Post Tagged with: "Drones"

Why There Should Be A Treaty Against the Use of Weaponized Drones

Why There Should Be A Treaty Against the Use of Weaponized Drones

Citizen activism to bring about changes in how brutal wars are conducted is extremely difficult, but not impossible.  Citizens have successfully pushed through the United Nations General Assembly treaties to abolish nuclear weapons and to ban the use of landmines and cluster munitions. Of course, countries that want to continue to use these weapons will not follow the lead of[Read More…]

by 04/06/2023 Comments are Disabled World
Adel Al Manthari

Surviving the Killing Fields, a Worldwide Challenge

by Kathy Kelly and Nick Mottern Awaiting discharge from a hospital in Cairo, Adel Al Manthari, a Yemeni civilian, faces months of physical therapy and mounting medical bills following three surgeries since 2018, when a U.S. weaponized drone killed four of his cousins and left him mangled, burnt and barely alive, bedridden to this day. On October 7th,  President Biden[Read More…]

by 11/10/2022 Comments are Disabled World
 Home of the “Hellhounds,” Whiteman AFB drone squadron ‘most lethal’ in US

 Home of the “Hellhounds,” Whiteman AFB drone squadron ‘most lethal’ in US

Note: Brian Terrell delivered this talk at the Oct. 1 peace witness sponsored by PeaceWorksKC, at Whiteman AFB, near Knob Noster, MO. Leading up to this protest there was discussion among organizers about the nature of drone operations here at Whiteman Air Force Base. Is this a training facility, or are Reaper drones engaged in lethal activities, are actual murders[Read More…]

by 03/10/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Secret U.S. Drone Strikes Massacred Civilians In Syria, Claims Report

Secret U.S. Drone Strikes Massacred Civilians In Syria, Claims Report

A secret U.S. Air Force (USAF) drone strike unit was allowed to operate in Syria for five years even as it broke rules of engagement and civilian casualties mounted, it has been revealed in a report by New York Times that cited multiple current and former military and intelligence officials. The New York Times report (Civilian Deaths Mounted as Secret[Read More…]

by 13/12/2021 Comments are Disabled World
A man grieves during a mass funeral for members of a family was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. (Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)

The U.S. Killer Drone Program Stays Afloat on the Back of Lies and Pentagon Propaganda

A wrongly targeted Afghan aid worker and his family are among the latest casualties. On August 29, in the final days of our 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, the United States launched a drone strike, firing a 20-pound Hellfire missile at an aid worker named Zemari Ahmadi as he parked his car outside his home in a residential neighborhood of Kabul.[Read More…]

by 14/10/2021 Comments are Disabled World
A man grieves during a mass funeral for members of a family was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. (Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)

Assassins-in-Chief and Their Brood

What a way to end a war! Apologies all around! We’re so damn sorry — or actually, maybe not! I’m thinking, of course, about CENTCOM commander General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr.’s belated apology for the drone assassination of seven children as the last act, or perhaps final war crime, in this country’s 20-year-long Afghan nightmare. Where to begin (or end, for that[Read More…]

by 29/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
US Drones Still Fly Over the Afghan Horizon

US Drones Still Fly Over the Afghan Horizon

Facing unrelenting criticism over the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden Administration is insisting that the United States will maintain a capability to launch airstrikes in Afghanistan, regardless of the legal limitations and possibility of perpetuating the war. The Biden Administration vows to keep in place an “over-the-horizon capability,” meaning that the United States will still be able to strike targets in Afghanistan[Read More…]

by 18/09/2021 Comments are Disabled World
A man grieves during a mass funeral for members of a family was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. (Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)

Shut Down the Drone War

The August 29 U.S. drone strike in Kabul that killed ten civilians, including seven children, demonstrates the bankruptcy of the war on terror. Like many other drone strikes, the strike in Kabul targeted innocent people and achieved nothing except to blow up civilians that had the misfortune to be in the vicinity. According to two recent investigative reports in The New York Times and The Washington[Read More…]

by 16/09/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Droning Disasters: A US Strike on Kabul

Droning Disasters: A US Strike on Kabul

No more profoundly disturbing statement was needed.  In the dying days of the official US departure from Kabul, a US drone etched its butcher’s legacy with a strike supposedly intended for the blood-lusty terrorist group ISIS-K, an abbreviation of Islamic State in Khorasan Province.  Its members had taken responsibility for blasts outside Harmid Karzai International Airport that had cost the[Read More…]

by 01/09/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Papers Instead of Human Lives: The Sentencing of Daniel Hale

Papers Instead of Human Lives: The Sentencing of Daniel Hale

In May 2019, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, that famous bastion of anti-whistleblowing fervour, unsealed an indictment charging former intelligence analyst Daniel Everett Hale with five counts of providing classified information to a reporter.  The first four focused on obtaining national defense information, retaining and transmitting that information, causing the communication of that same information[Read More…]

by 28/07/2021 1 comment World
Letter from drone war whistleblower Daniel Hale to Judge Liam O’Grady

Letter from drone war whistleblower Daniel Hale to Judge Liam O’Grady

“We now kill people without ever seeing them. Now you push a button thousands of miles away … Since it’s all done by remote control, there’s no remorse … and then we come home in triumph.” —US Navy Admiral Gene LaRocque, speaking to a reporter in 1995. Dear Judge O’Grady, It is not a secret that I struggle to live[Read More…]

by 26/07/2021 2 comments World
Pedestrians in Washington, D.C. walk past an image of Daniel Hale projected on a D.C. building on June 26, 2021 - Photo credit:  Nick Mottern

Why Daniel Hale Deserves Gratitude, Not Prison

 The whistleblower acted on behalf of the public’s right to know what is being done in its name “Pardon Daniel Hale.” These words hung in the air on a recent Saturday evening, projected onto several Washington, D.C. buildings, above the face of a courageous whistleblower facing ten years in prison. The artists aimed to inform the U.S. public about Daniel[Read More…]

by 07/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
Biden Acknowledges “Over The Horizon” Air Attacks Planned Against Taliban

Biden Acknowledges “Over The Horizon” Air Attacks Planned Against Taliban

“Over-the-horizon” air operations, possibly directed at the Taliban, may rely very heavily on drone assassination and drone targeting for manned aircraft. On July 2, fleeing questions from reporters about U.S. plans in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden sought refuge behind the July 4th Independence Day holiday, yet obliquely acknowledged that the U.S. will use some level of “over the horizon” air attacks[Read More…]

by 05/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
Robot Weapons Moving From Horror Movies to Real Battles

Robot Weapons Moving From Horror Movies to Real Battles

       There has increasing concern in recent times of robot weapons becoming more of a real-life threat, and a very serious one at that. So it was only a matter of time before we would hear of a horrible robot weapon being used in real battlefield. This appears to have happened last year in Libya with the appearance of what[Read More…]

by 22/05/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Photo Credit: Sam Durant, Untitled (drone), 2016-2021 (rendering). Proposal for the High Line Plinth. Commissioned by High Line Art. Courtesy of the High Line

Art Against Drones

At the High Line, a popular tourist attraction in New York City,  visitors to the West side of Lower Manhattan ascend above street level to what was once an elevated freight train line and is now a tranquil and architecturally intriguing promenade. Here walkers enjoy a park-like openness; with fellow strollers they experience urban beauty, art and the wonder of[Read More…]

by 12/05/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Activists Brian Terrell and Ghulam Hussein Ahmadi at the Border Free Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. Graffiti by Kabul Knight, photo by Hakim

Biden’s Drone Wars

On Thursday, April 15, the New York Times posted an article headed, “How the U.S. Plans to Fight From Afar After Troops Exit Afghanistan,” just in case anyone misunderstood the previous day’s headline, “Biden, Setting Afghanistan Withdrawal, Says ‘It Is Time to End the Forever War’” as indicating the U.S. war in Afghanistan might actually come to an end on[Read More…]

by 19/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
Moving on from the War on Terror?

Moving on from the War on Terror?

In the first two months of Joe Biden’s presidency, you could feel the country holding its breath. Sheltered in place, hidden behind masks, unsure about whether to trust in a safe-from-pandemic future, we are nonetheless beginning to open our eyes collectively. As part of this reemergence, a wider array of issues — those beyond Covid-19 — are once again starting[Read More…]

by 25/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
 A “Persistent Eye in the Sky” Coming to a City Near You?

 A “Persistent Eye in the Sky” Coming to a City Near You?

by Medea Benjamin and Barry Summers “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.” That same persistent eye in the sky may soon be deployed over U.S. cities. At the time he made that comment about surveillance drones over[Read More…]

by 16/09/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Lacking Transparency: Israeli Drones And Australian Defence

Lacking Transparency: Israeli Drones And Australian Defence

“Give us the chance to compete, to see our capabilities, to compare, to see the benefit we can bring with our [drone] system.” Shaul Shahar, Israel Aerospace Industries Vice-President, March 2, 2017 A certain part of you should go on vacation when a drone company, certainly one dedicated to killing, gets less custom to do what it does best.  The[Read More…]

by 05/09/2017 Comments are Disabled World
“Me And My Shadow-Drone”

“Me And My Shadow-Drone”

The computer whined
a kind of laugh….
“You’re on a biometric leash!
We know your thoughts before you strew them
haphazardly about.”

by 16/05/2017 3 comments Arts/Literature
Trump Administration Secretly Resumes CIA Drone Assassination Program

Trump Administration Secretly Resumes CIA Drone Assassination Program

The Trump White House has secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to resume drone assassination strikes that in the latter years of the Obama administration had been largely reserved for the US military, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The Journal cited unnamed US officials revealing that the authorization was granted shortly after Trump visited CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia[Read More…]

by 15/03/2017 1 comment Imperialism
Murder Inc. In the White House; Obama’s Drones For Breakfast Club

Murder Inc. In the White House; Obama’s Drones For Breakfast Club

Elections come and go but when “The Don”, Barack Obama, meets with his inner circle of Capos every Tuesday morning its breakfast with drones as in the Murder Incorporated assassination program. Think about it, every Tuesday morning in the White House this breakfast club decides who they are going to blow to smithereens that week, with fresh fruit and cappuccinos[Read More…]

by 10/11/2016 1 comment Imperialism
Droning Julian Assange: The Clinton Formula

Droning Julian Assange: The Clinton Formula

“We believe in what we are doing… If you are pushed you push back.” Julian Assange The mutterings have become furious, and it is clear that the Democratic contender for the White House has again shown how traditional her ploys towards power are going to be.  Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have again managed to pull the blinds off an episode[Read More…]

by 05/10/2016 1 comment World
Asymmetric Peace, 33 x 27 inches, 2016. Old fashioned cross-stitch embroidery includes color-coordinated web links.

Drone Unknowns: “I No Longer Love Blue Skies”

I got involved in the whole drones process because I was representing people in Guantanamo Bay. And when President Obama came into office he says we’re going to close Guantanamo Bay and fairly quickly it dawned on me that yeah he didn’t like Guantanamo, so they were just going out and killing the people instead of locking them up. And[Read More…]

by 08/09/2016 1 comment Imperialism
The Trojan Drone: An Illegal Military Strategy Disguised As Technological Advance 

The Trojan Drone: An Illegal Military Strategy Disguised As Technological Advance 

Think of it as the Trojan Drone, the ultimate techno-weapon of American warfare in these years, a single remotely operated plane sent to take out a single key figure. It’s a shiny video game for grown ups — a Mortal Kombator Call of Duty where the animated enemies bleed real blood. Just like the giant wooden horse the Greeks convinced the Trojans to[Read More…]

by 18/07/2016 1 comment Imperialism
Multicopter with camera

Civlian Drones: Are They Intruding Or Serving?

Neil Armstrong once said that ‘science has not yet mastered prophecy, we predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next ten’. This quote is so true in the Indian context as none can imagine exactly ten years ago that drones can be used for civilian purposes but now they are all set to[Read More…]

by 09/07/2016 1 comment India