Magda Hassan Wrote:I read today that it looks like Austin Texas might be the lucky forst to have this tried on them....
Dawn lives there and can report first hand......:mexican:
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
The Israeli company Stark Aerospace of Mississippi is not so much from Mississippi as it is from Israel. Stark Aerospace of Mississippi is a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries! And the Federal Aviation Administration has given them permission to fly their drones in American airspace!
Israel started its drone program with a contract in July of 1970 with the American company Teledyne Ryan. Since then it has moved to making its own drones which it uses to wage war with its neighbors as well as to keep Palestinians suppressed and under Jewish control. While being employed to control the Palestinians Israeli drones have been used in the direct killings of Palestinian children in Gaza.
The U.S. government promotes the use of drones to state and local governments. Already many state and local authorities have purchased drones for surveillance. As if this isn't bad enough, some are thinking of armingthem.
With U.S. politicians being so subservient to Israel and looking to the Jewish state for the advancement of their sickening and evil political careers, it is not surprising that American policy is mimicking Israeli policy. We've long since ceased to be a free Republic and are now merely a conglomerate of special interest groups with Israeli special interests at the top of the heap. In short, the American Republic has been replaced by a kosher plutocracy.
This is the same child as above after the Israeli drone attack. What is in store for Americans who resist Israel running our country?
One of the most powerful weapons Israel has in its march to destroy freedom and to rule the world as its Hebrew Bible/Old Testament instructs it to do (one Bible quote in particular which seems to speak not only of Israel's domination of its neighbors but also of its superior ruling relationship over America through its control of American politicians of both parties is Deuteronomy 11:23 which has God telling the Hebrews/Jews/Israel, "Then will the LORD drive out all these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than yourselves.") is the belief of Gentiles that the Bible is the word of God. Since the Bible was written by ancient Hebrews/Jews it promotes them and Israel at the expense of everyone else. For example, the ancient Hebrews wrote in Deuteronomy 7:6 that God had chosen them "above all people that are upon the face of the earth." And Leviticus 25:44-46 claims that God told the Hebrews/Jews that they could own Gentiles and our children as slaves forever "but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour." The list goes on and on.
This conflict Israel has with the rest of the world is a profoundly important problem that must be corrected. Especially since Israel has a stockpile of real nuclear, biological and chemical weapons along with multiple submarines to launch them. This conflict has been know for centuries as the battle between Jerusalem and Athens. Jerusalem represents alleged revelations and actual superstition. Athens represents God-given reason and the God honoring practice of following the evidence wherever it leads. (I wrote a chapter on this important topic in Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You.) The American founder and Deist Thomas Paine made clear the deadly nature of ancient Israel when he wrote in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition, "The Jews made no converts; they butchered all." This sick thinking is also embraced by modern Israel as is evident from its violent treatment of Palestinians, its promotion of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament which promotesJewish superiority and its rhetoric such as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stating that Jerusalem has been the Israeli capital for 3,000 years. The more people realize the ungodly nature of the Abrahamic "revealed" religions and their "holy" books (the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, New Testament [at Matthew 5:18 it says that Jesus said, "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."] and Koran), the sooner we can be free of the twisted thinking and the pain and misery they promote. Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on printMore Sharing Services
Drones: another Israeli racket in the fraudulent "War on Terror"
Over at Salon today, we read about the Israeli drone industry, yetanother racket in the fraudulent "War on Terror", which is more aptly named the Jewish War of Terror. The article begins:
Stark Aerospace of Mississippi is perhaps the only foreign-owned company with FAA permission to fly a drone in U.S. airspace. Based in the town of Columbus, not far from Mississippi State University, Stark is a subsidiary of the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries not that you could tell from looking at the company's website, executive leadership or affiliations. You have to go to the Mississippi secretary of state website to learn that two of Stark's three directors are Israelis.
So too with the America's drone industry. The Israeli influence is not visible but it is real, documented and extremely relevant to the future of drones in America. If you want to know how drones may change American airspace in coming years, just look to Israel, where the unmanned aerial vehicle market is thriving and drones are considered a reliable instrument of "homeland security."
"There are three explanations for Israel's success in becoming a world leader in development and production of UAVs," a top Israeli official explained to the Jerusalem Post last year. "We have unbelievable people and innovation, combat experience that helps us understand what we need and immediate operational use since we are always in a conflict which allows us to perfect our systems." […]
Since we are now "always in a conflict" with a faceless, manufactured enemy as a result of the Israeli false flag attack on 9/11, there will always be a market for these toys, especially here in the United States. And the Jews will be right there to sell them to their American puppets to use in their wars against Israel's enemies:
Israel markets its expertise in defense to the rest of the world. Israeli academic Neve Gordon cites a glossy government brochure on drones titled "Israel Homeland Security: Opportunities for Industrial Cooperation,"which boasts, "no other advanced technology country has such a large proportion of citizens with real time experience in the army, security and police forces." The chapter called "Learning from Israel's Experience" notes that "many of these professionals continue to work as international consultants and experts after leaving the Israel Defense Forces, police or other defense and security organizations."
The work has paid off when it comes to drones: The Jewish state is the single largest exporter of drones in the world, responsible for 41 percent of all UAVs exported between 2001 and 2011, according to a databasecompiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Israeli companies export drone technology to at least 24 countries, including the United States.
In addition to exports, Israeli companies also create subsidiaries in consumer countries. "To increase sales outside Israel, Israel's defense companies have to set up subsidiaries in target markets, rather than expand local manufacturing," Haaretz reported in 2009. The Israelis "set up Stark in 2006 to drum up business in America," according to Haaretz, because the U.S. prefers "to buy armaments and other defense gear from local companies." In 2007, Stark "inaugurated its first production outfit, which makes Hunter unmanned vehicles that it sells through Northrop Grumman. In fact, the U.S. armed forces have been using [Israeli-made] Hunter drones since the early 1990s."
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Israel and the Jews are trying to turn have turned the entire world into Occupied Palestine since their successful false flag operation on 9/11? Israel geared its economy towards the "Homeland Security/War on Terror" industry in 2000 and 2001, staged 9/11, used its criminal network of agents,sayanim, and assets in the West to launch illegal wars of aggression against its enemies in the Middle East as a result, and has benefitted more than any other entity both geopolitically and economically. The entire "War on Terror" and its related industries are one big Jewish racket.
But shhhhhhh, don't say anything about this. It's "anti-Semitic" after all, plus we all know the government is just trying to protect us from those Evil Muslims, right?
This is what our drones do to men, women, and children around the world:
As if worries about what the military might do with drones over
American cities aren't enough, now we have good cause to worry
about what they might do on ACCIDENT.
An entire neighborhood was evacuated in Texas recently when a
mock-Hellfire missile accidentally fell from an Army helicopter
into a field where children were playing.
I realize that a helicopter and a drone are not the same thing,
this does not ease my concern whatsoever...
Drone Warfare: Killing Our Civil Liberties With a Joystick
Thursday, 24 May 2012 13:59
By Ed Kinane, Truthout | News Analysis
Drone warfare is cowardly. A technician jiggles a joystick. Seconds later, thousands of miles away, a Reaper drone robot airplane fires a Hellfire missile, maiming or dismembering unsuspecting, unarmed, often unidentified human beings. That technician, along with his or her chain of command, plays god - a god who takes no risk in taking those human lives.
The Reaper incinerates Afghan or Pakistani shepherd boys, funeralgoers and other noncombatants. US civilians are also victims of drone warfare. I'm not referring here to US citizens already assassinated by drones, but to the fact that - thanks to the Reaper piloted from various US military bases - our civil liberties are increasingly being curtailed, eroded, violated.
Three cases from Central New York's Reaper hub in Syracuse:
On April 22, 2011 38 US civilians, myself included, sought to deliver a citizens' indictment at the main gate of Hancock Air Base for the drone war crimes being committed within. The "Hancock 38" were responding to the Nuremberg protocols, signed by the United States, which require citizens to expose and impede their government's war crimes.
The Hancock 38 were exercising our First Amendment rights of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and the freedom to petition our government for redress of grievances. Nonetheless, we were arrested and charged with blocking traffic and failure to heed a supposedly "lawful" order to disperse.
During our week-long trial, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark testified that weaponized Reapers violate international law. Nonetheless, a suburban town court found each of us guilty. (Note: many of the 38 saw no connection whatsoever between our "crime" and the $375 fines levied on each of us. Thus, rather than render unto Caesar, we redirected our fines - over $5000 total - through the antiwar organization Voices for Creative Nonviolence to a peace group in Afghanistan.)
Exactly one year later, on April 22, 2012, more than 50 US civilians walked silently, somberly and single-file for two miles toward Hancock Air Base. Most held signs protesting the Reaper; many carried a war crimes citizens' indictment, which they intended to deliver to the base. Several hundred yards from their destination, they were forced to halt on the shoulder of a public road by Onondaga County sheriffs. Many were arrested without warning. In a further escalation of illegal tactics, the sheriffs confiscated walkers' cameras and video equipment. This equipment has yet to be restored to its owners.
Closer to the base entrance but still on the shoulder of the public road, sheriffs arrested Ron Van Norstrand, a Syracuse attorney who, last fall, had defended some of the Hancock 38. Ron was snatched from our midst without provocation and without warning as he consulted with several of us about the day's arrests. There was no apparent reason that he was singled out from our group as we clustered on the shoulder across from the base entrance.
Shortly thereafter, the sheriffs blocked six civilians, also carrying citizen indictments, as we approached that entrance. While detained, activist Rae Kramer read aloud our indictment to the nest of armed soldiers guarding the gate. In all, that day, 33 orderly, law-abiding individuals exercising our First Amendment rights were pre-emptively arrested, charged with "marching without a permit."
Twice a month for the past couple of years, a handful of us have been standing on the shoulder of the road across from Hancock's main gate. We're there for 45 minutes during Hancock's afternoon shift change, displaying anti-drone signs to the rush hour traffic. Although we have had occasional conversations with civilian law enforcement there, we've never before been threatened or interfered with.
But on May 2, 2012, several prowl cars pulled up, and sheriffs, citing an obscure and perhaps never-before-enforced DeWitt town ordinance, told us we could no longer demonstrate there without a permit. We engaged the sheriffs in a discussion about the First Amendment and their oath to defend and uphold the Constitution.
A sergeant told us that the base complained about our presence. He also told us - with a straight face - that in the town of DeWitt, any "assembly" of more than two persons requires a permit. Dick Keough and I were then arrested, handcuffed and charged with "assembling w/o permit."
Compared to the terror of robotic killing, such stifling of dissent may seem like small potatoes, but it's a harbinger, and a slippery slope. Law enforcement and the courts, more and more, knuckle under to the military and violate the First Amendment rights of US citizens. Presumably, our law enforcement and military personnel swear to uphold the Constitution. Such individuals may (or may not) serve and sacrifice with honor and courage; the sad irony is that some seem to think they do so to protect our freedoms.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
An air strike by the US-led Nato coalition has killed eight members of a family in eastern Afghanistan, according to officials.
The coalition said it was aware of the allegation and was investigating the incident late on Saturday, in Paktia province. "Coalition officials are currently looking into the claims and gathering information," the coalition said in a statement.
Actions of the Taliban kill more civilians than foreign forces, but the deaths of citizens caught in the crossfire of the decade-long war continue to be an irritant in President Hamid Karzai's relationship with his international partners.
Earlier this month, he warned that civilian casualties caused by Nato airstrikes could undermine the strategic partnership agreement he just signed with the US.
Rohullah Samon, a spokesman for the governor of Paktia province, said Mohammad Shafi, his wife and their six children died in an air strike around 8pm, in Suri Khail, a village in the Gurda Saria district.
"Shafi was not a Taliban. He was not in any opposition group against the government. He was a villager," Samon said. "Right now, we are working on this case to find out the ages of their children and how many of them are boys and girls."
"If the lives of Afghan people are not safe, the signing of the strategic partnership has no meaning," Karzai's office said earlier this month.
Karzai's warning came after Afghan officials reported that 18 civilians had died recently in four air strikes in Logar, Kapisa, Badghis and Helmand provinces.
Last year was the deadliest on record for civilians in the Afghan war, with 3,021 killed as insurgents ratcheted up violence with suicide attacks and roadside bombs, the United Nations said in its latest report on civilian deaths.
The UN attributed 77% of the deaths to insurgent attacks and 14% to actions by international and Afghan troops. There were 9% of cases classified as having an unknown cause.
Separately, Nato reported on Sunday that four coalition service members had died in roadside bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan.
Nato said in a statement that all four deaths occurred on Saturday. It provided no other details on the attacks, including the nationalities of the service members.
One is thought to be a British soldier killed Saturday in an explosion in the Nahr-e Saraj region of southern Helmand province. The British Ministry of Defence announced late on Saturday that the soldier died while traveling in a vehicle.
Another Nato service member died Friday in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan.
Their deaths bring to 34 the number of Nato service members killed so far this month in Afghanistan, for a total of 166 this year. A total of 414 members of British forces have died since operations in Afghanistan began more than 10 years ago.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
As if the peace movement hasn't enough on its plate already, the military-industrial complex goes and invents a new and easier way to wage war: the unmanned drone.
For the busy activist trying to grapple with the growing development of the drone wars, what's needed is a well-written, easy-to-read book, coming from a committed nonviolent perspective, that lays out the issues in an accessible but not simplistic way. Thankfully, long-time US peace activist, Medea Benjamin, has written the very thing: Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.
Benjamin teases apart the varying overlapping issues connected with the growing use of drones (or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as the military insists on calling them).
Individual chapters explore the birth and growth of the industry as well as their spreading use in armed conflicts from Gaza and Afghanistan to Yemen and Somalia. The legality of their use is also investigated, in particular their use for so-called targeted killings' and their impact on civilians in Pakistan and elsewhere.
Unmanned drones seemingly give the ability to launch armed attacks at great distances with no risk or cost. Benjamin demonstrates that this is a lie on many levels.
For example she tells the story of an attack launched by a drone pilot in his Nevada base on a group of insurgents standing around a truck thousands of miles away. Just as the missile is launched, two kids on a bicycle suddenly appear.
The pilot says: Mesmerized by approaching calamity, we could only stare in abject horror as the silent missile bore down upon them out of the sky.… When the screens cleared, I saw the bicycle blown 20 feet away. One of the tires was still spinning. The bodies of the two little boys lay bent and broken among the bodies of the insurgents.'
Benjamin goes on to quote US major Bryan Callahan saying that drone pilots are taught early and often' to compartmentalise their lives, to separate the time they spend firing missiles on battlefields from the time they spend at home. This is perhaps the essence of the problem. The idea that we can separate ourselves off (at the personal and political level) from the economic, political, moral and human consequences of our actions has been taken to a new level by this new way to wage war.
The book concludes by looking at some of the initial efforts of the US and European peace movements to respond to the rise of the drone wars.
This book will, I am sure, encourage and enable more people to take further action.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Four missiles launched by a US drone has killed up to 17 people in north-west Pakistan, according to security sources, in the latest in a series of remote-controlled attacks which are straining relations between Washington and Islamabad.
The most recent drone operation targeted a hamlet in North Waziristan on Monday, a tribal area regarded as a hub for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters waging insurgencies on both sides of the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
It was the third such strike in as many days similar operations over the weekend claimed a dozen lives and the eighth in two weeks.
On Sunday, 10 suspected militants were killed by missiles fired from a drone in Mana Raghzai village in South Waziristan. The victims had gathered to pray for a militant commander who had been killed by another drone strike on Saturday.
"There has been a great increase in US strikes," said Muhammad Nawaz, a tribal elder in North Waziristan. "The people feel terrorised because we hear the drones in the sky most of the time. The militants are furious about the missile strikes."
A Pakistani intelligence official said Monday's missile attack flattened a mud house in Hasokhel, a hamlet to the east of Miranshah, North Waziristan's capital.
He said: "We have reports that there were some Uzbek militants among the dead, but we cannot be certain in our identification as the bodies were badly charred."
The frequency of US drone attacks is still a long way from its 2010 peak, but it has picked up since the Nato conference in Chicago last month which failed to persuade Pakistan to reopen its borders to Nato traffic. Supply lines into Afghanistan have been severed for six months. The American defence secretary Leon Panetta last week described diplomatic conditions between Washington and Islamabad as "up and down", noting "this is one of the most complicated relationships we have had".
Bill Roggio, an analyst who runs the Long War Journal website, said the attacks underlined "just how bad Pakistan and US relations are at the moment". "These last eight strikes all occurred after the Nato summit," he said. "The strikes were halted in an attempt to get the Pakistanis on board to reopen the supply lines but when they didn't happen they turned the programme back on."
Prior to the recent spate of attacks, the Obama administration's drone campaign had appeared suspended after lobbying from diplomats, particularly the US ambassador in Islamabad, who argued that the CIA programme was preventing the two sides from burying their differences. Pakistan closed its borders to Nato supply vehicles in November after US forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a border incident. Despite signs that Islamabad would relent, including in the runup to last month's Nato conference, Pakistan continues to demand an apology for the killing of its soldiers, an end to drone attacks and a sharp increase in the tariff paid by Nato for moving cargo across Pakistani territory as conditions to reopen them.
The increase in the number of drone attacks comes as the US assistant defence secretary, Peter Lavoy, prepares to visit Islamabad in an effort to persuade Pakistan to end its blockade.One sticking point is reportedly close to being fixed. On Monday Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported the US had finally agreed to pay Pakistan $1.8bn as recompense for its efforts fighting militancy along its western border.
The two sides are running out of time to complete negotiations on the Nato supplies as the US Congress, which goes on a summer recess on 4 July, requires two weeks' notice to approve any new deal.
In the border areas some people agreed that Pakistan was being punished by the US for its intransigence. "Also, the summer fighting season has already started in Afghanistan," said Mir Nawaz, a tribesman from Miranshah. "The US wants to keep the militants under pressure."
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
AMY GOODMAN: At least 27 people have been killed in three consecutive days of U.S. drone strikes inside Pakistan. More than half of the victims, more than half of them15 peoplewere killed Monday when U.S. missiles hit a village in North Waziristan. The attacks bring to at least seven the number of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan over the past two weeks. U.S. and Pakistani officials say militants were targeted, but it's unclear if any civilians were killed. Monday's strike targeted al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, but officials have been unable to confirm whether he was among those hit. Pakistani officials condemned the attacks, with the foreign ministry sayingdescribing the drone strikes as, quote, "illegal attacks" on Pakistani sovereignty.
PRESS SECRETARY JAY CARNEY: You know, you have a unique situation in Wisconsin where, you know, the eventthe election is a result of a recall petition, but the president absolutely stands by Tom Barrett and, you know, hopes he prevails.
AMY GOODMAN: White House spokesperson Jay Carney responding to questions from ABC's Jake Tapper. Well, to find out more about the implications of the increase in drone attacks, we go to London to talk to Chris Woods, award-winning reporter with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. He leads the Bureau's drones investigation team.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Chris. Can you tell us what's been happening in Pakistan, what you understand?
CHRIS WOODS: The last two weeks, as you mentioned, Amy, has seen a really significant rise in the number of U.S. drone strikes taking place in Pakistan. We have that number at eight, I think, since May 24th. That compares to 16 strikes in the entire period from January through May, so it gives you an idea of how rapidly those drone strikes have again escalated inside Pakistan. Most of those strikes appear to have been targeting not al-Qaeda, but groups allied to the Afghan Taliban fighting the insurgency across the border. A number of those strikes have targeted infrastructure that is, shall we say, unusual. We saw a mosque hit a couple of days ago. That was widely reported. On Sunday, funeral prayers for a victim of a previous drone strike were attacked by U.S. drones. And there have been two reportswe're trying to get more information on theseof possible strikes on rescuers attending the scene of previous CIA attacks. As I say, that's something we're still trying to confirm. But it does indicate not just a significant rise in the number of CIA strikes in Pakistan, but an aggression for those strikes that we really haven't seen for over a year.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to the correct SOT, the correct clip of ABC's Jake Tapper questioning White House spokesperson Jay Carney, Jay Carney responding to his questions after the New York Times revealed the so-called "kill list."
PRESS SECRETARY JAY CARNEY: I don't have the assessments of civilian casualties. I'm certainly not saying that we live in a world where the effort in a fight against al-Qaeda, against people who would, without compunction, murder tens of thousands, if not millions, of innocents
JAKE TAPPER: No, no, I'm talking about the innocent people that the United States kills.
PRESS SECRETARY JAY CARNEY: No, no, no. No, but let me say
JAKE TAPPER: With the assumption that if you are with a terrorist when a terrorist gets killed, the presumption is that you are a terrorist, as well, and even if we don't even know who you are, right? Isn't that part of the reason you're able to make these assertions?
PRESS SECRETARY JAY CARNEY: I don'tI am not going to get into the specifics of the process by which, you know, these decisions are made.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris Woods, your response?
CHRIS WOODS: I think Jake raised a really important point at that White House press briefing. The New York Times has made clear that the U.S. seems to be following a policy where all adult males in Waziristan would appear to be fair game. Now, they've indicated through that article and through other means that so-called terrorists who are being killed in CIA signature strikes can posthumously be reclassified as civilians. We're not even seeing evidence of that. Almost a year ago, the Bureau presented to the CIA the names of 45 civilians we were sure that they had killed in Pakistan over the previous year. To my knowledge, they've never acted on that information and continue to assert that all of those people that they've killed were civilians. And in fact, in that New York Times piece last week, I think U.S. officials are still claiming that the number of civilians that have died in Pakistan during President Obama's time in office is in the single digits, is under 10. Now, it's our understanding that perhaps 200 civilians have died in Pakistan, including at least 60 children. So the gulf between the media's understanding and researchers' understanding of what's taking place in Pakistan and what the CIA and the White House continue to claim is actually growing bigger, not smaller.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the difference in reaction in Britain and the United States? I mean, was this big headlines, what has come out in the United States? It's not really known very much in theamong the general population, but it was a big story in the New York Times about the kill list.
CHRIS WOODS: The kill list got really heavy coverage here. And I think what's interesting is that it's not a classic left-right issue. Right-wing newspapers, left-wing newspapers have all expressed significant concern about the existence of the kill list, the idea of this level of executive power. And I think also questions are starting to be asked here now, because the U.K. is a partner with the U.S. in its drones program. U.K. drones pilots sit alongside U.S. pilots and navigators at Creech in Nevada.
And I think some here are now saying, "Well, have the British adopted this definition of 'civilian'?" The U.K. has claimed very low numbers of civilians killed in its conventional drone strikes in Afghanistan. And I think that is something that we want to start looking at here in the U.K. Has this creeping redefinition of "civilian" crept [inaudible] into major operations outside of Pakistan and Yemen? And I think that's something we're going to be taking a good look at in the next few weeks.
AMY GOODMAN: Appearing on MSNBC over the weekend, Democracy Now! correspondent, The Nation's national security correspondent, Jeremy Scahill, caused a stir when he said drone strikes that kill innocent civilians amount "murder." This is where Jeremy explains why. Another guest, Colonel Jack Jacobs, briefly interrupts him.
JEREMY SCAHILL: If someone goes into a shopping mall in pursuit of one of their enemies and opens fire on a crowd of people and guns down a bunch of innocent people in a shopping mall, they've murdered those people. When the Obama administration sets a policy where patterns of life are enough of a green light to drop missiles on people or to useyou know, to send in AC-130s to spray them down
COL. JACK JACOBS: But that wasn't the case here. You're talking about a targeted person here.
JEREMY SCAHILL: No, no, no, no, no. That's notif you go to the village of al-Majalah in Yemen, where I was, and you see the unexploded cluster bombs, and you have the list and photographic evidence, as I do, of the women and children that represented the vast majority of the deaths in this first strike that Obama authorized on Yemen, those people were murdered by President Obama, on his orders, because there was believed to be someone from al-Qaeda in that area. There's only one person that's been identified that had any connection to al-Qaeda there, and 21 women and 14 children were killed in that strike. And the U.S. tried to cover it up and say it was a Yemeni strike. And we know from the WikiLeaks cables that David Petraeus conspired with the president of Yemen to lie to the world about who did that bombing. It's murder, when youit's mass murder, when you say, "We are going to bomb this area because we believe a terrorist is there," and you know that women and children are in the area. The United States has an obligation to not bomb that area if they believe that women and children are there. ThatI'm sorry, that's murder.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Jeremy Scahill on MSNBC's Up with Chris Hayes. Chris Woods, your response? Would you call it murder?
CHRIS WOODS: I think Jeremy's strong words indicate a reallya rising concern, particularly about these signature strikes being carried out by the CIA and the Pentagon in Somalia, in Yemen and in Pakistan. And it's not just Jeremy who's speaking out about this. We've had Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA, who introduced drone strikes; Robert Grenier, former head of the Counterterrorism Center at CIA when the drone strikes began; and Dennis Blair, who is the former director of national intelligence for the United States. All three of these very central characters have all made strong noises in the last few weeks, saying, "We are concerned about this policy. We're worried that it's getting out of control. We're worried that it's not achieving what it's supposed to be doing and may actually be making matters worse."
And I think the Washington Post, just last week, very powerful article built on investigations on the ground by their African editor showing that drone strikes in Yemen are actually leading to an increase in support of al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, everybody at the White House and the CIA seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet here. There is no voice of criticism that we're aware of challenging this narrative that's driving events in Washington. And the concern is that this is pushing America into a position that is going to make its efforts to fight terrorism worse rather than better.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris Woods, can you talk more about the redefinition of "civilians" outlined in the New York Times piece, President Obama embracing this disputed measure of counting civilian casualties, in effect counting all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants?
CHRIS WOODS: This revelation really is extraordinary, that any adult male killed in effectively a defined kill zone is a terrorist, unless posthumously proven otherwise. We think this goes a long way to explaining the gulf between our reporting of civilian casualties in Pakistan and Yemen and the reporting of credible international news organizations, and the CIA's repeated claims that it isn't killing anyone, or rather, is killing small numbers.
There's still a big issue now, though. In Pakistan, we believe 175 children have been killed by the CIA since 2004. We've named most of those children. Now, clearly, they fall completely outside this definition of an adult male in a combat zone, and yet the CIA is still saying it's killed 50 or maybe 60 civilians across the entire period. Many women, too, have died, and we've reported on that and, where possible, tried to report the names. So, this suggestion that the definition of "civilian" has been really radically tightened up, I still don't think is explaining why the CIA is not classifying people who are clearly civilians as such.
And I think it has profound implications in terms of U.S. policy, because if you keep assuring yourself that you're not killing civilians, by a sleight of hand, effectively, by a redrafting of the term of "civilian," then that starts to influence the policy and to encourage you to carry out more drone strikes. You might be getting tactical advantage from that, but strategically, whether this is in the long-term interests of the United States, when you have the people of Pakistan and Yemen expressing significant anger and concern about U.S. policy, I think that's a critical point.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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