Yep, That's Called a "Death Squad"

Trey Smith

The film Secret Wars, which premiered at Sundance, can be viewed, as Amy Goodman sees it, as an important narrative of excesses in the global "war on terror". It is also a record of something scary for those of us at home – and uncovers the biggest story, I would say, in our nation's contemporary history.

Though they wisely refrain from drawing inferences, Scahill and Rowley have uncovered the facts of a new unaccountable power in America and the world that has the potential to shape domestic and international events in an unprecedented way. The film tracks the Joint Special Operations Command (JSoc), a network of highly-trained, completely unaccountable US assassins, armed with ever-expanding "kill lists". It was JSoc that ran the operation behind the Navy Seal team six that killed bin Laden.

Scahill and Rowley track this new model of US warfare that strikes at civilians and insurgents alike – in 70 countries. They interview former JSoc assassins, who are shell-shocked at how the "kill lists" they are given keep expanding, even as they eliminate more and more people.

Our conventional forces are subject to international laws of war: they are accountable for crimes in courts martial; and they run according to a clear chain of command. As much as the US military may fall short of these standards at times, it is a model of lawfulness compared with JSoc, which has far greater scope to undertake the commission of extra-legal operations – and unimaginable crimes.

JSoc morphs the secretive, unaccountable mercenary model of private military contracting, which Scahill identified in Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, into a hybrid with the firepower and intelligence backup of our full state resources.
~ from JSoc: Obama's Secret Assassins by Naomi Wolf ~

Strip away any mention of President Obama and the US Government and then replace it with your favorite communist or authoritarian dictatorship and most Americans would immediately identify JSoc as a Death Squad. If I shared the above information and identified the nation as one from South America in the 70s and 80s, "Death Squad" would roll off of people's lips.

For all the screaming from the Right about Obama being this socialist flaming liberal, the truth of the matter is that he is about as LEFT as the Tea Party! I don't care if he mouths populist platitudes about gay rights or job creation. You simply can't be seen as a beacon for progressive politics if you run a secret Death Squad from the White House!!!

What makes this whole situation even more damning is that Obama is a constitutional scholar. The man used to teach constitutional law. And yet, here he is undermining the constitution in about the most vulgar way possible. I continue to be absolutely bewildered how so-called progressives can support this guy. If his name was Bush or Romney, progressives would be literally bouncing off the walls.

If You're Doing Nothing Wrong

Trey Smith

I am sure you've heard the refrain before. If you decry the growing police state in this nation, a friend or relative will say, "If you're doing nothing wrong -- you are not up to "no good" -- you have nothing to be afraid of." This sentiment informs us that all these restrictions of our basic civil rights are being instituted to get the "bad guys." Law abiding citizens may be inconvenienced a tad, but it's no reason to get your panties in a wad. It really won't impact your life much at all.

It sounds good, but more and more, it is turning out not to be true. Our government seems far more concerned with keeping tabs on and putting down law abiding Americans rather than with sinister foreign "bad guys." That's the conclusion Naomi Wolf comes to when she writes,

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

According to that hallowed document -- the US Constitution -- Americans have the right of a) free speech, b) free assembly and c) peaceful protest against the government. If you engage in any or all of the above rights, you don't lose your status as a law abiding citizen. And yet, it is those law abiding citizens that the police state targeted for abuse!!

Even worse, this was not solely a government-run operation. No, the government worked hand-in-hand with Wall Street to limit and punish public dissent. When the government and wealthy oligarchy merge into one, we no longer call that a representative democracy; it's called fascism!

For all of those folks out there who believe that the erection of our police state is about the "bad guys," Wolf reveals the truth.

Why the huge push for counterterrorism "fusion centers", the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about "the terrorists". It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you.

Big Brother Really Is Watching You

Trey Smith

People often ask me, in terms of my argument about "ten steps" that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially here.

In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major lobbying effort, "a huge push by […] the defense sector" to promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as hummingbirds – meaning that you won't necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs.
~ from The Coming Drone Attack on America by Naomi Wolf ~

As it now stands, the vast majority of Americans don't give a damn about drones. They believe that drones are used solely in "war zones" far away in distant lands occupied by Muslims. If you mention to these folks that drone strikes have killed hundreds of innocent people, they don't blink an eye. Drones keep us all safe, they say piously.

These folks will continue with their blithe attitudes until -- one day -- a drone impacts their way of life. At that juncture, they will find that they DO care about drones. The only problem is that, by the time they get around to caring, it will be far too late to do anything about it!

Tonite on Countdown - Naomi Wolf