How We’re Talking About Drones Today

February 7th, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Barack Obama | Moral Values | Politics | Tech | War and Peace - (3 Comments)

Yesterday, Peregrin Wood noted the leaking of a previously secret legal document written by the presidential administration of Barack Obama, a document that justifies the killing of American citizens who have been convicted of no crime, without the right to a trial and even without charges being brought to a criminal court. The tool for carrying out these killings: flying robot drones.

The architect of Barack Obama’s flying robot drone program for killing American citizens without a trial is John Brennan. And today, John Brennan is up for confirmation as Barack Obama’s nominee to be the new chief of the CIA.

More attention needs to be brought to this matter, but some people are already paying attention and talking about the bizarre dystopian turn our nation has taken into the flying-robot-drone killings without trial.

The public conversation is going on at least in part on the social headlining service Twitter. Here’s what they’re saying, expressed in the form of a linguistic network of word pairs:

Word pairs in Twitter discussion of Drones on February 7 2013, the day of John Brennan's confirmation hearing to be CIA chief

The drone program is a program to kill. We’re aware it’s being concealed. It’s directly related to the issue of whether someone like John Brennan should be given more power. The responsibility for it all comes back to Barack Obama.

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What did Anti-Muslim War on Terror Surveillance Bring the NYPD? Nothing.

January 20th, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Homeland Insecurity | Religion - (1 Comments)

For years, the New York City Police Department has engaged in massive spying on American Muslims in New York City, in New York State and in other states as well. The surveillance program, designed and partially run by the CIA, spent large amounts of money and time prying into the private lives of people who had done nothing wrong. Muslim Americans being spied upon had committed no crimes and were not suspected of committing any crime; they were only spied upon because of their religion.

And what did this all bring the NYPD? Did New York City authorities catch any terrorists?

No.

The massive evidenceless internal spying operation in America resulted in no convictions in terrorism cases.
NYPD spying led to no arrests in terrorism cases.
Not a single lead was generated.

The New York City Police Department didn’t freely admit this, either. It took a lawsuit to force the deposition in which the NYPD admitted it its spying program had generated absolutely nothing of use.

Coda: This isn’t just an issue for New York City. Despite the fact that NYPD surveillance of innocent Americans didn’t generate a single lead, Obama administration official John Brennan has declared the program to be of vital importance. Now John Brennan has been nominated by Barack Obama to head the CIA, the intelligence agency that set up the NYPD surveillance scheme in the first place.

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Excerpt Of The 30,000 Pages Of Emails From General John Allen

November 13th, 2012 | Posted by F. G. Fitzer in Humor and Fun | Sex and Gender | War and Peace - (1 Comments)

Americans learned this morning that, while he was supposed to be turning around the war in Afghanistan, Marine Corps General John Allen was instead sending 30,000 pages of “potentially inappropriate” emails to Jill Kelley, the volunteer event planner at MacDill Air Force Base who was harassed by General David Petraeus’s “biographer”, Paula Broadwell. It’s difficult to understand how 30,000 pages of information can be judged to be “potentially inappropriate”, or how anyone who is administering an entire war could find the time to write and read 30,000 pages of emails to a personal acquaintance.

potentially inappropriate marine corps generalIn order to get to the bottom of these mysteries, we at Irregular Times have used our inside sources to obtain an excerpt of the 30,000 pages of material exchanged between General Allen and Jill Kelley. The excerpt shows just how Kelley and the Marine Corps general filled up 30,000 pages:

From: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
To: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
Subject: Pooty

Hi Pooty.

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From: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
To: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
Subject: Hi.

Hi.
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From: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
To: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
Subject: ?

Watcha doin?

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From: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
To: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
Subject: Busy

Playin Angry Birds. Level 17.

U?

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From: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
To: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
Subject: Last night

Remember the promise you made me outside the Turquoise Macaw Club?

---------------

From: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
To: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
Subject: Yes

Yes.

----------------

From: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
To: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
Subject: Well...

Don't tell Petraeus. He thinks the poodle is special just between him and me.

----------------

From: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
To: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
Subject: OK

OK

----------------

From: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
To: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
Subject: Tonight

Do you have that pair of "lawn shears" I let you borrow? Make sure to clean them, allright?

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From: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
To: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
Subject: SORRY

LEFT THEM IN THE BACK OF THE TAXI. THINK I'M GOING TO TAKE TODAY OFF. TIRED. ;)

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From: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
To: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
Subject: Yawn

Mee too. Purrrrrrr....

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From: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
To: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
Subject: AFUCKEDUPSTAN

DAMN JUST GOT MESSAGE THAT WHITE HOUSE WANTS A NEW "PLAN". GOTTA THROW SOMETHING TOGETHER. DRONE STRATEGY FOLDER OVER AT YOUR PLACE.

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From: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
To: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
Subject: Hey

Yeah, but like could you stop yelling at me? I deserve more respect.

I can't get them to you today - have another "event".

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From: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
To: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
Subject: WHAT?

WHAT?

---------------
From: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
To: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
Subject: All Caps

All caps is yelling, Pooty.

---------------
From: generalmischief19@yahoo.com
To: kelleybelley@hotmail.com
Subject: WHAT?

WHAT?

In related news, an FBI agent who was supposed to be investigating the love triangle between David Petraeus, Paula Broadwell and Jill Kelley has been taken off the case, after it was discovered that he took photographs of himself standing around without his shirt on, and emailed those photographs to Jill Kelley. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Given the discovery that the leaders of the military and federal intelligence agencies are spending most of their time having sexual affairs and writing about it in long emails, I make the following proposal: In order to deal with the growing federal budget deficit, Congress should dissolve the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, CIA and FBI. Using 1 percent of the former budgets of these government bodies, Congress should establish a new Department of Getting It On, with a hotel and Internet cafe in Washington D.C. for military veterans and former government spies, where they can get their rocks off without having to send soldiers off into battle or establish electronic surveillance networks as a cover for their “potentially inappropriate” activities.

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AP: NY Police Department and CIA Operating Out of Jurisdiction to Spy on Innocent Americans

August 24th, 2011 | Posted by Jim Cook in Homeland Insecurity - (0 Comments)

Reporter Adam Goldman reveals:

  • The New York City Police Department is operating out of its jurisdiction, at least in New Jersey and possibly elsewhere
  • The NYPD is engaging in surveillance of innocent people with no probable cause evidence that crimes are being committed
  • The NYPD is targeting people for surveillance and harassment on the basis of their religion
  • The CIA, an agency set up outside constitutional bounds for foreign surveillance, is participating in the NYPD surveillance
  • The NYPD and CIA are sending people to religious worship services to monitor the content of sermons for political correctness
  • Both the CIA and the NYPD are refusing to provide federal judges with information about their operations, making a ruling on the constitutionality of the practice impossible
  • The NYPD is shredding documents on this activity to remain unaccountable

This is how the rule of law dies.

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No Prosecutions In Coverup Of Torture

November 10th, 2010 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Barack Obama | Liberty - (1 Comments)

The CIA agents who destroyed videotapes of interrogations by the CIA in a secret American prison in Thailand admit that the videotapes showed waterboarding torture. The videotapes may have showed other forms of torture as well, and other illegal activities.

Those CIA agents are under investigation for the use of torture, among other things. The videotapes that they destroyed are directly related to that investigation.

So, what has the Obama Administration decided to do about the deliberate destruction of evidence related to a criminal prosecution of torture by the United States? Like the Bush Administration before it, the Obama Administration has decided to prosecute no one.

Coddling coverups. Soft on torture, just like George W. Bush.

Can someone remind me what that change was that we were supposed to get if Barack Obama was elected President?

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Is This the Change You Can Believe In? Something is Wrong in the USA

September 8th, 2010 | Posted by Jim Cook in Barack Obama | George W. Bush | Homeland Insecurity | Liberty | Politics - (8 Comments)

While the nation fusses and frets about the moral appropriateness of some guy holding a religious ceremony at his church and burning a few books that (let’s face it) won’t feel a thing, news is breaking that:

* The CIA operated secret “black site” detention and interrogation centers in Afghanistan, Poland, Thailand and possibly elsewhere in violation of international law. Large numbers of people were “disappeared” to these sites.

* At one such “black site” in Poland, a CIA officer used an electric drill and a handgun as tools in interrogations.

* That CIA officer is now at work training other CIA officers in standards of conduct.

* The Obama administration is working to put at least one detainee interrogated in this manner either on trial or in a military commission, depending on which venue would allow a detainee’s responses under such interrogations to be used against him.

Right about now, if you’re a typical American, there’s a good chance that your eyes are glazing over, that your mind is fogging up a little bit, that you’re thinking you’ve heard it all before, that you’re struggling to care, that perhaps you’re not struggling to care.

Tell me whether anything is going to be done about this in the halls of Congress. Tell me whether anybody is going to march on Washington to protest this. Tell me whether we’ll hear more in the news about this revelation or about the guy who’s going to burn a few pieces of paper this weekend.

Do you remember when we were going to get rid of George W. Bush because he was the crazed kind of extremist president who would allow this sort of thing to happen without accountability? Do you remember when we were going to elect Senator Barack Obama to be president because he told us that in his America, justice would make its triumphant return?

Is this the change you believed in? Something is wrong in this country. Something’s gone very, very wrong.

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Blackwater / XE Services Told Foreigners What Congress Didn’t Know

August 30th, 2009 | Posted by jclifford in Politics | War and Peace - (3 Comments)

Ten days ago, word of a secret Bush Administration program in the CIA to contract out illegal assassinations to North Carolina mercenary company Blackwater USA (now known as Xe Services) leaked out of the Obama Administration.

This morning, more information about that criminal conspiracy has leaked out. It seems that Blackwater planned to subcontract out pieces of the assassination plot to foreign mercenaries and agents.

The program was kept secret from Congress. The program is still kept a a classified secret from the American people. Yet, Blackwater and the CIA saw no problem with telling foreign mercenaries about it.

The justification for this was that “you wouldn’t want to have American fingerprints on it,” – “it” being the assassination plot, because assassination is a crime. The CIA knew it was a crime. Blackwater knew it was a crime.

Why aren’t the people involved in this criminal conspiracy being ordered to appear before open, public investigations by Congress? Why aren’t they being arrested and arraigned?

Why does the program remain classified, if it really has been terminated? Why do we have to rely upon anonymous government sources to tell us the version of events they want to tell us? What other criminal conspiracies has the CIA decided to keep secret from us?

When there are crimes this serious in high offices of the federal government, and perhaps in the White House itself, the American people deserve to know the whole truth, and the perpetrators deserve to be brought to justice.

cia blackwater secret assassination

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Bush Administration Directed Construction of Torture Chambers

August 26th, 2009 | Posted by jclifford in George W. Bush | Liberty - (0 Comments)

Among the recently released reports detailing the extent of torture by the CIA under George W. Bush is a memo written by the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. That memo gave directions for the construction of special torture chambers with walls designed so that prisoners could be thrown against the wall up to 30 times in a row, and could even have their heads slammed up against the wall.

The walls were made of plywood instead of concrete as a supposed protection against severe physical injury.

This approach to interrogation was not only barbaric and illegal. It was downright stupid as well. Slamming your head against a plywood wall is a good way to get a concussion, a kind of bruising of the brain. It doesn’t matter that the plywood has a little more give to it than concrete does. What matters is that the head is moved quickly, and then that motion is stopped abruptly, so that the brain slams up against the skull.

Among the consequences of a concussion can be trouble concentrating and memory loss. If you want to get reliable information from someone, you don’t want that person to exhibit fuzzy thinking and have trouble remembering things.

The CIA interrogation tactics approved by the Bush Administration appear to have been founded in an emotional desire to enact vengeance upon accused enemies of the United States, rather than in a carefully considered plan to make the United States more secure. This heartfelt stupidity wasn’t merely a mistake. It was criminal. Conspiracy to commit torture is a violation against the Geneva Conventions and two separate criminal codes.

The torture trail now leads straight to the top of the Department of Justice, with a path from there to the White House strongly suggested. Any investigation of this torture that does not focus those at the top who directed the criminal conspiracy will amount to a coverup, rather than an objective pursuit of justice.

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