Danny and Derek are pleased to welcome back to the podcast Luca Trenta, associate professor in International Relations at Swansea University and author of The President’s Kill List. The group discusses assassinations and international law, when and how assassination became a tool for US foreign policy, the difficulties in accessing declassified documents about this topic, unsuccessful attempts on the life of Fidel Castro and successful operations against the likes of Osama Bin Laden and Patrice Lumumba, the intelligence community using assassination as a “low level” (i.e. not nuclear) form of retaliation in the Cold War, contemporary justifications for assassinations as “self defense” and the notion of “imminence”, and more.
This is one of very few instances where I'll get pedantic, but if we're quoting the Mitchell and Webb sketch, it's "baddies". For me, this takes it over the top.
There's a scene in Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly" where Arctor is surveilling his own house from the police station monitors, and watches his roommate willingly let his other tenant almost choke to death:
“That fucking Barris!” he said. “You know how he
works? He doesn't kill anybody he wants dead; he just hangs
around until a situation arises where they die. And he just
sits there while they die. In fact, he sets them up to die while
he stays out of it. But I'm not sure how. Anyhow, he arranges
to allow them to fucking die.” He lapsed into silence then,
brooding to himself. “Like,” he said, “Barris wouldn't wire
plastic explosives into the ignition system of your car. What
1. you all need to talk Luca into doing a several part series on this.
2. I really appreciate which of you mentioned that since al-Awlaki's assasination TWO of his children have been murdered by drones. Abdulrahman is often cited since it occurred two weeks later, but Nawar, then 8 was killed Feb. 1 2017.
Micah Xavier Johnson Was killed by a bomb disposal robot on U.S. soil on July 8th 2016. Is this not considered topical for overreach of drone strikes on U.S. citizens?
You guys are killing it with the excellent, edgy, interesting topics and appropriate guests. I feel like this episode was done just for me. :)
Wait. are we the bad guys? ™
This is one of very few instances where I'll get pedantic, but if we're quoting the Mitchell and Webb sketch, it's "baddies". For me, this takes it over the top.
There's a scene in Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly" where Arctor is surveilling his own house from the police station monitors, and watches his roommate willingly let his other tenant almost choke to death:
“That fucking Barris!” he said. “You know how he
works? He doesn't kill anybody he wants dead; he just hangs
around until a situation arises where they die. And he just
sits there while they die. In fact, he sets them up to die while
he stays out of it. But I'm not sure how. Anyhow, he arranges
to allow them to fucking die.” He lapsed into silence then,
brooding to himself. “Like,” he said, “Barris wouldn't wire
plastic explosives into the ignition system of your car. What
he'd do--”
“Do you have the money?” Donna said.
1. you all need to talk Luca into doing a several part series on this.
2. I really appreciate which of you mentioned that since al-Awlaki's assasination TWO of his children have been murdered by drones. Abdulrahman is often cited since it occurred two weeks later, but Nawar, then 8 was killed Feb. 1 2017.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/31/politics/yemen-raid-daughter-al-qaeda-leader/index.html
Micah Xavier Johnson Was killed by a bomb disposal robot on U.S. soil on July 8th 2016. Is this not considered topical for overreach of drone strikes on U.S. citizens?