A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• How to source more drones for killing is a full time job
• What Gaza is suffering far too often
• How sensitive is Google to alternative thinking?

How to source more drones for killing is a full time job 02 Oct 2010 What’s the best way the US can worsen its image in the Muslim world, kill more civilians and utterly condemn itself to further defeats against a rag-tag army of Taliban fighters? More murder from the air: The U.S. military is secretly diverting aerial drones and weaponry from the Afghan battlefront to significantly expand the CIA’s campaign against militants in their Pakistani havens. The shift in strategic focus reflects the U.S. view that, with Pakistan’s military unable or unwilling to do the job, more U.S. force against terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan is now needed to turn around the struggling Afghan war effort across the border. In recent months, the military has loaned Predator and Reaper drones to the Central Intelligence Agency to give the agency more firepower to target and bombard militants on the Afghan border. The additional drones helped the CIA escalate the number of strikes in Pakistan in September. The agency averaged five strikes a week in September, up from an average of two to three per week. The Pentagon and CIA have ramped up their purchases of drones, but they aren’t being built fast enough to meet the rapid rise in demand.

What Gaza is suffering far too often 02 Oct 2010 Here’s reporter Rami Almeghari writing from Gaza about the largely ignored Israeli bombing campaign that terrorises the tiny strip on a regular basis: Late on Monday night, 27 September, an Israeli drone spotted and killed three Palestinians near the Gaza-Israel boundary near the central Gaza Strip refugee camp of al-Bureij. This was just one of the frequent attacks Israel has launched on the coastal territory since its brutal three-week assault ended in January 2009. Israel claimed that the three victims had been preparing to fire projectiles into Israel when they were killed. A mix of feelings tore through me while I was at the Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah. It was almost 10:30pm when a doctor was stitching up the lips of my little boy Muhammad, who had taken a fall while playing at home with his sister. Abruptly, a crowd of people carrying the three victims of the drone shelling entered the department where my son was being treated. Screaming suddenly broke the calm in the place, pushing the doctor to leave Muhammad and rush to try to help rescue the latest Palestinian casualities.

How sensitive is Google to alternative thinking? 02 Oct 2010 What words does Google Instant not like?