When Ron Paul called Congress a bunch of psychopathic authoritarians in his farewell speech
relevant GIF is relevant
NSA Whistle-Blower Speaks Against Obama’s ‘Disposition Matrix’ | Truthdig
Former National Security Agency official and whistle-blower William Binney is appalled but unsurprised by last week’s revelation that President Obama has institutionalized a mechanism for generating targets for his secretive assassination list.
As Greg Miller reported in The Washington Post, the “disposition matrix” is a database that links the profiles of suspected “terrorists” to “locations, known associates and affiliated organizations” as well as “strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols.” The process is operated by the National Counterterrorism Center, which has access to all intelligence and other information collected on American citizens and people abroad, and the process is not open to scrutiny by a judge or independent oversight committee.
In other words, Barack Obama and a small group of defense officials have taken for themselves the right to decide who is a terrorist, who should die and how.
In a telephone interview with Truthdig, Binney explained that the use of information connecting other people to suspects suggests the process will be used to create new suspects that pose no threat to the United States.
“They’re using metadata to target people,” he says. “… [A]ddresses and phone numbers, which gets back to relationships between suspects and others and social network building. If you use that kind of information to target people without having substantive stuff behind it, that’s getting down to more random killing or getting killed because you’re in proximity to somebody who’s doing bad things. It’s an undisciplined slaughter.”
When news of the matrix was released, Glenn Greenwald pointed out that the specifics of how suspects are generated and how targets are selected “will undoubtedly be kept completely secret,” with no checks and balances. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that since President Obama took office, at least 70 civilians have died in strikes in which they were not targeted. Without oversight of the targeting process, it is reasonable to expect people will continue to die in this way.
“What is the criteria for being on the kill list?” Binney asked. “A lot of innocent people are being killed. It’s all being done in secret by saying ‘Trust me, we’ll make the proper decisions.’ Well, do you really trust the government?”
Binney, who became a target of the Obama administration’s anti-whistle-blower campaign when he spoke out about the NSA’s data-mining project, doesn’t trust the government. Instead he questions whether terrorists worldwide pose as much of a threat to the security of American citizens as does the United States government.
(Source: theamericanbear, via thelibertarianclarion)
the general response to my previous post
(19 plays)as prison inmates, drug users, prostitutes, bookies, etc. are actually political prisoners, not criminals.
…aaand GO
oh SNAP! (sorry, low-hanging fruit — you’ll get it in a sec, I promise <G>)
not only do the now-invisible “soup lines” hide the severity of the country’s economic malaise, but I would also suggest that the relative anonymity of SNAP EBT cards (along w/other handouts from the State) essentially relieve the recipients of the “burden” of personal responsibility and accountability: when you’re getting ~$1600 from a nameless, faceless bureaucrat, it’s a much different experience than borrowing that same $1600 from your Aunt Sally.
Ron Paul is coming to Utah County in mid-Oct — my life is now complete!
I totes spewed water all over my monitor when I saw this—sadly what makes it so frigging funny is that it’s true :\
Don’t be the guy in 20 years who looks over his shoulder to make sure no policemen are listening and then says to his kids, “Back in 2012, I supported Ron Paul, who was disrespected by the GOP establishment. I supported Ron Paul because I loved the Constitution, but since he lost the nomination, I didn’t vote and so I let the Democrat who hated the whole Constitution win. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. I should have voted for the Republican who only hated most of the Constitution, so he could win, instead.
FBI begins installation of $1 billion face recognition system across America — RT
Birthmarks, be damned: the FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars.
you can’t make this stuff up, folks…
Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system — RT
Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.
truth is stranger than fiction
Stratfor = shadow CIA (so dubbed by others who know a lot more than I do), kind of like Division in Nikita, only a private intelligence company instead of a “black box” gov’t programme
TrapWire = surveillance vectors from Person of Interest
t’would appear Hollyweird is actually telling us the truth but we’re generally too stupefied to recognize it as anything but entertainment—panem et circenses FTW!
