“oh please!... stop killing us!... we’re just children!... you killed the others!... you killed our mother!... you killed our father!... and then our sister!... and our brother!... and for what?!... our family’s dead!... you blew them apart!... our father’s smart head!... our mother’s sweet heart!... all they did was work hard!... our father plowed the fields!... our mother cooked our food!... sister’s wounds were healed!... and brother’s pigeon cooed!... now they’re dead and gone!... and it’s all because of you!... why do you kill like this?!... we don’t even know you!... but you still kill us dead!... yes this is what you do!... so what is life to you?!... even we know better!... than to be like you!... stop what you do!... stop killing us!... you did enough!... you killed so much!... just stay away from us!”...
This past Thursday was a beautiful day for a protest, both in London, England, and in San Diego, California. Fortunately for those of us who still care about peace and justice in the world -- even to the point of opposing cold-blooded murder no matter who does the murdering or how far away the victim is -- Veterans For Peace has become an international organization.
General Atomics is the manufacturer of the Predator and Reaper UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) in service with the U.S. and U.K. militaries. These drones have been used in numerous attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and other countries. People targeted by these weapons are killed from above without warning and without due legal process. Numerous entirely innocent people including women and children have been killed by these weapon systems. Here's a former British drone pilot who just admitted that he was minutes away from murdering "an insurgent" when he realized it was a little kid playing in the dirt.
Many of us remember taking over General Atomics' offices in Washington, D.C., last October (video). That's me and Tighe Barry, with filmmaker Dennis Trainor Jr., going in the side door and opening the front door for the crowd.
As it happens, General Atomics does its evil work in San Diego and London. Veterans for Peace has no tolerance for murderous robot planes, wherever they're made. Mike Reid, executive director of Veterans For Peace, said on Thursday, "If we oppose murder at close range, we should oppose it at long distance. If we oppose it when it's risky and difficult, we should be horrified of a practice that makes it trivial and easy. Imagining that drone wars don't damage the very culture of the people engaged in them is naive. Those manufacturing these instruments of death, in particular, should think long and hard about the road they are on."
They had a chance to do just that on Thursday. "On a bright autumn afternoon," reports Ben Griffin, "VFP UK headed to Tower 42, which contains the offices of General Atomics in London. We took our placards bearing the slogans 'GROUND THE DRONES' and 'GENERAL ATOMICS, DEATH FROM ABOVE.' We unfurled our VFP flag donated by Gerry Condon and set about handing out our flyers."
"Within minutes we were joined by over 20 nuns from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. They had heard about our protest and wanted to join in. They were soon into full song and dealt with an inquiring policeman effectively. Folks from Occupy, Friends of Bradley Manning, London Catholic Worker and supporters of Julian Assange also turned up."
Griffin's remarks to that crowd included this:
"People are targeted with these weapons without being identified and are killed from above without warning. Numerous innocent civilians including women and children have been killed as a result of these attacks. Mosques, schools, funerals and meetings of elders have all been attacked by drones. People responding to drone strikes by pulling the wounded out of buildings have also been attacked with these weapons. We must spread the word about these weapons, and the hidden wars they are used in."
And the word was spread to passing cars honking their support, passersby stopping to inquire, and many people who worked in the building, some of them surprised to learn that General Atomics was there as well.
A bit later on Thursday, the afternoon sun reached General Atomics in Poway, California, where, Dave Patterson reports, "Veterans For Peace, Chapter 91, had terrific posters and banners. I think I can say that our momentum is picking up for this cause now in week 6 of sequential demonstrations."
If you're in Southern California on a Thursday, join the protest from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at the corner of Scripps Poway Parkway and General Atomics Way in Poway, CA.
Veterans For Peace is calling for the grounding of Predator and Reaper Drones and for General Atomics to stop manufacturing them. Other members of VFP are currently traveling from the United States to Pakistan as part of a delegation organized by Code Pink to visit one area where U.S. drone strikes have become frequent. VFP is part of a coalition organizing an online petition in support of banning weaponized drones.
Veterans For Peace was founded in 1985 and has approximately 5,000 members in 150 chapters located in every U.S. state and several countries. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization recognized as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) by the United Nations, and is the only national veterans' organization calling for the abolishment of war.
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David Swanson is an associate (meaning non-veteran) member of and a paid contractor for Veterans For Peace.
I find myself caught between the need to follow the drone debate and the need to avoid unpleasant memories it stirs. I used drones – unmanned aerial vehicles – during the nadir of my military career that was an operational tour in Afghanistan. I remember cuing up a US Predator strike before deciding the computer screen wasn't depicting a Taliban insurgent burying an improvised explosive device in the road; rather, a child playing in the dirt.
There is a massive deception campaign in the US, and in its global propaganda, which seeks to portray the United States as a poor set-upon nation that would like world peace but just has to keep a military stationed around the globe to “police” all the world’s “trouble spots.”
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, is calling on the United States Senate Judiciary Committee to protect the privacy and civil liberties of American citizens from police use of unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones. In the wake of the passage of the FAA Reauthorization Act, it is expected that at least 30,000 drones will occupy U.S. airspace by 2020. In alerting the Senate Judiciary Committee to the dangers posed by drones to citizens’ privacy and civil liberties, The Rutherford Institute has made model legislation available, titled “Freedom from Drone Surveillance Act,” that would not only prohibit the federal government from using data recorded via police spy drones in criminal prosecutions but would also prevent police agencies from utilizing drones outfitted with anti-personnel devices such as tasers and tear gas.
“These drones—aerial, robotic threats to privacy and security—are being unleashed on the American populace before any real protocols to protect our privacy rights have been put in place and in such a way as to completely alter the landscape of our lives and our freedoms,” said Whitehead. “It is critical that Congress not only give serious consideration to the dangers posed to our freedoms by these aerial devices but ensure that the American people are protected against any resulting incursions on their rights as provided for by the U.S. Constitution.”
As The Rutherford Institute’s fact sheet on drones details, the FAA Reauthorization Act, signed into law by President Obama in early 2012, has opened the door for drones, once confined to the battlefields over Iraq and Afghanistan, to be used domestically for a wide range of functions, both public and private, governmental and corporate. Yet without proper safeguards, these devices, some of which are deceptively small and capable of videotaping the facial expressions of people on the ground from hundreds of feet in the air, will usher in a new age of surveillance in American society. Not even those indoors, in the privacy of their homes, will be safe from these aerial spies, which can be equipped with technology capable of peering through walls. In addition to their surveillance capabilities, drone manufacturers have confirmed that drones can also be equipped with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, tear gas, and tasers. Aside from the very serious and grave implications for privacy and civil liberties raised by Whitehead, there are also a number of safety issues involved with drone technology, with the paramount concern being that drones have a history of malfunctioning mid-air. Drones are also vulnerable to hackers, allowing unauthorized persons to access information gathered via drone, or to take control of the drone’s flight path. Noting that the safety and privacy issues posed by the implementation of drone technology are a bi-partisan concern, Whitehead concludes by calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to ensure that drone technology is fully vetted by a commission charged with studying its impact on the safety and privacy of Americans. “In the meantime, however,” states Whitehead, “it is imperative that Congress assures the citizens of this country that their privacy, safety, and civil liberties will not be jeopardized for the sake of expedience, economy and security.
Anti-drone activity has continued around the country in recent weeks -- see descriptions below. (In addition, see the links at right for updates from other locations.)
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/target.pdf This document by CRS Legislative Attorney Jennifer Elsea makes it clear that the US Government's drone program is based on the ancient legal principle of "shoot first, ask (legal) questions later". Her analysis demonstrates that these killings run afoul of almost every legal principle regarding the use of lethal force outside of a declared war between nations, from the Caroline principle to the UN Charter to the specific provisions of the 2001 AUMF. And of course it speaks volumes that the CRS has to speculate on the U.S. government's justification for killing people in the first place - this is the extent of our democracy, that Congress employs people to parse speeches by administration officials to find out what the policy of our country is regarding our right to not be killed in cold blood.
Two conscientious nonviolent activists, Brian Terrell and Ron Faust, were convicted on Monday of trespassing, for having attempted to deliver a document listing concerns about drones to the commander of Whiteman Air Force Base near Jefferson City, Mo., last April. A third protester, Mark Kenney of Omaha, Neb., is serving a four-month sentence after having pled guilty in June to trespassing.
Veterans For Peace members were among those participating in a demonstration last April, and again on Monday, in support of Faust and Terrell, who will be sentenced in the coming weeks. Veterans For Peace applauds nonviolent resistance to the illegal and immoral use of drones, and stands in solidarity with those taking these risks to serve their country and the world.
Enlarge Michelle Gabel, The Post-Standard Left to right, Richard Weiskopf and Ed Kinane, both of Syracuse, are shown during The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars demonstration at the Hancock Air Base Sunday to protest the use of drones that are operated out of the base. The protest coincides with the base's name change ceremony. It is changing its name from 174th Fighter Wing to Attack Wing.
DeWitt, NY -- Forty-one people with signs, a drum and voices parked themselves across from the gate to the New York Air National Guard headquarters at Hancock Field Sunday to protest the United States' use of unmanned drones in Pakistan and other countries.
"Americans just don't understand what is happening over there," said Judy Bello, of Rochester.
"Using drone to target assassinations is against international law," said Jim Clune, of Binghamton.
The group Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drone and End the Wars chose Sunday for its event because the 174th Fighter Wing at Hancock was changing its name to 174th Attack Wing, which reflects the change in mission at the base from flying fighter aircraft to MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft.
Although eight Onondaga County Sheriff's patrol cars and three town of DeWitt Police patrol cars were on hand, no one was arrested. The protesters stayed on the south side of Molloy Road during their 90-minute event.
· can cost $28 million? The Airforce has 60 and hopes to have 330.
· are used for targeted killing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Pakistan with no legal basis for defining the scope of the area where drones can and cannot be used, no rigorous criteria for deciding which people will be targeted for killing, no procedural safeguards to ensure the legality and accuracy of the killings, and no mechanisms of accountability.
· are killing civilians, Americans, non-Americans, adults, children.
· are being produced to spy on U.S. citizens.
Nick Mottern is a journalist and member of Knowdrones. He is currently on tour with a model drone, having conversations with folks across the country about the financial or moral costs of drones.
SYRACUSE, NY. -- Like the School of the Americas, the weaponized drone perpetrates terrorism. As Predator drones come to Ft. Benning, some SOA Watch activists are applying our SOAW experience to “outing” the Predator and Reaper drones already in our midst.
Syracuse’s Hancock Air National Guard Base has become one of the national hubs for piloting -- via computer screen and satellite -- the Reaper over Afghanistan. For three years upstate New York activists have been trying to educate our public and Hancock personnel about the war crimes being committed by these robotic killers [www.upstatedroneaction.org].
Rafia Zakaria, a Pakistani-American writer, reports on how drones look from thousands of miles away from the desks at which they are "piloted." Zakaria is a columnist for the English-language Pakistani newspaper Dawn, a blogger for Ms. Magazine and for Human Rights Now, and a director for Amnesty International USA. Drones will not look the same to you after listening to her.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson. Producer: David Swanson. Engineer: Christiane Brown. Music by Duke Ellington.
The lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki belong always before us. The agony of those two cities must remain our dark beacon.
Hiroshima/Nagasaki wasn’t so much about targets as about audiences. We – or rather, the very highest reaches of the US government – annihilated a couple hundred thousand nameless, unarmed, undefended human beings to warn the world: “Don’t mess with us; we run things now.”
Thanks to its atomic prowess – showcased at H/N – for over 65 years the US has been able to hold the planet hostage. It deploys nuclear blackmail to further its corporations’ grip on the world’s resources and markets. But such gunboat diplomacy has only partially succeeded.
The Soviets soon acquired the Bomb. For nearly four decades that other evil empire terrorized us here in our previously invincible Homeland. So the pitiless logic of proliferation made us all far less safe.
Fort Carson officials have decided that having a new combat aviation brigade of 113 helicopters and support troops conduct training at the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site won't do any permanent damage to the 238,000-acre training range northeast of Trinidad.
CNN’s national security expert Peter Bergen speaking at a recent event (Miller Center/ Flickr)
Following recent revelations by the New York Times that all military-aged males in Waziristan are considered fair game by the CIA in its drone strikes, many US journalists have been reassessing how they report on deaths in the attacks.
So when CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen produced a graph claiming that no civilians have been killed in Pakistan this year by US drones, his views were bound to attract criticism. Conor Friedersdorf, a columnist at The Atlantic, accused CNN and Bergen of running ‘bogus data‘, for example.
Bergen is also a director of the New America Foundation, which for more than three years has run a database on CIA drone strikes in Pakistan and produces estimates of numbers killed. That data is the most frequent source of statistics for the US media, including CNN itself. So the accuracy of its material is important.
Yet there are credible reports of civilian deaths in Pakistan this year. And unlike the New America Foundation the Bureau actively tracks those claims.
Americans have been protesting and getting arrested at U.S. drone bases and research institutions for years, and some members of Congress are starting to respond to the pressure.
But it’s not that drones are being used to extrajudicially execute people, including Americans, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia that has U.S. lawmakers concerned. Rather it’s the possible and probable violation of Americans’ privacy in the United States by unlawful drone surveillance that has caught the attention of legislators.
WHO: The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance [NCNR] was formed to encourage direct action against our government’s endless wars. For example, NCNR organized a visit to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland on October 9, 2011. The group was seeking a meeting with Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director, to discuss perceived illegal and unconstitutional activities. Instead of a meeting, fourteen citizen activists were arrested. They are scheduled for trial on October 25.
On May 8, 2012 eight members of NCNR sat in for eight hours in President Ron Daniel’s office at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. They were there to demand a meeting with the president to encourage him to end killer drone research at the university.
Elliott Adams and Nate Lewis, two members of Veterans For Peace, were part of a larger group of 15 activists arrested Thursday at the gate to Hancock Airbase in Syracuse, N.Y., where they held large banners and signs protesting drones for three hours before they were arrested.
One banner showed images of children killed by U.S. drones in Afghanistan. Another showed a reaper drone and the grim reaper. Another quoted Martin Luther King Jr. "I have a dream" and Barack Obama "I have a drone."
Photos and videos: http://www.facebook.com/daniel.j.burns.9?sk=wall
For some of the participants, this was not their first time protesting at Hancock. Adams was arrested last year as one of the "Hancock 38," and again this past April in a group of 33. Adams is Past President of Veterans for Peace and current Nonviolent Training Coordinator.
"President Barack Obama's administration on Wednesday refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for basic information on its drone programs," remarked President of Veterans For Peace Leah Bolger. "While programs of assassination ought not to exist at all, this week's response provides further evidence of the extreme secrecy now surrounding so much of what our government does.
"The White House has refused to disclose to the ACLU or the New York Times basic information on drone programs that amount to war-making, claiming that Congress has insisted on such secrecy, even while rejecting inquiries into the drone programs from Congress as well. Veterans For Peace supports efforts by the United Nations and the international human rights community to bring U.S. drone programs out into the open.
A shroud of darkness becomes the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, the unmanned space plane design that twice has ventured into orbit on hush-hush missions for the U.S. Air Force. Oh, the Air Force and X-37B maker Boeing don't mind telling you about the launches and landings and the vehicle's remarkable endurance. Just don't bother asking detailed questions about what they're doing with all that time in orbit.
This photo shows the first X-37B, designated OTV-1, on the runway at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on December 3, 2010, just after it returned from its first trip into space, which lasted 224 days. As it turns out, that was just a warmup act. Any day now, the second X-37B, OTV-2, will touch down on Earth to end its second mission, which began with a liftoff on March 5, 2011 -- meaning it has now been in orbit for better than 465 days, easily doubling the record of its older sibling.
Lord knows, I should'a been gone Lord knows, I should'a been gone And I wouldn't've been here, down on the killin' floor - Howlin' Wolf, Killing Floor
As convenient as it is for someone in a cubicle in the Nevada desert to press a button and incinerate a Pashtun wedding party in North Waziristan, now, with only a click, anyone can download a 359 KB file available on Amazon for only $8.99 - including free wireless delivery - and learn everything there is to learn about All Things Drone.
It's fitting that Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 has been put together by Tom Engelhardt - editor, MC of the TomDispatch website and "a national treasure", in the correct appraisal of University of Michigan professor Juan Cole - and TomDispatch's associate editor Nick Turse, author of the seminal 2008 study The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.
This is essentially Tom and Nick's revised and updated body of work detailing the uber-dystopian Dronescape over the past few years - spanning everything from secret Drone Empire bases to offshore droning; a Philip Dick-style exercise on a more than plausible drone-on-drone war off East Africa in 2050; and a postscript inimitably titled, "America as a Shining Drone Upon a Hill". It does beat fiction because it's all fact-based.
An MQ-1 Predator or an MQ-9 Reaper to go?
This digital file becomes even more crucial now that US and world public opinion knows US President Barack Obama is the certified Droner-in-Chief; the final judge, jury and digital Grand Inquisitor on which suspicious Muslim (for the moment, at least, they are all Muslims) will get his paradise virgins via targeted assassination.
Obama owns his newspeak-drenched "kill list". He decides on a "personality strike" (a single suspect) or a "signature strike" (a group). "Nominations" are scrutinized by Obama and his associate producer, counter-terrorism czar John Brennan. The logic is straight from Kafka; anyone lurking around an alleged "terrorist" is a terrorist. The only way to know for sure is after he's dead.
And the winner of the Humanitarian Oscar for Best Targeted Assassination with No Collateral Damage goes to… the Barack Obama White House death squad.
In town court this evening, at the request of the town prosecuting attorney, Judge David Gideon dismissed the charge of “parading without a permit” against the “Hancock 33.” Onondaga County sheriffs arrested the defendants, from Syracuse and across New York State, on Sunday, April 22 while they walked silently, solemnly and single-file along the shoulder of East Molloy Road, the public road leading to the main gate of Hancock Air Base.
Many of the defendants were carrying signs protesting the piloting of weaponized Reaper drones at Hancock. Their intent, foiled by the arrests, was to deliver a citizen’s indictment to the base. They allege that under International Law war crimes are committed on the base, especially the widespread killing of civilians by the Reaper in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The town attorney Donald Doerr, citing the DeWitt Town Code – Chapter 134-1, noted that prosecution was unnecessary since the 33 weren’t a threat to themselves or to the traveling public and that they didn’t interfere with emergency service to the community.
One of the walkers, Ann Tiffany of Syracuse, said, “These were pre-emptive arrests. They violated citizens’ rights to assemble and petition our government under the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution.”
from children...
ILLINOIS - Occupy Obama drew attention to Barack Obama's drone victims with a funeral procession in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention (DNC), which ended up at Obama 2012 Campaign HQ. (Coffins were marked "hope" and "change.")
Rafia Zakaria, a Pakistani-American writer, reports on how drones look from thousands of miles away from the desks at which they are "piloted." Zakaria is a columnist for the English-language Pakistani newspaper Dawn, a blogger for Ms. Magazine and for Human Rights Now, and a director for Amnesty International USA. Drones will not look the same to you after listening to her.
