AlterPolitics New Post

Robert Gibbs On U.S. Killing 16 Yr Old American 2-Weeks After Killing His Father: ‘Have A More Responsible Father’ (video)

by on Saturday, October 27, 2012 at 1:34 am EDT in Foreign Policy, Justice System, Politics, War On Terror

Robert Gibbs Fields Defends Obama's Assassination ProgramIn April 2010, Anwar al-Awlaki — an American citizen and an alleged leader of al-Qaeda operating out of Yemen — was placed on President Obama’s ‘Kill List’ for assassination. On September 30, 2011, an American drone targeted and killed him. 

Two weeks later and over 200 miles away from where Awlaki was killed, his 16 year old son, Abdulrahman — an American citizen and native of Denver, CO — was targeted and murdered by an American drone.

The Obama Administration, to date, has refused to explain why they killed this young American boy. They have never claimed that he was in anyway affiliated with al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. In fact the boy had not even seen his father in over two years, since his father went into hiding. 

A couple of reporters from WeAreChange.org approached Former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, and asked him several questions regarding the President’s flip-flop on NDAA, his ‘Kill List’, and how he justified extra-judicially killing a 16 year old American citizen. Here is the portion of the transcript that pertains to al-Awlaki’s son’s assassination, by journalist Sierra Adamson:

Adamson: Do you think the killing of al-Awlaki’s 16 year old son, an American citizen, was justifiable? 

Gibbs: I…I…I…I … I’m not going to get into al-Awlaki’s son. I know that Anwar al-Awlaki renounced his citizenship—

Adamson: His son was still an American citizen.

Gibbs: —did great harm to people in this country, and was a regional al-Qaeda commander, hoping to inflict harm and destruction on people that share his religion and others in this country.

Adamson: That’s an American citizen that’s been targeted without due process of law, without trial, and he’s under age. He’s a minor. 

Gibbs: I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they’re truly concerned about the well-being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.

Wow! So, even though you cannot choose your parents, Gibbs warns that you may be assassinated for being the offspring of the ‘wrong ones’.

WATCH:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MwB2znBZ1g[/youtube]

ACLU’s Adam Schwartz: Law Enforcement Uses Fusion Centers To Scrutinize Innocent Americans (video)

by on Friday, October 19, 2012 at 9:18 pm EDT in Justice System, Politics, War On Terror

Reason TV interviewed Adam Schwartz of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois where he discussed how law enforcement’s pervasive surveillance and data gathering efforts pose a threat to Americans’ constitutionally protected privacy and First Amendment rights. 

Schwartz describes the significance of fusion centers and the role they play:

“In the wake of the 9-11 terror attacks, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars to have the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security fund state and local fusion centers. These are state organizations that fuse under one roof, as much information as possible about people who are suspected of criminal or terror activity and then they funnel this information towards the Department of Homeland Security.”

Fusion centers maintain a large number of databases on each person, including gov’t criminal databases, gov’t noncriminal ones, and private ones. 

A recently published U.S. Senate investigative report concluded that the information coming from the fusion centers was unrelated to terrorism, and instead threatened citizens’ Privacy Act protections and civil liberties:

The investigation found that DHS intelligence officers assigned to state and local fusion centers produced intelligence of “uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”

WATCH: 

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_NwvO84tpw[/youtube]