drones 
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
9/28/2021
Droning On: America's Assassins-in-Chief
by Tom Engelhardt
Since the Bush administration, every President has used drone technology to be the nation's assassin-in-chief. In a nation increasingly tolerant of mass COVID death at home, does this even have the power to shock?
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SOURCE: The Conversation
9/29/2021
Autonomous Robot Weapons Could be More Destabilizing than Nukes
by James Dawes
"Imagine a world in which militaries, insurgent groups and international and domestic terrorists can deploy theoretically unlimited lethal force at theoretically zero risk at times and places of their choosing, with no resulting legal accountability."
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SOURCE: Tom Dispatch
1/12/20
How the President Became a Drone Operator
by Allegra Harpootlian
From Obama to Trump, the Escalation of Drone Warfare
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
3-3-16
Our drones kill hundreds of wedding party civilians and no one notices?
by Tom Engelhardt
This is outrageous says TomDispatch historian Tom Engelhardt.
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11-29-15
Herman Melville’s Take on Technology Echoes in Today’s Conversation About Drones
by David A. Mindell
It takes courage and skill to fly a drone.
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7-31-15
5 Things You Should Know about the CIA’s Covert Drone Assassination Campaign
by Brian Glyn Williams
Compared with standard bombing, the current drone campaign is far more precise than any previous bombing campaign in history.
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7-10-15
What You Don’t Hear in the Media: A Defense of Drones
by Brian Glyn Williams
An interview with the man who ran the first covert drone program, Lt. General David Deptula USAF (Ret)
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SOURCE: Special to HNN
1-23-15
Drones and the new ethics of war
by Neve Gordon
Because drones transform warfare into a ghostly teleguided act orchestrated from a base in Nevada or Missouri, whereby soldiers no longer risk their lives, the critical attitude of citizenry towards war is also profoundly transformed.
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1-11-15
Sure Drones Seem Like a Good Military Option Now, but If We Use Them, so Will Others
by Thomas I. Faith
That’s the lesson of chemical warfare.
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SOURCE: Popular Science
11-26-14
Iconic Cold War Spyplane May Get A Drone Makeover
Based at times in Area 51, the U-2 spyplane tested the very limits of human endurance and Cold War technology when it first flew in 1955.
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12-30-13
America's Love Affair With "Technowar"
by Steven Casey
American presidents have always relied on high technology to reduce U.S. casualties ... and increase enemy body counts.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
12-20-13
“Bride and Boom!”
by Tom Engelhardt
We’re number one... in obliterating wedding parties.
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11-4-13
The Age of the Drone
by Lloyd C. Gardner
President Obama has made it clear: even after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, there will still be drone strikes.
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A History of the World’s First Drone War
by Brian Glyn Williams
Towards an effort to historicize a new kind of war.
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Trayvon Martin and Edward Snowden
by Vicente L. Rafael
Could we say that within the particular imperial and racial nexus we find ourselves in, that Snowden, despite his obvious differences from Trayvon, might also share his fate?
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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Obama's Terrorism Speech
by Juan Cole
Originally posted on Informed Comment.Here are the good, the bad and the ugly things in President Obama’s important speech on counter-terrorism Thursday, and in the off-stage steps he has announced that mysteriously did not appear in the speech:The Good:
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No, Sen. Graham, Domestic Drones are NOT a Good Idea
by Daniel Martin Varisco
When exactly did a terrorist act, not an attack from another country or an armed insurrection from within, define what a “battlefield” is?
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The Ever-Destructive Dreams of Air Power Enthusiasts
by William J. Astore
RAF bombers over Hamburg in 1943.Originally posted on TomDispatch.com
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SOURCE: Omaha World-Herald
2-18-13
Jonathan Zimmerman: A History Lesson on Assassinations
I taught a course last month in the United Arab Emirates, which isn’t a democracy. But according to an Emirati guy I met there, the United States isn’t much of a democracy, either.“Anyone you don’t like, you just assassinate him with a drone,” he told me. “Shoot first, ask questions later.”But now lots of people are asking questions about U.S. drone strikes, especially after the recent confirmation hearings for John O. Brennan. Nominated by President Barack Obama to direct the Central Intelligence Agency, Brennan defended the CIA’s targeted killings in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere as essential to national security....
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SOURCE: Salon
2-11-13
Alex Seitz-Wald: Would Lincoln Use Drones?
Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter.With the nation deep in the throes of Hollywood-induced Lincoln-philia, Washington Examiner editor Mark Tapscott asked Friday what the revered president might do about one of the thorniest political questions of 2013: “Would Lincoln have droned Robert E. Lee?” His answer — an imagined conversation between Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that has the 16th president remarking “OMG” and “sheesh” — is dumb, but the question and answer are more interesting that Tapscott gives them credit.Lincoln is rightly held up as the paragon of the American presidency, so it makes sense that people would ask how he would handle a tough moral question like the use of unmanned killer drones, which has compelling arguments both for and against. WWLD? We consulted experts and the historical record to find out. The answer may surprise you.
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