Targeted Killings (assassinations)

US public supports targeted killing

Obama's use of drones to deal with the new generation of terrorists spawned by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan creates an ongoing cycle of never ending war. His questionable actions, using highly classified unmanned drone strikes in "targeted killings" by the CIA against young leaders opposed to the US Wars, identified by a 'disposition matrix', is becoming an cheap and easy institutional solution to a complex problem. Blowback is inevitable as innocent civilians are always 'collateral damage' in such covert wars.

Naureen Shah, Columbia University

As a new form of warfare, Naureen Shah: Associate Director of Columbia Law School's Counter-terrorism and Human Rights Project, says that these secret CIA attacks constitute a dangerous legacy that, without any limits, will be passed on to the next President, who may use this tool more liberally than Obama.

This can not be the extent of our counter-terrorism policy. We must have a spectrum of tools, including components of education, financial aid, medical services, trade, media, and even ground force if necessary. If the 'flexibility' of a shadow war with criminals is a necessity in a global society, then we need to debate the technology of targeted killings, to make their use transparent and accountable, both to our own public, as well as the community of international law. Conspiring to preform covert assassinations in the dark night of an indefinite war is the antithesis of American norms of liberty and justice. If this deadly tool falls into the hands of a Republican President in a couple of weeks, we may all regret our timid inaction.

Child Terrorist killed by Obama Drone Strike

Many people are targeted via the disposition matrix by a "Pattern of Action", these attacks kill groups of people, convoys, parties, households of people who we associate with those individuals we would target. This is inconsistent with our national values. There are no ground rules. Without eyes on the ground, the risk of 'collateral damage' killing unforeseen innocent civilians is too great to justify  The CIA should never have authorization to use force, all drones should be under the control of the US Military, subject to all the legal, civilian, and moral oversite of military regulation.

Hezbollah is already using Iranian drones, the US is selling this technology around the world. It is inevitable that other countries will develop drone technology and be used against US targets, both globally and domestically. We have set the president for such killings, and weather we call it terrorism or murder, it will be blowback from our own unethical actions.  - learn more at To The Point

Rules for Radicals, Saul D. Alinsky, published in 1971

The rules

• RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.
• RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.
• RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.
• RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
• RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
• RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.
• RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news.
• RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.
• RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.
• RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.
• RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.
• RULE 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

Architects & Engineers - Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 - AE911Truth.org

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Rape in the US Military

"No one at the top is going to prosecute this." - Director of the Invisible War

What it is like to go to war

Metals for the nature of evil. Genetic, amygdala short-circuit, religions.

The Invisible War

Although well known inside military circles, the fact of military rape by our own soldiers has reached critical proportions. One in three women in the military are victims of sexual assault by their fellow troops, as well as one in five men. That means that their are thousands of rapists in the military, and when they reenter the civilian world, they all become the sexual predators that assault our wives and children.
http://invisiblewarmovie.com/

The Battle of Blair Mountian 1921

These miners knew the dynamics of capitalism and the role of government. They knew who their friends and enemies were. They knew that only by organizing and physically defying centers of power would they ever get justice. They did not trust authority. They did not wait for authority figures to dole out justice. They were not seduced by the empty rhetoric of politicians. They knew that if they wanted a better world they would have to be their own leaders. They would have to fight for it. And this is a lesson in the nature of corporate and governmental power that we have forgotten. We must make the powerful afraid of us if we are to get any semblance of an open and free society. They are not and never will be on our side.

It is an old and cruel tactic in any company town. Reduce wages and benefits to subsistence level. Break unions. Gut social assistance programs. Buy and sell elected officials and judges. Fill the airwaves with mindless diversion and corporate propaganda. Pay off the press. Poison the soil, the air and the water to extract natural resources and leave behind a devastated wasteland. Plunge workers into debt. Leave them owing more on their houses than the structures are worth. Make sure the children will be burdened by tens of thousands of dollars lent to them for an education and will be unable to find decent jobs. Make sure that everything from hospital bills to car payments to credit card fees exact increasing pounds of flesh. And when workers stumble, when they cannot pay soaring interest rates, jack up rates further and deploy predators from debt collection agencies to harass the debtors and seize their assets. Then toss them away. Company towns all look the same. And we live in the biggest one on earth. - Chris Hedges

“It is freedom or death, and your children will be free,” Mother Jones told the miners. “We are not going to leave a slave class to the coming generation, and I want to say to you the next generation will not charge us for what we have done; they will charge and condemn us for what we have left undone.”

The coal companies have erased this piece of history from school textbooks. It is too inconvenient. It exposes predatory capitalism’s ruthless commodification and exploitation of human beings and the natural world. It exposes the drive by corporations to keep us impoverished, disempowered and unorganized. If corporate forces can sanitize history, if they can ensure historical amnesia, then the doctrine of laissez faire economics—which in short promises that the wealthier that rich people get, the better it is for all of us—can continue to rule our lives.

All the gains, often paid for with the lives of working men and women, have now been reversed. We are back where we started. We must organize, resist and build movements. We must embrace radical politics and remain perpetually alienated from power or become a subjugated herd. I do not call for an emulation of this violence. But I do call for direct and sustained confrontation with all formal mechanisms of power, including the Democratic Party. The corporate state, for its part, should also remember the lesson from Blair Mountain. There are limits to how far a people can be pushed. And if violence continues to be the preferred mechanism for control, if the state refuses to institute rational economic and political reforms to address the growing misery that corporations inflict on the citizens, it will, as at Blair Mountain, engender a violent response.

 We can do it the easy way or the hard way.