Devastating, Living Under Drones 3:30:
“Before the drone attacks, it was as if everyone was young. After the drone attacks, it is as if everyone is ill.”
Recently a teenage friend from Gaza visited me on her first trip away from her home on the Strip. The very first morning we were outside relaxing on the deck when the invasive sound of a worker operating an industrial sized weed blower in the neighbor’s yard permeated our space. Suddenly her eyes dulled, she looked at me and said “drone.”
Drones terrorize entire populations, for far too many people they are a fact of life. It is vitally necessary the US government change its drone policy for it is a national shame.
From Brave New Foundation:
Brave New Foundation has the honor of releasing a video to accompany a seminal report by human rights law experts at Stanford and New York University law schools. The report, entitled Living Under Drones presents chilling first-hand testimony from Pakistani civilians on the humanitarian and security costs of escalating drone attacks by the United States. The report uncovers civilian deaths, and shocking psychological and social damage to whole families and communities – where people are literally scared to leave their homes because of drones flying overhead 24 hours a day.
The report is based on nine months of research, including two investigations in Pakistan. The Stanford-NYU research team interviewed over 130 individuals, including civilians who traveled out of the largely inaccessible region of North Waziristan to meet with the researchers. They also interviewed medical doctors who treated strike victims, and humanitarian and journalist professionals who worked in drone impacted areas.
The legal analysis from the Stanford and NYU law schools can be accessed here. Full Report here.
This reminds me of how terrified people were in my hometown after ww2.
They wanted to get rid of everything German.
The German Wharf that had had this name for hundreds of years could easily have a name change. And now suddenly be called the Wharf (Bryggen) .
link to en.wikipedia.org
The hard part was getting rid of the Nazi German bunkers.
They tried to blow up the U-Boat-bunker «Bruno» at Laksevåg.
People was terrified from the explosions, so the government had to stop. The bunker is still there.
The people at Laksevåg lost 193 civilians, 61 of them children at Holen skole for children when one British bombing raid missed Bruno.
The children that was dug out from from the ruins alive has not had a good life.
After the war Norwegians had to love the winners, so survivors of Holen could not be victims…
Very good article. One of the theories why Obama has pursued the drone option in Pakistan is it avoids the entire subject of rendition, torture, geneva conventions, legal rights. Your just dead. Out of print. No prisons to visit. You wonder how many innocents in Pakistan have been killed. I’ve heard about huge wedding parties getting killed. Horrible.
Whaaaaat? Hypocritical, fake sympathy from a Zionist? THE ISRAELIS ARE DOING THIS TOO IN GAAAAAAAAAAZA!
kalithea: ‘Whaaaaat? Hypocritical, fake sympathy from a Zionist? THE ISRAELIS ARE DOING THIS TOO IN GAAAAAAAAAAZA!’
You’re ignoring the obvious. Different moral laws apply on Planet Israel.
Friendly suggestion, Annie: spend less time wallowing in ridiculous MW comment threads and more getting out and about the Internet, if not the real world! The “Living Under Drones” report and video came out on Sept. 25 and got wide publicity at the time: The Independent wrote: “The product of nine months’ research and more than 130 interviews, it is one of the most exhaustive attempts by academics to understand – and evaluate – Washington’s drone wars. And their verdict is damning.” Democracy Now had an excellent segment on it. Al Jazeera held a debate between one of the report’s researchers and a hugely annoying Beltway professor named Christine Fair. Though the NY Times covered the report only online, as far as I can tell, the LA Times had a long and very good story about it in print and a follow-up op-ed by an attorney for Reprieve who worked on the report, plus yesterday a reply by some idiot trying to justify the U.S. drone program by citing Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl recently shot by the Taliban.
On the other hand, I have to give you credit for beating NPR to the punch: they have yet to mention the report. Instead, on the very day it was released, they devoted four minutes, 21 seconds to a segment called “National Security Experts Go Rogue For ‘Drone Smackdown’,” an utter obscenity about two Beltway types (both Jews, one married to a woman who used to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and now heads of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution) taking their kids to the park and trying to crash each other’s toy remote-controlled planes.
The “Living Under Drones” report and video came out on Sept. 25 and got wide publicity at the time
and it’s still timely weeks later henry. btw, this was breaking news and no one here had a word to say:
link to mondoweiss.net
not one comment.
i also covered medea’s book link to mondoweiss.net
i think drones are important. wrt this being front paged that is not my decision, take it up with phil and adam.
Funny, I thought of posting something about it here at the time, but I decided it was outside MW’s scope. Whatever. Better late than never….
no henry, not outside MW scope at all. kathleen mentioned marcy wheeler earlier, ‘persistent and in depth’. i think persistence is the key to embedding the effects of US drone policy on american minds in terms of the way they effect people, and this film does that very well.
i hope you write something about drones. please do, we need more. most people don’t like the topic (including me unless it encompasses news events) but that is beside the point. americans have to be brought up to speed on the damage they are causing and that won’t happen with one or two posts a year.
anyone see any coverage anywhere in the MSM about the Pakistani protest against drone strikes in Waziristan last weekend?
kathleen, if you click on the “national shame” link in the main post above you can see cnn covering medea. also, in the first link i just copied in my October 11, 2012 at 5:22 pm comment above there are 2 links, one to nyt, the other to cnn.
Thanks so much Annie
kathleen, there’s an excellent report here:
link to thebureauinvestigates.com
and juan cole has it up at his site.
Drone strikes against people who cannot defend themselves is state terrorism pure and simple. The idea of a US “war on terror” is one of the biggest of the big lies. There is a war on perceived enemies of the US and Israel, and terror is fine and dandy in this struggle long as the “right” people are terrorized.
Note that Pakistan is either unwilling or unable to stop these strikes despite an arsenal of perhaps 100 nukes.
Maybe the Pakistanis understand the threats they face in the Swat valley and the mountainous regions..
might be old news but these drone nightmares aren’t going away. wait until they start using them domestically. anyone who votes for obama is an accomplice to murder…drone murder…the most chickenshit kind…or to borrow from waters; “the bravery of being out of range”
what a future….
A paranoid bunch, eh?
to flyod, re: domestic use of drones
link to publicintelligence.net
link to nashuatelegraph.com
link to articles.latimes.com
link to wired.com
link to independent.co.uk
link to wtop.com
Ahhh, Obama, the Drone Lord, and so many around here support him anyway. Obama has had more people killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen than Bush, but then it’s true that Bush was more into dropping genocide over Fallujah.
Americans spreading misery and shit around the world. There’s a slow genocide of Muslims happening in plain sight.
What would you have us do? Only going to be worse with Romney
And maybe stop shooting a 14-year old girl in the head because she wanted to make sure that all young Pakistani girls received an education?
I fail to see the difference between a drone strike and an attack from a manned aircraft. If the strike was justified and on-target, aimed at active terrorists, then it’s ok. If innocent civilians are hit, it’s wrong, regardless of whether the launch platform was manned or unmanned.
Apparently drones are cost-effective and efficient. They’re not going to be un-invented.
I fail to see the difference between a drone strike and an attack from a manned aircraft.
did you open the links and read the findings? did you watch the video? i’m not going to bother to address your comment before finding that out because if you have read and watched the available info then it will mean you are willfully ignoring the information available.
If the strike was justified and on-target, aimed at active terrorists, then it’s ok.
if? why bother to comment on a post while completely ignoring the information. 2% of the victims have been high level targets. get a grip.
Annie,
I did open the video and links. In my comment I was seeking to EXPAND the scope of the issue by pointing out that I don’t see the difference between a drone operator and a warplane pilot (and those giving them the orders). The moral responsibility is the same.
Appreciate Annie’s efforts to bring up the drone attacks and the deadly consequences here at Mondoweiss. But if you want persistent in depth coverage of this issue. Dr. Marcy Wheeler over at Emptywheel.net has been covering this critical issues for years now. There is post after post about this over there. Contact your reps, let other people know. I so appreciate Mondoweiss but this is not the only place most of us go to get our more detailed news about the middle east. Marcy Wheeler has really been on top of this issue.
I walked out of the room several times during the debate. Did Raddatz even whisper about deaths and U.S. drone attacks? I don’t believe so. She did mention deaths in Syria, but not in Iraq. They discussed foreign policy but she did not touch the I/P issue. Anyone else notice that.
She opened up with a tough question about Libya but then allowed Biden to skate around and he never answered the question