"Public Authority," Drone Murders, and the Death of the Rule of Law

by William Norman Grigg

In America, wrote Thomas Paine, ?the law is king.? In a totalitarian state, Vladimir Lenin wrote more than a century later, rulers exercise ?power without limit, resting directly on force, restrained by no laws.?

Lenin?s formula was a blunt expression of what is known as the ?public authority justification? for government action. That doctrine, as explained by one legal scholar, holds that ?Deeds which otherwise would be criminal, such as taking or destroying property, taking hold of a person by force and against his will ? or even taking his life, are not crimes if done with proper public authority.?

In other words, government can give itself permission to break the law. This claim is central to the recently-released 2010 Justice Department memorandum defending the Obama administration?s claim that the president can order the summary execution of US citizens through drone strikes. All that is necessary is for the president to designate a targeted citizen as an unlawful combatant. Once this is done, the extra-judicial murder is sanitized by the miracle of ?public authority,? thereby becoming a supposedly lawful exercise of war powers.

This is the doctrine the permitted Barack Obama to authorize the murder of a 16-year-old US citizen ? an act, and a claim, demonstrating that the rule of law is dead.

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In fact, every law has an exception exactly for when the act is done with proper public authority. Without that, punishing for any law violations would be impossible. So it applies to the drone strike as well as to less exotic incarcerating a felon, which without this exception would be impossible as well. so there is an exception for child rape?

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"Riot Control" Drone To Shoot Pepper Spray Bullets At Protesters

Experts slam technology: "deeply disturbing," "will maim and kill"
by Steve Watson

A drone that is capable of firing 400 rounds of pepper spray and paint balls, as well as employing ?blinding lasers? and loudspeakers to deter protesters has been developed and sold to an undisclosed company following a demonstration at a trade show in London.

Reports indicate that an undisclosed mining company in South Africa has purchased 25 of the ?Skunk riot control copter? devices developed by military surveillance and communications contractor?Desert Wolf.

The company?s website describes the drone as being ?equipped with 4 high-capacity paint ball barrels firing at up to 20 bullets per second each, with 80 Pepper bullets per second stopping any crowd in?its tracks.?

?The current hopper capacity of 4000 bullets and High Pressure Carbon Fiber Air system it allows for real stopping power.? the description continues. ?Bright strobe lights, blinding Lasers and with on-board speakers enables communication and warnings to the crowd,? the company also notes.

Defence Web notes?that the eight-rotored drone also has high definition and thermal vision cameras, and comes with a ground control station to be operated by two people.

Desert Wolf?s director, Hennie Kieser, notes that the operators will be monitored by a camera and microphone, to ensure that they are not ? too aggressive?.

Exactly who will be watching them on the camera and listening to them on the microphone is not explained.

The BBC reports?that a batch of the drones is to be deployed this month by mine owners in South Africa, where worker strikes and protests have led to violence.

Desert Wolf says that the drone?s initial deployment will lead to more orders from police and security companies. Technological and worker?s right experts, on the other hand, are not so happy with the development.

?This is a deeply disturbing and repugnant development and we are convinced that any reasonable government will move quickly to stop the deployment of advanced battlefield technology on workers or indeed the public involved in legitimate protests and demonstrations,? said International Trade Union Confederation spokesman Tim Noonan.

?We will be taking this up as a matter of urgency with the unions in the mining sector globally,? he added, vowing to discover exactly who has purchased the machines.

Noel Sharkey, chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control campaign group, described the technology as a facilitation of ?creeping authoritarianism and the suppression of protest?.

?Firing plastic balls or bullets from the air will maim and kill,? Sharkey said.

?Using pepper spray against a crowd of protesters is a form of torture and should not be allowed. We urgently need an investigation by the international community before these drones are used.? he added.

Guy Martin, the editor of Defence Web, described the drone as ?a logical next step in the development of UAVs,? adding ?but nevertheless it is a watershed moment in their evolution and goes to show that UAVs have almost unlimited uses.?

?I predict that we will see a whole new wave of UAVs emerging with payloads more unusual than tasers, dart guns and paint ball guns.? Martin added.

Weaponised drones have long been on the horizon.?Both?government?and?private companies?have considered the development of the technology. When a taser drone was developed and displayed by a hobbyist in Texas recently, both military and police departments expressed interest, unaware that it was purely a?publicity stunt aimed at raising awareness of and debate surrounding such technology.

The technology conjures up memories of the flying saucer spy drones from the 1988 dystopian cult classic movie?They Live. Philip K. Dick's?Minority Report?also features drone robots that can administer electrical shocks to suspects. The opening of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four also features the idea of police flying overhead and snooping into homes. With guns fitted to such devices, as these developers have demonstrated, this nightmare vision is set to become a shocking reality.
_
Steve Watson?is a London based writer and editor for Alex Jones??Infowars.com, and?Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

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Pentagon Changes Drone Strike Rules To Permit Bombing Civilians

Chris | InformationLiberation

From the Washington Times:

The Pentagon has loosened its guidelines on avoiding civilian casualties during drone strikes, modifying instructions from requiring military personnel to ?ensure? civilians are not targeted to encouraging service members to ?avoid targeting? civilians.

In addition, instructions now tell commanders that collateral damage ?must not be excessive? in relation to mission goals, according to Public Intelligence, a nonprofit research group that analyzed the military?s directives on drone strikes.

?These subtle but important changes in wording provide insight into the military?s attempts to limit expectations in regards to minimizing collateral damage and predicting the lethal effects of military operations,? Public Intelligence said in a recent report.

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Here Are All The Children Murdered By Drone Strikes At The Hands Of Obama

Visualizing the illegal drone bombardment
Steve Watson

The president likes children right? He surrounds himself with them constantly to help bolster his political agenda.

When it comes to children who get in the way of his political agenda, however, it?s a different story.

Here is a visual of the hundreds of children that have been murdered in US drone strikes on Pakistan and Yemen, ordered by the president during his first term.

Their ages range from just 1 year old to 19 years of age:

The information was complied by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which estimates that there have been approximately 399 to 500 strikes to-date. The research group has found that around three thousand individuals have been killed by these drones, many of them innocent civilians. In Pakistan alone, 891 civilians have been killed by U.S. drones since 2004.

When a college student recently attempted to write a tweet for every drone strike the US has carried out in the last decade, he gave up after 12 hours of constant tweeting, reaching only the year 2010, when the attacks expanded exponentially.

Pakistan?s President Asif Ali Zardari told US ambassador Richard Olson today that drone attacks are not only violation of Pakistan's sovereignty but are counter productive and their legality is questionable.

Yesterday, another seven people were killed in Yemen in a drone strike. It was the fourth strike in five days, marking what senior officials have called a significant escalation in the U.S.-Yemeni campaign against ?Al Qaeda affiliated militants?.

A further strike later the same day, which went relatively unreported by the mainstream Western media, killed a further nine people. Two of those killed were children, according to?witnesses.

The CIA and Obama administration officials have declined to comment on the strikes.

Yemeni Human Rights Minister Hooria Mashhour this week lambasted the strategy, criticized the lack of concern over civilian deaths, and said all Yemeni citizens deserve the right to a fair trial, rather than blanket assassination.

Yemeni President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, however, praised the operations when he visited Washington in September.

"They pinpoint the target and have zero margin of error, if you know what target you're aiming at," Hadi said at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Again, those dead children are:

Name | Age | Gender

PAKISTAN

Noor Aziz | 8 | male

Abdul Wasit | 17 | male

Noor Syed | 8 | male

Wajid Noor | 9 | male

Syed Wali Shah | 7 | male

Ayeesha | 3 | female

Qari Alamzeb | 14| male

Shoaib | 8 | male

Hayatullah KhaMohammad | 16 | male

Tariq Aziz | 16 | male

Sanaullah Jan | 17 | male

Maezol Khan | 8 | female

Nasir Khan | male

Naeem Khan | male

Naeemullah | male

Mohammad Tahir | 16 | male

Azizul Wahab | 15 | male

Fazal Wahab | 16 | male

Ziauddin | 16 | male

Mohammad Yunus | 16 | male

Fazal Hakim | 19 | male

Ilyas | 13 | male

Sohail | 7 | male

Asadullah | 9 | male

khalilullah | 9 | male

Noor Mohammad | 8 | male

Khalid | 12 | male

Saifullah | 9 | male

Mashooq Jan | 15 | male

Nawab | 17 | male

Sultanat Khan | 16 | male

Ziaur Rahman | 13 | male

Noor Mohammad | 15 | male

Mohammad Yaas Khan | 16 | male

Qari Alamzeb | 14 | male

Ziaur Rahman | 17 | male

Abdullah | 18 | male

Ikramullah Zada | 17 | male

Inayatur Rehman | 16 | male

Shahbuddin | 15 | male

Yahya Khan | 16 |male

Rahatullah |17 | male

Mohammad Salim | 11 | male

Shahjehan | 15 | male

Gul Sher Khan | 15 | male

Bakht Muneer | 14 | male

Numair | 14 | male

Mashooq Khan | 16 | male

Ihsanullah | 16 | male

Luqman | 12 | male

Jannatullah | 13 | male

Ismail | 12 | male

Taseel Khan | 18 | male

Zaheeruddin | 16 | male

Qari Ishaq | 19 | male

Jamshed Khan | 14 | male

Alam Nabi | 11 | male

Qari Abdul Karim | 19 | male

Rahmatullah | 14 | male

Abdus Samad | 17 | male

Siraj | 16 | male

Saeedullah | 17 | male

Abdul Waris | 16 | male

Darvesh | 13 | male

Ameer Said | 15 | male

Shaukat | 14 | male

Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male

Salman | 12 | male

Fazal Wahab | 18 | male

Baacha Rahman | 13 | male

Wali-ur-Rahman | 17 | male

Iftikhar | 17 | male

Inayatullah | 15 | male

Mashooq Khan | 16 | male

Ihsanullah | 16 | male

Luqman | 12 | male

Jannatullah | 13 | male

Ismail | 12 | male

Abdul Waris | 16 | male

Darvesh | 13 | male

Ameer Said | 15 | male

Shaukat | 14 | male

Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male

Adnan | 16 | male

Najibullah | 13 | male

Naeemullah | 17 | male

Hizbullah | 10 | male

Kitab Gul | 12 | male

Wilayat Khan | 11 | male

Zabihullah | 16 | male

Shehzad Gul | 11 | male

Shabir | 15 | male

Qari Sharifullah | 17 | male

Shafiullah | 16 | male

Nimatullah | 14 | male

Shakirullah | 16 | male

Talha | 8 | male

YEMEN

Afrah Ali Mohammed Nasser | 9 | female

Zayda Ali Mohammed Nasser | 7 | female

Hoda Ali Mohammed Nasser | 5 | female

Sheikha Ali Mohammed Nasser | 4 | female

Ibrahim Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 13 | male

Asmaa Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 9 | male

Salma Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 4 | female

Fatima Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 3 | female

Khadije Ali Mokbel Louqye | 1 | female

Hanaa Ali Mokbel Louqye | 6 | female

Mohammed Ali Mokbel Salem Louqye | 4 | male

Jawass Mokbel Salem Louqye | 15 | female

Maryam Hussein Abdullah Awad | 2 | female

Shafiq Hussein Abdullah Awad | 1 | female

Sheikha Nasser Mahdi Ahmad Bouh | 3 | female

Maha Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 12 | male

Soumaya Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 9 | female

Shafika Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 4 | female

Shafiq Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 2 | male

Mabrook Mouqbal Al Qadari | 13 | male

Daolah Nasser 10 years | 10 | female

AbedalGhani Mohammed Mabkhout | 12 | male

Abdel- Rahman Anwar al Awlaki | 16 | male

Abdel-Rahman al-Awlaki | 17 | male

Nasser Salim | 19

_
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones? Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

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Obama Lists His Five Criteria for Death by Drone

by Joe Wolverton, II

President Obama is tearing the shroud of secrecy off his once hush-hush death-by-drone program.

From his interview with Ben Swann, host of Fox 19's?Reality Check, to his sit-down with CNN's chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin, the kill-list compiler-in-chief is gradually exposing details of the principles he purportedly follows before targeting someone for assassination.

The president may assume that there is little reason to try hiding something that is being publicized daily?-- except in the mainstream media. In fairness, the New York Times has done fine work chronicling the expansion of the use of drones, as well as their involvement in the killing of innocents overseas caught in the blast zone of missiles aimed at alleged militants.

An exception to the official policy of silence on the matter of the death-by-drone program being carried out by the White House and the CIA was made earlier this year. In April the White House's top counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, admitted for the first time publicly to the government's significant reliance on drones in prosecuting the War on Terror. Brennan said that the remote control killing of suspects on foreign soil who have been charged with no crime whatsoever, is "in full accordance with the law."

Brennan also said the United States "respects national sovereignty and international law."

Speaking with Margaret Sanger at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Brennan defended the president's drone program. "So long as AQAP [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] seeks to implement its murderous agenda, we will be a close partner with Yemen in meeting this common threat," he said.

Later in the interview, Brennan said that the president deploys drones to target only "militants" with designs on attacking the United States or its allies abroad. He admitted that American intelligence agents provide tactical support to Yemeni armed forces battling al-Qaeda on the ground.

When asked about the collateral deaths of innocent civilians during these attacks, Brennan responded that American drone pilots "make every effort" to avoid killing innocents. Said Brennan:

Today I'd simply say that all our CT [counterterrorism] efforts in Yemen are conducted in concert with the Yemeni government. When direct action is taken, every effort is made to avoid any civilian casualty. And contrary to conventional wisdom, we see little evidence that these actions are generating widespread anti-American sentiment or recruits for AQAP. In fact, we see the opposite; our Yemeni partners are more eager to work with us. Yemenese citizens who have been freed from the hellish grip of AQAP are more eager, not less, to work with the Yemeni government. In short, targeted strikes against the most senior and most dangerous AQAP terrorists are not the problem; they are part of the solution.

Describing the disregard for innocent human life as part of a "solution" is eerily reminiscent of similar statements made by despicable tyrants in the recent past.

The death toll of innocent people killed by the United States in the Middle East continues to increase. As?The New American reported on September 6, 29 Yemenis were killed by U.S. drones in one week. Many of these had not even tenuous ties to terrorists and were killed simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When asked by CNN what process he uses to make the life or death decisions to deploy the drones to kill a "militant," President Obama listed five criteria:

? First, "It has to be a target that is authorized by our laws."

? Second, "It has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative."

? Third, "It has to be a situation in which we can't capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States."

? Fourth, "We've got to make sure that in whatever operations we conduct, we are very careful about avoiding civilian casualties."

? And fifth, "That while there is a legal justification for us to try and stop [American citizens] from carrying out plots ... they are subject to the protections of the Constitution and due process."

Examining this list reveals that in none of the deaths authorized by the president has any one of these criteria been met.

Let's take as a test case the remote-control murder of a young American in Yemen. What law authorized the murder of 16-year-old Abdulrahaman al-Awlaki, son of the American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also killed by Hellfire missiles fired by a Predator drone?

Neither man (both of whom were Americans) was ever charged with a crime or permitted to answer for his alleged crimes before an impartial judge -- a violation of the fifth point provided by the president.

What threat did the younger al-Awlaki pose to the United States? The Obama administration has never informed the country of any wrongdoing by this teenager other than being related to a man who posted anti-American videos on the Internet that allegedly influenced others to commit crimes. This violates the president's first criterion.

Number three above was certainly ignored by the president since no known attempt was ever made to capture this young man and take him into U.S. custody. Of course, that could be because he might actually have ended up in a court of law if he had been apprehended; and President Obama, a former lawyer, knows that trials can be long, messy, and unpredictable. It is much quicker and cleaner just to launch a missile and kill someone without going through the hassle of due process.

Finally, with regard to civilian casualties, not even the White House claims that Abdulraham al-Awlaki was a member of al-Qaeda or any associated organization. He was quite literally killed for being associated with one who was allegedly associated with those allegedly associated with al-Qaeda.

As Tom Junod wrote in Esquire:

But Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn't on an American kill list. Nor was he a member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Nor was he "an inspiration," as his father styled himself, for those determined to draw American blood; nor had he gone "operational," as American authorities said his father had, in drawing up plots against Americans and American interests.

He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who [sneaked] out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him.

Furthermore, the young man was killed while eating dinner on the side of the road in the company of friends and extended family. So much for the limiting of "civilian" collateral damage. Not only was the target of the nighttime drone attack a civilian, but so were all the boys sitting with him when two American missiles lit up the area and killed them all.

Finally, when Yellin asked Obama if he personally approves the targets of the drone strikes, the president answered, "You know, I can't get too deeply into how these things work, but as I said as commander in chief ultimately I'm responsible for the process that we've set up to make sure that folks who are out to kill Americans, that we are able to disable them before they carry out their plans."

If only all advocates of constitutional due process could nonviolently through the electoral process disable those of both parties -- whether in office or seeking to be elected-- from carrying out their plans to destroy the our constitutionally protected liberty.

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Rand Paul proposes bill to prevent warrantless drone surveillance

By Eric W. Dolan

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would prohibit law enforcement agencies from using unmanned aerial vehicles to conduct surveillance without a warrant.

?I?m not against technology per se,? he explained on CNN. ?What I am for are the constitutional processes that protect our civil liberties. So, you know, it?s not like I?m against the police using cars or against them using airplanes or helicopters or robots. But I am for personal privacy for saying that no policeman will ever do this without asking a judge for permission.?

This year?s Federal Aviation Administration funding bill contained provisions that made it easier for law enforcement agencies to use drones within the United States. The new law requires the FAA to speed up the process by which it authorizes government agencies to operate drones. The law also requires the FAA to allow agencies to operate any drone weighing 4.4 pounds or less as long as it is operated within line of sight, during the day and below 400 feet in altitude.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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