The new face of American serial killers: drone operators

From:  SOOT.NET

COMMENT - There is a chain of causality when someone is killed or maimed by drones we, as Americans, pay for.  The first step is the campaign to get the war started for the benefit of the relatively small number of multinationals and banks who so vastly profit.  

Reference John Perkins, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," on this first step.  

Second Step: If the proposed victim country can't pay the usurious interest on loans made them, refusing to turn over their natural resources, specialized hit men of the violent variety come in.  

The third step was documented by Major General Smedley Butler in his book, "War is a Racket." 

The article below is about the 21st Century variation on this theme, remote war.  The overhead is less at a time when even multinationals can see there is an end to our ability to kill America's youth, forced into the military because of the death of opportunities at home.  

Today, most people understand these wars for what they are.  This profoundly clear commentary on the subject, related to Vietnam, appeared on EdHat, an online website for Santa Barbara, where Green Hills Software in located.  The original entry is about a woman driving a Mercedes parking in a handicapped spot.  The commentary which followed went deeper.  

NATURE BOY	2013-04-29 06:17 PM
That's Levi. He's the coolest. A double-amputee with a custom made 3-wheel hot-rod that is customized to fit his needs. He rides it with his little dog on the back! Whenever i see him while i'm on my old Vespa, we always wave. Vietnam veteran, i believe. The LAST guy whose spot you want to park in! He earned that spot by fighting for our country. Oh i wish i could've been there!
COMMENT 403163P	2013-04-29 06:18 PM
Looks like she was maybe a nursing aide for an elderly person, who probably owned the card and the car? Not an excuse; just and observation.
NATURE BOY	2013-04-29 06:21 PM
163P, how does it look like that? I know you're not defending her crime, but what makes you think that?
CHILI_CON_ARTCARNE	2013-04-29 06:25 PM
Yes!
COMMENT 403163P	2013-04-29 06:25 PM
Small point of history, but we were not fighting for our country in Vietnam. We were fighting to keep a corrupt gang of South Vietnamese military lords in power. We had no national interest to protect in Viet-man. Draft had ended with that war, and not everyone is in combat, when they later chose to enlist in the military. Huge drug problems among our military personnel was a consequence of that engagement in South East Asia with its proximity to the Golden Triangle of the global drug traffic. It was one of our most strategic national blunders; exceeded only by Iraq, when we should have known better.
NATURE BOY 2013-04-29 06:32 PM Not to get into either semantics or a debate on geo-politics of the 1960s, but, "Fighting for his country": 1. He was fighting. 2. It was "for his country" in the way that his country either asked him to do it or made him do it.

At each point in the chain of causality people make decisions about what they, personally, will do.  Using the information available, we each choose.  When we are lied to, by policy and for profit, we often make decisions which later impact us profoundly and, in the case below, kill others.  

Those supplying every part of the drones are accountable and had far better information about the capacity for killing than those enlisted to pull the trigger.  

Vic Pittman
Salem-News.com
Sun, 28 Apr 2013 12:31 CDT

Brandon Bryant, 27, from Missoula, Montana, spent six years in the Air Force operating Predator drones from inside a dark container. But, after following orders to shoot and kill a child in Afghanistan, he knew he couldn't keep doing what he was doing and quit the military.

"I saw men, women and children die during that time. I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn't kill anyone at all." - Former US drone operator Brandon Bryant

A little after 10:00 p.m., and a serial killer is getting ready to make his move. He has watched and waited for this moment for some time.

He watches his victim get out of a cab and dig in his pockets for money. Two of his children run out to the porch to greet their daddy. The killer presses a button and watches as the victim, the taxi driver and the two children are vaporized. Other people in the house, the man's wife, parents and three other children are badly injured and burnt by the high explosive.

The house next door partially collapses, killing an elderly woman and injuring her grandson. But this is just the beginning.

Neighbors and emergency personnel arrive and begin trying to help the victims. There is chaos...children screaming, people wailing and the cries of the burnt and injured. Several people are trapped under rubble.

When enough people have gathered, the killer presses the button again. Fifteen seconds later, all those at the scene are vaporized or blown to shreds. The killer high-fives his partner. In two hours he will be off work! They are planning on driving in to Las Vegas, have some cocktails maybe pick up some girls.

On the other side of the world, at the crime scene, the misery, grief and suffering is just beginning. The gathering and grouping of body parts, the burials, the amputations and lifetime medical traumas, the traumatized children, the destroyed lives. But tonight in Vegas, it is party party party for this 22-year old serial killer from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, some 7550 miles away from the carnage. The biggest threat he will face tonight is a hangover tomorrow.

He is a drone "pilot". He and his kind have redefined the words "coward", "terrorist", and "sociopath". He is the new face of American warfare. He is a government trained and equipped serial killer. But unlike Ted Bundy or John Gacy, he does not have to worry about getting caught. It is his job.

One thing that the drone terrorism/assassination program has revealed to the world is how racist we Americans are. American life is precious... when Americans die we expect the entire world to weep at our feet along with us. Three Americans die in a senseless act of violence and murder at the Boston Marathon, and the entire country grieves and the president makes heartfelt speeches. Where were all the speeches and expressions of grief when the US bombed the school in Chenagai, Afghanistan? Didn't hear about that senseless act of violence and murder? Of course not.

This is from the UK newspaper The Tribune. 

"It is one of the worst incidents of the entire drones campaign, yet one of the least reported.

A CIA strike on a madrassa or religious school in 2006 killed up to 69 children, among 80 civilians.

The attack was on a religious seminary in Chenegai, in Bajaur Agency.CIA drones attacked on October 30, flattening much of the school. Their target was reportedly the headmaster, a known militant. But dozens of children were also killed, the youngest aged seven."
(see here)

Wow. So the CI next decides that the teacher of this school needs to be killed. They do not kill him on his way to school, or when he is alone. They wait until he is at the school full of children, THEN they send the missiles. They PURPOSELY wait until they can kill dozens of children too. Could Satan himself top this act of pure evil? If there is aHell, there is a special place for the murdering, drug running, child killers known as the CIA. Hitler's SS were Cub Scouts in comparison.

When the CIA decided that they wanted to kill a 16-year old American kid named Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, they waited until he was in a Yemeni restaurant with two of his teenaged friends. A drone operator fired the missiles and not only the intended victim, but eight other people died.

This is from Wikipedia:

"Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki was a 16-year-old American citizen who was killed while eating dinner at an outdoor restaurant in an airstrike by an armed C.I.A. drone in Yemen on October 14, 2011. The attack also killed two of his teenaged friends and five other people in the restaurant, which was reduced to rubble. He had no connection to terrorism and was searching for his father Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by an airstrike by an armed C.I.A. drone two weeks prior to the death of his son."

Dr. Mona Kazim Shah with a drone strike victim

By the way, Obama approved that strike, according to the New York Times. Tough guy. A real leader. Child killer.

Would that ever happen in the US?

Say if a non-government sanctioned serial killer like Jeffery Dahmler was in a Burger King, would the police or FBI blow up the entire restaurant and kill everyone else inside to get him ? If a really bad guy...robber, rapist, murderer was found to be in his house some night with his wife and four small children, would the police blow up the entire house and everyone in it to get the bad guy? Would the CIA bomb a school full of children in Colorado (where the 16 year old was from) to kill ONE teacher? No, because we value AMERICAN life.

Our damned military and the ghouls who give them their orders are rapidly changing for the worst, how we are perceived in the world. We are murderous, racist thugs, killers of children, bombers of weddings and funerals. The "logic" given for bombing weddings and funerals is that there might be someone attending that they want to take out. So, our Nobel Peace Prize winning president and the serial killers he employs just kill as many people as possible.

If they were at the wedding of someone who might be related to someone possibly involved with trying to get the foreign invaders out of their country, well they were probably "terrorists", and the children would probably grow up to be terrorists, so kill em all.

This is racism at it's most extreme. We can kill them like mice because they are not like us. We lie, invade, destroy, kill and then we call THEM "savages". WE are the most brutal, arrogant and sociopath society this earth has ever seen. We criticize the Jews for calling themselves the Chosen Ones, yet we act as if we are the only people on the planet that matter.

"Well", you might be thinking, "this rant does not apply to me. I am not in the military, I am not an 'aviation warfare specialist' as the joystick/drone operators in their 'flight suits' are called. I don't like this crap any more than the author of this piece...."

My question then would be "What are you doing about it?"

Have you called your congressmen and senators and told them that you will only support those politicians who sincerely and repeatedly call for an end to the drone murder program?

About the only thing I feel that I can do about it at this time is try to raise awareness. Anyone can do that in their everyday conversations with others. Letters to the editor are good. Do something or know that by your silence you are aiding and abetting evil in it's purest form. Even a "Drones are Evil" bumper sticker would be a start.

You would probably be surprised and maybe encouraged by how many others would comment on it. I believe that there should be a drone operator website where these punks are "outed". We need a drone operator list with names, pictures and addresses... I want to know if my neighbor, my child's friend's father, or the newly hired town cop is or was a murdering serial killer.

If so, they need to be treated like any other murderers.

They need to know even a bit of the terror that they inflict on others. They need to worry every single day, like the way Afghan and Pakistani parents worry, many now not sending their chidren to school because of the American/NATO habit of bombing schools, picnics and any gathering of people.

Can you imagine being afraid to throw a wedding for your child because a bored 22-year old "aviation warfare specialist" on the other side of the world may decide that it could be a terrorist get together and blow it up? That is the reality of life for many people in the world today, especially in Northern Pakistan.

And do you think that this killer drone business will not come to our shores?

Do you think that the same people who plan, approve and carry out strikes on weddings and houses full of children, who blow up an entire restaurant and everyone in it to kill a 16 year old American kid..do you think that these people would hesitate to do the same thing here if they felt a need to?

They kill children but are too nice to do it here?? "They wouldn't do that to us....that's crazy talk!" Remember Waco? There were children there. Twenty-eight of them.

Sooner or later we are going to see a scenario like this...in the United States. A citizen shoots down a surveillance drone flying over his property. The government responds with an armed drone and blows the citizen to shreds. No risk to "law enforcement", call the guy a terror suspect and classify the information so that no one can look any further into it.

The message will be sent to the other uppity citizens that if you mess with us, you will die...today.

And consider this the next time you hear of a "terrorist" bomb, a suicide bombing or a car bomb going off somewhere. The giant V-2 rockets that Germany deployed during WWII were invisible to the naked eye when they hit. These rockets were 46 feet long, nearly 6 feet in diameter, and had a 12 foot wingspan. They were the size of, and looked like, the finned rockets in old science fiction movies.

Hellfire missiles, which US drones use, are less than five feet long, seven inches in diameter, and have a 13" wingspan. By my rough calculations, nearly three hundred Hellfires could fit into a V-2, yet these giants were invisible when they hit. How much more so the Hellfires?

And by the way, do you know how many car bombs had been set off in Iraq before the American/British invasion? Zero.

Even with all the "sectarian strife" that we were told we must invade to prevent. Look it up..not one recorded car bombing incident until the Americans and Brits got there. Coincidence? I think not.

So if a drone fires a missile at a car in a crowded market and it explodes, it becomes a "car bomb"? In Gaza, shops, houses and cars blow up routinely and it is usually attributed by the Israelis to a bomb blowing up prematurely. You can only use that so many times however, before people start to question things.

I am afraid that we are to the point however, where they do not care about our impressions of their actions as long as we are "shock and awed" enough to fear resisting. Everything the government does, it does gradually...like frogs in a cooking pot, we adjust to each little infringement, each loss of freedom, each "sacrifice" that we are asked (ordered) to endure "for the good of the country".

One day we wake up and realize that we have become slaves to a cartel of profiteers that do not give a damn about us or The United States or the world. We are their tools, their pawns to be used and disposed of as they see fit. They use one group of us to wipe out another group of us, but we are all their pawns... Americans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, whatever.

We are being distracted and manipulated by "nationalism" - by people who have no allegiance to any country. Their loyalty is to power and wealth. They believe that they should rule the world.

When I was growing up, in the movies, cartoons and comic books, the people who wanted to "rule the world" were ALWAYS the bad guys....remember? How did that change? It didn't... wanting to dominate the world remains the wet dream of the most evil amongst us.

The real war going on is a class war. But it is very narrow class indeed which does the ruling..maybe the top 3%. They use fear, nationalism, "patriotism", religion, race, sexual preferences... anything they can to get us to fight each other, but what we always have is one group of poor bastards killing another group of the same so that evil people who have nothing but disdain for all of us can continue to grow in power and wealth.

We average Americans are too nice. We think that our "leaders" are nice also. We cannot imagine lying to the whole world to create a war for profit, or bombing a restaurant full of people to kill a 16-year old kid but they can and have. We cannot imagine torturing people to death, but they can and do. We could not imagine that they would kill 2200 of us on 9-11 to get a war going, but even the government appointed 9-11 commission members do not believe the official story that they say they were railroaded into endorsing. Polls show that a majority of the world does not buy it either.

So, do I think that even massive public pressure would change things, that the US military and the CIA would stop using and promise not to use killer drones anymore, or if they did make such a promise it would be kept? Not for a second. They are here to stay. I think that the only thing we can do is make it as difficult as possible for them. Make them go to a little more effort to cover their tracks. Harass drone-promoting politicians... make them worry. Send a letter to General Atomics, the ghouls that build these Predator drones.

Here is their address:

General Atomics
PO Box 85608
San Diego, California 92186-5608

If you think that their products are shitty, maybe the best way to express that is to send them some......shit! Got a dog? Maybe a cat? There you are... you are just a stamp and an envelope away.

We have generated a lot of well-justified hatred. If Americans were digging through rubble of weddings, restaurants and schools looking for their victims of Chinese drone strikes, I think it is safe to say that we would hate the Chinese.

I would try to figure out a way to fight back if I could. Wouldn't you?

And if Chinese drones were killing Europeans or Japanese in their houses, their restaurants, I would boycott all things Chinese. Despite all our wealth and WMDs, we are just 5% of the world's population. How long can we spit in the faces of the other 95% and not receive serious repercussions?

We use force to resolve differences, but we are an especially warlike society. The rest of the world will simply ignore us, reject us, and starve us out. Remember the fall of the South African apartheid government? That regime lasted a decade longer than it would have only because of loans from AMERICAN banks. The rest of the world had closed it's doors on the racist regime.

No one likes murderous bullies, except it seems, other murderous bullies. Things are going to change. I am surprised that it hasn't happened already. We are raised to think that the whole world admires us and wants to be like us. That may have been the case in the past, but we have become so brutal, hypocritical and arrogant that those days are over. The beautiful young maiden that the world embraced last night has been revealed to be an ugly, syphilitic old whore with bloodstained hands in the morning light.

The honeymoon is ending quickly...

We need to realize that an American boycott could very well happen. Sadly, only then will a huge number of us realize that we have been on the wrong side of history. Many of us will dig in with the "right or wrong, it's us against them" mentality. But most of us, I believe, are good, decent people who wish no harm to anyone. We just want to live our lives the best we can and hopefully raise our children in a happy and peaceful world. And most of us realize that all around the world everyone else is, with very few exceptions, the same.

For most of us our only sin is our silence.

That is how history will judge us.

People want to feel proud of themselves, of their country, of their military. We resist realizations that shatter that perception. It is tough to realize that at this point in time, we are indeed "the bad guys", and we should be ashamed for allowing this world-threatening cancer to grow in our name. But we are continually bombarded with lies and misinformation by a "government" that we were raised to trust and believe in.

What will our overlords do when they realize that we see through their lies, and their time is up? What will they do when our servicemen and women start refusing orders en mass? And how many innocents have to die before that point is reached? THAT is up to us.

"If there be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." - Thomas Paine

__________________________________ Vic Pittman is a freelance writer from Scotts Mills, Oregon who resides in Mexico today. He is the holder of no literary awards, journalistic awards or college degrees. He has at one time or another been a honor student, inmate, biker, Christian, pothead, father, radical, pacifist, anarchist, artist, heavy metal guitarist, model citizen, lawbreaker, business owner, illegal marijuana grower, and volunteer for various causes. He is proud to be a "common man" and be among those striving to make this world a better place if at all possible. He was fortunate enough to have been raised by awesome parents who instilled what he feels to be essential values and encouraged him to feel a kinship with not just family or Oregonians or Americans or whites, but every person on Earth, and to act accordingly. He and his wife Glenda currently live in Nayarit Mexico. You can write to Vic at this address: tropicats08@hotmail.com

Psychopaths’ Brain Patterns Lack Means for Empathy, Reveals Neuroimaging Study

From:  Medical Daily 

Author: Ashik Siddique

 COMMENT - Situational psychopaths are those who are influenced by the disordered around them, especially those in positions of authority, who manipulate and so change their behavior in relation to acting on human compassion and empathy.  

Which are you, if you are on Green Hills Software's Management Team?

New functional brain scan research on psychopathy reveals strikingly distinct patterns of activation among psychopathic prisoners in response to seeing other people in painful situations, suggesting a neural basis for their lack of empathy.

A lack of empathy is a signature trait of psychopaths— fascinating in fiction, inexplicable in reality. Now, a new study on psychopathic prisoners reveals strikingly different brain patterns that may limit their ability to emotionally respond to other people’s pain.

“This is the first time that neural processes associated with empathic processing have been directly examined in individuals with psychopathy, especially in response to the perception of other people in pain or distress,” said lead researcher Jean Decety, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, in a news release.

While previous studies have found differences between the brain structure of psychopathic convicts and controls, this is the first to observe neural differences in how they respond to distressing situations.

Empathy is a basic and evolutionarily ancient instinct, wrote Decety’s team in the study, and sensitivity to the pain of others is one of the earliest forms of it to develop in young children. The neural circuit of empathy is believed to involve connections among outer regions of the brain like the insula, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), as well as inner regions like the brainstem, amygdala, and hypothalamus.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder in which people have a “callous disregard for others,” according to researchers, as well as high impulsivity and aggression. It is estimated to be present in about 1 percent of Americans, and up to 30 percent of the United States prison population.

While not all people with such qualities are menaces to society, psychopaths are more likely to have committed serious crimes like rape, assault, and murder, and to commit repeat offenses. Perhaps not incidentally, some of them may also make excellent business executives.

Previous neuroimaging research on psychopaths has indicated reduced volumein some of these brain regions, as well as weakened connections among them, though it is unclear how such deficits develop. Psychopathic behavior is unlikely to be modified with existing cognitive-behavioral therapies, and the possibility that the disorder stems from intractable differences in brain structure is discouraging for researchers who hope to treat it.

In the hopes of eventually learning enough to develop effective psychological interventions, Decety’s team decided to investigate the patterns of brain activity involved in psychopaths’ responses to the distress of others.

Their findings, published online today in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, bring researchers slightly closer to accomplishing that goal.

80 incarcerated men aged 18 to 50 volunteered for the study, all prisoners in a medium-security correctional facility who were assessed for psychopathy levels with clinical diagnostic measures.

Read More: Here

A call to fire general in sexual-assault dismissal

From:  Politico

COMMENT -  Although we certainly do not agree with the actions of General Craig Franklin, he is, again, definitely NOT Craig (Incest Porn) Franklin. 

 

By JUANA SUMMERS | 4/24/13 5:11 AM EDT 

An advocate for sexual assault victims is urging the Air Force to fire a general involved with a case that has enraged members of Congress who are pushing for the military to finally crack down on the sexual violence that critics say has become an epidemic.
Protect Our Defenders President Nancy Parrish argued Tuesday in a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, commander of the 3rd Air Force, used “failed and biased reasoning and unreliable information” in his decision to dismiss the sexual-assault conviction of Lt. Col. James Wilkerson.

Parrish argued that Franklin’s decision to overturn the findings of a court-martial and free Wilkerson “clearly conflicts with his responsibility to further good order and discipline within the service.”

The case drew a hail of criticism from members of Congress, who argued Franklin’s decision showed an old-boys’ club at work protecting its own. Hagel responded with a proposal that Congress change the Uniform Code of Military Justice to weaken commanders’ abilities to void court-martial verdicts, which victims’ advocates welcomed as a first step toward what they say is needed reform.
Air Force Secretary Michael Donley defended Franklin, telling reporters in a breakfast meeting Tuesday that Franklin has a track record of acting correctly and within the bounds of the law. Franklin, Donley said, uses his power as “convening authority” in courts-martial based on the merits of each case. Although Franklin has altered the results in two of the five sexual-assault cases he’s dealt with, he has let convictions stand in three of them, Donley said.
Franklin himself has also dismissed charges that he does not take sexual assault seriously.
“Accusations by some that my decision was the result of either an apparent lack of understanding of sexual assault on my part, or that I do not take the crime of sexual assault seriously are complete and utter nonsense,” Franklin said in a six-page letter to Donley last month. “I unequivocally view sexual assault as a highly egregious crime. I take every allegation of sexual assault very seriously.”

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Obama’s drone war kills ‘others,’ not just al Qaida leaders

From:  McClatchy

COMMENT -  The bald fact is all war contracts are being paid, not for ensuing America is defended but to fatten the bottom line for war contractors and bankers, all of these compiled being Greedville.  It is easily understood if you look at it as a business plan.

Pakistani soldiers stand guard at the Shamsi Airbase located some 320 kilometers southwest of Quetta in southwest Pakistan, on December 11, 2011. | Yslb Pak Zhang Qi/Xinhua/MCT

By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified “other” militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, classified U.S. intelligence reports show.
The administration has said that strikes by the CIA’s missile-firing Predator and Reaper drones are authorized only against “specific senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces” involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks who are plotting “imminent” violent attacks on Americans.
“It has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative,” President Barack Obama said in a Sept. 6, 2012, interview with CNN. “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.”
Copies of the top-secret U.S. intelligence reports reviewed by McClatchy, however, show that drone strikes in Pakistan over a four-year period didn’t adhere to those standards.
The intelligence reports list killings of alleged Afghan insurgents whose organization wasn’t on the U.S. list of terrorist groups at the time of the 9/11 strikes; of suspected members of a Pakistani extremist group that didn’t exist at the time of 9/11; and of unidentified individuals described as “other militants” and “foreign fighters.”
In a response to questions from McClatchy, the White House defended its targeting policies, pointing to previous public statements by senior administration officials that the missile strikes are aimed at al Qaida and associated forces.
Micah Zenko, an expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, a bipartisan foreign policy think tank, who closely follows the target killing program, said McClatchy’s findings indicate that the administration is “misleading the public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted.”
The documents also show that drone operators weren’t always certain who they were killing despite the administration’s guarantees of the accuracy of the CIA’s targeting intelligence and its assertions that civilian casualties have been “exceedingly rare.”
McClatchy’s review is the first independent evaluation of internal U.S. intelligence accounting of drone attacks since the Bush administration launched America’s secret aerial warfare on Oct. 7, 2001, the day a missile-carrying Predator took off for Afghanistan from an airfield in Pakistan on the first operational flight of an armed U.S. drone.
The analysis takes on additional significance because of the domestic and international debate over the legality of drone strikes in Pakistan amid reports that the administration is planning to broaden its use of targeted killings in Afghanistan and North Africa.
The U.S. intelligence reports reviewed by McClatchy covered most – although not all – of the drone strikes in 2006-2008 and 2010-2011. In that later period, Obama oversaw a surge in drone operations against suspected Islamist sanctuaries on Pakistan’s side of the border that coincided with his buildup of 33,000 additional U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan. Several documents listed casualty estimates as well as the identities of targeted groups.
McClatchy’s review found that:
– At least 265 of up to 482 people who the U.S. intelligence reports estimated the CIA killed during a 12-month period ending in September 2011 were not senior al Qaida leaders but instead were “assessed” as Afghan, Pakistani and unknown extremists. Drones killed only six top al Qaida leaders in those months, according to news media accounts.
Forty-three of 95 drone strikes reviewed for that period hit groups other than al Qaida, including the Haqqani network, several Pakistani Taliban factions and the unidentified individuals described only as “foreign fighters” and “other militants.”
During the same period, the reports estimated there was a single civilian casualty, an individual killed in an April 22, 2011, strike in North Waziristan, the main sanctuary for militant groups in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
– At other times, the CIA killed people who only were suspected, associated with, or who probably belonged to militant groups.
To date, the Obama administration has not disclosed the secret legal opinions and the detailed procedures buttressing drone killings, and it has never acknowledged the use of so-called “signature strikes,” in which unidentified individuals are killed after surveillance shows behavior the U.S. government associates with terrorists, such as visiting compounds linked to al Qaida leaders or carrying weapons. Nor has it disclosed an explicit list of al Qaida’s “associated forces” beyond the Afghan Taliban.
The little that is known about the opinions comes from a leaked Justice Department white paper, a half-dozen or so speeches, some public comments by Obama and several top lieutenants, and limited open testimony before Congress.
“The United States has gone far beyond what the U.S. public – and perhaps even Congress – understands the government has been doing and claiming they have a legal right to do,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a Notre Dame Law School professor who contends that CIA drone operations in Pakistan violate international law.
The documents McClatchy has reviewed do not reflect the entirety of the killings associated with U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, which independent reports estimate at between 1,990 and 3,581.
But the classified reports provide a view into how drone strikes were carried out during the most intense periods of drone warfare in Pakistan’s remote tribal area bordering Afghanistan. Specifically, the documents reveal estimates of deaths and injuries; locations of militant bases and compounds; the identities of some of those targeted or killed; the movements of targets from village to village or compound to compound; and, to a limited degree, the rationale for unleashing missiles.
The documents also reveal a breadth of targeting that is complicated by the culture in the restive region of Pakistan where militants and ordinary tribesmen dress the same, and carrying a weapon is part of the centuries-old tradition of the Pashtun ethnic group.
The Haqqani network, for example, cooperates closely with al Qaida for philosophical and tactical reasons, and it is blamed for some of the bloodiest attacks against civilians and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. But the Haqqani network wasn’t on the U.S. list of international terrorist groups at the time of the strikes covered by the U.S. intelligence reports, and it isn’t known to ever have been directly implicated in a plot against the U.S. homeland.
Other groups the documents said were targeted have parochial objectives: the Pakistani Taliban seeks to topple the Islamabad government; Lashkar i Jhangvi, or Army of Jhangvi, are outlawed Sunni Muslim terrorists who’ve slaughtered scores of Pakistan’s minority Shiites and were blamed for a series of attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including a 2006 bombing against the U.S. consulate in Karachi that killed a U.S. diplomat. Both groups are close to al Qaida, but neither is known to have initiated attacks on the U.S. homeland.
“I have never seen nor am I aware of any rules of engagement that have been made public that govern the conduct of drone operations in Pakistan, or the identification of individuals and groups other than al Qaida and the Afghan Taliban,” said Christopher Swift, a national security law expert who teaches national security affairs at Georgetown University and closely follows the targeted killing issue. “We are doing this on a case-by-case, ad hoc basis, rather than a systematic or strategic basis.”
The administration has declined to reveal other details of the program, such as the intelligence used to select targets and how much evidence is required for an individual to be placed on a CIA “kill list.” The administration also hasn’t even acknowledged the existence of so-called signature strikes, let alone discussed the legal and procedural foundations of the attacks.
Leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees say they maintain robust oversight over the program. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., disclosed in a Feb. 13 statement that the panel is notified “with key details . . . shortly after” every drone strike. It also reviews videos of strikes and considers “their effectiveness as a counterterrorism tool, verifying the care taken to avoid deaths to non-combatants and understanding the intelligence collection and analysis that underpins these operations.”
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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/09/188062/obamas-drone-war-kills-others.html#storylink=cpy

Cal Tech News Vol. 9, No. 3, April 1975

Article on Glenn Hightower and his partner, John S. Denker from Cal Tech News Vol. 9, No. 3, April 1975

The values operating with Hightower's decision-making show a focus on the needs of people who are deaf, and meeting their needs.  Hightower was defrauded of his ownership in the company he had funded, Green Hills Software, Inc., in 1998 through a conspiracy between Dan O'Dowd and Craig Franklin, then Senior Vice President. 

Green Hills Software ships major upgrades to SuperTrace Probe v3 and Green Hills Probe v3

 From:  Embedded

News Release from Green Hills Software, Inc. 

Green Hills Software has released major hardware and software upgrades for the SuperTrace Probe v3 and Green Hills Probe v3. This software upgrade also adds support for 13 new debug targets and 4 new trace architectures.

40 gigabit-per-second High-Speed Serial Trace (HSST) card adds support for up to 6 high-speed serial lanes running at a maximum rate of 6.25 gigabits-per-second per lane, or up to 8 lanes running at a maximum of 5 gigabits-per-second per lane. With a combined 40 gigabits-per-second of trace bandwidth, STPv3 is the fastest and widest serial trace probe in the world. PowerPC Nexus and ARM HSSTP standards are supported.

New high-speed parallel trace pod with 5V support supports up to 32 trace input signals with voltage levels up to 5 Volts, and a trace collection bandwidth in excess of 8 gigabits-per-second. Housed in a custom enclosure and designed for high physical and electrical robustness, the TE trace pod features an intelligent, modular trace connector that lets users easily switch between varieties of trace ports. All current parallel trace targets are supported with the new TE trace pod.

Non-intrusive, task-aware probe debugging for INTEGRITY RTOS enables non-intrusive, task-aware debugging using only the hardware debug port such as JTAG. Probe Run Mode lets users debug applications without halting the processor, and without the need for any communications drivers. This enables application development to begin earlier, reducing time-to-market, and without using any Ethernet or serial ports.

Initial targets supported include Freescale QorIQ-based and ARM Cortex A9-based devices.

More information SuperTrace Probe v3
More information Green Hills Probe v3

Why your boss could easily be a psychopath

From:  Love Fraud 

 

COMMENT - The incidence of disordered individuals in business is now acknowledged and its impact on business culture sinking in.  Love Fraud is a great resource for the issue of psychopathy in all parts of our culture. 

 

by Donna Andersen

Monday, 25 February 2013 

Here’s a scary fact about the prevalence of sociopaths, also called psychopaths: Dr. Robert Hare, the psychologist who developed the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), says that approximately 1% of the general population meets his definition of a psychopath. But in a study of 200 high-potential executives, he found that 3.5% of them fit the profile of a psychopath. That means there are 3.5 times a many psychopaths in corporate offices as there are on the streets.

One of them, in my opinion, is Carl R. Greene, former executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA). I’ve posted several articles about him since he was fired from the agency that he ran for 12 years in August 2010.

Why was he fired? Well, there were the six sexual harassment complaints filed against him. Greene directed the agency’s lawyers and insurance company to settle three of them, for over $1 million, without informing the board of directors.

Then there was the hostile work environment Greene created. His rage was legendary. Anyone who stood up to him was fired, demoted, or relocated to some outpost in a crime-ridden neighborhood.

Then there was the “unapproved abandonment of his duties.” When the media reported that Greene’s luxury condominium was in foreclosure after he failed to pay the mortgage for five months, he stopped showing up for work. Greene disappeared for a week—no one knew where he was.

Looked the other way

The PHA board of directors apparently knew Greene was an abusive executive—after all, one employee, after being berated by him, went home and dropped dead. They may also have known about his inappropriate spending of agency funds, such as handing out $800 Tumi duffel bags to 20 staffers who attended an annual PHA conference. But they seemed to be willing to look the other way, because Greene got results.  MORE