Drone of Drones: Ray McGovern Deconstructs John 'Dark Side' Brennan

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Produced by: 
KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Wed, 01/09/2013 - 10:00am to 10:15am
Ray McGovern on John 'Dark Side' Brennan & Jeff Patterson on Bradley Manning's 112 days of freedom.

 

Drones On The Range...

Weeks before President Obama announced that he intended to appoint  Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense, the reaction from Progressives was electrifying.  The predictable blowback , of course, was that it electrified the Rightwing Punitorium, America’s echo chamber – there’s a lot of space between the ears echoes to bounce around in. There had to be a catch.

And there was. Obama’s next move was nominating John ‘Dark Side’ Brennan to be the next CIA chief.  This the same guy who, back in 2008 prompted 200 psychologists to urging him not to select John Brennan to head the CIA because of his open support of 'dark-side' policies.   Brennan withdrew his name the next day, and The New York Times explained the move as a reaction to 'concerns he was intimately linked to controversial CIA programs authorized by President Bush.'

  My guest today, Ray McGovern is himself a veteran CIA analyst. He has scrutinized Brennan's backing of torture and drone killings. Read his interview "Obama's and Brennan's 'Kill List'" .

 McGovern points out that   "Brennan is now the administration’s strongest advocate of extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens by drones. As for civilian deaths from CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, Brennan made the preposterous claim [in June 2011] that, over the previous year, 'there hasn’t been a single collateral death' from CIA drone strikes there."

 

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This week we learn that some TriMet  drivers work as many as 20 or more hours in a 24-hour period. 

This problem is not a local phenomena nor is it limited to the occupation itself - the only point here is that working brutal hours at the wheel of a large public vehicle presents dangers not associated with other fields of employment.

The real issue behind the headlines is this:  America is stranded in a false 'Recession', known to Wall Streeters as a 'jobless recovery.  Government numbers show that Americans productivity has never been higher.  No, Virginia, this does not mean that workers are just crazy in love with their jobs.  What it means is that fear is driving people to work harder than is healthy because they live in terror of losing their jobs, their rattletrap health insurance, their homes...in short, their lives.  And banks are still enjoying those TARP funds that rained down on them like mana from the sky a few years back.  Corporate CEOs aren't hiring because form them it's a buyers market.  and they aren't buying.  So we are going to be living with increasing deadly incidents  caused by employee exhaustion. 

 Public Transportation Managers in civilized nations would see the situation for what it is - because that is what they are being paid huge salaries to do - and they would immediately take steps to change the structure.  What that is not where we live or who we are.  So it is that the  TriMet  general manager has responded by calling  for an internal investigation.

I don't know what more the general manager needs to know.: if the problem is that there are so few drivers that the ones on staff are working 20 hour shifts, then the solution is to hire more drivers.  There always seems to be enough money to pay management to make all the smart moves, but not enough to maintain safe schedules.

Part of  TriMet's  approach is to "fight driver fatigue"...with what? Magic swords?

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