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| Drone attack Somalia |
Re-reporting, editing, comment by
Carolyn Bennett
Carolyn Bennett
“I cannot speak for gun manufacturers and I don’t know what goes on inside their minds but I do believe there is a culture of violence in the United States,” Ross said this week in an interview with Press TV.
Run by the military industrial complex, he said, “the country is slipping into dictatorship. The people of the world have got to be made aware that it is dangerous. It is armed and dangerous. The United States is spending $700 billion for war and, by contrast, half a billion dollars for the Peace Corps.”
These figures must be turned around, he said.
There has been no end to violence and there must be an end to it. “The question is: when will the American people do something about the violence?”
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| U.S. drone Press TV photo |
“The issue is not the morality of drones. Drones have no
morality; nor do they have politics or philosophy. They are soulless killing
machines.
“The morality at play is with those who define the targets
and push the buttons that incinerate people we
do not know half a world away.”
DRONES in YEMEN
In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, the relatives of three U.S.
citizens have named senior U.S. Defense Department and CIA officials in the
killing of U.S.-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son
Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and naturalized U.S. citizen Samir Khan. The dead lost
their lives in non-UN sanctioned U.S. assassination drone strikes in Yemen.
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| Yemeni suffering |
Though the U.S. president, Barack Obama, confirmed in January
of this year that his government uses unmanned drones in Pakistan and other
countries, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency refuses to release the official
memoranda [reminiscent of “a fraudulent documentation used by Alberto Gonzalez,
George W. Bush, Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the cases of U.S. torture
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay”] which grant the president legal
authority to approve drone strikes.
In an interview late last month with Press TV, columnist for
Foreign Policy in Focus Conn Hallinan said,
People really do not know anything about it so it is a kind of a shadow war. It allows the United States to take part in series of wars. There are at least three to four drone wars going on right now without ever referring to the Congress or bringing the issue before the American people.
It is a stealth way of engaging in warfare.
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| Drone attack North Waziristan |
That day in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region of North
Waziristan, at least five people reportedly died and three others were injured
in an airstrike carried out by a U.S. assassination drone.
These U.S. strikes on the tribal regions persist
disregarding the Pakistani government’s repeated calls on Washington to end the
drone attacks.
A news report yesterday said, the Pakistani people had to
postpone a polio immunization campaign in parts of its tribal belt after there
were threats to the polio program workers from pro-Taliban militants in the
region.
 |
| Pakistani tribesman protest |
In the tribal regions, at least 160,000 children in North
Waziristan and 80,000 in South Waziristan and more than 111,000 children in
Khyber tribal agency, according to health officials, “are likely to be affected
if Pakistan fails to administer anti-polio vaccine in the region.”
Vaccination problems in 2011 “led to Pakistan’s highest
number of polio cases in a decade, 198 compared to 144 in 2010” — Pakistan is
listed among the three countries where polio remains endemic — and given
current polio vaccination problems, “health experts fear that the world will
consider Pakistan an exporter of polio” if it fails to get control of the
situation.
This year’s postponement of immunization followed a pro-Taliban
militant group’s reported ban on polio vaccinations in the Waziristan region
along the Afghan border to “protest the U.S. assassination drone attacks.”
U.S. assassination drones on Pakistan and the U.S. war on Afghanistan persist as do protests rising from the Pakistani people
Pakistani protesters in the city of Peshawar reportedly said
this week that they will stop NATO supplies “by any means, even by force, if
the [Pakistan] government fails to reverse its decision” to reopen supply
routes to foreigners aggressors. “They have also vowed to continue their
protests until the termination of the assassination drone strikes.”
Protesters maintain that the decision of the Pakistan government to
reopen supply routes for U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan offended the whole
nation and bypassed the unanimous resolution of the parliament, which had demanded
that the United States stop drone attacks.
In Monday’s demonstrations rallying for a reversal of the
government decision and chanting anti-U.S. and anti-government slogans,
protesters remembered thousands of innocent civilians killed by U.S.
assassination drone attacks in Pakistan.
Without legitimate reporters on the ground, news is but
rumor, propaganda contrived for this or that faction or force.
On the high level killings (killer(s) unknown) this week in
Syria, media hysteria reached fever pitch. Reported assassinated were Syrian
Defense Minister Rajha (the top Christian in the government), crisis management
chief Turkmani, and Deputy Defense Minister Shawkat; and the later death of the
Syrian intelligence chief. Further unconfirmed reports from non-NATO channels
said Russian consultants also died in the attack.
Non-Western news reports said NATO’s goal was unambiguous: “nothing
less than the destruction of the modern Syrian nation, followed by chaos,
partition, subdivision, warlords, Balkanization, and a failed state …”; and the
“media apparatus coordinated by White House advisor Ben Rhodes went into high
gear, attempting to spread panic, hysteria, and reports of the immediate
collapse of the Syrian state.”
However, Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley noted at Press TV, “the
nature of this attack remains unclear” and it is “unwise to draw conclusions
about an infiltrated suicide bomber or other hypotheses emanating from the NATO
brainwash apparatus.
“In the abstract, the capabilities shown in this attack
could range anywhere from a cruise missile or drone to the capabilities
deployed in the assassination of Rafiq Hariri of Lebanon.”
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| U.S. drone arrives in Turkey |
DRONES in TURKEY
The Turkish Hurriyet Daily cites a Defense Industry
Executive Committee (SSIK) report assigning the Turkish Aerospace Industries
Inc. (TAI) the task of conducting studies for the production of Turkey’s first armed drones.
“The new ‘Anka Plus A’ drones” are said to be of the “high-altitude
long-endurance class” with capabilities “similar to the ‘U.S. Reaper’ and ‘Israeli
Heron.’” Last fall, Turkey reportedly tested a domestically-made
medium-altitude long-endurance Anka drone.
This latest report comes a few days after Turkish officials
reported receiving “one of five surveillance planes sold to Turkey by the
United States.”
DRONES in AFRICA
Kenya pitted against Somalia
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| Somalia's famine |
Last year the United States provided Ravens to Uganda.
Posted at Global Research Ca., Chris Cole writes this week
that people of the United States might increase their opposition to the use of
drones when the reality sets in that “‘non-approved’ nations can also use
drones.”
Rumors persist, Cole writes, “that the Syrian regime [is] using
a drone to target artillery strikes in Homs.” Slaughtering innocents in Syria
and Waziristan connect—all are “justified in the name of ‘security.’”
But no amount humanitarian assistance (real or militarily armed),
no amount of “charity” can help a people under attack by the most heavily militarized,
arms-selling power in the world. People remain in poverty and want because
inordinate power and force imposed by cruel and corrupt people make it so.
Those supporting “targeted killing by drone strikes seem to
do so in the mistaken belief that by ‘taking out the bad guys’ we can increase
security for all,” Chris Cole writes. However,
“stark reality is the opposite of this — and the sooner the latter wins the
argument, the sooner support for targeted killing and drone strikes will
disappear altogether.”
Why are Americans “shocked” when violence not only erupts now and then but is a state of being: continuous and unabated, aided and
abetted as a “birthright” perpetrated on U.S. cities, towns, schools and
villages? Given this character, Americans should not be “shocked” and I expect
they are not really shocked.
“I’m SHOCKED” is no more than empty utterance, mantra
mouthed every time news of horrendous domestic violence reaches international airwaves
(“goes viral” as savvy contemporaries say) so much so that the reality of it can
be neither denied nor ignored. In their “I’m
SHOCKED” response, Americans are saying, “This isn’t really us,” this isn’t who
we are; they are denying their character, their penchant for violence — which
is precisely who we are: a violent people.
In the face of U.S. violence against Afghanistan and
Pakistan, Syria and Somalia, Iraq and Iran, Bahrain and Yemen, Americans take
the luxury of sticking their heads in the sand or in drugs or the television. Americans
do not want to hear about this violence. They pretend this violence is not only
thousands of miles away, but in some other universe of “aliens.” The carnage
is being committed by some distant person, place or thing: some militant, militia
or terrorist, al Shabaab or Taliban or al Qaeda, some “evil” with or without
axis.
What is true is that we are that person, place and thing. We are the violence we say we deplore, that which does but does not “shock” us. We are a violent people and only we can and must change us.
Sources and notes
“‘U.S. has a culture of violence’” (Press TV conducted an
interview with Sherwood Ross, a reporter for OPED News, from Miami), July 21,
2012,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/21/251983/us-has-a-culture-of-violence/
DRONES
“The morality of pushing buttons that incinerate people we
do not know half a world away— Are drones the most ‘moral’ means of warfare
because they kill fewer civilians? Or are they simply soulless killing machines
that remove all risk from those who are doing the killing?”
(Conn Hallinan Counterpunch, July 16, 2012, USA and the War
on Terror) July 18, 2012,
http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/usa-war-on-terror/1691-the-morality-of-pushing-buttons-that-incinerate-people-we-do-not-know-half-a-world-away
“Obama drone strikes as illegal as Bush torture practices:
Analyst,” July 19, 2012, Press TV,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/19/251683/obama-drones-strikes-illegal-bush-torture-practices/
See also: “U.S. terrorizing north Pakistan with
assassination drones: Analyst,” May 1, 2012,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/05/01/238979/us-terrorizing-north-pakistan-assassination-drones/
“U.S. drone strikes form of shadow war,” June 27, 2012,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/06/27/248295/us-drone-strikes-form-of-shadow-war/
Pakistan postpones polio campaign due to threats, July 20,
2012, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/20/251945/pakistan-postpones-polio-campaign/
“Fresh protest slams NATO supplies reflow,” July 17, 2012,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/17/251313/fresh-protest-slams-nato-supplies-reflow/
“NATO kill teams attempt assault on Syria,” July 21, 2012,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/21/251968/nato-kill-teams-attempt-assault-on-syria/
“Turkey to begin studies on production of its first armed
drones,” July 19, 2012,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/19/251656/turkey-to-produce-its-first-armed-drones/
Drone search link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/21/251983/us-has-a-culture-of-violence/
“Pentagon eyes drones for Kenya to fight militants nearby,”
July 21, 2012,
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/07/21/kenya-usa-military-idINL2E8IL3IP20120721
“‘Unmanned Warfare’ in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia: Drone
strikes poll shows mass disapproval” (Chris Cole), July 21, 2012, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31453
“Marking one year since Somalia famine declared, UN flags
plight of needy millions,” July 20, 2012, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42525&Cr=somalia&Cr1=
Image
Somalia: Coping with the famine in Somalia. UNHCR/Riccardo
Gangale
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