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November 07

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DECEMBER 31, 2012 11:14AM

Obama Writing Rules For Killing People With Drones

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The source of all tyranny in this world is the rule of man; the illegitimate authority a human being grants him or herself over others. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, the Japanese Imperial Empire, Robert Mugabe, Communist China, Communist Russia, Apartheid South Africa, the British empire, Wall Street, deregulated corporate capitalism, African American slavery or any kind of corporate slavery, undocumented workers in unsafe and predatory jobs, European indentured servitude, empire, corporate payment of nonliving wages and the like were and are flagrant examples of how the rule of man has destroyed democracy and determinism and in the process murdered and enslaved cumulatively what has been and are billions of people.

One of the long term theses on here is that the world is collapsing for this very reason. Today, the entire world is under that yoke of tyranny in one or many manifestations of the rule of man.

Because the rule of law has been destroyed by predators, sociopaths, narcissists and other unstable manifestations of the self acting out against other human beings , modern civilization teeters on the precipice. Any public servant who "makes up" or dreams up any types of rules for anything affecting democracy, our economy or the lives of any other human beings that grants him or her authority in any way is creating an illegitimate authority to serve not the needs of a free people but to serve themselves and the various incantations of the rule of man.  This is the exact dynamic that has always led to tyranny.  Always. 

There is absolutely no legitimate authority in this world other than reasoned, just, transparent, democratic law.

The law has been shredded. The Constitution has been destroyed. Democracy is dead courtesy of the corporate state.

Title link video here.

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It's a mob rule, for sure. But the free ride won't last forever and that will be the end of the mob.
Well then I guess I ought to congratulate you for being brave enough to speak up as often and as loudly as you do, TimingLogic.

If only there had been people brave as you when other non-democratic states existed...like Hitler's Germany; Stalin's Soviet Union; Hussein's Iraq...and places like that.

They could have used people with your spine.
Dear TL,

With all respect, ...... Balderdash!

Do laws come into existence all by themselves? Unless you are privy to some information that I don't have, the every doggone law that exists was created by humans.

That humans have made many bad laws is obvious. Usually bad law is that which i intended to give some few people power over the majority. Economic power, social power, political power or religious power. These bad laws always create a pyramid-shaped structure that has a few at its apex who rule over all those under them. Each layer has some degree of authority over the layer or layers beneath it. It is the "law" that each layer derives its authority from the layer(s) above it and can only consider its own authority legitimate by supporting the layers above it as having the power to grant it that authority. Thus it becomes a self supporting structure with maximum power vested in that few in the apex of the pyramid.

Needless to say, those further down the pyramid have less and less power both in the society but over themselves.

This whole structure is dedicated to two things; 1) to establish that some have power over others, and, 2) to ensure that those who have this power will always have it. To this end are laws created.

Good law; law intended to ensure equality, fair dealing, decent behaviour, etc., is forever in a contest with bad law for dominance. Our society has many good laws. Unfortunately it also has many bad laws also. Right now we can see the results of the bad laws dominating the good ones.

Fortunately it is within our power to change this and to establish good laws as dominant. BUT this is not going to "just happen." We've got to get up off of our fat butts and make it happen. Until we do that, the bad laws and those who benefit from them are going to rule.

Couch potatoes are unlikely to do this.........

[r] Thanks, TL. Well said, once again. The corporate state. Might makes right. Profits uber alles. We are all collateral damage in the short and long runs.

I was very moved by the following passages:


Anatomy of an Air Attack Gone Wrong

By Letta Tayler

"December 29, 2012 "FP" -- SANAA, Yemen — The villagers who rushed to the road, cutting through rocky fields in central Yemen, found the dead strewn around a burning sport utility vehicle. The bodies were dusted with white powder -- flour and sugar, the witnesses said -- that the victims were bringing home from market when the aircraft attacked. A torched woman clutched her daughter in a lifeless embrace. Four severed heads littered the pavement. "The bodies were charred like coal. I could not recognize the faces," said Ahmed al-Sabooli, 22, a farmer whose parents and 10-year-old sister were among the dead. "Then I recognized my mother because she was still holding my sister in her lap. That is when I cried."

"Quoting unnamed Yemeni officials, local and international media initially described the victims of the Sept. 2 airstrike in al-Bayda governorate as al Qaeda militants. After relatives of the victims threatened to bring the charred bodies to the president, Yemen's official news agency issued a brief statement admitting the awful truth: The strike was an "accident" that killed 12 civilians. Three were children.

"Nearly four months later, that terse admission remains the only official word on the botched attack. A Washington Post article, published on Dec. 24, reports that "U.S. officials in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said it was a Defense Department aircraft, either a drone or a fixed-wing airplane, that fired" on the vehicle. But the people of al-Bayda still have received no official word as to who was responsible for the deaths -- the United States, which in the past year has accelerated its covert targeted-killing program against Yemeni-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; or the Yemeni government, whose new president, Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi, was installed with Washington's help.

"The information blackout on terrorism-related killings is not limited to al-Bayda. The United States has revealed only the barest details of its 400 estimated strikes on alleged militant targets in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia over the past decade. The attacks, carried out by the CIA and the Pentagon with unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), manned warplanes, and cruise missiles, have reportedly killed at least 2,800 people, according to sources such as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) in London. Yet in most cases, Washington refuses to even confirm or deny any role in the strikes, much less acknowledge whether any civilians were killed. With the United States leading the way on obfuscation, allies such as Yemen have no qualms about following suit, leaving no one accountable when attacks kill the wrong people.

"U.S. President Barack Obama's administration is reportedly drafting new rules on targeted killings, the majority of which have been conducted on his watch. But though these new rules might include more oversight, it's likely that the program will remain shrouded in secrecy. For the people of al-Bayda, just a pinprick on the map of innocents lost to the "war on terror," policy changes without more transparency mean nothing.


"The attack took place near Radda, a hilltop city roughly 100 miles southeast of Sanaa. For more than a year, drones had been circling day and night over Radda and surrounding areas, and one or two had been flying overhead on the morning of Sept. 2, the witnesses said. Shortly before 4 p.m., three of the witnesses said, two warplanes also swooped into the area. (The Washington Post article notes that some witnesses saw three planes.)

""I heard a very loud noise, like thunder," said Sami al-Ezzi, a farmer who was working in his fields in Sabool, a farming village six miles from Radda. "I looked up and saw two warplanes. One was firing missiles."

"Arriving at the scene, about 1.5 miles from Sabool, local residents found a horrific sight: The battered Toyota Land Cruiser that had served as the daily shuttle between Sabool and Radda lay on its side in flames. All the dead and injured were Sabool residents returning from Radda.

""About four people were without heads. Many lost their hands and legs," said Nawaf Massoud Awadh, a sheikh from Sabool who saw the attack. "These were our relatives and friends."

"Sabooli's mother was in the vehicle because her husband had taken her to Radda to see a doctor. Other passengers were farmers who had gone to Radda to sell their crop of khat, a legal and widely used stimulant in Yemen. Only two passengers, both men, survived. Both lost their ability to walk, the witnesses said."

end of quote

best, libby
Balderdash? Well, after that, I really didn't read any more of your comments because your opening statement is baseless.

Your freedoms are based on natural law. ie, Laws granted by nature of what your existence would be like without the force of the state which is what your first paragraph tries to defend. Your freedom and the laws protecting it are a recognition and deference to God granted or nature granted power/freedom given to every sentient being. Your freedom is not derived by the rule of man. To the contrary, given the precept of natural law, it follows that any rights of public servants are derived from the consent of the governed. You may have heard of such a ludicrous concept before. It's what your society is based upon. Rather than waste my time lecturing you in some grand treatise on authority and law, I would point you to do your diligence.

When a human being writes the law as they go as Obama is doing, the end result is the rule of man. And, it always leads to tyranny. We have a reasoned, democratic, transparent process based on vetting, discourse and debate, aka based on the tenants of natural law, (reason) that are the basis for the passage of law in our society. Not the rule of man.