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June 17, 2015
Years Too Late – Media Suddenly Recognize Futility Of Drone Strikes

Two days ago when news appeared of the alleged killing of Mokhtar Belmokhtar in Yemen I wrote:

Aside from the obvious unreliability of such reports one wonders what the killing of this or that "terrorist" is supposed to achieves. There will always be another one and the next one and so on and the violence will only get worse …

Then some U.S. drone strike killed Al-Qaeda old guard member Nasser al-Wuhayshi in Yemen and suddenly main stream media also start to doubt the value of this tactic.

This is an astonishingly synchronous recognition of the problem. While the U.S. may be "successful" in killing this or that leader of some terrorist gang the overall phenomenon just keeps growing. The Telegraph's sub headline catches it best:

'America has taken on a foe 5,000-strong. It has killed 10,000 of them. There are only 20,000 left'

Except that the original Al-Qaeda was only a few hundred strong and existed only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some fifteen years later, after the U.S. War of Terror killed and several hundred thousands of unrelated persons and thousands of jihadists, Al Qaeda and its derivatives are active in over a dozen countries and have several ten-thousands of followers. As I wrote:

The constant U.S. resort to military means is an expression of the lack of conflict resolution policies.

Still none of the above pieces comes up with a decent list of  policies that could start to address the problem without increasing it.

Here is a first try:

  • Stop drone strikes and the like as they obviously only creating more terrorists.
  • Stop using extremists, like jihadists and neo-nazis, as a policy tool against this or that inconvenient ruler.
  • Restrict the resources such groups need to grow on. This will require to pressure the Saudi and Qatari dictators, including with threats to their regimes existence, to stop financing the proselyting of their radical version of Islam as well as the "private" financing of such groups from their countries.

It is unlikely for now that such steps will be taken. But it took years for the media to recognize the futility of drone strikes. A few years on they may even start to consider the obvious first steps towards a solutions of the problem.

Unfortunately many more will die in the War of Terror before that will happen. 

Posted by b on June 17, 2015 at 14:53 UTC | Permalink
Comments

great post b and i second your suggestions.. i think we are being too idealistic to think that anyone in power responsible for these actions would actually stop the stupidity.. i think al qaeda version 1 or 2 are tools for the military and financial complex… i will it was different..

Posted by: james | Jun 17 2015 15:58 utc | 1

will – wish…

Posted by: james | Jun 17 2015 15:58 utc | 2

But drones are awesome. You can sip your Starbucks and kill people thousands of miles away! How cool is that? And think how many people are employed designing and building them.

Posted by: dh | Jun 17 2015 16:19 utc | 3

Perhaps part of the issue with the US approach is the lack of a diplomatic corps with any depth of knowledge or experience, leading to military solutions (the military and national security types being the only permanent “experts” left) for every conceivable issue. Only a complete idiot would think that drone killings would solve anything–particularly after years of experience showing that it only radicalizes more opponents rather than reducing opposition to US machinations. But the US seems to have no end to idiots who ignore the evidence–unless all they care about is ensuring more weapons contracts since the manufacturers of high tech weaponry make out like bandits no matter how useless their goods are for doing anything but killing more people in the world.

Posted by: WorldBLee | Jun 17 2015 16:48 utc | 4

What’s really frustrating about all this is that you’re policy prescriptions are such a “no duh”, obviously better approach from the perspective of any moderately informed, non-psycho, un-brainwashed by war on terror rhetoric average person- yet even those steps, as noted, seem out of the realm of possibility. At the same time, setting the world aflame and toppling govts we dont like is some sort of common wisdom among policy makers at State/CIA/Pentagon/WH or whoever is really calling the shots.

Posted by: Colinjames | Jun 17 2015 16:49 utc | 5

Drone warfare is cowardly at best. It does feed the MIC though so expect their lackeys in government to defend it. Disgusting in all respects.

Posted by: Gurrker | Jun 17 2015 17:18 utc | 6

Every damn thing seems only a cover to give legitimacy to a campaign of never-ending war and ethnic cleansing. The countries being droned are either incapable of taking measures to shoot them down, or are bribed into looking the other way.
Drone warfare is cowardly as all hell. It encourages violence as a quick “solution” to complicated problems that AmeriKans just don’t have the time or patience to sort out diplomatically. Being the 3rd party behind the scenes stirring the shit in the dark, like a slug or a cockroach is where the “elected” USSA govt uber alles has found its slimy niche.

Posted by: farflungstar | Jun 17 2015 17:58 utc | 7

it all seems to be going swimmingly well for the US of A. Terrorist numbers increasing continually would seem to be the purpose of drone strikes. Throwing petrol on the fire while telling people they are dousing it is par for their course. Its what they do. Killing more people.

Posted by: desmond | Jun 17 2015 18:32 utc | 8

this is ot, but connected.. i think mina posted it on the other thread and definitely worth the read..
from the article here
“Significantly, drone bases now dot the maritime margins around the world island — from Sigonella, Sicily, to Icerlik, Turkey; Djibouti on the Red Sea; Qatar and Abu Dhabi on the Persian Gulf; the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean; Jalalabad, Khost, Kandahar, and Shindand in Afghanistan; and in the Pacific, Zamboanga in the Philippines and Andersen Air Base on the island of Guam, among other places. To patrol this sweeping periphery, the Pentagon is spending $10 billion to build an armada of 99 Global Hawk drones equipped with high-resolution cameras capable of surveilling all terrain within a hundred-mile radius, electronic sensors that can sweep up communications, and efficient engines capable of 35 hours of continuous flight and a range of 8,700 miles.

Posted by: james | Jun 17 2015 18:56 utc | 9

The use of drones has always been pitched by US politicians as a far safer (for the US troops) alternative to actually having troops on the ground.
Perhaps this sudden discovery that drones are ineffective is laying the groundwork for an expansion of actual US ground combat forces in Iraq and, clandestinely, in Syria and elsewhere.

Posted by: sleepy | Jun 17 2015 18:58 utc | 10

sleepy@10-
ugh, good call.

Posted by: Nana2007 | Jun 17 2015 19:57 utc | 11

Extending on James @ 9 and the massive increase for drones in Pentagon planning, there was this nice tidbit at the end of a story today about staffing difficulties the Air Force is experiencing in piloting its drone:

Colonel Cluff invited a number of reporters to the Creech base on Tuesday to discuss some of these issues. It was the first time in several years that the Air Force had allowed reporters onto the base, which has been considered the heart of the drone operations since 2005.
The colonel said the stress on the operators belied a complaint by some critics that flying drones was like playing a video game or that pressing the missile fire button 7,000 miles from the battlefield made it psychologically easier for them to kill. He also said that the retention difficulties underscore that while the planes themselves are unmanned, they need hundreds of pilots, sensor operators, intelligence analysts and launch and recovery specialists in foreign countries to operate.
Some of the crews still fly their missions in air-conditioned trailers here, while other cockpit setups have been created in new mission center buildings. Anti-drone protesters are periodically arrested as they try to block pilots from entering the base, where signs using the drone wing’s nickname say, “Home of the Hunters.”

Posted by: Mike Maloney | Jun 17 2015 20:06 utc | 12

it seems that the continued state-sponsored murder by use of drones of suspected “terrorists” and anyone else who happens to be in the area, is a “deliberate” policy in place to feed the need (so to speak) for continued investment in MIC R&D to protect Americans from an ever increasing chaotic world. After all, thanks to very clever PR tactics on the part of mainstream media, the majority of Americans believe that the source of all the violence in the world is of other’s creation; and that the use of any means by the US military establishment is acceptable – notwithstanding a few mistakes here and there. The simple fact of the matter is that most Americans care very little about what happens elsewhere; and that it is perhaps something inherent within these regions that give rise to all the violence happening “somewhere else”. What comes to mind in this context is my nephew, in a brief discussion about the conflict in Yemen, blurting out: “Those Arabs are always fighting among themselves” While it might be true that Arabs and Islamists do indeed fight among themselves, what my nephew lacks (as well as the majority of citizens who feed exclusively off MSM) is almost no knowledge of the interference from outside powers exploiting these centuries old conflicts. Nor do most people take the time to actually look at any of the history and background of any of the conflicts flaring.
On the matter of any of the tragedies that are occasionally reported on by MSM (dozens killed at weddings or funeral processions) which get “polite” mention, not much is said about it accept if the victims are not ban fide “terrorists”; if the victim happens to be an American or European mistakenly hit, then it is big deal. Otherwise, the killing of any Terrorists, or those killed “collaterally”, doesn’t much matter; after all they are only Arabs anyway.
In regards to the recent concern expressed by MSM it does not appear that the concern has anything to do with the immorality of the drone program; its concern is primarily about how counterproductive is the program; and that is the major problem with the majority of the editorial staffs of MSM: it is as morally bankrupt as the rest of corporatist Anglo-American imperialist, state.

Posted by: bjmaclac | Jun 17 2015 20:46 utc | 13

Sure, but just compare the US empire arming and funding its terrorist proxies in ISIL and Al Qaeda compared to drone strikes ( you can allow for it’s evil allies assistance too ), and it’s clear that the drive towards using jihadi terrorism as agents for regime change and mass murderous chaos is the better way to judge it’s hegemonic policy of the “war on terror”. You can’t judge drone strike success on the reductions or gains of terrorism and jihads, while ignoring the US’s and allies far more supportive policies supporting it.
“terrorists” have grown far worse because of a more heinous US policy of terrorist proxism, that is driving it’s growth, outside of drone strikes.

Posted by: tom | Jun 17 2015 21:10 utc | 14

​WorldBLee @ #4,
Yes, this was exactly the point of a speech delivered by Charles Freeman that served as the basis for b’s post of June 15, The Deprofessionalized Empire. Read the linked speech in full if you have not yet done so. I don’t agree in all points with what Mr. Freeman had to say, but there were a lot of useful observations and insights in the talk.

Posted by: JerseyJeffersonian | Jun 17 2015 22:08 utc | 15

Yes, very peculiar indeed this simultaneous angst about the droning of an old school Al-Qaeda member expressed by so many MSM outlets, isn’t it?
Here’s an off-the-cuff hypothesis… The argument goes:
While it is inarguable that this guy who has been an operative/leader in Al-Qaeda for long enough to have had US blood on his hands reached a fitting end, in these latter days when newspapers like The Guardian are working to rehabilitate Al-Qaeda’s reputation, perhaps there is a hidden message? If Al-Qaeda (or Nusra Front, or whatever they are calling themselves nowadays) plays ball, and no longer goes after US/Israeli/Western targets, well then bygones will be bygones. Just be sure that in future, you only go after people we both think to be worthy targets (Syria, Iran, Russia, China…), and we can have a little deal. What say you Al-Qaeda?

Posted by: JerseyJeffersonian | Jun 17 2015 22:20 utc | 16

Spot on! For cross reference read Mai Yamani article ‘Bin Laden’s Ghost’ on the proliferation of Al Qaeda and the need to confront the GCC/Saudis not support them, particularly the Wahabhi business.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bin-laden-s-ghost

Posted by: Eric Green | Jun 17 2015 23:13 utc | 17

Cheers MoA! We all knew it, and now there is pseudo-validation that launching devastating weaponry, based on imperfect intelligence, to kill an exponentially mitotic group of “belligerents” + those in their proximity is counter productive. Monday morning quartbacking is fun with sports, but doesn’t provide me with the same satisfaction in cases like these. It feels like Mystery Science Theatre 3000 around here. I’m sick of this talk. The momentum is what matters, and it is not on our side if we consider a smattering of news stories to be a win when they are concurrent with a half dozen escalating war zones.

Posted by: IhaveLittleToAdd | Jun 17 2015 23:27 utc | 18

@4
‘ … unless all they care about is ensuring more weapons contracts since the manufacturers of high tech weaponry make out like bandits no matter how useless their goods are for doing anything but killing more people in the world. ‘
That’s what it’s come to. The arguments on the face … that they’re dumb, somehow earnest but mistaken, unprofessional … those arguments ignore their true profession. We’ll be reading soon the same sort of questions that were put forth after the fall of the Third Reich. How could a ‘civilized country’ have descended so quickly and totally into the depths of depravity?

Posted by: jfl | Jun 17 2015 23:41 utc | 19

b…
Just a small nit-pick:

… including with threats to their regimes existence …

So, stop beating people up, or we’ll beat you up?

Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Jun 18 2015 0:00 utc | 20

‘America has taken on a foe 5,000-strong. It has killed 10,000 of them. There are only 20,000 left’
No one seems to understand. No one seems to get it. Its too horrific to even contemplate.
But the hard truth is – that was the plan all along.
ps As a bonus – new weapons techonlogy gets tested – on real people.

Posted by: johnson | Jun 18 2015 0:13 utc | 21

Roxy Ryan Screaming: Green Hamburger
Mary Jane Watson: (Screaming)
Roxy Ryan Screaming: Green Ham
Mary Jane: (Screaming)
Big Butt Screaming: Potato
Big Butt Screaming: And The Woods And The Hood
Big Butt Screaming: Potato And The Woods And The Hood
Jennifer Aniston: Why Are You Screaming
Jennifer Aniston: I Think It’s Time For Lunch
Jennifer Aniston: Why Are You Shrieking
Jennifer Aniston: I Think Is Time For Lunch

Posted by: herbivore | Jun 18 2015 3:16 utc | 22

*In the last eight years, trillions of dollars have flowed to military and homeland security companies. When the administration starts a war like Libya, it is a windfall for companies who are given generous contracts to produce everything from replacement missiles to ready-to-eat meals.
In the first 10 days of the Libyan war alone, the administration spent roughly $550m. That figure includes about $340m for munitions – mostly cruise missiles that must be replaced. Not only did Democratic members of Congress offer post-hoc support for the Libyan attack, but they also proposed a permanent authorisation for presidents to attack targets deemed connected to terrorism – a perpetual war on terror*
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/big-money-behind-war-military-industrial-complex-20141473026736533.html

Posted by: denk | Jun 18 2015 3:21 utc | 23

@9
There are some very interesting references in the McCoy article as well. At least i found them interesting.

Posted by: jfl | Jun 18 2015 3:34 utc | 24

drones are the future…..no jet fuel,no pilot,imagine a drone bomb size of a shoebox,not one but 10,000 being dropped from a b-52 each one flown remotely by a computer,onto a battlefield.what we are seeing today are flying dinosaurs…..show off stuff.

Posted by: mcohen | Jun 18 2015 4:44 utc | 25

US/Western policy produces chaos, austerity, and rule by parsimonious Western banks. It’s endgame, dissipated, leaderless (except for the Pentagon and NATO) stuff. Certainly not a vision of the future that would pull Asian leaders away from China’s multiple silk road Eurasia strategy, which tells nationalist Asians: “Your economies will move forward, your competent businesses will prosper, your workers will be busy, you will participate in the direction of the project when it impinges on your sovereignty, and no more racist, stuck-up American and European imperialist a##holes telling you what to do.”
Excellent, long discussion with Pepe Escobar on all this at Counterpunch radio: http://store.counterpunch.org/pepe-escobar-episode-7/

Posted by: fairleft | Jun 18 2015 5:18 utc | 26

@24 jfl..that’s interesting.. thanks.

Posted by: james | Jun 18 2015 6:05 utc | 27

jfl @24
That most recent McCoy article — The Geopolitics of American Global Decline — is a magnificent overview, showing how China’s frenetic economic infrastructure building activity, already tying together southeast and southwest Asia to the central Asian and the Russo-Chinese heartland, fits perfectly into Mackinder’s ‘world island’ endgame. This is contrasted with America’s militaristic (rather than economic development oriented) containment strategy, which consists of a helluva lot of drone bases and the forlorn hope that Japan and Germany stay on the USA’s side.

Posted by: fairleft | Jun 18 2015 8:08 utc | 28

b says:
This is an astonishingly synchronous recognition of the problem
yeah, and since the drones are clearly not only not going away, but expanding exponentially, one has to wonder why exactly our fickle whore media is broadcasting this bad publicity for one of its owners favorite products.
beats me,
but i don’t think that a recognition of “the futility of drone strikes” has anything to do with it.

Posted by: john | Jun 18 2015 8:53 utc | 29

25
Once ordnance makers figure out that lightweight high-velocity shards are much more damaging than heavy old school steel ball bearing shrapnel to unarmored or ‘bullet-proof’ Mercedes and Toyota Tundras, and that 25 ‘enemy’ with body parts blowm off is far more effective than 25 replace-at-leisure corpses, you’ll start to see little green football-sized drones, dozens launched at a time, searching the terrain like a pack of schweinhundts, communicating GPS positions, then swarming on the target in synchronized, and time-delayed, waves for maximum devastation in killing first and then second responders.
Great Shaytan walks the Earth in a powder blue pants suit, this First Day of Ramadan. Fast against the Empire! It freaks out the cryto-ZWOs when they see you’re fasting during Ramadan.
Fast in sympathy with the Ukrainian, Syrian, Libyan and Yemeni people who are being rendered stateless.
One of the few freedoms we have left is to fast and boycott.

Posted by: Chipnik | Jun 18 2015 9:52 utc | 30

Drone assassination is obscene, but the corporate media punditry never talks about that, only about efficiency and utility. Nazis.

Posted by: fairleft | Jun 18 2015 9:56 utc | 31

30
I normally fast once a year on the day of atonement but since I have accumulated so many sins so far and the tetrad coming in I might just sneak in a small one july 2nd just to take the edge off.not because it is ramadan but mostly because the cholesterol is at 6.7 and my doc told me to cut down on the cream cheese.

Posted by: mcohen | Jun 18 2015 10:33 utc | 32

#29,
You echo my thoughts john. A brief review of all six of the linked articles leaves me with the strong sense of orchestration. Pretty obvious eh? I didn’t post my thoughts earlier because I thought to post the obvious would be trite. But you are the only one so far that has been explicit. I totally agree with you that:

a recognition of “the futility of drone strikes” has anything to do with it.

But like you, I don’t have a clue of what it could be about.
Any of the more informed here like to come up with some ideas?

Posted by: juannie | Jun 18 2015 10:39 utc | 33

Yemen anyone?
1st day of Ramadan and the guys are still getting bombs
Help won’t come from the UN, as if…
http://www.innercitypress.com/yemen26fishy061715.html

Posted by: Mina | Jun 18 2015 11:46 utc | 34

Getting UNdollars for refugees is a good business in times of crisis
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/133080/World/Region/Turkey-blocks-Syrian-refugees-seeking-to-return-to.aspx

Posted by: Mina | Jun 18 2015 11:57 utc | 35

I have no clue why the MSM put up these drone inneffective stories,but the multitude of papers reporting such means,Zion approves.
The current drones are highly vulnerable to modern AA and such,and their use against nations with those capabilities is highly suspect,although against our current self made foes they are deadly.But those minidrones scare the hell out of me,like in Dune.

Posted by: dahoit | Jun 18 2015 12:45 utc | 36

Did Iran take control of, and land, a US drone a few years ago, or did I imagine that? If I didn’t imagine it then drones are on borrowed time, imo. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this story arises from multiple signs that “someone” has been regularly interfering with drone missions and flight paths.
The notion that the AmeriKKKan killing machine would own up to indulging in flawed thinking, and/or self-deception, is preposterous.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 18 2015 15:41 utc | 37

@28
I think it’s just that they have been building weapons for so long … exporting the manufacture of everything else … that, lazy and greedy as they are, it’s literally a ‘no brainer’ to keep on keeping on. Same with fossil fuels. And with prisons … I’ve been reading Slavery by another name. Nothing new here. Their system has to keep expanding, that’s it’s ponzi basis. Yeah, the strategy is a transparent loser … but tactically they’re making ‘money’ … what still passes for money … hand over fist. The ‘political class’ has turned into the plutes’ ‘body servant class’. The only hope for leadership is from ordinary folks like ourselves. Small ‘d’ democracy. It’s essential, as far as i can see.

Posted by: jfl | Jun 18 2015 15:50 utc | 38

@33 juannie… i don’t know why either.. ordinarily the msm is always on side with all the murder and mayhem so long as it is expressed towards the right (or wrong) group of people.. i can’t imagine them having a change of heart..

Posted by: james | Jun 18 2015 16:06 utc | 39

US corporates are ready to go very far to get bags of cash
http://angryarab.blogspot.de/2015/06/the-grotesque-words-of-president-of-nyu.html

Posted by: Mina | Jun 18 2015 16:26 utc | 40

Long love story between the Muslim Brothers and the CIA
http://mondafrique.com/lire/decryptages/2015/06/18/said-ramadan-le-pere-de-tariq-travaillait-pour-la-cia

Posted by: Mina | Jun 18 2015 16:30 utc | 41

Talk about high effort low yield endeavors. Why mess around on the periphery when KSA is the real problem?
We should have taken over Saudi Arabia right after WW2 and loaded the then small population on ships, sent them all to Paki. We could have left them confined in enclaves, kept them on a short leash and subsistence sustenance.
Even now, the takeover of the country and the ghettoization of the populace isn’t an all bad idea. If American Hegemony over the ME is the deep state’s goal, what better way to accomplish it?
They are the enemy…
What Churchill said of the Indians is doubly true of the KSA: “A beastly people with a beastly religion”

Posted by: A | Jun 18 2015 16:50 utc | 42

jfl@38 this caught my eye from the bottom of your article:
“Democracy is not only ‘equitable’, and ‘just’, and ‘nice’, it is essential. Without all of our active involvement it’s “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country” – globalized. A subset of the whole is always capable of treating (what it sees as) its own interests as universal, and with our increasing numbers and profligate ways, that will surely spell out our doom. As we watch it unfold on TV, from the couch.”

Posted by: okie farmer | Jun 18 2015 16:53 utc | 43

When I see the corporate media embrace an understanding that the alternative media have been talking about for a decade, I don’t waste time applauding their new enlightenment. I get right to wonder what the new game plan is. What is the new twist in the road of duplicity and manipulation. We live in a world that Machiavelli would blush to see.

Posted by: paul | Jun 18 2015 21:14 utc | 44

Maybe it(bad drone press) is a lead-in to requesting robo-boots on the ground?? I mean, they already have 4-wheelers armed and prepped with IR targeting. Wouldn’t take much to just send them on patrol with an algo that says “kill anything within this temperature range and with body mass greater than X”.
Or worse – the desert glass option?
Occams Razor – In editors meeting:
“No new crises anywhere this week, so what do we run with?”
“I don’t know – what do we have out there that is canned and harmless? We need eyeballs on out stuff.”
Hey – this anti-drone thing might make us look tough. Besides, we know that cow is long out of the barn.”
“Cool – let’s do that!”

Posted by: Oilman2 | Jun 18 2015 22:49 utc | 45

Drone strikes are terrorist attacks and they do terrorize the victim country.
To say US terrorist attacks do not achieve their goal is completely untrue, many weddings and other celebrations are now held in secret because of the terror caused by US drone strikes.

Posted by: Sinbad | Jun 18 2015 23:20 utc | 46

@43
Yeah. Mike Gravel – my man in 2008 – used to say, I paraphrase, that politically we are adolescents : always complaining, never actually taking charge ourselves and doing anything. And that until we ‘grow up’ and take charge the abuse will continue. I agree. I don’t know how much irreversible damage is occurring during our ‘adolescence’ – our becoming adults – but I know that, in the natural world it is occurring. Time will tell. Hedges goes on about Nietzsche’s Last man. I never liked Nietzsche, I suppose due to the bad actors who posthumously embraced and appropriated him. But that’s the choice … adolescence completed or complete acquiescence. TIAA or TINA. We must choose.
And I do believe that everyone of us must strive to assert our point of view. The regime in the US is using the increasingly corporate prison system to disenfranchise those of us with the most disparate, desperate points of view… why should Barack ‘The Assassin’ Obama be allowed to vote, or John ‘Torture’ Brennan, and those less-well-connected among us denied? Obama’s and Brennan’s points of view are certainly over-represented and those of the rest of are not – or are nullified, just in case they’ve effectively plea bargained our citizenship away. What’s good for The Company is good for the country. Well, no. It’s not. In fact it’s disastrous for the country, and for all the world’s countries, peoples, and other living things. ‘Mother and Father’ – heroin addicts that they are, tying off a vein in the loo – insist TINA. We ‘Sons and Daughters’ must ‘kick the habit’, must insist TIAA. Or in fact there won’t be one, will there?

Posted by: jfl | Jun 19 2015 2:28 utc | 47

@33 @39
Maybe the drone salesmen are mounting a push for an extended, indefinite anti-ISIS drone campaign? You know I read that ‘war’ is now officially slated to last generations, or at least ‘a looong time’. How can they miss that pitch.
So to avoid hitting their own boys the USG/MSM are … oh, look, there are ‘very bad’ effects to drones, too. If not ‘properly’ used. Expect a new discovery of the ‘proper use’ of drones that does an end run around ISIS? Drones are certainly slated for a long, constant-use, and extremely remunerative future for Murder Inc.

Posted by: jfl | Jun 19 2015 2:40 utc | 48

jfl at 47 —
The Nazis had no use for the free-thinking Nietzsche; Plato and his “philosopher-kings” appealed to their tastes. His sister and her husband, who cared for him after his breakdown, did misuse his work, I understand, in promoting their anti-Semitic beliefs.
Dour post-modernists affect to like him, though they lack the Dionysian energy energy of his prose. On one level, he works well at the surface — he’s quite acrobatic at times, seemingly inconsistent, says outrageous stuff regularly. But it’s probably the least productive way, things operate above and below the surface, and he asks the reader, in his way, “You are keeping up, right? Good!”
But we’ll let the philologist and animal-lover speak for himself. F. Nietzsche, from the Preface to Twilight of the Idols:

Finally to pose questions with a hammer, and sometimes to hear as a reply that famous hollow sound that can only come from bloated entrails… [T]his time they are not just idols of the age, but eternal idols, which are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning fork: there are no idols that are older, more assured, more puffed-up — and none more hollow.

Posted by: rufus magister | Jun 19 2015 4:03 utc | 49

fairleft @ 26; Thanks for the link. Big picture indeed.

Posted by: ben | Jun 19 2015 5:47 utc | 50

@28
‘ … which consists of a helluva lot of drone bases and the forlorn hope that Japan and Germany stay on the USA’s side. ‘
Gazprom will double the capacity of Nord stream

Thus, Shell, E. On and OMV recognized that Europe cannot survive without Russian gas, and U.S. statements on the supply of American natural gas to Europe are nothing more than a bluff.

I imagine that Abe is waiting for the opportune moment to resume talks with Russia as well.

Posted by: jfl | Jun 19 2015 7:08 utc | 51

33
Simple. The drone program is an advanced procurement. The big R&D money phase is over. Now keeping the factory open waiting for new orders is a liability, a competitive race-to-the- bottom. Do you hold out, waiting for another order, or burn up all your profits in idle labor?
No, my friends, the UAV business if very much over. Time to denigrate UAV drones, in favor of Eye-In-The-Sky, the Pentagonal Church of Satan’s latest ’emergency procurement’ nexus: WW2-style barrage balloons, outfitted with an ARGUS-equipped ‘Gorgon Stare’ technology, guyed at 10,000 feet above your little home-sweet-home, monitoring everything you do from your cell phone constantly updated GPS location, then heads-up displayed as a mug shot, superimposed over Gorgon Stare’s 1.8 gigapixel video.
And no, I’m not making this up.
I suppose 10,000-feet is a little too high for Nike to buy the ‘swoosh’ branding rights, but the laws are already in place, allowing McDonald’s or KFC, VISA or Mastercard, Starbucks or Pepsi, to fill the sky with their Gorgon Stare blimp billboards, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it, because it’s being done under ’emergency procurement’ outside of FBOs.
That’s what the USArian Congress just voted $58 BILLION into a special ‘war slush fund’ for. Here’s another look at your last life savings, never coming back.
Need a handle on the moment?

Posted by: Chipnik | Jun 19 2015 9:07 utc | 52

47
When a cruise missile can
take out one wing
of the Pentagon after executing an impossible
270-degree aerial maneuver, coming at
barely 50-feet off the deck at 500-mph, far above the
survivable speed for fully-loaded commercial airframe
at sea level,
then impacting without a fuel fireball,
without hundreds of corpses,
without a confetti of luggage,
without two giant wings, their spars like massive fir trees,
without two giant holes where the massive engines punched through,
where there is only a small entry hole,
and a large blast radius,
smoldering in the sun …
…and that can be played off as a ‘terrorist attack’,
without anyone asking who those terrorists really were,
who precisely targeted the one small wall area
the exact Pentagon wing where the Congressional
investigation records were being stored
of massive Defense fraud under the Clinton Administration,
that Rumsfeld was forced to admit was $2,300 BILLION lost
only the day before…
…when that can be played off into two $4,000 BILLION wars
of occupation and empire on behalf of the
Zionist Yinon Plan
and the KSA Dark Lords,
spawn of Fukuyama and Huntington,
then we should have all realized at that very moment,
what we most definitely should and must realize now:
Just . use . the . eyes . that . G-d . gave . you!
The only record of this Death Culture will be preserved on
atomic-powered LPDDR3 tablets, slowly disintegrating
into fractal starbursts of color, behind shattered
shards of gorilla glass.

Posted by: Chipnik | Jun 19 2015 9:39 utc | 53

Chipnik says:
No, my friends, the UAV business if very much over
in favor of what? err…UAVs?
man, you procurement officer types are freakin’ brilliant.

Posted by: john | Jun 19 2015 9:52 utc | 54

49
But not everyone fights lions, some people are cowards.

Posted by: Chipnik | Jun 19 2015 9:56 utc | 55

54
I think everyone here realizes MOA is a spook hangout after the original MOA went dark,
but (sigh) I’m not one of them.

Posted by: Chipnik | Jun 19 2015 9:58 utc | 56

Posted by: Chipnik | Jun 19, 2015 5:56:01 AM | 55
Any vid as heavily and frequently edited as this lion vid can only ever be a fake. The giveaway (confession?) in this one is the edited-in closeup of a huge flat, sliced-flesh shot during the intro, BEFORE the “brave warriors” have approached/ disturbed the lions.
Love all your stuff but that vid is a cinematic Whopper.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 19 2015 17:51 utc | 57

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