“In his first three years, Obama has unleashed 268 covert drone strikes, five times the total George W. Bush ordered during his eight years in office. All told, drones have been used to kill more than 3,000 people designated as terrorists, including at least four U.S. citizens. In the process, according to human rights groups, they have also claimed the lives of more than 800 civilians. Obama’s drone program, in fact, amounts to the largest unmanned aerial offensive ever conducted in military history; never have so few killed so many by remote control.”
Game of Drones written by Heathcote Williams; Narration and Montage by Alan Cox.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1chqhJYxzD4
Festival Cut by Margaret Cox
«Events of great consequence often spring from trifling circumstances.»
Titus Livy, Annales, XXVII
(Ex parvis saepe magnarum momenta rerum pendent.)
«Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.» A MEASURE OF CHANGE Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will By JO BECKER and SCOTT SHANE New York Times May 29, 2012
«The real question is, why assassinate anyone? The government has made it very clear that the assassinations are personally approved by Obama and the criteria for assassination are very weak. If a group of men are seen somewhere by a drone who are, say, loading something into a truck, and there is some suspicion that maybe they are militants, then it’s fine to kill them and they are regarded as guilty unless, subsequently, they are shown to be innocent. That’s the wording that the United States used and it is such a gross violation of fundamental human rights that you can hardly talk about it.» Noam Chomsky DECEMBER 12, 2012 "Nothing Can Justify Torture"