Rise of CIA's deadly drones in war on Taliban Unmanned planes have become key to taking fight behind militant lines but are blamed for civilian deaths    Peter Walker
guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 August 2009 Article history A Reaper drone, as used by the CIA and American military in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images  The missiles believed to have killed Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief, were fired from the skies above the country's South Waziristan region. But their target and trajectory were almost certainly chosen thousands of miles away at a US military base.Mehsud is thought to have been targeted by an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, better known as a drone – an increasingly common and controversial feature of modern warfare.In Afghanistan and Pakistan in particular, missile-armed drones operated by the US air force and the CIA have hunted for suspected al-Qaida and Taliban militants in the vast tribal regions adjoining the two countries.They began flying shortly before the 9/11 attacks on secretive missions to hunt down Osama bin Laden and have been used with ever greater frequency since 2001.The Predator and Reaper drones built by General Atomics have 20-metre wingspans and distinctive V-shaped tails. They can stay in the air for more than 30 hours at a time. The planes are launched from local airfields but controlled via satellite by crews at US air bases, most commonly the Creech facility in Nevada.Some are used purely for surveillance but many are fitted with Hellfire missiles or bombs. Controllers use video images from the drones, and often intelligence from the ground, to select targets and fire.The US military and CIA regard the drones as invaluable because of their long range and the way they…

  The Stakes at Notre Dame Words From Rome Change The Debate on Inviting Obama    " To the dismay of many conservatives, the Vatican's own newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has offered what one antiabortion Catholic blog called "a surprisingly positive assessment of the new president's approach to life issues" -- so positive, in fact, that a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee was moved to criticize Pope Benedict XVI's daily. The Vatican newspaper offered its analysis as Catholic liberals and conservatives are battling fiercely over Notre Dame's decision to invite the president as this year's commencement speaker and to grant him an honorary degree. The article will strengthen the liberal claim that the Catholic right's over-the-top response is rooted at least as much in Republican and conservative politics as in concern over the abortion question."        

 A Post-Tiger Woods Endorsement Deal The deal McDonald's signed with basketball star LeBron James is a sign that the Tiger Woods debacle hasn't put marketers off celebrity endorsements altogether. But it does indicate that the landscape is subtly changing.   

 Publisher's Note: Some of us are old enough to have seen this before. This IS political. Forces, groups, internal, external- they have an end in mind. Greece, Mexico, South America, Yemen, Africa and in the U.S.- all a sign of societies in change.   From Times Online January 12, 2009Armed gang kidnaps Greek shipping tycoon Pericles Panagopoulos

   Fear and the Fourth of July Noam Chomsky says that from its very founding, the US has been shaped not by a pluralistic ideal, but by fear of the other Comments (82)



Frankie Martin guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 July 2009 15.00 BST Article history
A US flag at Guantánamo Bay. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/Pool/Reuters  "America is a very frightened country." It was last October, and I was sitting face to face with Noam Chomsky at MIT, a man the New York Times has called "arguably the most important intellectual alive". Chomsky was answering a question posed by Akbar Ahmed, American University's chair of Islamic studies, that he described as "striking": What is American identity? As a young American brought up to believe I'm part of a superpower, Chomsky's identification of fear as essential to what it means to be American caught me off guard. Privileged to be witnessing a conversation between two world-renowned academics in the fields of anthropology and linguistics, I listened. Chomsky continued: From the very beginning there's a strong element of fear. You find it, it's been studied in popular literature, literature for the masses. Now it'd be television or movies or something, but for a long time, it was magazines and novels. The theme that runs through them from the 18th century, the theme is we're about to be destroyed by an enemy, and at the last minute, a super weapon is discovered or a hero arises – Rambo or something – and somehow saves us. The Terminator or high school boys hiding in the mountains defending us from the Russians. This goes right back…