John Grant

The news that Barack Obama -- a Constitutional scholar and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize -- has taken personal charge of lethal US drone hits in Yemen and Pakistan is one of those stories that takes time to sink in.

May God have mercy on our souls.

The New York Times stresses how serious the issue has become. “With China and Russia watching, the United States has set an international precedent for sending drones over borders to kill enemies.” It’s no longer a cool video-game experiment; it’s the beginning of robot warfare, and, if history is a lesson, it will have unanticipated consequences and our enemies will learn to counter the weapon with imaginative weapons of their own, including drones. We should expect to be surprised and blindsided. Martin Luther King spoke of it as a futile rising cycle of violence.

Exactly how many non-combatants and innocent people are being killed is the big question. There's no way to know. One, there’s a pathological level of secrecy in our militarized government and, two, we can’t believe a word the government says anyway.

The President’s counterterrorism adviser John Bennan, for example, makes the preposterous claim that “not a single non-combatant has been killed in a year of strikes.” The Times interviewed former intelligence officials familiar with the issue and they “expressed disbelief.” It recalls the days during the Vietnam War when all Vietnamese corpses were VC.

We know of entire families killed in Yemen, as reported by Jeremy Scahill. And Britain’s Sunday Times reports since Obama began the campaign, 300 to 500 civilians have been killed, more than 60 of them kids.

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Stephen Lendman

Journalist Marat Musin about Houla Massacre (GR.)

Musin's article is powerful reading. Circulating it widely is important. Only public rage can stop wars. Nothing else works. Knowing the truth and spreading it has impact. Imperial America and war profiteers fear that most. [S. Lendman]

Going to war depends first on selling it. Gaining public support is vital. Previous articles discussed it. Walter Lippmann coined the phrase "manufacture of consent."

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky discussed the "propaganda model" in their book titled "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media."

Media scoundrels use it to manipulate and control public thinking and perceptions. News and information are filtered. Acceptable "residue" only is reported. Dissent is marginalized. Government and dominant private interests are prioritized.

Michael Parenti explained: "The enormous gap between what US leader do....and what American's think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments...."

In their book titled "Propaganda and Persuasion," Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell defined their topic as "the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist." Richard Alan Nelson described the technique as follows:

"Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels." "A propaganda organization employs propagandists who engage in propagandism—the applied creation and distribution of such forms of persuasion."

Propaganda has different forms. Advertisers use it to generate sales. So do politicians to get elected. Religious leaders use it to indoctrinate the faithful. So do nations to promote their agendas.

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David Harris-Gershon

Families cannot sleep together for fear of appearing, in the eyes of a drone, as a dangerous gathering. Village elders cannot meet according to tradition to discuss resource allocations because, in the eyes of a drone, they may be deemed a nefarious group. Citizens cannot gather to plan a nonviolent protest against drone attacks for fear of being killed by them.

The voices you are about to hear belong to individuals the United States may soon kill or maim – whether with clear-eyed intention as pinpoint targets or by mistake.

They belong to those who have – for years – been terrorized by our country, those who continue to be terrorized by our country, those who are bereaved and fearful and paralyzed because of our country.

They are voices belonging to drone attack survivors from the village of Datta Khel in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan, voices collected by the U.K. human rights group Reprieve and included in a lawsuit filed against the British government for aiding America’s unaccountable and illegal drone campaign.

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Adnan Al-Daini

It is clear to anyone with an open mind, willing to be guided by reason, that severe cuts and austerity as a medicine to cure the patient are doing nothing of the sort; actually they are killing it.

Right wing politicians and commentators have always been able to appeal to the lowest instincts of human nature in a way that chimes with the aspirations of the many. Take, for example, the issue of the savage cuts in government spending; they are presented in the guise of a "family finances" argument.   As a family “wouldn't you want to pay your debts and live within your means?” is an appealing argument.   There is, of course, a crucial difference between running a household budget and running the country’s finances. 

If you are lucky enough to be employed, and you discover that your expenditure exceeds your income or you are in debt, the right thing to do is for your family to economize, so that it lives within its means and pays its debts.  

The income of a government, however, comes from the taxes we pay, and that depends on the economic activity in the country and the level of employment. In a recession economic activity is down, unemployment is up, and thus the tax intake goes down. 

Austerity and cuts will depress economic activity even further and unemployment will increase, thus reducing government income.  Moreover, the rise in unemployment has to be paid for by the government to ensure that people do not descend into the sort of poverty that currently exists in some developing countries.  Austerity, therefore, hits the economy with a double whammy, low income for the government and greater expenditure.

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