Category: War

A bloody month in the drone wars: 7 separate drone strikes kill dozens of civilians across 4 war zones

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3 December 2019 — Drone Wars

November 2019 saw seven civilian casualties incidents from drone strikes in four different war-zones illustrating the growing spread of drone warfare. The seven strikes between them are thought to have killed  41 civilians including 11 children.

Proponents of the use of armed drones often argue that drones are better at warfare as they can  sit above the ‘fog and friction’ of war and therefore limit the harm to civilians as they have a better view of the ground.  The reality, however, is that drones appear to be transferring the risk of warfare away from combatants onto the shoulders of civilians.

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‘Precise’ Strikes: Fractured Bodies, Fractured Lives – An update on Israel’s drone wars

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11 November 2019 — Drone Wars

Chloe Skinner

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Five years ago, Drone Wars published a ground breaking report examining Israel’s production, use and proliferation of military drones. Today we are pleased to publish ‘Precise Strikes: Fractured Bodies, Fractured Lives’ which brings our 2014 report up-to-date. The report looks beyond the veil of secrecy that surrounds Israel’s development and deployment of armed drones to explore their use and impact, particularly in Gaza in the five years since 2014.

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UK drones more likely to target individuals than infrastructure data analysis reveals

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5 November 2019 — Drone Warfare

Chris Cole

Drone video showing ISIS fighter with children in Iraq.*

Examination of UK air strike data from the past two years shows that British unmanned drones have been used far more often to attack individuals on the ground in Iraq and Syria than the UK’s other strike aircraft, the Tornado or the Typhoon.

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What Does the U.S. Public Think of Its Government Arming and Bombing the World?

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22 October 2019 — Washington’s Blog

by David Swanson

Data for Progress for quite a while appeared to be yet another U.S. PEP group (Progressive Except for Peace). They were producing useful polling reports on all sorts of topics as if 96% of humanity didn’t exist. Foreign policy just couldn’t be found. They told me they were just getting around to it. You still can’t find it from the homepage of their website (or at least it’s beyond my navigational skills), but Data for Progress has now published a report called “Voters Want to See a Progressive Overhaul of American Foreign Policy.”

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OPCW: A Site of Struggle for Impartiality, Independence and International Legitimacy in War Crimes Investigations

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5 October 2019 — Tim Hayward

By Tim Hayward

The use of chemical weapons is a war crime. The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) – signed by almost every nation[1] – aims to expunge their use from the face of our planet. Charged with implementing the Convention is the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Part of its task is to investigate such use when alleged to have occurred. It has played a particularly prominent role in relation to Syria since the US administration under President Obama declared the use of chemical weapons a ‘Red Line’ the transgression of which would trigger military intervention in the war.

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Relaying Views of US’s Top General, Newsweek Sees No Need for Countervailing Facts

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1 October 2019 — FAIR

by Joshua Cho

Newsweek: NATO Superiority Over Russia Has 'Eroded,' Forcing Alliance to Create New Strategy, U.S. General Says

Newsweek (9/18/19) reports NATO is losing “superiority” over Russia, without mentioning that the alliance’s combined military budget is 17 times that of Russia.

Lazy, one-sided reports like Newsweek’s “NATO Superiority Over Russia Has ‘Eroded,’ Forcing Alliance to Create New Strategy, US General Says” (9/18/19), by David Brennan, are a major reason why US officials are still taken seriously when they demand further investments in the military/industrial complex and the strengthening of an unnecessary military alliance like NATO.

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US Reaper drones test Agile Condor: Another step closer to ‘Killer Robots’

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27 September 2019 — Drone Wars

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, manufacturer of the Reaper drone, has recently been awarded a US Air Force contract to demonstrate the  ‘Agile Condor’ artificial intelligence system with the MQ-9 Reaper drone.  According to General Atomics President David R. Alexander,
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The Black Swan Is a Drone By Charles Hugh Smith

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15 September 2019 — Of Two Minds

What was “possible” yesterday is now a low-cost proven capability, and the consequences are far from predictable.

Predictably, the mainstream media is serving up heaping portions of reassurances that the drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities are no big deal and full production will resume shortly. The obvious goal is to placate global markets fearful of an energy disruption that could tip a precarious global economy into recession.

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Did Trump Tacitly Threaten to Use Biological Weapons to Exterminate 10 Million? By Terje Maloy

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4 September 2019 — Global Research

“We could win that war so fast if I wanted to kill 10 million people … which I don’t. I’m not looking to kill a big portion of that country [Afghanistan],”

“I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone,”

“It would be over in — literally, in 10 days. And I don’t want to do — I don’t want to go that route.” (ABC July 24.2019) (emphasis added)

“As I’ve said, and I’ll say it any number of times – and this is not using nuclear – we could win that war in a week if we wanted to fight it, but I’m not looking to kill 10 million people,” (quoted by Press TV, Aug 21.2019) (emphasis added)

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United States Withdraws from INF Treaty, Torpedoing Global Arms-Control Structure

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2 September 2019 — Global Research

Russia and China Call Security Council Meeting to Confront New Threats to International Peace and Security

By Carla Stea

Ambassador Matjila, South Africa:

“It is indeed deeply troubling that a long-established arms control instrument such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty has unraveled, placing not only the region of Europe but the whole world at risk of a nuclear war and catastrophe.”

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