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Standing With Daniel Hale, Standing With Whistleblowers

April 8, 2021 Chip Gibbons, Defending Rights and Dissent. , ,
Join us for a special broadcast featuring DRAD Policy Director Chip Gibbons, Jesselyn Radack head of Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts, and whistleblowers who have faced Espionage Act charges. Last week, Daniel Hale, a drone whistleblower, pled guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act. Hale admitted in court that he gave to an investigative reporter documents detailing human rights abuses pertaining to the US’s troubling assassination program. Although this information was in the public interest, the government nonetheless indicted Hale under the Espionage Act. This fits into a troubling pattern where those who expose official abuses of power, including war crimes and unconstitutional surveillance, are charged under the Espionage Act.

Drone Whistleblower Charged With Violating Espionage Act Pleads Guilty

April 2, 2021 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , ,
Daniel Hale, who blew the whistle on the United States government's targeted assassination program that includes drones, pled guilty to transmitting and retaining "national defense information" in violation of the Espionage Act. The guilty plea by Hale makes him the first whistleblower to be convicted under the Espionage Act during President Joe Biden's administration. A change of plea hearing was held on March 31 in the Eastern District of Virginia, around a week before Hale was scheduled to go to trial. Judge Liam O'Grady permitted Hale to remain under supervision by a probation officer until sentencing on July 13. Though Hale pled guilty, prosecutors from the Justice Department opposed canceling the trial altogether and refused to dismiss the four remaining charges.

Next Indo-Pacific US Commander Warns Of China’s Threat To Taiwan

March 27, 2021 Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. , , ,
During his confirmation hearing to head the command that covers 51 percent of the globe, U.S. Pacific Fleet commander Admiral John Aquilino told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “the most dangerous concern is that of a military force against Taiwan.”  Aquilino told the committee that the “annexation of Taiwan is the number one priority of China” and asked the Senate committee to fund the $27.3 billion Pacific Deterrence Initiative. Aquilino’s comment echoed the March 2, 2021 assessment of retired Lt. General H.R. McMaster, one of the Trump administration’s national security advisers.

Withdrawing US Troops From Afghanistan Is Only A Start

March 7, 2021 Phyllis Bennis, The Nation. , , ,
In recent months talk of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan has increased once again. It’s not the first time during the course of the nearly two-decades-long war that we’ve heard this, and at several points since the war began in 2001, some troops have actually been withdrawn. But somehow, almost 20 years in, there still isn’t very much talk about what it will actually take to end US actions that kill civilians. We hear talk about the “forever wars,” of which Afghanistan is of course the longest, but not much about what their first perpetrator, President George W. Bush, named the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT)—and the effect that that’s had. The shift in name and definition of war in Afghanistan (and related post-9/11 wars in so many countries) away from GWOT to “forever wars” reflects how the wars have been and continue to be fought.

Why I Support An International Treaty To Ban Weaponized Drones And Drone Surveillance

March 1, 2021 Kathy Kelly, Covert Action Magazine. , , ,
At a time in my life when I barely knew drones existed, a young Lebanese mother mourning the death of her six-year-old daughter, Zainab, helped me understand how monitoring by drones terrified her and her neighbors. It was the summer of 2006, during a war referred to as the Israeli-Hezbollah war. On July 30th, around 1:00 a.m., Israeli warplanes fired missiles at buildings in Qana, Lebanon, a small village in southern Lebanon. One missile, a bunker buster supplied by the U.S. corporation Raytheon, caused a three-story building to collapse, killing an extended family of 27 people. Fifteen of them were children.  Two weeks later, with a team of international observers, I visited Qana because of reports of a massacre there.

Yemen: ‘Mission Accomplished’… For Now?

February 12, 2021 Charles Pierson, Counterpunch. , , ,
Beneath a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” President George W. Bush announced that “[m]ajor combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” Bush’s May 1, 2003 announcement on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln would turn out to be wildly overoptimistic. The US invaded Iraq in March 2003. US troops would remain in Iraq for the next eight years, until 2011. In 2014, US forces were back, this time to fight the Islamic State. In 2020, US troops left Iraq under pressure from the Iraqi government. US forces were in Afghanistan for nearly two decades after invading in 2001, the longest war in US history. (President Donald Trump withdrew the US from Afghanistan in 2020.)

The Dark Past Of Biden’s Nominee For National Intelligence Director

December 31, 2020 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. , , ,
Former acting CIA Director Mike Morell, who has disingenuously argued for years that he had nothing to do with the agency’s torture program, but who continued to defend it, has taken himself out of the running to be President-elect Joe Biden’s new CIA director. The decision is a victory for the peace group Code Pink, which spearheaded the Stop Morell movement, and it’s a great thing for all Americans.  Now, though, we have to turn our attention to Biden’s nominee to be director of national intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines. Haines is certainly qualified on paper to lead the Intelligence Community. 

Portland Drone Testing Facility Cancelled

November 11, 2020 Fight for the Future. , , ,
Last week, the Port of Portland announced it would cancel a pending lease with Verizon for seven acres of riverfront property in one of Portland, Oregon’s most diverse neighborhoods. Verizon and their Portland-based subsidiary Skyward had sought to lease this area to test drones on Verizon’s 5G network along the Willamette river. “We appreciate the Port responding in support of community members and organizations who organized quickly to oppose this facility,” said Cassie Cohen (she/her), Executive Director of the Portland Harbor Community Coalition.

Alice’s Nightmare In Drone Land

October 30, 2020 World Beyond War. , , ,
New York - On Thursday, 33 people from New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts organized by Upstate Drone Action blocked the gates at Hancock Air Field near Syracuse, NY. Prior to Thursday’s action, activists released this statement: “And why are we going to Hancock AFB on October 29? Our country has gone down the rabbit hole — racially, spiritually and economically. COVID 19 has exposed the Pentagon and the Federal government’s inability to do their job: to aid and protect our people. In fact the government has helped spread COVID, denying its severity and denying our people the PPE to combat that scourge.

Anti-drone Protestors Block Entrance To US Assassin Drone Base

October 4, 2020 Shut Down Creech, Popular Resistance. , , ,
A group of 15 peaceful protesters from Nevada, California, and Arizona converged for a weeklong protest at Creech Air Force Base to oppose the remote-controlled killing that takes place in the desert just north of Las Vegas.  Organized by CODEPINK and Veterans For Peace, the bi-annual protest known as “Shut Down Creech” was different due to the concerns and constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, and especially because many of the regular activists are elders, and are at higher risk of complications and death.

A “Persistent Eye In The Sky” May Be Coming To A City Near You

September 20, 2020 Medea Benjamin and Barry Summers, Information Clearinghouse. , , ,
“Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything.” That same persistent eye in the sky may soon be deployed over U.S. cities. At the time he made that comment about surveillance drones over Afghanistan, Maj. General James Poss was the Air Force’s top intelligence officer. He was preparing to leave the Pentagon, and move over to the Federal Aviation Administration. His job was to begin executing the plan to allow those same surveillance drones to fly over American cities.

US Drone Assassinations Continue Despite German Effort To Restrict Them

June 1, 2020 By Patrick Maynard, Truthout. , , ,
A year after a German court issued a ruling that would have dramatically restricted U.S. drone operations in accordance with international law, no substantive changes have taken place, as the lawsuit that led to the March 2019 ruling is still stuck in the appeals process. The lawsuit, filed by Yemeni engineer Faisal bin Ali Jaber over the killing of two family members, alleges that the German government intentionally ignored U.S. forces’ use of Ramstein Air Base, near Mannheim, as a vital data transfer point in drone assassinations. Those drone operations often kill civilians in areas where the United States has not declared war — a category of attack that has been interpreted as being against international law. According to the human rights organization Reprieve, which also took part in the suit, the two people killed in the 2012 Yemen drone strike were Jaber’s brother-in-law, Salem, and his nephew, Waleed. The family had gathered for a wedding celebration.

The End Of War As We Know It?

May 27, 2020 Danny Sjursen, Tom Dispatch. , , , ,
Covid-19, an ongoing global human tragedy, may have at least one silver lining. It has led millions of people to question America’s most malignant policies at home and abroad. Regarding Washington’s war policies abroad, there’s been speculation that the coronavirus might, in the end, put a dent in such conflicts, if not prove an unintended peacemaker -- and with good reason, since a cash-flush Pentagon has proven impotent as a virus challenger. Meanwhile, it’s become ever more obvious that, had a fraction of “defense” spending been invested in chronically underfunded disease control agencies, this country’s response to the coronavirus crisis might have been so much better. Curiously enough, though, despite President Trump’s periodic complaints about America’s “ridiculous endless wars,” his administration has proven remarkably unwilling to agree to even a modest rollback in U.S. imperial ambitions.

First Somali Congressperson Legitimizes AFRICOM And US Drone War

May 14, 2020 By Tunde Osazua and Netfa Freeman, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
United States representatives, no matter their racial or ethnic backgrounds, appear unable to perceive the inherent white supremacy in the notion that the US has some altruistic responsibility to police the continent of Africa with military troops and supervisors. As a result, "people of color," such as the Somali-"American" Congresswoman IIhan Omar provide political and moral cover to the presence of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the dubious claims about “US interests” on the continent. Only an erasure of brutal European colonization from history and its “Scramble for Africa” to steal her rich mineral resources and vast tracts of arable land can justify giving heirs of European colonialism a role of benevolence. AFRICOM is the colonization of Africa by the U.S. and constitutes the new scramble for Africa tantamount to when, in the 1800s, the colonial powers fought over which of them would dominate which parts of the resource rich continent. 

US Drone Assassinations Continue Despite German Effort To Restrict Them

March 23, 2020 Patrick Maynard, Truthout.org , , ,
Berlin– A year after a German court issued a ruling that would have dramatically restricted U.S. drone operations in accordance with international law, no substantive changes have taken place, as the lawsuit that led to the March 2019 ruling is still stuck in the appeals process.
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