeVos family has set up operations and can ensure that those swinish capitalist gangsters can operate with impunity you are a made man in The Homeland circa 2014.
Speaking of Glenn Greenwald yesterday marked the day of the launching of the long anticipated new media venture First Look Media. The first of several different online magazines is called "The Intercept" and will serve as an independent vehicle for the type of crusading, hold corrupt power accountable type of investigative journalism that has been nearly snuffed out in this country by a venal, consolidated and connected corporate media. The first story, in collaboration with journalist Jeremy Scahill (Dirty Wars) is perfectly timed given the Obama administration's latest targeting of an American without the benefit of a trial in that the NSA has been providing targeting intelligence to the ongoing armed drone attacks that are a pox upon this one great country's reputation. The story details how the American Stasi assists in tracking cell phone coordinated for those targeted for killing. While this fails to surprise those who truly understand the vile and anti-American nature of the wretched hive of scum and villainy at Fort Meade the revelation that the stupid bastards fail to take into account exactly WHO is using the targeted cellphones only further cements the image of an agency that is a sucking black hole of taxpayer money and an abject failure in fighting "terrorism". I excerpt from the piece:
"In one tactic, the NSA "geolocates" the SIM card or handset of a suspected terrorist's mobile phone, enabling the CIA and U.S. military to conduct night raids and drone strikes to kill or capture the individual in possession of the device.
The former JSOC drone operator is adamant that the technology has been responsible for taking out terrorists and networks of people facilitating improvised explosive device attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But he also states that innocent people have "absolutely" been killed as a result of the NSA's increasing reliance on the surveillance tactic.
One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA's reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.
Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA's targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. "They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave," the former drone operator says. "That's how they confuse us."
As a result, even when the agency correctly identifies and targets a SIM card belonging to a terror suspect, the phone may actually be carried by someone else, who is then killed in a strike. According to the former drone operator, the geolocation cells at the NSA that run the tracking program -- known as Geo Cell --sometimes facilitate strikes without knowing whether the individual in possession of a tracked cell phone or SIM card is in fact the intended target of the strike.
"Once the bomb lands or a night raid happens, you know that phone is there," he says. "But we don't know who's behind it, who's holding it. It's of course assumed that the phone belongs to a human being who is nefarious and considered an "unlawful enemy combatant.' This is where it gets very shady."
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