Drone-Killing the Fifth Amendment
by Peter Van Buren
You can’t get more serious about protecting the people from their government than the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, specifically in its most critical clause: “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” In 2011, the White House ordered the [...]
From the IPS United Nations Newsbriefs
Failure to account and justify lethal drone activity by the United States represents a major violation of international law and international human rights law, a former U.N. rapporteur said Wednesday.
Since the beginning of drone attacks in 2001, the U.S. has conducted around 450 lethal drone strikes that have [...]
via LobeLog
by Tyler Cullis
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that January was the first month without a U.S. drone strikein the Pakistani tribal areas since 2011. The Washington Post argues that this is the result of a request from Pakistan’s government after ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, though some suggest [...]
via LobeLog
by Daniel Luban
Earlier this year, William Saletan published a typically contrarian piece titled “In Defense of Drones”. The subtitle — “they’re the worst form of war, except for all the others” — gives a good indication of the general line of argument; Saletan suggested that the collateral damage of the [...]
How Does the Global War on Terror Ever End?
via Tom Dispatch
[This epilogue to Scahill’s bestselling book, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield, is posted with the kind permission of its publisher, Nation Books.]
On January 21, 2013, Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term [...]
by Jim Lobe
via IPS News
Responding to growing criticism by human rights groups and foreign governments, U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday announced potentially significant shifts in what his predecessor called the “global war on terror”.
In a major policy address at the National Defense University here, Obama said drone strikes against [...]
via Lobe Log
by James A. Russell
With the disappearance of war between developed states in the post-World War II era, policing intra-state violence on land and trying to punish so-called rogue states constitutes the main security problems facing the international community.
As the world’s sole military power capable of global power projection, many [...]