Drone protesters in Pakistan block NATO supply route. About 10,000 people participated in Saturday's protest.
The protesters included members of Khan's party and two others that are coalition partners in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government. They shouted anti-U.S. slogans such as "Down with America" and "Stop drone attacks. " "I am participating in today's sit-in to convey a message to America that we hate them, since they are killing our people in drone attacks," university student Hussain Shah said. "America must stop drone attacks for peace in our country. " The federal information minister, Pervez Rashid, said the national government's anti-drone stance was clear and accused Khan of "playing politics" on the issue. Dirty Wars. Dirty Wars follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill , author of the international bestseller Blackwater , into the heart of America’s covert wars, from Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond .
Part political thriller and part detective story, Dirty Wars is a gripping journey into one of the most important and underreported stories of our time. What begins as a report into a U.S. night raid gone terribly wrong in a remote corner of Afghanistan quickly turns into a global investigation of the secretive and powerful Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). As Scahill digs deeper into the activities of JSOC, he is pulled into a world of covert operations unknown to the public and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress. In military jargon, JSOC teams “find, fix, and finish” their targets, who are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits for the “kill list,” including U.S. citizens. Pakistan unveils its own military drones, as protests continue against U.S. attacks.
KABUL — Pakistan’s military unveiled two domestically produced drones Monday, even as the country is facing growing protests over U.S. drone strikes on Pakistani soil.
After years of preparation, the Strategically Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were formally announced by Gen. Medea Benjamin on Drone Warfare, Pt. 1. US defends drone strikes as 'necessary and just' in face of UN criticism. UN rapporteur Christof Heyns condemns use of drone strikes. Deploying drone strikes as a form of global policing undermines international security and will encourage more states and terrorist groups to acquire unmanned weapons, a UN report has warned.
The study has been submitted to UN general assembly by Christof Heyns, a South African law professor who is the organisation's special rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Although no state is identified in the report, the comments are clearly directed at the legal problems raised by the US programme of aerial attacks against al-Qaida supporters in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. "The expansive use of armed drones by the first states to acquire them, if not challenged, can do structural damage to the cornerstones of international security and set precedents that undermine the protection of life across the globe in the longer term," the report states.
Heyns's report is due to be debated at the UN general assembly in New York on 25 October. "Will I be Next?" US Drone Strikes in Pakistan. I wasn't scared of drones before, but now when they fly overhead I wonder, will I be next?
- Nabeela, eight-year-old granddaughter of US drone strike victim Mamana Bibi On a sunny afternoon in October 2012, 68-year-old Mamana Bibi was killed in a drone strike that appears to have been aimed directly at her. Her grandchildren recounted in painful detail to Amnesty International the moment when Mamana Bibi, who was gathering vegetables in the family fields in Ghundi Kala village, northwest Pakistan, was blasted into pieces before their eyes. Nearly a year later, Mamana Bibi's family has yet to receive any acknowledgment that it was the US that killed her, let alone justice or compensation for her death.
DN! AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!
, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: As we continue our special on U.S. drone strikes, we turn now to the killing of a 67-year-old Pakistani grandmother last year. "These Drones Attack Us and the Whole World is Silent": New Film Exposes Secret U.S. War. Smartphones, drones and social media: peacekeeping's technological armoury. Type "UNSMIS" into YouTube and you can see for yourself what the United Nations observers are seeing on the very mean streets of Syria.
Fed up with accusations from the Syrian authorities that they were making up their reports of ceasefire infringements, the UN's Supervision Mission In Syria, in a surprise move, decided to post their own footage. Shot by a new generation of UN digital peacekeepers like journalist David Mwangi, a worldwide audience could see exactly what was going on during the siege of Homs or the aftermath of the government offensive against Tremseh -- even attacks by government thugs on UN vehicles.
This footage was particularly important as at that point only the UN had access to the battlefields. Rights groups say Obama's drone program violates international law. Two new reports on the use of drones by the United States in its ongoing war against Al-Qaeda add to a growing chorus of concern among human-rights groups that the Obama administration's drone program has violated international law and caused unnecessary civilian deaths, fear and chaos in Pakistan and Yemen.
One report, released by Amnesty International, reviews 45 drone strikes in North Waziristan and surrounding regions in Pakistan in 2012 and 2013. Pakistani victims tell US lawmakers tale of drone attack. Since they arrived in Washington last weekend — their first time outside of Pakistan — the Rehmans have patiently sat for hours of interviews with dozens of media outlets in a dogged effort to change hearts and minds, with only a few breaks to go see the sights in the U.S. capital.
The Obama administration, for its part, until recently did not even acknowledge the existence of the program. Now, officials say drone warfare is a precise and effective means to neutralize enemies in remote regions of the world where capturing terrorists is difficult and that civilian casualties are minimal. That rationale holds little solace for Rafiq and his family. Opponents of the United States have pointed out, beyond the legal and moral implications, that the U.S. policy engenders hatred of America and breeds extremism.
But even after what his family has been through, Rafiq Rehman said he does not resent the United States.