How to make civilian drone casualties disappear

In the US we are constantly regaled with stories in the media of high-level people in al Qaeda being killed by drone strikes and how few civilians have been harmed. We are constantly reminded of how precise drones are. But of course, all that means is that there is a high probability that a drone hits the target that it was aiming at. It says nothing about whether the target was the right one to begin with, even if one concedes that the US government has the right to target and kill anyone it pleases. [Read more…]

Film review: The Conspirator (no spoilers)

As an immigrant who never studied US history formally as part of a curriculum, my knowledge of it has large holes. So although I knew that Abraham Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth in a theater in 1865 at the beginning of his second term of office during the waning days of the Civil War, I was not aware of the precise motive or that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy that sought to also kill the vice-president and the Secretary of State. [Read more…]

The Potemkin constitution revisited

The New York Times had a long article showing how willingly and easily Obama sidesteps the constitution he has sworn to protect, all the while presenting him as someone who grapples gravely with issues. The article provides another striking example, if one were needed, of what I wrote about before, how constitutional protections are being hollowed out, to become mere window dressing. [Read more…]