Drones

Murder By Any Other Name

November 7, 2021 Scott Ritter, Consortium News. Educate! Afghanistan, Drones, International Law, Wars and Militarism

On Aug. 29, the United States murdered ten Afghan civilians in a drone strike. The U.S. Air Force Inspector Gen., Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said, was appointed on Sept. 21, to lead an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the attack. On Nov. 3, Gen. Said released the unclassified findings of his investigation, declaring that while the incident was “regrettable,” no crimes were committed by the U.S. forces involved. The reality, however, is that the U.S. military engaged in an act of premeditated murder violative of U.S. laws and policies, as well as international law. Everyone involved, from the president on down committed a war crime. Their indictment is spelled out in the details of what occurred before and during the approximately eight hours a U.S. MQ-9 “Reaper” drone tracked Zemari Ahmadi, an employee of Nutrition and Education International, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that has been operating in Afghanistan since 2003, working to fight malnutrition among women and children who live in high-mortality areas in Afghanistan.

Daniel Hale And America’s Unending Persecution Of Whistleblowers

November 3, 2021 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Daniel Hale, Drones, Whistleblowers

Struggling with the moral injury of taking part in America’s expanding drone wars, Daniel Hale took it as his civic duty to tell his fellow Americans the truth about what was being done in their name. In 2014, the former Air Force member and National Security Agency intelligence analyst leaked 17 documents to The Intercept that provided the basis for a series of articles detailing the full scope of the civilian deaths caused by U.S. drone strikes. Despite being billed by President Barack Obama, whose administration greatly expanded the drone wars, as “exceptionally surgical and precise,” what Hale’s leaks revealed was that not only was that not the case, but that what the U.S. was doing in the Middle East amounted to war crimes.

Drone Whistleblower Thrown In Pen With Terrorists

October 20, 2021 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Daniel Hale, Drones, Prisoner rights, Whistleblowers

Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale was sent on Sunday to the notorious Communications Management Unit (CMU) at the maximum-security U.S. Penitentiary (USP) at Marion, Illinois to serve a 45-month sentence, rather than to the low-security prison at Butner, North Carolina, where federal Judge Liam O’Grady had recommended he go. Butner is a prison hospital complex, and O’Grady was cognizant of Daniel’s need for psychological therapy to deal with post traumatic stress disorder from his time as a U.S. Air Force drone operator. USP Marion, on the other hand, is a former “Supermax” prison that was built in the early 1960s as a replacement for Alcatraz. It was converted into a CMU to keep terrorists from being in contact with the media.

Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale Imprisoned In Unit For Terrorists

October 19, 2021 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Daniel Hale, Drones, Whistleblowers

Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale, who pled guilty to violating the Espionage Act, was transferred from a jail in Virginia to a communication management unit (CMU) at United States Penitentiary Marion in southern Illinois. He is the first person convicted for an unauthorized disclosure of information to the press to be incarcerated in a CMU, which the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) claims is for terrorists and “high-risk inmates.” The decision may effectively cut him off from his entire support network, including friends and fellow whistleblowers who were by his side as federal prosecutors aggressively pursued charges against him.

Jail Killer Drone Operators Instead Of Drone Whistleblowers

September 19, 2021 Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. Educate! Accountability, Drones, War crimes, Whistleblowers

For decades the U.S. has been murdering innocent civilians, including U.S. citizens, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Mali and who knows where else. Not one person in the military has been held accountable for these criminal acts. Instead, drone whistleblower Daniel Hale is sitting in prison with a 45 month sentence. The August 29, 2021 deaths of ten innocent civilians, including seven children, in a family compound in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan by a hellfire missile fired from a U.S. military drone has brought the U.S. assassination program into massive public view. The photos of the blood-stained walls and the mangled white Toyota in the family compound in densely populated Kabul have gotten incredible attention compared to the 15 years of drone strikes in isolated areas in which hundreds of people attending funerals and wedding parties were killed.

Stop The Terror Of The US Drone Killing Machine

September 4, 2021 ToBlome, Shut Down Creech. Resist! Afghanistan, Drones, Nevada, Terrorism

Did you hear about the 3 Afghan toddler girls whose flesh was ripped to pieces by a U.S. Drone Strike last Sunday? Striking in a Kabul NEIGHBORHOOD, the attack also killed 4 other children, including 2 more under 6 years old! The grief on Amal Ahmadi’s face tells it all! 10 civilian family members dead, 7 of them children, body parts everywhere, and bodies unrecognizable. It was a horrific and tragic scene. And then there was last Friday’s U.S. drone strike in Nangarhar Province that U.S. officials claimed killed two “high profile" ISIS-K targets.” A witness reported, “…rickshaws were burning. Children and women were wounded and one man, one boy and one woman had been killed on the spot.” OFFICIALS LIE...CHILDREN, WOMEN AND MEN DIE! WE MUST UNITE TO STOP THIS RACIST U.S. DRONE TERROR IN THE SKY.

Preventing A Dystopian Future: New Campaign To Ban Killer And Surveillance Drones

August 30, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Afghanistan War, Drones, Occupation, Surveillance

Drones are being used as weapons of terror and oppression throughout the world. Not only do they make it possible for the United States to colonize and occupy other countries, but police departments in the US have access to surveillance and weaponized drones to target civilians. As the technology evolves, drones have the potential to lead to greater wars, including a war between major powers. To prevent this dystopian future, anti-drone activists are organizing an international campaign to ban drones. Clearing the FOG speaks with Nick Mottern, one of the founders of the Ban Killer Drones campaign, about the impact of drones on communities and the work to end them.

Biden Vows New Strikes In Retaliation

August 29, 2021 Julia Conley, Commondreams. Educate! Afghanistan War, Drones, Joe Biden, Wars and Militarism

Even as he planned to withdraw all remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan by August 31, President Joe Biden said Saturday that the drone strike that was launched Friday night in retaliation for an attack claimed by ISIS-K "was not the last." "We will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay," the president said in a statement Saturday afternoon. "Whenever anyone seeks to harm the United States or attack our troops, we will respond. That will never be in doubt." The Pentagon said the drone strike killed two "planners and facilitators" of the explosion outside Kabul's airport, but according to The Guardian, in addition to targets related to the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, an elder in Jalalabad reported that three civilians were killed and four were wounded in the U.S. strike.

Biden Admitted War In Afghanistan Is Becoming A Somalia-Like Drone War

August 19, 2021 Morgan Artyukhina, Sputnik News. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Drones, Wars and Militarism

The war in Afghanistan rested on the same legal basis as the rest of the US War on Terror: the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress on September 18, 2001, a week after the terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda that destroyed the World Trade Center skyscrapers in New York and damaged the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, killing roughly 3,000 Americans. The US invasion of Afghanistan followed just weeks later, and while the Taliban government that had harbored al-Qaeda was quickly overthrown, it regrouped in the countryside and launched a new insurgency the following year, which on Sunday finally succeeded after 18 years in seizing Kabul and dispersing the US-backed Afghan government.

Three Activists Arrested After Blockading Drone Factory

August 19, 2021 Palestine Action. Resist! Drones, Israel, Palestine, Wars and Militarism

Palestine Action have returned to Elbit System’s drone factory in Braunstone Town, Leicester, and have once again disrupted the production of killer drones used for repressive purposes by Israeli forces. The factory – ran by Elbit-Thales joint venture UAV Tactical Systems – has been blockaded by Palestine Action activists. Two activists in a ‘lock-on’ and one activist who had D-locked their body to gates have been arrested, after placing their bodies in the way of Elbit’s drone manufacture operations. The previous occupation of the Leicester site – from May 19th-25th – was Palestine Action’s longest continuous action so far, with the action carried on by local residents who turned out in support.

Daniel Hale Receives 45-Month Sentence

July 28, 2021 Kevin Gosztola, Shadow Proof. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Daniel Hale, Drones, Whistleblowers

Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale was sentenced to 45 months in federal prison. It was a severe sentence but not the harshest sentence ever issued in an Espionage Act prosecution against a former United States government employee or contractor for the “unauthorized disclosure” of information. The sentence was not what U.S. prosecutors demanded. They wanted Hale to go to prison for nine years, but it is likely Judge Liam O’Grady issued a lower sentence after considering his mental health problems. This case is the first major Espionage Act conviction under President Joe Biden. Hale was a signals intelligence analyst in the U.S. Air Force, who was deployed to Afghanistan and stationed at Bagram Air Base.

Drone War Whistleblower Daniel Hale Remains Steadfast

July 26, 2021 Kevin Reed, WSWS. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Daniel Hale, Drones, Whistleblowers

In a 20-page sentencing memorandum in the case of the United States v. Daniel Everette Hale published on July 19, federal prosecutors argue vindictively that the former Air Force analyst stole classified information in order to “ingratiate himself” with journalists and that a “significant sentence is necessary to demonstrate that the unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a serious crime with significant consequences.”

On The Sentencing And Courage Of Daniel Hale

July 16, 2021 Robert Shetterly, Common Dreams. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Daniel Hale, Drones, Whistleblowers

My next portrait for the Americans Who Tell the Truth project will be Daniel Hale, the former Air Force analyst and drone whistleblower who released classified documents showing that nearly 90% of the casualties of U.S. drone assassination missions are civilians—children, women, workers, farmers, and other people who show up as shadows on drone pilot computer screens and are subsequently rendered permanent shadows. Hale will be sentenced on July 27 in Alexandria, Virginia for the crime of truth telling. In all likelihood he will receive 10 years in prison—surely sufficient time to reflect on the error of his ways, which is, primarily, having an overactive conscience, believing that killing innocent civilians, no matter what the national security excuse, is murder.

Bless The Traitors

July 13, 2021 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Daniel Hale, Drones, Whistleblowers

Daniel Hale, an active-duty Air Force intelligence analyst, stood in the Occupy encampment in Zuccotti Park in October 2011 in his military uniform. He held up a sign that read “Free Bradley Manning,” who had not yet announced her transition. It was a singular act of conscience few in uniform had the strength to replicate. He had taken a week off from his job to join the protestors in the park. He was present at 6:00 am on October 14 when Mayor Michael Bloomberg made his first attempt to clear the park. He stood in solidarity with thousands of protestors, including many unionized transit workers, teachers, Teamsters and communications workers, who formed a ring around the park.

Groups Demand End To ‘Unlawful’ US Airstrikes And Drone Attacks

July 5, 2021 People's Dispatch. Resist! Drones, Joe Biden, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

On Wednesday, June 30, rights groups in a letter to president Joe Biden demanded that the US end all “unlawful” airstrikes, including drone attacks. The letter, signed by 113 organizations from across the world, including countries affected by US airstrikes, called such strikes against racial justice as the majority of its victims are Muslims, Brown and Black people.

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