THAT’S ONE GIANT STEP FOR WORLD LEUKEMIA SUFFERERS. An Indian court rules that a “copycat” (generic) version of a brand name drug cannot be prohibited by the patent claimed by the brand name company. This decision could have “ripple” effects on the availability of generics for people throughout the world. Prohibition of copycat [...]
ANTI-DRONE ACTION: IT’S NOT JUST A 13-HOUR RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER ANYMORE. Medea Benjaming and Noor Mir describe an April “month of uprising” against drone use both domestically and in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy interests. This “uprising” is taking many forms, including prohibitions for police use in many cities and states, protests at the [...]
AMERICANS ARE A SIGNIFICANTLY “THREATENED” PEOPLE. A new Gallup survey of “1015 adult Americans” shows that 99% perceive Iran’s nuclear development a threat to U.S. “interests.” 83% of them (97% of Republicans, 79% of Democrats) view this threat as “critical” while another 16% see it as “important.” Nor is this fear confined to [...]
The White House has signaled it is willing to make enormous political sacrifices and deep concessions to noisy partisan critics in order to ensure the continued secrecy of the government’s legal justification for using drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists. Having already been forced to offer a limited acknowledgement of the legal details behind the [...]
SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HEARING THROWS A WHIFF OF TRANSPARENCY INTO TARGETED DRONE ASSASSINATIONS BY U.S. AGENCIES. Hearings for John Brennan, current counter-intelligence chief and Obama’s nominee for director of C.I.A., show signs of restlessness of some Senators like the chair of the committee, Dianne Feinstein. Expressing frustration at the difficulty of the committee in [...]
FIRST THE SENTENCE, THEN THE VERDICT: THE WAR ON TERRORISM IN WONDERLAND. Lewis Carroll’s classic depiction of a trial of Alice evokes the kind of “legal procedure” in which people are convicted and punished before or even instead of being found guilty after presentation of the evidence of their crimes. A legal memorandum from the Office [...]
FORGET A “SLIPPER SLOPE.” THE LEAKED JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MEMO ON KILLING AMERICAN CITIZENS IS DOWNRIGHT TERRIFYING. Reaction has been strong to news of a leaked Justice Department memo that bluntly lays out the Obama administration’s justification for its highly controversial and legally questionable use of drone strikes to kill suspected “terrorists.” Language in [...]
PAKISTAN AND THE UNITED STATES: “THE DYSFUNCTIONAL NUCLEAR FAMILY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS.” This is Dilip Hiro’s description of a situation in which, in a country most of whose inhabitants have sharply “anti-American” feelings fueled by drone raids and operations like the one that took out Osama bin Laden, keeps a small arsenal of nuclear weapons ostensibly [...]
AFTER THEY TORTURE YOU, A NICE GUY COMES IN AND OFFERS YOU A CIGARETTE. Jacob Levich, commenting on recent book Living Under Drones, notes the drone attacks launched by the U.S. against civilian populations in Pakistan and other countries as a “counter-insurgency” agenda against any countries resistant to American imperialist domination. He describes this [...]
TINY “SUICIDE DRONES” COULD ALLOW THE UNITED STATES TO LAUNCH “PRECISION” ASSASSINATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. 11 years after the attacks of September 11, the arsenal of weaponry that the “war on terror” has justified continues to grow along with the global reach of U.S military and intelligence operations. Drone strikes have become the [...]
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