Reports from Hancock and Beyond – Page 2 – The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars

A Tale of Two Atrocities

April 18, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Doug Noble Donald Trump’s latest strike on Syria, pulled off without Congressional approval and in blatant violation of US and international law. Reporting in breathless detail the weapons used and the sites bombed, the mainstream media seem to agree with President Trump that Syrian President Bashar Assad is a “Gas Killing Animal” responsible for the ghastly deaths of Syrian innocents in a chemical attack, one which demands swift, forceful retaliation. This rush to judgment comes even as international organizations

Gene Sharp Taught Us How and Why Nonviolence Works

April 18, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Ann Tiffany and Ed Kinane of the Syracuse Peace Council Activist, author and scholar Gene Sharp died this past January 28. Inspired by Gandhi and deeply informed by history, Sharp (b.1928) founded the Albert Einstein Institution in Boston. Back in the 80s, Ed plowed through Sharp’s three-volume, 900-page, “The Politics of Nonviolent Action” (Porter Sargent, 1973). The tome pivots on Sharp’s “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action,” for toppling dictators and enlarging liberation. Widely reprinted, the systematic (though somewhat redundant)

Thousands of Hearts and Minds

April 18, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Ed Kinane To work against militarism and for social justice is to struggle for hearts and minds. We “educate, agitate, and organize.” We reach out to the public to mobilize its conscience. But the public is large and we are few. Most ways to reach the public are costly. Or shaped by other agendas. So mostly we operate small scale. We could however make much greater use of a familiar and broad public forum: letters to the editor. LTEs

Billboards Opposing Drone Wars Are Going Up All Over Syracuse, NY

March 3, 2018 David Swanson Leave a comment

by David Swanson, originally published on World Beyond War, Feb 21. 2018 World Beyond War has been raising funds for and renting billboards in opposition to war. We’ve run into censorship from numerous billboard companies but persevered, and more billboards are on their way. First we put this message up here in Charlottesville, Va., and then in Baltimore, Md. (see explanation of the 3% calculation here): Now we’re putting these two images up on billboards in Syracuse, NY, where drone

Pentagon Drone Attacks Escalate in Somalia While AMISOM Plans Withdrawal

February 1, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Abayomi Azikiwe, originally published on Pan African News Wire, Jan 31, 2018 Trump administration creates conditions for further displacement and hunger Somalia is facing yet another major crisis as the United States steps up its drone attack and combat operations in this Horn of Africa state. Drone attacks are promoted by the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an effective means of targeting so-called “terrorists” without threatening the lives of innocent people and American soldiers. This

GETTING BEYOND WAR AND MILITARISM: the “To-Do” List

January 10, 2018 Ed Kinane Leave a comment

Violence begets violence. War profits only the few, the rich, the powerful — the 1%. As moral beings and tax paying citizens we must vigorously oppose war. Especially those wars of aggression perpetrated by the United States and its allies and proxies. These mostly occur in or near the Islamic oil lands (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen). We must oppose resource war and wars of weapon demonstration (drones over Gaza). We must oppose war for corporate profit. War industry lobbying (Lockheed Martin)

Standing Up to the National Anthem

January 10, 2018 James Ricks Leave a comment

by James Ricks of Upstate Drone Action, previously published on United National Antiwar Coalition Blog and Ithaca Gazette This Nation’s anthem was composed by Francis Scott Key, a racist, white supremacist, anti-abolitionist lawyer. He felt that black people, free or slave, were genetically inferior to white people. That perception was the foundation of his legal pursuits. When he was the District Attorney for the City of Washington, he defended slavery and prosecuted those in the abolitionist movement. He argued in court that

The Wars Abroad Meet the War at Home

December 13, 2017 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Felton Davis of NYC Catholic Worker Below is the announcement sent out by Isaac at Action Corps NYC, and a couple of the photo sets from Monday’s demonstration across from the United Nations. It was a long twenty hours “in the system,” as the process from the precinct through the labyrinth of basement holding cells, to the courtroom at 100 Centre Street is known. My vest photo of Nora Al-Awlaki was taken by the officers of the Strategic Response

We are Killing Terrorists and Attack We Will

December 8, 2017 ucgdew One comment

Those who slaughter innocent people will find no glory in this life or the next. They are nothing but thugs and criminals and predators, and that’s right losers. ~President Donald Trump We are Killing Terrorists and Attack We Will, Trump’s Most Vicious Racist Rants by Brian Terrell, Originally Published in “The Sower“, Dec. 17, 2017 On Monday, August 21, President Donald Trump delivered a prime-time speech almost shocking in its ordinariness. It was such an address as either of his

The Environmental Consequences of the Use of Armed Drones

December 7, 2017 ucgdew Leave a comment

It is suspected that a small drone carrying a thermite grenade may have caused a massive arms depot blast near Balakliya, Ukraine in March 2017. The 350 hectare site near Kharkiv is around 100km from the frontline of the conflict in the eastern Donbas area. 20,000 people were evacuated and the blast is likely to have left a significant environmental footprint of heavy metals and energetic materials. by Doug Weir and Elizabeth Minor, Originally published on Toxic Remnants of War