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

The Persistent Myth of US Precision Bombing

June 29, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

The devastating aerial assault on Baghdad in 2003, known as “shock and awe.” by Nicolas J. Davies, originally published on Consortium News Opinion polls in the United States and the United Kingdom have found that a majority of the public in both countries has a remarkably consistent belief that only about 10,000 Iraqis were killed as a result of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in 2003. Estimates of deaths in Iraq actually range from 150,000 to 1.2 million. Part of the reason for the seriously misguided public

Trump Drones On

June 27, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

How Unpiloted Aircraft Expand the War on Terror By Rebecca Gordon, originally published on Tom Dispatch, May 24, 2018 They are like the camel’s nose, lifting a corner of the tent. Don’t be fooled, though. It won’t take long until the whole animal is sitting inside, sipping your tea and eating your sweets. In countries around the world — in the Middle East, Asia Minor, Central Asia, Africa, even the Philippines — the appearance of U.S. drones in the sky

Documenting the Poor People’s Campaign, Albany 2018

June 27, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

Image: Taken from the Fort Orange Club Action, 31 Arrested. Why are you here? Ann Tiffany, “Because I’m committed to making a change” Videos by John Amidon of Upstate Drone Action participants and others at the Poor People’s Campaign events in Albany, May and June of 2019. John Amidon is an active member of the Upstate Drone Action Coalition and of Veterans for Peace.

Drone Operator Issues

June 26, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

Former Drone Operators Say They Were “Horrified” By Cruelty of Assassination Program, ~The Intercept by Nick Mottern, published on KnowDrones.com At the beginning of 2017 there were about 1,350 U.S. Air Force drone operators, most of them assigned to operations and training centers inside the United States. In this section we will discuss what we know about the issues confronting these women and men and then list organizations and individuals offering help to those operators who are moved by conscience

Trump’s Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes, and No One Is Talking About It

June 26, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Lee Camp, originally published on TruthDig We live in a state of perpetual war, and we never feel it. While you get your gelato at the hip place where they put those cute little mint leaves on the side, someone is being bombed in your name. While you argue with the 17-year-old at the movie theater who gave you a small popcorn when you paid for a large, someone is being obliterated in your name. While we sleep and

Trident: Illegal and Immoral

May 8, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

“The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide” Reprinted from Kings Bay Plowshares Seven Catholic plowshares activists entered Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia on April 4th, 2018. They went to make real the prophet Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares”. The seven chose to act on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who devoted his life to addressing what he called the “triple evils of militarism, racism and materialism.”

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