Links 10/2/2013: Drones, War on Protest, Innovative Torture, and Politics of Leaks
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-10 10:56:47 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-10 10:56:47 UTC
Drones
-
Civilian drone deaths in Afghanistan tripled last year, according to a report by a UN agency. Forty-five civilians died in drone strikes in 2013.
-
Patricia “Paki” Wieland, Northampton, was among 12 people sentenced to jail on disorderly conduct charges during a 2012 protest at Hancock Air Base.
Wieland, a retired professor at Antioch University New England in Keene, N.H., and 15 other members of the Upstate New York Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars were charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct after being arrested in DeWitt, N.Y., Oct. 25, 2012. Members of the group were holding a rally at the gates of Hancock Air National Guard Base when they were arrested. Wieland and her group argue that by carrying out drone strikes, which sometimes kill civilians, the United States is violating international law.
-
An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.
-
In closing, a defiant Jackson mocks his audience, saying: “Stop whining about drones”. I daresay the families of unintended drone victims around the world are unlikely to get behind him on this one.
-
A drone-fired US missile struck a car southeast of here on a winter night last year, killing two alleged Al-Qaeda operatives who lived openly in their community. But it also killed two cousins who were giving the men a ride and who the Yemeni government later said were innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That incident, and other strikes that have followed, helped fuel anger here over civilian casualties from US drone attacks and what critics say is an even less scrutinized problem: The targeting of suspects who are within the reach of the law.
-
The CIA and U.S. military are increasingly relying on surveillance information from the NSA to locate then attack drone targets, with innocent people being killed as a result, according to allegations made in a new publication, The Intercept.
-
The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.
-
The NSA's surveillance programs are often used to help carry out drone strikes on targets, according to a new report. An anonymous former drone operator for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) told The Intercept — a new publication helmed by Glenn Greenwald, who broke the first of many NSA revelations last year — that the US military and CIA use the NSA's metadata analysis and phone tracking abilities to identify airstrike targets without confirming their veracity on the ground. The claims were corroborated by documents provided by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
-
In an exclusive interview, Boyle points out that "Obama's victims are Muslims" and Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention expressly defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group""
-
As for Mearsheimer, the National Interest has published an important piece by the realist scholar that takes on elitist liberal-interventionist ideas more forcefully than any article I’ve read. Called “America Unhinged,” the piece argues that the U.S. has no dog in the Syria fight and no ability to affect the outcome, and– this will be echoed by the left– the price of liberal interventionism has been the loss of civil liberties at home to a national security state and the destruction of American example abroad by the murderous drone attacks.
Torture
-
Other approved torture techniques described included “the attention grasp, walling, the facial hold, the facial slap (insult slap), the abdominal slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation beyond 72 hours … the use of harmless insects, the water board.”
-
It’s been one year since former CIA analyst and counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou was sentenced to prison for 30 months, the first American official to do time for the government’s torture policies during the Global War on Terror.
This is what whistleblower advocates like to point out – and Kiriakou, 49, strongly believes himself – that he is not in jail for doing the torture or even promoting it, but being the first counterterrorism official to acknowledge the use of waterboarding, and then speak publicly against it.
Wikileaks
-
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has claimed that a woman he is alleged to have raped sent text messages admitting that he never assaulted her.
-
A lawyer for one of the Swedish women accusing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of rape ripped calls by some public officials for an end to the investigation.
-
Even as members of Sweden's parliament have been stepping up pressure on prosecutors to question Julian Assange on the sexual allegations he faces in the country, Assange in a Wikileaks affidavit has claimed that text messages between the two alleged victims prove his innocence.
-
A former Swedish prosecutor has written an op-ed for the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, where he suggests the country’s office i# charge of pursuing the case against WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange terminate it entirely.
Rolf Hillegren urges the Prosecutor General to reverse the decision to reopen the investigation, revoke the detention order and withdraw the arrest warrant.
For three years, Sweden has been trying to have him extradited so he can be questioned on sexual allegations made by two women. He sought and obtained asylum from Ecuador and has been living in the Ecuadorean embassy in the United Kingdom since June 2012.
-
John Timoney has a face like a fist and a CV out of The Departed. He's been a cop in New York, Miami and Philadelphia. And now he's advising the Bahraini government on policing matters.
That's the Bahraini government, the one that gases, tortures and kills protesters as their preferred method of public order policing. And that's Timoney, who's been called "the worst cop in America" and faced hundreds of complaints over his violent approach to public order policing in the U.S.
-
As the illegal wildlife trade has boomed, it's also become more sophisticated. High prices for ivory, rhino horn, pangolin, and everything else have attracted organized crime and militants, and despite regular busts, entrenched trafficking rings remain elusive. To aid law enforcement and gather intelligence, a group of wildlife organizations have launched WildLeaks, a secure whistleblower and tipping system modeled after WikiLeaks.
-
The organisation that publishes secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources, revealed the information in a tweet. However, it did not mention the percentage of funding in digital currencies.
Politics
-
The tape (listen below) was released today, on the eve of Nuland’s second trip to meet with Ukrainian protestors and opposition leaders in the past two months — last time she passed out cookies to protestors.
The taped conversation demonstrates in clear detail that while Secretary of State John Kerry decries any foreign meddling in Ukraine’s internal affairs, his State Department is virtually managing the entire process. The “F**k the EU” part is her expressing anger that the EU is not moving fast enough with regime change in Ukraine and her plan is to get the UN involved in the process.
-
The "Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons," says that member States should be disarming their nuclear weapons, not restoring, rebuilding, arming, and testing them. This test seems to be in direct contradiction to the Treaty, at a time when the U.S. is engaged with measures to prevent Iran from enriching its uranium.
-
Western anti-Russian sentiment persists.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Twitter as X-Rated Hatred: Criticising Microsoft is Not OK, Calling for Beheadings (With Bounties on People's Heads) is OK
- Twitter automation missed 'hit job' advertising
- Balancing Activism Against (or With) Basic Necessities and Daniel Cantarín on Our Collective Battle for Software Freedom Around the World
- "I'm VERY angry about lots of stuff happening here in Argentina, all of it shielded behind the word "freedom"."
-
- Links 16/08/2024: YouTube Bans and Surveillance Expanded
- Links for the day
- We Were Right All Along and the Collaborators of Microsoft Helped Competition Crimes of Microsoft
- Once again vindicated regarding UEFI "secure boot"
- [Meme] The New Windows Slogan
- stat me up
- Addendum: Associate's Notes on Free Software as a Labour Issue and the Connectivity Swindles
- these are related issues/causes
- Microsofters Infiltrating Roles of Authority and Government Positions to Protect Microsoft and to FUD Microsoft's Competition
- friends of Microsofters who bully me and my wife
- Links 16/08/2024: UK Skills Deficit and Kim Dotcom to be Extradited to the US (for Doing the Same Stuff GAFAM Does)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 16/08/2024: Overgeneralisation and Games
- Links for the day
- Russia's Yandex 5 Times Bigger Than Microsoft... in Ukraine
- They'd rather rely on the Kremlin than on Microsoft
- [Meme] Gemini is Different, So What?
- different, not worse
- Now It's "Official": Over 4,000 Known Gemini Capsules in Lupa
- For the first time ever
- Clown Computing
- Reprinted with permission from Dr. Andy Farnell
- [Meme] What Freedom Means to IBM
- Free labou
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 15, 2024
- IRC logs for Thursday, August 15, 2024
- From 99% in 2012 to 27% in 2024: How Microsoft Lost Georgia
- What we're seeing is a migration from Windows to other platforms, notably GNU/Linux
- To Understand Cisco's Mass Layoffs Look at the Company's Soaring Debt (Same at Microsoft)
- Look what's happening to Intel - down almost 60% since the start of the year, 57% to be precise
- Windows Flying Low at 25%
- It's another all-time low
- [Meme] Long Texts You Never Bother Reading (Because Life is Too Short, Unlike Those Texts)
- The devil is in the terms of service
- Links 15/08/2024: Monkeypox Hysteria and Modern Homesteaders Living Off the Grid
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 15/08/2024: Confession of a Convention Game Master and Some Release nostalgia
- Links for the day
- Congratulations to Romania, Where Windows is Now "Minority Market Share" Platform
- Time will tell if GNU/Linux can pass 5% on the desktop/laptop "form factor" there
- Why It Matters That 4,000 Gemini Capsules Are Known to Lupa and Why Gemini Protocol Matters to Us
- I have no doubt Gemini Protocol will continue to expand because it solves a real problem
- Links 15/08/2024: Avast Surveillance Scandal Unsolved and Facebook Still Censors Terror Sympathisers
- Links for the day
- Daniel Cantarín's Response to Alexandre Oliva's Talk on Achieving Software Freedom in the Age of Platform Decay
- Soylent News caught up with the series
- 4,000 Gemini Capsules
- it's basically one capsule short of 4,000
- "Microsoft is a Sponsor of The New Stack."
- Many articles turn out to be just ads
- New Highs for Android in Russia, But It's Reportedly Working on Its Own Linux-Based Operating Systems (GAFAM-Free)
- statCounter isn't equipped to properly parse user agents or to keep up
- Upcoming Series: Terms of Service (TOS) Under the Microscope, FSF Party, GitHub Scandals, Clowns, and More
- Right now we have way more material than we have time to cover. But that's a good thing.
- Gemini Links 15/08/2024: Lies of Therapy and Web Applications
- Links for the day
- Software Freedom in Perspective - Part 5 - When Richard Stallman Came to Argentina
- It might seem a bit harsh, but a discussion at the end of this series will tie things together and explain why those things were said
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 14, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, August 14, 2024
- Russia develops an alternative to Android and iOS | News.az
- Russia already has several of its own operating systems
- Links 14/08/2024: Ecology and War Inside Russia
- Links for the day
- Daniel Pocock - Use of Technology in European Parliament Election Campaign (Public Talk)
- It starts in 4 hours
- Android About to Fly Past Windows in Portugal
- Perhaps by month's end or next month Portugal will be orange (Android majority)
- How OpenAI Will Decrease the Losses
- You have no losses when you have no users left
- Giving Control to Microsoft is Always a Dire, Huge Mistake
- Microsoft is known for buying things and sabotaging things, not for creating things
- Founders That Sell Their Company to Microsoft Speak Out
- "Microsoft's closure of Arkane Austin in May was one of the more shocking events of the past couple of years"
- In Chile, Microsoft's Web Browser (a Chrome Copycat) Fell to 3.6%, About the Same as Firefox and Opera and Less Than Safari, Yandex Browser, Google Chrome
- It does not look like Chileans fancy Microsoft's browser. They go out of their way to use something else, even on Windows.
- Software Freedom in Perspective - Part 4 - Daniel on Linux-based Mobile Platforms in LATAM (Latin America)
- GNU, Linux, and mobile
- Almost Nothing of Invidious Left Online (YouTube is Attacking Gateways)
- what it looks like at this very moment
- Gemini Links 14/08/2024: Funeral for an E-reader and a Mother Wants a Laptop
- Links for the day
- Links 14/08/2024: 8 Years of GDPR and Ridicule of "Hey Hi" (AI) Hype
- Links for the day
- This is How You Give Microsoft More Control Over LibreOffice Both as Software and as a Project
- Didn't the Document Foundation learn from prior Microsoft Store scandals connected to LibreOffice?
- "Heroes of Fedora" Are Just Salaried Employees of IBM (But "Community" is Just Sounding a Lot Nicer)
- A real community would not allow IBM a majority
- YouTube Has Thrown Free Software Users Into a Crisis
- For many Free software users, who rely on Invidious, YouTube is nearly dead already
- [Meme] "New Chapter in the FSF."
- We expect to have some coverage from this week's event
- There is No I in "GAFAM" and Soon There Won't be I At All (Like Novell Vanished, Not Overnight, as It Took Over a Decade)
- Intel is going through the biggest crisis in its entire history
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 13, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, August 13, 2024
- It's a "sm0l" World and It Won't Outsource to the Pentagon Anymore
- As many people aren't interested in a new PC - or simply cannot afford one - we can expect leaner operating systems to gain further
- Software Freedom in Perspective - Part 3 - GNU/Linux in Argentinian Desktops/Laptops
- Daniel explains why many years ago many PCs shipped with GNU/Linux and that there was an economic reason for it. At least in Argentina.
- Tivoisation and Decommodification in Clown Computing
- Some firms or organisations lost sight of what "servers" or "hosting" even mean
- The News Vacuum
- The problem is worse than just an absence of reporting
- x86 Lowered the Standards of Hardware Products
- A lot of it is just hacks and cheats that help fake performance