The Administration Really Doesn’t Want to Talk About the Drone That Killed an American Citizen

							The Administration Really Doesn’t Want to Talk
About the Drone That Killed an American
Citizen
Connor Simpson
The Atlantic Wire
January 3, 2013




In the latest sign that President Obama's targeted killing program may be forever shrouded in secrecy,
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon has denied a Freedom of Information Request from the
American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times over the death of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the
16-year-old American-born son of former Al-Queda heavy Anwar al-Awlaki who was killed by a drone
strike.
But, in this case, the administration withheld answering any of the ACLU's questions through a series
of exemptions that lets the Executive bench protect confidential information. McMahon's decision
seems pretty disappointed by the administration's actions:
However, this Court is constrained by law, and under the law, I can only conclude that the Government
has not violated FOIA by refusing to turn over the documents sought in the FOIA requests, and so
cannot be compelled by this court oflaw to explain in detail the reasons why its actions do not violate
the Constitution and laws of the United States. The Alice-inWonderland nature of this pronouncement
is not lost on me; but after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical
situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules - a veritable
Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the
Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their
face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a
secret. The ACLU and The New York Times were asking for the justification of not just this drone
strike, but justification of the whole drone strike program: The FOIA requests here in issue implicate
serious issues about the limits on the power of the
Executive Branch under the Constitution and laws of the
United States, and about whether we are indeed a nation
oflaws, not of men. The Administration has engaged in
public discussion of the legality of targeted killing, even
of citizens, but in cryptic and imprecise ways, generally
without citing to any statute or court decision that justifies
its conclusions.
Questions surrounding the killing of the 16-year-old have
swirled for a while. Obama's senior adviser Robert
Gibbs gave a particularly ugly answer justifying the
younger al-Awlaki's death on the campaign trail.
The administration is clearly not ready to talk delicately
about this. Just last week, the administration asked a federal court to dismiss lawsuits from the estates
of three families of American citizens killed by drone strike in Yemen, one of which was the al-Awlaki
estate. News came out at the end of November that the administration started to draft a rule book for
the drone strike program, propelled by the prospect of having to hand off the program to a potential
Romney administration. These are pretty big signs that Obama, his advisors, his lawyers, and the CIA
aren't quite ready to jump into the grander debate over the ethics of drones just yet — or, you know,
ever.

Obama Signs Sweeping U.S. Defense
Spending Bill
The Telegraph
January 3, 2013




Barack Obama has signed into law a $633 billion (£390 billion) US defence spending bill that
funds the war in Afghanistan and boosts security at US missions worldwide.
"I have approved this annual defence authorisation legislation, as I have in previous years,
because it authorises essential support for
service members and their families, renews
vital national security programs, and helps
ensure that the United States will continue to
have the strongest military in the world,"
Mr Obama said in a statement early on
Thursday after signing the measure.
Mr Obama, who is on holiday in Hawaii, said
that he signed the measure despite reservations.
"In a time when all public servants recognise
the need to eliminate wasteful or duplicative
spending, various sections in the Act limit the
Defense Department's ability to direct scarce
resources towards the highest priorities for our
national security," the president said.
"Even though I support the vast majority of the provisions contained in this Act ... I do not agree with
them all," he said in his statement, adding that he did not have the constitutional authority to approve
piecemeal items within the sprawling bill.
"I am empowered either to sign the bill, or reject it, as a whole," he said.
The measure was hammered out by House and Senate conferees last month after each chamber
voted to approve separate versions of the bill.

                                             It includes $527.4 billion for the base Pentagon budget;
                                             $88.5 billion for overseas contingency operations including
                                             the war in Afghanistan; and $17.8 billion for national
                                             security programs in the Energy Department and Defense
                                             Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
                                             The bill authorises $9.8 billion for missile defence,
                                             including funds for a Pentagon feasibility study on three
                                             possible missile defence sites on the US East Coast.
                                             It also extends for one year the restriction on use of US
                                             funds to transfer Guantánamo inmates to other countries, a
                                             limitation critics say marks a setback for Mr Obama's efforts
                                             to close the detention centre.
                                             Mr Obama also signed a bill that boosts taxes on the
                                             wealthiest Americans, while preserving tax cuts for most
                                             American households.
                                            The bill, which averts a looming fiscal cliff that had
                                            threatened to plunge the nation back into recession, also
extends expiring jobless benefits, prevents cuts in Medicare reimbursements to doctors and delays for
two months billions of dollars in across-the-board spending cuts in defense and domestic programs.
The Republican-run House approved the measure by a 257-167 vote late Tuesday, nearly 24 hours after
the Democratic-led Senate passed it 89-8.
             The Total Breakdown of Society
Infowars.com
Jan 3, 2012




Alex Jones gives this special report on the breakdown of our society and what the future America will
look like in the years to come in this 1984 style existence.
The Total Breakdown of Society VIDEO BELOW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mem4B5TsHAI



Bilderberg Elite Angry Over “Constant
Exposure”
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
January 3, 2013

Increased media coverage could force
secretive group to avoid Europe
According to veteran journalist Jim
Tucker, Bilderberg elitists are furious over
the “constant exposure” the secretive
group is receiving in the European media,
forcing members to consider the
unprecedented step of holding the
organization’s annual meeting in the
United States for two years running.
The US corporate media routinely ignores what would normally be considered a sensational story –
over 100 of the world’s most powerful people – including the likes of Eric Schmidt, Henry Kissinger,
David Rockefeller, Herman van Rompuy, and the Queen of the Netherlands – meeting behind closed
doors to discuss the future of the world.
However, European news outlets have given the event more intense press coverage in recent years,
leading Bilderberg members to prefer the relative anonymity they are afforded by the more controlled
U.S. media.
“A source at the November 30-December 3 meeting in Washington of Bilderberg’s North American
Group overheard Richard Armitage, a deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush, say
Bilderberg and the TC (Trilateral Commission) are angry over “their constant exposure,” adding that
organizers were contemplating holding the next Bilderberg meeting in the U.S. in order to keep a lower
profile,” writes Tucker, who notes that it will be a significant financial burden for Bilderberg to change
their venue given that they have to book out an entire luxury hotel two years in advance.
So has the Bilderberg Group been hounded out of Europe? Has the glare of the media spotlight in
Europe forced the cabal to take the unprecedented step of hosting their conference in America for two
years running?
2011 proved to be a bad year for Bilderberg.
Despite choosing to host their conference
half way up a mountain in the remote Swiss
resort of St. Moritz, hundreds of protesters
were encamped right outside the Suvretta
hotel. Members of both
the European and Swiss
parliaments attempted to enter the
conference, prompting unwelcome press
coverage, and Bilderberg attendees
themselves were confronted by inquisitive
demonstrators during an afternoon stroll
down the mountain.
Returning to America in 2012, Bilderberg were able to rely on tighter security and a compliant media
that virtually blacklisted their presence.
It seems unlikely that the 2013 confab won’t be held somewhere in Europe given the fact that every
time the event has taken place in the States, the following year it has switched to the other continent. In
addition, the annual confab of Bilderberg’s sister organization, the Trilateral Commission, will take
place in Berlin, Germany from March 15-17.
The last time Bilderberg held their conference in Chantilly Virginia, the following year it was held in
Athens, Greece.
The theme of Bilderberg members expressing vitriol at the fact that their conferences are being
protested by larger and more vocal crowds of people has repeatedly cropped up in recent years.
During last year’s confab in Chantilly, a source working inside the Westfields Marriott hotel told
London Guardian journalist Charlie Skelton that Bilderberg attendees referred to protesters outside the
hotel as “cockroaches”.
During the 2010 Bilderberg meeting in Spain, members were overheard complaining about the fact that
demonstrators could even afford to travel to different countries in order to make their voices heard and
that the fact they still had an income that allowed them to do so was a “permanent threat” to and “very
scary” to Bilderberg’s agenda.



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