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) .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyskebryggen
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.
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.
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.
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….