Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2242 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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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.

Read full article with links and photos.

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

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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.

Read full article.

2013/08/052013/08/05

Neal Rauhauser: Yemen’s Food & Water Crisis

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water

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Yemen’s Food & Water Crisis

Yesterday I saw an article that indicated Yemen’s capitol, Sana’a, could be out of water in a decade. There were some shocking statistics in that article and in the ReliefWeb article that provided the above map.

40% of Yemen’s water is used to cultivate qat, which is labeled as a narcotic, but it’s effect is similar to that of milder amphetamines. Fully 75% of all Yemeni men use this drug, which is both legal in the eyes of the government and accepted under the laws of Islam. The drug is commonly used there, as well as in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

Read full post with two more graphics.

2013/08/052014/04/25

Eagle: Police in Pittsburg Storm House Over Uncut Grass

07 Other Atrocities, Idiocy, Law Enforcement

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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

Lee Camp: NASA Says We’re Fucked — Are We?

Earth Intelligence, Offbeat Fun

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Published on Aug 3, 2013

NASA has put out a video showing the increase in global warming if the CO2 in the atmosphere continues to increase at its current rate. And let's just say you won't be needing that jacket in the year 2100. If you feel this issue is important, pass this video on. It doesn't matter if you piss off a friend. They need to know the truth.
1) The NASA video – http://huff.to/1chTFHT
2) Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate change – http://gu.com/p/3ghcy/tw
3) Climate change linked to increased violence – http://huff.to/14JyENk
4) Carbon in atmosphere reaches 400 ppm for first time in a million years – http://gu.com/p/3fzzb/tw
5) Song – “If We Should Stop This War” by Lorne Clark. Go here for more – http://www.songaweek.com/clarke.asp

2013/08/05

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

03 Economy, 11 Society, Corruption, Government

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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.

Read full article.

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

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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