Communities of Practice – Page 780 – Public Intelligence Blog

Yemen: The first steps towards criminalising drone strikes, Obama take note

Yemen's National Dialogue Conference decision to criminalise drone strikes is an essential step toward a stable Yemen.

Ghada Eldemellawy

al Ja'zeera, 2 August 2013

“America’s actions are legal” claimed President Obama in a speech on drones earlier this year. It was the latest in a string of attempts made by his administration to justify covert strikes carried out by the US overseas – in countries including the Arab peninsula’s poorest nation, Yemen.

But back in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, it appears the country’s civil society disagrees. Members of Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference (NDC) – a US-supported initiative which will map out Yemen’s post-Arab Spring future – overwhelmingly voted to criminalise drone strikes in Yemen. The Yemeni people have spoken. Now Presidents Hadi and Obama must listen – for their own sake, as much as that of Yemen.

While it is clear that no leader may lawfully authorise another sovereign to slaughter his own people, the decision to criminalise drones strikes sends a clear warning message to Hadi – if the current practice is to continue, it may well lead to a criminal prosecution.

But it is not only the threat of a jail cell that should focus the Yemeni President’s mind. Through his unconditional consent to the use of drones in his country, President Hadi has already alienated many of his supporters, especially those, like him, from the south, which bear the brunt of the strikes.

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2013/08/052013/08/05

Berto Jongman: DEA “Recreates” Evidence to Conceal NSA Role 2.0 Adds Snowden-Greenwald Take

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Law Enforcement

Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

By John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke

Reuters, 5 August 2013

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

“I have never heard of anything like this at all,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.

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2013/08/052014/04/25

Eagle: Police in Pittsburg Storm House Over Uncut Grass

07 Other Atrocities, Idiocy, Law Enforcement

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

More low-rent police terrorism. They mean well, they are simply stupid and over-empowered by the militarization of the domestic police function. The bond with society has been broken — this calls into question the legitimacy of the police and the government they represent.

Published on Jun 21, 2013

TURTLE CREEK, PA — Police came barging into a woman's home because they wanted to arrest the owner for the length of her lawn. A tenant, Robyn Ruckman, recorded the encounter. As she answered the door, police treated her rudely and started making demands. She told them her name but that wasn't good enough. They wanted her to produce ID. https://www.facebook.com/PoliceStateUSA

After asking them to stay outside, police and health inspectors barged into her home. “You know, I don't even see a nametag,” Ruckman told the officer. “I don't give a sh*t what you see. Go get your ID. You see that?! It says POLICE.” Police were performing a 12-hour roundup of the town's offenders, including the horrendous crimes of having uncut grass. The Lawn Nazis took care of business that day, and the streets were safe once again. Robyn Ruckman got off easy that day, as she was not the landlord. It was the owner of the long grass that was to be put behind bars. SOURCE: http://www.wtae.com/news/local/allegh…

2013/08/05

Paul Craig Roberts: The “New Economy” Is The No Jobs Economy

03 Economy, 11 Society, Corruption, Government

The “New Economy” Is The No Jobs Economy

EXTRACT:

One of my most popular columns was about escaping from the Matrix existence in which Americans live. It is a world of disinformation and misinformation in which facts are fiction, and abstract theories are substituted for empirical reality.

Official government statistics are make-believe. The government makes inflation and unemployment disappear by how it defines inflation and unemployment, and it makes the economy grow by how it defines Gross Domestic Product. The definitional basis determines the statistical result.

. . . . . . .

The lack of reality in America is extreme. I do not believe anything like it has ever existed in the modern world. Essentially, no one in government or out understands anything.

The combination of the power of vested interests with ideological thinking remote from empirical reality is destroying the US economy and the economic prospects of the American people.

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2013/08/05

SchwartzReport: Embassies Closed for a Week — Should We Question the Spending Choices Made These Past 14 Years?

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Strategy, Threats

I think this story is quite extraordinary, but not for the reasons given in the report. This year we will spend approximately $682.5 billion on the military budget and by the best unclassified estimates about $80 billion on the intelligence apparat. Hundreds of thousands of men and women work for these vast entities. Yet 19 young jihadists and about $500,000 created 9/11, and after over a! decade of expenditures, a few dozen jihadists still have the power to massively disrupt the U.S. There is something deeply wrong with this picture, and the current SR poll shows that over three-quarters of you feel less safe than you did 15 years ago. So what have we achieved, beyond making a small number of corporations obscenely rich, and killing and maiming a lot of people? One can only wonder if the choices made by first the Bush and, then, the Obama Administrations were the right ones. What would have happened, for instance, if instead of drones and war we had put our money into schools, libraries and hospitals in Islamic countries?

Embassy Closings Extended for a Week
ALI WATKINS, DAVID LIGHTMAN and ADAM BARON , Washington Bureau – McClatchy Newspapers

2013/08/04

Eagle: Police Murder 95-Year Old WWII War Hero — Wobbly, in a Home, They Taser Him and Then Shoot Him in Stomach with a Shotgun Beanbag

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement

The police are out of control. These two “officers” should hang. This is what the criminally insane 9/11 DHS “lies for empire” and printed money mind-set have accomplished. The militarization of the police — intellectually and morally limited to begin with — has destroyed the social contract between the community and its so-called goverance forces.

Die for your country! Or they’ll do it for you!

95-year-old veteran John Wrana fought for America in World War 2, but he didn’t get a chance to die for his country. Instead, his country killed him with a beanbag shotgun blast to the stomach after a thorough tasering.

The incident began after Wrana, who uses a walker, refused a surgery at his assisted living home. He grew agitated at the staff for pressuring him for medical attention. He was a war hero and didn’t like being pushed around.

Soon the police arrived to subdue the senior citizen, riot gear at the ready to take on the wobbly old man. Conflicting reports have emerged between officers and staff, with the employees of the home reporting that they asked officers not to harm him and requested to intervene.

Police decided instead to taser the war hero and follow it up with a beanbag to the guts. Officers reported that a knife had been pulled, but no knife was found on the scene. The police used a riot shield, shotgun and taser on a 95-year-old man in a walker who arguably presented no threat to anyone but himself.

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Continue reading “Eagle: Police Murder 95-Year Old WWII War Hero — Wobbly, in a Home, They Taser Him and Then Shoot Him in Stomach with a Shotgun Beanbag”

2013/08/042013/08/04

Marcus Aurelius: Snowden NSA Revelations Piss Off Rest of Government As They Realize What They Have NOT Been Getting From NSA or CIA

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

Who would have thought — tragic farce aka absurdist theater?

Other Agencies Clamor For Data N.S.A. Compiles

By Eric Lichtblau and Michael S. Schmidt

New York Times, August 4, 2013 , Pg. 1

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency’s dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say.

Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency’s vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority, current and former government officials say.

Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of the security agency’s troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans’ privacy rights.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Snowden NSA Revelations Piss Off Rest of Government As They Realize What They Have NOT Been Getting From NSA or CIA”

Category: Communities of Practice

Berto Jongman: Yemen Criminalizes Drone Strikes