How to Survive America's Kill List

I came across this. I knew about America's kill list and drone assassinations but it's still pretty surreal reading first hand accounts of drone attacks. Personally I #ing hate drones warfare. It's such a cowardly evil way to kill people, not much better than chemical or biological weapons honestly. And even the drone pilots themselves are affected by what they do. And honestly the idea that a secretive council can decide to kill you then send small robots armed with missiles to do so is absolutely terrifying.

www.rollingstone.com...

Born Darrell Lamont Phelps, he grew up just north of the Bronx in Mount Vernon, New York. He did what lots of kids in his neighborhood were doing in the late Seventies and Eighties: He spent his time rolling on the floor laughing to comics like Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor.

Over a decade later, after some major life changes – he’d converted to Islam and found himself working as a TV reporter in the Middle East under his new name, Bilal Abdul Kareem –

According to Kareem, in the summer of 2016, things began to explode around him with suspicious frequency. In the space of a few months, he survived five different attacks.

In the first, the Syrian office of the controversial Islamist TV network he founded, On the Ground News, was hit by a missile.

In the second, a stretch of road where he was setting up a film location became a sizzling crater moments after he walked up the street to look for a better view.

It was in the third incident, he says, when he first saw an American drone overhead. He and his crew were shooting a story in a remote town in the Aleppo countryside.


“I thought the Earth had split,” Kareem says. “Our car was flipping into the air. I thought the car had fallen off something into the Earth.”
The SUV, he alleges, had been hit with a Hellfire missile. Kareem broke a toe, but says he and his crew were otherwise miraculously unscathed.
Soon after, Kareem was tipped off by a source in Turkey that he had been put on a list of targets at Incirlik Air Base, a launching pad for American drones.

In the fourth attack that summer, an explosion again rocked his office, which was in the basement of a building that doubled as a charity center, he says.
A woman, an elderly man and a 10-year-old girl happened to be there that day. They were all killed.


A few weeks later, he survived another explosion, he says, outside a Syrian artillery college that had recently fallen into rebel hands.
Kareem now had no doubt he was on America’s infamous “Kill List.” Most Americans don’t even know we have such a thing. We do. Officially, it goes by the ghoulish bureaucratic euphemism “Disposition Matrix.”

Seemingly conceived in the Obama years, the lethal list appears to sort people into targeting for capture, interrogation, or assassination by drone. It was run by a star-chamber of two-dozen security officials and the president. They met once a week to decide which targets around the world lived or died.

Trump has upped the pace of drone attacks by about four or five times the Obama rate, which itself was 10 times the rate of Bush.

Kareem did what the system asks a law-abiding American citizen with a grievance to do. He sued, filing a complaint in district court in Washington, D.C., on March 30th, 2017, asking the U.S. government to take him off the Kill List, at least until he had a chance to challenge the evidence against him.
The case, still unresolved more than a year later, has awesome implications not just for Kareem but for all Americans – all people everywhere, for that matter.

It’s not a stretch to say that it’s one of the most important lawsuits to ever cross the desk of a federal judge. The core of the Bill of Rights is in play, and a wrong result could formalize a slide into authoritarianism that began long ago, but accelerated after 9/11.

This is only a small part of the article. I recommend reading the whole thing. And, no left-right bull#. Emphasis to shoe both are guilty of the same #.

a reply to: dug88

Most important paragraph of the piece:

And yet, nobody is paying attention. While America obsesses over Russia, Stormy Daniels and Kim Jong-Un, almost no one is covering Kareem’s trial. His race-against-time effort to escape the American killing machine is too surreal, even in the Trump era. But it’s also a potentially devastating last-straw moment in the history of America’s recent dystopian slide, with the executive branch asking for the ultimate in dictatorial powers: the right to kill even its own citizens without having to explain itself.

Truly disgraceful.

“I thought the Earth had split,” Kareem says. “Our car was flipping into the air. I thought the car had fallen off something into the Earth.” The SUV, he alleges, had been hit with a Hellfire missile. Kareem broke a toe, but says he and his crew were otherwise miraculously unscathed.

Yeah.

I'm not buying it.

a reply to: dug88

Drones are just the tip of the iceberg
Its gonna get worse
@3:13

a reply to: neo96

Of course you don't - another of your one liners -

"when tyranny becomes law" and all that; deny ignorance, do your own research.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

Right.

Everyone walks away from a hellfire missile with nothing more than a broken toe.

I don't know what I was thinking.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight



You really think he got a broken toe, and everyone else was unhurt after something like that?

originally posted by: neo96

“I thought the Earth had split,” Kareem says. “Our car was flipping into the air. I thought the car had fallen off something into the Earth.” The SUV, he alleges, had been hit with a Hellfire missile. Kareem broke a toe, but says he and his crew were otherwise miraculously unscathed.

Yeah.

I'm not buying it.

His crew got into the car and drove a mile or two, then parked to wait for an interview subject. Suddenly, a nearby SUV exploded.

The missile hit an SUV near his vehicle....I had to cut a lot out of what I summarized here.

originally posted by: loam
a reply to: dug88

Most important paragraph of the piece:

And yet, nobody is paying attention. While America obsesses over Russia, Stormy Daniels and Kim Jong-Un, almost no one is covering Kareem’s trial. His race-against-time effort to escape the American killing machine is too surreal, even in the Trump era. But it’s also a potentially devastating last-straw moment in the history of America’s recent dystopian slide, with the executive branch asking for the ultimate in dictatorial powers: the right to kill even its own citizens without having to explain itself.

Truly disgraceful.

Yeah I wanted to include that paragraph but, I always end up posting too much of the source articles and getting my ops trimmed. I also lime to hope people at least skim through the sources on things posted here...though I know a lot probably don't.

a reply to: dug88

I'm thinking those living in the US would be more interested in keeping off Billery's hit list.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

You really think he got a broken toe, and everyone else was unhurt after something like that?

Indeed. I know that drone attacks are very real but the thing is, they seldom miss their target.

This guy claims to have survived what, five drone attacks? I'm not buying it...

originally posted by: neo96
a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

Right.

Everyone walks away from a hellfire missile with nothing more than a broken toe.

I don't know what I was thinking.

lol seems like the intention isn't to kill him. maybe they're just eff'n with him. isolating him. nobody wants to do business with a guy that attracts drone fire everywhere he goes lolols

a reply to: MantheDevilsApe

Unlikely but still an amusing theory.

originally posted by: Wide-Eyes
a reply to: MantheDevilsApe

Unlikely but still an amusing theory.

imagine this poor bastard at a job interview lol " wait, aren't you the guy that keeps getting his office blown up by drones?? thanks for coming by, we'll call you we we need you"

a reply to: dug88

I read that earlier today. My question is what kind of idiot hangs out with terrorist and doesn't expect their stink to rub off on him. The "I'm a journalist" excuse is old and tired.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

You really think he got a broken toe, and everyone else was unhurt after something like that?

Ever notice how when this type of footage is released, there is little to no movement on the camera and targets - Hovering Drones - anyone got a pic of one because every military drone I've seen needs to keep moving to stay airborne ?

a reply to: MetalThunder

The military has a better version of these.

a reply to: MetalThunder

They're not hovering, the camera is locked over the target, from a UAV that's fairly high altitude, a fairly long way away, and slow enough that with that combination the movement is cancelled out in the video.

It could be that or a combination of the drone approaching the target head on (at a known speed) and zooming out at a rate equal to the speed of flight. It would look like the drone is hovering.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

Most of the time they turn away after launching, so they can get a clear line of sight. If it's a video that shows weapons impact, they're at some kind of angle to the target area. If it's just watching an area, it could be head on, as you said.

a reply to: dug88

Wow guy has random thing blowing up around him for a while, and only after a longer while he wonders what it may be as parts and things go flying everywhere. Ah! It could happen, I mean # does just blow up at random sometimes, cars, garbage bins, trees, people. It happens all the time. Seems totally believable.

But I am wondering if anybody wanted to kill him, why not just shoot him with a bow and arrow from 50 yards away? Seems that would have been much more effective, or better yet spot him for a few day and then stick a banana peel in his daily path and a sharp inconspicuous object in front oh about 5 feet of said banana peel, and see what happens, chances are he may trip on the banana peel and end up stabbing himself fatally.

Makes one wonder. Why are we wasting million and million of dollars on such ineffective things when a banana or an arrow would work wonders. Right?

Kill list eh? But ya, seems like something goberments would do, most especially when they can get away with it. Oh the anonymity of it all.