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The Omnipotent Power to Assassinate Any of Us

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Suppose an American citizen who is openly critical of governmental policy decides to take a trip overseas, say to Yemen. Suppose that President Obama orders the military and the CIA to assassinate him while he is traveling within Yemen. Suppose the order is carried out and that that American is, in fact, assassinated. Most Americans would consider such an assassination to be a grave wrong. They might not like the criticism that the American was leveling against the federal government, but they would ardently oppose the idea of assassinating the man based simply on the fact that he was criticizing the government. Yet, in post-9/11 America nothing could be done to rectify this wrong. The sad truth is that we now live in a country in which the president has the omnipotent power to assassinate any of us for any reason he wants. We simply have to trust him with this supreme power. We have to hope and pray that when ...

What Were the Standards for Executing Charles Horman?

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While Americans are seeking to determine the standards, if any, for President Obama’s assassination of American citizens, would it be too much to ask about the standards that were applied in the U.S. national-security state’s execution of American citizen Charles Horman? After all, in principle is a state-sponsored extra-judicial execution any different from a state-sponsored assassination? Why shouldn’t Americans have the right to know the standards by which they can be either assassinated or executed by their own government without a trial? Horman was executed in Chile in 1973, six days after the coup that installed army General Augusto Pinochet into power. As people were later to discover, the economic crisis leading up the coup was engineered in large part by the CIA, operating under orders of President Nixon. Pinochet’s military goons arrested Horman in Santiago, took him to the national stadium, and murdered him. He was 31 years old. At around the same time, his friend Frank Teruggi, also ...

Private: The Evil of the National-Security State, Part 11

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3| Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 On September 11, 1973, the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was ousted in a military coup headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet of the Chilean army. It was a watershed in the history of Chile, breaking with the country’s democratic tradition and unleashing a military reign of terror that lasted for 15 years, when a plebiscite finally removed Pinochet from power and restored democracy to Chile. In the aftermath of the coup, some 40,000 people were arrested and incarcerated without due process of law or trial. Thousands of them were tortured, raped, or executed. What was the justification for the Chilean coup, which the U.S. government had encouraged and supported? National security, of ...

Crises: A Gun-Grabber’s Best Friend

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After President Obama’s election in 2008, gun buyers went on a buying spree. Prices of assault rifles, ammunition, and high-magazine clips soared. The buying continued unabated for the four years of Obama’s first term. Throughout that time, gun-control advocates ridiculed the gun buyers. They called them overreacting paranoids, pointing out that Obama was doing nothing to initiate gun-control measures and ...

The Corporatist Intelligence Agency

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While the CIA is commonly understood to be an intelligence agency, we shouldn’t forget the important role it has played in carrying out clandestine operations that have benefited the financial elite. This accusation is substantiated by the CIA’s elitist origins, its well-documented connections to Wall Street, and its sordid history of carrying out assassinations, staging coups, and fomenting civil wars. The ...