Last Thursday, the Obama Administration came forward with the news that a drone strike back in January killed an American and an Italian, along with the four militants who were holding them hostage. The American, Warren Weinstein, is the 8th American killed by the Obama Adminstration’s drone program. Of those eight, only 6 were even suspected of being part of a terrorist network.
As numerous reporters have noted, there’s hardly any transparency when it comes to how the CIA is carrying out these attacks. It would be one thing if the secrecy of these attacks served some practical purpose, but that doesn’t appear to be the case anywhere.
In Somalia and Yemen, our drone strikes have only compounded the instability. And in Pakistan, where the Obama Administration has given the CIA even greater leeway – and where Weinstein and Italian hostage Giovanni Lo Porto were killed – not even the most strident domestic opponents of the Islamic radicals think it’s working. Writing recently in the Globe and Mail, former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani writes about the Obama Administration’s misguided belief that they can win the war on terror by dropping bombs from flying robots:
The fascination with drones reflects the desire of leaders to be able to fight wars without risking casualties to their own side. The Obama administration has preferred using unmanned aircraft, armed with cameras and missiles, in locating and eliminating terrorists over committing troops or even intelligence officers in the field. The death of hostages, coupled with the fact that terrorists continue to recruit and multiply despite drone strikes, points to the folly of that approach.
His piece gets at the heart of why drone warfare fails and why there’s so much official secrecy around it. Drones didn’t become a popular method of battling radical groups because of their effectiveness in war. They became the primary means of battling radical groups because of their effectiveness in selling us on war. The lack of transparency – and of dead Americans – keeps this disconnect alive and keeps public support for drone strikes at a much higher level. If Americans fully understood how this method of dealing with groups like Al Qaeda isn’t just a failure, but actually counterproductive, there might start to be some momentum to wind it down. But for now, there’s still a widespread belief that this method of waging the war or terror actually works. If you’re a drone manufacturer or a politician afraid to challenge the CIA, the less said about these failures the better.
More news items from the last two weeks…
Justin Wolfers, David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy write about the phenomenon of 1.5 million “missing” black men, arguably the most significant civil liberties issue in modern-day America. Will Bunch discusses the impact of this phenomenon in Philadelphia. Tony Newman explains how the drug war is largely to blame for it. Mike Konczal reviews Naomi Murakawa’s book on liberal complicity in this mass incarceration crisis. Bill Clinton says “My bad“. Hillary Clinton says she’ll clean up his mess.
An FBI Forensics team gave false testimony regarding hair analysis at numerous trials over decades. Daniel Rivero writes about a case where a man was sent to prison for 28 years based on hair that was supposedly his but actually came from a dog. Conor Friedersdorf adds some additional thoughts on how depressingly common these stories are. Radley Balko provides a history of forensics.
Senators Ron Wyden and Rand Paul, along with Representative Zoe Lofgren, introduced a bill that would amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to prevent the kinds of misguided prosecutions that led to the suicide of programmer and activist Aaron Swartz. In response, Senators Kirk and Gillibrand announce a bill that would stiffen those penalties, but don’t actually release the text of the bill.
Bruce Schneier writes about Stingrays and other IMSI-catchers used by law enforcement to be able to track us by our cell phones. In Tacoma, a defendant who was challenging the use of Stingrays agreed to a settlement.
Trevor Timm writes about the lack of internet security knowledge in Congress.
Katha Pollitt wonders why we’re moving forward rapidly when it comes to same-sex marriage, but falling behind when it comes to abortion rights.
Jonathan Blanks discusses some recent Supreme Court decisions regarding the 4th Amendment.
Gary Legum reminds us why Jeb Bush shouldn’t be allowed to get within 1000 miles of the White House.
James Ridgeway writes about long prison sentences as the modern day equivalent of the old practice of banishment.
Government-backed violence against labor organizers doesn’t appear to be a violation of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement.
Jacob Hornberger writes about how drug laws and individual freedom can’t co-exist.
Let’s say it all together – bulk surveillance of our communications is more than just a violation of our privacy, it’s a largely useless waste of time and resources. Greg Sargent gives us some hope that NSA’s bulk metadata surveillance may be ending soon.
Zeeshan Aleem writes about the success of Seattle’s drug offender diversion program.
Eli Saslow reports on the firing of Orting’s only black police officer.
A gay California corrections officer was locked in a room with a dog by a crackpot psychiatrist after complaining about discrimination at his job.
Victoria Kim writes about several southern California towns that are using forfeiture laws to steal millions of dollars from their own residents.
Federal prosecutors are trying to prevent a Singapore-based tech expert from testifying in a trial against a California man accused of jailbreaking XBOX 360s.
An Albuquerque police officer has allegedly been caught on video turning off his body camera before administering a beating.
In Texas, a man has been held in state custody since 1983 after a previous conviction had been overturned.
A Texas police officer was caught on video violently throwing a DWI suspect to the pavement and knocking her unconscious as her 6-year-old daughter looked on.
Dominic Holden writes about what Texas legislators are planning to do in order to stop gay marriage in the state.
Oklahoma intends to use nitrogen asphyxiation to administer the death penalty.
Law enforcement officials in Garden City, Kansas insist that their decision to kidnap the 11-year-old son of a medical marijuana user is in the child’s best interest.
Law enforcement officials assigned to Ferguson referred to protestors as “enemy forces”.
In Wisconsin, police have been raiding conservative activists and telling them to stay silent about what transpired.
A Chicago police officer was acquitted of a murder that he committed while off-duty. The reason given for the judge’s ruling doesn’t appear to make any sense, and the prosecutors appear to have given zero fucks about the case (or even purposefully tanked it).
Also in Chicago, the city will soon be paying reparations to the victims of police torture.
Sheriff’s deputies in Chicago are accused of stripping a deceased DUI victim and taking nude photos of her by the side of the road.
Michigan governor Rick Snyder opposes having the state of Michigan recognize the marriage of a gay man who’s terminally ill and married his partner in 2013 in New York.
The officer in the horrific beating and attempted framing of a man near Detroit has been charged. Police also withheld video evidence of the officers mocking the victim.
A woman from Ohio has won a settlement from the federal government after being strip-searched at the Detroit airport.
A family in Ohio is unable to get effective medicine for their daughter’s seizures because Ohio still doesn’t have a medical marijuana law.
Vaidya Gullapalli reports on the root causes of the recent hunger strike at Youngstown, Ohio’s supermax prison.
Near the University of Mississippi, local law enforcement is targeting low-level drug offenders to play the very dangerous role of confidential informant in order to avoid life-altering criminal records.
Anti-choice extremists in North Carolina are trying to implement a 72-hour waiting period for women to have an abortion.
A 94-year-old in North Carolina was arrested on marijuana charges.
Susan Ferriss writes about an 11-year-old autistic boy in Virginia whose treatment by both his school and the criminal justice system is raising some troubling questions.
A Baltimore man named Freddie Gray died of a severe spine injury after being arrested in Baltimore. This incident, after years of horrible relations between police and citizens, exploded into city-wide rioting. Like other cities that have recently seen unrest, Baltimore aggressively polices minority communities for petty crimes and has a history of using excessive force. David Simon points his finger squarely at the drug war.
Police in Harrisburg, PA will be releasing a video of a police officer shooting an unarmed man in the back as he laid face down.
In Philadelphia, suspects being injured in police vans is also a widespread problem.
A Philadelphia narcotics officer is being charged with perjury after repeatedly lying in court under oath.
Joel Anderson writes about the case of Shaneen Allen, the black single mom whose plight after violating New Jersey’s gun laws drew large support from gun rights supporters.
New York City is tracking cars throughout the city via their EZPass boxes, even far from where tolls are collected. And the New York Times editorializes against the city’s biased and unfair summons system.
Prince Edward Island is the only part of Canada where abortion services are not available.
Mexico has recently been deporting record numbers of Central American children fleeing their home countries.
The British government is starting to consider ways to assist refugees trying to escape Libya’s violence on boats across the Mediterranean that are sinking at a high rate. Dara Lind writes about the legal obligations that European nations have with respect to helping these refugees.
Jeremy Scahill writes about the role that the U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany plays in America’s drone wars.
A pro-Russian journalist was shot by masked assailants in Kiev.
Israel’s Supreme Court has given a green light to confiscate property from displaced Palestinians. Young activists in Gaza planned an international day of solidarity for the victims of Israel’s occupation for April 29.
Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was sentenced to 20 years in prison for inciting violence, illegally detaining people, and torture – all things that the regime that’s prosecuting him is also doing.
Sudan is trying to keep international observers out of Darfur.
Human rights activist Rasul Jafarov was sentenced for 6.5 years in Azerbaijan.
Iran has provided no evidence at all to the Washington Post to explain why their Tehran-based reporter, Jason Rezaian, is facing trial.
Indonesia is facing international condemnation for the execution of 8 alleged drug traffickers.
The Committee to Protect Journalists have named Eritrea and North Korea as the two most censored countries in the world.
Well Ike warned us.
@ 1
As did Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
What the secrecy surrounding these targeted airstrikes means is that they are political in nature, not military. That means that the United States Government is probably not even calling the shots in this. At least where Yemen is concerned. This transition in Saudi Arabia probably has a lot to do with it. The last of the old guard, the sons of Abdulaziz Ibn Saud is dying and has been suffering from Alzheimer’s for a couple of decades. The new guy is purging his potential competitors out of his own family right now.
I wonder who else is being “purged”, and why it would be likely that we’re helping?
Yep, government has become too big, too powerful and too intrusive. The Constitution, to the government, is just some quaint document that they do their best to work around to accomplish goal of building an even bigger, more powerful and more intrusive government.
Justin Wolfers, David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy write about the phenomenon of 1.5 million “missing” black men, arguably the most significant civil liberties issue in modern-day America.
Sad isn’t it. Butt you can see the liberal [sic] slant from the writers. The gentle giant Michael Brown brought his death upon himself. No where in that linked article is that brought out. Liberal {sic] policies at work. Butt, did those liberal [sic] policies forced those to sell drugs? Did those liberal [sic] policies force black men to use black women as semen sponges and create so many out of wedlock children with no father figures to guide them?
The national FBI crime figures in inner cities state black men do most of the crime. Where is that in their article? It’s the missing FACTS Puddy looks for. Puddy been saying for years liberal [sic] policies in these cities are destroying black families. Just ask the yellowishleakingbuttspigot arschloch for a crazed databaze replay! Places with most missing men – are all cities with liberal [sic] policies from liberal [sic] policy Democrats [sic] in place!
Homicides has dropped? Houston and Chicago has seen a drop in the killing of young black men? WHERE are these guys getting their data?
Iran has provided no evidence at all to the Washington Post to explain why their Tehran-based reporter, Jason Rezaian, is facing trial.
And yet Senate Democrats [sic] are all up in arms over Republican efforts to tie Jason Rezaian’s release along with others to the Iran nukular deal! Now why is that?
An FBI Forensics team gave false testimony regarding hair analysis at numerous trials over decades. Daniel Rivero writes about a case where a man was sent to prison for 28 years based on hair that was supposedly his but actually came from a dog. Conor Friedersdorf adds some additional thoughts on how depressingly common these stories are. Radley Balko provides a history of forensics.
It’s all about the convictions people. This isn’t a Republican or a Democrat [sic] thing! Butt 15 of the last 23 years have leaned left!
On the Israeli law…
The law is worded in very broad terms, and states that any person who owns property in Israel and lives, or is present, in an enemy country can be declared an absentee and the property will be transferred to the control of the Custodian — and used for the “development of the country.
The law is to be used in only the “rarest of rare cases”.
So what are enemy countries? Hmmm…? Anyone who wants to publicly destroy Israel? Hmmm…?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/27/.....index.html “White House wants the Pentagon, not the Central Intelligence Agency, to take the lead in these lethal operations.”
Obama has been calling for Congress to take the drone program out of his hands since 2009. Haqqani criticizes the drones, then begs us to help fight radicalism in his country. He just wants the money. Part of the problem with the drone strikes in Pak are due to the corruption within their own intelligence communities. So what are our choices? Do we just walk away from the war on terror and be isolationists, do we nuke all the brown countries into glass parking lots like the xenophobes want, do we put more of our men and women in uniform in harm’s way to “civilize” all the brown countries like the imperialists want,…? What do we do? What’s the easy answer?
8,
Islam will never change as long as Western nations insist in interfering in Islam countries’ affairs. In fact, we could say that Islamic terrorism was the response to all of our meddling over the past 100 years, especially the last 60 years.
It won’t be long before the champions of smaller and less intrusive government are flying drones up women’s vaginas to wage their War On Women (TM). They’re just waiting for the Lockheed or Amazon engineers to miniaturize them a little more.
(Full disclosure: Roger Rabbit owns stock in companies that build drones, including Lockheed and an Israeli defense contractor.)
@9 “all of our meddling over the past 100 years”
That’s a typo, right? Surely you meant “over the past 1000 years.”
@4 ” Puddy been saying for years liberal [sic] policies in these cities are destroying black families.”
Meanwhile conservative economic policies are lifting them up …
@6 So here we have the insane loon* trying to blame the failures and injustices of rightwing law’n’order policies on Democrats …
* Yes, I’m aware of the redundancy; but just about everything concerning him is redundant — redundant bullshit, etc.
@11,
Yeah, 1,000 years is more like it, not just 100 years.
Thanks senile schismatic IDIOT Wabbit @12!
You just claimed the Democrat [sic] party is not a law and order party. Instead the Democrat [sic] party is the party of lawlessness and chaos. We see that in SPADES in Baltimore right now.
Thanks for playing!
@8
There isn’t one.
@9
This is correct, and part of the hard answer is how to undo the damage that’s been done.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....eddie-Gray
@15 “You just claimed the Democrat [sic] party is not a law and order party. Instead the Democrat [sic] party is the party of lawlessness and chaos. We see that in SPADES in Baltimore right now.”
I’m glad you brought this up, because it seems the cops organized and instigated the Baltimore riots. Here’s what really happened according to numerous witnesses:
“When school let out that afternoon, police were in the area equipped with full riot gear. According to eyewitnesses in the Mondawmin neighborhood, the police were stopping busses and forcing riders, including many students who were trying to get home, to disembark. Cops shut down the local subway stop. They also blockaded roads near the Mondawmin Mall and Frederick Douglass High School, which is across the street from the mall, and essentially corralled young people in the area. That is, they did not allow the after-school crowd to disperse.
“Meghann Harris, a teacher at a nearby school, described on Facebook what happened: ‘Police were forcing busses to stop and unload all their passengers. Then, [Frederick Douglass High School] students, in huge herds, were trying to leave on various busses but couldn’t catch any because they were all shut down. No kids were yet around except about 20, who looked like they were waiting for police to do something. The cops, on the other hand, were in full riot gear, marching toward any small social clique of students…It looked as if there were hundreds of cops.
“The kids were ‘standing around in groups of 3-4,’ Harris said in a Facebook message to Mother Jones. ‘They weren’t doing anything. No rock throwing, nothing…The cops started marching toward groups of kids who were just milling about.’
“A teacher at Douglass High School, who asked not to be identified, tells a similar story: ‘When school was winding down, many students were leaving early with their parents or of their own accord.’ Those who didn’t depart early, she says, were stranded. Many of the students still at school at that point, she notes, wanted to get out of the area and avoid any Purge-like violence. Some were requesting rides home from teachers. But by now, it was difficult to leave the neighborhood. ‘I rode with another teacher home,’ this teacher recalls, ‘and we had to route our travel around the police in riot gear blocking the road…The majority of my students thought what was going to happen was stupid or were frightened at the idea. Very few seemed to want to participate in “the purge.”‘
“A parent who picked up his children from a nearby elementary school, says via Twitter, ‘The kids stood across from the police and looked like they were asking them “why can’t we get on the buses” but the police were just gazing…Majority of those kids aren’t from around that neighborhood. They NEED those buses and trains in order to get home.’ He continued: ‘If they would’ve let them children go home, yesterday wouldn’t have even turned out like that.’
“Meg Gibson, another Baltimore teacher, described a similar scene to Gawker: ‘The riot police were already at the bus stop on the other side of the mall, turning buses that transport the students away, not allowing students to board. They were waiting for the kids…Those kids were set up, they were treated like criminals before the first brick was thrown.’ With police unloading busses, and with the nearby metro station shut down, there were few ways for students to clear out.
“Several eyewitnesses in the area that afternoon say that police seemed to arrive at Mondawmin anticipating mobs and violence—prior to any looting. At 3:01 p.m., the Baltimore Police Department posted on its Facebook page: ‘There is a group of juveniles in the area of Mondawmin Mall. Expect traffic delays in the area.’ But many of the kids, according to eyewitnesses, were stuck there because of police actions.
http://www.motherjones.com/pol.....wmin-purge
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Well how about that? The police created their own photo-op riot. They’re lying about what happened to Freddie Gray, too. They leaked a phony story to the now-rightwing Bezos-owned Washington Post that Gray’s injuries were self-inflicted. A Baltimore TV reporter has debunked this story. I’ll just add this: Do you know how hard it is to break someone’s neck and sever their spinal cord? When the state does this to a condemned prisoner, they tie a thick rope around his neck and drop him through a trap door 5 to 7 feet, and even then sometimes the neck doesn’t break and the prisoner strangles to death suspended from the rope. The cops’ claim that a shackled Freddie Gray could have broken his own neck by banging his head against the interior wall of the police van is cock-and-bull. Anyone who believes that nonsense is gullible beyond description.
@15 Yeah, standing on a street corner and making eye contact with a cop is “lawlessness and chaos.” It certainly is you’re in Baltimore — and black. We can count on Piddles to defend lawless cops and blame the dead victim of police brutality for getting himself brutalized. After all, it’s his own damn fault for being born black. This wouldn’t have happened to him if he had chosen a whiter mother.
Was Freddie Gray Given A “Wild Ride”?
Well, now the truth is starting to come out, despite all the police lying and coverup about how they killed Freddie Gray:
“The mystery surrounding Freddie Gray’s death deepened Thursday with revelations from the second prisoner inside the van with Gray. Donta Allen had heard Gray trashing about and didn’t see any harm done to Gray, according to Baltimore police. But on Thursday Allen told WJZ-TV he heard more than just Gray’s movements. ‘So when we got to the station all I hear is them (police) like, “we got him, we gave him a run for his money,”‘ said Allen. The police denied that Gray was given what is known in Baltimore as a ‘wild ride,’ intended to frighten or even injure prisoners. But Police Commissioner Anthony Batts has admitted mistakes were made. ‘We know he was not buckled in the transportation wagon as he should have been,’ said Batts. ‘No excuses for that.'”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wh.....-gray-van/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Now it all makes perfect sense — why Gray wasn’t seatbelted in, why the police van stopped multiple times, why his pleas for medical help were ignored, and why the police higher-ups are hiding the results of their investigation: THE COPS GAVE HIM A “WILD RIDE.” And he died as a result. Someone needs to go to prison for this.
Puddy, I want to thank you for using “Democrat [sic] party” instead of your usual “DUMOCRETIN!”.
@51 Probably a typo. He’s likely drunk.
@9 And what of Charles Martel at Potiers in 732. Which complicates the whole western nations interfering with the middle east rhetoric. History is much more complicated. Much of the rhetoric about the crusades is a canard and ignores a lot of history where Arabs and Muslims are the aggressors. The Mongols also scared the Moslems but that just adds to the complexity of the near and middle east.
So what do we do when we deal with a nation like Iran that also has drones. (They copied ours and have some smart folks.) The Israelis’ are having to deal with drones being flown from somewhere and trying to enter Israeli airspace. So drones must have some military utility when they are popular with Iran or other nations. Could it be our political class are avoiding a serious discussion about whether we should risk our young men (and women?) to carry the spear into battle? Perhaps come home on the shield, and perhaps have to really acknowledge that war is not cheap nor is doing an occupation and doing an occupation well. The Russians certainly know how to occupy. Not many suggestions we allow them to just take care of business in the middle east and achieve their dreams of a warm water port or ports. The great game continues on.
@24
Drones are merely a technology that allows for pilotless flight. They have potentially lots of better uses if used intelligently.
It’s not just the technology itself that’s problematic, it’s the use of that technology to deploy bombs. And it’s the belief that if you can just kill a certain number of “bad guys” you solve the underlying issues that drive their radicalism in the first place.
If Iran was using drones to fire into Israeli cities at people they suspected of killing their nuclear scientists, it would certainly bring about a retaliatory invasion by western nations. So from that standpoint, employing drones that fire weapons is just as terrible a military solution for them as it for us.
For us, the blowback is less severe – because we’re far more powerful – but it still happens.
Absolutely, that was a big part of the point I’d wanted to make.
Thanks for the comments.