DREYFUS CASE
“The Dreyfus case—a provocative trial organized in 1894 by the
reactionary-monarchist circles of the French militarists. On trial was Alfred Dreyfus,
a Jewish officer of the French General Staff, falsely accused of espionage and high
treason. Dreyfus’s conviction—he was condemned to life imprisonment—was used by the
French reactionaries to rouse anti-Semitism and to attack the republican regime and
democratic liberties. When, in 1898, socialists and progressive bourgeois democrats
such as Emile Zola, Jean Jaurès, and Anatole France launched a campaign for
Dreyfus’s re-trial, the case became a major political issue and split the country into
two camps—the republicans and democrats on the one hand, and a bloc of monarchists,
clericals, anti-Semites and nationalists, on the other. Under the pressure of public
opinion, Dreyfus was released in 1899, and in 1906 was acquitted by the Court of
Cassation and reinstated in the Army.” —Note 39, LCW 31.
“DRIP-PRICING”
The initial hiding of the full price of some commodity by originally referring only to a
part of the full price, and then adding to that amount later with additional fees and costs.
In effect the full price is only made known by separate “drips” or steps. This is a way of
lying to the customer, trying to hook them with a falsely stated low price, and after they
agree to the purchase, adding to the actual price demanded later on. This technique has become
more and more common recently, as capitalism further reveals more aspects of its inherently
fraudulent and dishonest nature.
“‘Drip-Pricing’
“A widespread practice in which consumers
are presented with an initial price on a product or service that does not disclose mandatory
fees.
“It can happen when you book airline
tickets, rent a car or order a taco dinner: The great deal you thought you clinched turns out
to be not so great because of fees that weren’t disclosed upfront....
“The term drip pricing has been around
since at least 2009... But drip pricing itself has been going on for decades—probably because
it works....
“A big reason drip pricing works, research
has shown, is that our brains tend to stay fixed on the price we first encountered even after
we learn the total cost. And once we learn about the hidden fees, we often still pay up rather
than shop around... ‘We implicitly calculate that investing more time into searching for [a
better price] will not be worthwhile.’
“The rise of e-commerce in the past decades
has made drip pricing ubiquitous.” —Santul Nerkar, “Shop Talk”, New York Times,
February 25, 2024.
DRONE [Pilotless Aircraft]
An aircraft which flies itself, or much more commonly at present, an aircraft remotely controlled
by a pilot who is not onboard it. The U.S. military has in recent years utilized rapidly
increasing numbers of drone warplanes as a major part of its endless imperialist wars, especially
in Afghanistan. These drones are most often controlled by U.S. pilots sitting in comfortable
air-conditioned buildings at Air Force bases in the United States, including in Nevada, New
Mexico and near Syracuse, New York. When these remote killers spot a group of possible “enemies”,
they shoot missiles from the drone aircraft down on them. Although they claim to be trying to
avoid women and children, this often results in the murder of large numbers of civilians,
including women and children. In any case, it is an extremely dehumanized method of mass murder.
After their days of slaughter of often a dozen or more people at a time, the U.S. pilots head
home for a comfortable evening with their own families.
See also:
YEMEN — U.S. Imperialist Drone Warfare In,
TORTURE — By U.S. Government
“HANCOCK FIELD AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, N.Y. — From his computer console
here in the Syracuse suburbs, Col. D. Scott Brenton remotely flies a Reaper drone that
beams back hundreds of hours of live video of insurgents, his intended targets, going
about their daily lives 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan. Sometimes he and his team watch
the same family compound for weeks.
“‘I see mothers with children, I see
fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer,’ Colonel
Brenton said.
“When the call comes for him to fire
a missile and kill a militant—and only, Colonel Brenton said, when the women and children
are not around—the hair on the back of his neck stands up, just as it did when he used to
line up targets in his F-16 fighter jet.
“Afterward, just like the old days, he
compartmentalizes. ‘I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy,’ he said. ‘I have a duty,
and I execute the duty.’ ...
“The Air Force now has more than
1,300 drone pilots, about 300 less than it needs, stationed at 13 or more bases across
the United States. They fly the unmanned aircraft mostly in Afghanistan. (The numbers
do not include the classified program of the C.I.A., which conducts drone strikes in
Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.) Although the Afghan war is [supposedly!] winding down, the
military expects drones to help compensate for fewer troops on the ground.
“By 2015, the Pentagon projects
that the Air Force will need more than 2,000 drone pilots for combat air patrols operating
24 hours a day worldwide. The Air Force is already training more drone pilots—350 last
year—than fighter and bomber pilots combined.” —Elisabeth Bumiller, “A Day Job
Waiting for a Kill Shot a World Away”, New York Times, July 29, 2012.
“Now I prefer cloudy days when the drones don’t fly. When the sky brightens
and becomes blue, the drones return and so does the fear. Children don’t play so often now,
and have stopped going to school. Education isn’t possible as long as the drones circle
overhead.” —Zubair Rehman, 13-year old Pakistani student, October 29, 2013. Quoted in the
London Review of Books, Vol. 43, #17, Sept. 9, 2021, p. 3.
[U.S. drone attacks occur frequently
in growing numbers of countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and multiple countries
in the Middle East and northeast Africa. They will undoubtedly continue in Afghanistan even
after the supposed “end” to the 20-year war there in 2021. In fact, even as the last
withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan occurred in late August 2021, a U.S. drone attack
recklessly killed 10 members of a civilian family, including 7 children, even though the
father of that family was actually an aid worker in support of U.S. imperialist occupation
efforts. (See the next quotation.) —Ed.]
“The Pentagon acknowledged on Friday that the last U.S. drone strike before
American troops withdrew from Afghanistan was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians,
including seven children, after initially saying it had been necessary to prevent an attack
on troops. The extraordinary admission provided a horrific punctuation to the chaotic ending
of the 20-year war in Afghanistan ...
“Almost everything senior defense
officials asserted in the hours, and then days, and then weeks after the Aug. 29 drone
strike turned out to be false. The explosives the military claimed were loaded in the trunk
of a white Toyota sedan struck by the drone’s Hellfire missile were probably water bottles,
and a secondary explosion in the courtyard in a densely populated Kabul neighborhood where
the attack took place was probably a propane or gas tank, officials said.
“In short, the car posed no threat at
all, investigators concluded.
“The acknowledgement of the mistake
came a week after a New York Times investigation of video evidence challenged
assertions by the military that it had struck a vehicle carrying explosives meant for Hamid
Karzai International Airport.” —“Drone Attack Was a Mistake, Pentagon Says; Admits
Afghans Killed Had No Ties to ISIS”, New York Times, National Edition, Sept. 18, 2021.
[Since these sorts of “mistakes” in
U.S. drone attacks are so very common, they really should not be called “mistakes” at all.
Reckless indifference to the lives of ordinary people is much closer to the truth.
And this so-called “mistake”, in particular, was obviously only even acknowledged at all
because a New York Times investigation was able to expose the long string of Pentagon
lies about what happened. —Ed.]
DROUGHT
A period of dryness or diminished rainfall, especially when this causes damage to farm crops or
prevents their successful growth. Increased areas and periods of drought are major symptoms of
climate change in the late capitalist era, even though other
regions are simultaneously having increased periods or areas of flooding.
“Expanding Drought
“Since the 1980s, climate change has
tripled the areas of the world that suffer from extreme drought and has brought unprecedented
damage to human health, according to a new report.
“The Lancet Countdown on Health and
Climate Change reports that almost a third of the world experienced extreme drought for
at least three months in 2023, compared to an average of only 5% four decades ago. The increase
has been most severe in South America, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.
“The report states that 151 million more
people faced food shortages last year compared to the 1990s.
“Climate change is bringing more severe
drought to some areas of the world while more extreme rainfall is drenching others.”
—Steve Newman, “Earthweek”, San
Francisco Chronicle, November 3, 2024.