4 ms·

Only a 1000x difference?

bcoates 14y ago
It's a back of the envelope estimate: the US has about a 10,000/year murder rate, about half of those are in the family. The targeted killings program doesn't exactly advertise but it's known to be well more than one so I'm guessing it's in the tens per year of people who could be described as westerners. YMMV.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Where on earth do you get the idea that the drone strikes are killing a non-zero number of westerners?!
  - Hello71 14y ago
    Where on earth do you get the idea that he was talking about drone strikes?!
    - rayiner 14y ago
      What other "targeted killing" program is there?
      - olefoo 14y ago
        Well, the US government has said that it doesn't have to tell you that because it's a national security matter. However the existence of at least one government associated plan to kill US Citizens on US territory was surfaced in the media last week http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/12/31/fbi-report-mentions-plot-to-kill-occupy-protesters/ http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/12/31/fbi-report-mentions-p... And while I cannot provide evidence that there have been others; it is a fact that the US government has been training death squads at Fort Benning and elsewhere for more than 40 years (vide: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay and many other countries whose paramilitary/police were trained by the US and went on targeted campaigns of killing civilians); although most of the openly acknowledged trainees were not US citizens, but Police and Military from client governments, mostly in South and Central America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_fo... And given that Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder is on the record as saying """ “Due process” and “judicial process” are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. """ It's not impossible that everyone who reads this thread is being assessed for their suitability to be judged a "threat to national security" and thus worth the cost of elimination.
        rayiner 14y ago
        You speak of a "government associated" plan, but the very article you link to says: "It remains unclear as to who or what this report is referring to, yet the FBI decided to disclose it under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the Partnership For Civil Justice Fund – the document is on page 61." You think the FBI is giving out information about government projects to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil via FOIA documents? As for the quote "due process and judicial process are not one and the same," it's a completely accurate and uncontroversial statement of the law. The phrase "due process" means exactly what it sounds like. People are entitled to the "process" that is "due" given the context. The process due is not necessarily judicial process, and in many contexts might be much less than that.
        olefoo 14y ago
        Most crimes committed by US government officials in the course of carrying out their duties are documented in some way by the government. Those documents are subject to disclosure under FOIA; indeed that is the purpose of the FOIA. That the FBI knew of a plot to murder American citizens and did nothing to warn the potential targets of such a plot; and furthermore since no one has, so far as we know been indicted, fired, reprimanded or otherwise held accountable for what is on the face of it a very serious crime... the obvious implication is that it was either some element of the government itself, or one of those monstrous public/private partnerships (like Xi/Blackwater/Triple Canopy/etc.) that is a "deniable violence provider" in the current global security context. Now we can argue forever in the absence of further facts; but given the evidence we do have, it certainly suggests that we are looking at the very least, at a contingency plan to kill American Citizens on American Soil, for nothing more than exercising their rights under the 1st amendment. The common understanding of Due Process as mentioned in the Bill of Rights specifically refers to the "due process of law"; and as such, the government deciding to kill American Citizens would seem to require a capital trial. In a court of law, before a judge with the usual 5th amendment rights to know the charges against one, and to hear and challenge the evidence on which the determination of their fate will be made; that is clearly not happening here. We are clearly not living in the moral universe that we're taught about in civics class anymore. And while it's always been the case that some people "become cops to break heads", what we are seeing evidence of in the last few years is the emergence of an elite consensus that state violence of lethal intensity could be legitimately employed against unarmed civilians domestically as easily and as casually as it's deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq.

It's a back of the envelope estimate: the US has about a 10,000/year murder rate, about half of those are in the family. The targeted killings program doesn't exactly advertise but it's known to be well more than one so I'm guessing it's in the tens per year of people who could be described as westerners. YMMV.

rayiner 14y ago
Where on earth do you get the idea that the drone strikes are killing a non-zero number of westerners?!
- Hello71 14y ago
  Where on earth do you get the idea that he was talking about drone strikes?!
  - rayiner 14y ago
    What other "targeted killing" program is there?
    - olefoo 14y ago
      Well, the US government has said that it doesn't have to tell you that because it's a national security matter. However the existence of at least one government associated plan to kill US Citizens on US territory was surfaced in the media last week http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/12/31/fbi-report-mentions-plot-to-kill-occupy-protesters/ http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/12/31/fbi-report-mentions-p... And while I cannot provide evidence that there have been others; it is a fact that the US government has been training death squads at Fort Benning and elsewhere for more than 40 years (vide: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay and many other countries whose paramilitary/police were trained by the US and went on targeted campaigns of killing civilians); although most of the openly acknowledged trainees were not US citizens, but Police and Military from client governments, mostly in South and Central America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_fo... And given that Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder is on the record as saying """ “Due process” and “judicial process” are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. """ It's not impossible that everyone who reads this thread is being assessed for their suitability to be judged a "threat to national security" and thus worth the cost of elimination.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        You speak of a "government associated" plan, but the very article you link to says: "It remains unclear as to who or what this report is referring to, yet the FBI decided to disclose it under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the Partnership For Civil Justice Fund – the document is on page 61." You think the FBI is giving out information about government projects to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil via FOIA documents? As for the quote "due process and judicial process are not one and the same," it's a completely accurate and uncontroversial statement of the law. The phrase "due process" means exactly what it sounds like. People are entitled to the "process" that is "due" given the context. The process due is not necessarily judicial process, and in many contexts might be much less than that.
        olefoo 14y ago
        Most crimes committed by US government officials in the course of carrying out their duties are documented in some way by the government. Those documents are subject to disclosure under FOIA; indeed that is the purpose of the FOIA. That the FBI knew of a plot to murder American citizens and did nothing to warn the potential targets of such a plot; and furthermore since no one has, so far as we know been indicted, fired, reprimanded or otherwise held accountable for what is on the face of it a very serious crime... the obvious implication is that it was either some element of the government itself, or one of those monstrous public/private partnerships (like Xi/Blackwater/Triple Canopy/etc.) that is a "deniable violence provider" in the current global security context. Now we can argue forever in the absence of further facts; but given the evidence we do have, it certainly suggests that we are looking at the very least, at a contingency plan to kill American Citizens on American Soil, for nothing more than exercising their rights under the 1st amendment. The common understanding of Due Process as mentioned in the Bill of Rights specifically refers to the "due process of law"; and as such, the government deciding to kill American Citizens would seem to require a capital trial. In a court of law, before a judge with the usual 5th amendment rights to know the charges against one, and to hear and challenge the evidence on which the determination of their fate will be made; that is clearly not happening here. We are clearly not living in the moral universe that we're taught about in civics class anymore. And while it's always been the case that some people "become cops to break heads", what we are seeing evidence of in the last few years is the emergence of an elite consensus that state violence of lethal intensity could be legitimately employed against unarmed civilians domestically as easily and as casually as it's deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq.