Drone Strikes, Police Violence, and Suspect Classes in American Justice

Last week, NSA domestic surveillance programs, as well as several provisions of the PATRIOT Act were shut down. First off, credit where credit is due: I disagree with Rand Paul on a great many things, but he has consistently been good on surveillance issues, and he blocked the Senate from fast-tracking a vote on the…

Language and the War on Terror

A while ago, I think I mentioned on here that the BBC was no longer going to use the words “terrorist” or “terrorism” in their reporting (except when quoting someone.) The BBC explained this policy change by stating: “We recognise the existence and the reality of terrorism – at this point in the twenty first…

War on Terror Update 2: Yemen, Libya, and Collateral Damage

Not long ago, Yemen was cited as an example of successful U.S. counterterrorism policy. President Obama described our engagement there, relying pretty much entirely on the use of drones in cooperation with the Yemeni government, as a model for future counterterrorism operations, specifically against ISIS. Unfortunately, our counterterrorism partner, the Yemeni government, has collapsed. Several…

Links to Start Your Week 2/22/15

Middle East 21 Egyptians working in Libya were executed by the ISIL this week. The men were Coptic Christians. The move is being interpreted as both evidence of ISIL’s spreading influence beyond Iraq and Syria, and men in the video said it was also a warning to Europe. Spokesmen from ISIL have talked before about…

War on Terror Update 1: Kayla Mueller

Once again, time has gotten away from me a bit on the blogging front. You would think that being snowed in half the time would make me productive on this front, but somehow that was not the case. But anyway, a lot has been happening in the realm of the Global War on Terror, and…

Links to Start Your Week 1/25/15

Middle East King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has died. His 79-year-old brother succeeds him. Meanwhile, the once close relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia has gotten somewhat more strained, but has not been severed. As has always been the case, one of the key reasons for that is Saudi oil. You may have heard…

Post-Midterm Thoughts

So elections happened this week in the U.S. And there were a lot of big victories for Republicans. As a self-identified anarcho-social democrat, this was not particularly encouraging to me. On the other hand, there were victories that I appreciate. Across the country, people rejected so-called “personhood” amendments (a.k.a. attempts to outlaw abortion and some…

Evaluating Risk in the War on Terror

It’s been a while (this grad school thing is time consuming,) but I have things to say to the Internet! And as they often do, these things concern the War on Terror. I’ve written before about the need for a new strategy, or really any actual strategy, in the War on Terror, and my intense…

Links to Start Your Week 3/16/14

War on Terror Rolling Stone brings us great information on the CIA spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee staffers who were reviewing its interrogation and detention program. The Senate staffers accessed an internal CIA review that CIA officials claim that they were not authorized to access. Interesting point: the internal review, in other words what…

Links to Start Your Week 3/9/14

Surveillance The Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked the FBI to look into congressional staffers who have been working on a report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation practices. The move comes after CIA officials complained that they thought the staffers had accessed classified information somehow. Democracy Noam Chomsky comments on the inherently undemocratic tendencies…

The Ignored Dangers of Autonomous Weapon Systems

The Center for a New American Security just published a report called 20YY: Preparing for War in the Robotic Age. The report discusses the dawn of a new era, one in which “unmanned and autonomous systems will play central war-fighting roles for the United States, its allies and partners, and its adversaries.” Meanwhile, the head…

Links to Start Your Week 11/17/13

Surveillance/War on Terror Mother Jones published what I think is an excellent article on this year’s revelations about the NSA’s spying practices. Basically, they make the point that even with this absurd amount of data collection, which has ostensibly been mostly to enhance U.S. national security and foreign policy making, those continue to be areas…