Ernst Wolff

A new study, “Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan,” describes the terrorizing of Pakistan’s civilian population by US drone assaults.

The study, released by researchers at New York University School of Law and Stanford University Law School, includes interviews with survivors of drone attacks and relatives of victims, giving a searing account of the horror and suffering that US imperialism has inflicted on an entire population.

Armed US drones first began operating over Afghanistan in October 2001, followed by attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, where most killings have occurred so far. From 2002 until today, the US has extended its arsenal from 167 to 7,000 unmanned aerial vehicles that are remotely controlled from facilities in the US, including the US Air Force Base in Creech, Nevada and the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The Obama administration has increased the number of attacks from between 45 and 52 under G.W. Bush to 293. It has also changed the strategy for picking the drones’ victims from “personality strikes” – aimed at high-ranking members of alleged terrorist organizations – to a strategy of “signature strikes.”

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Paul Craig Roberts

Americans live in a matrix of lies. The endless lies have created a culture of delusion. And this is why America is lost.

A writer’s greatest disappointments are readers who have knee-jerk responses. Not all readers, of course. Some readers are thoughtful and supportive. Others express thanks for opening their eyes. But the majority are happy when a writer tells them what they want to hear and are unhappy when he writes what they don’t want to hear.

For the left-wing, Ronald Reagan is the great bogeyman. Those on the left don’t understand supply-side economics as a macroeconomic innovation that cured stagflation by utilizing the impact of fiscal policy on aggregate supply. Instead, they see “trickle-down economics” and tax cuts for the rich. Leftists don’t understand that the Reagan administration intervened in Grenada and Nicaragua in order to signal to the Soviets that there would be no more Soviet expansion or client states and that it was time to negotiate the end of the cold war. Instead, leftists see in Reagan the origin of rule by the one percent and the neoconservatives’ wars for US hegemony.

In 1981 curtailing inflation meant collapsing nominal GNP and tax revenues. The result would be budget deficits–anathema to Republicans– during the period of readjustment. Ending the cold war meant curtailing the military/security complex and raised the specter in conservative circles of “the anti-Christ” Gorbachev deceiving Reagan and taking over the world.

In pursuing his two main goals, Reagan was up against his own constituency and relied on rhetoric to keep his constituency on board with his agenda. The left wing heard the rhetoric but failed to comprehend the agenda.

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Barry Grey

Within American ruling circles, it is well known that plans for war against Iran are far advanced, but there is a conspiracy of silence by both political parties and the media to keep this reality out of the presidential election. The intent is to drag the American people into yet another bloody war in the Middle East on the basis of false pretexts and lies, despite broad popular opposition to an attack on Iran.

Nothing reveals the anti-democratic and fraudulent character of the elections more clearly than the refusal to explain to the American people the military carnage that is being prepared in their name and allow them to express their democratic will.

Over the past week, a number of commentaries in the American and European press have warned of an attack by either Israel or the US, or both, against Iran in the near future, and a bipartisan group of former foreign policy officials, retired generals and former legislators has issued a report outlining the potentially catastrophic consequences of an unprovoked attack on the Persian Gulf country.

Some of the recent articles have the character of a pre-emptive political strike by ruling class figures wary of a war against Iran, while others suggest that such a war is necessary and inevitable. The confluence of such commentaries is itself an indication that detailed planning for war is underway.

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