7180. The truth about murder drones (Video)

To this point, U.S. drones have taken over 7,180 lives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somali; no tally has been kept of drone assassinations in the other countries engulfed in war – Iraq, Syria and Libya. These killings, as you know, violate international law requiring due process and a variety of principles established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by the U.S. after World War II.

Nick Turse | Breaking the Camouflage Wall of Silence: When AFRICOM Evaluates Itself, the News Is Grim

What’s strange, however, is that none of this seems to have caused anyone in the national security state or the military to reconsider the last 15 years of military-first policies, of bombs dropped, troops dispatched, drones sent in, and what the results were across the Greater Middle East and now Africa. There is no serious recalibration, no real rethinking. The response to 15 years of striking failure in a vast region remains more of the same. State of failure indeed! --Tom

Tomgram | Patrick Cockburn, An Endless Cycle of Indecisive Wars

…no less crucial for being obvious: in most of these countries, where Islam is the dominant religion, ... al-Qaeda, and the Taliban are essentially the only available vehicles for protest and rebellion. By now, they have completely replaced the socialist and nationalist movements that predominated in the twentieth century; these years have, that is, seen a remarkable reversion to religious, ethnic, and tribal identity, to movements that seek to establish their own exclusive territory by the persecution and expulsion of minorities.

Anti-War Committee Statement on FBI Entrapment of Muslim Youth

Kamal Hasan...shared: "When the families confiscated [the passports] and prevented them from traveling, the FBI offered them fake passports, offered to buy their cars so they could buy tickets and travel. To us, that means they [the FBI] are facilitating and helping these kids break the law."

Parallel Paths: The CVE Program and U.S. Foreign Policy in Somalia

Building Community Resilience is part of a larger program developed by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice. The program is nationally known as “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE). The program was launched in 2011 in Boston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis as a preventive counter-terrorism program.

Polly Mann: The Pentagon’s Foreign Aid

Counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen suggest that U.S. military assistance programs have created substantial blowback by exacerbating the central forces fueling insurgency and violence, thereby strengthening the enemies they are intended to combat.

The Drone Papers | Part 8: Target Africa

Turse: Africom and the Pentagon jealously guard information about their outposts in Africa, making it impossible to ascertain even basic facts — like a simple count — let alone just how many are integral to JSOC operations, drone strikes, and other secret activities.

The Drone Papers | Part 6: Firing Blind

Flawed intelligence and the limits of drone technology The Obama administration has portrayed drones as an effective and efficient weapon in the ongoing war with al Qaeda and other radical groups. Yet classified Pentagon documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the U.S. military has faced “critical shortfalls” in the technology and intelligence it uses More

The Drone Papers | Part 4: Find, Fix, Finish

Lt. General Michael Flynn: “Our entire Middle East policy seems to be based on firing drones. That’s what this administration decided to do in its counterterrorism campaign. They’re enamored by the ability of special operations and the CIA to find a guy in the middle of the desert in some shitty little village and drop a bomb on his head and kill him.”

The Drone Papers | Part 1: The Assassination Complex

Scahill: The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government.

U.N. Security Council Takes ‘Historic’ Stand on Killings of Journalists

When war breaks out, most non-combatants run the other way. But a handful of courageous reporters see it as their duty to tell the world what’s happening on the ground. And many pay a high price. By Kitty Stapp OSC  NationofChange.org  May 30, 2015 Since 1992, 1,129 journalists have been killed on the job, 38 percent of More

Go to Top