Het
is zonder meer een schande dat de VS middels drones ‘standrechtelijk’ al duizenden mensen heeft
vermoord, waarbij meer dan 90% van de slachtoffers niet eens als verdacht te boek stond, dus veelal vrouwen en kinderen……. Deze gang van zaken kan niet anders dan als grootschalige terreur worden gezien!!
Nu
blijkt ook nog eens dat de beslissing om mensen op de VS moordlijst
te zetten, is gebaseerd op metadata, waar een algoritme diverse
(onzekere, ‘mysterieuze’) zaken bij elkaar zoekt, daarop wordt de beslissing genomen of deze persoon vermoord mag worden (uiteraard gebruikt
men het woord ‘moord’ niet, immers het moet allemaal legaal
lijken)……
Hoe
is het mogelijk dat de hele wereld toekijkt en amper of geen
commentaar levert op de massamoord, die buiten elke rechtsgang om
wordt gepleegd…… Als er al kritiek wordt geleverd is dit door
landen als Pakistan, waar de VS mensen uitschakelt en zoals gewoonlijk zonder de
regering te waarschuwen……
Hoe
is het mogelijk dat het Internationaal Strafhof toekijkt terwijl de
VS de zoveelste massamoord begaat…. Deze executies staan buiten
elke fatsoenlijke rechtspraak, je kan dan ook gerust stellen dat de
VS niet langer een rechtstaat is (dat is overigens al heel lang zo,
neem het meer dan achterlijke ‘plea bargain’ >> zelfs als je
niets hebt gedaan is het heel vaak aan te raden om schuld te bekennen
daar je anders een lange gevangenisstraf staat te wachten…..)
Dan
te bedenken dat Nederland desnoods zelfs eigen burgers uitzet naar de
VS……. Schande!!!
Het volgende artikel van Tom Emswiler en Will Isenberg werd eerder geplaatst op de ‘Boston Globe‘, hierin o.a. aandacht voor Bilal Abdul Kareem, een VS journalist die werkt in het Midden-Oosten, hij stelt dat de overheid hem wil vermoorden*. De schrijvers stellen dat de VS wetgeving moet maken waarmee het vermoorden van VS burgers wordt verboden, lullig dat ze niet zitten met het vermoorden van niet-VS burgers die worden verdacht in het buitenland…… Wat ongelofelijk kortzichtig……
Ach ja, VS burgers stellen zich ver boven de rest van de wereldbevolking en dat voor burgers die hun bestaan en land te danken hebben aan de grootste genocide ooit gepleegd, die op de oorspronkelijke bevolking van de Amerika’s…….
Your
Government Has a Secret Kill List. Is that OK With You?
“We
kill people based on metadata.” An algorithm collates a series of
mystery factors and decides whether that person should be killed.
By
Tom Emswiler, Will Isenberg
September
01, 2018 “Information
Clearing House” – Bilal
Abdul Kareem, an American citizen, thinks the government is trying to
kill him. And he might be right.
Kareem’s
story, recently
chronicled in
Rolling Stone, neatly captures the havoc that the war on terror has
wreaked on the legal system and the dangers of abandoning legal
traditions that have served us well for centuries.
Kareem
resides overseas and is struggling to determine why he is apparently
on the government’s secret “kill list,” which targets terror
suspects for drone strikes. Kareem finds that objects in his vicinity
tend to explode with some frequency, and he has taken the issue to
court, arguing that the American government cannot blow him up
without due process.
Unfortunately,
the federal judiciary so far has largely removed itself from this
process by declaring the criteria for the kill list to be a political
question outside the purview of judges. Kareem’s case continues to
make its way through the courts, but lawmakers shouldn’t punt their
responsibilities to the judiciary.
Congress
should act, and pass a law that protects American citizens from
extrajudicial killing by banning the executive branch from targeting
American citizens for assassination. Further, here in Massachusetts
and elsewhere, every candidate running for federal office should
clearly state their position on the executive branch’s assumed
authority to impose a unilateral death sentence on their potential
constituents.
Why
does it matter if a person is American if that person may be
dangerous? Setting aside whether you trust the government’s
criteria for designating someone a terrorist, the reason is that each
of us is entitled to due process. That’s a phrase most Americans
are probably familiar with, but few outside the legal community could
define.
Due
process is the right to be informed and the opportunity to be
meaningfully heard before the government deprives you as a citizen of
life, liberty, or property. The right to due process is granted to
Americans by the Fifth and 14th Amendments. It is a cloak that
swathes Americans in a wide range of protections, from requiring
access to an attorney when a citizen is accused of a criminal offense
to a period of public comment before an agency changes a policy.
Yet,
shockingly, the basic right to be notified and heard regarding a
death sentence is denied to all Americans residing outside our
states, territories, military bases, and embassies. The government
cannot convict you of trespassing without informing you of the charge
— but it can arm a drone with a missile and shoot at you, even
absent any evidence that you pose an imminent threat, based on
criteria it refuses to make public.
The
policy of using drones to kill American citizens developed under
President Barack Obama, most notably with his administration’s 2011
killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Democrats who might have
criticized George W. Bush or Donald Trump for that constitutional
violation stayed mum then and have since continued their silence.
To
be sure, the evidence against al-Awlaki is damning — that he
inspired both the Fort Hood shooter and the Boston Marathon bombing,
among other crimes. But like a domestic killer, al-Awlaki deserved a
day in court. The Obama administration denied this citizen due
process.
While
the criteria for determining who’s on the kill list are classified,
those determinations appear be automated. The former head of the
National Security Agency and CIA stated flatly in 2014: “We kill
people based on metadata.” An algorithm collates a series of
mystery factors and decides whether someone is a terrorist, and
whether that person should be killed. Call it death by Spotify.
Sound
extreme? Maybe. We don’t know. You don’t know. No judge, jury, or
lawmaker, for that matter, seems to know. Americans and two out of
three branches of our government don’t know who’s on the list,
and that must end.
Sadly,
politicians from both parties have been deafeningly silent on this
issue of extrajudicial killings.
In
2013, Republican Senator Rand Paul filibustered the CIA director’s
nomination to protest drone strikes against Americans on American
soil (an event that has never happened). Paul has since offered
conflicting positions on the issue of targeted assassination of
Americans overseas.
Senator
Elizabeth Warren has spoken movingly about the high cost of civilian
casualties caused by drone strikes, but not the targeted killing of
American citizens or made her position on Obama’s extrajudicial
killing of al-Awlaki known.
Every
candidate running for president, senator, or representative should be
questioned about whether they support extrajudicial killing of
citizens and, if not, what they intend to do about it.
The
right to due process has been a bedrock of the judicial system, and
one of the pillars that support a free society going back eight
centuries to the Magna Carta. It is the birthright of every American.
Gaining
a tactical advantage is not worth losing that heritage. To every
candidate running for Congress right now, we should ask: Are you
comfortable with secret kill lists and extrajudicial executions? Our
fellow Americans: Are you?
This
article was originally published by “Boston
Globe“ –
=============================
* Zie: ‘VS (Murder Inc.) heeft journalisten op moordlijst……..‘