Skip to main content

Snowden leaks: Important details about drone killings

New Edward Snowden leaks shed light on the details of US drone strikes in places like Yemen and Pakistan and the tracking technologies that helped them. They focus on a strike targeting an Al-Qaeda surgeon that resulted in civilian casualties. The documents reviewed by the New York Times and the Guardian deal with the March 30, 2012 attack aimed at killing Dr. Khadim Usamah. The GCHQ newsletter, Comet News, described Usamah as a member of the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and 'the doctor who pioneered using surgically planted explosives.'”

According to the database of drone strikes maintained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the attack reportedly killed five AQAP militants and one civilian – Mohamed Saleh al-Suna, 60 – while injuring nine civilians, including six children. The documents also discuss how the strike was a product of the joint program between the US, British and Australian intelligence agencies. The Guardian described the program, codenamed 'Overhead,' as operation based on 'satellite, radio and some phone collection of intelligence.'”

During 2009, President Obama’s first year in office, Pakistan saw more US more drone strikes than in the preceding four years under President George W. Bush. The revelations have raised questions in the UK about the country’s involvement in undeclared US wars in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere.”

While officials insist the government broke no laws, the British public is very much opposed to drone warfare. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center poll, 59 percent of Britons opposed the drone strikes, while only 33 percent approved. While polls show over 50 percent of Americans support drone warfare, 45 US military veterans recently called on drone operators to stand down and stop the killing missions.”

More:

Comments

  1. This is both lazy and sloppy; certainly no way for a nation to carry on business.
    Even the Mafia has more couth.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why the 2026 Iran War is the Death of Israel, Trump & the American Empire

Double Down News   For decades, the Western war machine assumed its high-tech hegemony was untouchable. Not anymore...    Related: Five reasons a war with Iran will mark the final fall of US empire

George Soros tried to get rid of Yanis Varoufakis because the neoliberal regime could not handle Greece and Ukraine simultaneously

globinfo freexchange In a recent interview at the Greek channel, Crete TV, the former Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, made some interesting revelations. Among other things, he actually confirmed what the blog thought until now to be an exaggerated far-right conspiracy theory. He essentially confirmed that George Soros intervenes directly to political leaderships, substituting political institutions in Europe and elsewhere. Varoufakis said that, on June, 2015, George Soros tried to contact Alexis Tsipras via his own ‘channels’. In the interview, Varoufakis claims that he had no idea what Soros wanted to talk about. As Varoufakis also writes in his book Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment, for years he has been falsely portrayed by the pro-troika establishment and the anti-Semitic Right as Soros’s stooge in Greece. Yet, Soros’s message to the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, came as a perverse vindication. ‘ Fire...

An example of how the banking cartels control countries

the Greek case by SCH If we take a look at the Greek legislation, we can understand why the country is totally controlled by big private banks. According to the legislation concerning operating rules of the Primary Dealers selected in order to provide specialised services in the government securities market , one can read that: From article 1, paragraph1: as Primary Dealers are appointed institutions authorised as credit institutions or investment firms in a country which is a member of the European Union or authorised as such in another jurisdiction by a regulatory authority which, in the opinion of the Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Bank of Greece (hereinafter “the Competent Authorities”), imposes an adequate supervisory/investor protection regime . Primary Dealers are selected in order to provide specialised services in the government securities market, i.e., to participate in the syndications and auctions of Greek government securities in the primary mark...

Όσοι περνάν των χώρα της απόγνωσης παθαίνουν αμνησία ...

globinfo freexchange Δανειστήκαμε αυτή τη φράση από ένα παλιό κομμάτι της Ελληνικής ροκ μπάντας "Τρύπες", για να περιγράψουμε με λίγα λόγια αυτό που φαίνεται να έχει πάθει η Ελληνική κοινωνία.  Πώς είναι δυνατόν μια ολόκληρη κοινωνία να έχει ξεχάσει ποιοι τη χρεοκόπησαν; Ποιοι έστησαν το άθλιο σύστημα των κρατικοδίαιτων 'ημέτερων' και της οικογενειοκρατίας; Ποιοι έσωσαν τις τράπεζες με πακτωλό δισεκατομμυρίων σε βάρος της μεσαίας τάξης; Ποιοι έκαναν τη μίζα και το ρουσφέτι επάγγελμα; Πώς είναι δυνατόν αυτή η κοινωνία να ετοιμάζεται να ξαναφέρει στην εξουσία ένα κομμάτι αυτού του άθλιου πολιτικού κατεστημένου, με την επιστροφή μάλιστα του αμετανόητα νεοφιλελεύθερου Κυριάκου Μητσοτάκη και της ομάδας του;   Η απόγνωση που έφεραν εννέα χρόνια βάρβαρων νεοφιλελεύθερων πολιτικών και σκληρής λιτότητας και που ανάγκασε τη χώρα να διαβεί τον εφιαλτικό μονόδρομο της μόνιμης χρεοκοπίας, πρέπει να έπαιξε σημαντικό ρόλο.  Διότι ως γνωστόν, η απελπισία...

Προβλέψεις ...

GR elections Update (15/9): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις (μετά το δεύτερο debate): ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 28-30% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 11-13% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 2,5-3% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 2,5-3,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ + ΔΗΜΑΡ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update (11/9): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις (μετά το πρώτο debate): ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 25-28% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 11-13% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 3,5-4% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 2,5-3,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ + ΔΗΜΑΡ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update (04/9): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις: ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 23-25% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 12-15% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 3,5-4% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 2,5-3,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update (29/8): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις: ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 23-25% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 12-15% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 4-4,5% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 4-4,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update : Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις: ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 26-27% ...

Trump PANICS As US Bases BURN & GROUND INVASION PLANNED!!

Secular Talk    

How Western societies lost their faith in Vision

Why people don't rise up massively today? Why there are no real revolutions? How we tolerate all things that have been imposed to us? These questions come up in people's minds more and more often today in Greece and abroad, due to the economic crisis. Some theories are circulated as an answer, among these, explanations which include, for example, the psychosynthesis of modern Greeks, but the truth is that there is something more fundamental behind this passive behaviour and concerns not only Greece, but the entire Western world. by system failure Prior to the beginning of the 20th century, Friedrich Nietzsche declares God's death and Western world will put all its hopes in science. Laplace's Determinism leads to the almighty man, who through science, can find all the answers for the world. Technology, which naturally comes from scientific discoveries, promises prosperity and a better life for the majority. Science becomes the central "pylon...

The dominant elite ready to break the "social contract"

Hyper-automation will allow the super-rich to “get rid” of the rest by system failure Since the French revolution and the new form of the urban states-democracies, the ruling class had to make the so-called "social contract" with the majority. From the moment that the dominant urban class took the power from feudalism and monarchy, should had to find a way to protect the means of production and the labor force. Therefore, the ethnic consciousness in each state served to bound the majority in order to shape national armies to protect the ruling class interests. In exchange, the ruling urban class had given the so-called social state, labor rights, etc., through the nation-state as a carrier and guarantor for all these benefits for the middle and lower classes. Since then, there have been a lot of battles and the majority managed to conquer some benefits. At the start of 20th century, the technology progress had brought the mass production. Western s...

Already happens: Capitalism destroys human labor force and goes to the next phase

by system failure Connecting the dots one can discover the most nightmarish scenarios. Destructive capitalism's next phase is the total substitution of the human labor force with robotic machines, or in other words, the hyper-automatization. There is a process taking place right now, and no one (or nearly no one) knows what would happen after its completion. The true picture behind unemployment From a latest article in PressTV: “ Did you know that there are nearly 102 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now? And 20 percent of all families in the United States do not have a single member that is employed. So how in the world can the government claim that the unemployment rate has “dropped” to '6.3 percent'?” “ Well, it all comes down to how you define who is 'unemployed'. For example, last month the government moved another 988,000 Americans into the 'not in the labor force' category.” http://www.presstv.ir/detail...

America's 250th birthday: The most divided yet?

Liu Xin   America is turning 250 years old, but this is no ordinary birthday celebration. National pride has hit a 25-year low, two rival celebrations are splitting the country, and the political and economic landscape is more fractured than ever.   In this episode of Pointcast, host Liu Xin sits down with Ben Norton, Editor-in-Chief of Geopolitical Economy Report @GeopoliticalEconomyReport, to unpack what's really going on beneath the surface of America's semiquincentennial.