U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivers his first major public address on investing in a strong foreign policy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA on February 20, 2013.
“For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer, where the air-conditioning was kept at 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) and, for security reasons, the door couldn’t be opened. Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world.
The container is filled with the humming of computers. It’s the brain of a drone, known as a cockpit in Air Force parlance. But the pilots in the container aren’t flying through the air. They’re just sitting at the controls.”
Innocent women and children were killed by drone strikes in the al-Majala region of Yemen. The United States is responsible for a very high number of innocent civilian deaths from drone strikes; a soldier wracked with guilt told his story of dehumanizing rationalization after killing a child. The senseless deaths of innocent children in Newtown, Connecticut devastated the nation, causing President Obama to cry openly for them. Why are children in places like Yemen or Pakistan not mourned? Cenk Uygur discusses the disparity (19 Dec 2012).
The report Living under Drones, quoted by Cenk Uygur, was earlier this year the subject of another post of mine: “Since 2004, up to 884 innocent civilians, including at least 176 children, have died from US drone strikes in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. A new report from the Stanford and New YorkUniversity law schools finds drone use has caused widespread post-tramatic stress disorder and an overall breakdown of functional society in North Waziristan. In addition, the report finds the use of a “double tap” procedure, in which a drone strikes once and strikes again not long after, has led to deaths of rescuers and medical professionals”.[1]
‘The Pakistani Taliban gained significant leverage as popular anger against US drone strikes has risen. But according to LinkAsia contributor Wajahat Khan, the shooting of 14-year-old women’s rights activist Malala Yousufzai has swayed public opinion against them (10 Oct 2012)’.
Double Standards with Afshin Rattansi is a political satire and interview programme broadcast from the heart of London that exposes the hypocrisy of world powers with comedy and high-profile guests.
Afshin Rattansi is an award-winning journalist who has worked at the BBC Today programme (in the run up to the war on Iraq in 2003), CNN International, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera Arabic, Press TV, TV-am and a number of Channel 4 (UK) commissioned production companies. He started in journalism on The Guardian (London) for which he wrote a column and had written for the New Statesman, The Oldie, Counterpunch, Critical Quarterly and Flaunt Magazine. He was also chief catastrophe risk analyst at a leading Lloyd’s of London agency.
Here is episode # 10, posted on the interwebz on 10 October 2012.
‘Since 2004, up to 884 innocent civilians, including at least 176 children, have died from US drone strikes in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. A new report from the Stanford and New YorkUniversity law schools finds drone use has caused widespread post-tramatic stress disorder and an overall breakdown of functional society in North Waziristan. In addition, the report finds the use of a “double tap” procedure, in which a drone strikes once and strikes again not long after, has led to deaths of rescuers and medical professionals. Many interviewees told the researchers they didn’t know what America was before drones. Now what they know of America is drones, death and terror (24 September 2012)’.
The report, called “Living Under Drones,” describes the conditions of daily life in communities in northwest Pakistan where drones hover 24 hours a day, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women and children, driving many to stay away from school, funerals, and routine economic, social, and communal activities.
“We heard horrendous stories from people who lost loved ones, who witnessed drone strikes, or had been injured themselves,” said Professor James Cavallaro, Director of the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at StanfordLawSchool and an author of the report. “And perhaps most shocking are the psychological and social ramifications for whole families and communities. People are scared to go to the market, to school, to socialize because of the terror that a drone could strike anywhere at any moment.”
The Stanford-NYU research team conducted nine months of research, including two investigations in Pakistan. Researchers interviewed over 130 individuals, including civilians who traveled out of the largely inaccessible region of North Waziristan to meet with the research team. They also interviewed medical doctors who treated strike victims, humanitarian professionals, and journalists who worked in drone-impacted areas.
One small business owner from North Waziristan described the devastation caused by drones. Strikes “destroy human beings,” he said. Afterwards, “there is nobody left and small pieces left behind. Pieces. Whatever is left is just little pieces of bodies and cloth.” The everyday effect of drone strikes was underscored by the president of the local journalists union. “If I am walking in the market, I have this fear that maybe the person walking next to me is going to be a target of a drone…[or]…Maybe they will target the car in front of me or behind me.”
“The voices of the people who live where drones fly constantly – and who bear the primary costs of U.S. drone attacks – are largely absent in the U.S. public debates and in the U.S. media,” said another report author Professor Sarah Knuckey, a human rights lawyer at NYU, and former advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. “This report is a step towards bringing their accounts to a U.S. audience. Policy-makers and the American public cannot continue to ignore evidence of harm and counter-productive impacts of U.S. drone strikes. A significant rethinking of current policies, in light of all relevant short and long-term costs and benefits, is long overdue”.[1]
In Pakistan, violent rallies have left at least 17 people dead. Protesters were demonstrating over an anti-Islam video that was recently released online. Al Jazeera‘s Kamal Hyder reports from Islamabad (21 September 2012).
Drone warfare has increased dramatically since 2008 and there are over 60 bases across the globe engaging in a US drone missions. US drones are currently deployed in the skies of over 14 different countries, some for surveillance and others for attacking ground targets. The area of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, known as Waziristan is the locus of much of the drone operations. But are these weapons keeping us safe, or do they just incite further terrorist attacks? And is their use a violation of the Geneva Conventions?
THE DRONE LANDSCAPE
THE DRONE ECONOMY
THE DRONE MORALITY
As a bonus, here is Al Jazeera’s People & Power talking about the Attack of the Drones: The US government’s growing reliance on aerial drones to pursue its war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere is proving controversial. As governments are increasingly relying on drones, what are the consequences for civil liberties and the future of war? (18 July 2012).
Interview with Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange and author of “Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control” recorded July 28, 2012 in the KEXP studios (28 July 2012).
People stumbling across the following piece in Today’s Zaman must have been somewhat surprised, while Turkey’s so-called secularists are probably feeling vindicated now, albeit primarily perturbed and worried too: a ‘prosecutor has proposed charging an internationally renowned Turkish pianist and composer with insulting Islamic religious values in comments he made on Twitter. The state-run Anatolia news agency reported on Friday [, 25 May] that an İstanbul court will decide whether to accept the proposed indictment against Fazıl Say, who has played piano with the New York Philharmonic, Berliner Symphoniker, Israel Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France and Tokyo Symphony. The prosecutor accuses 42-year-old Say of inciting hatred and public enmity and insulting “religious values.” Say, who has served as a culture ambassador for the European Union, allegedly mocked Islamic beliefs on Twitter. Last month, Say sent controversial tweets questioning whether heaven in Islamic belief is like a brothel or pub because the Quran says there are rivers of drinks and houris, or very beautiful women, in heaven for those who commit good deeds while they are on earth’.[1]
In his tweet Mister Say posed the somewhat rhetorical question whether heaven (“cennet”) was a whorehouse (“kerhane”) or a tavern (“meyhane”), and given that the Turkish nation consists of dedicated followers, his facetious comment also got to the attention of a number of people who appear to lack a sense of humour but instead possess a dedicated attachment to the Islamic Heaven. Fazıl Say was obviously referring to the Quranic verse describing the rivers of heaven: “Therein are rivers of water unpolluted, and rivers of milk whereof the flavour changeth not, and rivers of wine delicious to the drinkers, and rivers of clear-run honey; therein for them is every kind of fruit, with pardon from their Lord”.[2] In other words, the Quran clearly indicates that believers will be drinking wine in heaven, and that they will enjoy the experience. And Turkish believers have officially known these delights since 1926: the “proclamation of the Republic . . . liberated Turkish citizens from the restrictions of Islam and the Şeriat [Shariah].” As a result, Republican Turks were meant to enjoy this world and its delights to the fullest and the decision to let Turkish citizens “partake of the delights of the mortal world was arguably crystallized in the consumption of alcoholic beverages. A strict interpretation of Islam explicitly prohibits the drinking of intoxicants in this world.” Hence, the issue of unrestricted access to beer and other alcoholic intoxicants has now assumed political, if not ideological, importance [in Turkey]. Turkey’s Muslim citizens have had legal access to alcohol since 1926. Turkey’s Islamic neighbor states do not grant their citizens equally easy access to the forbidden delights of alcohol. As a result, some Turks regard the issue as critical to the definition of secularism in the country. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) also defines secularism as “Concerned with the affairs of this world, wordly; not sacred”, as I wrote some time ago in Hürriyet Daily News.[3] Now, the pianist Fazıl Say has succeeded to move the debate concerning the consumption of alcohol to loftier spheres. His second query, then, was a reference to those eternally virginal lady-companions one will encounter in heaven: “Thus (it will happen,) and We will marry them with houris having big dark eyes” (44/54); “Relaxing on lined up couches”. And We will marry them with big-eyed houris” (52/20); “The houris, kept guarded in pavilions” (55/72); and finally, “And (for them there will be) houris, having lovely big eyes” (56/22).[4] These Quranic references to other delights awaiting believers in heaven constitute the meat of the first half of his flippant question (“kerhane”).
The big bulk of Turkey’s population has always been quite pious, but nowadays the presence of the AKP government in Ankaraseems to give certain pious busy-bodies the courage to pursue an active exercise in social control in accordance with the Islamic Way. Mister Say, in the company of his lawyers Metin Feyzioğlu and Meltem Akyol, has now appeared in front of the İstanbul Cumhuriyet Savcılığı (Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office), located in Çağlayan.[5]
Recently, a similar thing happened in Afghanistanas well: an ‘Afghan journalism student sentenced to death for insulting Islam denied the charges before an appeals court Sunday [,13 May 2012], saying he only confessed to questioning the religion’s treatment of women because he was tortured. During an hour-long hearing, a judge read aloud a transcript of the Jan. 22 proceedings against 24-year-old Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh at the primary court in northern Balkhprovince. It was the first time the public and the media heard full details from the closed-door trial, which highlights the influence of conservative religious attitudes in post-Taliban Afghanistan’s still-nascent justice system. Kambakhsh was studying journalism at BalkhUniversityin Mazar-i-Sharif and writing for local newspapers when he was arrested Oct. 27 [,2011]’, as recorded by AP.[6]
In neighbouring Pakistan, the present blasphemy legislation has also led to numerous assaults: the BBC informs that ‘offences relating to religion were first codified by India’s British rulers in 1860, and were expanded in 1927. Pakistaninherited these laws after the partition of Indiain 1947. Between 1980-86, a number of clauses were added to the laws by the military government of General Zia-ul Haq. He wanted to “Islamise” them and also legally to separate the Ahmadi community, declared non-Muslim in 1973, from the main body of Muslim population . . . The laws have been contentious since the formation of Pakistan in 1947, but have been especially in the spotlight since a Christian mother-of-five, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death in November 2010 for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The following January Punjab Governor Salman Taseer – a prominent critic of the law – was assassinated by his bodyguard. The assassination divided Pakistan, with some hailing his killer as a hero. In March 2011 Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti was shot dead in Islamabad[as well]’.[7]
Do Pakistan and Afghanistan now represent the shape of things to come inTurkey??? Or has the Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office merely overreached and will there now be a “secular” backlash on the streets of Turkey??? Or, is this but the beginning of the slide down the slippery slope???
The Iranian state-sponsored broadcaster Press TV reports that an alleged ‘former agent of the CIA has revealed that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has died of natural causes five years before the US announced his death. In an interview with Russia’s Channel One, Berkan Yashar, who is also a Turkish politician, said theUS has not killed the al-Qaeda leader’.
Who is this agent claiming to know what really happened to the U.S.enemy of the state # 1??? A reporter at the KavkazCenter, Amir Kashirov had this to say: “Berkan Yasar (AKA “Abubakar”), [a] baldish unsuccessful journalist [who now] turns out to be a CIA agent! Pretty tough! In reality, in the midst of the Chechen diaspora in Turkey that “agent” is known as a usual scam artist”.[1] Turkish nationalists are unusually fond of the Chechen resistance, claiming ethnic affinities as well as a shared devotion to the religion of Islam. Now this scam artist has found another way to exploit the gullible for financial gain. Last month, the British-Turkish translator and journalist Haluk Demirbağ did a piece on the Chechen and his new claims: “Osama bin Laden died a natural death nearly 5 years before it was announced that he was eliminated by the American commandos. This sensational statement was made by a Turkish politician, and a former U.S. intelligence agent [or rather con artist and fraud by the name of Berkan Yaşar]. In an interview with Russia’s Channel One, he said that the Americans simply found and opened the tomb of the leader of al-Qaeda. The journalists of Channel One first met this man in 2008. At the time he was featured in the documentary “Plan Caucasus,” talking about the attempts of the western intelligence services in the early 1990′s to separate the Northern Caucasus and, in particular, Chechnya from Russia”.[2]
Demirbağ expands on his contention by divulging that “Berkan Yashar is now a Turkish politician ,’ (though) Chechen by nationality], but in [the 1990’s] he was one of the ideologists of Johar Dudayev. He asked for a meeting, promising to tell the truth about the death of Osama bin Laden whom he met in the early 90-ies in Chechnya”.[3]
In Turkey, conspiracy theorists and charlatans are quasi-ubiquitous, hence my surprise reading that Demirbağ apparently takes this Chechen opportunist seriously . . . Mister Yaşar appears to have made the following statement: “In September of 1992 I was in Chechnya, that’s when I first met the man whose name was Bin Laden. This meeting took place in a two-story house in the city of Grozny; on the top floor was a family of Gamsakhurdia, the Georgian president, who then was kicked out of his country. We met on the bottom floor; Osama lived in the same building” and with regard to the above-mentioned spectacular claim, he continues that “[e]ven if the entire world believed [that Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Special Forces] I could not possibly believe it. I personally know the Chechens who protected him, they are Sami, Mahmood, and Ayub, and they were with him until the very end. I remember that day very well, there were three sixes in it: 26 June 2006. These people, as well as two others from Londonand two Americans, all seven of them, saw him dead. He was very ill, he was skin and bones, very thin, and they washed him and buried him”.[4]
Like all Turkish intellectuals and public figures, this Chechen scam artist turns out to be a total megalomaniac, as explained by Demirbağ: “Berkan explained why he informed the journalists of Channel One: he feared for his life. According to him, only wide publicity around the world can protect him from the CIA. However, just in case, the Turkish secret services, according to him, provided him with guards and weapons”.[5] As for the question whether or not Osama died in Abbottabad, I can only say that time will tell . . . or maybe not.
Secretary Kerry Delivers Remarks on Investing in a Strong Foreign Policy
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivers his first major public address on investing in a strong foreign policy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA on February 20, 2013.
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Americana, Current Affairs, Current History, Democracy, Drone Wars, Middle East, Military-Industrial Complex, Obama, Oil and Gas, Pakistan, Political Commentary, Terrorism, Uncategorized, War on Terror