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Video: RAW: Russia’s first 3D-printed surveillance drone on display
Greek Government in Talks with Israel to Purchase Surveillance Drones
Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News – With growing anger in Greece due to austerity measures, the government under President Karolos Papoulias of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) is in talks with several Israeli firms to purchase surveillance drones to monitor the country’s borders due to an influx of illegal immigration, spy on organized crime syndicates and to prevent terrorist attacks. According to the online news source of www.ekathimerini.com who published a report titled ‘Drones to boost police security effort’ states:
The Public Order Ministry is in talks with Israeli firms regarding the acquisition of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, to bolster the efforts of the Greek Police (ELAS) to monitor the country’s borders and curb illegal immigration as well as cracking down on organized crime and domestic terrorism, Kathimerini has learned. It remains unclear how many drones the ministry is seeking to acquire and what type. In any case the aircraft, once acquired, will be able to provide Greek security services with useful data including cell phone signals that could help avert crimes and terrorist attacks
Between 2010 and 2012, protests across Greece including general strikes by unions against the government’s plans to cut public spending and raise taxes across the board through austerity measures. The Greek government agreed with the European Union’s €110 billion bailout plan to solve the 2010-2011 Greek Debt Crises. In May 2011, anti-austerity protests were organized by the ‘Direct Democracy Now movement known as the Indignant Citizens Movement. Major protests began all across Greece, some turned violent. Violence between riot police and protesters erupted when the Greek parliament accepted the EU’s austerity requirements. It was reported that the police used excessive force and used tear gas against protesters. Now, the Greek government wants unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones to monitor an increasing dire situation within Greece. According to the report:
According to an extremely well-informed source, Greek authorities first considered the acquisition of such aircraft during the summer of 2011 when the “Indignants” movement of citizens opposed to austerity was growing rapidly with thousands gathering in Syntagma Square day and night. A drone was used to trace several Albanian convicts who escaped from Trikala Prison in central Greece in March last year. It is likely that European Union subsidies will be used for the purchase of the UAVs though it remains unclear what sum has been earmarked for the investment
Greece unemployment is close to 30%, with more than 50% affecting those under 25 years old. The European Union is a colossal failure as Portugal, Italy and Spain continue to suffer from high-unemployment and a mass exodus of its citizens to other countries that might offer economic opportunities. Governments within the EU are concerned that more protests across the region will increase and in many circumstances can turn violent. The rise of extreme right-wing groups is on the increase. According to a the Guardian earlier this year, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party Nigel Farage spoke out in the European Parliament when he criticized Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras for allowing the EU and IMF to control the Greek economy. The Article titled ‘Nigel Farage becomes popular in Greece after outburst against the PM’ Farage was quoted as saying:
You come here, Mr Samaras, and tell us that you represent the ‘sovereign will of the Greek people’. Well, I am sorry but you are not in charge of Greece, and I suggest you rename and rebrand your party,” railed Farage last week as Samaras, slumped in his seat, looked on haplessly. “It is called New Democracy; I suggest you call it No Democracy because Greece is now under foreign control. You can’t make any decisions, you have been bailed out and you have surrendered democracy, the thing your country invented in the first place
The article also stated:
Reminding Samaras of the heavy price Greece had paid to be rescued from insolvency by creditors at the EU and IMF, he said: “I must congratulate you for getting the Greek presidency off to such a cracking start. Your overnight successful negotiation … will have them dancing in the streets of Athens. “No matter that your country, very poorly advised by Goldman Sachs, joined a currency that it was never suited to. No matter that 30% of its people are unemployed, that 60% of youth are unemployed, that a neo-Nazi party is on the march, that there was a terrorist attack on the German embassy.”
The Greek government’s decision to accept the EU’s recommendations on the economy will increase anger and resentment among the Greek people as the economy continues to worsen. They are concerned that a civil war can possibly take place. With the possibility of the Greek government purchasing Israeli made drones, I assume that is what they are expecting.
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Spring Days of Action to End Drone Killing, Drone Surveillance, Global Militarization
Today we issue an international call for Spring Days of Action – 2014, a coordinated campaign in April and May to:
End Drone Killing, Drone Surveillance and Global Militarization
The campaign will focus on drone bases, drone research facilities and test sites and drone manufacturers.
The campaign will provide information on:
1. The suffering of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza who are under drone attack, documenting the killing, the wounding and the devastating impact of constant drone surveillance on community life.
2. How attack and surveillance drones have become a key element in a massive wave of surveillance, clandestine military attacks and militarization generated by the United States to protect a global system of manufacture and oil and mineral exploitation that is creating unemployment and poverty, accelerating the waste of nonrenewable resources and contributing to environmental destruction and global warming.
In addition to cases in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, we will examine President Obama's "pivot" into the Asia-Pacific, where the United States has already sold and deployed drones in the vanguard of a shift of 60% of its military forces to try to control China and to enforce the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership. We will show, among other things, how this surge of "pivot" forces, greatly enabled by drones, and supported by the US military-industrial complex, will hit every American community with even deeper cuts in the already fragile social programs on which people rely for survival. In short, we will connect drones and militarization with "austerity" in America.
3. How drone attacks have effectively destroyed international and domestic legal protection of the rights to life, privacy, freedom of assembly and free speech and have opened the way for new levels of surveillance and repression around the world, and how, in the United States, increasing drone surveillance, added to surveillance by the National Security Agency and police, provides a new weapon to repress black, Hispanic, immigrant and low-income communities and to intimidate Americans who are increasingly unsettled by lack of jobs, economic inequality, corporate control of politics and the prospect of endless war.
We will discuss how the United States government and corporations conspire secretly to monitor US citizens and particularly how the Administration is accelerating drone surveillance operations and surveillance inside the United States with the same disregard for transparency and law that it applies to other countries, all with the cooperation of the Congress.
The campaign will encourage activists around the world to win passage of local laws that prohibit weaponized drones and drone surveillance from being used in their communities as well as seeking national laws to bar the use of weaponized drones and drone surveillance.
The campaign will draw attention to the call for a ban on weaponized drones by RootsAction.org that has generated a petition with over 80,000 signers
http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6180
and to efforts by the Granny Peace Brigade (New York City), KnowDrones.org and others to achieve an international ban on both weaponized drones and drone surveillance.
The campaign will also urge participation in the World Beyond War movement.
The following individuals and organizations endorse this Call:
Lyn Adamson – Co-chair, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Dennis Apel – Guadalupe Catholic Worker, California
Judy Bello – Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars
Medea Benjamin – Code Pink
Leah Bolger – Former National President, Veterans for Peace
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Sung-Hee Choi – Gangjeong Village International Team, Jeju, Korea
Chelsea C. Faria – Graduate student, Yale Divinity School; Promoting Enduring Peace
Sandy Fessler – Rochester (NY) Against War
Joy First
Bruce K. Gagnon - Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
Holly Gwinn Graham – Singer/songwriter, Olympia, WA.
Regina Hagen - Darmstaedter Friedensforum, Germany
Kathy Kelly – Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Malachy Kilbride
Marilyn Levin and Joe Lombardo – Co-Coordinators, United National Antiwar Coalition
Tamara Lorincz – Halifax Peace Coalition, Canada
Nick Mottern – KnowDrones.org
Agneta Norberg – Swedish Peace Council
Pepperwolf – Director, Women Against Military Madness
Lindis Percy, Coordinator, Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases CAAB UK
Mathias Quackenbush – San Francisco, CA
Lisa Savage – Code Pink, State of Maine
Janice Sevre-Duszynska
Wolfgang Schlupp-Hauck- Friedenswerkstatt Mutlangen, Germany
Cindy Sheehan
Lucia Wilkes Smith – Convener, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) – Ground Military Drones Committee
David Soumis – Veterans for Peace; No Drones Wisconsin
Debra Sweet – World Can’t Wait
David Swanson - WarisACrime.org
Brian Terrell – Voices for Creative Nonviolence
United National Antiwar Coalition
Veterans for Peace
Dave Webb – Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK)
Curt Wechsler – Fire John Yoo! (a project of World Can’t Wait) – San Francisco, CA
Paki Wieland, Northampton (MA) Committee to Stop War(s)
Loring Wirbel – Citizens for Peace in Space (Colorado Springs, CO)
Women Against Military Madness
Ann Wright – Retired US Army colonel and former diplomat
Leila Zand - Fellowship of Reconciliation
Add your name by emailing it to email: nickmottern@earthlink.net and watch for updates at http://KnowDrones.org
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Global Drone Warfare, Targeted Assassinations Supported by NSA Surveillance
The Post’s report, “Documents reveal NSA’s extensive involvement in targeted killing program,” testifies to the integration of the surveillance apparatus exposed in recent months into US imperialism’s global military operations. Officials cited by the Post said that the NSA has deployed analysts to work along side Central Intelligence Agency personnel at the CIA Counterterrorism Center and at “every major US embassy or military base overseas.”
The report further documents the NSA’s systematic attempts to overcome encryption, including the extraction of PGP encryption keys from targets. The agency reportedly was able to capture 16 keys from a single electronic raid on a suspected Al Qaeda computer.
According to the report, the NSA’s “Tailored Access Operations,” a cyber-warfare and intelligence gathering program, conducts surveillance of targets in Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Iran, and throughout Africa. TAO runs programs such as UNITEDRAKE and VALIDATOR, which launch cyber attacks using “software implants” to grab sensitive data such as keystroke logs and audio files.
ArsTechnica reported in August that advanced software used by TAO enables operatives to tap directly into hardware such as “routers, switches and firewalls,” and that TAO’s activities are integrated into data systems such as XKeyscore.
Information gathered by the NSA has been used in particular in the course of the CIA’s drone war in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan. As summarized by the Post, the NSA has “draped a surveillance blanket over dozens of square miles of northwest Pakistan.” One US intelligence official told the Post, “NSA threw the kitchen sink at the FATA.” To date, at least 3,000 people have been killed as a result of US drone operations in Pakistan, including hundreds of civilians.
Both the NSA surveillance and the policy of drone war that it facilitates are criminal operations, carried out in violation of international law. The Obama administration asserts the right to kill anyone in the world without due process, including US citizens, in violation of the Bill of Rights. Among those killed have been US citizens including Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, in Yemen.
A full accounting of the Pakistanis murdered by US drones may never be completed. However, a study published by Stanford University and New York University earlier this year showed that large sections of the population living in the FATA suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the buzzing of drones overhead and the never-ending barrage of ordnance raining down on the area.
UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Ben Emmerson wrote in March of this year, “As a matter of international law, the US drone campaign is therefore being conducted without the consent of the elected representatives of the people, or the legitimate government of the state. It involves the use of force on the territory of another state without its consent, and is therefore a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.”
The Post described the leaked NSA documents as “self-congratulatory in tone” and “drafted to tout the NSA’s counterterrorism capabilities.” According to Fox News, the Post withheld substantial information about the drone strikes “at the request of US intelligence officials.”
The Post report highlights the case of Hassan Ghul, who was killed as a direct result of intelligence acquired through electronic surveillance operations run by the NSA. After his capture in 2004, Ghul was held at a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe until 2006, where he was subject to “enhanced interrogation techniques” (i.e., torture), including slapping, sleep deprivation, and stress positions.
In 2006, Ghul was transferred to Pakistan, where he was released and rejoined Al Qaeda militants in Waziristan. Ghul worked to set up logistical networks for Al Qaeda after being freed, according to a Treasury Department document from 2011. No explanation has been offered by US or Pakistani authorities for Ghul’s release.
Ghul was then killed in 2012 by a drone strike in Mir Ali, after having been monitored for a year prior to his death by a secret NSA unit called the Counter-Terrorism Mission Aligned Cell (CT MAC), which specializes in finding high priority targets in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Ghul’s location was discovered through analysis of an email sent to him by his wife. His death was never officially acknowledged by the US government, despite the fact that his interrogation supposedly provided intelligence about an Al Qaeda courier named al-Kuwaiti, which supposedly led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The scope of the integration of the NSA, CIA, military and police agencies extends far beyond what is taking place in Pakistan. The entire world is the subject both of the intelligence-gathering operations of the NSA and the drone strikes of the CIA.
Under the Obama administration, the NSA’s surveillance operations gather the communications of every telephone and Internet user on the planet, US citizens and non-citizens alike. This week has already seen new evidence emerge that the NSA is stealing address books—which often contain large amounts of personal information—from various web platforms and storing them in its archives. (See “ NSA ‘harvesting’ electronic address books and contact lists”)
The possibility of strikes being launched against American targets has been raised by top officials, and drones are already deployed on non-strike missions over the US. In a letter of March 4, 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote that the president “has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a US citizen on US soil, and without trial,” saying that in certain cases such action would be “necessary and appropriate.”
If and when such operations are initiated, the state will have no shortage of data with which to target Americans, whose communications are subject to constant scrutiny by the surveillance apparatus.
NSA surveillance programs facilitate global drone war
By Thomas Gaist
18 October 2013
Documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published in the Washington Post Wednesday show that NSA surveillance operations play a key role in the global campaign of assassinations being waged by the Obama administration.
The Post’s report, “Documents reveal NSA’s extensive involvement in targeted killing program,” testifies to the integration of the surveillance apparatus exposed in recent months into US imperialism’s global military operations. Officials cited by the Post said that the NSA has deployed analysts to work along side Central Intelligence Agency personnel at the CIA Counterterrorism Center and at “every major US embassy or military base overseas.”
The report further documents the NSA’s systematic attempts to overcome encryption, including the extraction of PGP encryption keys from targets. The agency reportedly was able to capture 16 keys from a single electronic raid on a suspected Al Qaeda computer.
According to the report, the NSA’s “Tailored Access Operations,” a cyber-warfare and intelligence gathering program, conducts surveillance of targets in Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Iran, and throughout Africa. TAO runs programs such as UNITEDRAKE and VALIDATOR, which launch cyber attacks using “software implants” to grab sensitive data such as keystroke logs and audio files.
ArsTechnica reported in August that advanced software used by TAO enables operatives to tap directly into hardware such as “routers, switches and firewalls,” and that TAO’s activities are integrated into data systems such as XKeyscore.
Information gathered by the NSA has been used in particular in the course of the CIA’s drone war in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan. As summarized by the Post, the NSA has “draped a surveillance blanket over dozens of square miles of northwest Pakistan.” One US intelligence official told the Post, “NSA threw the kitchen sink at the FATA.” To date, at least 3,000 people have been killed as a result of US drone operations in Pakistan, including hundreds of civilians.
Both the NSA surveillance and the policy of drone war that it facilitates are criminal operations, carried out in violation of international law. The Obama administration asserts the right to kill anyone in the world without due process, including US citizens, in violation of the Bill of Rights. Among those killed have been US citizens including Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, in Yemen.
A full accounting of the Pakistanis murdered by US drones may never be completed. However, a study published by Stanford University and New York University earlier this year showed that large sections of the population living in the FATA suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the buzzing of drones overhead and the never-ending barrage of ordnance raining down on the area.
UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Ben Emmerson wrote in March of this year, “As a matter of international law, the US drone campaign is therefore being conducted without the consent of the elected representatives of the people, or the legitimate government of the state. It involves the use of force on the territory of another state without its consent, and is therefore a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.”
The Post described the leaked NSA documents as “self-congratulatory in tone” and “drafted to tout the NSA’s counterterrorism capabilities.” According to Fox News, the Post withheld substantial information about the drone strikes “at the request of US intelligence officials.”
The Post report highlights the case of Hassan Ghul, who was killed as a direct result of intelligence acquired through electronic surveillance operations run by the NSA. After his capture in 2004, Ghul was held at a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe until 2006, where he was subject to “enhanced interrogation techniques” (i.e., torture), including slapping, sleep deprivation, and stress positions.
In 2006, Ghul was transferred to Pakistan, where he was released and rejoined Al Qaeda militants in Waziristan. Ghul worked to set up logistical networks for Al Qaeda after being freed, according to a Treasury Department document from 2011. No explanation has been offered by US or Pakistani authorities for Ghul’s release.
Ghul was then killed in 2012 by a drone strike in Mir Ali, after having been monitored for a year prior to his death by a secret NSA unit called the Counter-Terrorism Mission Aligned Cell (CT MAC), which specializes in finding high priority targets in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Ghul’s location was discovered through analysis of an email sent to him by his wife. His death was never officially acknowledged by the US government, despite the fact that his interrogation supposedly provided intelligence about an Al Qaeda courier named al-Kuwaiti, which supposedly led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The scope of the integration of the NSA, CIA, military and police agencies extends far beyond what is taking place in Pakistan. The entire world is the subject both of the intelligence-gathering operations of the NSA and the drone strikes of the CIA.
Under the Obama administration, the NSA’s surveillance operations gather the communications of every telephone and Internet user on the planet, US citizens and non-citizens alike. This week has already seen new evidence emerge that the NSA is stealing address books—which often contain large amounts of personal information—from various web platforms and storing them in its archives. (See “ NSA ‘harvesting’ electronic address books and contact lists”)
The possibility of strikes being launched against American targets has been raised by top officials, and drones are already deployed on non-strike missions over the US. In a letter of March 4, 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote that the president “has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a US citizen on US soil, and without trial,” saying that in certain cases such action would be “necessary and appropriate.”
If and when such operations are initiated, the state will have no shortage of data with which to target Americans, whose communications are subject to constant scrutiny by the surveillance apparatus.
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Before September 11, 2001, more than half the border crossings between the United States and Canada were left unguarded at night, with only rubber cones separating the two countries. Since then, that 4,000 mile “point of pride,” as Toronto’s Globe and Mail once dubbed it, has increasingly been replaced by a U.S. homeland security lockdown, although it’s possible that, like Egyptian-American Abdallah Matthews, you haven’t noticed.
The first time he experiences this newly hardened U.S.-Canada border, it takes him by surprise. It’s a freezing late December day and Matthews, a lawyer (who asked me to change his name), is on the passenger side of a car as he and three friends cross the Blue Water Bridge from Sarnia, Ontario, to the old industrial town of Port Huron, Michigan. They are returning from the Reviving the Islamic Spirit conference in Toronto, chatting and happy to be almost home when the car pulls up to the booth, where a blue-uniformed U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent stands. The 60,000-strong CBP is the border enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security and includes both customs and U.S. Border Patrol agents. What is about to happen is the furthest thing from Matthews’s mind. He’s from Port Huron and has crossed this border “a million times before.”
After scanning their passports and looking at a computer screen in the booth, the agent says to the driver, as Matthews tells the story:
“Sir, turn off the vehicle, hand me the key, and step out of the car.”
He hears the snap of handcuffs going around his friend’s wrists. Disoriented, he turns around and sees uniformed men kneeling behind their car, firearms drawn.
“To my disbelief, situated behind us are agents, pointing their guns.”
The CBP officer asks Matthews and the remaining passengers to get out of the car and escorts them to a waiting room. Thirty minutes later, he, too, is handcuffed and in a cell. Forty-five minutes after that another homeland security agent brings him into a room with no chairs. The agent tells him that he can sit down, but all he sees is a countertop. “Can I just stand?” he asks.
And he does so for what seems like an eternity with the door wide open, attempting to smile at the agents who pass by. “I’m trying to be nice,” is how he put it.
Finally, in a third room, the interrogation begins. Although they question Matthews about his religious beliefs and various Islamic issues, the two agents are “nice.” They ask him: Where’d you go? What kind of law do you practice? He tells them that a former law professor was presenting a paper at the annual conference, whose purpose is to revive “Islamic traditions of education, tolerance, and introspection.” They ask if he’s received military training abroad. This, he tells me, “stood out as one of their more bizarre questions.” When the CBP lets him and his friends go, he still thinks it was a mistake.
However, Lena Masri of the Council of American Islamic Relations-Michigan (CAIR-MI) reports that Matthews’s experience is becoming “chillingly” commonplace for Michigan’s Arab and Muslim community at border crossings. In 2012, CAIR-MI was receiving five to seven complaints about similar stops per week. The detainees are all Arab, all male, all questioned at length. They are asked about religion, if they spend time at the mosque, and who their Imam is.
According to CAIR-MI accounts, CBP agents repeatedly handcuff these border-crossers, often brandish weapons, conduct invasive, often sexually humiliating body searches, and detain people for from two to 12 hours. Because of this, some of the detainees have lost job opportunities or jobs, or given up on educational opportunities in Canada. Many are now afraid to cross the border to see their families who live in Canada. (CAIR-MI has filed alawsuit against the CBP and other governmental agencies.)
Months later, thinking there is no way this can happen again, Matthews travels to Canada and crosses the border, this time alone, on the Blue Water Bridge to Port Huron. Matthews still hadn’t grasped the seismic changes in Washington’s attitude toward our northern border since 9/11. Port Huron, his small hometown, where a protest group, Students for a Democratic Society, first famously declared themselves against racism and alienation in 1962, is now part of the “frontline” in defense of the “homeland.” As a result, Matthews finds himself a casualty of a new war, one that its architects and proponents see as a permanent bulwark not only against non-citizens generally, but also people like Matthews from “undesirable” ethno-religious groups or communities in the United States.
While a militarized enforcement regime has long existed in the U.S-Mexico borderlands, its far more intense post-9/11 version is also proving geographically expansive. Now, the entire U.S. perimeter has become part of a Fortress USA mentality and a lockdown reality. Unlike on our southern border, there is still no wall to our north on what was once dubbed the “longest undefended border in the world.” But don’t let that fool you. The U.S.-Canadian border is increasingly a national security hotspot watched over by drones, surveillance towers, and agents of the Department of Homeland Security.
The Canadian Threat
Bert Tussing, U.S. Army War College Homeland Defense and Security Director, realizes that when people think of border security, what immediately comes to mind is the U.S.-Mexico border. After all, he is speaking in El Paso, Texas, where in the early 1990s the massive transformation and expansion of the border enforcement apparatus was born. Operation Blockade (later renamed Operation Hold-the-Line) became the Clinton administration’s blueprint for the walls, double-fencing, cameras, sensors, stadium-lighting, and concentration of Border Patrol agents now seen in urbanized areas -- and some rural ones as well -- from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, California. Tussing believes that this sort of intense surveillance, which has literally deformed communities throughout the southwest, should be brought to the northern border as well.
A former Marine with close-cropped brown hair, Tussing has a Napoleonic stature and despises being stuck behind a podium. “I kind of like moving around,” he quips before starting “The Changing Role of the Military in Border Security Operations,” his talk at last October’s Border Management Conference and Technology Expo.
Perhaps Tussing realizes that his audience holds a new breed of border-security entrepreneur when his initial Army-Marine joke falls flat. Behind the small audience are booths from 74 companies selling their border-security wares. These nomadic malls of the surveillance state are popping up in ever more places each year.
Hanging from the high ceiling is a white surveillance aerostat made by an Israeli company. Latched onto the bottom of this billowing balloon are cameras that, even 150 feet away, can zoom in on the comments I’m scrawling in my notebook. Nearby sits a mannequin in a beige body suit, equipped with a gas mask. It’s all part of the equipment and technology that the developing industry has in mind for our southern border, and increasingly the northern one as well.
Tussing homes in on a 2010 statistic: 59,000 people (“illegals if you will”) tried to enter the United States from countries “other than Mexico, the euphemistic OTMs.” Six hundred and sixty-three of these “OTMs” were from countries Tussing calls "special-interest nations" such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, and Somalia, and also from countries the U.S. has identified as state-sponsors of terrorism like Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria.
Next, he turns to the U.S-Canada divide, mentioning the 1999 case of Ahmed Ressam who would have become “the millennium bomber,” if not for an astute U.S. Customs agent in Washington state. Here, as Tussing sees it, is the crux of the problem: “We found over time that he was able to do what he was to do because of the comparatively liberal immigration and asylum laws that exist today in Canada, which allowed him a safe haven. Which allowed him a planning area. Which allowed him an opportunity to build bombs. Which allowed him an opportunity to arrange his logistics.” He pauses. “This is not to say that Canada’s laws are wrong, but they are different from ours.”
A Government Accountablity Office report, he adds, claims that “the risk of terrorist activity is high along the northern border.” Of that 4,000-mile border between the two countries, he adds, “only 32 of those miles are categorized as what we say are acceptable levels of control.”
As what Tussing calls the "coup de grâce" to his argument for reinforcements of every sort along that border, he quotes Alan Bersin, former director of Customs and Border Protection: “In terms of the terrorist threat, it’s more commonly accepted that the most significant threat comes from the north,” not the south.
A Constitution-Free Zone
In 2012, the U.S. government spent more on the Homeland Security agencies responsible for border security than all of its other principal federal law enforcement agencies combined. The $18 billion allocated to Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement significantly exceeds the $14.4 billion that makes up the combined budgets of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshal Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. In the years since 9/11, more than $100 billion has been spent on border security. Much of that went to the southern border, but now an ever larger chunk is heading north.
On that northern border, things have come a long way since North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan in 2001 held up an orange cone and said, “This is America’s security at our border crossing... America can’t effectively combat terrorism if it doesn’t control its borders.”
Now Predator B drones, sometimes in the air for 20 hours at a stretch, are doing surveillance work from Grand Forks, North Dakota, to Spokane, Washington. Expensive surveillance towers equipped with night-vision cameras and sophisticated radar have been erected along the St. Clair and Niagara Rivers in Michigan and western New York state. Homeland Security built a $30 million border security “war room” at Michigan’s Selfridge Air National Guard Base, which, with its “video wall,” is worthy of a Hollywood action flick. This “gold standard” for border protection, as the CBP dubs it, is now one of many places where agents continuously observe those rivers of the north. As at Selfridge, so many resources and so much money has been poured into the frontlines of “homeland security,” and just upstream from cash-starved, post-industrial Detroit, the poorest city of its size in the United States.
In addition, the CBP’s Office of Air and Marine -- essentially Homeland Security’s air force and navy -- has established eight U.S. bases along the border from Plattsburgh, New York, to Bellingham, Washington. While such bases are commonplace on the southern border, they are new on the Canadian frontier. In addition, new state-of-the art Border Patrol stations are popping up in places like Pembina, North Dakota (at the cost of $13 million), International Falls, Minnesota ($6.8 million), and other places. This advance of the homeland security state in the north, funded and supported by Congress, seems both uncontroversial and unstoppable.
Don’t think that the eternal bolstering of “border security” is just a matter of fortifying the boundary line, either. Last November, the CBP ordered an additional 14 unmanned aerial vehicles. (They are, however, still waiting for Congress to appropriate the funding for this five-year plan.) With this doubling of its fleet, there will undoubtedly be more surveillance drones flying over major U.S. urban areas like Detroit, Buffalo, Syracuse, Bangor, and Seattle, places the ACLU has classified as in a “Constitution-free zone.”
That zone -- up to 100 miles from any external U.S. border -- is the area that the Supreme Court has deemed a “reasonable distance” in which to engage in border security operations, including warrantless searches. As in the Southwest, expect more interior checkpoints where federal agents will ask people about their citizenship, as they did to Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy in 2008. In the zone, you have the developing blueprint for a country not only in perpetual lockdown, but also under increasing surveillance. According to the ACLU, if you were to include the southern border, the northern border, and coastal areas in this zone, it would contain 200 million people, a potential “border” jurisdiction encompassing two-thirds of the U.S. population.
It’s October 2007 when I get my first glimpse of this developing Constitution-free zone in action at a Greyhound bus station in Buffalo, New York. I’m with Miguel Angel Vasquez de la Rosa, a Mexican lawyer who is brown-skinned and speaks only Spanish. As we enter the station, we spot two beefy Border Patrol agents in their dark-green uniforms patrolling the waiting area.
I have to blink to make sure I’m not seeing things, to remember where I am. I’m originally from this area, but have lived for years along the U.S.-Mexican border where I’ve grown used to seeing the “men in green.” I can’t remember ever seeing them here.
Before 9/11, Border Patrol agents on the southern border used to joke that they went north to “go fishing.” Not anymore. The 2001 USA Patriot Actmandated a 300% increase in Border Patrol personnel on the northern border, as well as the emplacement of more surveillance technology there. Further legislation in 2004 required that 20% of the agency’s new recruits be stationed on the Canadian divide.
The number of U.S. Border Patrol agents on the northern border went from340 in 2001 to 1,008 in 2005 to 2,263 in 2010. Now, the number is approaching 3,000. That’s still small compared to the almost 19,000 on the southern border, but significant once you add in the “force multipliers,” since Border Patrol works ever more closely with local police and other agencies. For example, according to immigration lawyer Jose Perez, New York State troopers call the Border Patrol from Interstate-90 outside of Syracuse about a suspected undocumented person about 10 times a day on average. “And we aren’t even in Arizona.”
On that day in Buffalo, the two agents made a beeline for Miguel to check his visa. A moment later, the hulking agents are standing over another brown-skinned man who is rifling through a blue duffle bag, desperately searching for his documents. Not long after, handcuffed, he is walked to the ticket counter with the agents on either side. Somehow, cuffed, the agents expect him to retrieve his ticket from the bag, now on the counter. There are so many people watching that it seems like a ritual of humiliation.
Since 2007, this sort of moment has become ever more usual across the northern border region in bus and train stations, as “homeland security” gains ever more traction and an ever wider definition. The Border Patrol are, for instance, staking out Latino community centers in Detroit, and working closelywith the police on the Olympic peninsula in Washington state, leading to a much wider enforcement dragnet, which looks an awful lot like round-ups of the usual suspects.
After 9/11, the Border Patrol’s number one mission became stopping terrorists and weapons of mass destruction from coming into the country between the ports of entry. The Border Patrol, however, is “an agency that doesn’t have limitations,” says Joanne Macri, director of the Criminal Defense Immigration Project of the New York State Defender Association. “With police officers, people have more due process protection.” Since 9/11, she adds, they have become “the national security police.”
And from what we know of their arrest records, it’s possible to grasp their definition of national security. Just in Rochester, New York, between 2005 and 2009, the CBP classified 2,776 arrests during what it terms “transportation raids” by skin complexion. The results: 71.2% of medium complexion and 12.9% black. Only 0.9% of their arrests were of “fair” complexion. And agents have had incentives to increase the numbers of people they sweep up, including Home Depot gift certificates, cash bonuses, and vacation time.
Macri tells me that it is now ever more common for armed national security police to pull people “who don’t belong” off buses and trains in the name of national security. In 2011, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement director John Morton, there were more than 47,000 deportationsof undocumented people along the northern border.
Too Close to Home
The next time Abdallah Matthews crosses the international border, a familiar face asks him the normal questions: Where did you go in Canada? What was the purpose of your trip? Matthews is already in the same CBP waiting area, has already been handcuffed, and can’t believe it’s happening again.
The CBP agent suddenly stops. “Do you remember me?”
Matthews peers at him, and finally says, “Yes, I played soccer with you.” They haven’t seen each other since high school. They briefly reminisce, two men who grew up together along the St. Clair River before all those expensive surveillance towers with infrared cameras and radar went up. Although Matthews and the CBP agent were once friendly, although they lived in the same small town, there is now a boundary between them. Matthews struggles against this divide. He pleads: “You know who I am. I grew up here. I’ve been over this border a million times.”
This is, of course, only one of thousands of related stories happening along U.S. borders, north and south, in a universe in which, as anthropologist Josiah Heyman puts it, there are increasingly only two kinds of people: “the watchers and the watched.” And keep in mind that, with only "32 miles" under operational control, this is just the beginning. The U.S. border enforcement apparatus is only starting its migration north.
Matthews’s former high-school acquaintance guides him to the now-familiar room with the counter where three interrogators are waiting for him. They tell him to spread his legs. Then they order him to take off his shoes. It’s hard to take them off, however, when your hands are cuffed behind your back. The two interrogators in front are already shouting questions at him. (“What were you doing in Canada?”) The one behind him kicks his shoes. Hard. Then, after Matthews finally manages to get them off, the agent searches under his waistband.
When they are done, Matthews asks the agents what they would do if he were to circle around, reenter Canada, and cross the border again. The agents assure him that they would have to do the same exact thing -- handcuff, detain, and interrogate him as if his previous times had never happened.
Stealth Wear: New Counter-Surveillance Clothing Makes You Invisible to Drones
In early 2012 the U.S. Congress authorized the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act. Within this bill is a provision calling for the deployment of some 30,000 robotic drones over the skies of America by 2015, arguably the boldest overt domestic surveillance initiative to have ever been introduced in the land of the free. With an average of some 600 drones allocated per state, this future network of highly advanced surveillance systems promises to give law enforcement, military and intelligence assets unprecedented video and audio access into the lives of every single American.
Privacy advocates are justifiably outraged.
But whenever government attempts to institute a ban on contraband items, or pass draconian laws, or introduce new tracking and surveillance methods, rebellious elements within the target populace rapidly develop counter-strategies and technologies to marginalize the threat.
Oftentimes, billion dollar government initiatives and development projects are rendered almost useless by low-tech strategies and designs.
Artist and fashion designer Adam Harvey, who objects to the authoritarian nature of the global surveillance state, has done just that.
In an effort to counter the high-tech integrated drone surveillance systems soon to be fused into intelligence networks across the country, Harvey and a group of partners have developed a line of clothing dubbed Stealth Wear.
Making its debut on January 17th, the Stealth Wear line will include hoodies, scarves, hats, and t-shirts that will make the wearer invisible to thermal imaging cameras widely used throughout the unmanned aerial vehicle community.
The idea is that the material blocks heat signatures, captured using infrared sensors, which give people away to surveillance helicopters or drones from the skies above. [link]
The flagship Stealth Wear line will include:
- The anti-drone hoodie and anti-drone scarf: Garments designed to thwart thermal imaging, a technology used widely by UAVs.
- The XX-shirt: A x-ray shielding print in the shape of a heart, that protects your heart from x-ray radiation
- And the Off Pocket: An anti-phone accessory that allows you to instantly zero out your phone’s signal
Via: Adam Harvey Projects
Harvey and his project team aren’t just limiting the scope of their work to anti-drone technology either.
They’ve introduced new techniques to counter computer vision (CV), also known as facial recognition.
CV Dazzle is camouflage from computer vision (CV). It is a form of expressive interference that combines makeup and hair styling (or other modifications) with face-detection thwarting designs. The name is derived from a type of camouflage used during WWI, called Dazzle, which was used to break apart the gestalt-image of warships, making it hard to discern their directionality, size, and orientation. Likewise, the goal of CV Dazzle is to break apart the gestalt of a face, or object, and make it undetectable to computer vision algorithms, in particular face detection.
Because face detection is the first step in automated facial recognition, CV Dazzle can be used in any environment where automated face recognition systems are in use, such as Google’s Picasa, Flickr, or Facebook
Source: CV Dazzle
They’ll also be launching a product called Off the Pocket for your cell phone, a technology that is capable of zeroing out your phone’s broadcast signal, making it invisible to GPS and mobile network triangulation.
Building off previous work with CV Dazzle, camouflage from face detection, Stealth Wear continues to explore the aesthetics of privacy and the potential for fashion to challenge authoritarian surveillance. Presented by PRIMITIVE at TANK MAGAZINE HQ will be a suite of new designs, made in collaboration with NYC fashion designer Johanna Bloomfield, that tackle some of the most pressing and sophisticated forms of surveillance today.
Source: Primitive London
Accompanying each project will be videos and tests revealing the process behind each technology and counter technology.
Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 21,401 people
Date: January 11th, 2013
Website: www.SHTFplan.com
Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.
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"Breaking news:
"MaryAnne Grady-Flores was convicted in DeWitt Town Court last night on 2nd Degree Contempt of an Order Of Protection. Grady-Flores, who did not intend to violate the Order despite its immorality and invalidity, was taking pictures of others at the base - the Ash Wednesday Witnesses - who engaged in nonviolent civil resistance blocking the front Gate to Hancock base for which they were subsequently acquitted.
"In a heinous abuse of an instrument meant to protect the innocent from violence, Orders of Protection are being used to protect violent transgressions of international and moral law from citizen oversight. While trying to publicize and support a movement to ground the drones and end the wars which take countless innocent lives, Grady-Flores was arrested for noncompliance with an order that does not specify particulars outside of how you might attack another human, something she would never do. She understood the Order to mean that she was forbidden to join the protest.
"The Guilty verdict was proffered by a jury 5 minutes after they had asked the judge for a legal definition of 'keep away', and he had replied that they 'are the sole triers of fact'.
"The two-day trial included testimony from Colonel Earl A. Evans who is the party protected by the OOP, Catholic Priests Father Bill Pickard and Tim Taugher, Catholic Workers Bill Frankel-Streit and Ellen Grady, sister. Grady-Flores also testified on her own behalf."
Back in the USA I had my senior high students watch as I climbed a fence into the largest store house of nuclear weapons in the USA. I was in a Santa Clause suit and a bag with candy and hand bills urging federal workers to find a real job….a life giving job.
Environment was major with my students and they commandeered the four corners of the original IBM setting in Endicott NY demanding that IBM pay per pound of hydroflorocarbons emitted each year…IBM the greatest polluter of the Ozone according to the EPA. Locals, with IBM the backbone of the job force, had no idea that their wonder company was doing wrong -- until students contacted media and the story was blasted. Kids can make a difference. (Two years later, President Bush met with IBM officials in the Rose Garden to award them for their winning reduction of ozone pollutants. Students by then were in college or elsewhere and of course, not mentioned.) My main claim to fame is my thousands of students who understood I didn’t buy the lies fed to them by the text books and media bullshit. I hope they are questioning and acting. But being a sheep has its advantages even for the committed.
So, my activism has been education. Our play, The Bench, a story about apartheid, made it to many schools around the Southern Tier of NY while Mandela was still incarcerated at Robins Island. Today, my play, The Predator, (you helped clean up a few items in it) has been done around the nation in small group settings such as the Pittsburgh Foreign Affairs Council etc. I believe education is the key -- slow, but it works if persistence is one’s forte.
I told you a bit about my activism to close the US Army School of the Americas and my southern jail, federal diesel therapy and various federal prisons for a six month ‘holiday’. It did close but opened up weeks later with a new name. C’est la vie. C’est la guerre.
Why do you believe protesting is a strategic tool?
It has worked historically. Need I repeat what most people of historical awareness know as fact….in the past 100 years….Gandhi, King, Chavez, Walesa, Mandela, Romero, Berrigans, etc.
Silence is the enemy of justice and we have great silence today. Silence is based in fear but is comfortable and safe. Sheepherders are our guides today rather than national leadership. Hiding in the middle of the flock is safe. Few speak out about our murderous ways.
How have the approaches of the police and the courts changed?
Police are doing their job. I once witnessed Federal Marshalls at the Pentagon (back in pre 2001 days) hosing down old ladies who were doing a ‘die in’ to protest Pentagon support for a school of assassination at Ft Benning. Elizabeth McAllister (widow of Phil Berrigan) was standing next to me and she asked one of the Marshalls if he would do the same thing if it was gasoline. The Marshall turned to Liz and said: "I'd follow my orders, Lady".
So cops are doing what they are paid to do. They are not told to stop the killing going on inside of the base so they do what they are told and arrest those who say our government should not be breaking the law of country and God and natural law. But like the pilots who do the killing and the surrounding support people, it's the system that thrives on doing what they are told to do by the criminals at the top. We need to educate the police to have a conscience and see the real enemy . . . the killers, not those who protest.
Courts are not much different. There is a sense of affinity between the Air Force personnel, smartly dressed, ramrod straight who stand or sit before judge and/or jury and make a fine presentation of patriotism . . . doing the job of heroes. It's a tough act to question. Judges and jurors have been taught to respect those who kill to keep us safe. The decisions made by the judges have been almost all in favor of the base and the killing Q9 drones and their crews. The one jury trial so far, just last week (May 17th.) rendered a decision in favor of the base. The case was a charge of a violation of an Order of Protection. An OPP is usually used to allow a spouse to keep away an abuser. Now, it is being creatively used at Hancock Air Base as an instrument to prevent First Amendment Rights to be practiced. Mary Anne Grady, a long time nonviolent peace activist, mother of four, every day hard working business woman was at a demo on Ash Wednesday at Hancock to do the media work of photos and video. She did not engage in the demonstration for she was ordered to not go on the base. She is shown in videos on the road in front of the base (cars and joggers going by right next to her) but Hancock Air Base now claims to have a lease on half of the public road that Mary Anne stood on and filmed. She faces a possible severe sentence on July 10th being found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a Syracuse jury of six. (Mary Anne was told months ago that juries may not be any better than judges -- tens of thousands stand and cheer at Syracuse Basketball games for the military and staff of the 174th Attach Wing at Hancock.)
What is your current legal situation?
My legal status is a jury trial at DeWitt Court starting at 8:30 a.m. on July 14th. First day mostly picking of jurors and opening statements and second day direct and cross examination, judge advise to jury and decision of guilt or innocence. I could be sentenced to one year in the Jamesville Penitentiary for my nonviolent die to remember those we have killed in Afghanistan (and God and the NSA only know where else). I think there is a chance of winning this one. If so, it could set a precedent. There are many jury trials to follow mine. Schedules go into late 2015….all for the same action. One judge said: "This has got to stop". Former President of Veterans For Peace, Elliott Adams, agreed with the judge. Elliott said, "Yes, your honor, it has to stop, we need to stop the killing and you need to be part of that stop effort."
I’ve been to most trials and have to say that there is little concern of judges to do anything to stop the assassinations. They are doing their job and following the "law". Now, we need to prove the so called law is illegal.
What would you recommend that people do who share your concern?
Here is what Ed Kinane had to say about recommending what to do. Ed walks the walk. Ed has lived in federal confinement for his peace and justice activism. Ed says:
That depends on whether they are far or near and where they are in life (in terms of dependents and responsibilities). Our campaign has a whole range of tactics they can join in or support: educate themselves; read some of the key drone books and reports; write letters to the editor...to elected officials...to base commanders; take part in our twice-monthly demos across the road from Hancock; attend the De Witt court when we defendants appear there; take part in annual conferences (usually in April); invite us to speak to their classes, community groups or congregations; contribute $$$ to our bail fund or to such anti-drone groups as codepink; work to pass local resolutions and ordinances restricting surveillance and weaponized drones over local or regional airspace; take part in fact-finding delegations to drone-plagued areas (Pakistan); risk arrest at Hancock, at other drone bases, or other relevant venues (federal buildings, drone research or production facilities, etc.); become a federal tax resister -- i.e.stop paying federal income taxes (much of which goes to the Pentagon war machine).
*****
I'll add a few more:
Visit Upstate Drone Action Reports at http://upstatedroneaction.org/wordpress
Sign the petition to ban weaponized drones.
Get your city or state to oppose drones.
Get anti-drone shirts, stickers, hats, etc.
Every Tuesday: Stop the Killing.
Plan for a Global Day of Action Against Drones on October 4, 2014.
Join the movement to end all war, with all weapons, at http://WorldBeyondWar.org
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In 2013, the Indian defence budget formed over ten percent of total government expenditure. It has been for many years the world’s largest market for imported arms. In 2000,
Apart from ongoing violent conflicts in the ‘tribal belt’ and elsewhere, there is the continuing all pervasive structural violence of crony capitalism, corruption, ‘globalisation’ and neo-liberalism, which has, among other atrocities, resulted in up to 300,000 farmer suicides and India having over one-third of the poorest people in the world and the world’s largest number of children suffering from malnutrition (6).
There are people who want to do us harm. We need to be protected. There are extremists and wrong doers who want to bend the system for their own narrow agendas against the interests of the many. There always has been. Unfortunately, they have hijacked the machinery of state(s) and are increasingly to be found in positions of authority implementing surveillance and economic terrorism ‘for our own good’.
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Gaza: Life and death under Israel’s drones
Al-Jazeera – 28 November 2013
There are many things to fear in Gaza: Attacks from Israel’s Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter jets, the coastal enclave’s growing isolation, the regular blackouts from power shortages, increasingly polluted drinking water and rivers of sewage flooding the streets.
Meanwhile, for most Palestinians in Gaza the anxiety-inducing soundtrack to their lives is the constant buzz of the remotely piloted aircraft – better known as “drones” – that hover in the skies above.
Drones are increasingly being used for surveillance and extra-judicial execution in parts of the Middle East, especially by the US, but in nowhere more than Gaza has the drone become a permanent fixture of life. More than 1.7 million Palestinians, confined by Israel to a small territory in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, are subject to near continual surveillance and intermittent death raining down from the sky.
There is little hope of escaping the zenana – an Arabic word referring to a wife’s relentless nagging that Gazans have adopted to describe the drone’s oppressive noise and their feelings about it. According to statistics compiled by human rights groups in Gaza, civilians are the chief casualties of what Israel refers to as “surgical” strikes from drones.
“When you hear the drones, you feel naked and vulnerable,” said Hamdi Shaqura, deputy director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, based in Gaza City. “The buzz is the sound of death. There is no escape, nowhere is private. It is a reminder that, whatever Israel and the international community assert, the occupation has not ended. We are still living completely under Israeli control. They control the borders and the sea and they decide our fates from their position in the sky,” said Shaqura.
The Israeli military did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.
Suffer the children
The sense of permanent exposure, coupled with the fear of being mistakenly targeted, has inflicted deep psychological scars on civilians, especially children, according to experts.
“There is a great sense of insecurity. Nowhere feels safe for the children, and they feel no one can offer them protection, not even their parents,” said Ahmed Tawahina, a psychologist running clinics in Gaza as part of the Community Mental Health Programme. “That traumatises both the children and parents, who feel they are failing in their most basic responsibility.”
Shaqura observed: “From a political perspective, there is a deep paradox. Israel says it needs security, but it demands it at the cost of our constant insecurity.”
There are no statistics that detail the effect of the drones on Palestinians in Gaza. Doctors admit it is impossible to separate the psychological toll inflicted by drones from other sources of damage to mental health, such as air strikes by F-16s, severe restrictions on movement and the economic insecurity caused by Israel’s blockade.
But field researchers working for Palestinian rights groups point out that the use of drones is intimately tied to these other sources of fear and anxiety. Drones fire missiles themselves, they guide attacks by F-16s or helicopters, and they patrol and oversee the borders.
A survey in medical journal The Lancet following Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s month-long attack on Gaza in winter 2008-09, found large percentages of children suffered from symptoms of psychological trauma: Fifty-eight percent permanently feared the dark; 43 percent reported regular nightmares; 37 percent wet the bed and 42 percent had crying attacks.
Tawahina described the sense of being constantly observed as a “form of psychological torture, which exhausts people’s mental and emotional resources. Among children at school, this can be seen in poor concentration and unruly behaviour.” The trauma for children is compounded by the fact that the drones also disrupt what should be their safest activity – watching TV at home. When a drone is operating nearby, it invariably interferes with satellite reception.
“”It doesn’t make headlines, but it is another example of how there is no escape from the drones. Parents want their children indoors, where it feels safer and where they’re less likely to hear the drones, but still the drone finds a way into their home. The children cannot even switch off from the traumas around them by watching TV because of the drones.”
Israel’s ‘major advantage’
Israel developed its first drones in the early 1980s, during its long occupation of south Lebanon, to gather aerial intelligence without exposing Israeli pilots to anti-aircraft missiles. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, said drones help in situations where good, on-the-ground intelligence is lacking. “What the UAV gives you is eyes on the other side of the hill or over the border,” he said. “That provides Israel with a major advantage over its enemies.”
Other Israeli analysts have claimed that the use of drones, with their detailed intelligence-collecting abilities, is justified because they reduce the chances of errors and the likelihood of “collateral damage” – civilian deaths – during attacks.
But, according to Inbar, the drone is no better equipped than other aircraft for gathering intelligence or carrying out an execution.
“The advantage from Israel’s point of view is that using a drone for these tasks reduces the risk of endangering a pilot’s life or losing an expensive plane. That is why we are moving towards much greater use of these kinds of robots on the battlefield,” he said.
‘Mistakes can happen’
According to Gaza human rights group al-Mezan, Israel started using drones over the territory from the start of the second intifada in 2000, but only for surveillance.
Israel’s first extra-judicial executions using drones occurred in 2004, when two Palestinians were killed. But these operations greatly expanded after 2006, in the wake of Israel’s withdrawal of settlers and soldiers from Gaza and the rise to power of the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas.
Drones, the front-line weapon in Israel’s surveillance operations and efforts to foil rocket attacks, killed more than 90 Palestinians in each of the years 2006 and 2007, according to al-Mezan. The figures soared during Operation Cast Lead and in its aftermath, with 461 Palestinians killed by drones in 2009. The number peaked again with 199 deaths in 2012, the year when Israel launched the eight-day Operation Pillar of Defence against Gaza.
Despite Israeli claims that the intelligence provided by drones makes it easier to target those Palestinians it has defined as “terrorists”, research shows civilians are the main victims. In the 2012 Pillar of Defence operation, 36 of the 162 Palestinians killed were a result of drone strikes, and a further 100 were injured by drones. Of those 36 killed, two-thirds were civilians.
Also revealing was a finding that, although drones were used in only five percent of air strikes, they accounted for 23 percent of the total deaths during Pillar of Defence. According to the Economist magazine, the assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Jabari, which triggered that operation, was carried out using a Hermes 450 drone.
Palestinian fighters report that they have responded to the constant surveillance by living in hiding, rarely going outdoors and avoiding using phones or cars. It is a way of life not possible for most people in Gaza.
Gaza’s armed groups are reported to be trying to find a way to jam the drones’ navigation systems. In the meantime, Hamas has claimed it has shot down three drones, the latest this month, though Israel says all three crashed due to malfunctions.
Last week, on the anniversary of the launch of Pillar of Defence, an Israeli commander whose soldiers control the drones over Gaza from a base south of Tel Aviv told the Haaretz newspaper that “many” air strikes during the operation had involved drones. “Lt Col Shay” was quoted saying: “Ultimately, we are at war. As much as the IDF strives to carry out the most precise surgical strikes, mistakes can happen in the air or on the ground.”
Random death by drone
It is for this reason that drones have become increasingly associated with random death from the sky, said Samir Zaqout, a senior field researcher for Al-Mezan.
“We know from the footage taken by drones that Israel can see what is happening below in the finest detail. And yet women and children keep being killed in drone attacks. Why the continual mistakes? The answer, I think, is that these aren’t mistakes. The message Israel wants to send us is that there is no protection whether you are a civilian or fighter. They want us afraid and to make us turn on the resistance [Palestinian fighters].”
Zaqout also points to a more recent use of drones – what has come to be known as “roof-knocking”. This is when a drone fires small missiles at the roof of a building to warn the inhabitants to evacuate – a practice Israel developed during Operation Cast Lead three years earlier, to allay international concerns about its repeated levellings of buildings with civilians inside.
In Pillar of Defence in 2012, 33 buildings were targeted by roof-knocking.
Israel says it provides 10 minutes’ warning from a roof-knock to an air strike, but, in practice, families find they often have much less time. This, said Zaqout, puts large families in great danger as they usually send their members out in small groups to be sure they will not be attacked as they move onto the streets.
One notorious case occurred during Cast Lead, when six members of the Salha family, all women and children, were killed when their home was shelled moments after a roof-knocking. The father, Fayez Salha, who survived, lost a case for damages in Israel’s Supreme Court last February and was ordered to pay costs after the judges ruled that the attack was legitimate because it occurred as part of a military operation.
A US citizen who has lived long-term in Gaza, who wished not be named for fear of reprisals from Israel, said she often heard the drones at night when the street noise dies down, or as they hover above her while out walking. “The sound is like the buzz of a mosquito, although there is one type of drone that sometimes comes into view that is silent,” she said.
She added that she knew of families that, before moving into a new apartment building, checked to see whether it housed a fighter or a relative of a fighter, for fear that the building may be attacked by Israel.
Shaqura said the drones inevitably affect one’s day-to-day behaviour. He said he was jogging early one morning while a drone hovered overhead.
“I got 100 metres from my front door when I started to feel overwhelmed with fear. I realised that my tracksuit was black, the same colour as many of the fighters’ uniforms. I read in my work too many reports of civilians being killed by drones not to see the danger. So I hurried back home.”
Tagged as: Gaza, war crimes
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March 26, 2013 |
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Rand Paul’s marathon 13-hour filibuster was not the end of the conversation on drones. Suddenly, drones are everywhere, and so is the backlash. Efforts to counter drones at home and abroad are growing in the courts, at places of worship, outside air force bases, inside the UN, at state legislatures, inside Congress--and having an effect on policy.
1. April marks the national month of uprising against drone warfare. Activists in upstate New York are converging on the Hancock Air National Guard Base where Predator drones are operated. In San Diego, they will take on Predator-maker General Atomics at both its headquarters and the home of the CEO. In D.C., a coalition of national and local organizations are coming together to say no to drones at the White House. And all across the nation—including New York City, New Paltz, Chicago, Tucson and Dayton—activists are planning picket lines, workshops and sit-ins to protest the covert wars. The word has even spread to Islamabad, Pakistan, where activists are planning a vigil to honor victims.
2. There has been an unprecedented surge of activity in cities, counties and state legislatures across the country aimed at regulating domestic surveillance drones. After a raucous city council hearing in Seattle in February, the Mayor agreed to terminate its drones program and return the city’s two drones to the manufacturer. Also in February, the city of Charlottesville, VA passed a 2-year moratorium and other restrictions on drone use, and other local bills are pending in cities from Buffalo to Ft. Wayne. Simultaneously, bills have been proliferating on the state level. In Florida, a pending bill will require the police to get a warrant to use drones in an investigation; a Virginia statewide moratorium on drones passed both houses and awaits the governor’s signature, and similar legislation in pending in at least 13 other state legislatures.
3. Responding to the international outcry against drone warfare, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, is conducting an in-depth investigation of 25 drone attacks and will release his report in the Spring. Meanwhile, on March 15, having returned from a visit to Pakistan to meet drone victims and government officials, Emmerson condemned the U.S. drone program in Pakistan, as “it involves the use of force on the territory of another State without its consent and is therefore a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty.”
4. Leaders in the faith-based community broke their silence and began mobilizing against the nomination of John Brennan, with over 100 leaders urging the Senate to reject Brennan. And in an astounding development, The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), a faith-based coalition of 34,000 churches comprised of 15 denominations and 15.7 million African Americans, issued a scathing statement about Obama’s drone policy, calling it “evil”, “monstrous” and “immoral.” The group’s president, Rev. Anthony Evans, exhorted other black leaders to speak out, saying “If the church does not speak against this immoral policy we will lose our moral voice, our soul, and our right to represent and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
5. In the past four years the Congressional committees that are supposed to exercise oversight over the drones have been mum. Finally, in February and March, the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee held their first public hearings, and the Constitution Subcommittee will hold a hearing on April 16 on the “constitutional and statutory authority for targeted killings, the scope of the battlefield and who can be targeted as a combatant.” Too little, too late, but at least Congress is feeling some pressure to exercise its authority.
Drone Warfare is Neither Cheap, Nor Surgical, Nor Decisive: The Ever-Destructive Dreams of Air...
Today’s unmanned aerial vehicles, most famously Predator and Reaper drones, have been celebrated as the culmination of the longtime dreams of airpower enthusiasts, offering the possibility of victory through quick, clean, and selective destruction. Those drones, so the (very old) story goes, assure the U.S. military of command of the high ground, and so provide the royal road to a speedy and decisive triumph over helpless enemies below.
Fantasies about the certain success of air power in transforming, even ending, war as we know it arose with the plane itself. But when it comes to killing people from the skies, again and again air power has proven neither cheap nor surgical nor decisive nor in itself triumphant. Seductive and tenacious as the dreams of air supremacy continue to be, much as they automatically attach themselves to the latest machine to take to the skies, air power has not fundamentally softened the brutal face of war, nor has it made war less dirty or chaotic.
Indeed, by emboldening politicians to seek seemingly low-cost, Olympian solutions to complex human problems -- like Zeus hurling thunderbolts from the sky to skewer puny mortals -- it has fostered fantasies of illimitable power emboldened by contempt for human life. However, just like Zeus’s obdurate and rebellious subjects, the mortals on the receiving end of death from on high have shown surprising strength in frustrating the designs of the air power gods, whether past or present. Yet the Olympian fantasy persists, a fact that requires explanation.
The Rise of Air Power
It did not take long after the Wright Brothers first put a machine in the air for a few exhilarating moments above the sandy beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in December of 1903, for the militaries of industrialized countries to express interest in buying and testing airplanes. Previously balloons had been used for reconnaissance, as in the Napoleonic wars and the U.S. Civil War, and so initially fledgling air branches focused on surveillance and intelligence-gathering. As early as 1911, however, Italian aircraft began dropping small bombs from open-air cockpits on the enemy -- we might today call them “insurgents” -- in Libya.
World War I encouraged the development of specialized aircraft, most famously the dancing bi- and tri-winged fighter planes of the dashing “knights of the air,” as well as the more ponderous, but for the future far more important, bombers. By the close of World War I in 1918, each side had developed multi-engine bombers like the German Gotha, which superseded the more vulnerable zeppelins. Their mission was to fly over the trenches where the opposing armies were stalemated and take the war to the enemy’s homeland, striking fear in his heart and compelling him to surrender. Fortunately for civilians a century ago, those bombers were too few in number, and their payloads too limited, to inflict widespread destruction, although German air attacks on England in 1917 did spread confusion and, in a few cases, panic.
Pondering the hecatombs of dead from trench warfare, air power enthusiasts of the 1920s and 1930s not surprisingly argued strongly, and sometimes insubordinately, for the decisive importance of bombing campaigns launched by independent air forces. A leading enthusiast was Italy’s Giulio Douhet. In his 1921 work Il dominio dell’aria (Command of the Air), he argued that in future wars strategic bombing attacks by heavily armed “battle-planes” (bombers) would produce rapid and decisive victories. Driven by a fascist-inspired logic of victory through preemptive attack, Douhet called for all-out air strikes to destroy the enemy’s air force and its bases, followed by hammer blows against industry and civilians using high-explosive, incendiary, and poison-gas bombs. Such blows, he predicted, would produce psychological uproar and social chaos (“shock and awe,” in modern parlance), fatally weakening the enemy’s will to resist.
As treacherous and immoral as his ideas may sound, Douhet’s intent was to shorten wars and lessen casualties -- at least for his side. Better to subdue the enemy by pressing hard on select pressure points (even if the “pressing” was via high explosives and poison gas, and the “points” included concentrations of innocent civilians), rather than forcing your own army to bog down in bloody, protracted land wars.
That air power was inherently offensive and uniquely efficacious in winning cheap victories was a conclusion that found a receptive audience in Great Britain and the United States. In England, Hugh Trenchard, founding father of the Royal Air Force (RAF), embraced strategic bombing as the most direct way to degrade the enemy’s will; he boldly asserted that “the moral effect of bombing stands undoubtedly to the material effect in a proportion of twenty to one.”
Even bolder was his American counterpart, William “Billy” Mitchell, famously court-martialed and romanticized as a “martyr” to air power. (In his honor, cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy still eat in Mitchell Hall.) At the Air Corps Tactical School in the 1930s, U.S. airmen refined Mitchell’s tenets, developing a “vital centers” theory of bombing -- the idea that one could compel an enemy to surrender by identifying and destroying his vulnerable economic nodes. It therefore came as no accident that the U.S. entered World War II with the world’s best heavy bomber, the B-17 Flying Fortress, and a fervid belief that “precision bombing” would be the most direct path to victory.
World War II and After: Dehousing, Scorching, Boiling, and Baking the Enemy
In World War II, “strategic” air forces that focused on winning the war by heavy bombing reached young adulthood, with all the swagger associated with that stage of maturity. The moral outrage of Western democracies that accompanied the German bombing of civilian populations in Guernica, Spain, in 1937 or Rotterdam in 1940 was quickly forgotten once the Allies sought to open a “second front” against Hitler through the air. Four-engine strategic bombers like the B-17 and the British Lancaster flew for thousands of miles carrying bomb loads measured in tons. From 1942 to 1945 they rained two million tons of ordnance on Axis targets in Europe, but accuracy in bombing remained elusive.
While the U.S. attempted and failed at precision daylight bombing against Germany’s “vital centers,” Britain’s RAF Bomber Command began employing what was bloodlessly termed “area bombing” at night in a “dehousing” campaign led by Arthur “Bomber” Harris. What became an American/British combined bomber offensive killed 600,000 German civilians, including 120,000 children, reducing cities like Cologne (1942), Hamburg (1943), Berlin (1944-45), and Dresden (1945) to rubble.
Yet, contrary to the dreams of air power advocates, Germany’s will to resist remained unbroken. The vaunted second front of aerial battle became yet another bloody attritional brawl, with hundreds of thousands of civilians joining scores of thousands of aircrews in death.
Similarly mauled but unbroken by bombing was Japan, despite an air campaign of relentless intensity that killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. Planned and directed by Major General Curtis LeMay, new B-29 bombers loaded with incendiaries struck Tokyo, a city made largely of wood, in March 1945, creating a firestorm that in his words “scorched and boiled and baked [the Japanese] to death.” As many as 100,000 Japanese died in this attack.
Subsequently, 60 more cities were firebombed until the apotheosis of destruction came that August as atomic bombs incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing another 200,000 people. It quickly became an article of faith among American air power enthusiasts that these bombs had driven Japan to surrender; together with this, the “decisive” air campaign against Germany became reason enough to justify an independent U.S. Air Force, which was created by the National Security Act of 1947.
In the total war against Nazi and Japanese terror, moral concerns, when expressed, came privately. General Ira Eaker worried that future generations might condemn the Allied bombing campaign against Germany for its targeting of “the man in the street.” Even LeMay, not known for introspective doubts, worried in 1945 that he and his team would likely be tried as war criminals if the U.S. failed to defeat Japan. (So Robert McNamara, then an Army Air Force officer working for LeMay, recalled in the documentary The Fog of War.)
But moral qualms were put aside in the post-war glow of victory and as the fear rose of future battles with communism. The Korean War (1950-1953) may have ushered in the jet age, as symbolized by the dogfights of American Sabre Jets and Soviet MiGs over the Yalu River, but it also witnessed the devastation by bombing of North Korea, even as the enemy took cover underground and refused to do what air power strategists had always assumed they would: give up.
Still, for the U.S. Air Force, the real action of that era lay largely in the realm of dystopian fantasies as it created the Strategic Air Command (SAC), which coordinated two legs of the nuclear triad, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles in silos and nuclear-armed long-range bombers. (The third was nuclear-missile-armed submarines.) SAC kept some of those bombers carrying thermonuclear weapons in the air 24/7 as a “deterrent” to a Soviet nuclear first strike (and as a constant first strike threat of our own). “Thinking about the unthinkable” -- that is, nuclear Armageddon -- became all the rage, with “massive retaliation” serving as the byword for air power enthusiasts. In this way, dreams of clean victories morphed into nightmares of global thermonuclear annihilation, leaving the 1930s air power ideal of “clean” and “surgical” strikes in the dust -- for the time being.
Reaping What We Sow
Despite an unimaginably powerful nuclear deterrent that essentially couldn’t be used, the U.S. Air Force had to relearn the hard way that there remained limits to the efficacy of air power, especially when applied to low-intensity, counterinsurgency wars. As in Korea in the 1950s, air power in the 1960s and 1970s failed to provide the winning edge in the Vietnam War, even as it spread wanton destruction throughout the Vietnamese countryside. But it was the arrival of “smart” bombs near that war’s end that marked the revival of the fantasies of air power enthusiasts about “precision bombing” as the path to future victory.
By the 1990s, laser- and GPS-guided bombs (known collectively as PGMs, forprecision guided munitions) were relegating unguided, “dumb” bombs largely to the past. Yet like their predecessors, PGMs proved no panacea. In the opening stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, for example, 50 precision “decapitation strikes” targeting dictator Saddam Hussein’s top leadership failed to hit any of their intended targets, while causing “dozens” of civilian deaths. That same year, air power’s inability to produce decisive results on the ground after Iraq’s descent into chaos, insurrection, and civil war served as a reminder that the vaunted success of the U.S. air campaign in the First Gulf War (1991) was a fluke, not a flowering of air power’s maturity. (Saddam Hussein made his traditionally organized military, defenseless against air power, occupy static positions after his invasion of Kuwait.)
The recent marriage of PGMs to drones, hailed as the newest “perfect weapon” in the air arsenal, has once again led to the usual fantasies about the arrival -- finally, almost 100 years late -- of clean, precise, and decisive war. Using drones, a military need not risk even a pilot’s life in its attacks. Yet the nature of war -- its horrors, its unpredictability, its tendency to outlive its original causes -- remains fundamentally unaltered by “precision” drone strikes. War’s inherent fog and friction persist. In the case of drones, that fog is often generated by faulty intelligence, the friction by malfunctioning weaponry orinnocent civilians appearing just as the Hellfire missiles are unleashed. Rather than clean wars of decision, drone strikes decide nothing. Instead, they produce their share of “collateral damage” that only spawns new enemies seeking revenge.
The fantasy of air war as a realm of technical decision, as an exercise in decisively finding, fixing, and dispatching the enemy, appeals to a country like the United States that idolizes technology as a way to quick fixes. As a result, it’s hardly surprising that two administrations in Washington have ever more zealously pursued drone wars and aerial global assassination campaigns, already killing 4,700 “terrorists” and bystanders. And this has been just part of our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president’s campaign of 20,000 air strikes(only 10% of which were drone strikes) in his first term of office. Yet despite -- or perhaps because of -- these attacks, our global war against al-Qaeda, its affiliates, and other groups like the Taliban appears no closer to ending.
And that is, in part, because the dream of air power remains just that: a fantasy, a capricious and destructive will-o’-the-wisp. It’s a fantasy because it denies agency to enemies (and others) who invariably find ways to react, adapt, and strike back. It’s a fantasy because, however much such attacks seem both alluringly low-risk and high-reward to the U.S. military, they become a rallying cause for those on the other end of the bombs and missiles.
A much-quoted line from the movie Apocalypse Now captured the insanity of the American air war in Vietnam. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,”says an Air Cav commander played by Robert Duvall. “Smelled like... victory.” Updated for drone warfare, this line might read: “I love the sound of drones in the morning. Sounds like... victory.” But will we say the same when armed drones are hovering, not only above our enemies’ heads but above ours, too, in fortress America, enforcing security and conformity while smiting citizens judged to be rebellious?
Something tells me this is not the dream that airpower enthusiasts had in mind.
Are Attorney General Holder’s Statements on Banks and Drones Connected? How Far Will the...
The Attorney General of the United States made the following 2 statements within 48 hours:
These statements may – at first glance – seem unconnected. And the mainstream media is treating them as separate.
True, the government is hell-bent on keeping the giant banks afloat, even though virtually all independent economists, financial experts and bankers are calling for them to be broken up, and Americans overwhelmingly want the government to get tougher on prosecuting Wall Street fraud.
But there might be more to it then than that … and Holder’s statements may be intimately connected.
For example, the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and other government agencies worked hand-in-hand with the big banks to violently crack down on the Occupy protests.
And what was Occupy protesting? One of the core complaints of the Occupy protesters was that there are two systems of justice: the little guy gets thrown in jail for the smallest infraction, while banksters escape prosecution for their criminal fraud. (Occupy also protested the fact that that the big banks got bailed out, while the rest of us got sold out. And see this.)
In other words, it is exactly the Department of Justice’s policy of not prosecuting big bank crimes which was one of Occupy’s core complaints … and – in response – the federal government sent in the goons to crack heads and trash the free speech rights of the protesters.
This is not an isolated incident.
The big banks literally own the politicians.
For many years, the government has used anti-terror laws mainly to crush political dissent and to help the too big to fail businesses.
Asking questions about Wall Street shenanigans, speaking out against government policies, and protesting anything are all considered grounds for being labeled a “potential terrorist” by the government. Whistleblowers are also being treated as terrorists.
Indeed, the government agency with the power to determine who gets assassinated is the same agency that is at the center of the “ubiquitous, unaccountable surveillance state aimed at American citizens.”
If this sounds like breathless fearmongering, please remember that the U.S. military now considers the American homeland to be a “battle zone” (and see this).
And the banking system is considered “critical infrastructure” by the Department of Homeland security.
Another Connection Between Big Banks and Drones
There is another connection between big banks and drones.
The big banks have a direct role in encouraging and financing war. And see this.
And Ron Paul noted in 2007:
Congress and the Federal Reserve Bank have a cozy, unspoken arrangement that makes war easier to finance. Congress has an insatiable appetite for new spending, but raising taxes is politically unpopular. The Federal Reserve, however, is happy to accommodate deficit spending by creating new money through the Treasury Department. In exchange, Congress leaves the Fed alone to operate free of pesky oversight and free of political scrutiny.
The big banks own the Federal Reserve.
Indeed, some say that all wars are really bankster wars.
US Attorney General Gives the Go-Ahead on Domestic Drone Strikes: May Be Necessary Under...
When Congress authorized the deployment of some 30,000 drones over U.S. skies with the passage of the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act in 2012 many civil liberties groups, privacy advocates and Americans expressed their concerns about the possibility that these surveillance tools could be used within the borders of the United States much like they are on the battlefields of the middle east where scores of innocent civilians are killed almost every day as collateral damage in direct strikes against alleged terrorists.
Those fears are very quickly being realized not as possibilities, but actualities.
In response to questions recently voiced by Senator Rand Paul about drone strikes being used against American citizens on American soil without charge or trial, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a public statement indicating that the government has the right to use armed unmanned aerial vehicles should “extraordinary circumstances” arise.
Holder writes:
On February 20, 2013, you wrote to John Brennan requesting additional information concerning the Administration’s views about whether “the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, without a trial.”
As members of this administration have previously indicated, the US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat. We have a long history of using the criminal justice system to incapacitate individuals located in our country who pose a threat to the United States and its interests abroad. Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and convicted of terrorism-related offenses in our federal courts.
The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront.
It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.
For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.
The official position of the United States government is that a drone, or any military asset for that matter, can be deployed by the President of the United States or his surrogates without regard to the sixth amendment of the US Constitution, which requires that citizens be afforded the right of facing their accusers, to call witnesses and to be tried by a jury of their peers.
Senator Paul responded to the Attorney General’s comments and warned of the dangers of the new policy:
“The U.S. Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening – it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans.”
Last month President Obama responded to questions about domestic drone strikes:
First of all… there’s never been a drone used on an American citizen, on American soil.
We respect and have a whole bunch of safeguards in terms of how we conduct counter-terrorism operations outside of the United States. The rules outside of the United States are going to be different than the rules inside of the United States.
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I am not somebody who believes that the President has the authority to do whatever he wants or whatever she wants, whenever they want, just under the guise of counter-terrorism.
There have to be checks and balances on it.
Based on Eric Holder’s memo, the President, and therefore agencies under his control, do believe that they have the authority to use lethal force against those identified as “terrorists.”
As the Attorney General noted in his letter to Senator Paul, there are hundreds of Americans that have been tried and convicted as terrorists, and thousands more that have been identified as terrorists by government officials.
U.S. attorney Anne Tompkins recently prosecuted Bernard Von Nothaus for minting silver coins he branded as “liberty dollars.” After Vot Nothaus was convicted, Tompkins referred to his actions as a unique form of domestic terrorism.
Local law enforcement officials attending DHS sponsored training events have widely reported that the definitions for “terrorist” activity are becoming very broad, as outlined by one police officer at James Rawles’ Survival Blog:
During the past several years, I have witnessed a dramatic shift in the focus of law enforcement training. Law enforcement courses have moved away from a local community focus to a federally dominated model of complete social control. Most training I have attended over the past two years have been sponsored by Department of Homeland Security (DHS), namely the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
No matter what topic the training session concerns, every DHS sponsored course I have attended over the past few years never fails to branch off into warnings about potential domestic terrorists in the community.
…
So how does a person qualify as a potential domestic terrorist? Based on the training I have attended, here are characteristics that qualify:
- Expressions of libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
- Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership, holding a CCW permit)
- Survivalist literature (fictional books such as “Patriots” and “One Second After” are mentioned by name)
- Self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
- Fear of economic collapse (buying gold and barter items)
- Religious views concerning the book of Revelation (apocalypse, anti-Christ)
- Expressed fears of Big Brother or big government
- Homeschooling
- Declarations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties
- Belief in a New World Order conspiracy
Earlier this year a kindergarten student was suspended from school after officials reported that she made a terrorist threat utilizing a Hello Kitty bubble gun.
The Attorney General of the United States of America just gave the President the go-ahead on domestic drone strikes.
Under the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, no Constitutional protections need be afforded to American citizens, thus, anyone can be classified as a domestic terrorist at the President’s discretion.
If you mint a silver coin, stockpile food, refuse to turn in your high capacity magazine, voice beliefs that may be considered subversive to the government, or have a toy resembling a gun, you maybe labeled a terrorist.
As such, you can also be targeted for extermination.
FAA takes major step in expanding drone use in America
RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (Reuters)
US President Barack Obama has approved legislation that is expected to immediately accelerate the use of domestic surveillance drones within the United States.
On Thursday, Pres. Obama signed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, a bill that the Federal Aviation Administration’s AnneMarie Ternay describes as containing requirements for integrating unmanned aircraft systems and vehicles such as drones into the national airspace starting immediately.
With the president’s approval this week, the FAA has already begun soliciting proposals from cities across the country that are interested in becoming one of six soon-to-be established test sites where drones and UAVs will be sent into the sky as America takes the next step towards accepting the latest generation of aircraft.
The FAA says that locations in over 30 states have already showed interest in the program. Soon the agency will be tasked with picking a mere half-dozen locations so that drones can formally be introduced into official US airspace and not just strips of sky above designated areas.
Should the FAA stay on schedule, drones are likely to start flying regularly in the US by late 2015, and as many as 30,000 non-military UAVs are expected to be in the sky by the end of the decade. First, however, the FAA, drone builders and pilots will have to pick test sites to work out the kinks of a controversial aircraft.
“We expect to learn how unmanned aircraft systems operate in different environments and how they will impact air traffic operations,” FAA Chief Michael Huerta says in a statement obtained by the Associated Press. “The test sites will inform the agency as we develop standards for certifying unmanned aircraft and determine necessary air traffic requirements.”
"This research will give us valuable information about how best to ensure the safe introduction of this advanced technology into our nation's skies," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood added to the AP.
Earlier in the week, the head of the FAA’s new drone department spoke at a convention outside of Washington, DC to discuss some concerns Americans have voiced en masse lately about bringing drones to inside of America’s borders. The US Department of Homeland Security already has an arsenal of the aircraft at its disposal for use in border-patrol missions, but small-time law enforcement agencies and other federal, state and educational institutions hope to have drones of their in the near future. So far, the FAA has received at least 81 applications from entities wishing to obtain drone licenses, including police departments and universities. What exactly law enforcement could do with a drone has some Americans concerns, though, an issue that was addressed at this week’s conference.
“We currently have rules in the books that deal with releasing anything from an aircraft, period. Those rules are in place and that would prohibit weapons from being installed on a civil aircraft,” Jim Williams of the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration Office said this week.
On the same day that President Obama signed off on the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, around 150 people from Oakland, California attended an Alameda County meeting to weigh in on demands from figures there to put drones in the sky.
“We oppose the use of public resources to buy machines to surveil its citizens,” said Michael Seigel, a member of Alameda County Against Drones, according to Wired’s Danger Room.
Earlier in the week, the FAA’s Mr. Williams dismissed those concerns, saying, “The FAA has no authority to make rules or enforce any rules relative to privacy.”
“We can ask [the industry] to take into consideration the privacy issue. … There aren’t any rules to date on that.”
The Next Generation of Surveillance: “Everything That Is A Moving Object Is Being Automatically...
The following video highlights one of the scariest surveillance technologies you’ve ever seen.
With Congress having recently authorized 30,000 drones to patrol America’s skies by 2015, this technology will soon become available to law enforcement officials all over the country.
It’s creator, Yiannis Antoniades, says that it’s the next generation of surveillance and as you’ll see, it’s capabilities are so advanced that it can actively scan an area encompassing 15 square miles – about the area of a medium sized city – from an altitude of 20,000 feet.
Moreover, it tracks every single moving object in its field of view, streaming the high definition video back to monitoring stations on the ground.
With 1.8 billion pixels it is the world’s highest resolution camera. ARGUS fits inside the belly of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.
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Also known as Wide Area Persistent Stare, Argus is the equivalent of having up to 100 predators look at an area the size of a medium sized city at once.
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Everything that is a moving object is being automatically tracked… You can see individuals crossing the street. You can see individuals walking in parking lots. There’s actually enough resolution to be able to see people waving their arms or what kind of clothes they wear.
You can pick the location of where you produce these images anywhere in the entire field of view.
…
Antoniades can open up to sixty five windows at once and see objects as small as six inches on the ground.
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ARGUS streams live to the ground and also stores everything. One million terabytes of video per day.
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ARGUS may be mounted on an armed UAV, a long range platform, or a developmental craft called the solar eagle that may some day stay aloft for years at a time.
…
We’re moving towards an increasingly electronic society where our movements are going to be tracked.
If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.
But, with hundreds of thousands of laws on the books and definitions for terrorist activity expanding to everything from minting your own silver coin to bringing a toy bubble gun to school, just about everyone is a terrorist or criminal in America today.
Now, consider this technology in the context of extra-judicial drone strikes initiated by artificial intelligence assessment parameters that automatically determine if you are a threat or not, and you can see how dangerous drones armed with these imaging systems will become.
How long before these military grade assault weapons of mass destruction are used on American citizens right here at home?
Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 10,390 people
Date: February 13th, 2013
Website: www.SHTFplan.com
Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.
Should An Armed Drone Be Dispatched to Kill Christopher Dorner?
Christopher Jordan Dorner has declared 'war' against former LAPD colleagues and their families in a manifesto posted online. (Photograph: Reuters)A major manhunt has been underway in the Los Angeles area for Chris Dorner, the former LAPD officer, Navy reservist, and trained marksman who is the prime suspect in the murder of three people, including the daughter of an LAPD captain (who previously represented him in a disciplinary proceeding) and her fiance. A lengthy Facebook message attributed to Dorner vows that he will continue to kill not only members of the LAPD but also their children and spouses until he receives a public apology for what he believes was his unfair firing:
"This will be a war of attrition . . . . I will utilize OSINT to discover your residences, spouses workplaces, and children's schools. IMINT to coordinate and plan attacks on your fixed locations. . . . HUMINT will be utilized to collect personal schedules of targets. I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own, I'm terminating yours. . . . I know your significant others routine, your children's best friends and recess. I know Your Sancha's gym hours and routine. I assure you that the casualty rate will be high."
Surveillance drones are now being used to try to locate him. LAPD are so apprehensive that they have already mistakenly shot at innocent people when they saw vehicles resembling the one they thought belonged to Dorner. Authorities suspect he's hiding in "the icy wilderness" of Big Bear east of Los Angeles which, reported AP, is "filled with thick forests and jagged peaks, that creates peril as much for Dorner as the officers hunting him."
Here's my question: if the surveillance drones detect his location, should the lives of law enforcement agents be risked, along with other civilians, in an attempt to apprehend this highly-trained warrior? Why shouldn't an armed drone instead be immediately dispatched once his location is ascertained and simply kill him?
For those of you who believe it's possible to know someone's guilt without a trial, there is very little doubt about his guilt. Nobody has contested the authenticity of the confession posted in his name, nor the threats of further killing. He admitted and justified the killings on his Facebook entry.
For those of you who believe there is a clear definition of "terrorism", Dorner meets it easily. LAPD chief Charlie Beck today said that Dorner was engaging in "domestic terrorism". That's because he has not only threatened to kill random LAPD officers but also their children and family members in order to terrorize the department into publicly apologizing to him. He vowed to wage what he called "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" in pursuit of his goal. As intended, the entire community is in terror. If that's not "domestic terrorism" under the conventional defintion, then nothing is.
Now obviously, if attempts are made to apprehend Dorner and he uses lethal force to resist, then shooting or killing him would be justified, uncontroversially so. The FBI just killed a kidnapper in Alabama when he began shooting at the agents who tried to arrest him, and nobody objected. Law enforcement agents always have the right to defend themselves against people they're trying to arrest if lethal force is used to resist. That's an easy case, and not what I'm asking.
Instead, suppose the LAPD locates Dorner in a cabin in a remote area of the California wilderness, just sitting alone watching television. Why should they possibly risk the lives of police officers to apprehend him? Why would anyone care if this terrorist's rights are protected? What's the argument for not simply killing him the moment he's located? Given that everyone seems certain of his guilt, that he's threatened further killings of innocents, that he declared himself at "war", and that the risk from capturing him would be high, what danger is created by simply shooting a Hellfire missile wherever he's found?
Or suppose that, as feared, he makes his way into Mexico. What's the objection to sending an armed drone to killing him there?
The impetus for my asking is obviously the widespread support for killing US citizen Anwar Awlaki without a trial or charges based on suspicions of guilt: it's far from clear that apprehending Awlaki would have been infeasible, and Dorner poses at least as much risk to Americans as Awlaki did, almost certainly more so. But leave that aside: independent of comparisons to any other case, including Awlaki, what would be wrong or dangerous, if anything, about simply droning this domestic Terrorist to death even in the absence of lethal resistance? What would be the harm from doing that? What are the reasons not to, if any?
Question posed on CNN
As Cenk Uygur notes in the video clip below, this question - why not send an armed drone to kill Dorner? - was posed with obvious sincerity by CNN's Erin Burnett late last week. Given how trained the citizenry has become to think this way, this sort of approach is inevitable and therefore deserves serious discussion:
UPDATE
This doesn't pertain to any of the substantive points raised here, but while some media reports (including the one linked above) have stated that surveillance drones are being used in the hunt for Dorner, other accounts call that claim into question.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited
US plans drones for ‘new Asia threat’
The US military plans development of newer drones and other aircraft intended to deal with its ‘changing security threats’ and greater focus on Asia as its troop drawdown from Afghanistan gets underway.
Pentagon’s new focus on Asia would demand “a new mix of drones and other aircraft” since nations in the region are better capable of detecting and shooting down American assassination and spying drones, AP reports Tuesday citing senior US military commanders. The plan, however, will not affect CIA’s terror drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.
Commander of US Air Combat Command Gen. Mike Hostage underlined in an interview that the new focus of the American military on the Asia-Pacific region will require a different mix of aircraft, raising fears that unlike Afghanistan and Pakistan, where US assassination drones operated without worry of being shot down, some nations in the pacific are well capable of challenging US war planes, whether manned or unmanned.
Although the US commander did not elaborate about any specific or potential threat, a number of America’s spy drones, including the most sophisticated RQ-170 model, have been captured by Iran in past months while violating the country’s air-space.
Gen. Hostage further expressed concerns about the US military’s ability to continue maintaining the current number of American drones conducting surveillance and terror missions overseas, saying that senior Pentagon officials are analyzing, and for the first time considering slashing, “the massive buildup of drones” over the past years in a bid to save money and adapt to changing security threats.
The report further cites US Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence Lt. Gen. Larry James as saying that a key part the decision to scale back the drone production will involve reconsiderations on what types of drones and other aircraft will the Pentagon need as it switches focus on the Pacific.
According to the report, the growing US concentration on Asia-Pacific reflects an intensifying “strategic concern” over China's emergence as a major military power, amid persisting disputes over Taiwan and contested islands in the south and east China seas.
This is while Pentagon’s overall spending on drones has surged from USD284 million in the year 2000 to nearly USD4 billion in the past fiscal year, while the number of drones owned by the Pentagon has soared “from less than 200 in 2002 to at least 7,500 now,” the report adds.
The CIA, however, maintains its own fleet of assassination and spying drones, which it uses to conduct what it claims as “counterterror missions,” and any decision by the US military to halt the drone buildup would likely have no impact on the spy agency’s drone operations.
There has been a major surge in US assassination drone strikes in Muslim countries in Asia and North Africa since Barack Obama assumed US presidency in 2009. The attacks have reportedly caused thousands of civilian casualties, prompting popular outrage in targeted nations.
MFB/MFB
Police State USA. Glimmer of Hope: Citizens Force Seattle To Scrap Police Drones
It’s one of those stories that you had to listen twice when you heard the report on the radio, and then, still in a state of suspended disbelief, I rushed to the internet to check and see if indeed it was the case. With the good news, I could just about hear a faint pulse of the American heart beating again.
It’s safe to assume that after this week’s developments, corporate lobbyists, politicians, bureaucrats at the DHS, county sheriffs, city police – and maybe The President perhaps… should at least know by now – that Americans do not want drones flying over their cities and towns. A wave of resistance is currently building…
In Seattle, where residents laid seige to the Seattle Police Department’s plans to use surveillance drones, it appears that following Wednesday night’s Public Safety, Civil Rights and Technology Committee hearing - the program has been scrapped.
Washington residents take away expensive new police toys.
This news comes on the back of a week of controversy surrounding Obama’s CIA Director nominee, John O. Brennan, seen by many as a pioneer of sorts in the field of US military secret drone assassinations. This has presented an ethical dilemma for President Obama, who ascended to power on a liberal PR wave which is fundamentally at odds with this level of anti-constitutional and illegal policy.
Obama himself signed the bill in early 2012 that enabled some 30,000 drones in the domestic US, to be operated by the Department of Homeland Security and local police departments, Seattle being one such city scheduled for adoption of a junior ‘Skynet’ beta program.
Make no mistake about it – there is an Washington DC-based agenda to roll out drones all over the country. Seattle’s Police Department had obtained these two small drones through a federal grant.
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn explained:
“Today I spoke with Seattle Police Chief John Diaz and we agreed that it was time to end the unmanned aerial vehicle program so that SPD can focus its resources on public safety and the community building work that is the department’s priority. (They) will be returned to the vendor.”
Public protesters gathered in for the October public meeting on the city’s new drone program, which prompted police to quickly retreat on the issue:
“The testimony opposing drones has been overwhelmingly clear that the 11 people who testified this afternoon, all of whom testified against the use of drones, was symbolic of the general reaction we are getting,” said Chairman Bruce Harrell.
Compared to other direct actions, this was a relatively modest effort, which should encourage other citizen groups keeping the encroaching police state at bay – for now at least. Mia Jacobson who represents the citizen group StandUP explains, “If 11 voices can protect the people from flying government robots watching their every move – what can 20 voices do? What can your voice accomplish?”.
In addition to Seattle, the city of Charlottesville, Va., also rejected drones by ordering a two-year moratorium on their use thanks to The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group.
According to FOX news: the U.S. Department of Homeland Security drones do enter Washington State airspace occasionally, patrolling the Canadian border east of the Cascade mountains. The two 10,000-pound Predator-B unmanned aircraft are based in North Dakota.
Back on Pennsylvania Ave, Sen. Diane Feinstein who was chairing Obama’s CIA directorate confirmation hearings for drone-master John Brennan, came under some similar pressure from crowds of protesters, some of whom were ‘Code Pink’ anti-war demonstrators who were able to ‘gatecrash’ the DC venue. Brennan defended US state-sponsored murders by unmanned drones abroad by claiming that drone strikes are used only against targets ‘planning to carry out attacks against the United States’, completely missing out on the extrajudicial nature of the killings (including an estimated 100 children) which is actually causing the whole controversy. Back to square one…
Debating a Court to Vet Drone Strikes
(Photo: drsmith7383; Edited: JR / TO)Washington - Since 1978, a secret court in Washington has approved national security eavesdropping on American soil — operations that for decades had been conducted based on presidential authority alone.
Now, in response to broad dissatisfaction with the hidden bureaucracy directing lethal drone strikes, there is an interest in applying the model of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court — created by Congress so that surveillance had to be justified to a federal judge — to the targeted killing of suspected terrorists, or at least of American suspects.
“We’ve gone from people scoffing at this to it becoming a fit subject for polite conversation,” said Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas. He said court approval for adding names to a counterterrorism kill list — at least for American citizens abroad — “is no longer beyond the realm of political possibility.”
A drone court would face constitutional, political and practical obstacles, and might well prove unworkable, according to several legal scholars and terrorism experts. But with the war in Afghanistan winding down, Al Qaeda fragmenting into hard-to-read offshoots and the 2001 terrorist attacks receding into the past, they said, it is time to consider how to forge a new, trustworthy and transparent system to govern lethal counterterrorism operations.
“People in Washington need to wake up and realize the legal foundations are crumbling by the day,” Mr. Chesney said. That realization seemed evident at Thursday’s confirmation hearing for John O. Brennan as C.I.A. director, which became a raucous forum for complaints about the expansion of counterterrorist strikes and the procedures for deciding who should die.
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, was one of those who complained that he could not get the administration to even list the countries where lethal strikes had been carried out. Among Republicans, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said he thought that killing had become a dubious substitute for capture. A program that began in the shadows was dragged for the first time into the spotlight of Congressional debate.
Today, with Al Qaeda’s core in Pakistan hugely diminished and Osama bin Laden dead, the terrorist threat is far more diffuse than it was a decade ago. Most drone-fired missiles now kill not high-level terrorists plotting to attack the United States, but a mixed bag of midlevel militants and foot soldiers whose focus is often more on the Pakistani or Yemeni authorities than on the United States. And since a September 2011 drone strike deliberately killed an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who had joined Al Qaeda in Yemen, the legal and moral rationale for such strikes has been hotly debated.
Even if they are glad Mr. Awlaki is dead, many Americans are uneasy that a president can use secret evidence to label a citizen a terrorist and order his execution without a trial or judge’s ruling. Hence the idea of court oversight for targeted killing, which on Thursday, unexpectedly, got serious discussion from senators and Mr. Brennan.
First, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she would review proposals for establishing such a court. Her remark got a strong second from Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent.
“Having the executive being the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the executioner all in one is very contrary to the traditions and the laws of this country,” he said.
Mr. Brennan then made a striking disclosure: The Obama administration had held internal talks on the feasibility of such a court. “I think it’s certainly worthy of discussion,” Mr. Brennan said. “What’s that appropriate balance between the executive, legislative and judicial branch responsibilities in this area?”
An administration official who spoke of the White House deliberations on the condition of anonymity said President Obama had asked his security and legal advisers a year ago “to see how you could have an independent review” of planned strikes. “That includes possible judicial review.”
“People on the national security staff and the legal side took a hard look at it, and the discussions are still going on,” the official said. “There are a lot of complexities. You’d need legislation and probably a new judicial body.”
The FISA court was created by Congress in 1978 after revelations of widespread eavesdropping on Americans by the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation convinced Congress that the executive branch had proved incapable of properly policing itself.
Eleven judges from around the country sit on the court, but one is on duty at a time, hearing cases in a special high-security courtroom added to Washington’s federal courthouse in 2009. In 2011, according to the most recent statistics, the court approved 1,745 orders for electronic surveillance or physical searches, rejecting none outright but altering 30.
A drone court would have the same appeal, bringing in an independent arbiter. But it is likely there would be serious limitations to its jurisdiction. Most experts say judges do not have the alacrity or expertise to rule on a frantic call from the C.I.A. every time a terrorism suspect is in its sights. A better approach would be to have the court rule on whether the government had enough evidence against a suspect to place him on the kill list.
But if the court’s jurisdiction extended to every foreign terrorism suspect, even some proponents believe, it might infringe on the president’s constitutional role as commander in chief. Senator King, for instance, said he thought the court would pass constitutional muster only if it were limited to cases involving American citizens.
With such limits, however, a drone court would not address many of the most pressing concerns, including decisions on which foreign militants should be targeted; how to avoid civilian deaths; and how to provide more public information about strike rules and procedures.
“In terms of the politics and the optics, aren’t you in the same position that you are now?” said William C. Banks, a national security law expert at Syracuse University. “It’s still secret. The target wouldn’t be represented. It’s a mechanism that wouldn’t satisfy critics or advance the due process cause much.”
Indeed, Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project, said that a drone court would be a step backward, and that extradition and criminal prosecution of suspected terrorists was a better answer. “I strongly agree that judicial review is crucial,” she said. “But judicial review in a new secret court is both unnecessary and un-American.”
Nor are judges clamoring to take up the challenge. At an American Bar Association meeting in November, a retired FISA judge, James Robertson, rejected the idea that judges should approve “death warrants.”
“My answer is, that’s not the business of judges,” Mr. Robertson said, “to decide without an adversary party to sign a death warrant for somebody.”
Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.
In a Major Privacy Victory, Seattle Mayor Orders Police to Dismantle Its Drone Program...
In an amazing victory for privacy advocates and drone activists, yesterday, Seattle’s mayor ordered the city's police agency to cease trying use surveillance drones and dismantle its drone program. The police will return the two drones they previously purchased with a Department of Homeland Security grant to the manufacturer.
A victory for privacy advocates, the Mayor of Seattle has ordered police to dismantle a domestic drone program (Photo: Casey McNerthney/seattlepi.com) EFF has been warning of the privacy dangers surveillance drones pose to US citizens for more than a year now. In May of last year, we urged concerned citizens to take their complaints to their local governments, given Congress has been slow to act on any privacy legislation. The events of Seattle proves this strategy can work and should serve as a blueprint for local activism across the country.
Back in early 2012, the Seattle city council was told that the Seattle police agency had obtained an authorization to fly drones from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). But they did not find out from the police; they found out from a reporter who called after the council after he saw Seattle’s name on the list obtained by EFF as part of our lawsuit against the FAA.
City council was understandably not happy, and the police agency was forced to appear before the council and apologize. It then vowed to work with the ACLU of Washington and the FAA to develop guidelines to make sure drones wouldn’t violate Seattle citizens’ privacy. But as long as the guidelines weren’t passed in a binding city ordinance, there’d be no way to enforce them.
After a townhall meeting held by police, in which citizens showed up in droves and angrily denounced the city’s plans, some reporters insinuated that city counsel members’ jobs could be on the line if they did not pass strict drone legislation protecting its citizens privacy.
Documents obtained by MuckRock and EFF in October as part of our 2012 drone census showed that the Seattle police were trying to buy two more drones despite the controversy. But that ended yesterday as the Mayor put a stop to the program completely.
Critics of the privacy protests said the participants were exaggerating the capabilities of the Seattle drones, given they would only fly for less than an hour at a time and are much smaller than the Predator drones the military flies overseas and Department of Homeland Security flies at home.
But while Seattle’s potential drones may not have been able to stay in the air for long, similar drones have already been developed and advertised by drone manufacturers with the capability to stay in the air for hours or days at a time. In fact, Lockheed Martin has been bragging about a drone that weights 13.2 pounds (well within the FAA’s weight limits) that can be recharged by a laser on the ground and stay in the air indefinitely.
Since the Seattle protests have heated up, similar complaints have been heard at local city counsels and state legislatures across the country. At least thirteen states are now considering legislation to restrict drone use to protect privacy, and there are also members of Congress on both sides of the aisle pushing the same thing.
Here in the Bay Area, we’ve experienced a similar situation. The Alameda County Sheriff's Office tried to sneak through drone funding without a public hearing and told the county board of supervisors it only wanted to use the drone for emergency purposes. Yet in internal documents obtained by EFF and MuckRock as part of our 2012 drone census, the Sheriff’s Office said it wanted to use the drone for “suspicious persons” and “large crowd control disturbances.”
When EFF and ACLU held a press conference pointing out this discrepancy, the county backtracked and is now attempting to write privacy guidelines that could potentially be turned into binding law. We will keep you updated on further developments.
But regardless, it’s important that privacy advocates take the lesson from Seattle and apply it all over the country. This is an important privacy victory, and like we said back in May, local governments will listen to our concerns, so let’s make our voice heard.
Wrong on Drone Hits
Wrong on Drone Hits
Posted on Feb 7, 2013
The White House/Pete Souza |
WASHINGTON—If George W. Bush had told us that the “war on terror” gave him the right to execute an American citizen overseas with a missile fired from a drone aircraft, without due process or judicial review, I’d have gone ballistic. It makes no difference that the president making this chilling claim is Barack Obama. What’s wrong is wrong.
The moral and ethical questions posed by the advent of drone warfare—which amounts to assassination by remote control—are painfully complex. We had better start working out some answers because, as an administration spokesman told me recently, drone attacks are “the new normal” in the ongoing struggle against terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.
But one of the few bright lines we can and should recognize is that in the exceedingly rare instances when a U.S. citizen may be targeted, our government bears a special burden.
The Obama administration acknowledged as much in a secret Justice Department “white paper” obtained this week by NBC News. The document laid out a legal argument that the president, without oversight, may order a “lethal operation” against a citizen who is known to be a “senior operational leader” of al-Qaeda or an affiliated group.
This is not an academic question. In 2011, a CIA drone attack in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric who had become a leading figure in the terrorist franchise known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Two weeks later, another drone attack killed Awlaki’s 16-year-old son.
Awlaki was believed to have been directly involved in the near-miss “Underwear Bomber” plot to down a civilian airliner on Christmas Day 2009, as well as the planting of two bombs—fortunately, discovered before they could explode—on Chicago-bound cargo planes in 2010. Perpetrators of several other attacks cited Awlaki’s fiery sermons and, in some cases, his personal messages as their inspiration.I shed no tears for him. But as the Justice Department document admits, U.S. citizens have constitutional rights. I am deeply troubled by the notion that the president can unilaterally decide those rights no longer apply.
The white paper specifies the conditions that must be met before a citizen is targeted for obliteration. Among them is that he or she must be planning an “imminent” terrorist attack. The document then argues for a remarkably elastic definition of imminence—which, you may be surprised to learn, apparently does not mean “in the immediate future.”
That part is shaky, but I accept that Awlaki was a legitimate target. What I don’t accept is that the president or a “high-level official” gets to make the call about without judicial oversight. When the government wants to violate a citizen’s right to privacy with wiretaps and other forms of electronic surveillance, a judge from a special panel—the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court—has to give approval. Surely there should be at least as much judicial review when the government wants to violate a citizen’s right not to be blown to smithereens.
This oversight would occur when the decision was made to place a citizen on the “kill list” of targets—meaning there could be no “hot pursuit” scenario in which a drone had a target in its sights but the aircraft’s controllers had to get a judge’s approval before firing. Keep in mind that the question of targeting a citizen would come up only rarely. Also keep in mind that the “drone court,” like the surveillance court, would surely grant almost every government request.
The practical impact of providing for judicial review in targeting citizens would be practically nil. But doing so would help us establish a conceptual and legal framework for this new, unsettling form of warfare.
The one thing we know is this: There will be drones.
No president could become aware that specific enemies are planning attacks against the United States and not take action. This would be an unconscionable dereliction of duty. If the plot is being developed in a place like Yemen or Somalia, what are the options? Order a Special Forces commando raid, risking American lives? Mount a full-scale invasion? Or send up a flying robot, armed with a missile, and foil the plot by eliminating the plotters?
As drones become more sophisticated, the range of missions for which they are used will grow. And as the United States demonstrates the military potential of drones, other nations will build their own robot fleets. We need to realize that the future is now.
Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.
© 2013, Washington Post Writers Group
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Brennan and Kiriakou, Drones and Torture
John Brennan and John Kiriakou worked together years ago, but their careers have dramatically diverged. Brennan is now on track to head the CIA, while Kiriakou is headed off to prison. Each of their fates is tied to the so-called war on terror, which under President George W. Bush provoked worldwide condemnation. President Barack Obama rebranded the war on terror innocuously as “overseas contingency operations,” but, rather than retrench from the odious practices of his predecessor, Obama instead escalated. His promotion of Brennan, and his prosecution of Kiriakou, demonstrate how the recent excesses of U.S. presidential power are not transient aberrations, but the creation of a frightening new normal, where drone strikes, warrantless surveillance, assassination and indefinite detention are conducted with arrogance and impunity, shielded by secrecy and beyond the reach of law.AP/Jacquelyn Martin
John Kiriakou spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and a case officer. In 2002, he led the team that found Abu Zubaydah, alleged to be a high-ranking member of al-Qaida. Kiriakou was the first to publicly confirm the use of waterboarding by the CIA, in a 2007 interview with ABC’s Brian Ross. He told Ross: “At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. ... I think I’ve changed my mind, and I think that waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn’t be in the business of doing.” Kiriakou says he found the “enhanced interrogation techniques” immoral, and declined to be trained to use them.
Since the interview, it has become known that Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times, and that he provided no useful information as a result. He remains imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, without charge. Kiriakou will soon start serving his 30-month prison sentence, but not for disclosing anything about waterboarding. He pled guilty to disclosing the name of a former CIA interrogator to a journalist, with information that the interrogator himself had posted to a publicly available website.
Meanwhile, John Brennan, longtime counterterrorism advisor to Obama, is expected to receive Senate confirmation as the new director of central intelligence. I recently asked Kiriakou what he thought of Brennan:
“I’ve known John Brennan since 1990. I worked directly for John Brennan twice. I think that he is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. I think that it’s time for the CIA to move beyond the ugliness of the post-September 11th regime, and we need someone who is going to respect the Constitution and to not be bogged down by a legacy of torture. I think that President Obama’s appointment of John Brennan sends the wrong message to all Americans.”
Obama has once already considered Brennan for the top CIA job, back in 2008. Brennan withdrew his nomination then under a hail of criticism for supporting the Bush-era torture policies in his various top-level intelligence positions, including head of the National Counterterrorism Center.
What a difference four years makes. With the killing of Osama bin Laden notched in his belt, Obama seems immune from counterterror criticism. John Brennan is said to manage the notorious “kill list” of people that Obama believes he has the right to kill anytime, anywhere on the planet, as part of his “overseas contingency operations.” This includes the killing of U.S. citizens, without any charge, trial or due process whatsoever. Drone strikes are one way these assassinations are carried out. U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen by a drone strike, then, two weeks later, his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed the same way.
I asked Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, what he thought of Brennan. He told me: “What’s happening with drone strikes around the world right now is, in my opinion, as bad a development as many of the things we now condemn so readily, with 20/20 hindsight, in the George W. Bush administration. We are creating more enemies than we’re killing. We are doing things that violate international law. We are even killing American citizens without due process and have an attorney general who has said that due process does not necessarily include the legal process. Those are really scary words.”
While Kiriakou goes to prison for revealing a name, the U.K.-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism is launching a project called “Naming the Dead,” hoping “to identify as many as possible of those killed in U.S. covert drone strikes in Pakistan, whether civilian or militant.” The BIJ reports a “minimum 2,629 people who appear to have so far died in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan.” John Brennan should be asked about each of them.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
© 2012 TruthDig
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 1,100 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.
Iran exhibits evidence of US drone decoding
A grab taken from the Iranian state-run Press TV on December 8, 2011 shows what Iranian officials claim is the US RQ-170 Sentinel high-altitude reconnaissance drone that crashed in Iran on December 4, 2011.(AFP Photo / Press TV)
Iran for the first time showcased supposed evidence it has managed to access some of the data stored on a US ‘Sentinel’ drone it captured back in December 2011. The claims are based on aerial footage aired by an Iranian TV channel.
Earlier in April, the country’s military officials announced that Iranian experts have decoded the drone's intelligence gathering system and hard discs, but provided little proof of the breakthrough.
But the newly released video details the first examples of the unmanned air vehicle’s activities, including flying around the Kandahar airfield (KAF) in Afghanistan, a building under surveillance and a Reaper drone parked at the KAF.
Interestingly, the drone’s erase sequence never kicked in when it lost control, making data recovery possible.
But how the so-called ‘Beast of Kandahar’ ended up crash-landing in Iran is still a mystery. The US claimed it was only patrolling the Afghan-Iranian border when it lost control. But that does not explain how the drone was discovered 225 kilometers inside Iranian airspace.
On 9 December 2011, Iran filed a formal complaint to the United Nations Security Council over the violation of its airspace. However, only three days later the US asked for its drone back, much to the dismay of Tehran, who replied saying "it seems he [Obama] has forgotten that Iran’s airspace was violated, spying operations were undertaken, international laws were violated and that Iran’s internal affairs were interfered with. … Instead of an official apology and admitting to this violation, they are making this request."
But this did not mark the last time a drone confrontation would take place between the two nations. Less than a year later, in November 2012, Iran for the first time took down a ‘Predator’ drone over the Persian Gulf, with the US claiming it was flying over international waters at the time.
Brennan and Kiriakou, Drones and Torture
Brennan and Kiriakou, Drones and Torture
Posted on Feb 6, 2013
By Amy Goodman
John Brennan and John Kiriakou worked together years ago, but their careers have dramatically diverged. Brennan is now on track to head the CIA, while Kiriakou is headed off to prison. Each of their fates is tied to the so-called war on terror, which under President George W. Bush provoked worldwide condemnation. President Barack Obama rebranded the war on terror innocuously as “overseas contingency operations,” but, rather than retrench from the odious practices of his predecessor, Obama instead escalated. His promotion of Brennan, and his prosecution of Kiriakou, demonstrate how the recent excesses of U.S. presidential power are not transient aberrations, but the creation of a frightening new normal, where drone strikes, warrantless surveillance, assassination and indefinite detention are conducted with arrogance and impunity, shielded by secrecy and beyond the reach of law.
John Kiriakou spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and a case officer. In 2002, he led the team that found Abu Zubaydah, alleged to be a high-ranking member of al-Qaida. Kiriakou was the first to publicly confirm the use of waterboarding by the CIA, in a 2007 interview with ABC’s Brian Ross. He told Ross: “At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. ... I think I’ve changed my mind, and I think that waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn’t be in the business of doing.” Kiriakou says he found the “enhanced interrogation techniques” immoral, and declined to be trained to use them.
Since the interview, it has become known that Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times, and that he provided no useful information as a result. He remains imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, without charge. Kiriakou will soon start serving his 30-month prison sentence, but not for disclosing anything about waterboarding. He pled guilty to disclosing the name of a former CIA interrogator to a journalist, with information that the interrogator himself had posted to a publicly available website.
Meanwhile, John Brennan, longtime counterterrorism advisor to Obama, is expected to receive Senate confirmation as the new director of central intelligence. I recently asked Kiriakou what he thought of Brennan:
“I’ve known John Brennan since 1990. I worked directly for John Brennan twice. I think that he is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. I think that it’s time for the CIA to move beyond the ugliness of the post-September 11th regime, and we need someone who is going to respect the Constitution and to not be bogged down by a legacy of torture. I think that President Obama’s appointment of John Brennan sends the wrong message to all Americans.”
Obama has once already considered Brennan for the top CIA job, back in 2008. Brennan withdrew his nomination then under a hail of criticism for supporting the Bush-era torture policies in his various top-level intelligence positions, including head of the National Counterterrorism Center.
What a difference four years makes. With the killing of Osama bin Laden notched in his belt, Obama seems immune from counterterror criticism. John Brennan is said to manage the notorious “kill list” of people that Obama believes he has the right to kill anytime, anywhere on the planet, as part of his “overseas contingency operations.” This includes the killing of U.S. citizens, without any charge, trial or due process whatsoever. Drone strikes are one way these assassinations are carried out. U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen by a drone strike, then, two weeks later, his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed the same way.
I asked Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, what he thought of Brennan. He told me: “What’s happening with drone strikes around the world right now is, in my opinion, as bad a development as many of the things we now condemn so readily, with 20/20 hindsight, in the George W. Bush administration. We are creating more enemies than we’re killing. We are doing things that violate international law. We are even killing American citizens without due process and have an attorney general who has said that due process does not necessarily include the legal process. Those are really scary words.”
While Kiriakou goes to prison for revealing a name, the U.K.-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism is launching a project called “Naming the Dead,” hoping “to identify as many as possible of those killed in U.S. covert drone strikes in Pakistan, whether civilian or militant.” The BIJ reports a “minimum 2,629 people who appear to have so far died in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan.” John Brennan should be asked about each of them.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,000 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2013 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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Naming the Dead: New Investigation into Victims of US Drone Strikes
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is launching an ambitious new investigation, which will seek to identify as many as possible of those killed in US covert drone strikes in Pakistan, whether civilian or militant.
The Bureau is raising some of the money for this project through a crowd-funding appeal.
As part of our ongoing monitoring and reporting of CIA and Pentagon drone strikes, the Bureau has already recorded the names of hundreds of people killed in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
At the end of January 2013, the Bureau was able to identify by name 213 people killed by drones in Pakistan who were reported to be middle- or senior-ranking militants.
A further 331 civilians have also now been named, 87 of them children.
But this is a small proportion of the minimum 2,629 people who appear to have so far died in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. The Bureau’s work suggests 475 of them were likely to have been civilians.
‘At the moment we know the names of fewer than 20% of those killed in Pakistan’s tribal areas. At least 2,000 deaths still remain publicly anonymous,’ said Chris Woods, who leads the Bureau’s covert drone war team.
‘Our aim will be to identify by name many hundreds more of those killed. A significant number of those identities will be known by local communities, by US and Pakistani officials, and by militant groups. We hope to convince them to share that information.’
Related story – Analysis: Why we must name all drone attack victims
A February 15 2009 drone strike killed at least 26. Few have so far been named. (Getty Images)
The project has already secured substantial funding from a UK foundation – but it still needs more funds.
Today the US-based Freedom of the Press Foundation, a crowd-funding organisation aimed at raising money for public interest journalism, announced it is backing the Bureau’s Naming the Dead project. The Bureau’s new investigation will be one of four recipients of Freedom of the Press Foundation’s latest campaign.
Crowd-funding is an established way of supporting journalism in the US and it is increasingly being used in the UK as a way of funding projects, which established organisations ignore or will not fund.
Using the reach of the web, many people (the crowd) are able to give small amounts of money to back a cause or project in which they believe.
‘In the face of official secrecy, having the full facts about who is killed is essential for an informed debate about the effectiveness and ethics of the drone campaign,’ said Christopher Hird, managing editor of the Bureau. ‘And it is exciting to be able to give all of our supporters worldwide the chance to be part of our first venture in this democratic form of funding.’
A challenging task
Government officials, media organisations and even militant groups are often quick to identify senior militants such as Yahya al-Libi and Ilyas Kashmiri when they are killed.
Yet little is said of the hundreds more alleged militants and civilians among at least 2,629 deaths in Pakistan drone strikes.
Both the US and Pakistani governments are likely to keep detailed records. A recent case at the Peshawar High Court heard that officials in the tribal agencies had prepared a confidential report which ‘included details of each and every drone attack and the number, names and ages of the people killed’.
Anonymous US intelligence officials have also revealed details of CIA video surveillance on particular strikes. And the ‘Terror Tuesday’ process – in which hundreds of named alleged militants have been selected by US agencies for targeted killing – has been widely reported.
Photographs and other documents also occasionally surface. When a civilian family was killed in the first drone strike of Barack Obama’s presidency, local officials issued formal paperwork (see right) that was later obtained by the campaign group Center for Civilians in Conflict.
ID cards, family photographs and eyewitness testimony of attacks can all provide useful corroborating evidence. The graves of militants killed in drone strikes can also name them as ‘martyrs’ and give details of the strikes in which they died.
Drawing on information from a wide array of sources, the Bureau’s team will seek to build a detailed understanding of those killed.
Focus on Pakistan
While the Bureau will seek to extend the project to Yemen and Somalia in the near future, the initial focus will be on the nation where most US covert drone strikes have taken place.
Researchers based in Pakistan and the UK will seek to build up biographical information for all of those killed, whether civilian or militant – their name, age, gender, tribe, and village, for example. Where possible, photographs, witness statements and official documentation will also be published.
The team will seek assistance from the Pakistan and US governments in identifying those killed. And researchers will also call on Taliban factions and other militant groups to release information on the many hundreds of fighters killed in more than 360 US drone strikes since 2004.
Spy Agencies Plan ‘Black Box’ Style Web Surveillance
Drones: The Ultimate Stalkers
A hexacopter flown by Daniel Garate, an aerial photographer, during his demonstration at his home in Woodland Hills, Calif., Feb. 3, 2012. (Photo: J. Emilio Flores / The New York Times)Imagine you’re being stalked from the sky. Every time you go in or out of any building, it’s recorded. Everybody you talk with. Everyplace you drive or take public transportation. Your sky-stalker can see through your windows, read your lips, and, using infrared cameras, can even see if you’ve lit a cigarette – of any type.
Shouldn’t this be illegal?
When Larisa Oleynik, star of “The Secret World of Alex Mack,” found she had a stalker, she got a restraining order. But if her stalker had been the police, and they were doing it with a drone, right now there are virtually no laws or regulations that would protect her. Or you.
Being concerned about such things is genuinely all-American.
You could say that our privacy concerns started with George Orwell (who, ironically, was British) and the publication of his book “1984,” but in reality the modern-day American concern about government snooping into our lives goes back before the American Revolution.
Thomas Jefferson, back before George Washington was president but after the Revolutionary War, was living in Paris and communicated in code with his protégé, James Madison, about their Federalist political enemies.
Jefferson did it again when he became President in 1801, developing an even more elaborate code to communicate with his most trusted aide, Meriwether Lewis. Their concern was which military officers, mostly leftovers from the John Adams administration, might be reading their mail or interrogating White House servants because those officers were thinking of pulling a military coup to overthrow the Jefferson administration.
The result was that Jefferson, on Lewis’s suggestion, fired two-thirds of all the commissioned officers and cut the size of the Army by over 80 percent.
Fast forward to today. Police helicopters, police trucks that can use infrared to see inside your house, and GPS units cops can attach to you car. In every case there’s a legitimate police use for these technologies, as well as an incredible potential for abuse.
The Fourth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights that Jefferson demanded Madison put into the Constitution as the price of getting Virginia’s ratification, is one sentence long. It says:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
In other words, they can’t spy on you – on you, personally – unless they have enough proof to bring before a judge that you’re up to something that’s probably illegal.
In the case of the police helicopters, trucks, GPS units, and phone taps, to some extent both state governments, Congress, and the Supreme Court have brought their use into at least a marginal compliance with the Fourth Amendment.
Not so with drones. At least yet.
And that’s why the City of Charlottesville, Virginia – a stone’s throw from Thomas Jefferson’s home – did a beautiful thing this week in passing a resolution calling for a ban, for the moment, on drones in their skies.
The Rutherford Institute proposed the first draft of what ultimately became the resolution that was promoted by the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice. It included language that said:
“WHEREAS, the federal government and the Commonwealth of Virginia have thus far failed to provide reasonable legal restrictions on the use of drones within the United States; and
“WHEREAS, police departments throughout the country have begun implementing drone technology absent any guidance or guidelines from law makers…” there should be at two-year moratorium on using information obtained from them, or on weaponizing them.
As David Swanson notes in his blog on the CCPJ site, “without proper safeguards, these drones, 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.”
And that doesn’t even include the capability of these police drones to be weapon-equipped, from bullets to nerve gas. Or their ability to be hacked, or their data streams to be hijacked by malicious corporations, weird stalkers, or foreign governments.
Nobody is saying there’s no legitimate place for drones in police work in America. They’re a heck of a lot cheaper than the helicopter that famously followed OJ Simpson’s car, for example. At the most basic level, they’re just an extension of already-existing and already-used technology.
And yet, as with any new technology – think email, for example, or text-messages – we need to make sure it’s used in a way that complies with the Fourth Amendment and respects our individual rights to privacy.
And that’s why it’s way beyond time to have a national conversation about drones over US skies. With the help of the CCPJ, Charlottesville has taken a great first step in starting that national dialog. Oregon, for example, has started a similar debate, with legislation introduced by both Democrats and Republicans concerned about individual privacy rights.
Let’s all work for solid legislative restrictions on police use of these drones so that they help legitimate police work while respecting the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of us all.
Drone Warfare
Drone Warfare
Posted on Feb 3, 2013
Mike Keefe, Cagle Cartoons
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Drone Warfare
Drone Warfare
Posted on Feb 3, 2013
Mike Keefe, Cagle Cartoons
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Drone Warfare
Drone Warfare
Posted on Feb 3, 2013
Mike Keefe, Cagle Cartoons
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Barack Obama, Drone Ranger
If you’ve seen the movie Zero Dark Thirty, you know why it has triggered a new debate over our government’s use of torture after 9/11.
The movie’s up for an Oscar as best motion picture. We’ll know later this month if it wins. Some people leave the theater claiming the film endorses and even glorifies the use of torture to obtain information that finally led to finding and killing Osama bin Laden. Not true, say the filmmakers, but others argue the world is better off without bin Laden in it, no matter how we had to get him. What’s more, they say, there hasn’t been a major terrorist attack on American soil since 9/1 — if we have to use an otherwise immoral practice to defend ourselves against such atrocities, we’re okay with it. Or so the argument goes.
The story of bin Laden’s death is just one aspect of the international manhunt the United States has pursued, a worldwide dragnet of detention and death that has raised troubling questions and fervent debate over the fight against terrorism. What about the undermining of civil liberties here at home? The rights of suspects? The secret surveillance of American citizens? The swollen executive powers first claimed by George W. Bush and now by Barack Obama?
Soon after he succeeded Bush, President Obama announced he would not permit torture and would close down the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. He also said:
“The orders that I sign today should send an unmistakable signal that our actions in defense of liberty will be just as our cause. And that we the people will uphold our fundamental values as vigilantly as we protect our security. Once again, America’s moral example must be the bedrock and the beacon of our global leadership”
Four years later, Guantanamo remains open. In fact, just a few days ago, the State Department announced it was eliminating the office assigned to close the prison and move its detainees.
Because of logjams in the process of military justice, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others have yet to come to trial. And there’s continuing controversy about the lack of oversight and transparency surrounding the detention and interrogation of suspects both here and abroad.
Meanwhile, President Obama has stepped up the use of unmanned drones against suspected terrorists abroad, not only in Afghanistan but in countries where we’re not at war, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. As the Brookings Institution’s Peter Singer wrote in The New York Times a year ago, “… A new technology is short-circuiting the decision-making process for what used to be the most important choice a democracy could make. Something that would have previously been viewed as a war is simply not being treated like a war.”
Just last week, as reports came of more deaths by drone — including three attacks in Yemen, with 13 dead — the United Nations announced an investigation into the legality of drones and their deadly toll on the innocent. According to UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson:
“The central objective of the investigation… is to look at the evidence that drone strikes and other forms of remote targeted killing have caused disproportionate civilian casualties in some instances… It’s both right as a matter of principle, and inevitable as a matter of political reality, that the international community should now be focusing attention on the standards applicable to this technological development.”
Since Barack Obama took office, the aerial assaults also have killed three U.S. citizens, raising additional arguments as to whether the president has the right to order the death of Americans suspected of terrorism without due process of law. One of those controversial drone attacks involved the killing of Anwar al-Awalki, an American citizen and radical Muslim cleric who had moved to Yemen with his family. He was said to be the brains behind repeated attempts to attack the U.S., including the Christmas day underwear bomber plot in 2009 that would have blown up a passenger jet over Detroit. Also dead was American citizen Samir Khan, editor of “Inspire,” al Qaeda ‘s online propaganda magazine, and two weeks later, in a separate drone attack, al-Awalki’s 16-year-old son, born in Denver.
A key player in our government’s current drone program is John Brennan, who during the Bush presidency was a senior official at the Central Intelligence Agency and head of the National Counterterrorism Center. Reportedly, Barack Obama considered offering him the top job at the CIA in 2008, but public opposition — in reaction to the charges that the Bush White House had approved torture — caused Brennan to withdraw his name from consideration. Nonetheless, Obama kept him on as an adviser, and now, despite Brennan’s past notoriety, Obama officially has chosen him to head the CIA. This time, there’s been little criticism of the decision.
We hope Brennan’s upcoming confirmation hearings on February 7 will offer Congressional critics the chance to press him on drone attacks and whether the Obama administration in its fight against terror is functioning within the rule of law — or abusing presidential power when there has been no formal declaration of war.
US considering new drone base in Africa – report
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton holds a small US-made drone drone that the Ugandan military uses in Somalia to fight al-Qaida linked militants (AFP Photo / Pool / Jacquelyn Martin)
The US is planning to consolidate its position in Africa with a new drone outpost in Niger, with the stated purpose of providing unarmed surveillance support to French efforts in Mali and keeping tabs on al-Qaeda elements on the continent.
In the future, though, the US command does not rule out using the base to conduct military strikes if the situation deteriorates or the extremist threat increases, military officials told The New York Times.
In the meantime, the US military's Africa Command is reviewing the options for the base with other countries in the region, including Burkina Faso.
The Africa Command’s scheme still needs the go-ahead from the Department of Defense, President Barack Obama and Niger. No final decision had been made, but a status-of-forces agreement has been reached between the two governments in Niger on Monday, providing legal protection to American troops in the African country.
If the drone base plan goes through, the facility could become home to as many as 300 American military and contractual personnel.
The United States so far has only one permanent base in Africa, in Djibouti. The drone base there is widely used for missions in nearby Yemen and allows access to Somalian and Sudanese airspace. A base in Niger would drastically shorten the response time to developing situations in the region.
The ongoing discussions about the installation follow the French military intervention in Mali and the Algerian hostage crisis, which left at least 37 foreigners dead and highlighted the threat from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
On Wednesday, outgoing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised not to let northern Mali become a “safe haven” for extremists in the region as al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents have become a “a very serious, ongoing threat.”
Last week, Washington sent approximately 100 military trainers to nations that are prepared to, or have already deployed, troops to Mali – including Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo and Ghana.
Here Come The Drones, Or The True Reason For The Mali Incursion
Given our recent discussion (here and here) of the rising importance of Africa in the world's power and money echelons, it is not entirely surprising that the NY Times reports that US military command in Africa is actively preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa to increase "unarmed surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups" that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region. It would appear Niger will be the most likely place for the base - from which officials envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones though, of course, they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Perhaps, actually scratch the "perhaps", what is really happening is the US now has a drone base with which to supervise Chinese expansion in Northweast Africa, anda drone fleet to use defensively and offensively as it sees fit.
And so it would appear we can draw a big red circle over northwest Africa in the map above which is where the US will literally have a bird's eye view of all the resources that China is sequestering, and all the infrastructure that the world's most populous nation is setting up.
Next we need a little dose of the perpetual "Al-Qaeda" bogeyman in Central, Eastern, and finally South Africa and the US will have military control over a continent that China is rapidly doing all it cen to colonize from the ground up.
The United States military command in Africa is preparing plans to establish a drone base in northwest Africa to increase unarmed surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.
For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.
If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger, a largely desert nation on the eastern border of Mali, where French and Malian troops are now battling Qaeda-backed fighters who control the northern part of that country...
The immediate impetus for a drone base in the region is to provide surveillance assistance to the French-led operation in Mali. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
A handful of unarmed Predator drones would carry out surveillance missions in the region and fill a desperate need for more detailed information on a range of regional threats, including militants in Mali and the unabated flow of fighters and weapons from Libya. American military commanders and intelligence analysts complain that such information has been sorely lacking.
The United States military has a very limited presence in Africa, with only one permanent base, in Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali. ...
If approved, the base could ultimately have as many as 300 United States military and contractor personnel, but it would probably begin with far fewer people than that, military officials said.
Some Africa specialists expressed concern that setting up a drone base in Niger or in a neighboring country, even if only to fly surveillance missions, could alienate local people who may associate the distinctive aircraft with deadly attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
Officials from Niger did not respond to e-mails over the weekend about the plan, but its president, Mahamadou Issoufou, has expressed a willingness to establish what he called in a recent interview “a long-term strategic relationship with the U.S.”
...
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who heads the Intelligence Committee, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” on Sunday that in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and the turmoil of the Arab Spring, there was “an effort to establish a beachhead for terrorism, a joining together of terrorist organizations.”
...
General Ham said during an interview on his visit to Niger that it had been very difficult for American intelligence agencies to collect consistent, reliable intelligence about what was going on in northern Mali, as well as in other largely ungoverned parts of the sub-Saharan region.
“It’s tough to penetrate,” he said. “It’s tough to get access for platforms that can collect. It’s an extraordinarily tough environment for human intelligence, not just ours but the neighboring countries as well.”
The State Department has been extraordinarily wary of allowing drones to operate in the region, fearful of criticism that the United States is trying to militarize parts of Africa...
American drones regularly conduct surveillance flights over Somalia and occasionally launch airstrikes against people suspected of being members of the Shabab, a militant group linked to Al Qaeda.
...
“Without operating locations on the continent, I.S.R. capabilities would be curtailed, potentially endangering U.S. security,” General Ham said in a statement submitted to the House Armed Services Committee last March. “Given the vast geographic space and diversity in threats, the command requires increased ISR assets to adequately address the security challenges on the continent.”
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Report: US Shops for New Drone Base in Africa
Reporting in the New York Times Monday reveals that the US government is busy in west Africa looking for a country willing to host a military base for a portion its fleet of Predator drones.
US government is looking for a new home in Africa for a base to operate a fleet of Predator drones. (Photo: Air Force) Officials who spoke to the newspaper say that only un-armed surveillance drones would be part of an original plan to establish a base, but "they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes" if they consider it necessary in the future.
According to the Times:
If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger, a largely desert nation on the eastern border of Mali, where French and Malian troops are now battling Qaeda-backed fighters who control the northern part of that country. The American military’s Africa Command is also discussing options for the base with other countries in the region, including Burkina Faso, officials said.
The immediate impetus for a drone base in the region is to provide surveillance assistance to the French-led operation in Mali. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for ISR,” one American military official said on Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Established critics of the US war on terror will not be surprised at the news, as the Pentagon and CIA have been fighting aspects of the so-called 'war on terror' in Africa for much of the last decade. However, establishing a US drone base inside Niger, Burkina Faso or elsewhere will be a clear escalation on the part of AFRICOM.
As Dashiell Bennett writes at The Atlantic, a new US base "almost certainly guarantees a long-term U.S. presence in North Africa." And continues:
It would also send a clear signal that the U.S. now considers North Africa to be a theater in the never-ending, non-declared war on terror (with lowercase letters). Now that Afghanistan and Iraq are officially "over," the focus appears to be moving West, to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, to the ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria, to the scattered militias in Libya, and toward terrorist attackers like those who hit the Algeria gas facility this month. This just continues the pattern of the Sahara region drawing more and more of America's military resources and attention. And history shows that once the Pentagon establishes a presence in an foreign country, it becomes almost impossible to get them to leave.
It also proves that drones will continue to be the preferred first line of defense overseas. The Times also reports that Americans have already signed a "status of forces" agreement with Niger, the likely location of the new base. There are still several steps of approval to go through, but the wheels are in motion, and it won't be long before the drones will be in the sky.
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Finally: The UN Will Investigate Drone Strikes
A mock drone set up to protest government surveillance at a protest representing a variety of causes near the site of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 2, 2012. (Photo: Max Whittaker / The New York Times) Don’t let the forces of regression dominate the media in 2013 - click here to support brave, independent reporting today by making a contribution to Truthout.
It’s about time: the United Nations is set to investigate drone strikes, reports the New York Times. The technologically advanced killing machines have become a staple for developed nations, particularly the United States. However, the lack of oversight and accountability with drone usage has critics wondering whether the robots are successfully combatting the war on terror or merely spreading terror further.
Ben Emmerson, a British lawyer who works for the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, will head a panel for a nine-month investigation. While Emmerson said the findings will pertain to all nations utilizing drone technology, any proclamations the United Nations makes will be most relevant to the United States, the leader in that field by far.
The United Nations’s goal is not to eliminate drones altogether, but find acceptable regulations for drone usage. “This form of warfare is here to stay,” said Emmerson. “It is completely unacceptable to allow the world to drift blindly toward the precipice without any agreement between states as to the circumstances in which drone strike targeted killings are lawful, and on the safeguards necessary to protect civilians.”
The fact that most American citizens know nothing about drone attacks is no accident. Although the White House says that President Barack Obama authorizes many of the drone strikes himself, it does not acknowledge or comment on specific attacks. Names of the targets are not provided – and sometimes not even known by the CIA itself – and the U.S. does not need to provide evidence to anyone to show that the killings are warranted.
Despite the mystery surrounding this emerging technology, ProPublica has a great primer explaining the information that is known about the drone warfare. Around 3,000 individuals that the United States suspects of having ties with terrorism have been killed abroad, which includes a few American citizens. The U.S. gives itself the discretion to kill potential terrorists when capture of these individuals appears too difficult, although it now seems to be the primary mode of handling suspects.
Then there’s the matter of civilian casualties: though the White House’s estimates of bystander fatalities is significantly lower than that of independent journalists, the number of bystander fatalities seems to be at least a few hundred. That’s a lot of human lives with no terrorist connections to be chalked up to collateral damage.
Two Americans will serve on the ten-person United Nations panel: Captain Jason Wright, a lawyer for the U.S. Army, and Sarah Knuckey, a human rights lawyer and professor at NYU. They will be joined by a few British professionals as well as a judge from Pakistan and an activist from Yemen, two countries that have been the target of many drone strikes.
Although Emmerson acknowledges that the White House has been extremely secretive about its drone program thus far, he is “strongly optimistic” that the U.S. will adhere to any recommendations developed by the U.N.
Drone Wars: “The Ethics of Killing Civilians”
While Americans debate the ethics of killing American citizens abroad without a trial, as happened when a U.S. predator drone targeted U.S.-born Al Qaeda campaigners Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan last month, there has been little talk about the ethics of killing civilians.
In Yemen, however, the subject is on everyone’s mind.
Although drones have been flying over the country for almost a decade, the frequency of the attacks have increased significantly in recent years. Locals in southern Yemen, where the drone strikes are primary concentrated, said that these days, the U.S. drones have been bombing on a near daily basis.
Yemeni boys vent their anger at a rally in Sanaa on Sept. 30, 2011. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty)
The practice of using unmanned aerial vehicles to target suspected terrorists in southern Yemen has had myriad repercussions, beyond just civilian casualties. Local government officials say outside of the psychological impact of hearing the endless buzz of drones flying overhead, they have had an economic impact on the region, as well as a political one.
Despite the claims of large numbers of civilian deaths, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a controversial U.S. ally in the war on terror, has always supported the drones. As a result — and likely the reason for his continued support, analysts say — the United States remained largely quiet during the massive protests that engulfed the country earlier this year, only backing an internationally-brokered plan for a transfer of power after his security forces opened fire on unarmed activists in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital.
Saleh’s cooperation with the United States, and his support of the air strikes, has further enraged average Yemenis and is often cited as one of the reasons why millions of people have risen up against his government over the last eight months.
“The Saleh regime allowed the U.S. to intervene and desecrate our homeland from end to end,” said a local politician in the rural village of Muajala, located in southern Abyan Province, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Yemen has been turned into Afghanistan and its people, either in mountains or valleys, were turned into [members] of Al Qaeda.”
The political repercussions don’t stop with the protests.
The Drone Wars: The humans behind the technology
In May 2010, an errant U.S drone strike killed Jabr Al-Shabwani, the popular deputy governor of Marib Province, in the country’s east. Al-Shabwani had been mediating a discussion between militants and the government when the hellfire missile struck. The death of Al Shabwani outraged Yemenis across the country. And the government approval of the drone strikes has stoked separatist sentiments in the south that have plagued the country for generations.
“Our reaction [to the presence of drones] is like any Yemeni’s. It is a violation of Yemen’s sovereignty and a crime committed against the Yemeni people,” said Ahmed Al-Shabwani, the deputy governor’s brother.
The Al-Shabwani family retaliated, carrying out a series of attacks against the country’s oil and power industry, demanding that Saleh stop cooperating with the U.S. drone program.
Yemeni Vice President Abd Rabo Mansur Hadi, in a speech in July, revealed that the United States was providing “logistical” support to the Yemeni military in their operations against militants in the country’s south. Later, after President Saleh returned from Saudi Arabia after being injured in an assassination attempt on his palace, Saleh himself thanked the United States, as well as Saudi Arabia, for their help in fighting militants in southern Yemen.
“The drones fly over Marib every 24 hours and there is not a day that passes that we don’t see them. The atmosphere has become weary because of the presence of U.S. drones and the fear that they could strike at any time. The drones themselves are getting inaccurate information … and that is what happened when they martyred Sheikh Jabr Al-Shabwani,” said Ibrahim Al-Shabwani, another one of the deputy governor’s brothers.
“Marib’s sovereignty has been breached. We demand that they [the Yemeni and American governments] give us the truth, otherwise disastrous things will happen to either Americans or Yemenis,” he added.
Although, since no one keeps track, it’s nearly impossible to tally just how many civilians have been killed in drone strikes, local reports put the number well into the hundreds or more.
Days before the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound jet liner in 2009, the Obama administration authorized a cruise missile strike on Muajala against suspected Al Qaeda militants. Fifty-two civilians were killed in that attack, many of who were women and children.
“There were elements of Al Qaeda about three kilometers away from civilians when the missiles hit,” said Yaslam Al-Anbory, a resident of Muajala, whose relative was killed in the 2009 missile strike. “But the majority of those killed were civilians.”
Locals claim that the drones have been only marginally more accurate. While the U.S. government hails the killing of Awlaki has a major success in the fight against Al Qaeda around the world, Yemenis themselves, who say they have barely heard of the man, are forlorn. They know that with every perceived success, the drone program gains legitimacy. And they are worried that more civilians will be killed.
Today, with little success, some relatives are seeking justice for the loved ones they have lost.
“We have asked for compensation from the government but have received nothing. I swear nothing was paid. We demand fair compensation from America,” Al-Anbory said.
Additionally, the link between the failing Yemeni economy and American drone and missile strikes is a strong one, according to Yemeni political analyst Abdul Ghani Al-Iryani.
For instance, as tribes continue to attack Yemen’s already meager oil infrastructure in retaliation for the death of Jabr Al Shabwani, the economic cost is felt.
“That one drone strike in May of last year has cost Yemen over $1 billion,” he said.
US gives Afghanistan fleet of drones
A US army soldier with the 101st Airborne Division Alpha Battery 1-320th tries to launch a drone outside Combat Outpost Nolen in the village of Jellawar in The Arghandab Valley (AFP Photo / Patrick Baz)
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his recent meeting with US President Obama gave him nearly everything his country hoped for – including a fleet of aerial surveillance drones that Afghan officials have long been requesting.
Karzai held a news conference on Monday in which he proudly announced the promised fleet of drones, as well as an upgraded fleet of aircraft including 20 helicopters and at least four C-130 transport planes. The Afghan president noted that the surveillance drones would be unarmed, but will nevertheless help spy on enemy combatants and watch over coalition forces. Western forces will train Afghans to fly, use and maintain them before giving complete control to the Karzai government.
The US will also provide Afghanistan with intelligence gathering equipment “which will be used to defend and protect our air and ground sovereignty,” Karzai said. The US has also pledged to speed up the handover of detainees currently imprisoned and held by American forces. Karzai has previously called this a violation of promised Afghan sovereignty and the issue has built up tension between the two nations.
“We are happy and satisfied with the results of our meetings,” the Afghan president told journalists at the presidential palace. “We achieved what we were looking for.”
American officials refused to confirm or deny the details of the agreement made between Afghanistan and the US regarding aircraft, the New York Times reports. But since his meeting with Obama, Karzai had repeatedly expressed his satisfaction with the outcome.
The US has long demanded that Afghanistan grant immunity to any US forces staying in the country after the 2014 withdrawal. Karzai has sternly opposed this measure, but conceded after Obama granted him many of his own wishes.
“This is a decision that should be made by the Afghan people in a Loya Jirga: whether they are granting immunity to them or not; if yes, how and under what conditions” he said in an interview with CNN.
But this might not even matter if Afghans have their way when it comes to post-withdrawal troops. Top Afghan officials have expressed their desire for Special Operations forces to leave the country at the same time as US military troops. These forces currently train the Afghan local police and US officials have assumed that the withdrawal would only apply to traditional military troops, the Washington Post reports.
The Washington meetings between Karzai and Obama have resulted in numerous benefits for the Afghans and Karzai’s news conference was the first mention of American drones being handed over to the Afghan government. Negotiations between the US and Afghanistan are still ongoing, with the two countries trying to determine details regarding the US presence in Afghanistan after the 2014 troop withdrawal.
ACLU of Florida Statement Applauding Committee Passage of Drone Regulation Bill
TALLAHASSEE - January 15 - Today, the Florida Senate Committee on Criminal Justice unanimously voted in favor of Senate Bill 92, authored by Senator Joe Negron (R – District 32). SB 92 seeks to put needed controls on law enforcement’s use of unmanned surveillance drones.
The following statement may be attributed to Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida:
“We applaud Senator Negron for taking leadership on this critical issue, and the Senate Criminal Justice Committee for making this bill a priority for the first days of legislative committee meetings.
“This is the first piece of legislation voted out of committee this year, and the leadership we have seen on this issue could make our state the first in the nation to regulate the use of drones by local law enforcement.
“The ACLU has serious concerns about unregulated, warrantless use of unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance technology to collect information about individuals. The pace by which surveillance technology has evolved in recent years has so far outstripped the pace at which laws have adapted to protect individuals’ privacy.
“Strict controls are needed to help guide law enforcement in using surveillance technology. Without those limits, we risk inching further into a society under constant and permanent surveillance.
ACLU of Florida Statement Applauding Committee Passage of Drone Regulation Bill
TALLAHASSEE - January 15 - Today, the Florida Senate Committee on Criminal Justice unanimously voted in favor of Senate Bill 92, authored by Senator Joe Negron (R – District 32). SB 92 seeks to put needed controls on law enforcement’s use of unmanned surveillance drones.
The following statement may be attributed to Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida:
“We applaud Senator Negron for taking leadership on this critical issue, and the Senate Criminal Justice Committee for making this bill a priority for the first days of legislative committee meetings.
“This is the first piece of legislation voted out of committee this year, and the leadership we have seen on this issue could make our state the first in the nation to regulate the use of drones by local law enforcement.
“The ACLU has serious concerns about unregulated, warrantless use of unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance technology to collect information about individuals. The pace by which surveillance technology has evolved in recent years has so far outstripped the pace at which laws have adapted to protect individuals’ privacy.
“Strict controls are needed to help guide law enforcement in using surveillance technology. Without those limits, we risk inching further into a society under constant and permanent surveillance.
Flying Towards War? Drone Race Signals Escalation in China-Japan Standoff
Florida sheriff wants drones to monitor civilians
Drones have already been deployed across several US states, but thousands of UAVs could soon be flying all across the country for surveillance purposes that some privacy advocates consider unconstitutional.
The Federal Aviation Administration has received at least 60 applications for drone employment in the US and this month approved 348 drones for domestic use. Most of the currently employed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being used along the Mexican border to help law enforcement officers crack down on illegal immigration, but some drones will soon be used to monitor civilians.
The sheriff’s office in Orange County, Fl., has already experimented with two domestic surveillance drones that it plans to use over metro Orlando starting this summer, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The drones would not be armed, but would be used to track down criminals, terrorists and illegal immigrants, as well as be used for environmental monitoring and wildfire surveillance, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
The FAA predicts that 30,000 UAVs will fly over the US in less than 20 years, which has alarmed privacy advocates who claim the drones are a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against ‘unreasonable searches’.
“This is unwise and unnecessary. … Sheriffs are supposed to be sheriffs, not the US Army,” said Doug Head, a Democratic activist who closely follows Orange County politics.
“It’s really easy to increase public surveillance. But when the inevitable problems arise, it’s much harder to bring them back,” said Baylor Johnson, a Miami-based spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Nationwide, about a dozen law enforcement agencies have or are using a drone for surveillance purposes already. Some legislators have attempted to place restrictions on the UAVs to protect their constituents’ privacy. Florida state Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, introduced a bill to limit the use of drones and allow their employment only when the federal government predicts a terrorist attack, to collect evidence in criminal cases where a search warrant has been approved, and during hostage-taking situations.
“I don’t think [drones] should be used to spy on American citizens,” Negron told USA Today, adding that the UAVs are “fine for killing terrorists.”
Across the nation, at least nine other legislators have taken steps to restrict the use of drones on their constituents. In December, state Sen. Alex Padilla introduced a bill to try to regulate drones in California, while Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey introduced a bill to establish national privacy safeguards and limit surveillance. Missouri Rep. Casey Guernsey considers the use of surveillance drones unconstitutional and this month introduced the ‘Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act’, which would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant in order to use UAV surveillance to gather criminal activity.
“As drones become less expensive, our fear is that police and other agencies could use them for fishing expeditions that infringe on individual’s right to privacy,” Gary Brunk, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri, told the Kansas City Star.
Employing drones in Orange County would cost $22,000 to $25,000 per vehicle, which County Sheriff Jerry Demings believes is well worth the money “to help keep our community safe.”
But Negron calls domestic drones an “intrusion of privacy”. The FAA is currently coming up with a set of rules that would regulate how drones can be used and how they can share the airspace with other commercial and private vehicles. Once these guidelines have been established in 2015, thousands of unmanned aircrafts will be brought into the American skies to search for criminal activity and monitor US citizens every questionable move.
Drones are the “Weapon of Choice” in Obama’s Destruction of Due Process
The United States continues the constant pounding of the tribal region of North Waziristan in Pakistan.
On January 10, AFP reports that six “militants” allegedly working for al-Qaeda were killed in a drone strike.
This is the seventh drone strike this year in the area.
The latest state-sanctioned assassination was carried out when CIA-controlled drones fired four Hellfire missiles at a village and a motorcycle near the town of Mir Ali, according to AFP sources.
In what should come as no surprise to anyone following the unconscionable chronicle of the never-ending drone war, there is no word as to the identity of either the targets or the victims.
Of course, the White House insists that several “leaders” of al-Qaeda have been killed in the attacks.
As reported by Long War Journal:
Four senior and midlevel al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are reported to have been killed in the seven strikes since the beginning of the New Year. The US killed Mullah Nazir, the leader of a Taliban group in South Waziristan who was closely allied with Bahadar, al Qaeda, and the Afghan Taliban, in a strike on Jan. 3. In a second strike on Jan. 3, the US killed Faisal Khan, commander in the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan commander. In one of two strikes on Jan. 6, the US killed Wali Mohammed, a Taliban commander who is said to have directed suicide operations for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. And in one of the two strikes on Jan. 8, an al Qaeda leader known as Sheikh Yasin Al Kuwaiti is reported to have been killed.
And the Obama administration is certainly proud to report (although they are notoriously tight-lipped about the death-by-drone program) that in a similar attacks in the same region carried out on January 8, eight other “militants” were assassinated. Again, from Long War Journal:
Just after midnight, the CIA-operated, remotely piloted Predators or the more deadly Reapers first struck a compound in the village of Haider Khel near the town of Mir Ali. Eight missiles were fired at the compound, which was thought to be owned by an “important Taliban leader,” The Nation reported; however, it is unclear if he was killed in the strike. Five people are reported to have been killed.
A Pakistani security official told AFP that four “militants” were killed in the strike. Reuters reported that one of those killed was a “foreign tactical trainer” from either Somalia or the United Arab Emirates.
The US drones then fired several more missiles at a compound in the nearby village of Eissu Khel. Three people were reported killed in the strike, but it is unclear if they were militants or civilians.
Unclear, and to the president, unimportant. The president’s on-the-record statements regarding the serial drone killings reveal that he considers himself the judge, jury, and executioner — and does not believe he is obliged to provide evidence to the American people.
In fact, it would be very naïve to believe these (allegedly) targeted assassinations only kill innocents due to unfortunate miscalculations. When the judicial and executive powers of government are consolidated and restraints on the exercise of power are cast aside, it can be expected — based both on our knowledge of history and on the nature of man — that power will be abused and no one’s rights or life will be safe from elimination by despots.
In interviews with CNN and Fox, the president consistently defended the fact that he orders drone strikes to assassinate people based on nothing more than his suspicion that they threaten U.S. national security. But for all his apparent frankness, there is one aspect of his drone-based assassination program about which the president remains mum.
This silence shrouds the cold and callous manner in which civilian deaths are disregarded by the president when it comes to counting the number of fatalities resulting from his death-by-drone campaign. “Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties,” the New York Times reported in an article published May 29, 2012. When read in conjunction with the headline from an Associated Press article reading “Iraq to Stop Counting Civilian Dead,” a picture of global casualness as to casualties begins to emerge.
The Times clarified: “Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” (Emphasis added.)
The highly informative New York Times piece illuminates much of the macabre methodology of aggregating the names of enemies of the state to President Obama’s proscription list.
Recounting the scene at one of the regularly scheduled Tuesday intelligence briefings at the White House, Jo Becker and Scott Shane wrote, “The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.”
It cannot be too soberly restated that these seemingly cold-blooded conferences are occurring every week in the Oval Office and are presided over by the president of the United States.
That last fact is essential if one is to understand the era into which our Republic has entered. The president of the United States, in this case Barack Obama, sits in a chair in the White House rifling through dossiers of suspected terrorists. After listening to the advice of his claque of counselors, it is the president himself who designates who of the lineup is to be killed. As the New York Times explains: “Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.”
There is a salient question that the president would likely laugh at were it to be posed to him: Where is the constitutional authority for creating and issuing kill orders?
The presidential presumption of guilt by association followed by the autocratic order of a lethal drone strike rightly worries many constitutionalists and friends of liberty. In fact, many questions prompted by the president’s drone program remain unanswered. Why can’t these alleged “terrorists” be tried in our federal court system? For decades those accused of terroristic crimes have been formally charged with those crimes, had those charges heard before an impartial federal judge, and been permitted to mount a defense to those crimes.
Due process as a check on monarchical power was included in the Magna Carta of 1215. This list of grievances and demands codified the king’s obligation to obey written laws or be punished by his subjects. Article 39 of the Magna Carta says: “No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised [dispossessed] or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”
Over the years, the Magna Carta was occasionally revised and amended. In 1354, the phrase “due process of law” appeared for the first time. The Magna Carta as amended in 1354 says: “No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.”
This fundamental restraint on the royal presumption of the power to lop off heads on command was incorporated by our Founders in the Bill of Rights, particularly in the Fifth Amendment that says in relevant part: “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
President Obama’s nearly daily approval of drone-delivered assassinations is an effrontery to over 650 years of our Anglo-American law’s protection from autocratic decrees of death without due process of law. When any president usurps the power to place names on a kill list and then have those people summarily executed without due process, he places our Republic on a trajectory toward tyranny and government-sponsored terrorism.
Finally, one wonders where the pacifist bloc of the coalition that elected Barack Obama in 2008 has gone now that there candidate has become president and not only continued his predecessors program of drone diplomacy, but has accelerated it.
From 2004-2007, President George W. Bush authorized only 10 drone strikes. During Barack Obama’s first year in office — 2009 — that number increased by more than 500 percent.
Every time a U.S. drone fires a Hellfire missile at a “compound” and kills “militants,” every one of those uncounted, unnamed, unindicted victims — regardless of guilt or innocence — was assassinated, not executed. Execution implies justice and American justice requires due process.
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at jwolverton@thenewamerican.com This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
Drones Over New York City?
Spy drones heading to eastern Congo
M23 rebels withdraw from the city of Goma in the eastern Congo on December 1, 2012.
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda have expressed support for a proposal by the United Nations to deploy surveillance drones along Congo’s eastern border.
In October 2012, UN experts issued a report, in which they said that Rwanda and Uganda continued to support the March 23 movement (M23) rebels, who had set up a parallel government in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu in eastern Congo.
On Tuesday, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said he had asked the Security Council for three aircraft-size drones to deploy along the border in Congo’s mountainous eastern region.
"The Congolese government welcomes this proposition," Congolese Information Minister Lambert Mende said in Kinshasa.
"The deployment of three unarmed drones will allow international troops to refine their management of the problematic border which separates DRC and Rwanda,” he added.
Uganda, which has been selected as the mediator for the talks between the Congolese government and M23 rebels, also expressed its support for the plan on the condition the drones are not used for combat missions.
"Drones can be used for two purposes: You use them for intelligence or for fighting. If a drone is for intelligence and it respects sovereignty, it will be alright," Ugandan Defense Minister Crispus Kiyonga said in Kampala.
On December 31, 2012, the UN Security Council unanimously agreed to impose an arms embargo on M23 and another rebel group known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
The sanctions freeze assets of certain people linked to the groups and bar two M23 leaders -- the rebel group's president, Jean-Marie Runiga, and one of its military commanders, Lt. Col. Eric Badege -- from travel.
The M23 rebels seized the eastern city of Goma on November 20 after UN peacekeepers gave up the battle for the frontier city, which is home to about one million people. The rebels withdrew from the city on December 1 under a ceasefire accord.
The M23 rebels defected from the Congolese army in April 2012 in protest over alleged mistreatment in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC). They had previously been integrated into the Congolese army under a peace deal signed in 2009.
Since early May, over 900,000 people have fled their homes in the eastern Congo. Most of them have resettled in Congo, but tens of thousands have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.
Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few decades, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on since 1998 and left over 5.5 million people dead.
GJH/HGL
Drones over New York? NYPD chief admits he’s interested in an UAV
The head of the New York City Police Department announced this week that the largest local law enforcement agency in the United States might soon rely on spy drones for conducting surveillance.
During an open conversation held Thursday between Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen Adler and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, the chief of police confirmed that New York’s boys in blue aren’t entirely opposed to acquiring an unmanned aerial vehicle for the sake of security.
“We’re looking into it," Kelly reportedly told an audience at the 92nd Street Y Thursday evening. “Anything that helps us.”
Jill Colvin, a producer for the website DNAinfo, says Kelly told his crowd that adding an UAV to their arsenal of surveillance tools could come in handy during future mass protests in the Big Apple. For starters, she reports, Kelly said cops could begin with using basic civilian models that are available for purchase online and in stores.
"You can go to Brookstone and buy a drone," Kelly told the crowd.
“The only thing we would do is maybe use the cheap $250 ones to take a look and see the size of the demonstration or something along those lines,” Colvin quotes him as saying.
The Federal Aviation Administration is still ironing out a rulebook for how UAVs will be used domestically in the years to come. Currently, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on the spy planes to secure the country’s borders. Dozens of smaller agencies across the country have applied to use drones too, though, a decision that has led to a large amount of concern from civil liberty advocates that say blanketing surveillance violates the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.
"The law hasn't caught up with the technology," Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the Oakland Tribune last year. "There are no rules of the road for how they operate these things."
Months earlier, Timm and another member of the EFF led a discussion about drones at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) conference in New York. There they said the surveillance drones currently being manufactured have the capability to “zoom in and read a milk carton from 60,000 feet” in the air.
Just recently, the sheriff of Alameda County, California postponed a public discussion regarding his plans to procure a surveillance drone after news of the proposal spurred a grassroots opposition campaign. Down state in San Diego, the county Sheriff’s Office has come under fire from journalists who say law enforcement is withholding information about plans for an UAV. When the website MuckRack insisted they had proof that San Diego County was issued information about obtaining a drone, officials fired back "there is very little public benefit in the release of such records.”
Should New York City secure a drone of their own, there is little one could do that isn’t already possible in NYC. As of last year, the NYPD had access to around 2,000 surveillance cameras on just the island of Manhattan.
Eleven Years of Guantanamo; Drone Strategy Consolidates Under Brennan
Michael Ratner: From Guantanamo to Brennan at CIA, Obama carries on the policies of George Bush.
TRANSCRIPT:
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week's edition of The Ratner Report with Michael Ratner, who now joins us from New York City.
Michael is president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, and a board member for The Real News. Thanks for joining us, Michael.
MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Good to be with you, Paul.
JAY: So what are you following this week? I guess the big issue will be the anniversary of Guantanamo.
RATNER: I wish I could say it's a big issue. Of course it's a big issue. But it's a grim anniversary. It's the 11th year of Guantanamo. We're entering the 12th year. The U.S. has had that detention camp since January 11, 2002. The original order came down in November 2001. That's the order that the Center for Constitutional Rights and myself has been challenging since that time. And despite our challenges, despite Obama, we still have Guantanamo there. And we have a Guantanamo—and these numbers are important—that 166 people still remaining at Guantanamo, and that 86 of those, 86 have been cleared for release. That means they're innocent, they shouldn't be there anymore, and they are still there. And they've been there going on, in some cases, 11 years, ten years, nine years. Still there. So we're still running a detention camp.
JAY: Why are they still there if they've been cleared for release?
RATNER: You know, that gets into the big issue on Guantanamo. It gets into the president's promise to close it. The president on January 22, 2009, wrote an executive order saying exactly it has to be closed in one year from this date and saying it's in the national security interests of the United States and the foreign policy interests and the interests of justice to close Guantanamo. And yet it remains open.
So the big question is: why? Well, you know, politicians are politicians. And what happened in Guantanamo—I can do a couple of factors quickly, but they're still at the politicians' door. One is [incompr.] the first people who were ordered released from Guantanamo when Obama became president, the Uyghers from Western China, which is the Muslim split-off group from China, they were picked up in Afghanistan. The U.S. refused to let them come into the United States, despite a federal court order and despite a Uyghur community that was willing to take them in, and despite their complete clearance for release. Obama showed weak knees. That was early in his term, you know, probably by February or March.
And then, after he refused to let those Uyghurs into the United States, Congress got in the act. And that goes on and on. Congress then said nobody from Guantanamo can come to the United States, nobody from Guantanamo can be sent to any other country, unless there are all kinds of hurdles that they go through and clearances.
And that's now reflected in, like, two years of legislation, which we've talked about before, called the National Defense Authorization Act. Obama signed that again. That contains the Guantanamo restrictions on transfer to the United States and to other countries. Obama said in his signing statement, I think a lot of it's unconstitutional and I may override it. He said that last year as well. But I don't expect him to do it.
So my prediction: you and I will be celebrating, sadly, this grim anniversary year after year. And I put it—yes, I put it at the feet of Obama. I put it at the feet of Congress, and also the courts. While at my office we won a right for the Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detentions in courts, that right has not been carried out by the courts, and we have not yet gotten people out in the last few years as a result of any of the litigation. All of it has been reversed in the appeals court.
And so we're sitting there now with what I consider to be an incredible human rights and political outrage. The only way people seem to be getting out of the camp now is by death. And we had one death in September, a man named Adnan Latif, who'd been there for ten years. Government claimed suicide. Who knows. It was an overdose of drugs somehow. How he got that in a detention camp when there's a camera on you every second is unclear to me.
So Guantanamo is really like the albatross around Obama's neck. But be honest: it's not the only albatross. If we look at what the Obama administration has done, the areas that I care about and have litigated, he's not very much different than President Bush was. If you look at Guantanamo, [it] exists. You look at military commissions, which are those special rum trials, still going on. If you look at death by drone, more under Obama by far than under Bush. If you look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is the right that they've given the government to surveil your and my conversations, it's as broad as it's ever been. They don't even have to name the U.S. citizens they're surveilling anymore. They can go to the secret court and get a warrant and say, we just want to investigate The Real News, pick up all the American citizens they want by wiretap, and that's it. So Obama on those issues is really hand-in-glove with President Bush. And on torture, of course, yes, he did do an order to stop the worst forms of torture—waterboarding and otherwise. That had actually ended by the time Obama took office.
JAY: What about the appointment of John Brennan as director of the CIA?
RATNER: Well, that really seals what I've been saying about the two wings of the same bird sense of Bush and Obama on these national security issues that I've been discussing. John Brennan has been the national security adviser for President Obama in the White House. The reason he was that adviser was because he couldn't get to be head of the CIA, which is what Obama wanted to appoint him to four years ago. And he couldn't appoint him to that because Brennan set up the counterintelligence center or the Counterterrorism Center in Washington to fight terrorism. And as part of that, of course, we had the torture techniques employed widely. Brennan was head of that. We had rendition employed widely. Brennan was head of that. So there was too much opposition for Brennan to get to be head of the CIA.
Go ahead now four more years. Brennan's been heading the drone program for President Obama. He's become like a brother, as far as we can tell, to President Obama on the drone program. What happens next? Obama nominates Brennan to be head of the CIA. Is there going to be significant opposition? I doubt it. The torture stuff probably won't come up at all. It seems that every member of Congress or at least every member of the Senate is on the same page or almost the same page on the drone issues with a few exceptions. And so probably Brennan is going to sweep through.
So what does that tell you about what's happened to the country? When we had Bush in office, I had a tremendous amount of support for the opposition that my office and others have had to Guantanamo, drones, the torture program, getting people prosecuted for torture [inaud.] Obama's taken office, that support has evaporated. And worse than that, they're now putting into the head of the CIA one of the architects of the Bush program, and actually the head of the drone program, essentially. We've seen a normalization now of these issues in the country.
JAY: Just to be clear, when you said head of the drone program, now we know from—'cause they told The New York Times, this is Brennan and Obama sitting around, deciding who's going to be killed.
RATNER: That's where they make up the kill list. Obama said he signs off on it personally. It includes a wide variety of people, not just people who are alleged terrorists, who they know the names of; it includes what are called signature strikes, which are just people who have characteristics they say belong to terrorists or in the areas where terrorists allegedly hang out; and it includes people killing outside of war zones, which is, I think, what people are really getting upset by, because it may be one thing—it's like a bomber if you're fighting a shooting war, to drop bombs on, you know, the other side; but when you're talking about people who were not in uniforms, who were not in a war zone, but are living in Yemen or living in Somalia, or could be living in the United Kingdom or right here in the United States, you're talking about something else. And that's who's going to be the head of our CIA.
So I would say that this country on those issues is really in a hell somewhere. I mean, we have a long way to come back. Eleven years of Guantanamo, six, seven, eight years of drones, a dozen years of torture and no prosecutions for it, and then you throw into the mix the last little bit, a nice film like Zero Dark Thirty—and I mean nice facetiously—that essentially makes an argument that torture works and that we need torture to protect ourselves in the United States. Luckily, while it was nominated for an academy award, its director, who should not be directing, Kathryn Bigelow, was not nominated. But the film confirms, really, what this country has become, which is a country where torture is considered acceptable and necessary for its protection.
JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Michael.
RATNER: Thank you, Paul.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
11 Years of Guantanamo; Brennan CIA Nomination Consolidates Drone Assassination Strategy
Context: As yet there are no context links for this item.
Bio
Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. He is currently a legal adviser to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. He and CCR brought the first case challenging the Guantanamo detentions and continue in their efforts to close Guantanamo. He taught at Yale Law School, and Columbia Law School, and was President of the National Lawyers Guild. His current books include "Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in the Twenty-First Century America," and “ Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder.” NOTE: Mr. Ratner speaks on his own behalf and not for any organization with which he is affiliated.
Transcript
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week's edition of The Ratner Report with Michael Ratner, who now joins us from New York City.
Michael is president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, and a board member for The Real News. Thanks for joining us, Michael.MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Good to be with you, Paul.JAY: So what are you following this week? I guess the big issue will be the anniversary of Guantanamo.RATNER: I wish I could say it's a big issue. Of course it's a big issue. But it's a grim anniversary. It's the 11th year of Guantanamo. We're entering the 12th year. The U.S. has had that detention camp since January 11, 2002. The original order came down in November 2001. That's the order that the Center for Constitutional Rights and myself has been challenging since that time. And despite our challenges, despite Obama, we still have Guantanamo there. And we have a Guantanamo—and these numbers are important—that 166 people still remaining at Guantanamo, and that 86 of those, 86 have been cleared for release. That means they're innocent, they shouldn't be there anymore, and they are still there. And they've been there going on, in some cases, 11 years, ten years, nine years. Still there. So we're still running a detention camp.JAY: Why are they still there if they've been cleared for release?RATNER: You know, that gets into the big issue on Guantanamo. It gets into the president's promise to close it. The president on January 22, 2009, wrote an executive order saying exactly it has to be closed in one year from this date and saying it's in the national security interests of the United States and the foreign policy interests and the interests of justice to close Guantanamo. And yet it remains open. So the big question is: why? Well, you know, politicians are politicians. And what happened in Guantanamo—I can do a couple of factors quickly, but they're still at the politicians' door. One is [incompr.] the first people who were ordered released from Guantanamo when Obama became president, the Uyghers from Western China, which is the Muslim split-off group from China, they were picked up in Afghanistan. The U.S. refused to let them come into the United States, despite a federal court order and despite a Uyghur community that was willing to take them in, and despite their complete clearance for release. Obama showed weak knees. That was early in his term, you know, probably by February or March. And then, after he refused to let those Uyghurs into the United States, Congress got in the act. And that goes on and on. Congress then said nobody from Guantanamo can come to the United States, nobody from Guantanamo can be sent to any other country, unless there are all kinds of hurdles that they go through and clearances. And that's now reflected in, like, two years of legislation, which we've talked about before, called the National Defense Authorization Act. Obama signed that again. That contains the Guantanamo restrictions on transfer to the United States and to other countries. Obama said in his signing statement, I think a lot of it's unconstitutional and I may override it. He said that last year as well. But I don't expect him to do it. So my prediction: you and I will be celebrating, sadly, this grim anniversary year after year. And I put it—yes, I put it at the feet of Obama. I put it at the feet of Congress, and also the courts. While at my office we won a right for the Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detentions in courts, that right has not been carried out by the courts, and we have not yet gotten people out in the last few years as a result of any of the litigation. All of it has been reversed in the appeals court. And so we're sitting there now with what I consider to be an incredible human rights and political outrage. The only way people seem to be getting out of the camp now is by death. And we had one death in September, a man named Adnan Latif, who'd been there for ten years. Government claimed suicide. Who knows. It was an overdose of drugs somehow. How he got that in a detention camp when there's a camera on you every second is unclear to me. So Guantanamo is really like the albatross around Obama's neck. But be honest: it's not the only albatross. If we look at what the Obama administration has done, the areas that I care about and have litigated, he's not very much different than President Bush was. If you look at Guantanamo, [it] exists. You look at military commissions, which are those special rum trials, still going on. If you look at death by drone, more under Obama by far than under Bush. If you look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is the right that they've given the government to surveil your and my conversations, it's as broad as it's ever been. They don't even have to name the U.S. citizens they're surveilling anymore. They can go to the secret court and get a warrant and say, we just want to investigate The Real News, pick up all the American citizens they want by wiretap, and that's it. So Obama on those issues is really hand-in-glove with President Bush. And on torture, of course, yes, he did do an order to stop the worst forms of torture—waterboarding and otherwise. That had actually ended by the time Obama took office.JAY: What about the appointment of John Brennan as director of the CIA?RATNER: Well, that really seals what I've been saying about the two wings of the same bird sense of Bush and Obama on these national security issues that I've been discussing. John Brennan has been the national security adviser for President Obama in the White House. The reason he was that adviser was because he couldn't get to be head of the CIA, which is what Obama wanted to appoint him to four years ago. And he couldn't appoint him to that because Brennan set up the counterintelligence center or the Counterterrorism Center in Washington to fight terrorism. And as part of that, of course, we had the torture techniques employed widely. Brennan was head of that. We had rendition employed widely. Brennan was head of that. So there was too much opposition for Brennan to get to be head of the CIA. Go ahead now four more years. Brennan's been heading the drone program for President Obama. He's become like a brother, as far as we can tell, to President Obama on the drone program. What happens next? Obama nominates Brennan to be head of the CIA. Is there going to be significant opposition? I doubt it. The torture stuff probably won't come up at all. It seems that every member of Congress or at least every member of the Senate is on the same page or almost the same page on the drone issues with a few exceptions. And so probably Brennan is going to sweep through. So what does that tell you about what's happened to the country? When we had Bush in office, I had a tremendous amount of support for the opposition that my office and others have had to Guantanamo, drones, the torture program, getting people prosecuted for torture [inaud.] Obama's taken office, that support has evaporated. And worse than that, they're now putting into the head of the CIA one of the architects of the Bush program, and actually the head of the drone program, essentially. We've seen a normalization now of these issues in the country. JAY: Just to be clear, when you said head of the drone program, now we know from—'cause they told The New York Times, this is Brennan and Obama sitting around, deciding who's going to be killed.RATNER: That's where they make up the kill list. Obama said he signs off on it personally. It includes a wide variety of people, not just people who are alleged terrorists, who they know the names of; it includes what are called signature strikes, which are just people who have characteristics they say belong to terrorists or in the areas where terrorists allegedly hang out; and it includes people killing outside of war zones, which is, I think, what people are really getting upset by, because it may be one thing—it's like a bomber if you're fighting a shooting war, to drop bombs on, you know, the other side; but when you're talking about people who were not in uniforms, who were not in a war zone, but are living in Yemen or living in Somalia, or could be living in the United Kingdom or right here in the United States, you're talking about something else. And that's who's going to be the head of our CIA. So I would say that this country on those issues is really in a hell somewhere. I mean, we have a long way to come back. Eleven years of Guantanamo, six, seven, eight years of drones, a dozen years of torture and no prosecutions for it, and then you throw into the mix the last little bit, a nice film like Zero Dark Thirty—and I mean nice facetiously—that essentially makes an argument that torture works and that we need torture to protect ourselves in the United States. Luckily, while it was nominated for an academy award, its director, who should not be directing, Kathryn Bigelow, was not nominated. But the film confirms, really, what this country has become, which is a country where torture is considered acceptable and necessary for its protection.JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Michael.RATNER: Thank you, Paul.JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.End
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Flying towards war? Drone race signals escalation in Sino-Japanese tensions
The "Yi Long" drone by China Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC) is displayed during the 9th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai on November 13, 2012. (AFP Photo/Philippe Lopez)
(32.1Mb) embed videoThe development and acquisition of drones has become crucial to the ever-expanding arms race between China and Japan, as tensions over disputed islands in the East China Sea could soon reach boiling point.
Weaknesses in Japan’s surveillance capability and the ongoing territorial dispute over the Senkaku islands, known as the Diaoyu in China, have spurred Tokyo to purchase an advanced drone model from the US.
Japan’s vulnerability was highlighted late last year when Japanese radar failed to detect a low-flying Chinese aircraft passing over the group of disputed islands.
The drones will seemingly be deployed “to counter China's growing assertiveness at sea, especially when it comes to the Senkaku islands,” the Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed defense ministry official as saying.
Japanese concerns that the islands will be used by China as a prelude to testing regional power balances, prompted Japan’s Defense Ministry to request $2.4 billion dollars from hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose conservative government swept to power on December 26.
The funds will be used for extra PAC-3 missile interceptors and upgrades for F-15 fighter planes, Bloomberg cites a document distributed by the ministry as saying.
Japan has further decided to increase overall defense spending to some $54.3 billion, the first defense hike in a decade. Abe further promised on the campaign trail to bulk up the country’s army and coast guard.
James Corbett, editor of the Japanese-based Corbett Report news website, told RT the latest conflict had yet to filter down to the citizen level in Japan like it had in China, where nationalistic sentiment is on the rise.
With the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands serving as the focal point for the current standoff, Corbett says Sino-Japanese military conflict will likely become the new norm.
“…now that Abe is in power – he’s known as a hardline nationalist – and now that Xi JinPing is taking the helm of China for the next 10 years, I think he’s looking to put his stake down as someone who is really a strong defender of China. So I think we’re really going to see an entrenched position on both sides and it looks like there is a new normal of wars and increasing [military] expenditures that are likely for the next several years.”
China has taken measures to significantly ratchet up its drone program in a move which US analysts described as a “worrisome trend.”
In October Chinese state media said 11 drone bases would be built along China's coastline, and “at least one drone will be stationed at each base,” the Guardian cites China Radio International as reporting.
China rolled out eight new models in November at an annual air show in the southern coastal city of Zhuhai, photographs of which were featured prominently in the state-owned media.
In December it was further announced that the People's Liberation Army were readying to test-fly a domestically developed drone, which analysts said is likely a clone of the US's carrier-based X-47B.
The unclassified document published by the US Defense Science Board in July outlined fears China “could easily match or outpace US spending on unmanned systems.”
Sino-Japanese relations took a drastic turn for the worse after the Japanese government purchased the disputed islands from a private Japanese owner last September.
Tensions have continued to rise, as an increasingly frequent cat and mouse came between Chinese surveillance planes and Japanese F015 fighters risks descending into a potentially deadly game of brinkmanship.
Chinese government ships have entered Japanese-controlled waters on multiple occasions in recent months, prompting regular standoffs with the Japanese coast guard.
On Tuesday Japan summoned China’s ambassador to Tokyo to protest an incursion by 4 Chinese maritime surveillance ships, allegedly occurring Monday.
China remained undaunted, with Reuters quoting the Communist Party chief of China's marine surveillance corps, Sun Shuxian, as saying “Japan has continued to ignore our warnings that their vessels and aircraft have infringed our sovereignty."
"This behavior may result in the further escalation of the situation at sea and has prompted China to pay great attention and vigilance."
Flying towards war? Drone race signals escalation in Sino-Japanese tensions
The "Yi Long" drone by China Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC) is displayed during the 9th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai on November 13, 2012. (AFP Photo/Philippe Lopez)
(32.1Mb) embed videoThe development and acquisition of drones has become crucial to the ever-expanding arms race between China and Japan, as tensions over disputed islands in the East China Sea could soon reach boiling point.
Weaknesses in Japan’s surveillance capability and the ongoing territorial dispute over the Senkaku islands, known as the Diaoyu in China, have spurred Tokyo to purchase an advanced drone model from the US.
Japan’s vulnerability was highlighted late last year when Japanese radar failed to detect a low-flying Chinese aircraft passing over the group of disputed islands.
The drones will seemingly be deployed “to counter China's growing assertiveness at sea, especially when it comes to the Senkaku islands,” the Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed defense ministry official as saying.
Japanese concerns that the islands will be used by China as a prelude to testing regional power balances, prompted Japan’s Defense Ministry to request $2.4 billion dollars from hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose conservative government swept to power on December 26.
The funds will be used for extra PAC-3 missile interceptors and upgrades for F-15 fighter planes, Bloomberg cites a document distributed by the ministry as saying.
Japan has further decided to increase overall defense spending to some $54.3 billion, the first defense hike in a decade. Abe further promised on the campaign trail to bulk up the country’s army and coast guard.
James Corbett, editor of the Japanese-based Corbett Report news website, told RT the latest conflict had yet to filter down to the citizen level in Japan like it had in China, where nationalistic sentiment is on the rise.
With the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands serving as the focal point for the current standoff, Corbett says Sino-Japanese military conflict will likely become the new norm.
“…now that Abe is in power – he’s known as a hardline nationalist – and now that Xi JinPing is taking the helm of China for the next 10 years, I think he’s looking to put his stake down as someone who is really a strong defender of China. So I think we’re really going to see an entrenched position on both sides and it looks like there is a new normal of wars and increasing [military] expenditures that are likely for the next several years.”
China has taken measures to significantly ratchet up its drone program in a move which US analysts described as a “worrisome trend.”
In October Chinese state media said 11 drone bases would be built along China's coastline, and “at least one drone will be stationed at each base,” the Guardian cites China Radio International as reporting.
China rolled out eight new models in November at an annual air show in the southern coastal city of Zhuhai, photographs of which were featured prominently in the state-owned media.
In December it was further announced that the People's Liberation Army were readying to test-fly a domestically developed drone, which analysts said is likely a clone of the US's carrier-based X-47B.
The unclassified document published by the US Defense Science Board in July outlined fears China “could easily match or outpace US spending on unmanned systems.”
Sino-Japanese relations took a drastic turn for the worse after the Japanese government purchased the disputed islands from a private Japanese owner last September.
Tensions have continued to rise, as an increasingly frequent cat and mouse came between Chinese surveillance planes and Japanese F015 fighters risks descending into a potentially deadly game of brinkmanship.
Chinese government ships have entered Japanese-controlled waters on multiple occasions in recent months, prompting regular standoffs with the Japanese coast guard.
On Tuesday Japan summoned China’s ambassador to Tokyo to protest an incursion by 4 Chinese maritime surveillance ships, allegedly occurring Monday.
China remained undaunted, with Reuters quoting the Communist Party chief of China's marine surveillance corps, Sun Shuxian, as saying “Japan has continued to ignore our warnings that their vessels and aircraft have infringed our sovereignty."
"This behavior may result in the further escalation of the situation at sea and has prompted China to pay great attention and vigilance."
Missouri lawmaker wants drone use to require a warrant
Drones have been employed throughout the US for surveillance purposes, but a Kansas City lawmaker perceives this type of spying as a violation of the Fourth Amendment and is working to limit the government’s use of domestic drones.
Kansas City Rep. Casey Guernsey (R), who works in the Missouri House of Representatives, claims that the domestic use of drones is a defilement of American freedom. The state legislator this week introduced the ‘Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act’, which would require law enforcement officers to obtain a warrant in order to use UAV surveillance to gather criminal activity. The bill would also protect agriculture businesses and farmers from being spied on without their knowledge.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have in recent years been employed throughout the US to capture criminals and monitor illegal immigrants. Homeland security claims to use the UAVs to protect US citizens from terrorism and crime, while the drones are also used for “disaster relief, immigration control and environmental monitoring,” according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The National Guard claims to use unmanned drones for wildfire surveillance.
Few drones are currently employed in the US, but the Federal Aviation Administration predicts that 30,000 UAVs will fly over the US in less than 20 years. The surveillance capabilities of the watchful machines has been a cause of concern for privacy advocates, with some claiming that the drones are a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against ‘unreasonable searches.’
“As drones become less expensive, our fear is that police and other agencies could use them for fishing expeditions that infringe on individual’s right to privacy,” Gary Brunk, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri, tells the Kansas City Star.
Rep. Guernsey has already become alarmed over the use of drones in Missouri and believes that unless their use is restricted, it won’t be long until the government spies on individuals inside their homes.
“It isn’t far-fetched that we could see government agencies deploy drones to spy on individuals and businesses around the state,” he says.
When it comes to the use of surveillance drones, California is facing similar privacy concerns as Missouri. Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern has made a request to purchase a drone for overhead surveillance above his county. Using $31,646 of a $1.2 million grant dispersed by the California Emergency Management Agency, the sheriff wants to purchase the UAV for “search and rescue, pursuing violent felons, pursuing people evading law enforcement and having the air support during a natural disaster to see the safest routes for people to travel in and out of an area,” Ahern said.
Privacy advocates have called for a public discussion about the sheriff’s request, which Ahern postponed, claiming that his drone request is unrelated to the issue of privacy.
Nationwide, about a dozen law enforcement agencies have or are using a drone for surveillance purposes, which the CRS claims is a rising problem.
“Some members of Congress and the public fear there are insufficient safeguards in place to ensure that drones are not used to spy on American citizens and unduly infringe upon their fundamental policy,” the CRS reports.
Drones: From Afghanistan to Your Own Backyard
Drones, phones and other 2012 privacy threats
Lawsuits for Information on Drones
Armed Drones to Patrol Highways by 2025
Homeland Security Wants to Double Predator Drone Fleet
Homeland Security to use small drones to spy on citizens
Drones for sale: Opposition leader wants to buy ‘toys of terror’
Britain to spend £260 million on ‘Eurosur’ spy drone project
Are Universities Turning into Corporate Drone Factories?
George Bush’s Personal Spy Drone
French argue over aerial robot surveillance
Britain Is Now A Surveillance Society
Surveillance Society – the future now
Police agencies want drone sky patrols
No sunshine: Preemptive strike rationale deepens N. Korean status quo
Still, diplomatic exchanges always seem go nowhere, and often end in finger-pointing. Since coming to power earlier this year, South Korean President Park Geun-hye has further entrenched the policies of her deeply unpopular predecessor, Lee Myun-bak, with a harder military stance on Pyongyang. Seoul’s posturing recently culminated in a massive military parade showcasing homemade cruise missiles capable of hitting targets anywhere within North Korea, as well as Israeli-made Spike missiles that have been deployed right on the tense Northern limit line separating the two countries. Seoul plans to spend nearly $1 billion dollars on enhancing its missile defense capabilities over the next year.
Following a recent meeting between Chuck Hagel and the South Korea’s Defense Ministry, the so-called "Tailored Deterrence Strategy" has been rolled out, detailing the protocol for a preemptive strike on North Korea in the event of Pyongyang’s impending usage of WMDs. According to the doctrine, Seoul can employ not only conventional strikes and missile defense capabilities, but also the American nuclear umbrella. Starting from 2014, the US Air Force will begin flying surveillance drones near North Korean borders to gather intelligence data.
Pyongyang hasn’t exactly applauded this news, and has fired back, promising to preempt any strike by attacking first. The scenario is a familiar one – Seoul and Pyongyang armed to the teeth, promising mutually assured destruction and war in one of the world’s most densely populated and economically productive regions.
McCain’s Valentine
Jon Stewart Slams Obama Over Drone Strike Memo America's Global Torture Network Hacker Exposes Bush Family's Private Emails, Photos 'Generalissima Clinton' Expands the Empire 'Left, Right & Center': Drones and the Saturday Mail Shocker |
‘Generalissima Clinton’ Expands the Empire
By Ralph Nader
The Sports Tax
By David Sirota
An Interview with Marjorie Cohn About Targeted Killings
By Dennis Bernstein
Spring Season Soon to Sprout Earlier
By Tim Radford, Climate News Network |
The World Until Yesterday
By Rachel Newcomb |
McCain’s Valentine
Posted on Feb 9, 2013
Click to see more Truthdig Cartoons |
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: The Fight for Election Reform Got Some Huge...
In today's On the News segment: The fight for election reform got some huge support; Ohio Gov. John Kasich has joined the growing list of Republican governors trying to screw poor people in their states; Sen. Bernie Sanders took a stand against corporate greed by introducing his newest piece of legislation, the Corporate Tax Fairness Act; and more.
TRANSCRIPT:
Thom Hartmann here – on the news...
You need to know this. Yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders took a stand against corporate greed, by introducing his newest piece of legislation, the Corporate Tax Fairness Act. And now, Rep. Jan Schakowsky has announced that she too, is fighting in the House to make corporations pay their fair share. The Corporate Tax Fairness Act will stop corporations from sheltering income in the Caymen Islands, and ends tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas. Richard Trumpka, president of AFL-CIO said this legislation "would increase investment, employment, and wages in the United States." According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, this bill would raise more than $590 billion in revenue over the next decade – eliminating the need for nearly half the proposed austerity looming in the sequester. And it's the best way to keep – and create – American jobs. It's time to make corporations pay their fair share for the benefits of using our commons, and for making huge profits off hard-working Americans. Call your senators, and your representative, and tell them to support the Sanders-Schakowsky Corporate Tax Fairness Act.
In screwed news...Ohio Governor John Kasich has joined the growing list of Republican governors trying to screw poor people in their states. Kasich is pushing a plan to reduce income taxes for rich people in his state, and cut the business tax rate in half, while replacing the revenue by raising the state sales tax. This seems to be the newest Republican "screw-the-poor" fad, as Governors in Red States all over our country, like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Dave Heineman of Nebraska, and Sam Brownback of Kansas, are all pushing this regressive tax scheme. As poor and working people typically spend 100% of their disposable income, an increase in sales tax hurts those who can least afford it. As the Think Progress Blog points out, Kasich's plan would raise taxes on the poorest 60% of the states residents, while giving the wealthiest 1% in the state an average tax cut of over $10,000. As state budget cuts are already devastating many of the social programs that poor people in these states rely on, an additional tax increase will only make it more difficult for them to survive. The wealthy don't need more tax breaks. It's time for Republican governors like John Kasich to start working for all of the people in their states - not just their largest campaign donors.
In the best of the rest of the news...
Today, the fight for election reform got some huge support. One of the nation's largest teachers unions, the National Education Association, is pushing President Obama to prioritize protecting our democratic process. In a letter to Obama, NEA president, Van Roekel said, "We must correct this threat to our democracy by ensuring: 1) universal voter registration; 2) equitable administration by state of voting procedures and access to the polls; and 3) that we curb the influence of money in politics that has resulted from the infamous Citizens United decision." That pretty much says it all. Republicans around our nation gave voter-suppression their all in 2012, and already in 2013, we've seen scheme after scheme to rig the next election. It isn't surprising that those responsible for crafting the leaders of our future, recognize the importance of protecting our nation's historic democratic principles. Mr. Roekel's ideas are a great starting point in the fight to protect our democracy... but let's go even further. Take the election-rigging ability away from Republican governors and legislators by moving to a national popular vote. Go toNationalPopularVote.com.
In Australia – unsubsidized renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels. A new study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that wind farms in Australia are supplying energy at $80/MWh, while coal plants are more costly, at $143/MWh. As the chief executive at Bloomberg New Energy Finance said, "The perception that fossil fuels are cheap, and renewables are expensive, is now out of date." It's actually been out of date for a while if you account for all the externalities of fossil fuels – from diseases to war – that are being paid for by taxpayers instead of by oil companies. It's time for a Manhattan Project for renewable energy right here in America.
Seattle residents won't be stalked from the sky. In an announcement today, Mayor Mike McGinn said the Seattle police department will not use two small surveillance drones it obtained through a federal grant. In a brief statement, Mayor McGinn said "I spoke with Seattle Police Chief John Diaz, and we agreed that it was time to end the unmanned aerial vehicle program, so that SPD can focus its resources on public safety and the community building work." This is a huge victory for privacy advocates, who've been protesting the proposed use of drones, as the program would have allowed police to use facial recognition software during surveillance. Seattle is the second city to announce this week that drones won't be spying on residents. On Monday, Charlottesville, Virginia passed a resolution imposing a two-year moratorium on drone use. Our Constitution guarantees the right of privacy, and it's nice to know that some of our leaders still understand that.
And finally...who knew that former President George W. Bush enjoyed painting himself in the nude? The Smoking Gun is in possession of several images it claims were hacked from personal emails belonging to people close with the Bush family. And those emails contain a number of paintings that were allegedly done by the former President himself. Two of the paintings depict Bush bathing – one in the shower and one in the bathtub. A third picture shows Bush hard at work over a canvas painting a church. A hacker names "Guccifer" is claiming responsibility for the stolen emails – and he says there's more to come. It's rumored that Bush plans to sell his painting – and any proceeds will go to his war crimes legal defense fund.
And that's the way it is today – Friday, February 8th, 2013. I'm Thom Hartmann – on the news.
Are All Those Guns and Ammunition for Obama’s Civilian National Security Force?
(Image courtesy of DaleToons)
Speculation abounds surrounding the 2 billion rounds of ammunition purchased by the Department of Homeland Security and other national alphabet agencies in recent years. Moreover, as the White House and their cohorts in Congress contemplate the disarming of American citizens, the very assault weapons purported to be so dangerous in the hands of law abiding gun owners are being purchased in mass quantities by local and federal law enforcement agencies.
So what is the purpose and motivation behind the government’s continued efforts to stockpile so much firepower?
One frightening theory could explain what the President and his national security apparatus are up to.
Many of you will remember a story I broke a long time ago – about presidential candidate Barack Obama’s little-noticed announcement that, if elected in 2008, he wanted to create a “civilian national security force” as big, as strong and as well-funded as the Defense Department.
Here’s what he actually said at a campaign stop in Colorado July 2, 2008:
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
Could what we see happening now in the Department of Homeland Security be the beginning of Obama’s dream and our constitutional nightmare?
We never heard another mention of Obama’s “civilian national security force” again. Not in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 or 2012.
But that brings us up to 2013 and the highly unusual stockpiling of firearms and ammo by Homeland Security – firearms and ammo that Obama would like to deny to ordinary citizens who are not members of his domestic army.
Well, I hate to say it, but I may have predicted this, too.
I wasn’t joking. I was deadly serious – so serious, in fact, that I did something I pledged I would never do: Vote for Mitt Romney. It was a matter of self-defense and self-preservation. I said then that a second term of Obama might mean we would never see another free and fair election in America. (I’m not even sure we saw one in 2012.) I suggested due process would go the way of the horse and buggy. I said I expected Obama would move to shut down or destroy all independent media. I even speculated that his biggest critics would eventually be rounded up in the name of national security.
Think about it.
Why does the civilian Department of Homeland Security need billions of rounds of ammunition?
This is the agency that is responsible for policing the border. But it doesn’t.
This is the agency that is responsible for catching terrorists. But it doesn’t.
So why does Homeland Security need so many weapons and enough hollow-point rounds to plug every American six times?
Excerpted from Josefph Farah of WND
The official explanation?
Target practice.
As for concern about the type of bullets — hollow points, which expand upon impact — the statement said the type is “standard issue” and is used during “mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions.” (link)
While the majority of Americans will take this explanation at face value, there are some key facts that suggest the Department of Homeland Security is mobilizing for a significant future action against the American people.
- The US military has been actively war-gaming worst-case scenarios that include economic collapse and civil unrest, going so far as to simulate wide-scale food riots.
- Just last month the military deployed gunships over Miami and executed a training exercise with local police departments. A few days later, similar exercises were held in Houston, TX. Last year these “exercises” also included ground forces, armored personnel carriers and tanks on the streets of St. Louis.
- Despite overwhelming opposition, there is an overt and focused movement to disarm Americans of their right to bear semi-automatic personal defense rifles and any other firearms deemed dangerous to the public. Those calling for this disarmament qualify their positions by claiming these weapons are not necessary for sporting, hunting, or personal defense. As if this provision of the US Constitution doesn’t even exist, there is a total blackout on the fundamental intent of the Second Amendment, which allows for citizens to bear arms to protect themselves against tyrannical government.
- Heavily armored vehicles have been spotted all over the country, and many local law enforcement agencies have taken possession of these vehicles, normally reserved for military engagements, and have put them to use in neighborhoods and communities around America.
- Congress has authorized the deployment of some 30,000 surveillance drones in the skies of America, to be available for use by intelligence agencies by 2015.
- The National Security Agency is building a massive spy center capable of recording, aggregating and analyzing every digital interaction on the planet – phones, internet, purchasing patterns, travel, and even what we say in the privacy of our own homes. A 30 year veteran of the NSA says the data mining program is so vast it will “create an Orwellian state.”
- The US government, in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, has created legislation that directly targets American citizens. The Patriot Act makes it possible for anyone who is identified as attempting to subvert government legitimacy as a terrorist, and also allows for the warrantless wiretapping of everyone for any reason. Under the Patriot Act and expanded government definitions, just about anyone now qualifies as a domestic terrorist.
- The National Defense Authorization Act takes the Patriot Act even further, allowing the government to detain anyone suspected of being a terrorist indefinitely and without trial – this includes American citizens living in the United States.
- And, as Joseph Farah points out, the President specifically claimed he would create a civilian national security police force as large as the US military. If he meant it, then we’re talking about 2 million or so civilians that will be armed, deputized and backed by the government. To do what? We’re not quite sure, but apparently we need these civilians for something important, or else the President wouldn’t have brought it up.
These are but a few examples of what our government has been up to. There are hundreds of others.
Now put all those together and the complete puzzle begins to emerge.
This surveillance infrastructure and control grid are being designed not for foreign terrorists or rogue nations that may do harm to America. They have been designed for you.
You, my fellow American, are the enemy.
Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 31,925 people
Date: February 4th, 2013
Website: www.SHTFplan.com
Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.
Are All Those Guns and Ammunition for Obama’s Civilian National Security Force?
(Image courtesy of DaleToons)
Speculation abounds surrounding the 2 billion rounds of ammunition purchased by the Department of Homeland Security and other national alphabet agencies in recent years. Moreover, as the White House and their cohorts in Congress contemplate the disarming of American citizens, the very assault weapons purported to be so dangerous in the hands of law abiding gun owners are being purchased in mass quantities by local and federal law enforcement agencies.
So what is the purpose and motivation behind the government’s continued efforts to stockpile so much firepower?
One frightening theory could explain what the President and his national security apparatus are up to.
Many of you will remember a story I broke a long time ago – about presidential candidate Barack Obama’s little-noticed announcement that, if elected in 2008, he wanted to create a “civilian national security force” as big, as strong and as well-funded as the Defense Department.
Here’s what he actually said at a campaign stop in Colorado July 2, 2008:
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
Could what we see happening now in the Department of Homeland Security be the beginning of Obama’s dream and our constitutional nightmare?
We never heard another mention of Obama’s “civilian national security force” again. Not in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 or 2012.
But that brings us up to 2013 and the highly unusual stockpiling of firearms and ammo by Homeland Security – firearms and ammo that Obama would like to deny to ordinary citizens who are not members of his domestic army.
Well, I hate to say it, but I may have predicted this, too.
I wasn’t joking. I was deadly serious – so serious, in fact, that I did something I pledged I would never do: Vote for Mitt Romney. It was a matter of self-defense and self-preservation. I said then that a second term of Obama might mean we would never see another free and fair election in America. (I’m not even sure we saw one in 2012.) I suggested due process would go the way of the horse and buggy. I said I expected Obama would move to shut down or destroy all independent media. I even speculated that his biggest critics would eventually be rounded up in the name of national security.
Think about it.
Why does the civilian Department of Homeland Security need billions of rounds of ammunition?
This is the agency that is responsible for policing the border. But it doesn’t.
This is the agency that is responsible for catching terrorists. But it doesn’t.
So why does Homeland Security need so many weapons and enough hollow-point rounds to plug every American six times?
Excerpted from Josefph Farah of WND
The official explanation?
Target practice.
As for concern about the type of bullets — hollow points, which expand upon impact — the statement said the type is “standard issue” and is used during “mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions.” (link)
While the majority of Americans will take this explanation at face value, there are some key facts that suggest the Department of Homeland Security is mobilizing for a significant future action against the American people.
- The US military has been actively war-gaming worst-case scenarios that include economic collapse and civil unrest, going so far as to simulate wide-scale food riots.
- Just last month the military deployed gunships over Miami and executed a training exercise with local police departments. A few days later, similar exercises were held in Houston, TX. Last year these “exercises” also included ground forces, armored personnel carriers and tanks on the streets of St. Louis.
- Despite overwhelming opposition, there is an overt and focused movement to disarm Americans of their right to bear semi-automatic personal defense rifles and any other firearms deemed dangerous to the public. Those calling for this disarmament qualify their positions by claiming these weapons are not necessary for sporting, hunting, or personal defense. As if this provision of the US Constitution doesn’t even exist, there is a total blackout on the fundamental intent of the Second Amendment, which allows for citizens to bear arms to protect themselves against tyrannical government.
- Heavily armored vehicles have been spotted all over the country, and many local law enforcement agencies have taken possession of these vehicles, normally reserved for military engagements, and have put them to use in neighborhoods and communities around America.
- Congress has authorized the deployment of some 30,000 surveillance drones in the skies of America, to be available for use by intelligence agencies by 2015.
- The National Security Agency is building a massive spy center capable of recording, aggregating and analyzing every digital interaction on the planet – phones, internet, purchasing patterns, travel, and even what we say in the privacy of our own homes. A 30 year veteran of the NSA says the data mining program is so vast it will “create an Orwellian state.”
- The US government, in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, has created legislation that directly targets American citizens. The Patriot Act makes it possible for anyone who is identified as attempting to subvert government legitimacy as a terrorist, and also allows for the warrantless wiretapping of everyone for any reason. Under the Patriot Act and expanded government definitions, just about anyone now qualifies as a domestic terrorist.
- The National Defense Authorization Act takes the Patriot Act even further, allowing the government to detain anyone suspected of being a terrorist indefinitely and without trial – this includes American citizens living in the United States.
- And, as Joseph Farah points out, the President specifically claimed he would create a civilian national security police force as large as the US military. If he meant it, then we’re talking about 2 million or so civilians that will be armed, deputized and backed by the government. To do what? We’re not quite sure, but apparently we need these civilians for something important, or else the President wouldn’t have brought it up.
These are but a few examples of what our government has been up to. There are hundreds of others.
Now put all those together and the complete puzzle begins to emerge.
This surveillance infrastructure and control grid are being designed not for foreign terrorists or rogue nations that may do harm to America. They have been designed for you.
You, my fellow American, are the enemy.
Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 18,138 people
Date: February 4th, 2013
Website: www.SHTFplan.com
Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.
Obama’s Geopolitical China ‘Pivot’: The Pentagon Targets China
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the nominal end of the Cold War some twenty years back, rather than reducing the size of its mammoth defense spending, the US Congress and all US Presidents have enormously expanded spending for new weapons systems, increased permanent military bases around the world and expansion of NATO not only to former Warsaw Pact countries on Russia’s immediate periphery; it also has expanded NATO and US military presence deep into Asia on the perimeters of China through its conduct of the Afghan war and related campaigns.
Part I The Pentagon Targets China
On the basis of simple dollar outlays for military spending, the US Pentagon combined budget, leaving aside the huge budgets for such national security and defense-related agencies of US Government as the Department of Energy and US Treasury and other agencies, the US Department of Defense spent some $739 billion in 2011 on its military requirements. Were all other spending that is tied to US defense and national security included, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates an annual military spending of over $1 trillion by the United States. That is an amount greater than the total defense-related spending of the next 42 nations combined, and more than the Gross Domestic Product of most nations.
China officially spent barely 10% of the US outlay on its defense, some $90 billions, or, if certain defense-related arms import and other costs are included, perhaps $111 billion a year. Even if the Chinese authorities do not publish complete data on such sensitive areas, it is clear China spends a mere fraction of the USA and is starting from a military-technology base far behind the USA.
China today, because of its dynamic economic growth and its determination to pursue sovereign Chinese national interests, merely because China exists, is becoming the Pentagon new “enemy image,” now replacing the earlier “enemy image” of Islam used after September 2001 by the Bush-Cheney Administration to justify the Pentagon’s global power pursuit, or that of Soviet Communism during the Cold War. The new US military posture against China has nothing to do with any aggressive threat from the side of China. The Pentagon has decided to escalate its aggressive military posture to China merely because China has become a strong vibrant independent pole in world economics and geopolitics. Only vassal states need apply to Washington’s globalized world.
Obama Doctrine: China is the new ‘enemy image’
After almost two decades of neglect of its interests in East Asia, in 2011, the Obama Administration announced that the US would make “a strategic pivot” in its foreign policy to focus its military and political attention on the Asia-Pacific, particularly Southeast Asia, that is, China. The term “strategic pivot” is a page out of the classic textbook from the father of British geopolitics, Sir Halford Mackinder, who spoke at various times of Russia and later China as “pivot powers” whose geographical and geopolitical position posed unique challenges toAnglo-Saxon and after 1945, to American hegemony.
During the final months of 2011 the Obama Administration clearly defined a new public military threat doctrine for US military readiness in the wake of the US military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. During a Presidential trip to the Far East, while in Australia, the US President unveiled what is being termed the Obama Doctrine.[1]
Obama told the Australians then:
With most of the world’s nuclear power and some half of humanity, Asia will largely define whether the century ahead will be marked by conflict or cooperation…As President, I have, therefore, made a deliberate and strategic decision — as a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future…I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority…As we plan and budget for the future, we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region. We will preserve our unique ability to project power and deter threats to peace…Our enduring interests in the region demand our enduring presence in the region.
The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay. Indeed, we are already modernizing America’s defense posture across the Asia Pacific. It will be more broadly distributed — maintaining our strong presence in Japan and the Korean Peninsula, while enhancing our presence in Southeast Asia. Our posture will be more flexible — with new capabilities to ensure that our forces can operate freely .. I believe we can address shared challenges, such as proliferation and maritime security, including cooperation in the South China Sea.[2]
The centerpiece of Obama’s visit was the announcement that at least 2,500 elite US Marines will be stationed in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory. In addition, in a series of significant parallel agreements, discussions with Washington were underway to fly long-range American surveillance drones from the remote Cocos Islands — an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. Also the US will gain greater use of Australian Air Force bases for American aircraft and increased ship and submarine visits to the Indian Ocean through a naval base outside Perth, on the country’s west coast.
The Pentagon’s target is China.
To make the point clear to European members of NATO, in remarks to fellow NATO members in Washington in July 2012, Phillip Hammond, the UK Secretary of State for Defense declared explicitly that the new US defense shift to the Asia-Pacific region was aimed squarely at China. Hammond said that, “the rising strategic importance of the Asia-Pacific region requires all countries, but particularly the United States, to reflect in their strategic posture the emergence of China as a global power. Far from being concerned about the tilt to Asia-Pacific, the European NATO powers should welcome the fact that the US is willing to engage in this new strategic challenge on behalf of the alliance.” [3]
As with many of its operations, the Pentagon deployment is far deeper than the relatively small number of 2,500 new US soldiers might suggest.
In August 2011 the Pentagon presented its annual report on China’s military. It stated that China had closed key technological gaps. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for East Asia, Michael Schiffer, said that the pace and scope of China’s military investments had “allowed China to pursue capabilities that we believe are potentially destabilizing to regional military balances, increase the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation and may contribute to regional tensions and anxieties.” [4] He cited Chinese refurbishing of a Soviet-era aircraft carrier and China’s development of its J20 Stealth Fighter as indications of the new capability requiring a more active US military response. Schiffer also cited China’s space and cyber operations, saying it was “developing a multi-dimensional program to improve its capabilities to limit or prevent the use of space-based assets by adversaries during times of crisis or conflict.” [5]
Part II: Pentagon’s ‘Air-Sea Battle’
The Pentagon strategy to defeat China in a coming war, details of which have filtered into the US press, is called “Air-Sea Battle.” This calls for an aggressive coordinated US attack. US stealth bombers and submarines would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar and precision missile systems deep inside the country. This initial “blinding campaign” would be followed by a larger air and naval assault on China itself.[6] Crucial to the advanced pentagon strategy, deployment of which has already quietly begun, is US military navy and air presence in Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam and across the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. Australian troop and naval deployment is aimed at accessing the strategic Chinese South China Sea as well as the Indian Ocean. The stated motive is to “protect freedom of navigation” in the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea. In reality it is to be positioned to cut China’s strategic oil routes in event of full conflict.
Air-Sea Battle’s goal is to help US forces withstand an initial Chinese assault and counterattack to destroy sophisticated Chinese radar and missile systems built to keep US ships away from China’s coastline.[7]
US ‘Air-Sea Battle’ against China
In addition to the stationing of the US Marines in the north of Australia, Washington plans to fly long-range American surveillance drones from the remote Cocos Islands — an Australian territory in the strategically vital Indian Ocean. Also it will have use of Australian Air Force bases for American military aircraft and increased ship and submarine visits to the Indian Ocean through a naval base outside Perth, on Australia’s west coast.[8]
The architect of the Pentagon anti-China strategy of Air-Sea battle is Andrew Marshall, the man who has shaped Pentagon advanced warfare strategy for more than 40 years and among whose pupils were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. [9] Since the 1980s Marshall has been a promoter of an idea first posited in 1982 by Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, then chief of the Soviet general staff, called RMA, or ‘Revolution in Military Affairs.’ Marshall, today at the ripe age of 91, still holds his desk and evidently very much influence inside the Pentagon.
The best definition of RMA was the one provided by Marshall himself: “A Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is a major change in the nature of warfare brought about by the innovative application of new technologies which, combined with dramatic changes in military doctrine and operational and organizational concepts, fundamentally alters the character and conduct of military operations.” [10]
It was also Andrew Marshall who convinced US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his successor Robert Gates to deploy the Ballistic Missile “defense” Shield in Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Japan as a strategy to minimize any potential nuclear threat from Russia and, in the case of Japan’s BMD, any potential nuclear threat from China.
PART III: ‘String of Pearls’ Strategy of Pentagon
In January 2005, Andrew Marshall issued a classified internal report to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld titled “Energy Futures in Asia.” The Marshall report, which was leaked in full to a Washington newspaper, invented the term “string of pearls” strategy to describe what it called the growing Chinese military threat to “US strategic interests” in the Asian space.[11]
The internal Pentagon report claimed that “China is building strategic relationships along the sea lanes from the Middle East to the South China Sea in ways that suggest defensive and offensive positioning to protect China’s energy interests, but also to serve broad security objectives.”
In the Pentagon Andrew Marshall report, the term China’s “String of Pearls” Strategy was used for the first time. It is a Pentagon term and not a Chinese term.
The report stated that China was adopting a “string of pearls” strategy of bases and diplomatic ties stretching from the Middle East to southern China that includes a new naval base under construction at the Pakistani port of Gwadar. It claimed that “Beijing already has set up electronic eavesdropping posts at Gwadar in the country’s southwest corner, the part nearest the Persian Gulf. The post is monitoring ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea.” [12]
The Marshall internal report went on to warn of other “pearls” in the sea-lane strategy of China:
• Bangladesh: China is strengthening its ties to the government and building a container port facility at Chittagong. The Chinese are “seeking much more extensive naval and commercial access” in Bangladesh.
• Burma: China has developed close ties to the military regime in Rangoon and turned a nation wary of China into a “satellite” of Beijing close to the Strait of Malacca, through which 80 percent of China’s imported oil passes. China is building naval bases in Burma and has electronic intelligence gathering facilities on islands in the Bay of Bengal and near the Strait of Malacca. Beijing also supplied Burma with “billions of dollars in military assistance to support a de facto military alliance,” the report said.
• Cambodia: China signed a military agreement in November 2003 to provide training and equipment. Cambodia is helping Beijing build a railway line from southern China to the sea.
• South China Sea: Chinese activities in the region are less about territorial claims than “protecting or denying the transit of tankers through the South China Sea,” the report said. China also is building up its military forces in the region to be able to “project air and sea power” from the mainland and Hainan Island. China recently upgraded a military airstrip on Woody Island and increased its presence through oil drilling platforms and ocean survey ships.
• Thailand: China is considering funding construction of a $20 billion canal across the Kra Isthmus that would allow ships to bypass the Strait of Malacca. The canal project would give China port facilities, warehouses and other infrastructure in Thailand aimed at enhancing Chinese influence in the region, the report said… The U.S. military’s Southern Command produced a similar classified report in the late 1990s that warned that China was seeking to use commercial port facilities around the world to control strategic “chokepoints.” [13]
Breaking the String of Pearls
Significant Pentagon and US actions since that 2005 report have been aimed to counter China’s attempts to defend its energy security via that “String of Pearls.” The US interventions since 2007 into Burma/Myanmar have had two phases.
The first was the so-called Saffron Revolution, a US State Department and CIA-backed destabilization in 2007 aimed at putting the international spotlight on the Myanmar military dictatorship’s human rights practices. The aim was to further isolate the strategically located country internationally from all economic relations, aside from China. The background to the US actions was China’s construction of oil and gas pipelines from Kunming in China’s southwest Yunnan Province, across the old Burma Road across Myanmar to the Bay of Bengal across from India and Bangladesh in the northern Indian Ocean.
Forcing Burma’s military leaders into tighter dependency on China was one of the factors triggering the decision of the Myanmar military to open up economically to the West. They declared that the tightening of US economic sanctions had done the country great harm and President Thein Sein made his major liberalization opening, as well as allowing US-backed dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi, to be free and to run for elective office with her party, in return for promises from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of US investment in the country and possible easing of US economic sanctions. [14]
The US corporations approaching Burma are hand-picked by Washington to introduce the most destructive “free market” reforms that will open Myanmar to instability. The United States will not allow investment in entities owned by Myanmar’s armed forces or its Ministry of Defense. It also is able to place sanctions on “those who undermine the reform process, engage in human rights abuses, contribute to ethnic conflict or participate in military trade with North Korea.” The United States will block businesses or individuals from making transactions with any “specially designated nationals” or businesses that they control — allowing Washington, for example, to stop money from flowing to groups “disrupting the reform process.” It’s the classic “carrot and stick” approach, dangling the carrot of untold riches if Burma opens its economy to US corporations and punishing those who try to resist the takeover of the country’s prize assets. Oil and gas, vital to China, will be a special target of US intervention. American companies and people will be allowed to invest in the state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise.[15]
Obama also created a new power for the government to impose “blocking sanctions” on any individual threatening peace in Myanmar. Businesses with more than $500,000 in investment in the country will need to file an annual report with the State Department, with details on workers’ rights, land acquisitions and any payments of more than $10,000 to government entities, including Myanmar’s state-owned enterprises.
American companies and people will be allowed to invest in the state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, but any investors will need to notify the State Department within 60 days.
As well, US “human rights” NGOs, many closely associated with or believed to be associated with US State Department geopolitical designs, including Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Institute for Asian Democracy, Open Society Foundations, Physicians for Human Rights, U.S. Campaign for Burma, United to End Genocide— will now be allowed to operate inside Myanmar according to a decision by State Secretary Clinton in April 2012.[16]
Thailand, another key in China’s defensive String of Pearl Strategy has also been subject of intense destabilization over the past several years. Now with the sister of a corrupt former Prime Minister in office, US-Thai relations have significantly improved.
After months of bloody clashes, the US-backed billionaire, Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra , managed to buy the way to put his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra in as Prime Minister, with him reportedly pulling the policy strings from abroad. Thaksin himself was enjoying comfortable status in the US as of this writing, in summer 2012.
US relations with Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, are moving in direct fulfillment of the Obama “strategic pivot” to focus on the “China threat.” In June 2012, General Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, after returning from a visit this month to Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore stated: “We want to be out there partnered with nations and have a rotational presence that would allow us to build up common capabilities for common interests.” This is precisely key beads in what the Pentagon calls the String of Pearls.
The Pentagon is now quietly negotiating to return to bases abandoned after the Vietnam War. It is negotiating with the Thai government to create a new “disaster relief” hub at the Royal Thai Navy Air Field at U-Tapao, 90 miles south of Bangkok.
The US military built the two mile long runway there, one of Asia’s longest, in the 1960s as a major staging and refueling base during the Vietnam War.
The Pentagon is also working to secure more rights to US Navy visits to Thai ports and joint surveillance flights to monitor trade routes and military movements. The US Navy will soon base four of its newest warships — Littoral Combat Ships — in Singapore and would rotate them periodically to Thailand and other southeast Asian countries. The Navy is pursuing options to conduct joint airborne surveillance missions from Thailand.[17]
In addition, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter went to Thailand in July 2012 and the Thai government has invited Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who met with the Thai minister of defense at a conference in Singapore in June.[18]
In 2014, the US Navy is scheduled to begin deploying new P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance and anti-submarine aircraft to the Pacific, replacing the P-3C Orion surveillance planes. The Navy is also preparing to deploy new high-altitude surveillance drones to the Asia-Pacific region around the same time. [19]
PART IV: India-US Defense ‘Look East Policy’
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was in India in June of this year where he proclaimed that defence cooperation with India is the lynchpin of US security strategy in Asia. He pledged to help develop India’s military capabilities and to engage with India in joint production of defence “articles” of high technology. Panetta was thr fifth Obama Cabinet secretary to visit India this year. The message that they have all brought is that, for the US, India will be the major relationship of the 21st century. The reason is China’s emergence. [20]
Several years ago during the Bush Administration, Washington made a major move to lock India in as a military ally of the US against the emerging Chinese presence in Asia. India calls it India’s “Look East Policy.” In reality, despite all claims to the contrary, it is a “look at China” military policy.
In comments in August 2012, Deputy Secretary of defense Ashton Carter stated, “India is also key part of our rebalance to the Asia-Pacific, and, we believe, to the broader security and prosperity of the 21st century. The US-India relationship is global in scope, like the reach and influence of both countries.” [21] In 2011, the US military conducted more than 50 significant military activities with India.
Carter continued in remarks following a trip to New Delhi, “Our security interests converge: on maritime security, across the Indian Ocean region; in Afghanistan, where India has done so much for economic development and the Afghan security forces; and on broader regional issues, where we share long-term interests. I went to India at the request of Secretary Panetta and with a high-level delegation of U S technical and policy experts.” [22]
Indian Ocean
The Pentagon “String of pearls” strategy against China in effect is not one of beautiful pearls, but a hangman’s noose around the perimeter of China, designed in the event of major conflict to completely cut China off from its access to vital raw materials, most especially oil from the Persian Gulf and Africa.
Former Pentagon adviser Robert D. Kaplan, now with Stratfor, has noted that the Indian Ocean is becoming the world’s “strategic center of gravity” and who controls that center, controls Eurasia, including China. The Ocean is the vital waterway passage for energy and trade flows between the Middle East and China and Far Eastern countries. More strategically, it is the heart of a developing south-south economic axis between China and Africa and Latin America.
Since 1997 trade between China and Africa has risen more than twenty-fold and trade with Latin America, including Brazil, has risen fourteen fold in only ten years. This dynamic, if allowed to continue, will eclipse the economic size of the European Union as well as the declining North American industrial economies in less than a decade. That is a development that Washington circles and Wall Street are determined to prevent at all costs.
Straddled by the Islamic Arch–which stretches from Somalia to Indonesia, passing through the countries of the Gulf and Central Asia– the region surrounding the Indian Ocean has certainly become the world’s new strategic center of gravity.[23]
No rival economic bloc can be allowed to challenge American hegemony. Former Obama geopolitical adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a student of Mackinder geopolitics and still today along with Henry Kissinger one of the most influential persons in the US power establishment, summed up the position as seen from Washington in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and It’s Geostrategic Imperatives:
It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geo-strategy is therefore the purpose of this book. [24]
For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia…. America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained. [25]
In that context, how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources. [26]
The Indian Ocean is crowned by what some call an Islamic Arch of countries stretching from East Africa to Indonesia by way of the Persian Gulf countries and Central Asia. The emergence of China and other much smaller Asian powers over the past two decades since the end of the Cold war has challenged US hegemony over the Indian Ocean for the first time since the beginning of the Cold War. Especially in the past years as American economic influence has precipitously declined globally and that of China has risen spectacularly, the Pentagon has begun to rethink its strategic presence in the Indian Ocean. The Obama ‘Asian Pivot’ is centered on asserting decisive Pentagon control over the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean and the waters of the South China Sea.
The US military base at Okinawa, Japan is being rebuilt as a major center to project US military power towards China. As of 2010 there were over 35,000 US military personnel stationed in Japan and another 5,500 American civilians employed there by the United States Department of Defense. The United States Seventh Fleet is based in Yokosuka. The 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force in Okinawa. 130 USAF fighters are stationed in the Misawa Air Base and Kadena Air Base.
The Japanese government in 2011 began an armament program designed to counter the perceived growing Chinese threat. The Japanese command has urged their leaders to petition the United States to allow the sale of F-22A Raptor fighter jets, currently illegal under U.S law. South Korean and American military have deepened their strategic alliance and over 45,000 American soldiers are now stationed in South Korea. The South Koreans and Americans claim this is due to the North Korean military’s modernization. China and North Korea denounce it as needlessly provocative.[27]
Under the cover of the US war on Terrorism, the US has developed major military agreements with the Philippines as well as with Indonesia’s army.
The military base on Diego Garcia is the lynchpin of US control over the Indian Ocean. In 1971 the US military depopulated the citizens of Diego Garcia to build a major military installation there to carry out missions against Iraq and Afghanistan.
China has two Achilles heels—the Straits of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Malacca near Singapore. Some 20% of China oil passes through the Straits of Hormuz. And some 80% of Chinese oil imports pass through the Strait of Malacca as well as major freight trade.
To prevent China from emerging successfully as the major economic competitor of the United States in the world, Washington launched the so-called Arab Spring in late 2010. While the aspirations of millions of ordinary Arab citizens in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and elsewhere for freedom and democracy was real, they were in effect used as unwitting cannon fodder to unleash a US strategy of chaos and intra-islamic wars and conflicts across the entire oil-rich Islamic world from Libya in North Africa across to Syria and ultimately Iran in the Middle East. [28]
The US strategy within the Islamic Arch countries straddling the Indian Ocean is, as Mohamed Hassan, a strategic analyst put it thus:
The US is…seeking to control these resources to prevent them reaching China. This was a major objective of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but these have turned into a fiasco. The US destroyed these countries in order to set up governments there which would be docile, but they have failed. The icing on the cake is that the new Iraqi and Afghan government trade with China! Beijing has therefore not needed to spend billions of dollars on an illegal war in order to get its hands on Iraq’s black gold: Chinese companies simply bought up oil concessions at auction totally within the rules.
[T]he USA’s…strategy has failed all along the line. There is nevertheless one option still open to the US: maintaining chaos in order to prevent these countries from attaining stability for the benefit of China. This means continuing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and extending it to countries such as Iran, Yemen or Somalia.[29]
PART V: South China Sea
The completion of the Pentagon “String of Pearls” hangman’s noose around China to cut off vital energy and other imports in event of war by 2012 was centered around the increased US manipulation of events in the South China Sea. The Ministry of Geological Resources and Mining of the People’s Republic of China estimated that the South China Sea may contain 18 billion tons of crude oil (compared to Kuwait with 13 billion tons). The most optimistic estimate suggested that potential oil resources (not proved reserves) of the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea could be as high as 105 billion barrels of oil, and that the total for the South China Sea could be as high as 213 billion barrels. [30]
The presence of such vast energy reserves has not surprisingly become a major energy security issue for China. Washington has made a calculated intervention in the past several years to sabotage those Chinese interests, using especially Vietnam as a wedge against Chinese oil exploration there. In July 2012 the National Assembly of Vietnam passed a law demarcating Vietnamese sea borders to include the Spratly and Paracel islands. US influence in Vietnam since the country opened to economic liberalization has become decisive.
In 2011 the US military began cooperation with Vietnam, including joint “peaceful” military exercises. Washington has backed both The Philippines and Vietnam in their territorial claims over Chinese-claimed territories in the South China Sea, emboldening those small countries not to seek a diplomatic resolution.[31]
In 2010 US and UK oil majors entered the bidding for exploration in the South China Sea. The bid by Chevron and BP added to the presence of US-based Anadarko Petroleum Corporation in the region. That move is essential to give Washington the pretext to “defend us oil interests” in the area. [32]
In April 2012, the Philippine warship Gregorio del Pilar was involved in a standoff with two Chinese surveillance vessels in the Scarborough Shoal, an area claimed by both nations. The Philippine navy had been trying to arrest Chinese fishermen who were allegedly taking government-protected marine species from the area, but the surveillance boats prevented them. On April 14, 2012, U.S. and the Philippines held their yearly exercises in Palawan, Philippines. On May 7, 2012, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying called a meeting with Alex Chua, Charge D’affaires of the Philippine Embassy in China, to make a serious representation over the incident at the Scarborough Shoal.
From South Korea to Philippines to Vietnam, the Pentagon and US State Department is fanning the clash over rights to the South China Sea to stealthily insert US military presence there to “defend” Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean or Philippine interests. The military hangman’s noose around China is being slowly drawn tighter.
While China’s access to vast resources of offshore conventional oil and gas were being restricted, Washington was actively trying to lure China into massive pursuit of exploitation of shale gas inside China. The reasons had nothing to do with US goodwill towards China. It was in fact another major weapon in the destruction of China, now through a form of environmental warfare.
F. William Engdahl author of, Es klebt Blut an Euren Händen (FinanzBuchVerlag)
Notes:
[1] President Barack Obama, Remarks By President Obama to the Australian Parliament, November 17, 2011, accessed in
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australian-parliament.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Otto Kreisher, UK Defense Chief to NATO: Pull Your Weight in Europe While US Handles China, July 22, 2012, accessed in
http://defense.aol.com/2012/07/19/uk-defense-chief-to-nato-pull-your-weight-in-europe-while-us-ha/?icid=related4 .
[4] BBC, China military ‘closing key gaps’, says Pentagon, 25 August 2011, accessed in http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14661027 .
[5] Ibid.
[6] Greg Jaffe , US Model for a Future War Fans Tensions with China and inside Pentagon, Washington Post, August 2, 2012, accessed in
http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/139681/us-model-for-a-future-war-fans-tensions-with-china-and-inside-pentagon.html.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Matt Siegel, As Part of Pact, U.S. Marines Arrive in Australia, in China’s Strategic Backyard, The New York Times,
April 4, 2012, accessed in http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/world/asia/us-marines-arrive-darwin-australia.html.
[9] Greg Jaffe, op. cit.
[10] F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totallitarian democracy in the New World Order, Wiesbaden, 2009, edition.engdahl, p. 190.
[11] The Washington Times, China Builds up Strategic Sea Lanes, January 17, 2005, accessed in http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/jan/17/20050117-115550-1929r/?page=all#pagebreak
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Wall Street Journal, An Opening in Burma: The regime’s tentative liberalization is worth testing for sincerity,
Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2011, accessed in
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204443404577049964259425018.html
[15] Radio Free Asia, US to Invest in Burma’s Oil, 7 November, 2011, accessed in
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/burma/sanctions-07112012185817.html
[16] Shaun Tandon, US eases Myanmar restrictions for NGOs, AFP, April 17, 2012, accessed in
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jmwmJ3e0yIjyD-7N52GAFISnweAA?docId=CNG.a8c1c3e2edf92a30cc1b3c9bd5ed11c1.131
[17] Craig Whitlock, U.S. eyes return to some Southeast Asia military bases, Washington Post, June 23, 2012, accessed in
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-seeks-return-to-se-asian-bases/2012/06/22/gJQAKP83vV_story.html
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Premvir Das, Taking US-India defence links to the next level, June 18, 2012, accessed in http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-taking-us-india-defence-links-to-the-next-level/20120618.htm
[21] Zeenews, US-India ties are global in scope: Pentagon, August 02, 2012, accessed in
http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/us-india-ties-are-global-in-scope-pentagon_791212.html
[22] Ibid.
[23] Gregoire Lalieu, Michael Collon, Is the Fate of the World Being Decided Today in the Indian Ocean?, November 3, 2010, accessed in
http://www.michelcollon.info/Is-the-fate-of-the-world-being.html?lang=fr
[24] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives, 1997, Basic Books, p. xiv.
[25] Ibid., p. 30.
[26] Ibid., p. 31.
[27] Cas Group, Background on the South China Sea Crisis, accessed in
http://casgroup.fiu.edu/pages/docs/3907/1326143354_South_China_Sea_Guide.pdf
[28] Gregoire Lalieu,, et al, op. cit.
[29] Ibid.
[30] GlobalSecurity.org, South China Sea Oil and Natural Gas, accessed in
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/spratly-oil.htm
[31] Agence France Presse, US, Vietnam Start Military Relationship, August 1, 2011, accessed in
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20110801/DEFSECT03/108010307/U-S-Vietnam-Start-Military-Relationship
[32] Zacks Equity Research, Oil Majors Eye South China Sea, June 24, 2010, accessed in www.zacks.com/stock/news/36056/Oil+Majors+Eye+South…
Groups Slam Senate Immigration Plan for Privacy Violations
Civil liberties organizations are raising flags about the proposed immigration reform framework being unveiled on Monday by a bipartisan Senate working group saying that the plan includes provisions that endanger personal freedoms for all US citizens.
Recent polls show that the majority of Americans support fair immigration reform. (Photo: Shell Photographics/SEIU Int'l via Flickr) The purported "tough but fair path to citizenship” mandates the increased use of employment verification systems, which is causing alarm considering the notoriously error-prone record (.pdf) of the current E-Verify system.
“The outline’s call for employers to be mandated to use E-Verify, an expensive electronic employment-verification system, is a thinly-disguised national ID requirement that undermines the privacy of every American worker while imposing new burdens on businesses. Mandatory E-Verify would not only lead to discrimination against those who look or sound “foreign,” but also increase the risk of identity theft and make it harder to get a job,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU.
Critics also point out the system's record of frequent false-positives "that can cost Americans and legal permanent residents their jobs."
“The...plan is the beginning, not the end, of the discussion on immigration reform,” said ACLU legislative counsel Joanne Lin. She added, “We urge the passage of a roadmap that is just, humane and fair."
The Huffington Post outlines some of the other key components of the proposed "enforcement force, green cards second" reform framework, which includes the increased use of surveillance drones as part of enhanced border security.
The bipartisan Senate working group—which includes: Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Michael Bennet (D-Co.) Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), John McCain (R-Az.) and Jeff Flake (R-Az.)—will reveal the details of their plan at a press conference Monday afternoon.
Congo’s M23 Conflict: Rebellion or Resource War?
M23 rebels in DR Congo have threatened to march to the capital and depose the government. UN reports confirm that rebels receive support from key US allies in the region, and Washington’s role in the conflict has become difficult to ignore. Instability, lawlessness and violence are nothing new to those who live in the troubled eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An
Congolese have perished since 1996 in a spate of ceaseless military conflicts that have long gripped this severely-overlooked and underreported region. In late November 2012, members of the M23 rebel group invaded and took control of Goma, a strategic provincial capital in North Kivu state with a population of 1 million people, with the declared purpose of marching to the nation’s capital, Kinshasa, to depose the ruling government. M23′s president, Jean Marie Runiga, later agreed to withdraw only if the ruling President Joseph Kabila listened to the group’s grievances and adhered to their demands. Rebel leaders have threatened to abandon peace talks unless Kinshasa signs an official ceasefire, a demand the government dismissed as unnecessary.
Kinshasa called on M23 to respect previous agreements to withdraw 20km outside of Goma in a move to prevent the region falling back into war after two decades of conflict, fought largely over the DRC’s vast wealth of copper, cobalt diamonds, gold and coltan. The United Nation’s peacekeeping mission in DR Congo has come under fire for allowing M23 to take Goma without firing a single shot, despite the presence of 19,000 UN troops in the country. The UN’s Congo mission is its largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation, costing over US$1 billion a year. UN forces recently announced they would introduce the use of surveillance drones over the DRC, in addition to imposing a travel ban and asset freeze on M23 leader Jean-Marie Runiga and Lt. Col. Eric Badege. A confidential 44-page report issued by a United Nations panel accused the governments of neighboring Rwanda and Uganda of supporting M23 with weapons, ammunition and Rwandan military personnel. Despite both nations denying these accusations, the governments of the United States, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands have publicly suspended military aid and developmental assistance to Rwanda. The governments of both Rwanda and Uganda, led by President Paul Kagame and President Yoweri Museveni respectively, have long been staunch American allies and the recipients of millions in military aid.
M23 President Jean-Marie Runiga (2nd R) arrives to address the media in Bunagana in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.(Reuters / James Akena)
Historical precedent
The DRC has suffered immensely during its history of foreign plunder and colonial occupation; it maintains the second-lowest GDP per capita despite possessing an estimated $24 trillion in untapped raw minerals deposits. During the Congo Wars of the 1996 to 2003, the United States provided training and arms to Rwandan and Ugandan militias who later invaded the Congo’s eastern provinces where M23 are currently active. In addition to enriching various Western multinational corporations, the regimes of Kagame in Rwanda and Museveni in Uganda both profited immensely from the plunder of Congolese conflict minerals such as cassiterite, wolframite, coltan (from which niobium and tantalum are derived) and gold; the DRC holds more than 30 per cent of the world’s diamond reserves and 80 per cent of the world’s coltan.
In 1990, civil war raged between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups in neighboring Rwanda; Washington sought to overthrow the 20-year reign of then-President Juvénal Habyarimana (a Hutu) by installing a Tutsi client regime. At the time, prior to the outbreak of the Rwandan civil war, the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), led by the current president, was part of Uganda’s United People’s Defense Forces (UPDF). Kagame, who received training at the US Army Command and Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas, invaded Rwanda in 1990 from Uganda under the pretext of liberating the Tutsi population from Hutu subjugation. Kagame’s forces defeated the Hutu government in Kigali and installed himself as head of a minority Tutsi regime in Rwanda, prompting the exodus of 2 million Hutu refugees (many of whom took part in the genocide) to UN-run camps in Congo’s North and South Kivu provinces.
Following Kagame’s consolidation of power in Rwanda, a large invasion force of Rwandan Tutsis arrived in North and South Kivu in 1996 under the pretext of pursuing Hutu militant groups, such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Under the banner of safeguarding Rwandan national security, troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi invaded Congo and ripped through Hutu refugee camps, slaughtering thousands of Rwandan and Congolese Hutu civilians, including many women and children. US Special Forces trained Rwandan and Ugandan troops at Fort Bragg in the United States and supported Congolese rebels, who brought down Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko – they claimed he was giving refuge to the leaders of the genocide.
After deposing Mobutu and seizing control in Kinshasa, a new regime led by Laurent Kabila, father of the current president, was installed. Kabila was quickly regarded as an equally despotic leader, eradicating all opposition to his rule; he turned away from his Rwandan backers and called on Congolese civilians to violently purge the nation of Rwandans, prompting Rwandan forces to regroup in Goma. Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001 at the hands of a member of his security staff, allowing his son, Joseph, to usurp the presidency. The younger Kabila derives his legitimacy from the support of foreign heads of state and the international business community, primarily for his ability to comply with foreign plunder.
During the Congo’s general elections in November 2011, the international community and the UN remained silent regarding the mass irregularities observed by the electoral committee. The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) has faced frequent allegations of corruption, prompting opposition leader Étienne Tshisikedi, who is currently under house arrest, to call for the UN mission to end its deliberate efforts to maintain the system of international plundering and to appoint someone “less corrupt and more credible” to head UN operations. MONUSCO has been plagued with frequent cases of peacekeeping troops caught smuggling minerals such as cassiterite and dealing weapons to militia groups. Kabila is seen by many to be self-serving in his weak oversight of the central government in Kinshasa. M23 rebels have demanded the liberation of all political prisoners, including opposition leader Étienne Tshisikedi, and the dissolution of the current electoral commission that was in charge 2011’s elections, widely perceived to be fraudulent.
Displaced civilians from Walikale arrive at Magunga III camp outside of the eastern Congolese city of Goma.(Reuters / Alissa Everett)
Role of US in Rwanda’s M23 backing
M23, or The March 23 Movement, takes its name from peace accords held on March 23, 2009, which allowed members of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), an earlier incarnation of today’s M23, to integrate into the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and be recognized as an official political party. The CNDP was an entirely Rwandan creation, and was led by figures such as Bosco Ntaganda. In accordance to the deal reached in 2009, the Congolese government agreed to integrate 6,000 CNDP combatants into the FARDC, giving Ntaganda, a Rwandan Tutsi and former member of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, a senior position in the integrated force. The current M23 offensive began in April 2012, when around 300 former CNDP personnel led by Ntaganda defected from FARDC, citing poor working conditions and the government’s unwillingness to meaningfully implement the 23 March 2009 peace deal.
According to UN reports, Ntaganda controls several mining operations in the region and has derived enormous profits from mineral exploitation in eastern Congo, in addition to gaining large revenues from taxation levied by Rwandan-backed “mining police.” Bosco Ntaganda appears to be assisting Rwanda’s Tutsi government in plundering eastern Congo’s natural resources, which has gone on since Kagame came to power in 1994; M23 is basically paid for with the money from tin, tungsten and tantalum smuggled from Congolese mines. UN reports detail Rwanda’s deep involvement by even naming Rwandan personnel involved; Ntaganda takes direct military orders from Rwandan Chief of Defense Staff General Charles Kayonga, who in turn acts on instructions from Minster of Defense General James Kabarebe. Both Britain and France reportedly found the UN report to be “credible and compelling.”
Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, finds herself mired in scandal yet again; Rice has come under fire for suppressing information on Rwanda’s role in the ongoing resource looting and rebellion in eastern Congo. Rice delayed the publication of a UN Group of Experts report detailing Rwandan and Ugandan depredations in Congo, while simultaneously subverting efforts within the State Department to rein in Kagame and Museveni. Rice, in her role as assistant secretary of state for African affairs in 1997 under the Clinton administration, tacitly approved Rwanda and Uganda’s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo and was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “…they [Kagame & Museveni] know how to deal with that, the only thing we have to do is look the other way.” Another article published in the New York Times by Helen Cooper detailed Rice’s business connections to the Rwandan government:
“Ms. Rice has been at the forefront of trying to shield the Rwandan government, and Mr. Kagame in particular, from international censure, even as several United Nations reports have laid the blame for the violence in Congo at Mr. Kagame’s door… Aides to Ms. Rice acknowledge that she is close to Mr. Kagame and that Mr. Kagame’s government was her client when she worked at Intellibridge, a strategic analysis firm in Washington… After delaying for weeks the publication of a United Nations report denouncing Rwanda’s support for the M23 and opposing any direct references to Rwanda in United Nations statements and resolutions on the crisis, Ms. Rice intervened to water down a Security Council resolution that strongly condemned the M23 for widespread rape, summary executions and recruitment of child soldiers. The resolution expressed ‘deep concern’ about external actors supporting the M23. But Ms. Rice prevailed in preventing the resolution from explicitly naming Rwanda when it was passed on Nov. 20.”
M23 rebel fighters walk as they withdraw near the town of Sake, some 42 km (26 miles) west of Goma.(Reuters / Goran Tomasevic)
Geopolitics of plunder
It must be recognized that Kagame controls a vastly wealthy and mineral-rich area of eastern Congo – an area that has long been integrated into Rwanda’s economy – with total complicity from the United States. As Washington prepares to escalate its military presence throughout the African continent with AFRICOM, the United States Africa Command, what long-term objectives does Uncle Sam have in the Congo, considered the world’s most resource-rich nation? Washington is crusading against China’s export restrictions on minerals that are crucial components in the production of consumer electronics such as flat-screen televisions, smart phones, laptop batteries, and a host of other products. The US sees these Chinese export policies as a means of Beijing attempting to monopolize the mineral and rare earth market.
In a 2010 white paper entitled “Critical Raw Materials for the EU,” the European Commission cites the immediate need for reserve supplies of tantalum, cobalt, niobium, and tungsten among others; the US Department of Energy 2010 white paper “Critical Mineral Strategy” also acknowledged the strategic importance of these key components. In 1980, Pentagon documents acknowledged shortages of cobalt, titanium, chromium, tantalum, beryllium, and nickel. The US Congressional Budget Office’s 1982 report “Cobalt: Policy Options for a Strategic Mineral” notes that cobalt alloys are critical to the aerospace and weapons industries and that 64 per cent of the world’s cobalt reserves lay in the Katanga Copper Belt, running from southeastern Congo into northern Zambia.
Additionally, the sole piece of legislation authored by President Obama during his time as a Senator was SB 2125, the“Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006”. In the legislation, Obama acknowledges Congo as a long-term interest to the United States and further alludes to the threat of Hutu militias as an apparent pretext for continued interference in the region; Section 201(6) of the bill specifically calls for the protection of natural resources in the eastern DRC. The United States does not like the fact that President Kabila in Kinshasa has become very comfortable with Beijing, and worries that Congo will drift into Chinese economic orbit. Under the current regime in Congo, Chinese commercial activities have significantly increased not only in the mining sector, but also considerably in the telecommunications field.
In 2000, the Chinese ZTE Corporation finalized a $12.6 million deal with the Congolese government to establish the first Sino-Congolese telecommunications company; furthermore, the DRC exported $1.4 billion worth of cobalt between 2007 and 2008. The majority of Congolese raw materials like cobalt, copper ore and a variety of hardwoodsare exported to China for further processing and 90 per cent of the processing plants in resource rich southeastern Katanga province are owned by Chinese nationals. In 2008, a consortium of Chinese companies were granted the rights to mining operations in Katanga in exchange for US$6 billion in infrastructure investments, including the construction of two hospitals, four universities and a hydroelectric power project. In 2009, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded renegotiation of the deal, arguing that the agreement between China and the DRC violated the foreign debt relief program for so-called HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) nations. The IMF successfully blocked the deal in May 2009, calling for a more feasibility study of the DRCs mineral concessions. An article published by Shamus Cooke of Workers Action explains:
“This act instantly transformed Kabila from an unreliable friend to an enemy. The US and China have been madly scrambling for Africa’s immense wealth of raw materials, and Kabila’s new alliance with China was too much for the US to bear. Kabila further inflamed his former allies by demanding that the international corporations exploiting the Congo’s precious metals have their super-profit contracts re-negotiated, so that the country might actually receive some benefit from its riches.”
During a diplomatic tour of Africa in 2011, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton herself has irresponsibly insinuatedChina’s guilt in perpetuating a creeping “new colonialism.” China annually invests an estimated $5.5 billion in Africa, with only 29 per cent of direct investment in the mining sector in 2009 – while more than half was directed toward domestic manufacturing, finance, and construction industries. China has further committed $10 billion in concessional loans to Africa between 2009 and 2012. As Africa’s largest trading partner, China imports 1.5 million barrels of oil from Africa per day, accounting for approximately 30 per cent of its total imports. Over the past decade, 750,000 Chinese nationals have settled in Africa; China’s deepening economic engagement in Africa and its crucial role in developing the mineral sector, telecommunications industry and much needed infrastructural projects is creating “deep nervousness” in the West, according to David Shinn, the former US ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia.
Too big to fail, or too big to succeed?
In December 2012, Dr J Peter Pham published a bizarre Op-Ed in the New York Times titled, “To Save Congo, Let It Fall Apart.” Pham is the director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center and is a frequent guest lecturer on the US Army War College, the Joint Special Operations University, and other US Government affiliated educational institutions; he is a Washington insider, and understanding his rationale is important, as his opinion may very well shape US policy in Congo. Pham argues that Congo is an “artificial entity” that is “too big to succeed,” and therefore, the policy direction taken by the US should be one of promoting balkanization:
“Rather than nation-building, what is needed to end Congo’s violence is the opposite: breaking up a chronically failed state into smaller organic units whose members share broad agreement or at least have common interests in personal and community security… If Congo were permitted to break up into smaller entities, the international community could devote its increasingly scarce resources to humanitarian relief and development, rather than trying, as the United Nations Security Council has pledged, to preserve the ‘sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity’ of a fictional state that is of value only to the political elites who have clawed their way to the top in order to plunder Congo’s resources and fund the patronage networks that ensure that they will remain in power.”
What Pham is suggesting is policy to bring out the collapse of the Congolese nation by creating tiny ethno-nationalist entities too small to stand up to multinational corporations. The success of M23 must surely have shaken President Kabila, whose father came to power with the backing of the Ugandan and Rwandan regimes in 1996, employing the same strategies that M23 is using today. If Kabila wants to stay in power, he needs the capability of exercising authority over the entire country. Sanctions should be imposed on top-level Rwandan and Ugandan officials and all military aid should be withheld; additionally, Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame should be investigated and removed from his position. Kambale Musavuli, of the Washington DC-based NGO, Friends of Congo, has it right when he says:
“People need to be clear who we are fighting in the Congo… We are fighting Western powers, the United States and the United Kingdom, who are arming, training and equipping the Rwandan and Ugandan militaries.”
M23 military leader General Sultani Makenga attend press conference in Bunagana in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.(Reuters / James Akena)
Nile Bowie is an independent political commentator and photographer based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com
Congo’s M23 conflict: Rebellion or resource war? (Op-Ed)
M23 rebels in DR Congo have threatened to march to the capital and depose the government. UN reports confirm that rebels receive support from key US allies in the region, and Washington's role in the conflict has become difficult to ignore.
Instability, lawlessness and violence are nothing new to those who live in the troubled eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An estimated 6.9 million Congolese have perished since 1996 in a spate of ceaseless military conflicts that have long gripped this severely-overlooked and underreported region. In late November 2012, members of the M23 rebel group invaded and took control of Goma, a strategic provincial capital in North Kivu state with a population of 1 million people, with the declared purpose of marching to the nation’s capital, Kinshasa, to depose the ruling government.
M23's president, Jean Marie Runiga, later agreed to withdraw only if the ruling President Joseph Kabila listened to the group's grievances and adhered to their demands. Rebel leaders have threatened to abandon peace talks unless Kinshasa signs an official ceasefire, a demand the government dismissed as unnecessary.
Kinshasa called on M23 to respect previous agreements to withdraw 20km outside of Goma in a move to prevent the region falling back into war after two decades of conflict, fought largely over the DRC’s vast wealth of copper, cobalt diamonds, gold and coltan.
The United Nation’s peacekeeping mission in DR Congo has come under fire for allowing M23 to take Goma without firing a single shot, despite the presence of 19,000 UN troops in the country. The UN’s Congo mission is its largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation, costing over US$1 billion a year. UN forces recently announced they would introduce the use of surveillance drones over the DRC, in addition to imposing a travel ban and asset freeze on M23 leader Jean-Marie Runiga and Lt. Col. Eric Badege.
A confidential 44-page report issued by a United Nations panel accused the governments of neighboring Rwanda and Uganda of supporting M23 with weapons, ammunition and Rwandan military personnel. Despite both nations denying these accusations, the governments of the United States, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands have publicly suspended military aid and developmental assistance to Rwanda. The governments of both Rwanda and Uganda, led by President Paul Kagame and President Yoweri Museveni respectively, have long been staunch American allies and the recipients of millions in military aid.
M23 President Jean-Marie Runiga (2nd R) arrives to address the media in Bunagana in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.(Reuters / James Akena)
Historical precedent
The DRC has suffered immensely during its history of foreign plunder and colonial occupation; it maintains the second-lowest GDP per capita despite possessingan estimated $24 trillion in untapped raw minerals deposits.
During the Congo Wars of the 1996 to 2003, the United States provided training and arms to Rwandan and Ugandan militias who later invaded the Congo’s eastern provinces where M23 are currently active. In addition to enriching various Western multinational corporations, the regimes of Kagame in Rwanda and Museveni in Uganda both profited immensely from the plunder of Congolese conflict minerals such as cassiterite, wolframite, coltan (from which niobium and tantalum are derived) and gold; the DRC holds more than 30 per cent of the world's diamond reserves and 80 per cent of the world's coltan.
In 1990, civil war raged between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups in neighboring Rwanda; Washington sought to overthrow the 20-year reign of then-President Juvénal Habyarimana (a Hutu) by installing a Tutsi client regime. At the time, prior to the outbreak of the Rwandan civil war, the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), led by the current president, was part of Uganda’s United People's Defense Forces (UPDF).
Kagame, who received training at the US Army Command and Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas, invaded Rwanda in 1990 from Uganda under the pretext of liberating the Tutsi population from Hutu subjugation. Kagame’s forces defeated the Hutu government in Kigali and installed himself as head of a minority Tutsi regime in Rwanda, prompting the exodus of 2 million Hutu refugees (many of whom took part in the genocide) to UN-run camps in Congo’s North and South Kivu provinces.
Following Kagame’s consolidation of power in Rwanda, a large invasion force of Rwandan Tutsis arrived in North and South Kivu in 1996 under the pretext of pursuing Hutu militant groups, such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Under the banner of safeguarding Rwandan national security, troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi invaded Congo and ripped through Hutu refugee camps, slaughtering thousands of Rwandan and Congolese Hutu civilians, including many women and children.
US Special Forces trained Rwandan and Ugandan troops at Fort Bragg in the United States and supported Congolese rebels, who brought down Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko – they claimed he was giving refuge to the leaders of the genocide.
After deposing Mobutu and seizing control in Kinshasa, a new regime led by Laurent Kabila, father of the current president, was installed. Kabila was quickly regarded as an equally despotic leader, eradicating all opposition to his rule; he turned away from his Rwandan backers and called on Congolese civilians to violently purge the nation of Rwandans, prompting Rwandan forces to regroup in Goma.
Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001 at the hands of a member of his security staff, allowing his son, Joseph, to usurp the presidency. The younger Kabila derives his legitimacy from the support of foreign heads of state and the international business community, primarily for his ability to comply with foreign plunder.
During the Congo’s general elections in November 2011, the international community and the UN remained silent regarding the mass irregularities observed by the electoral committee. The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) has faced frequent allegations of corruption, prompting opposition leader Étienne Tshisikedi, who is currently under house arrest, to call for the UN mission to end its deliberate efforts to maintain the system of international plundering and to appoint someone “less corrupt and more credible” to head UN operations.
MONUSCO has been plagued with frequent cases of peacekeeping troops caught smuggling minerals such as cassiterite and dealing weapons to militia groups. Kabila is seen by many to be self-serving in his weak oversight of the central government in Kinshasa. M23 rebels have demanded the liberation of all political prisoners, including opposition leader Étienne Tshisikedi, and the dissolution of the current electoral commission that was in charge 2011’s elections, widely perceived to be fraudulent.
Displaced civilians from Walikale arrive at Magunga III camp outside of the eastern Congolese city of Goma.(Reuters / Alissa Everett)
Role of US in Rwanda’s M23 backing
M23, or The March 23 Movement, takes its name from peace accords held on March 23, 2009, which allowed members of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), an earlier incarnation of today’s M23, to integrate into the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and be recognized as an official political party.
The CNDP was an entirely Rwandan creation, and was led by figures such as Bosco Ntaganda. In accordance to the deal reached in 2009, the Congolese government agreed to integrate 6,000 CNDP combatants into the FARDC, giving Ntaganda, a Rwandan Tutsi and former member of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, a senior position in the integrated force.
The current M23 offensive began in April 2012, when around 300 former CNDP personnel led by Ntaganda defected from FARDC, citing poor working conditions and the government's unwillingness to meaningfully implement the 23 March 2009 peace deal.
According to UN reports, Ntaganda controls several mining operations in the region and has derived enormous profits from mineral exploitation in eastern Congo, in addition to gaining large revenues from taxation levied by Rwandan-backed “mining police.” Bosco Ntaganda appears to be assisting Rwanda’s Tutsi government in plundering eastern Congo’s natural resources, which has gone on since Kagame came to power in 1994; M23 is basically paid for with the money from tin, tungsten and tantalum smuggled from Congolese mines.
UN reports detail Rwanda's deep involvement by even naming Rwandan personnel involved; Ntaganda takes direct military orders from Rwandan Chief of Defense Staff General Charles Kayonga, who in turn acts on instructions from Minster of Defense General James Kabarebe. Both Britain and France reportedly found the UN report to be "credible and compelling."
Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, finds herself mired in scandal yet again; Rice has come under fire for suppressing information on Rwanda’s role in the ongoing resource looting and rebellion in eastern Congo. Rice delayed the publication of a UN Group of Experts report detailing Rwandan and Ugandan depredations in Congo, while simultaneously subverting efforts within the State Department to rein in Kagame and Museveni.
Rice, in her role as assistant secretary of state for African affairs in 1997 under the Clinton administration, tacitly approved Rwanda and Uganda’s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo and was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “…they [Kagame & Museveni] know how to deal with that, the only thing we have to do is look the other way.”
Another article published in the New York Times by Helen Cooper detailed Rice’s business connections to the Rwandan government:
“Ms. Rice has been at the forefront of trying to shield the Rwandan government, and Mr. Kagame in particular, from international censure, even as several United Nations reports have laid the blame for the violence in Congo at Mr. Kagame’s door… Aides to Ms. Rice acknowledge that she is close to Mr. Kagame and that Mr. Kagame’s government was her client when she worked at Intellibridge, a strategic analysis firm in Washington… After delaying for weeks the publication of a United Nations report denouncing Rwanda’s support for the M23 and opposing any direct references to Rwanda in United Nations statements and resolutions on the crisis, Ms. Rice intervened to water down a Security Council resolution that strongly condemned the M23 for widespread rape, summary executions and recruitment of child soldiers. The resolution expressed ‘deep concern’ about external actors supporting the M23. But Ms. Rice prevailed in preventing the resolution from explicitly naming Rwanda when it was passed on Nov. 20.”
M23 rebel fighters walk as they withdraw near the town of Sake, some 42 km (26 miles) west of Goma.(Reuters / Goran Tomasevic)
Geopolitics of plunder
It must be recognized that Kagame controls a vastly wealthy and mineral-rich area of eastern Congo – an area that has long been integrated into Rwanda’s economy – with total complicity from the United States.
As Washington prepares to escalate its military presence throughout the African continent with AFRICOM, the United States Africa Command, what long-term objectives does Uncle Sam have in the Congo, considered the world’s most resource-rich nation?
Washington is crusading against China's export restrictions on minerals that are crucial components in the production of consumer electronics such as flat-screen televisions, smart phones, laptop batteries, and a host of other products. The US sees these Chinese export policies as a means of Beijing attempting to monopolize the mineral and rare earth market.
In a 2010 white paper entitled “Critical Raw Materials for the EU,” the European Commission cites the immediate need for reserve supplies of tantalum, cobalt, niobium, and tungsten among others; the US Department of Energy 2010 white paper “Critical Mineral Strategy” also acknowledged the strategic importance of these key components.
In 1980, Pentagon documents acknowledged shortages of cobalt, titanium, chromium, tantalum, beryllium, and nickel. The US Congressional Budget Office’s 1982 report “Cobalt: Policy Options for a Strategic Mineral” notes that cobalt alloys are critical to the aerospace and weapons industries and that 64 per cent of the world’s cobalt reserves lay in the Katanga Copper Belt, running from southeastern Congo into northern Zambia.
Additionally, the sole piece of legislation authored by President Obama during his time as a Senator was SB 2125, the “Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006”. In the legislation, Obama acknowledges Congo as a long-term interest to the United States and further alludes to the threat of Hutu militias as an apparent pretext for continued interference in the region; Section 201(6) of the bill specifically calls for the protection of natural resources in the eastern DRC.
The United States does not like the fact that President Kabila in Kinshasa has become very comfortable with Beijing, and worries that Congo will drift into Chinese economic orbit. Under the current regime in Congo, Chinese commercial activities have significantly increased not only in the mining sector, but also considerably in the telecommunications field.
In 2000, the Chinese ZTE Corporation finalized a $12.6 million deal with the Congolese government to establish the first Sino-Congolese telecommunications company; furthermore, the DRC exported $1.4 billion worth of cobalt between 2007 and 2008. The majority of Congolese raw materials like cobalt, copper ore and a variety of hardwoods are exported to China for further processing and 90 per cent of the processing plants in resource rich southeastern Katanga province are owned by Chinese nationals.
In 2008, a consortium of Chinese companies were granted the rights to mining operations in Katanga in exchange for US$6 billion in infrastructure investments, including the construction of two hospitals, four universities and a hydroelectric power project.
In 2009, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded renegotiation of the deal, arguing that the agreement between China and the DRC violated the foreign debt relief program for so-called HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) nations.
The IMF successfully blocked the deal in May 2009, calling for a more feasibility study of the DRCs mineral concessions. An article published by Shamus Cooke of Workers Action explains:
“This act instantly transformed Kabila from an unreliable friend to an enemy. The US and China have been madly scrambling for Africa’s immense wealth of raw materials, and Kabila’s new alliance with China was too much for the US to bear. Kabila further inflamed his former allies by demanding that the international corporations exploiting the Congo’s precious metals have their super-profit contracts re-negotiated, so that the country might actually receive some benefit from its riches.”
During a diplomatic tour of Africa in 2011, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton herself has irresponsibly insinuated China’s guilt in perpetuating a creeping “new colonialism.” China annually invests an estimated $5.5 billion in Africa, with only 29 per cent of direct investment in the mining sector in 2009 – while more than half was directed toward domestic manufacturing, finance, and construction industries. China has further committed $10 billion in concessional loans to Africa between 2009 and 2012.
As Africa’s largest trading partner, China imports 1.5 million barrels of oil from Africa per day, accounting for approximately 30 per cent of its total imports. Over the past decade, 750,000 Chinese nationals have settled in Africa; China’s deepening economic engagement in Africa and its crucial role in developing the mineral sector, telecommunications industry and much needed infrastructural projects iscreating "deep nervousness" in the West, according to David Shinn, the former US ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia.
Too big to fail, or too big to succeed?
In December 2012, Dr J Peter Pham published a bizarre Op-Ed in the New York Times titled, “To Save Congo, Let It Fall Apart.” Pham is the director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center and is a frequent guest lecturer on the US Army War College, the Joint Special Operations University, and other US Government affiliated educational institutions; he is a Washington insider, and understanding his rationale is important, as his opinion may very well shape US policy in Congo. Pham argues that Congo is an “artificial entity” that is “too big to succeed,” and therefore, the policy direction taken by the US should be one of promoting balkanization:
“Rather than nation-building, what is needed to end Congo’s violence is the opposite: breaking up a chronically failed state into smaller organic units whose members share broad agreement or at least have common interests in personal and community security… If Congo were permitted to break up into smaller entities, the international community could devote its increasingly scarce resources to humanitarian relief and development, rather than trying, as the United Nations Security Council has pledged, to preserve the ‘sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity’ of a fictional state that is of value only to the political elites who have clawed their way to the top in order to plunder Congo’s resources and fund the patronage networks that ensure that they will remain in power.”
What Pham is suggesting is policy to bring out the collapse of the Congolese nation by creating tiny ethno-nationalist entities too small to stand up to multinational corporations. The success of M23 must surely have shaken President Kabila, whose father came to power with the backing of the Ugandan and Rwandan regimes in 1996, employing the same strategies that M23 is using today.
If Kabila wants to stay in power, he needs the capability of exercising authority over the entire country. Sanctions should be imposed on top-level Rwandan and Ugandan officials and all military aid should be withheld; additionally, Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame should be investigated and removed from his position. Kambale Musavuli, of the Washington DC-based NGO, Friends of Congo, has it right when he says:
“People need to be clear who we are fighting in the Congo… We are fighting Western powers, the United States and the United Kingdom, who are arming, training and equipping the Rwandan and Ugandan militaries.”
M23 military leader General Sultani Makenga attend press conference in Bunagana in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.(Reuters / James Akena)
Nile Bowie for RT
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
France: US, UK back Mali intervention
Armed men patrol the streets of a city in northern Mali. (File photo)
France's foreign minister says the US and Britain are providing support for the French-led military intervention in Mali amid clashes in the West African country.
Laurent Fabius made the announcement on Sunday, saying "We have the support of the Americans for communications and transport."
The minister added that Britain, Denmark, and other European nations are also supporting the French-led military intervention in the country.
The announcement comes a day after that Washington offered to send drones to Mali as it has already declared its backing of moves against rebels in the African nation.
US commanders were further considering other options such as “providing intelligence and aerial refueling tankers” as well as “logistical backup and boosting intelligence sharing” involving its surveillance drones, AFP reported, quoting an unnamed US official that spoke on condition of anonymity.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has also approved to deploy aircraft to help transport troopers.
Earlier in the day, French jets and combat helicopters targeted the northern city of Gao, which had been controlled by the rebels.
The French Defense Ministry said in a statement that "French fighter jets have identified and destroyed this Sunday, Jan. 13, numerous targets in northern Mali near Gao, in particular training camps, infrastructure, and logistical depots” that served as bases for rebels.
According to the residents of Gao, its airport was among the targets of the airstrikes.
This comes three days after France took military action in Mali to halt advances made by the rebels, who control the north of the West African country.
On Friday, the Malian Army said it has driven back militants from the town of Konna after France intervened with airstrikes to halt advances by fighters.
Unrest erupted in Mali after President Amadou Toumani Toure was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012. The coup leaders said they had mounted the coup in response to the government's failure to contain the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country, which had been going on for two months.
MR/HN
John Brennan vs. a Sixteen-Year-Old
In October 2011, 16-year-old Tariq Aziz attended a gathering in Islamabad where he was taught how to use a video camera so he could document the drones that were constantly circling over his Pakistani village, terrorizing and killing his family and neighbors. Two days later, when Aziz was driving with his 12-year-old cousin to a village near his home in Waziristan to pick up his aunt, his car was struck by a Hellfire missile. With the push of a button by a pilot at a US base thousands of miles away, both boys were instantly vaporized—only a few chunks of flesh remained.
Afterwards, the US government refused to acknowledge the boys’ deaths or explain why they were targeted. Why should they? This is a covert program where no one is held accountable for their actions.
The main architect of this drone policy that has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocents, including 176 children in Pakistan alone, is President Obama’s counterterrorism chief and his pick for the next director of the CIA: John Brennan.
On my recent trip to Pakistan, I met with people whose loved ones had been blown to bits by drone attacks, people who have been maimed for life, young victims with no hope for the future and aching for revenge. For all of them, there has been no apology, no compensation, not even an acknowledgement of their losses. Nothing.
That’s why when John Brennan spoke at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington DC last April and described our policies as ethical, wise and in compliance with international law, I felt compelled to stand up and speak out on behalf of Tariq Aziz and so many others. As they dragged me out of the room, my parting words were: “I love the rule of law and I love my country. You are making us less safe by killing so many innocent people. Shame on you, John Brennan.”
Rather than expressing remorse for any civilian deaths, John Brennan made the extraordinary statement in 2011 that during the preceding year, there hadn’t been a single collateral death “because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop.” Brennan later adjusted his statement somewhat, saying, “Fortunately, for more than a year, due to our discretion and precision, the U.S. government has not found credible evidence of collateral deaths resulting from U.S. counterterrorism operations outside of Afghanistan or Iraq.” We later learned why Brennan’s count was so low: the administration had come up with a semantic solution of simply counting all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.
The UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has documented over 350 drones strikes in Pakistan that have killed 2,600-3,400 people since 2004. Drone strikes in Yemen have been on the rise, with at least 42 strikes carried out in 2012, including one just hours after President Obama’s reelection. The first strike in 2013 took place just four days into the new year.
A May 29, 2011 New York Times exposé showed John Brennan as President Obama’s top advisor in formulating a “kill list” for drone strikes. The people Brennan recommends for the hit list are given no chance to surrender, and certainly no chance to be tried in a court of law. The kind of intelligence Brennan uses to put people on drone hit lists is the same kind of intelligence that put people in Guantanamo. Remember how the American public was assured that the prisoners locked up in Guantanamo were the “worst of the worst,” only to find out that hundreds were innocent people who had been sold to the US military by bounty hunters?
In addition to kill lists, Brennan pushed for the CIA to have the authority to kill with even greater ease using “signature strikes,” also known as “crowd killing,” which are strikes based solely on suspicious behavior.
When President Obama announced his nomination of John Brennan, he talked about Brennan’s integrity and commitment to the values that define us as Americans. He said Brennan has worked to “embed our efforts in a strong legal framework” and that he “understands we are a nation of laws.”
A nation of laws? Really? Going around the world killing anyone we want, whenever we want, based on secret information? Just think of the precedent John Brennan is setting for a world of lawlessness and chaos, now that 76 countries have drones—mostly surveillance drones but many in the process of weaponizing them. Why shouldn’t China declare an ethnic Uighur activist living in New York City as an “enemy combatant” and send a missile into Manhattan, or Russia launch a drone attack against a Chechen living in London? Or why shouldn’t a relative of a drone victim retaliate against us here at home? It’s not so far-fetched. In 2011, 26-year-old Rezwan Ferdaus, a Massachusetts-based graduate with a degree in physics, was recently sentenced to 17 years in prison for plotting to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol with small drones filled with explosives.
In his search for a new CIA chief, Obama said he looked at who is going to do the best job in securing America. Yet the blowback from Brennan’s drone attacks is creating enemies far faster than we can kill them. Three out of four Pakistanis now see the US as their enemy—that’s about 133 million people, which certainly can’t be good for US security. When Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was asked the source of US enmity, she had a one word answer: drones.
In Yemen, escalating U.S. drones strikes are radicalizing the local population and stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants. Since the January 4, 2013 attack in Yemen, militants in the tribal areas have gained more recruits and supporters in their war against the Yemeni government and its key backer, the United States. According to Abduh Rahman Berman, executive director of a Yemeni National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms, the drone war is failing. “If the Americans kill 10, al-Qaeda will recruit 100,” he said.
Around the world, the drone program constructed by John Brennan has become a provocative symbol of American hubris, showing contempt for national sovereignty and innocent lives.
If Obama thinks John Brennan is a good choice to head the CIA and secure America, he should contemplate the tragic deaths of victims like 16-year-old Tariq Aziz, and think again.
US to back French military move in Mali
The French Army has begun military operations against militant groups in Mali (file photo).
The US is looking into supporting French military intervention in its former African colony of Mali, by offering to provide “surveillance drones” as it has already declared its backing of moves against Malian militants.
US commanders were further considering other options such as “providing intelligence and aerial refueling tankers” as well as “logistical backup and boosting intelligence sharing,” involving its surveillance drones, AFP reported Friday, quoting an unnamed US official that spoke on condition of anonymity.
The report also quotes its anonymous source as saying that senior American officials held talks with their French counterparts as well as authorities from other European allies in Paris on “an action plan” against militants controlling a northern portion of the Muslim country.
The US military holds a network of major air bases in Italy, Spain and other western European countries and could back the French military intervention by providing it with refueling tankers and other logistical assistance.
Paris-backed Malian government forces, the report says, began a military offensive against militants that have seized control of the north of the West African states with aerial support from French war planes.
French President Francois Hollande has confirmed his country’s military intervention against what he has described as ‘al-Qaeda-linked radicals’ in Mali.
Previously, the US had raised alarms about the militants in Mali, blaming them for involvement in an attack against the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya that led to the killing of its ambassador and three CIA operatives in the neighboring country.
The US National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor is also cited in the report as vowing support for French objectives in the West African country.
"We have noted that the government of Mali has asked for support, and we share the French goal of denying terrorists a safe haven in the region,” he is quoted as saying in the report.
Hollande, meanwhile, has insisted that France’s military intervention in Mali would continue "for as long as is necessary."
MFB/MFB
Why Obama’s CIA Nominee Is Responsible for the Deaths of Pakistani Civilians
President Obama’s counterterrorism chief John Brennan is the wrong guy.
January 9, 2013 |
Official portrait of John O. Brennan, the likely new head of the CIA.
Photo Credit: White House/Wikimedia Commons
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In October 2011, 16-year-old Tariq Aziz attended a gathering in Islamabad where he was taught how to use a video camera so he could document the drones that were constantly circling over his Pakistani village, terrorizing and killing his family and neighbors. Two days later, when Aziz was driving with his 12-year-old cousin to a village near his home in Waziristan to pick up his aunt, his car was struck by a Hellfire missile. With the push of a button by a pilot at a US base thousands of miles away, both boys were instantly vaporized—only a few chunks of flesh remained.
Afterwards, the US government refused to acknowledge the boys’ deaths or explain why they were targeted. Why should they? This is a covert program where no one is held accountable for their actions.
The main architect of this drone policy that has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocents, including 176 children in Pakistan alone, is President Obama’s counterterrorism chief and his pick for the next director of the CIA: John Brennan.
On my recent trip to Pakistan, I met with people whose loved ones had been blown to bits by drone attacks, people who have been maimed for life, young victims with no hope for the future and aching for revenge. For all of them, there has been no apology, no compensation, not even an acknowledgement of their losses. Nothing.
That’s why when John Brennan spoke at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington DC last April and described our policies as ethical, wise and in compliance with international law, I felt compelled to stand up and speak out on behalf of Tariq Aziz and so many others. As they dragged me out of the room, my parting words were: “I love the rule of law and I love my country. You are making us less safe by killing so many innocent people. Shame on you, John Brennan.”
Rather than expressing remorse for any civilian deaths, John Brennan made the extraordinary statement in 2011 that during the preceding year, there hadn’t been a single collateral death “because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop.” Brennan later adjusted his statement somewhat, saying, “Fortunately, for more than a year, due to our discretion and precision, the U.S. government has not found credible evidence of collateral deaths resulting from U.S. counterterrorism operations outside of Afghanistan or Iraq.” We later learned why Brennan’s count was so low: the administration had come up with a semantic solution of simply counting all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.
The UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has documented over 350 drones strikes in Pakistan that have killed 2,600-3,400 people since 2004. Drone strikes in Yemen have been on the rise, with at least 42 strikes carried out in 2012, including one just hours after President Obama's reelection. The first strike in 2013 took place just four days into the new year.
A May 29, 2011 New York Times exposé showed John Brennan as President Obama’s top advisor in formulating a “kill list” for drone strikes. The people Brennan recommends for the hit list are given no chance to surrender, and certainly no chance to be tried in a court of law. The kind of intelligence Brennan uses to put people on drone hit lists is the same kind of intelligence that put people in Guantanamo. Remember how the American public was assured that the prisoners locked up in Guantanamo were the “worst of the worst,” only to find out that hundreds were innocent people who had been sold to the US military by bounty hunters?
In addition to kill lists, Brennan pushed for the CIA to have the authority to kill with even greater ease using "signature strikes," also known as "crowd killing," which are strikes based solely on suspicious behavior.
When President Obama announced his nomination of John Brennan, he talked about Brennan’s integrity and commitment to the values that define us as Americans. He said Brennan has worked to “embed our efforts in a strong legal framework” and that he "understands we are a nation of laws."
A nation of laws? Really? Going around the world killing anyone we want, whenever we want, based on secret information? Just think of the precedent John Brennan is setting for a world of lawlessness and chaos, now that 76 countries have drones—mostly surveillance drones but many in the process of weaponizing them. Why shouldn’t China declare an ethnic Uighur activist living in New York City as an “enemy combatant” and send a missile into Manhattan, or Russia launch a drone attack against a Chechen living in London? Or why shouldn’t a relative of a drone victim retaliate against us here at home? It’s not so far-fetched. In 2011, 26-year-old Rezwan Ferdaus, a Massachusetts-based graduate with a degree in physics, was recently sentenced to 17 years in prison for plotting to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol with small drones filled with explosives.
In his search for a new CIA chief, Obama said he looked at who is going to do the best job in securing America. Yet the blowback from Brennan’s drone attacks is creating enemies far faster than we can kill them. Three out of four Pakistanis now see the US as their enemy—that’s about 133 million people, which certainly can’t be good for US security. When Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was asked the source of US enmity, she had a one word answer: drones.
In Yemen, escalating U.S. drones strikes are radicalizing the local population and stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants. Since the January 4, 2013 attack in Yemen, militants in the tribal areas have gained more recruits and supporters in their war against the Yemeni government and its key backer, the United States. According to Abduh Rahman Berman, executive director of a Yemeni National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms, the drone war is failing. “If the Americans kill 10, al-Qaeda will recruit 100,” he said.
Around the world, the drone program constructed by John Brennan has become a provocative symbol of American hubris, showing contempt for national sovereignty and innocent lives.
If Obama thinks John Brennan is a good choice to head the CIA and secure America, he should contemplate the tragic deaths of victims like 16-year-old Tariq Aziz, and think again.