by Barry Summers, published on Covert Action Magazine, January 21, 2022

Drones, or Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), were developed for war. The idea was first conceived in World War I and they were first adopted for surveillance purposes at the end of World War II and in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Then military drones like the Predator became armed during the “Global War on Terror.”

For many years now, people in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan have had to assume that they were being tracked by a drone they could not see, circling miles over their heads. In the United States, government and corporate surveillance is everywhere. However, other than isolated exceptions like the Predator circling over Minneapolis during the George Floyd protests, military drones have not been allowed to operate in civilian, or “non-segregated,” U.S. airspace. That is about to change.

With very little public notice, the U.S. government started the process of opening U.S. civilian airspace to military drones (otherwise known as “integration”) in 2010. The Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Transportation began drafting a “Plan,” at the direction of Congress, and that Plan was signed into law by Barack Obama in 2012.

The Plan emphasized Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) steps to integrate “civil” (civilian, commercial, hobbyist) drones into the National Airspace System (NAS). But the short section devoted to “public” (government, military) drones served the original purpose—beginning the opening of U.S. skies to routine operation of Predators, Reapers, and other drones. A plan within a Plan.

Since then, it has become clear that there was another plan within this Plan. It involved using the imprimatur of the FAA to push the next generation of U.S.-made surveillance/attack drones onto U.S. allies across the globe—not all of whom were deemed suitable to receive advanced U.S. drones previously. Countries with a history of human rights violations [like Morocco or the United Arab Emirates (UAE)], or perpetual states of conflict with their neighbors (like India or Taiwan) have not been able to acquire the most advanced U.S.-made drones. Those restrictions are now falling away.

One U.S. drone maker was at the center of the effort from the start: General Atomics (GA). Maker of the Predator, and then the Reaper, its newest, most advanced drone is the MQ-9B SkyGuardian.

Originally called the “Ceritifiable Predator B,” GA started developing it in 2012 soon after the Plan was signed into law. As the name implies, it was designed from the ground up with the intention that it be certified to operate in domestic airspace. GA has been aggressively marketing it overseas since 2014, with the presumed certification by the FAA as a major selling point. (How aggressively? GA sued the German government to try to force it to reconsider choosing a competitor’s drone.)

GA funded this project internally, meaning it placed a gigantic bet that its “certifiable” drone would be warmly received by the FAA. If in fact there was prior coordination among the DoD, FAA and General Atomics, it suggests that a U.S. foreign policy initiative, a “Public-Private Partnership,” huge and unpublicized, was woven into this Plan.

Since it began in 2012, the majority of the reporting on the DoD/FAA’s drone integration program has been about the civilian/commercial benefits of small drone integration—package delivery, local law enforcement, infrastructure inspection, etc. But behind the scenes, integrating military drones appeared to be the main purpose. And then, there are the foreign sales.

“The foreign sales aspect of these RPAs is potentially huge.”

U.S. Air Force (USAF) Major General James O. Poss, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, the senior Intelligence officer for the USAF, was quoted in a 2012 article titled “Military ‘Aggressively Working’ To Ease Drone Sales Abroad.” He stated that “the foreign sales aspect of these RPAs [remotely piloted aircraft] is potentially huge.… A less restrictive export policy for unmanned aircraft is “in the national interest of the United States,” Poss continued. “It’s something we’re aggressively working with both the OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] policy folks and the State Department.”

Two months after that article appeared, General Poss retired from the USAF. During his career he had, among other things, shepherded the Reaper drone through its certification in 2005. He was central to expanding the role of drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for touting their capabilities, like the new “Gorgon Stare” technology. Gorgon Stare and its successors allowed the USAF to maintain a constant, high-definition video database of a huge area, which could be searched at a later date.

“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.”

After leaving USAF, Poss was tapped by the FAA to direct research into integrating drones into domestic U.S. airspace. He was almost certainly one of the authors of the Plan.

While the choice of leadership of the FAA UAS Center of Excellence was billed by the FAA as a “rigorous competition,” Poss appeared to have known years in advance that he would be holding this office. In a January 2015 interview just before the choice was announced, he said “We’ve been preparing for this competition for over five years.” So that was, what—2010? From 2010 – 2012, Poss was still at the Pentagon.

The decision to place Poss in this office was likely made by the FAA Assistant Administrator for NextGen, the office that oversees all FAA Centers of Excellence. At the time, that position was held by former USAF Major General Edward L. Bolton, Jr., Director, Space and Cyber Operations. His role is especially interesting as GA was on a path to become a major player in the militarization of space.

Bolton and Poss were two of the dozens of former senior military officers occupying positions at FAA and ancillary organizations involved in drone integration.

General Poss again, from the 2012 article:

[T]here are international lawyers out there that think the various treaties dealing with cruise missiles apply,” such as the Missile Technology Control Regime (MCTR).

The MTCR was embraced by the U.S. in part to keep advanced drone technology from countries which were not solid allies of the U.S. Not that U.S. drone technology is unrepresented abroad. The Reaper drone is a major weapons system of many U.S. allies. (A man named Stephen Luxion was instrumental in providing the MQ-9A Reaper to U.S. allies. His name will come up again.)

Another of those likely Plan authors featured in that 2012 article was DoD official Steven Pennington. For the previous several years, he had been the principal public advocate of opening U.S. airspace to military drones.

“A senior Air Force civil servant put the stakes bluntly: ‘The aviation enterprise is the crown jewel in the U.S. economy by far. It has the greatest number of high value jobs, it has the greatest value that is exported,’ said Steven Pennington, director of ranges, bases and airspace. If the U.S. does not take the lead in the global drone market, he warned, Europe, Asia and others will ‘quickly fill that void.’

“Poss said, ‘The stakes are strategic as well as economic. The military sees foreign military sales of all kinds as a way to build relationships with friendly governments while equipping them with gear that makes it easier to operate alongside U.S forces. Unmanned air vehicles are a particularly important area to be interoperable.’”

Poss had been celebrated for his years as a leader of “interoperability” between the U.S. and United Kingdom (UK) airborne intelligence forces. If there is any evidence that the drone integration Plan had an international proliferation agenda within it, this was it.

When Poss left the USAF in late 2012, his senior Intelligence counterpart in the Royal Air Force (RAF), Sir Stephen Hillier, had left his position several months earlier, to oversee UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) military procurement. This would place him at the center of the decision whether to purchase the newest U.S.-made military drone, GAs MQ-9B SkyGuardian, for the UK’s “Protector” initiative. It was one of four career moves for Hillier in ten years, coinciding with steps that would lead to the MQ-9B operating in UK skies. Other steps are explained below.

On the last day of 2013, the FAA announced the winners of the coveted state-level UAS test sites mandated in the 2012 FAA Act, chosen after a supposedly rigorous competition. There was no mention of military activities. However, each site wound up being led by a high-level, recently retired military officer. In one case, North Dakota (ND), it was headed by the state’s active-duty Air National Guard Commander.

DoD official Pennington actually cited ND’s Grand Forks Air Force Base in a 2011 article about the DoD/FAA drone program, months before the legislation was signed into law. He also stated that the funding for these sites would come from the DoD, not FAA. While they would all go on to conduct some civilian, commercial drone integration research, the military leadership, funding and military bases they operated on or next to, signaled what their principal purpose was.

For example, a few years after its founding, it was difficult to see where the FAA’s “Northern Plains UAS Test Site” (NPUASTS), Grand Forks Air Force Base, and the large General Atomics facility next door begin and end. This was where the 2018 MQ-9B SkyGuardian flight over the Atlantic would depart from, on its PR mission to the UK’s Royal Air Force. It was timed to arrive for the Royal International Air Tattoo airshow, where the newest military aircraft are displayed for potential buyers.

DoD official Pennington, cited above, was quoted in February of 2012 that the DoD would be selecting these sites based on their criteria. The fiction that this was anything but a principally military research operation is pretty thin. In any case, the test sites would share in federal research grants disbursed by former Major General James Poss’s FAA UAS Center of Excellence, ASSURE.

By mid-March of 2016, the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Executive Committee (ExCom), created in 2009 to coordinate UAS activities among federal agencies, was expanded. It then included DoD, FAA, NASA, and the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and Interior. When NASA joined in 2010, it understood that the purpose of this coordination was to expedite public (military) UAS access to the NAS. The ExCom was chaired by former Major General Marke “Hoot” Gibson, previously Director of Operations, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations for the USAF. At the time, he was the FAA’s “Senior Adviser on UAS Integration.” A two-star Air Force General would be representing the “civilian” FAA on a joint-agency committee overseeing drone integration.

The FAA also stated explicitly that the focus of the ExCom was “DoD’s UAS access into the NAS.” ExCom was originally named the “Joint Department of Defense and Federal Aviation Administration Executive Committee on Conflict and Dispute Resolution,” suggesting a history of conflict and disputes between the DoD and FAA on military drone integration which, according to the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act, posed “a threat to national security.”

At that same time, emails obtained in 2018 by DroneWarsUK revealed extensive coordination between the MoD, GA, USAF, and FAA to persuade skeptical UK civilian air regulators not to block the acquisition of the MQ-9B for the Protector Initiative. One thread of emails had the subject line “Developing the Mechanism for a Technical Support Arrangement to Protector.”

That is when, coincidentally, the USAF committed to opening a “Non-DoD Military Aircraft Office” (NDMAO) at Wright-Patterson AFB. It would be dedicated to providing certification services to U.S. companies producing military aircraft that the U.S. did not currently intend to purchase. These services would be provided to private companies for a fee. The email thread then had the words “[Non-DoD Source]” added to the subject line. MQ-9B SkyGuardian is the NDMAO’s first customer. The UK would eventually pay the bill.

It appears that did the trick. One month later, the UK announced it would buy the MQ-9B. Both James Poss and Stephen Hillier resigned their respective posts within weeks, strongly suggesting that the sale of the MQ-9B to UK was the reason they were in those posts to begin with. Hillier would go on to become Air Chief Marshal, Commander of the Royal Air Force. Poss would found his own UAS consulting company. Edward Bolton had left FAA a month earlier, to become a Vice President at the Aerospace Corporation, the private company that manages the launch and space systems of the USAF and the National Reconnaissance Office.

Poss’s successor at the FAA UAS COE was former USAF Colonel Stephen “Lux” Luxion. His career had two notable high points: He created and ran the first Predator attack unit tasked to the CIA in the “Global War on Terror,” the 17^th Reconnaissance Squadron. (While this fact was originally included in his ASSURE bio, it has since been deleted.)

Later, when the Reaper was established as the drone of choice for U.S. allies, Luxion was stationed in Europe overseeing basing decisions for the new drone squadrons. It is an unexpected pedigree for the head of FAA research into integrating drones into civilian U.S. airspace, unless one considers that the goal may have been to place advanced U.S.-made drones into other countries airspace as well.

A few months later, in July of 2016, ExCom member NASA announced its UAS “Systems Integration and Operationalization” (SIO) flight demonstrations. Listed first in the missions of vital importance are “national security and defense.” However, when GA was later announced as one of the participants, the stated purpose of its flight would be to demonstrate potential civilian, commercial uses of large, military-grade drones. GA floated one civilian/commercial use of the MQ-9B on a defense industry news site: local law enforcement. In a surprisingly candid moment, the pro-industry reporter covering it called the idea “dystopian.” GA would eventually land on “infrastructure surveying” as a plausible commercial application of the $100 million, 6-ton, 79-foot wingspan MQ-9B.

A May 2017 presentation of NASA’s program on drone integration appeared to have the SIO demo flights scheduled for summer 2021 (page 23).

In June 2017, the Trump administration announced its intention to sell the “SeaGuardian” MQ-9B variant to India. For the U.S. to sell the MQ-9B to India would require “decoupling UAS from the MTCR.” A few months later, the Trump administration confirmed that it was “reviewing” the MTCR.

By October 2017, it appears that NASA’s SIO demo flights were moved up one full year to summer 2020 (page 19).

November 2017. General Atomics purchased the U.S. subsidiary of UK-based satellite maker Surrey Satellite Technology. GA is described as “a defense contractor with a growing interest in building military-optimized spacecraft.”

August 2018. NASA announced that General Atomics was one of the three companies selected to participate in its SIO demonstrations.

September 28, 2018. General Atomics Awarded NASA Contract for Commercial Satellite.

January 24, 2019. The UK’s MoD announced they would purchase the “Sense-and-Avoid” systems for their MQ-9B Protector drones, after the original contract omitted that option. The decision came after GA went around MoD and lobbied Parliament directly:

“[F]ailure to make appropriate provisions threatens to undermine Protector’s operational capability…One of the platform’s key design characteristics is provision for the sense-and-avoid capability required to facilitate operations in non-segregated airspace… MoD aspires to integrate such a sense-and-avoid system but it was not funded within the core program.”

August 2019. GA performed a test of the SkyGuardian in civilian U.S. airspace for the benefit of the RAF, U.S. Marine Corps, and Royal Australian Air Force. The USMC was the first U.S. military branch overtly interested in the MQ-9B. GA touted the FAA clearance for the flight, which occurred almost entirely over mountains and desert. A week later, James Poss penned an opinion piece applauding the UK’s purchase of the MQ-9B SkyGuardian, and urging the U.S. and all its allies to do the same, to prepare for a possible war with Iran. He claimed that the MQ-9B “can fly integrated with even civilian manned aircraft,” a statement which two years later, still is not exactly true.

October 7, 2019. GA announced the planned SIO demo flight over San Diego. There are numerous misleading statements in the announcement, such as City of San Diego participation, etc. The principal stated purpose of the demo was infrastructure inspection, although it would be revealed later by the Voice of San Diego (VOSD) that they were still secretly pitching law enforcement uses.

November 28, 2019. Seven weeks after the San Diego SIO announcement, Australia announced it was going to purchase the MQ-9B instead of the cheaper MQ-9A, specifically because “the MQ-9B is able to be certified to fly in civilian airspace,” again, not yet exactly true.

Mav 7, 2020. The UK announced that Sir Stephen Hillier would resign as Air Chief Marshal of the RAF, in order to take over the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), just as it was grappling with whether to allow the MQ-9B to operate in UK airspace in the summer of 2021.

June 1, 2020. VOSD announced its lawsuit against the FAA for documents related to the proposed MQ-9B flight over the City. “We can’t get into details about a military aircraft program,” said the FAA. This, despite the fact that every aspect of the SIO flight stated publicly had been civilian: owner, operator, aircraft certification, airspace, sponsoring agency (NASA), stated purpose, etc.

July 9, 2020. GA informed Forbes that the SIO flight over San Diego was canceled.

July 24, 2020. The Trump administration officially changed how it “interpreted” the MTCR, clearing the way for military drone sales to countries that were previously excluded. New potential buyers of the MQ-9B soon included India, Taiwan, Morocco, and the UAE. Along with the confirmed sales to the UK, Belgium and Australia, it looked like MQ-9B sales would soon exceed $10 billion.

October 26, 2020. The VOSD released FOIA’d emails that showed the deep skepticism that FAA engineers had over the safety claims by GA. The proposed SIO flight over San Diego was eventually canceled, and replaced by a flight over non-populated areas. However, the specific reasons why it did so were redacted. Also, it is clear that FAA personnel were aware that GA would be using this supposed commercial demonstration flight to showcase the MQ-9B to foreign military buyers.

March 26, 2021. Reuters reported that the Biden administration was likely to keep the new MTCR policy.

May 2021. NASA released General Atomics final report on its SIO flight, which GA was required to generate in its SIO contract with NASA. It revealed that the critical safety component for avoiding other aircraft, the “Detect and Avoid” system, failed repeatedly during the flight, just as FAA engineers feared it would.

July 24, 2021. After fighting in court not to reveal the reasons for denying the proposed SIO flight over San Diego, the FAA agreed to answer a few more questions from the VOSD. In response to the question of “Whether General Atomics voluntarily rerouted its flight to the desert, or whether the FAA denied the permit,” its paragraph-long answer could be summarized as: We never denied General Atomics a permit to fly the SkyGuardian over San Diego. We approved its permit to fly, just not over San Diego.

It is also fair to ask if the FAA was keeping the reasons for the San Diego denial under wraps so as to not embarrass GA. GA’s sales pitch to foreign customers was that the MQ-9B could be certified for domestic operations. Rejection by the FAA for a demo flight for which it had been preparing for many years might cause potential customers to think twice before committing to a multi-billion dollar weapons purchase.

July 28, 2021. After delaying the decision for months, the UK’s CAA (now headed by Sir Stephen Hillier, former Air Chief Marshal of the RAF) approved temporary airspace changes that would allow the MQ-9B SkyGuardian to operate in UK civilian airspace during the NATO “Joint Warrior” exercises. Joint Warrior is a major opportunity to demonstrate the MQ-9B to potential allied military customers. This was the exact same drone that was rejected by the FAA for a flight over the City of San Diego one year earlier.

September 8, 2021. In the middle of the Joint Warrior exercises, the MQ-9B appeared to detour to conduct “Contested Urban Environment” exercises over the UK Army’s Imber Range in southern England. It is not clear if it was part of the official CUE2021 exercise. Some 48 hours after the flight, the Chief of the Air Staff of the RAF announced that, when the Protector drone is operational, it will be available for “assisting local authorities.”

September 9, 2021. The RAF announced the creation of the “Protector International Training Centre” at the Waddington RAF base. That would be a MQ-9B pilot training facility for “international partners.”

General Atomics is becoming a major player in military space hardware construction, including winning a DARPA contract to design a nuclear reactor to power spacecraft to the moon.

A Freedom of Information Act request to see the report containing the Plan mandated in the 2010 NDAA was placed with the FAA in the spring of 2021. Nine months later, the FAA has yet to acknowledge receipt of the request.

The Plan appears to be: civilian drone integration is cover for military drone integration is cover for military drone proliferation. Underlying it all is the familiar argument for foreign military sales: If the U.S. does not do it first, others will. For decision-makers, this dovetails neatly with the economic and political rewards, leading to: Drone proliferation is a necessary good.

Apparently, we have no choice but to stay in the lead of the arms race we started. Rinse, repeat.

In the coming years, people in more and more countries (including the U.S. and its allies) will be wondering if a high-tech surveillance/attack platform is circling overhead, making a permanent record of everything they do once they set foot outside their homes. Is this the kind of “freedom” America should be exporting?

 

by William Bruno, published on Truthout, January 14, 2022

On January 13, 2017, a family including a husband, wife and three small children scurried from building to building in East Mosul, Iraq. They were seeking refuge as a battle between ISIS (also known as Daesh) and U.S.-backed forces swirled around them. The family was huddled in an abandoned school surrounded by other civilians when a U.S.-operated drone struck and destroyed the structure. The father and one of his sons narrowly escaped with their lives. The tragic fate of his wife and other children would not be confirmed until months later when he watched as their bodies were excavated from the rubble.

This account was just one of several described in a recent publication of Pentagon reports documenting the extensive civilian casualties resulting from U.S. drone and air strikes. As the reporting shows, the considerable toll armed drones reap on civilian populations has largely been obfuscated by the U.S. government. What reporting such as this makes clear, however, is that weaponized drones are becoming a serious threat to public health.

The use of weaponized drones for targeted killings is not new and neither is the government’s lack of transparency. The U.S. government has been steadily increasing lethal covert drone operations since 2008, and almost everything we know about the program comes from whistleblowers and leakers. Specifics around the number of civilians killed and the extensiveness of the program are difficult to ascertain, but stories like the one above demonstrate the disregard for human life that results from the use of weaponized drones.

Like all violations of human rights, the public health community, of which I am a part, has an obligation to condemn the use of weaponized drones and demand an end to these targeted killings. If the goal of the public health sector — which includes health care practitioners, researchers, academics and policy makers — is, as the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) website states, “to prevent people from getting sick or injured,” then surely lending an authoritative voice in opposition to weaponized drones is more than appropriate.

U.S. citizens bear special responsibility. Unlike other causes of death or disability, weaponized drones are built, maintained and funded by our tax dollars. It is our elected officials who put them in action. Our complicity is unacceptable.

The APHA has made impassioned arguments advocating for the prevention of armed conflict from a public health perspective. However, little has been written specifically with regard to drones. This omission is important when one considers how our political leaders — even those often seen as advocates for “peace” — view the use of weaponized drones. For example, the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning former President Barak Obama saw drone strikes as an alternative to the more uncouth, “stupid wars” that he railed against during his campaign. This perspective resulted in a huge expansion of the program under his administration with well over 500 strikes, including one that explicitly targeted and executed a 16-year-old-boy. Political leaders like Obama see drones as an acceptable “middle ground” that allows for the implementation of U.S. force without, at least ostensibly, the traditional collateral of American casualties or civilian deaths.

Drone strike-related deaths are not the only consequence felt by civilians. One researcher explains how children living in a region such as northern Pakistan — with heavy U.S. drone activity — “become hysterical when they hear the characteristic buzz of a drone,” which often circle overhead 24/7. The psychiatric toll this constant threat of violence takes on children is hard to imagine.

Despite the common refrain from U.S. government officials that weaponized drones offer an extremely “precise” method of targeting, the truth is that civilian casualties of weaponized drone attacks are a common occurrence. The indiscriminate nature of weaponized drone attacks is reminiscent of a much older though equally brutal weapon — landmines. Over the past several decades, human rights organizations, academics and activists have worked tirelessly to show the world that landmines maim and kill civilian populations, and therefore, their use should be banned. The public health community has played a pivotal role in this movement by, for example, conducting research which adds evidentiary support for the movement’s claims. The same tact should be taken with weaponized drones. Public health researchers should work with activists and human rights scholars to form a coalition that demands an end to the use of weaponized drones.

Professional societies such as the APHA could provide guidance highlighting the role of public health in ending the use of weaponized drones. This could take the form of a bold policy statement similar to the one APHA released in 2009 regarding public health’s role in the prevention of armed conflict.

With political leaders from both major U.S. parties seeing drones as a convenient workaround to the traditional pitfalls of American use of force, it is imperative that the public health community remind the world that these weapons have tragic consequences. It is our responsibility to lend our voices, research skills and positions of prominence to stop the use of weaponized drones and end the pain and suffering they cause.

*Featured Image:  Emal Ahmadi surveys the damage to his home after a U.S. drone strike killed 10 of his family members in Kabul, Afghanistan, on October 2, 2021. MARCUS YAM / LOS ANGELES TIMES

Copyright © Truthout.  Reprinted with permission.

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William Bruno, M.D., is an emergency medicine resident physician at the LAC+USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. In addition to working clinically in the emergency department, William has research interests in humanitarian response and the ethics of conducting research in disaster settings. Follow William on Twitter: @williamjbruno.

by Jackie Gillis, published on the Binghamton Homepage, December 28, 2021

BINGHAMTON, NY – Organizations from around Upstate New York are working together to call for a congressional investigation into Twenty years of USA killing of Middle East Civilians.

Veterans for Peace, Peace Action of Broome, Upstate Drone Action, and more met outside the Federal Building, where Senator Chuck Schumer office is located.

These organizations are calling upon Schumer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and President Biden to end sanctions, unfreeze funds of Afghanistan Banks to prevent death and starvation in Afghanistan.

Peace Action Board Member, Jack Gilroy, tells the story about what happened to the Ahamdi family several months ago.

“They were slaughtered by Lockheed Martin Missiles made just fifteen point three miles away from Disney World in Orlando Florida, fired from a reaper drone made by the company known as, General Atomics, which is just eighty-three miles away from Disneyland in California,” he said.

He followed that with saying this was one of thousands of U.S. drone attacks that have killed and terrorized people in the Middle East over the past twenty years.

Gilroy stated that two weeks ago the release of hidden Pentagon Files by the New York Times documented thousands of innocent civilians were killed by precision weapons.

He added that Daniel Hale, a killer drone analyst, has been arrested for getting the truth out there about what the New York Times reported on.

Gilroy and other speakers at the protest are asking the Biden release Hale, end the Pentagon cover-up, and provide reparations to the Ahmadi family.

by Raymond Nat Turner, published on Black Agenda Report, December 1, 2021

The Drone Ranger gallops into Glasgow

“His absence is good company.”

—Scottish saying.

Overriding The Hague from palatial

$15 million hideout

The Drone Ranger galloped gangsta

style to Glasgow—setting foot in places

war criminals Kissinger, W, Schmuck

Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al., avoided like

vampires avoiding sunlit crucifixes…

 

The Drone Ranger galloped into Glasgow—

saddlebags bulging with Wall Street bullion,

fossil fuel talking points and methane promises

for Pentagon prosperity; Last Days of Pompeo

empire/fossil fuel extractors and emitters

 

The Drone Ranger galloped into Glasgow—

posse of polluters, lynch mob of lobbyists,

fossil fuel filibusters in tow; greenwashing

Corporate climate catastrophe; gaslighting

Negroz and children with giant carbon boot

print—slogging over AFRICOM—

Squishing blood and oil each and every step…

 

The Drone Ranger galloped into Glasgow—

Masked man—masking school busses and

hospitals he hit with Hellfire Missiles as

Commander-in-Chief. Masking Afghan grand-

mothers smoked gardening with grandsons.

Concealing joy he vaporized—

gifting Pakistani wedding parties headless

torsos, carbonized bodies and charred cars…

 

The Drone Ranger galloped into Glasgow—

Negroz and children leaping like lepers to touch

the bloodstained hem of his garment…Before he

crooned like $campaigning for Killary at the Apollo—

going Green (Al Green) on them: “I-I-I’m

so in love with OIL…” And bringing the house down with his

“A-A-A-Amazing GAS…COAL and OIL…” He’s some-

thing of a singing cowboy—General Dynamics’ Gene

Autry; Raytheon#s Roy Rogers…

The Drone Ranger galloped into Glasgow—

Actor with enormous range—pompous professor to

Iceberg Slim—head and shoulders above his hero, B

actor Reagan. Head and shoulders above bumbling W;

and ultra-ignorant rogue state thug, Boss Tweet.

Head and shoulders above Ol’ Schmo, angry boxer

who took punches in bunches—four fights too many.

 

The Drone Ranger galloped into Glasgow—

rogue state rockstar—Fooling some of the

Children some of the time… If he dares canter

to COP 27—police state with pyramids—

babies will bring 365 more days beneath their

belts; greeting him with enhanced interrogation:

 

“How much carbon did each drone strike emit?”

“How many greenhouse gasses were unleashed

destroying Libya?”

“What greenhouse gasses does Guantanamo—torture

chamber you kept open—pump into our atmosphere?”

“How much methane does bullshit emit?”

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© 2021. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet;  BAR’s Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC. You can Vote for his work at:  

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-town-criers-big-tooth-fund

PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

by Larry Gilbert Sr., published AntiWar.com, November, 18, 2021

As a people represented by our government, what gives us the right to go into other countries and indiscriminately assassinate people? Do we think that “American exceptionalism” gives us that right? How would we feel if the roles were reversed? Families around the world are merely trying to live their lives in peace as much as we are here in America.

As a Vietnam War veteran and seeing the ravages of war from that time forward, I have become a member of two organizations, Veterans for Peace and World Beyond War.

At the end of September, I traveled to Indian Springs, Nevada, to join with fellow members as well as members of Code Pink: Women for Peace and other organizations from 12 states. This is where Creech Air Force Base is located – some 50 miles north of Las Vegas.

We spent a week camped out in the desert. We conducted nonviolent protest actions at the entrance to the drone base twice daily, when drone pilots would arrive for work in the morning and leave at the end of their shifts. All the while during the day and night, killer drones were buzzing loudly over us and doing touch and goes on the runway.

The U.S. drone program has been ongoing for some 20 years by the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency. As a country, we have used killer drones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. The last I knew, we haven’t declared war with these countries, other than Afghanistan and Iraq – our perpetual wars.

Hardly ever have we, the American people, heard of the strikes that are conducted ever so frequently in these countries with no accountability. Thousands of strikes have taken place during these 20 years and thousands of people have been killed, including so many innocent civilians. The civilians killed are merely referred to as “collateral damage.”

The “collateral damage” are families made up of innocent men, women and children.

As a people represented by our government, what gives us the right to go into other countries and indiscriminately assassinate people? Do we think that “American exceptionalism” gives us that right? How would we feel if the roles were reversed? Families around the world are merely trying to live their lives in peace as much as we are here in America.

On Aug. 29 of this year, as we were withdrawing from Afghanistan, the US fired a drone strike where its missile(s) struck a car parked by Zamarai Ahmadi outside his home. The strike slaughtered him and nine members of his family, including seven children, five of whom were younger than 10.

According to the New York Times, “the Pentagon claimed that Ahmadi was a facilitator for the Islamic State and that his car was packed with explosives, posing an imminent threat to US troops guarding the evacuation at the Kabul Airport.”

General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of the US Central Command, said “the drone strike dealt a crushing blow to Islamic State.” General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, called it a “righteous strike.”

I ask, what is righteous about killing 10 innocent people?

It was only after investigative news reports that there was proof that this was in fact an attack on Zamarai Ahmadi, 45, an engineer for a U.S.-based nonprofit. Generally, most drone strikes have no follow-up investigations.

A recent report of the incident said it was an “honest mistake” and what the drone pilots and their commanders saw was what they call “confirmed bias.” In other words, they saw what they wanted to see.

How often does that happen? I suspect quite often, by those giving the orders to fire the missiles.

Unfortunately, those young Air Force drone pilots have to come into work every morning and fire missiles from drones killing people during the day and go home to their families at the end of their shift, especially after seeing the carnage that they wreaked. I suspect that some of these pilots will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder after a period of time.

How will they and their families’ lives be impacted in the years following? I would encourage those who feel this sense to seek help from organizations such as ours, Veterans For Peace, to assist them.

On another note, the Israeli government flies drones day and night over the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians live in a state of terror that missiles will be fired at them. Aside from that fear, the noise offers another sense of harassment.

It is high time to kill killer drones. Peace and justice.

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Larry Gilbert Sr. is a former mayor and police chief of Lewiston, U.S. marshal, and U.S. Army veteran. Distributed by PeaceVoice.

By Ann Wright and Brian Terrell, published on Ann’s FB Page

The great peace and anti-assassin drone activist Brian Terrell is back on the farm in Iowa after three weeks in the Netherlands and Germany. This is a brief report on his trip to bring attention to US nuclear weapons in the Netherlands and assassin drone connections in Germany:

In Brian’s words:

“My first stop was Amsterdam and the Dutch Air Force base at Volkel- along with 7 Dutch friends, we were able to successfully dig a tunnel under the fence and go into the base where a US Air Force squadron keeps a stash of B61 nuclear missiles for Dutch F16s to ‘deliver’ destruction to perceived enemies under a NATO ‘nuclear sharing’ agreement. Held by military and civilian police for 5 hours, we were released and expect charges to be filed.

In Germany, gave talks on banning killer drones and nuclear disarmament at the Catholic Worker communities in Dortmund and Hamburg and Elsa Rassback organized appearances in Berlin, Frankfurt and Cologne. This is a pivotal time, as the question of whether or not to arm the German drone fleet is a big issue for the new coalition of parties that will govern Germany for the near future. The German peace movement is also petitioning the coalition parties on the issues of nuclear sharing with the US and Germany’s failure to ratify and abide by the The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Brian wrote:

“Our digging took place during the NATO exercise, “Steadfast Noon” (a strange name for the annual rehearsal for the end of the world!) and we are pretty sure that we caused the runway to be closed, making the world safer for an hour or so, anyway. It was great fun, lots of young people, singing, laughter when we realized that we were actually going to make it inside! .

I never saw police or soldiers so chill anywhere-I think that they were amused. In the US we might have been shot or jailed for years. I think that it was important for one US citizen to be in the group and I am glad that I was there. I am hoping to be invited back to the Netherlands for a trial.

We were held for 5 hours, I was interrogated about the number of Afghan visas in my passport, “Do you want to talk about why you visited Afghanistan so many times?” I was asked. No, I did not. The issue dropped there. Privilege of being a white man with a US passport, someone else might have disappeared.”

Media accounts of the action:

“The Royal Military Police has arrested eight activists who had penetrated into the military airport of Volkel on Wednesday afternoon. The eight had gained access by digging a hole under the fence surrounding the military airport, reported the military police after reports by DTV News.

According to a spokesman for the military police, the action was peaceful.

“We knew about the demonstration,” he said. “We already suspected that a number of people would try to get on the premises. They made a hole under the fence, and once at the airport we stopped them. They didn’t resist. It all went off peacefully.”

Nuclear weapons

They were activists from Peace Creation who came to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. The activists fear that a new generation of nuclear bombs will come to the Netherlands next year. The action was organized at the head of the runway. This “to advocate that the old nuclear bombs be removed and the CO2 emissions of the armed forces be counted in the climate targets and to protest against the arrival of new nuclear bombs.”

Fifteen to twenty American B61 atomic bombs have been stored at Volkel Air Force Base since the early 1960s. The Zembla broadcast Target Volkel (2019) shows how the Netherlands has not enforced a veto on the deployment of American nuclear weapons from the airbase. At the moment it is decided to carry out a nuclear attack, Dutch pilots must drop the bombs.

The broadcast also shows that the 15 to 20 American free-fall bombs are outdated and will soon be replaced. The new model, the B61-12, will have steerable tail fins and will therefore be much more precise and deployable. The bombs also have a facility with which the explosive force can be set from 1 to 50 kilotons. That is more than three times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

The House of Representatives is not informed about the modernization of the B61. The government will not even confirm that there are atomic bombs in the Netherlands: that is a state secret. Yet Zembla discovered in old parliamentary archives that the then Minister of Defense acknowledged as early as 1960 that the Netherlands was home to American atomic bombs.

They also disagree with the deployment of F-16s and other aircraft, which, according to the protesters, “emit tons of CO2.”

*Featured Image: US anti-assassin drone activist Brian Terrell with Dutch colleagues tunneling under a fence at a Dutch air force base where US nuclear weapons are available for Dutch pilots to drop on the world!!!!  

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Ann Wright is a retired US Army Reserve Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the weapons of mass destruction lies of the Bush administration for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”

Brian Terrell is a longtime activist and lives on a Catholic Worker Farm in Maloy, Iowa.   Brian is a founding member of the Ban Killer Drones Network. He has traveled to Afghanistan several times and been arrested numerous times in civil resistance actions opposing drone warfare.

 

Press Release from Ban Killer Drones

The Pentagon must be called upon by people around the world and by the U.S. Congress to make public all of the communications and logs, including communications with the White House, pertaining to the August 29, 2021 drone attack that killed 10 members of the Ahmadi family in Kabul, including seven children, say representatives of the anti-drone war organization BanKillerDrones.org.

“The Pentagon’s assertion that no one did anything illegal to cause the drone deaths of the Ahmadi family members is a shameful side-stepping and a further cover-up of who made what decisions and why in this horrible slaughter,”

said Nick Mottern, a co-coordinator of BanKillerDrones.org.

“We need to see all the records surrounding this incident, including those that may help us to know the role of President Biden, if any.”

Kathy Kelly, a peace advocate who has visited Afghanistan 28 times since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and also a co-coordinator of BanKillerDrones.org, said:

“By recommending against any disciplinary action following the slaughter of 10 civilians, seven of whom were children, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is endorsing reckless cruelty waged through ghastly drone attacks.”

Mottern noted that a wide array of international human rights law experts have asserted that U.S. drone attacks violate international law and principles of war, so the use of an armed drone on August 29^h was illegal.  Further, he said, Air Force veteran Daniel Hale was sent to federal prison in July at the hands of the Biden Administration for releasing government documents that addressed precisely the faulty intelligence and other problems with the U.S. drone program that led to the August 29^th drone attack.  “The use of weaponized drones should have been shelved years ago,” Mottern said.

He and Kelly said also: “It is beyond outrageous that the Pentagon has yet to provide full reparations for the killing of Ahmadi family members and has failed to meet their need for speedy passage to the United States.”  BanKillerDrones.org has called for reparations of $3 million for each of the 10 Ahmadi family members killed.  The Washington Post reported that the Obama administration paid “nearly $3 million” to the family of Giovanni Lo Porto, who was mistakenly killed in a U.S. drone attack in Pakistan in 2015.

“The U.S. ought to be aiding all the hundreds of thousands of Afghans suffering in the wreckage of the U.S. invasion and occupation,” they said, “rather than trying to shrug off the August 29^th drone atrocity.”

The Ban Killer Drones network is comprised of concerned citizens, in local and national peace and justice organizations, many of them in communities in which there are killer drone control bases. Together they are organizing to achieve a United Nations conference to adopt and ratify an international treaty to ban weaponized drones and military and police drone surveillance.

 

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by PCIM, published on The Edge, October 20, 2021

Ban Killer Drones, Upstate Drone Action, October 3, 2021

Just two weeks ago, several online journals published an article by Brian Terrell, a Catholic Worker from Maloy, Iowa, entitled  “No, the Longest War in U.S. History is Not Over“.  In it, Brian pointed out the significance of October 7, 2001. On this day, in 2001, the United States began a 20-year long war against Afghanistan and initiated the so-called U.S. global “War on Terror“.

Brian believes that October 7th needs to be remembered especially in light of President Biden’s pledge to hunt down people anywhere in the world who are viewed by the U.S. government as threats. Biden said: “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay“.  His threat is based on the U.S. use of weaponized drones to kill anyone, at anytime, anywhere in the world.

We, as members of the Ban Killer Drones network, propose to observe October 7, 2021 as a “A Day of Atonement“, a day to repent for the war crimes of our government and military in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world.

Emblematic of those crimes is the August 29th U.S. revenge drone attack in Kabul that killed ten civilians.

As U.S. citizens whose tax dollars went into buying the MQ-9 Reaper drone that made that attack, and the missile it fired, the blood of Zemari Ahmadi and his three children, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 10; Ahmadi’s cousin Naser, 30; the children of Ahmadi’s brother Romal: Arwin, 7, Benyamin, 6, and Hayat, 2; and two 3-year-old girls, Malika and Somaya is on our hands.

On Thursday, October 7th, we will gather, and we urge all those reading this to gather, at places of worship at 11am to call for a real end to the 20 years of U.S. terror against the people of Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. We urge a ban on weaponized drones and an end to any “Over the Horizon” airstrikes  against  Afghanistan and any other country. We will also call on our religious leaders to speak out clearly for peace, ending what has too often been a tragic, enabling silence from faith leaders over the 20 years.

Organize as best you can on such short notice.  Having talking points for the media is key to any action. Call the press multiple times before the date. Television staffs need to get their copy edited for the evening sound bites. Help them succeed. Thank them.

Here are some talking points:

1) 10/7 was the start of 20 years of U.S. terror against the people of Afghanistan and the Middle East and elsewhere.

2) The fiasco of the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan that was exposed with the U.S. departure from that tortured nation has also exposed the mistake religious leaders made in supporting the war and “supporting the troops”.

3) President Biden has vowed to continue drone attacks under the banner of “Over the Horizon”—continued illegal immoral assassinations and more generalized attacks. It appears that possibly 90% of those killed by weaponized drones have been other than those who were targeted. We urge religious leaders to call for an end to the use of weaponized drones, the illegal “Over the Horizon” and the U.S. vigilantism that it represents.

5) U.S. military contractors are eager to make China our enemy. Now is the time for religious leaders not to be silent. It is time for them to call for diplomatic responses to China and to oppose a U.S. military build-up in Asia.

Bring signs and flyers, and, if possible, posters showing the photos and the names of the members of the Ahmadi family killed by the August 29 U.S. drone attack, to places of worship in your community.

See this video: In Memory of the victims of the U.S. Drone Strike in Kabul, September 29, 2021

Read Jack Gilroy’s article on Covert Action: Blessed be the Warmakers? Why Post-9/11 American Religious Leaders Must Atone

ATTACHMENTS:

Day of Atonement Letter to Pastors

Day of Atonement Planned Actions

 

 

 

Dear (Pastor, Rev. Father, Rabbi)

We are at your place of worship, today, October 7, 2021, not to demean you or your house of worship. We are here in remembrance of the 20th anniversary of the start of the war on Afghanistan. The war on Afghanistan expanded to Iraq and made the date 10/7 of far greater horror than 9/11.

In the past twenty years, approximately a million people have died in the Middle East in wars generated by the United States starting on 10/7. Additionally, 9 million people have become refugees in Iraq alone, with countless houses, apartment buildings, and businesses devastated. The crime of 9/11 with 3,000 dead and two skyscrapers destroyed pales in comparison.

Those of us here today represent various peace and justice groups and respectfully request your vocal objection to more war-making and fear-producing. The near silence of religious denominations at the start of 10/7 and the 20-year war that followed is, to us, shocking. Praying for the troops was a mantra of all religious groups and music to the ears of the Pentagon and its war contractors. It enables the war-makers to do their business blessed by the moral arbiters of America– religious communities.

We ask you, we implore you, to vocally object to existing plans for more drone warfare. We urge you to call for an end of the Over the Horizon drone attack plan of our United States government. We ask as well that you speak out in opposition to the political, military, and corporate fear-making depicting China as our new enemy–a fear that is already generating great financial benefit to the Pentagon war contractors.

Signed

ENDORSERS OF OCT. 7 DAY OF ATONEMENT STATEMENT

Baltimore Phil Berrigan Chapter, Veterans For Peace

Ellen Barfield, Baltimore, MD

Mickie Lynn, member of Women Against War, Delmar, NY

The Drone Death Walk, Philadelphia, PA

Marie Dennis, Co-President (2007-2019) Pax Christi International

Marge Van Cleef, Philadelphia, PA

Pax Christi, Greenburg, PA

Kathy Kelly, To End All Wars

Des Moines Catholic Worker

Des Moines Chapter, Veterans For Peace

Ann Tiffany, Upstate Drone Action (NY)

Ed Kinane, Upstate Drone Action (NY)

Upstate Drone Action (NY)

Father Tim Taugher, Binghamton, NY

John Heagle, Chair, Gospel Nonviolent Working Group, AUSCP (Association of United States Catholic Priests

Stephen V. Kobasa, for Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice, New Haven, CT

BanKillerDrones.org

Nick Mottern – Co-coordinator BanKillerDrones.org

Peace Network of Western New York

Vicki Ross, Peace Network of Western New York

Johnny Zokovitch, Executive Director – Pax Christi USA

Interfaith Peace Network

NYC War Resisters League

Paki Weiland, CODEPINK

Brian Terrell, Catholic Worker, Maloy, Iowa

Fr. Bernard Survil, Priest of the Diocese of Greenburg, PA

Peace and Justice Works, Portland, OR

New York City Catholic Worker Community

Broome County, NY Peace Action

Broome County, NY Chapter 90, Veterans for Peace

Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, Washington, DC