The CIA often doesn’t know who their drones are killing, but they are certain about them being enemy combatants

NBC News has received classified documents that apparently show that one in four of those killed in drone attacks are not necessarily affiliated with any enemy group.   Apparently, they are classified as “other militants” based solely on the fact that they were killed by U.S. drone attacks.  This harkens back to the days of the Vietnam war when the U.S. gauged its success by the number of Vietnamese they killed, classifying them all as enemy simply on the basis of having killed them.

Though the Obama administration has previously said it targets al Qaeda leaders and senior Taliban officials plotting attacks against the U.S. and U.S. troops, officials are sometimes unsure of the targets’ affiliations. About half of the targets in the documents are described as al Qaeda. But in 26 of the attacks, accounting for about a quarter of the fatalities, those killed are described only as “other militants.” In four others, the dead are described as “foreign fighters.”

In some cases, U.S. officials also seem unsure how many people died. One entry says that a drone attack killed seven to 10 people, while another says that an attack killed 20 to 22.

Yet officials seem certain that however many people died, and whoever they were, none of them were non-combatants. In fact, of the approximately 600 people listed as killed in the documents, only one is described as a civilian. The individual was identified to NBC News as the wife or girlfriend of an al Qaeda leader.

Given that teh U.S. is not exactly at war with Pakistan, one would think that the CIA would be a little more careful about indiscriminate killing.  Of course, if the mission is to perpetuate the war on terror by creating as much ill will toward the U.S. as possible, then the CIA is doing a commendable job.  The beneficiaries of perpetual war are probably quite pleased.

According to the NYT article there are two kinds of drone attacks.  “Personality” strikes target known targets. “Signature” strikes are different:

In so-called “signature” strikes, intelligence officers and drone operators kill suspects based on their patterns of behavior — but without positive identification. With signature strikes, the CIA doesn’t necessarily know who it is killing. One former senior intelligence official said that at the height of the drone program in Pakistan in 2009 and 2010, as many as half of the strikes were classified as signature strikes.

Annoying a cop in New York may soon be a felony

The bill has been passed by the Senate and now moves on to the New York State Assembly. From RT

Sponsored by Senator Joe Griffo, Bill S.2402 would make it a felony to “harass, annoy, or threaten a police officer while on duty.”

From the text of the bill:

S 240.33 AGGRAVATED HARASSMENT OF A POLICE OFFICER OR PEACE OFFICER.
    A  PERSON  IS  GUILTY  OF AGGRAVATED HARASSMENT OF A POLICE OFFICER OR
  PEACE OFFICER WHEN, WITH THE INTENT TO HARASS, ANNOY, THREATEN OR  ALARM
  A  PERSON  WHOM HE OR SHE KNOWS OR REASONABLY SHOULD KNOW TO BE A POLICE
  OFFICER OR PEACE OFFICER ENGAGED IN THE COURSE  OF PERFORMING HIS OR HER
  OFFICIAL DUTIES, HE OR SHE STRIKES, SHOVES, KICKS OR OTHERWISE  SUBJECTS
  SUCH PERSON TO PHYSICAL CONTACT.
    AGGRAVATED  HARASSMENT OF A POLICE OFFICER OR PEACE OFFICER IS A CLASS
  E FELONY.

This really just codifies what cops often do already.  If you aggravate them, they will retaliate by arresting you under some vaguely written laws about disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, or interfering with an officer.

Of course, cops have the right to annoy ordinary citizens all they want. Any civil consequences are paid out of the pockets of taxpayers.

In May 2011, New York homeowner Emily Good was arrested by Rochester police while standing in her yard and videotaping police officers who were performing a traffic stop in front of her house.

As a side note, this story is reported on the front page of RT.com, but I found very few other mainstream outlets  covering it when I did a Google search.   Maybe that will change if the bill becomes law.  RT is one of the few establishment news outlets that relishes publishing stories that embarrass governmental entities in the U.S.  They have an agenda, of course, but their adversarial stance with regard to the U.S. makes them less inclined to mindlessly repeat official governmental declarations as if they are propagating God’s honest truth.  Even  European news outlets are often barely distinguishable from U.S. sources as they are all part of a somewhat homogeneous western media establishment.  You will probably see more libertarian perspective on RT than any other mainstream media source.  RT also has less of the left/right bias common to U.S. media organizations.  They are quite comfortable attacking either side.

More evidence that Barack Obama is just George Bush disquised as a black guy

Today the media is all abuzz about a secret court order, requested by the FBI, demanding that Verizon turn over to the NSA all call metadata both international and domestic for its subscribers.  Glenn Greenwald and the New Your Times have amazingly similar articles about it, making one wonder if one copied from the other.watch full movie Star Wars: The Last Jedi 2017 online

Essentially, the stunning lack of regard for privacy under Bush has continued and probably increased under Obama. The only difference is that Obama is using the secret FISA court to rubber stamp its abuse of power and sidestep Constitutional protections.  The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, is telling the American public to “Trust us.  While we are secretly collecting information about everything you do, we are also secretly respecting your Constitutional rights.”  Only idiots and mindless loyalists could possibly fall for such a ridiculous line.

There have been never ending attempts by government to leverage off the 9/11 attacks to gain unfettered access to all private information for individuals and businesses. Most well known of these invasions of privacy is the USA Patriot Act.  Another is the Total Information Awareness program advocated by SAIC and Admiral John Poindexter and established under DARPA.  When that drew lots of public and Congressional ire, the government simply disbursed the program’s constituent parts which have continued to be further developed over the years.  Carnivore (FBI) and Echelon (NSA) are among the more well known electronic communications interception programs operated by U.S. government, but it’s safe to assume that the government also has finger-tip access to all electronic medical and financial records of U.S. citizens as well.

While it is not clear whether such orders have been served on other U.S. telecom companies, I think it is fair to assume that to be the case.  Given the adversarial stance that the federal government has taken with respect to ordinary citizens and given their aggressive attempts to access and gain gain control over all personal information of U.S. citizens, the only conclusion one can come to is that this is probably only the tip of the iceberg rather than some anomaly.

I think this establishes beyond any doubt that both democrats and republicans will continue to advance the American surveillance state regardless of lip service to the contrary.  But that’s okay, folks.  Later on you can still play dumb and claim you never saw it coming as is always the case when people suddenly open their eyes and find themselves living under the thumb of a totalitarian government.

Monday Afternoon Links

Deland, Florida police officer, James P. Harris, has been fired for running over Marlon Brown in his police cruiser.  Cops started chasing Brown when a Volusia County deputy noticed he wasn’t wearing his seat belt.  The cop has apparently not been charged with any crimes, but the investigation still isn’t over, so a miracle could still happen.

Remember that case of the Kern County Sheriff’s confiscating video of their deputies beating a David Sal Silva to death?  Well, the coroner’s report now says that the guy’s death was an accident.  Probably not surprising since the Kern County Sheriff, Donny Youngblood, just happens to also be the Kern County coroner.  An independent autopsy is out of the question since Silva’s body was cremated.

According to the Star Tribune, Minneapolis has paid out $14 million to settle 95 police misconduct cases.  Only eight of the 95 cases resulted in any officers being disciplined and, of the 12 costliest cases, no officers were disciplined.   So, basically, cops who abuse their powers get a pass while taxpayers are left holding the bag.  I doubt that Minneapolis differs from most large city police departments in that regard.

New York State chief judge Sol Wachtler was famously quoted by Tom Wolfe in The Bonfire of the Vanities that “a grand jury would ‘indict a ham sandwich,’ if that’s what you wanted.”   Unless the accused is a cop…

The Court Martial of Bradley Manning begins today.  This, like the leak of the Pentagon Papers by Danial Ellsberg, Manning will almost certainly be hailed as a hero in the future, but governments learn very slowly and Manning will continue to suffer as the public continues to be largely apathetic.

Meanwhile, the British government is considering talks with Ecuador to discuss the fate of Julian Assange who has been penned up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden relating to a rape investigation.  Assange has agreed to return to Sweden if given a guaranty that he won’t be extradited to the U.S. as part of the Bradley Manning witch hunt.  Assange is currently pursuing a remote campaign for the Australian Senate.  The election will be held in September, 2012. [NOTE:  The link for this story isn’t working because rt.com has been down a good part of the afternoon]

A 3-year-old deaf preschooler in Nebraska is being forced by the Grand Island school district to change the hand sign he uses for his name because it resembles a gun.  “We are working with the parents to come to the best solution we can for the child,” a school spokesperson said.

Cop gets a slap on the wrist for accessing personal information of 54 people for personal reasons.

Clearwater, FL police commander, Lt. Richard Crean, used a law enforcement data base to access personal information of anyone and everyone he was interested in, including “his ex-wife’s boyfriend, a television news reporter and the wives of other police officers.”  The department is recommending that he be demoted and suspended for 5 days.  Apparently this doesn’t rise to the level of a crime for which his ass should be prosecuted.

Bryan Felts, a Tampa officer that Crean looked up twice said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. At my agency, that just would never, never fly.  All they did was demote him? That’s incredible.”

My guess is that there would have been a lot less concern had there been no cops among the victims.  In fact, I’d be willing to bet that this kind of abuse is so commonplace that the only thing that sets this case apart is that someone actually got in trouble.

Afternoon Links

  • A 350 pound asthmatic man died at the hands of Forth Worth “zero tolerance officers” who were conducting a drug search of his home on May 16th.  The man resisted being forced to lie on his stomach because it restricted his breathing.  He was tasered at least twice before he stopped breathing and died.  As usual, the cops aren’t talking about it because, you know, they are “investigating”.
  • NYPD housing cop is convicted of 10 felony counts related to falsifying paperwork to conceal his involvement with an illegal search and arrest of a Manhattan man during a 2012 drug bust.  If not for the irrefutable surveillance video, the innocent man would still be in prison and the cop would still be on the job.
  • The FBI is investigating the LAPD SWAT team for buying “large numbers” of custom-made handguns and reselling them for a huge profit.  An initial internal “investigation” found no wrong-doing on the part of cops.  I’m guessing that would have been the end of it if someone on the inside hadn’t leaked to the media about it.

FBI shoots and kills unarmed interviewee while investigating Boston bombing

From the Washington Post:

A Chechen man who was fatally shot by an FBI agent last week during an interview about one of the Boston bombing suspects was unarmed, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

An air of mystery has surrounded the FBI shooting of Ibragim Todashev, 27, since it occurred in Todashev’s apartment early on the morning of May 22. The FBI said in a news release that day that Todashev, a former Boston resident who knew bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed during an interview with several law enforcement officers.

The FBI isn’t saying much about it until they can all get their stories straight pending an investigation of itself which will not be completed until the incident is forgotten by the public for months.

Late Afternoon Links

  • LAPD cop arrested for molesting two young girls, both under age ten.  Interesting to note that he is on paid administrative leave even as he sits in jail.  I don’t get paid if I have to go to court for a speeding ticket.  Cops must live is some kind of parallel universe.
  • Sacramento cops subdue an unarmed man to death during an arrest at a convenience store.  The police department has launched an investigation which will presumably lead to a declaration that their officers behaved appropriately.
  • From the New York Daily News:  “A Massachusetts kindergartner sparked panic on his school bus when he brought a plastic Lego gun — the size of a quarter — on board.”

 

The war on terror = perpetual war

Glenn Greenwald discusses the administration position that the war on terror is expect to continue for and, in terms of importance, why that should be the lead story in the news instead of the Benghazi, IRS, or DOJ/AP scandals.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war – justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism – that is the single greatest cause of that threat.

He makes a good point.  Attacks on the U.S. by foreign terror organizations have universally been in response to perpetual Western (especially U.S.) interference in the affairs of middle eastern countries.  The U.S. then uses that as an excuse to further ramp up and broaden that interference which leads to broader foreign support for the very terrorist organizations we claim to be fighting.  Contrary to the common belief that wars happen to the U.S., the real fact of the matter is that the U.S. pursues war.

Greenwald continues:

…the “war on terror” cannot and will not end on its own for two reasons: (1) it is designed by its very terms to be permanent, incapable of ending, since the war itself ironically ensures that there will never come a time when people stop wanting to bring violence back to the US (the operational definition of “terrorism”), and (2) the nation’s most powerful political and economic factions reap a bonanza of benefits from its continuation. Whatever else is true, it is now beyond doubt that ending this war is the last thing on the mind of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and those who work at the highest levels of his administration. Is there any way they can make that clearer beyond declaring that it will continue for “at least” another 10-20 years?

If the past is any measure, public opposition to war is only roused by flag-draped caskets of American soldiers, the institution of the draft, and burdens that bring the actual cost of war directly to their front to in a highly visible way.  Neither political party is against war.  Blind patriotism is becoming just as widely embraced by the left as the right.

Another factor affecting the public reaction to the permanent war on terror is the stunning lack of understanding of (or interest in ) how U.S. military activities in the Middle East provoke a terrorist response.  Furthermore, Americans think that terrorism violates the ethics of war, so it’s easy to demonize the terrorists who are simply retaliating with the only methods that make sense against an opponent that could easily crush them in a conventional conflict.

The U.S. is engaged in a global war with objectives that have never been defined  against an enemy that is perpetually being redefined and with no idea what constitutes winning or losing or how to know when it’s over.  If war is the health of the state, then this state has truly arrived.

Dear employees, about next year’s health insurance….

Over at Reason, J.D. Tuccille posted a letter from small business owner, Michael Ortner, to his 23 employees describing all the available options for health insurance in the coming year.  It turns out that it’s just like voting because it’s a choice between multiple evils.

What makes the article worth reading is that it presents a very concise list of what employers can offer their employees along with a short history of how the U.S. got to where it is in dictating healthcare as an employee benefit.  What I found most interesting was the list of four defects in the current healthcare laws because it demonstrates so conclusively that the health care laws do not serve the public they purport to serve.

1) Irrespective of much we decide to spend, we lack freedom in choosing the specific plan that is right for us when we receive it as a benefit from our employer.

2) If we decide to buy health insurance directly (10% of Americans do), we are discriminated against since we do not receive the same treatment from the IRS.  We have to use post tax dollars to purchase it.  This is completely unjust and should be the first thing on an political leader’s agenda when it comes to solving the healthcare problem.  Either everyone should pay taxes on them or noone should.

3) When we develop a treatable medical condition, we are out of luck if we leave our employer since our insurance was tied to that employer and we now have a pre-existing condition.

4) The worst of all…because most of us receive our heathcare as a benefit, we are completely separated from any real knowledge of our actual expenses.  This is the major reason why our healthcare expenses are now through the roof.

This is like the income tax code in the sense that it is so abusive of most ordinary taxpayers that it’s virtually impossible for a reasonable person to think that the government has any respect at all for them at all.  The reason tax laws have become so incomprehensible is that they are a vehicle for politicians to dispense favors to special interests at the expense of ordinary citizens.  In other words, tax law is the face of government corruption and the very same thing is true for healthcare law.  The real beneficiaries are the healthcare and insurance industries while the ordinary citizen is saddled with a narrow one-size-fits all range of options designed by bureaucrats in partnership with those beneficiaries.

What is really astonishing is how young people, the healthiest segment of society, sit idly by as the government increasingly burdens them with subsidizing healthcare for those who are  less healthy.  These are, of course, the people who are lower on the income ladder, but who also face the costs of starting a family, buying a home, and paying off their college loans.

 For example, there is no way most 23 year old single people should be spending $500/month on health insurance.  That’s a bad deal for most 23 years olds and if given the choice most should take at least half of that in cash and save it/invest it.  23 year olds are already getting stuck with higher premiums on auto insurance since they are higher risk drivers; by the same principle, they should be paying much lower premiums since they are generally less at risk health-wise.

The single short-coming people have in their political beliefs has less to do with whether they lean left or right but rather their stunning lack of skepticism about the supposition that the government has their best interests at heart.   World history is the history of government officials serving their own interests to the detriment of their citizens.