Obama: I Could Be My Own Drone Bombing Victim

Barack Obama kills an awful lot of people via his drone bomb program.

Since 2009, Obama has ordered drone bomb strikes that have killed 2,304 people in Pakistan.

That's right - 2,304.

Today Barack Obama made an appearance before the press to weep about how, given his background, he could have been Trayvon Martin:

 “I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away,” Mr. Obama said in the briefing room. “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.”

The president is right, of course.

As a man of color, he has been profiled because of his race, his skin color, and his appearance.

Given different circumstances, he quite literally could have been Trayvon Martin.

But if he could have been Trayvon Martin, he also could have been one of those 2,304 people he has ordered killed with drone bomb strikes since he has been president.

These are also people of color who are targeted simply because of how they look, where they live, where they worship, and who they associate with or live next door to,

He could have been Trayvon Martin.

He also could be his own drone bomb victim.

Too bad he doesn't see that for himself.

Thatcher Funeral To Be Privatized

With the news of former British Prime Minister Margaret 'Let The Rich Get Richer" Thatcher's death today comes this:

Well said, Ken.

Morrissey responded to the news with a letter:

Every move she made was charged by negativity; she destroyed the British manufacturing industry, she hated the miners, she hated the arts, she hated the Irish Freedom Fighters and allowed them to die, she hated the English poor and did nothing at all to help them, she hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists, she was the only European political leader who opposed a ban on the ivory trade, she had no wit and no warmth and even her own cabinet booted her out. She gave the order to blow up The Belgrano even though it was outside of the Malvinas Exclusion Zone—and was sailing AWAY from the islands! When the young Argentinean boys aboard The Belgrano had suffered a most appalling and unjust death, Thatcher gave the thumbs-up sign for the British press.

Iron? No. Barbaric? Yes. She hated feminists even though it was largely due to the progression of the women's movement that the British people allowed themselves to accept that a prime minister could actually be female. But because of Thatcher, there will never again be another woman in power in British politics, and rather than opening that particular door for other women, she closed it.

Thatcher will only be fondly remembered by sentimentalists who did not suffer under her leadership, but the majority of British working people have forgotten her already, and the people of Argentina will be celebrating her death. As a matter of recorded fact, Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity.

And some in Britain responded like this:

Me, all I can say is, the universe sure does have a sense of humor.

Here Thatcher lived to 87 and Kissinger is still kicking around in his wheelchair on the Upper East Side but Joe Strummer died at 50.

I know lots of people are playing The English Beat and Morrissey to mark her passing.

I'm going to play Joe Strummer and Johnny Cash

Rumsfeld Wants Kudos For Iraq War Screw-Ups

Unfreakingbelievable:

As noted earlier, on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, marking a war that saw up to 134,000 Iraqi civilians killed and has cost the U.S. $2 trillion and counting, George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tweeted that “all who played a role in history deserve our respect & appreciation.”

So glad Gates Foundation Education Week decided to go to Rummy to get "leadership lessons".

Apparently one Rumsfeld can pass along is how to be a clueless asshole.

All those deaths, all that money wasted, the car bombs are STILL going off in Iraq - and Rumsfeld wants a pat on the back for a "job well done!"

You can't make this stuff up.

I don't know what's worse - Rumsfeld wanting a pat on the back for the Iraq war or Gates Foundation Education Week thinking he'd be a good go-to for "leadership lessons."

Obama Continues Bush Illegal Rendition Practice

I am so glad we re-elected Barack Obama rather than the "unthinkable" Mitt Romney:

The three European men with Somali roots were arrested on a murky pretext in August as they passed through the small African country of Djibouti. But the reason soon became clear when they were visited in their jail cells by a succession of American interrogators.

U.S. agents accused the men — two of them Swedes, the other a longtime resident of Britain — of supporting al-Shabab, an Islamist militia in Somalia that Washington considers a terrorist group. Two months after their arrest, the prisoners were secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York, then clandestinely taken into custody by the FBI and flown to the United States to face trial.
The secret arrests and detentions came to light Dec. 21 when the suspects made a brief appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom.

The men are the latest example of how the Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Renditions are taking on renewed significance because the administration and Congress have not reached agreement on a consistent legal pathway for apprehending terrorism suspects overseas and bringing them to justice.
 
Congress has thwarted President Obama’s pledge to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and has created barriers against trying al-Qaeda suspects in civilian courts, including new restrictions in a defense authorization bill passed last month. The White House, meanwhile, has resisted lawmakers’ efforts to hold suspects in military custody and try them before military commissions.

The impasse and lack of detention options, critics say, have led to a de facto policy under which the administration finds it easier to kill terrorism suspects, a key reason for the surge of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Renditions, though controversial and complex, represent one of the few alternatives.

“In a way, rendition has become even more important than before,” said Clara Gutteridge, director of the London-based Equal Justice Forum, a human rights group that investigates national security cases and that opposes the practice.

Drone bomb strikes, a kill list, illegal renditions and warrantlesss wiretapping - I'm so glad a Democrat is in office so that I don't have to worry my head about any of those things.

Of course if this were Mitt Romney, John McCain or George Bush doing it, I would be screaming about war crimes.

But Barack Obama is my guy, and he's a good guy, so I just let this stuff go by and talk about how crazy those Republicans are instead.

When Barack Obama spoke of the murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary, he said the following:

"I think anybody who was up in Newtown, who talked to the parents, who talked to the families understands that something fundamental in America has to change," Obama told David Gregory on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And all of us have to do some soul searching, including me as president, that we allow a situation in which 20 precious small children are getting gunned down in a classroom. 

A noble sentiment from our Nobel Peace Prize winning president.

How about a fundamental change to American foreign policy that uses drone bomb strikes against terrorism suspects and kills children in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere?

Children like the ones described here.https://twitter.com/dronestream/status/279258960916271105/photo/1

Or here.https://twitter.com/dronestream/status/278727931818278913/photo/1

Or here. https://twitter.com/i/#!/dronestream/media/slideshow?url=pic.twitter.com%2F1jKbpuIz

Adam Lanza murdered 20 children at Sandy Hook in a horrific event.

We don't know how many children Barack Obama has had murdered through U.S. drone policy strikes, because the U.S. government is very secretive about casualties.

But it's more than 20, we know that.

We know that the Obama administration specializes in targeting funerals of drone bomb victims with another drone bomb strike, that they also target first responders to drone bomb strikes who attempt to help the victims with another drone bomb strike.

We know the policy causes and is meant to cause terror all across the globe - don't screw with us or this will happen to you.

Now is rendering and detaining suspects without charges, interrogating them without informing them of their rights or giving them legal counsel, and trying them on evidence obtained illegally better than the drone bomb campaign the Obama administration has engaged in?

Absolutely not.

But the Obama administration says that because Congress will not act the way they want on WoT issues, they have no choice but to do one of these two things.

If this were George Bush or Mitt Romney or John McCain doing the rendering, the murders from the sky, the slaughtering of innocent children like the ones pictured and detailed in the above links, liberals and progressives would be screaming holy hell over it.

But because this is Barack Obama engaged in the rendition and drone bomb murder and the slaughtering of innocent children like the ones pictured and detailed in the above links, there is relative silence from those same liberals and progressives.

Barack Obama is a war criminal and a murderer, he belongs in a prison cell block along with Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, John Yoo and Richard Nixon's corpse.

Where is the outrage from the left?

Walcott Finally Tests PS 114 In Belle Harbor, Finds Mold And Asbestos In The School

Test happy Chancellor Dennis Walcott refused to test PS 114 for mold after Sandy.

The school took on five to six feet of water, but Walcott said a sight review of the school showed everything was safe.

The DOE reopened the school, but many parents were afraid to send their kids back and called for mold tests to be conducted on the building.

The UFT joined them in that call.

Finally Walcott agreed and - you guessed it - the school came up positive:

Department of Education officials found mold and asbestos in a storm-damaged Queens school that last week was cleared for students to return — but only after parents insisted that the officials check.

It took scores of complaints from parents and meetings at the school before officials agreed to conduct tests for moisture and other hazards at PS 114 in Belle Harbor, which had been shut for more than a month after Hurricane Sandy.

Late yesterday, DOE officials quietly posted findings of subsequent tests online showing that areas of mold and asbestos in the auditorium and a nearby stairwell require removal.

Additionally, two of 14 water fountains showed elevated levels of copper.

In a letter to parents, Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm committed to removing the mold and asbestos over the coming two weekends.

Great - not just mold, but asbestos and elevated levels of copper in the water.

But Dennis Walcott said he had the results of all the necessary tests for PS 114 in hand and that he KNEW the school was safe.

It turns out Walcott was wrong.

Just as was the case at PS 51 where Walcott and the DOE continued to send students and staff to a school that they knew to be unsafe (in the case of PS 51, with cancer-causing toxins), Walcott and the DOE have sent Rockaway children and school staff into harm's way at PS 114 for god knows what reason.

Walcott was on record last week as saying the following:

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said the water is safe.

"It's part of people's perception that it hasn't been tested," Walcott said. "But it's being tested on a regular basis by the Department of Environmental Protection. That's for the community and the school is part of that community.

Oh, yeah the water is safe - except for the elevated levels of copper in two water fountains.

Teacher, why does my mouth taste like old pennies?

Walcott's refusal to test 114 for mold and other harmful toxins was unconscionable and you can bet those tests never would have happened had the parents, the union and the media not jumped all over him for refusing to conduct them.

Now it behooves everybody to watch closely and make sure the DOE follows up on the testing and removes the mold, asbestos, and copper.

It is not beyond reason to describe Dennis Walcott as one of the worst human beings on the planet.

Seriously, to refuse to test PS 114 for mold after all that storm damage and send kids back in to the school when all it was going to cost was the price of one DOE consultant overrun to test the place is beyond the pale.

The chancellor is happy to spend hundreds of millions on standardized testing but didn't want to spend $50,000 on mold tests - even though kids were back in the school and could get sick from the mold.

Really, one of the worst human beings on the planet.

NY Times: Obama Looked To Codify "Kill List" Before The Election In Case Romney Won

Believing few things are more important than institutionalizing his drone bomb campaign that slaughters innocents the world over in order to keep us "safe" from terrorism, President Obama and his advisers worked very hard to codify the rules of the program pre-election:

 A report in the New York Times on Sunday describes how, leading up to the recent US election, the Obama administration made a determined push to codify guidelines for its targeted assassination (aka 'Kill List') program and clarify rules for the use of US predator drones strikes overseas.

 Critics of the US drone program have long made the argument that Demoractic supporters of the President would perhaps lose their enthusiasm (or passive acceptance) for the "kill list" program if it was placed in the hands of a Republican president like the party's most recent hopeful, Mitt Romney.
The Times reporting on Sunday seems to indicate that the fear of handing over an amiguous and secretive assassination program to a Republican administration was also shared by some top officials in the Obama administration.

Reported by the paper's Scott Shane, the article says that the "attempt to write a formal rule book for targeted killing began last summer after news reports on the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, revealed some details of the president’s role in the shifting procedures for compiling “kill lists” and approving strikes."

Though the Obama administration has continually sought to protect the secrecy of certain details of its program, it has simultaneously defended its usefulness in combating international terrorism. This contradiction has been seized by international human rights groups, US civil libertarians, journalists, and the United Nations, calling on the US government to come clean on how it justifies the extrajudicial killing of individuals--both foreign citizens and American nationals--in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and others.

Shane reports that "the president and top aides believe [the programs] should be institutionalized," and that efforts to do "seemed particularly urgent when it appeared that Mitt Romney might win the presidency."

The hypocrisy of liberals and progressives on this issue astounds me.

Change one word in the Times article - switch "Obama" for "Bush" - and you can bet that liberals and progressives would be up in arms over this program.

But because it's their guy in charge, it's a good program, a necessary program, one that is used judiciously by a judicious president.

Bullshit.

Read this Glenn Greenwald column from late September on a Stanford/NYU study of the consequences of the drone bomb campaign on civilians, on the propaganda the Obama administration uses to justify this slaughter of innocents, on their targeting of funerals and even emergency responders to initial drone attacks, on the complicity of the media in this propaganda campaign and then tell me this program is less harmful and murderous because a Democrat is heading it as opposed to a Republican.

Here is a taste:

Significantly, the report says the prime culprit of these evils is what it calls the "dramatic escalation" of the drone campaign by the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate - escalated not just in sheer numbers (in less than four years, Obama "has reportedly carried out more than five times" the number ordered by Bush in eight years), but more so, the indiscriminate nature of the strikes. As Tuesday's Guardian article on this report states: it "blames the US president, Barack Obama, for the escalation of 'signature strikes' in which groups are selected merely through remote 'pattern of life' analysis."

 The report is equally damning when documenting the attempts of the Obama administration to suppress information about its drone victims, and worse, to actively mislead when they deign selectively to release information. Recognizing the difficulty of determining the number of civilian deaths with exactitude - due to "the opaqueness of the US government about its targeted killing program" as well as the inaccessibility of the region - it nonetheless documents that "the numbers of civilians killed are undoubtedly far higher than the few claimed by US officials." In other words, the administration's public statements are false: "undoubtedly" so. As the LA Times summarizes the study's findings today: "Far more civilians have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas than U.S. counter-terrorism officials have acknowledged."

Before the election, I attempted to ask a few people who claimed they were voting for Obama over Romney despite his education policies because on other issues, he was the clear moral choice about the immorality of the drone bomb campaign.

I didn't get much response from anybody.

I suspect it's because they either live in denial that this is happening or know it but do not wish to acknowledge it publicly.

The hypocrisy Obama supporters, liberals and progressives on this issue is just infuriating.

As Greenwald notes, not only do these people ignore the crimes and murders perpetrated by the Obama administration under the guise of the War on Terror, but they actively cheer them (as at the DNC.)

And again, it's with this moral superiority complex - we're more reflective and thoughtful about this stuff then the Bushies, Obama reads Aquinas before ordering the strikes, so somehow this has a moral justification that Bush's policies didn't.

I don't see anything moral about this drone bomb campaign or the man in charge of it.

Rather I see a war criminal who is murdering lots of innocent people on a weekly basis who belongs in a jail cell next to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Hadley, Yoo, et al.

Why Do Liberals Let Obama Get Away With This Bush League Stuff?

We have a president who has institutionalized the slaughter of thousands of innocents in the name of national security and the War on Terror.

We have a president with a personal "kill list" who orders the murder of at least one person on that list every week - again, in the name of national security and the War on Terror.

This president has declared that he has the right to assassinate any American at any time in any place for any reason - so long as the president believes this person is guilty of acts of terrorism and cannot be taken alive into custody. This declaration of extraordinary and unconstitutional powers is also made in the name of national security and the War on Terror.

This president even ordered the assassination of a 16 year old boy, an American citizen - the son of an American man who was never indicted, let alone brought to trial or convicted on any crimes, but was nonetheless killed by the American government because he was believed to be a "terrorist".

This man's son, a 16 year old boy, was later targeted by this president and killed by a drone bomb strike in Yemen.  His 17 year old cousin was killed along with him.

This president's administration first lied about the ages of these boys to make the murders seem less horrific, but once caught in their lies by the Washington Post and the L.A. Times, they admitted they had killed two teenagers.

They nonetheless continue to defend these killings as justified, saying that's it too bad this kid had to die but he should've "had a more responsible father."  

This kind of thing makes this president's statements on the senseless killing of another American teenager, Trayvon Martin, seem as disingenuous as they no doubt were.

In case you haven't figured out the timeline by now, this president who has engaged in the systematic slaughter of innocents, who is busy institutionalizing that slaughter so that those who come after him can continue it with legal justification in place, who seems to relish his "tough guy" role as judge, jury and executioner in the so-called War on Terror, is Barack Obama.

You know, the guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize a few years ago.

Had George W. Bush engaged in this kind of murderous behavior, liberals would have been up in arms calling for his impeachment and imprisonment.

But because the president engaging in this murderous activity is a Democrat, they remain silent, making believe they do not know what is happening.

Or worse, they justify it as practical and necessary.

I keep seeing people I respect, thoughtful people with progressive values, endorsing this murderous president as the better alternative to his opponent, Mitt Romney.

Obama is, as the cliche goes, the lesser of two evils and many people are deciding to hold their noses and vote for him under that rationale.

I cannot do that.

Barack Obama is a murderer and a war criminal.

If there were justice in the world, he would be in a jail cell in Guantanamo Bay alongside Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hadley, Rumsfeld, Yoo, et al. having Rage Against The Machine albums blasted at him 24/7 for the rest of his life.

But there is no justice, and so, instead many Americans are faced with the choice of voting for him because he is the lesser of the two evils available to us on election day.

Well, I cannot choose the lesser evil.

It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again: The lesser of two evils is still evil.

And make no mistake, Barack Obama is evil.

Just ask the relatives of the dead drone bomb victims Obama had slaughtered in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the name of national security and the War on Terror.