• Of all the reactions to the deaths of two hostages from a missile fired from a US drone, Congressman Adam Schiff provided the deepest insight into the logic underpinning the endless, secret US campaign of global killing.
  

   

  “To demand a higher standard of proof than they had here could be the end of these types of counter-terrorism operations,” said Schiff, a California Democrat and one of the most senior legislators overseeing those operations.

• The standard of proof in the January strike in tribal Pakistan was outlined by the White House press secretary in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s admission about the deaths. An agency that went formally unnamed – likely the CIA, though the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) also conducts drone strikes – identified what Josh Earnest called an “al-Qaida compound” and marked the building, rather than particular terrorists, for destruction.

   

    

   

  Thanks to Obama’s rare admission on Thursday, the realities of what are commonly known as “signature strikes” are belatedly and partially on display.
• The “signatures” at issue are indicators that intelligence analysts associate with terrorist behavior – in practice, a gathering of men, teenaged to middle-aged, traveling in convoys or carrying weapons. In 2012, an unnamed senior official memorably quipped that the CIA considers “three guys doing jumping jacks” a signature of terrorist training.
• civilian deaths in signature strikes do not operate quite like the “collateral damage” familiar from earlier wars. It is one thing for US bombs and missiles to miss their targets or to hit facilities that, at the time of the strike, no longer have their targets in them. It is another for them to hit targets absent prior confirmation that the target is an enemy as a matter of policy.
• Schiff’s reaction condensed the root argument of the administration’s drone advocates: it’s this or nothing. The Obama administration considers the real alternatives to drone strikes to be the unpalatable options of grueling ground wars or passive acceptance of terrorism. Then it congratulates itself for picking the wise, ethical and responsible choice of killing people without knowing who they are.
• No Obama official involved in drone strikes has ever been disciplined: not only are Brennan and director of national intelligence James Clapper entrenched in their jobs, David Barron, one of the lawyers who told Obama he could kill a US citizen without trial as a first resort, now has a federal judgeship.

• Beyond the question of when the US ought to launch drone strikes lie deeper geostrategic concerns. Obama’s overwhelming focus on counter-terrorism, inherited and embraced from his predecessor, subordinated all other considerations for the drone battlefield of Yemen, which he described as a model for future efforts.

   

  The result is the total collapse of the US Yemeni proxy, a regional war Obama appears powerless to influence, the abandonment of US citizens trapped in Yemen and the likely expansion of al-Qaida’s local affiliate. A generation of Yemeni civilians, meanwhile, is growing up afraid of the machines loitering overhead that might kill them without notice.

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• Zotero's online syncing allows you to access your Zotero library on any computer with internet access. Zotero syncing has two parts: data syncing and file syncing.
• Data syncing merges library items, notes, links, tags, etc.—everything except attachment files—between your local computer and the Zotero servers, allowing you to work with your data from any computer with Zotero installed. It also allows you to view your library online on zotero.org. Data syncing is free, has no storage limit, and can be used without file syncing.
• Storing the Zotero data directory directly in a cloud storage folder is extremely likely to corrupt your Zotero database and should not be done.
• While using a third-party tool to sync the 'storage' subdirectory of the Zotero data directory is generally safe, syncing the entire Zotero data directory, including the main SQLite database, with an automated third-party tool is extremely likely to corrupt it. When using any of these options, make sure to back up your Zotero data frequently.
• A key problem in using a folder synchronization service, such as Dropbox, is that Zotero allows you to change the location of the data directory but does not allow setting the location of the storage. There are two workarounds for this problem: 1) You can use a symbolic link to sync only the storage directory. 2) You can set the data directory inside Dropbox and then use selective sync options to disable syncing for the data directory and then enable syncing of the storage directory. The first option is probably more commonly used, but either one should work. But you should understand that if you set up the second option incorrectly, you risk losing data. The forums contain several threads about the problems that users are facing with Dropbox-based setups.

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• convert \  -verbose \  -density 150 \  -trim \  test.pdf \  -quality 100 \  -flatten \  -sharpen 0x1.0 \  24-18.jpg

• Erase data banks, etc.
• Marx warned that capitalist industry made “material relations between persons and social relations between things.” The stuff that we make is not predicated on a social relationship (I need a shirt. Will you make it for me and I’ll owe you one?) but rather, my labour is part and parcel of material objects and those social relations are bought and sold through objects
• We don’t have to set up social relationships that fulfill our needs, we just go out and buy what we need after someone has built it for an unknown customer
• Anyone who wants to “live off the grid” is looking to develop a homestead, not a local economy.
• Mutual aid is not even on their radar.

• We need to consider working in different scales, at different registers. When we imagine these things going away, we immediately think to sustain ourselves, not each other. If you block a highway, be prepared to offer (at least) a temporary alternative.

   
• So when an Occupation decides to block a highway or stop a cell phone tower from working, they are disrupting the lives of the poor disproportionally more than the rich
• The Occupy moment’s greatest achievement and biggest failure is that it brought thousands of white, middle class Americans into a struggle that has been going on for decades and they think it is a new and temporary problem.
• The good news is that those privileged Americans will be introduced to concepts like systemic violence, institutional racism, and the inherent contradictions of capitalism. It means that the “national conversation” shifts. But it also means that the “temporarily embarrassed” middle class will fight to “get their country back” not recognizing that some never felt a sense of ownership in the first place.
• but when the cameras are trained on the protestors, and a reporter asks what this road was seized for, are we going to say “it should serve the people again” or are we going to say, “these systems were never built to benefit everyone and never can!”? I assume we’d say the former, but I think the latter is closer to the truth
• Thinking of capitalism as a hyperobject does not give me the tools necessary for such a discussion either. I can arrive at Bryant’s conclusion with Langdon Winner and bell hooks faster –and with the proper provision of developing a proper coalition– than actor network theory ever could.
• ANT may tell us to block the road. But it never says for whom

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