Drones

TeleSur | – – Human rights organizations argue the U.S. government has grossly underestimated the number of civilian deaths caused by drones. The United States government accepted responsibility Friday for inadvertently killing up to 116 civilians in strikes in countries where America is not at war, a major disclosure likely to inflame debate about targeted […]

Afghanistan

US still in Conventional War in Afghanistan via . . . Drones?

contributors

By Jack Serle | ( Bureau of Investigative Journalism) | – – US drones hit Taliban more than terrorist networks despite end of Afghan war The majority of US airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2016 have been in support of ground troops including Afghan forces fighting the Taliban, rather than targeting suspected terrorists. An investigation by […]

Dissent

Thousands Protest Drone Wars at US Air Force Base in Germany

contributors

TeleSur | – – Protesters say the base is being used to coordinate U.S. drone strikes in several countries which they argue violates German constitution. Several thousand demonstrators formed a human chain along the perimeter of a U.S. Air Force Base in southwest Germany Saturday in protest against drone operations by the United States. The […]

Drones

How Syria is becoming a test bed for high-tech weapons of electronic warfare

contributors

David Stupples | (The Conversation) | – – The relationship between Russia and the West is becoming increasingly dangerous with potential flashpoints developing in both eastern Europe and Syria. After repeated incursions into Turkish airspace by Russian warplanes on bombing raids over Syria, NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg warned Moscow that it stands ready to […]

Constitution

US admits it has no Idea who it is Assassinating by Drone

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The tragic deaths last January, just now being revealed, of two Western hostages in drone strikes on a relatively empty housing complex in northern Pakistan near the Afghanistan border underlines that the Obama administration is killing people from the air without knowing who they are and is killing […]

Bill of Rights

Execution without Trial: A Short History of the Predator Drone

contributors

By Grégoire Chamayou | (Tomdispatch.com) Initially, the English word “drone” meant both an insect and a sound. It was not until the outbreak of World War II that it began to take on another meaning. At that time, American artillery apprentices used the expression “target drones” to designate the small remotely controlled planes at which […]

Drones

American ‘Exceptionalism’ or just Above the Law? Torture, Drones, Assassination with Impunity

contributors

By Alfred W. McCoy | (Tomdispatch.com) – “The sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” said conservative thinker Carl Schmitt in 1922, meaning that a nation’s leader can defy the law to serve the greater good. Though Schmitt’s service as Nazi Germany’s chief jurist and his unwavering support for Hitler from the night of […]

Drones

After 500 Strikes: Is America’s Drone War Crashing And Burning?

contributors

AJ+ | — “Drone strikes are the weapon of choice in America’s so-called War on Terror. They’ve been used nearly 500 times in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia since 2002. But while U.S. officials praise their “surgical precision,” the reality on the ground tells a different tale. Here’s what you need to know about the U.S. […]

Drones

Top 7 Ways Assassination Fails USA as Policy

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Wikileaks has released a government assessment of drone strikes aimed at assassinating top leaders. The document urges such strikes, but is amazingly frank about the drawbacks. it says, “Potential negative effects of HVT ope rations include increasing the level of insurgent support, causing a government to neglect other aspects of its counterinsurgency […]