Everything We Know About Drone Strikes.

I had the privilege to sit down with some political activists from Yemen a few weeks back.

I asked about the impacts of Obama's drone program and in very clear terms everyone said that the drone strikes were doing nothing but empowering repressive and authoritarian elements within the country.

Cora Currier with ProPublica has a good run down of everything we know about Drone strikes.  Please take a moment to read it.

The U.S. is counting any military-aged male killed in a drone strike as a militant. This is nothing short of an effort by the Noble Peace Prize winners administration to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind as a far wiser man than I once aptly phrased such political speech.  An administration official recently told a ProPublica reporter: “If a group of fighting age males are in a home where we know they are constructing explosives or plotting an attack, it's assumed that all of them are in on that effort.”

As someone who has coworkers that live in a house with gang members (whom they usually refer to as a brother or sister) I can tell you this assumption is not only wrong but is a subtle and unintentional way of feeding into the Anti-Arab/"hatred of all brown people" that seems to run rampant during the Republican primaries here in Georgia. 

Ms. Currier wisely included a list of who to follow on Twitter so here is a good #FollowFriday list if you need one:

For reporting and commentary on the drone war on Twitter:

@drones collects op-eds and news on well, drones. (Run by members of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, which has been outspoken about privacy concerns in the use of domestic drones, but it also covers national security.)

@natlsecuritycnn has breaking news.

@Dangerroom from Wired covers national security and technology, including a lot on drones.

@lawfareblog covers the drone war’s legal dimensions.

@gregorydjohnsen is an expert on Yemen, who is closely following the war there.

@AfPakChannel from the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy tweets news and commentary on Afghanistan and Pakistan.