World Can’t Wait & KnowDrones – 2014-04-25 01:11:40
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/organizingmaterials-mainmenu-6/materials-mainmenu-296/8125-april-days-of-action-stop-us-drone-warfare
ACTION ALERT: April Marks ‘National Days of
Action to Stop US Drone Wars’
World Can’t Wait
Three Weeks into Days of Action to Stop US Drone Wars & Surveillance, more than 90 protest actions had been held around the country and a Congressional hearing on drone war and targeted killing is to be held in Washington.
CIA drone strikes over the last few days have taken the lives of “more than 3 dozen militants” according to US and Yemen government statements. They admit to killing three civilians, and if patterns hold, may be forced to admit that people branded as “militants” may not have been armed combatants, and certainly may not have been part of al Queda, as the US military has alleged.


Kevin Gosztola poses “Questions That Should Be Asked About Recent Operations, Including Drone Strikes, in Yemen”: “How much of it is targeting fighters, who are opposed to the current regime led by President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi?” Given that there is no formal agreement between Yemen and the US on the use of drone strikes, with each side allowed “plausible deniability,” who is to say who is being killed and why?


Even the New York Times coverage quoted Obama’s claim last May that strikes were used “only against militants who posed a ‘continuing and imminent threat to the American people.’ He also said no strike could be authorized without ‘near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured,’ a bar he described as ‘the highest standard we can set.'”

The coverage went on: “Given that the administration would not even confirm that American drones carried out the strikes over the weekend, it was unclear how the people targeted in the strike posed a threat to Americans.” Exactly.
This week, a federal Appellate Court ruled that the Obama administration must release its secret legal justification for targeted killing in response to demands for transparency. Beyond transparency, we want justice, and an end to death by drone across national borders, and in violation of international law.


Nick Mottern of knowdrones.com reports: “Since mid-March, over 80 events are scheduled, from Hawaii to Maine, addressing drone warfare/robotic war/militarization, including civil resistance, drone base protests, teach-ins, street and campus leafletting and film screenings of Unmanned: America’s Drone War and Wounds of Waziristan. More than 100 events are expected by the end of May.” Dozens of people have been arrested, or are awaiting trial, at Creech, Beale, and Hancock Air Force bases.
Photos of Victims of US Drone Wars in Pakistan and Yemen


Click to download 11″ x 17″ versions of the images to hold at protests, and help bring to life the human stories behind the statistics.
There are not many photos of the drone victims available for a number of reasons. Most of these drone attacks take place in remote locations. People living in these areas often don’t have many photos of loved ones they can readily share after they have been killed. Maybe worst of all, journalists and rescuers are often deterred from visiting recent drone attack sites by the possibility of a second “double tap” drone strike.


Naeem Ullah was just 10-years-old when he died of shrapnel wounds from a drone strike on October 18th 2010 in Datta Khel, North Waziristan. Noor Behram took this photo shortly before the boy died. Click here to view/download other images.
Spread the Word: Drones Mean Danger!

The US military is killing and terrorizing people right now in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia with missiles fired from drones which may circle villages for weeks, piloted from distant bases, many in the US by military operators and CIA contractors.
Thousands of people have been incinerated, some by follow-up attacks aimed at rescuers and mourners in lands where the US have designated all military-age males as combatants.

The US war makers as using drones and secret operations for targeted killing, making war seem easy and cheap to politicians, attractive to a publis attuned to video games, while sowing fear, hatred and revenge among those unjustly targeted.


Vast surveillance by the NSA of billions of people has been used to kill drone targets. Domestic drone surveillance by police and the FBI not only threatens privacy but endangers peoples’ rights to associate, assemble and speak out. 


List of Pakistanis and Yemenis Killed by Drone Strikes


This list was compiled for reading at anti-drone protests during the Spring Days of Action to End US Drone Killing & Surveillance. 


Find an event near you. Download this list as a printable PDF.
Spring Days of Action to End Drone Killing,
Drone Surveillance, Global Militarization
SalsaLabs.com
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 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.
