7 Things Democrats Would Have Freaked Out About If Bush Had Done Them
Buzzfeed: Obama’s national security policy has continued some of the most controversial moves of the Bush administration. Silence from much of the left
"[E]ven as Obama said that “a decade of war is now ending” in his inauguration speech, a drone strike killed three suspected Al Qaeda members in Yemen. […]
If George W. Bush were doing this sort of thing, we’d be marching in the streets about it. Why does Obama get a free pass? (And on Bradley Manning? And on Guantanamo?) Anyone in the press want to ask the President about the legality & moral stickiness of drone strikes at his next press conference?"
kottke.org: Obama’s overlooked war and lethal Presidency (via hipsterlibertarian)
(via hipsterlibertarian)
"No politician is exempt from the rules of ethics, decency, and honesty. Obama can’t palm this off on the disastrous legacy of George W. Bush, either. This is a crow he has to eat, and he has to live with it. It’s appalling to think of anyone giving him a pass for sanctioned murder just because they voted for him."
Ex Lege Libertas (via eltigrechico)
(via bitchbetterhavemyhunny)
January 3rd: 3-4 killed by a drone strike on a car near Mir Ali, North Waziristan. CNN reports the drone fired first on the vehicle, then on rescuers who went to help those in the car, injuring several more. The death toll is expected to rise, according to local security sources. #pakistan #drone #drones (at Mubarak Shahi, North Waziristan)
Reps. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, both about to leave Congress, are teaming up to try to force the office of the President to release its legal justification for drone use, which so far has been entirely free of scrutiny, transparency, and accountability.
(Source: hipsterlibertarian, via the-altar)
U.N. announces investigation of Obama's deadly drone attacks, special rapporteur says some may be war crimes
The United Nations is to set up a dedicated investigations unit in Geneva early next year to examine the legality of drone attacks in cases where civilians are killed in so-called “targeted” counter-terrorism operations.
The announcement was made by Ben Emmerson QC, a UN special rapporteur, in a speech to Harvard law school in which he condemned secret rendition and waterboarding as crimes under international law. His forthright comments, directed at both US presidential candidates, will be seen as an explicit challenge to the prevailing US ideology of the global war on terror.
Earlier this summer, Emmerson, who monitors counter-terrorism for the UN, called for effective investigations into drone attacks. Some US drone strikes in Pakistan may amount to war crimes, Emmerson warned.
In his Harvard speech, he said: “If the relevant states are not willing to establish effective independent monitoring mechanisms … then it may in the last resort be necessary for the UN to act.
“Together with my colleague Christof Heyns, [the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings], I will be launching an investigation unit within the special procedures of the [UN] Human Rights Council to inquire into individual drone attacks.”
Embarrassing, shameful that it is going to take an international body to hold President Barack Obama and his administration accountable for the supreme crimes against humanity committed they have committed against Pakistan and other countries. Our aspirational Peace Prize Winner might end up becoming America’s First War Criminal President.
(Source: againstpower)
US Drones Kill Up To 3 in Pakistan, ‘Not Clear’ Whether They Had ‘Any Link to Militancy’
Your Waziristan update of the week:
A US drone fired two missiles at near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least one person and possibly three, although officials said “It was not clear whether the three dead were men or women or whether they had any link to militancy,” according to the Associated Press.
The attack occurred in the North Waziristan tribal area. Pakistani intelligence officials provided the AP with conflicting accounts of how many were killed, though, and could not confirm that those killed had any connection to militancy at all.
The intelligence officials also confirmed that a cow and a buffalo were killed in the drone strikes.
The Obama administration has waged the drone war in Pakistan for nearly four years now, and while certain officials have spoken publicly about it, the program is kept technically so that the administration can escape any legal scrutiny or avoid being forced to release information to the public.
The Pakistani government has persistently denounced the unilateral bombing of their country by the US, saying its a violation of the law and of their sovereignty.
A few thousand people have been killed in the drone war, only 2 percent of which, according to a recent academic study, were named as high-value militants.
“Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning,” the study by researchers at the Stanford and NYU schools of law found. “Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. These fears have affected behavior.”
You have no place denouncing Obama’s drone campaign if you are planning on voting for Romney next week.
When you vote next month, you better think of that child laughing on the right.
Who is this? This is Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. An innocent 16-year old American teenager brutally assassinated by one of Barack Obama’s drone strikes.
Wait, you do not know who he is? How the fuck do you not know? It was all over the news! I bet you know about Big Bird and Binders Full of Women, though.
I mean, it is not like it was a story on:
1. Esquire: http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812-4
2. TIME: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2097899,00.html
3. NPR: http://www.npr.org/2012/08/26/160077178/obamas-warfare-from-power-to-a-policy
4. Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-airstrike-that-killed-american-teen-in-yemen-raises-legal-ethical-questions/2011/10/20/gIQAdvUY7L_story.html
5. ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/awlaki-family-protests-us-killing-anwar-awlakis-teen/story?id=14765076#.UIQyQJJEpjAOh wait. It looks like it was a story on these sites.
Your ignorance is unacceptable.
However, if you knew about this and yet decided that this bit of information is too damaging to your guy to warrant a mention, then your silence is criminal.
Your silence is criminal.
Just as some of us will never forget what happened to the young, innocent Abdulrahman, some of us will never forget your silent complicity
(Source: againstpower)
What It’s Like to Be Hit By a Drone Strike
c4ss:
… At about 5:00 that evening, they heard the hissing sound of a missile and instinctively bent their heads down. The missile slammed into the center of the room, blowing off the ceiling and roof, and shattering all the windows. The immense pressure from the impact cracked the walls of the attached house, as well as those of the neighboring houses. Our research team reviewed photographs that Faheem showed us, which he said showed the destruction to the home. Faheem, who stated that he was approximately ten footsteps away from the center of the hujra, suffered a fractured skull and received shrapnel wounds and burns all over the left side of his body and face. All others in the hujra-at least seven, but as many as 15 people-were killed. …
37 People Arrested At Drone Protest In New York
Dozens of war protesters were arrested Friday afternoon outside the main entrance of the New York Air National Guard’s base at Hancock Field.
Thirty seven protesters, draped with red-spattered sheets, had lain themselves in the main entrance roads to the base, off East Molloy Road. They were arrested by Onondaga County Sheriff’s deputies on charges of trespassing and obstruction of justice.
They were handcuffed and, after a 45-minute wait, were led to a jail transport bus that was supposed to take them to the Onondaga County Justice Center for processing. Two were in wheel chairs.
The arrests followed a rally outside the air base where more than 150 people had gathered to protest the MQ-9 Reaper drones, and U.S. military involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Drone Protesters Rally in Syracuse Drone Protesters Rally in Syracuse Drone protesters rally in Syracuse, with a final protest outside the Air National Guard Base at Hancock. Thirty-seven people were arrested following a demonstration. Video by Gary Walts / The Post-Standard Watch video
Friday’s rally culminated a week of walks, talks and dinners that brought people from around New York State and the U.S., organized by the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars.
“Our real goal is to end the war,” said Kathy Kelly, a peace activist from Chicago.
Speaker after speaker said the drones represent a new stage of dehumanizing war, kill and maim many civilians. “They terrorize people we don’t want to terrorize,” said Elliott Adams, a Veterans for Peace member from Sharon Springs, NY.
The 174th Fighter Wing of the New York Air National Guard has been remotely flying MQ-9 Reaper drones over Afghanistan, from Syracuse, since late 2009. The unmanned surveillance aircraft is armed with Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs.
The 174th is the first Air National Guard unit to fly MQ-9s, and the first Air Force-affiliated unit east of the Mississippi to fly them.
Major Jeff Brown, spokesman for the 174th, said the unit was proud of their mission. “We are proud of the role we play protecting the lives of military men and women on the ground, in harm’s way,” he said. “This state-of-the-art technology saves American lives on a daily basis.”
(Source: voluntaryexchange, via 21st-century-classical-liberal)
Obama Finally Talks Drone War, But It's Almost Impossible to Believe Him
The most important paragraph in this piece:
A third point — that an American citizen is given the “protections of the Constitution” before he’s approved for unmanned killing — is dubious. Yes, there is a process that the White House uses to vet proposed drone targets. Several government officials review a suspected terrorist’s dossier before an attack on that person is okayed. This is an internal review by presidential aides, not subject to any kind of independent authority, and obviously not one in which a target’s representatives can contest the case. It’s enough to condemn someone to death. The Obama administration has argued that this is the same as the “due process of law” guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
Do you trust President Barack Obama to decide which of your fellow Americans is killed without trial? How about Romney?
- Jayel Aheram
(via againstpower)
“We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won’t allow them to write “fuck” on their airplanes because it’s obscene!”
"
That’s the level of detailed monitoring that drone surveillance enables. Numerous attributes of surveillance drones — their ability to hover in the same place for long periods of time, their ability to remain stealth, their increasingly cheap cost and tiny size — enable surveillance of a breadth, duration and invasiveness unlike other types of surveillance instruments, such as police helicopters or satellites. Recall that one new type of drone already in use by the U.S. military in Afghanistan — the Gorgon Stare, named after the “mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them” — is “able to scan an area the size of a small town” and “the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence that [can] seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity”; boasted one U.S. General: “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything.”
There is zero question that this drone surveillance is coming to American soil. It already has spawned a vast industry that is quickly securing formal approval for the proliferation of these surveillance weapons. There’s some growing though still marginal opposition among both the independent left and the more on the right, but at the moment, that trans-ideological coalition is easily outgunned by the combination of drone industry lobbyists and Surveillance State fanatics. The idea of flying robots hovering over American soil monitoring what citizens do en masse is yet another one of those ideas that, in the very recent past, seemed too radical and dystopian to entertain, yet is on the road to being quickly mainstreamed. When that happens, it is no longer deemed radical to advocate such things; radicalism is evinced by opposition to them.
Glenn Greenwald, Extremism Normalized: How Americans Now Acquiesce to Once Unthinkable Ideas (via socialuprooting)
Glenn Greenwald is fantastic.
(via antigovernmentextremist)
(Source: jayaprada, via antigovernmentextremist)
"Indeed, Obama’s first authorized drone attack in Yemen led to the deaths of 14 women and 21 children, and only one al-Qaeda affiliate."
http://lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead47.1.html (via evanmille)
