It has been confirmed that US citizens have been placed on the President's assassination list and signed off by Obama. After September 11, 2001, then president George W Bush authorised the CIA, and then later the military, to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed they were involved in organising or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests. Obama is continuing this policy; a senior administration official stated that if a US citizen joined al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them. They are then part of the enemy." In 1981, Ronald Reagan issued an executive order that stated; "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination."

As far as can be determined, George W Bush never officially placed any US citizen on the assassination list. However, it has been confirmed that there are at least three US citizens on the current assassination list. Both the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) maintain a kill list and US citizens have been placed on both of those lists, including recently New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Think about this for a moment; Obama, like Bush before him, has claimed the authority to be able to order outside of due process any US citizen to be murdered based only on unverified, uncharged claims that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." There are no charges issued, no arrests made, no trials, the accused are unable to face their accusers or contest the accusations; no due process at all as afforded by the US Constitution. This is a serious breach of constitution rights afforded to US citizens.

There is no question that if US citizens were on a battlefield firing at US troops, that they could be killed as a result; that is a part of war. However, what the assassination list means is that US citizens can be killed outside of participating in actual combat, in any actual conflict, or holding any weapons. They can be killed while sleeping in their beds, or dinning out, or while driving with family members, or just walking down a crowded public street. No attempts will be made at an arrest of the person, instead the intent will be to quickly kill the person. To justify this killing outside of battles or conflicts, Obama, like Bush before him, defines the battlefield as the entire world. Therefore, a US citizen on the "hit list" walking down a busy New York pavement is on the battlefield according to Obama and can be "taken out" by a sniper bullet. Based solely on his say, Obama can order any US citizen anywhere in the world killed without any judicial oversight; that is quite a power he is claiming.

What is alarming is that there is very little controversy over Obama assuming the power to kill US citizens without due process. The nation should be upset over this, Congress should be upset over this, the media should be running constant news feeds on this, the social networking sites should be flooded with outcries against this. Yet, there is almost nothing. It does not matter if the people are guilty or not, all US citizens are granted the right to due process under the US Constitution. It is one of the basic rights granted to citizens. Every US citizen has the right to defend themselves against accusations from the state; the state could be, and has been numerous times, wrong in their accusations. There is absolutely no legal basis what so ever for the President of the US to order any US citizen murdered just because she or he sate some claim against them. In fact, not only is there no basis, ordering such murders may be be illegal under US laws. It is interesting to note that Bill Clinton was impeached because he lied about having sex with some woman. Here we have the president of the United States ordering the murder of US citizens and no one even bats an eye.

It was bad enough when US citizens were merely detained and tortured, but now it has escalated to execution without trial. If being a citizen of the US means anything, it certainly means the government can not kill you simply because they say you are some threat. With this move, the US has slipped even deeper into Orwellian status.

The following is lifted from Truthout; http://truthout.org. It shows the Iraqi war from a different perspective, from that of the soldiers who are fighting the war.

Iraq War Vet: "We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us"

Wednesday 07 April 2010

by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Report

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: The U.S. Army, K. OS, whiteblot)

On Monday, April 5, Wikileaks.org posted video footage from Iraq, taken from a US military Apache helicopter in July 2007 as soldiers aboard it killed 12 people and wounded two children. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency: photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh.

The US military confirmed the authenticity of the video.

The footage clearly shows an unprovoked slaughter, and is shocking to watch whilst listening to the casual conversation of the soldiers in the background.

As disturbing as the video is, this type of behavior by US soldiers in Iraq is not uncommon.

Truthout has spoken with several soldiers who shared equally horrific stories of the slaughtering of innocent Iraqis by US occupation forces.

"I remember one woman walking by," said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the US Marines who served three tours in Iraq. He told the audience at the Winter Soldier hearings that took place March 13-16, 2008, in Silver Spring, Maryland, "She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces."

The hearings provided a platform for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to share the reality of their occupation experiences with the media in the US.

Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement (ROE) in Iraq, and how lax they were, to the point of being virtually nonexistent.

"During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot," Washburn's testimony continued, "The higher the threat the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond. Something else we were encouraged to do, almost with a wink and nudge, was to carry 'drop weapons', or by my third tour, 'drop shovels'. We would carry these weapons or shovels with us because if we accidentally shot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body, and make them look like an insurgent."

Hart Viges, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army who served one year in Iraq, told of taking orders over the radio.

"One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation.... One of the snipers replied back, 'Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?' The lieutenant colonel responded, 'You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.' After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my first experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment."

Vincent Emanuele, a Marine rifleman who spent a year in the al-Qaim area of Iraq near the Syrian border, told of emptying magazines of bullets into the city without identifying targets, running over corpses with Humvees and stopping to take "trophy" photos of bodies.

"An act that took place quite often in Iraq was taking pot shots at cars that drove by," he said, "This was not an isolated incident, and it took place for most of our eight-month deployment."

Kelly Dougherty - then executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War - blamed the behavior of soldiers in Iraq on policies of the US government.

"The abuses committed in the occupations, far from being the result of a 'few bad apples' misbehaving, are the result of our government's Middle East policy, which is crafted in the highest spheres of US power," she said.

Michael Leduc, a corporal in the Marines who was part of the US attack on Fallujah in November 2004, said orders he received from his battalion JAG officer before entering the city were as follows: "You see an individual with a white flag and he does anything but approach you slowly and obey commands, assume it's a trick and kill him."

Bryan Casler, a corporal in the Marines, spoke of witnessing the prevalent dehumanizing outlook soldiers took toward Iraqis during the invasion of Iraq.

"... on these convoys, I saw Marines defecate into MRE bags or urinate in bottles and throw them at children on the side of the road," he stated.

Scott Ewing, who served in Iraq from 2005-2006, admitted on one panel that units intentionally gave candy to Iraqi children for reasons other than "winning hearts and minds.

"There was also another motive," Ewing said. "If the kids were around our vehicles, the bad guys wouldn't attack. We used the kids as human shields."

In response to the WikiLeaks video, the Pentagon, while not officially commenting on the video, announced that two Pentagon investigations cleared the air crew of any wrongdoing.

A statement from the two probes said the air crew had acted appropriately and followed the ROE.

Adam Kokesh served in Fallujah beginning in February 2004 for roughly one year.

Speaking on a panel at the aforementioned hearings about the ROE, he held up the ROE card soldiers are issued in Iraq and said, "This card says, 'Nothing on this card prevents you from using deadly force to defend yourself'."

Kokesh pointed out that "reasonable certainty" was the condition for using deadly force under the ROE, and this led to rampant civilian deaths. He discussed taking part in the April 2004 siege of Fallujah. During that attack, doctors at Fallujah General Hospital told Truthout there were 736 deaths, over 60 percent of which were civilians.

"We changed the ROE more often than we changed our underwear," Kokesh said, "At one point, we imposed a curfew on the city, and were told to fire at anything that moved in the dark."

Kokesh also testified that during two cease-fires in the midst of the siege, the military decided to let out as many women and children from the embattled city as possible, but this did not include most men.

"For males, they had to be under 14 years of age," he said, "So I had to go over there and turn men back, who had just been separated from their women and children. We thought we were being gracious."

Steve Casey served in Iraq for over a year starting in mid-2003.

"We were scheduled to go home in April 2004, but due to rising violence we stayed in with Operation Blackjack," Casey said, "I watched soldiers firing into the radiators and windows of oncoming vehicles. Those who didn't turn around were unfortunately neutralized one way or another - well over 20 times I personally witnessed this. There was a lot of collateral damage."

Jason Hurd served in central Baghdad from November 2004 until November 2005. He told of how, after his unit took "stray rounds" from a nearby firefight, a machine gunner responded by firing over 200 rounds into a nearby building.

"We fired indiscriminately at this building," he said. "Things like that happened every day in Iraq. We reacted out of fear for our lives, and we reacted with total destruction."

Hurd said the situation deteriorated rapidly while he was in Iraq. "Over time, as the absurdity of war set in, individuals from my unit indiscriminately opened fire at vehicles driving down the wrong side of the road. People in my unit would later brag about it. I remember thinking how appalled I was that we were laughing at this, but that was the reality."

Other soldiers Truthout has interviewed have often laughed when asked about their ROE in Iraq.

Garret Reppenhagen served in Iraq from February 2004-2005 in the city of Baquba, 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) northeast of Baghdad. He said his first experience in Iraq was being on a patrol that killed two Iraqi farmers as they worked in their field at night.

"I was told they were out in the fields farming because their pumps only operated with electricity, which meant they had to go out in the dark when there was electricity," he explained, "I asked the sergeant, if he knew this, why did he fire on the men. He told me because the men were out after curfew. I was never given another ROE during my time in Iraq."

Emmanuel added: "We took fire while trying to blow up a bridge. Many of the attackers were part of the general population. This led to our squad shooting at everything and anything in order to push through the town. I remember myself emptying magazines into the town, never identifying a target."

Emmanuel spoke of abusing prisoners he knew were innocent, adding, "We took it upon ourselves to harass them, and took them to the desert to throw them out of our Humvees, while kicking and punching them when we threw them out."

Jason Wayne Lemue is a Marine who served three tours in Iraq.

"My commander told me, 'Kill those who need to be killed, and save those who need to be saved'; that was our mission on our first tour," he said of his first deployment during the invasion.

"After that the ROE changed, and carrying a shovel, or standing on a rooftop talking on a cell phone, or being out after curfew [meant those people] were to be killed. I can't tell you how many people died because of this. By my third tour, we were told to just shoot people, and the officers would take care of us."

When this Truthout reporter was in Baghdad in November 2004, my Iraqi interpreter was in the Abu Hanifa mosque that was raided by US and Iraqi soldiers during Friday prayers.

"Everyone was there for Friday prayers, when five Humvees and several trucks carrying [US soldiers and] Iraqi National Guards entered," Abu Talat told Truthout on the phone from within the mosque while the raid was in progress. "Everyone starting yelling 'Allahu Akbar' (God is the greatest) because they were frightened. Then the soldiers started shooting the people praying!"

"They have just shot and killed at least four of the people praying," he said in a panicked voice, "At least 10 other people are wounded now. We are on our bellies and in a very bad situation."

Iraqi Red Crescent later confirmed to Truthout that at least four people were killed, and nine wounded. Truthout later witnessed pieces of brain splattered on one of the walls inside the mosque while large blood stains covered carpets at several places.

This type of indiscriminate killing has been typical from the initial invasion of Iraq.

Truthout spoke with Iraq war veteran and former National Guard and Army Reserve member Jason Moon, who was there for the invasion.

"While on our initial convoy into Iraq in early June 2003, we were given a direct order that if any children or civilians got in front of the vehicles in our convoy, we were not to stop, we were not to slow down, we were to keep driving. In the event an insurgent attacked us from behind human shields, we were supposed to count. If there were thirty or less civilians we were allowed to fire into the area. If there were over thirty, we were supposed to take fire and send it up the chain of command. These were the rules of engagement. I don't know about you, but if you are getting shot at from a crowd of people, how fast are you going to count, and how accurately?"

Moon brought back a video that shows his sergeant declaring, "The difference between an insurgent and an Iraqi civilian is whether they are dead or alive."

Moon explains the thinking: "If you kill a civilian he becomes an insurgent because you retroactively make that person a threat."

According to the Pentagon probes of the killings shown in the WikiLeaks video, the air crew had "reason to believe" the people seen in the video were fighters before opening fire.

Article 48 of the Geneva Conventions speaks to the "basic rule" regarding the protection of civilians:

"In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives."

What is happening in Iraq seems to reflect what psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton calls "atrocity-producing situations." He used this term first in his book "The Nazi Doctors." In 2004, he wrote an article for The Nation, applying his insights to the Iraq War and occupation.

"Atrocity-producing situations," Lifton wrote, occur when a power structure sets up an environment where "ordinary people, men or women no better or worse than you or I, can regularly commit atrocities.... This kind of atrocity-producing situation ... surely occurs to some degrees in all wars, including World War II, our last 'good war.' But a counterinsurgency war in a hostile setting, especially when driven by profound ideological distortions, is particularly prone to sustained atrocity - all the more so when it becomes an occupation."

Cliff Hicks served in Iraq from October 2003 to August 2004.

"There was a tall apartment complex, the only spot from where people could see over our perimeter," Hicks told Truthout, "There would be laundry hanging off the balconies, and people hanging out on the roof for fresh air. The place was full of kids and families. On rare occasions, a fighter would get atop the building and shoot at our passing vehicles. They never really hit anybody. We just knew to be careful when we were over by that part of the wall, and nobody did shit about it until one day a lieutenant colonel was driving down and they shot at his vehicle and he got scared. So he jumped through a bunch of hoops and cut through some red tape and got a C-130 to come out the next night and all but leveled the place. Earlier that evening when I was returning from a patrol the apartment had been packed full of people."

On Tuesday, April 6, 2010, a federal appeals court ruled against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the lawsuit brought against them by Comcast. The court ruling basically comes down to the FCC lacks the authority to regulate how Internet service providers (ISP) manage their networks.

The stage for the lawsuit was set in 2005, under the Bush Administration, when the FCC deregulated broadband providers, classifying them as an “information service". This reclassification placed ISPs outside of the FCC regulations; unlike the classification of “telecommunications service” that could be regulated like the phone system. After the reclassification, the FCC issued a set of four principles of net freedom summarised as:

"To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to:"

• access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
• run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
• connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
• competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

Now to the lawsuit. In 2007 Comcast customers noticed that the company had slowed their connection rates to “peer-to-peer” sites. This action violated the FCC's principles of net freedom which states that all packets traversing the network be treated the same. Some advocacy groups hearing of the complaint contacted the FCC and at that time Comcast remove the restrictions. However, Comcast decided to challenged the FCC's authority in court.

In the lawsuit against the FCC, Comcast argument was that peer-to-peer file-sharing was hogging bandwidth. The problem here is the legal system has little understanding of how the internet works in the first place. What is really at issue here is that ISPs want to sign up an increasing number of customers without upgrading their networks; back to the issue of using outdated coaxial instead of fibre optics. The assumption is that not all of their customers will be accessing the network at the same time. This practice is the same as overbooking timeshares at a resort; a practice that has sent some people to prison.

All data on the internet consists of packets that can range in size from 20 bytes to a maximum of 65,535 bytes. It does not matter if the packet contains email with large attachments, or parts of a video being stream across the network, the maximum size of the data is still 65,535 bytes and consumes the same amount of bandwidth. The difference is the length of time the bandwidth is being consumed. The internet service providers provide a section of a total available bandwidth to their customers with the implied understanding that you can use that section of bandwidth full time. However, if all of their customers were to sit down and watch a film streaming across the network at the same time, it would quickly max out the bandwidth resulting in a greatly reduced speed of data transfer. The ISPs are fully aware of this, but updating their infrastructure means money that can not go into their pocketbooks. Again, the ISPs have oversold their available bandwidth, a practice that should be restricted just as resorts can not oversell their timeshares.

However, the court ruling has far more reaching implications than just restricting peer-to-peer sharing. The internet has been expanding to cover more services than ever before. Social networking, on demand video, telephone services, home automation monitoring, and many more are now a part of regular internet usage. The federal court ruling in favour of Comcast, and all ISPs in general, will now allow internet service providers free reign to control the packets that travel through their networks. Many ISPs provide VoIP telephone service. The court ruling will now allow them to block packets coming from competing VoIP providers. The court ruling now allows ISPs to make agreements concerning the packets that arrive to their network. It is very possible that an ISP could make an agreement with Microsoft to send all request for google.com to bing.com. As films and television content moves onto the net, blurring the lines between cable television and internet television, it is quit possible that ISPs will block rival companies content from being available to their customers. The court ruling would allow ISPs to restrict the information available; imagine an ISP blocking a presidential candidate's website because they don't agree with the platform of the candidate. Metering of internet content will now be possible; packets arriving from YouTube can have a surcharge attached to them or become a pay-per-view content. Emails can now have a surcharge attached for each email sent. The court ruling will even allow ISPs to force customers to use only approved devices connected to their networks, such as wireless routers, forcing them to rent the devices instead of purchasing. While the court decision was a big win for ISPs, it was a big lost for consumers.

The question now is what will the FCC do regarding net freedom? At this time the FCC has not indicated how it will proceed. It has several options available. The FCC could bring internet access service back under some common carrier regulation where it does have the authority. The FCC could also move Congress to pass new regulatory powers for internet access service. Regardless of what steps the FCC takes, it is important that the internet remains open and free and that ISPs have to treat all packets traversing their networks equally. The internet has become a centralised aspect of daily life, and is one of the last free open source of news and information; it will be a bleak day if the internet becomes shunted.

Kimberly seated on steps - Easter 2010

I spent Easter day at Sister #1's Easter gathering of family and friends. It was a fun time and it was especially fun watching the children hunt for plastic eggs with hidden treasures. There was plenty of food and drink and I made my traditional Easter coconut cake to share with everyone. To see the cake, visit this this link. Mum always made a coconut cake for Easter dinner and I just feel like it would not be Easer without the coconut cake. Mum came up with the ideas of adding jellied eggs and I was the one to come up with the the easy way of dying the coconut without making a mess. I think the marshmallow peeps adds the final touch to the decorations on the cake. I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter this year, and may all the coming Easters be as wonderful.

A fun Easter cake

Mum and I always made a coconut cake for Easter and we would add a bit of decorations to make it more of a holiday cake. The cake itself is just a white boxed mix with the addition of coconut flavouring added to the batter. The icing is made with confectioner's sugar, a bit of coconut oil, and flaked coconut; very easy to make and so much better than any icing from a shop.

The decorations are just some marshmallow peeps, jellied eggs, and dyed coconut. To dye the coconut flakes, place them in a polyethylene bag and add several drops of green food colouring. Twist the top of the bag together and just shake to evenly dye the coconut flakes.

This is an easy and fun Easter cake that will be a hit with the children and with the adults as well.