FOCUS FOR 2018 – AFGHANISTAN. WHAT DO YOU THINK?

In the weeks of the winter holidays - spending time with my family, cooking, sending cards, buying presents - I had gnawing at me that knowledge that I would be writing this new year's bulletin. [Continue reading...]

Will U.S. drone killings increase under Donald Trump?  The evidence says “Yes,” in part because expansion of the killer drone program was baked into cake by Barack Obama.

Last year, the USAF was reported to have plans to increase daily drone combat patrols from 60 per day now to 90 per day in 2019. 

World Can't Wait | January 24, 2017

Obama's policy of unprovoked attacks on sovereign nations continues.

"The reliability of the determinations on who was slain in any given strike has been in substantial doubt during the Saudi war in Yemen," posts Jason Ditz at antiwar.com, "as most of the US special forces who had been spotting targets were withdrawn in the lead-up to the war, and it's not clear how they get intelligence on who they're aiming at." 

There is no better time to stop the crimes of your government.

In May 2013, Obama finally acknowledged the U.S. military targeted killing program, and said he would explain how people are chosen to be killed.  But it still took an ACLU lawsuit to get the material made public.  As if it's all a game, the administration refers to the guidelines as a "playbook."

Yielding to pressure from critics of his killer drone practice, President Obama released fictional figures on civilian casualties this past Friday. In a classic "bury the news over the holiday weekend" move, and after delaying the promised disclosure for many months, the Obama administration said that, since 2009, the combined CIA and military assassination targeted killing programs had claimed the lives of "between 64 and 116" non-combatants and about 2,500 suspected terrorists (military-aged males in designated war zones). Both tallies are ridiculously low compared to estimates compiled by independent watchdogs at the Long War Journal and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Twenty-two-year-old Samantha Morris is a social worker at an Alabama-based nonprofit organization who works hard to attend to the needs of men and women recently released from prison or still incarcerated. When she began her job in 2015, she declined the nonprofit's offer to allocate a portion of her monthly wages into a 401(k) account. "At the time, I didn't want to take money out of my paycheck every month to invest through the organization that I work for," Morris said. However, like many young professionals anxious about their future, Morris found it prudent to save money, if possible, by investing in stocks and mutual funds.

Brian Terrell of Voices for Creative Non Violence writes, "Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III authorized RPA aircrews to log combat time when flying an aircraft within designated hostile airspace, regardless of the aircrew's physical location."

Reprieve | April 21, 2016

A video project launched today by the Guardian and Reprieve details the civilian impact of the US covert drone programme, through the voices of those who have lost family members to the strikes.

In the video interviews, six clients of the human rights organization Reprieve – all of whom lost innocent family members to covert US drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen – talk about the aftermath of those strikes, and the difficulties of ‘life after drones’ without accountability for the killings.

April 1 at Creech Air Force Base, activists began blocking the highway and other base gates, leading to arrests. Activists successfully delayed Air Force personnel (and presumably some drone pilots and technitions), from entering the base for as much as an hour.  17 were arrested, following five days of protests at the Base with a total of 26 arrested so far during the 2nd Annual National Mass Mobilization against Drone Warfare known as SHUT DOWN CREECH.

The film “Eye in the Sky” builds drama through excruciating minutes ticking by as politicians debate the legality and morality of sending Hellfire missiles into a house in Nairobi Kenya where tiny surveillance drones show figures strapping on suicide vests, just as a young girl unwittingly sets up shop nearby. She is full of life, and would be likely killed.

The former CIA/NSA Chief General Michael Hayden shilling for targeted killing by drones today on the New York Times opinion page?

"Critics assert that a high percentage of the people killed in drone strikes are civilians — a claim totally at odds with the intelligence I have reviewed — and that the strikes have turned the Muslim world against the United States, fueling terrorist recruitment. Political elites have joined in, complaining that intelligence agencies have gone too far — until they have felt in danger, when they have complained that the agencies did not go far enough."