"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
***************WARNING!!!**************** In my deepest, scratchiest voice!!! "Be afraid... be VERY afraid" (All the above translates into "A juicy bit of Right Wing Propaganda is on the way" )
God! A thirteen minute video to say... Obama Has Ordered Drone Strikes that Kill People! (what a waste of time that was)
IF all you watch is Right Wing Propaganda... All You'll Know Is Right Wing Propaganda! (But you already knew that and can't resist watching it yet again)
Talk about "sheeple"!!!
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
***************WARNING!!!**************** In my deepest, scratchiest voice!!! "Be afraid... be VERY afraid" (All the above translates into "A juicy bit of Right Wing Propaganda is on the way" )
God! A thirteen minute video to say... Obama Has Ordered Drone Strikes that Kill People! (what a waste of time that was)
IF all you watch is Right Wing Propaganda... All You'll Know Is Right Wing Propaganda! (But you already knew that and can't resist watching it yet again)
***************WARNING!!!**************** In my deepest, scratchiest voice!!! "Be afraid... be VERY afraid" (All the above translates into "A juicy bit of Right Wing Propaganda is on the way" )
God! A thirteen minute video to say... Obama Has Ordered Drone Strikes that Kill People! (what a waste of time that was)
IF all you watch is Right Wing Propaganda... All You'll Know Is Right Wing Propaganda! (But you already knew that and can't resist watching it yet again)
Talk about "sheeple"!!!
And of course you are against anyone wanting to save the lives of innocent children.
50 years later and you still support baby killers.
December 09, 2012 - Updated 20 PKT From Web Edition
[Former US president slams drone attacks]
WASHINGTON: Former US President Jimmy Carter has slammed American assassination drone strikes in other countries, saying that killing civilians in such attacks would in fact nurture terrorism.
"I personally think we do more harm than good by having our drones attack some potential terrorists who have not been tried or proven that they are guilty," Carter said in an interview with Russia Today.
"But in the meantime, the drone attacks also kill women and children, sometimes in weddings... so this is the kind of thing we should correct," he added.
Carter, who served as US president from 1976 to 1980, also criticized incumbent American policy makers for violating the country's "long-standing policy" of "preserving the privacy of US citizens."
"We now pass laws that permit eavesdropping on private phone calls and private communication," he noted, explaining that in the past, in order to do that, the government had to obtain a court ruling that proved the nation's national security was at risk, "which was very rare, but now it's done all over America."
"We need to back off [and] restore basic human rights as spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)," the former US president underlined.
He concluded by saying that there are 30 paragraphs in the UDHR, "and at present time, my country, the US, is violating 10 out of the 30." (Monitoring Desk)
PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly will unanimously condemn today (Tuesday) the killing of innocent people in the US drone attacks in the tribal areas and urge the federal government to convey their sentiments to the US government.
It will also ask the federal government to desist from launching a military operation in North Waziristan, which they thought could deteriorate the already worsening law and order situation in the country.
This was decided by lawmakers after debating the US drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas on the first day of the assembly session convened by the government on Monday.
Soon after the recitation from the Holy Quran, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) MPA Nighat Orakzai, on a point of order, expressed concern over the killing of innocent tribesmen in the drone attacks and said the US government should trace out the wanted men instead of hitting the entire population.
She also demanded a separate province in the name of “Qabailistan” for tribal people, where they could have own provincial assembly and chief minister.The lawmaker asked the rulers to visit Waziristan to know about the ground realities.
The PML-Q lawmaker said the US should pinpoint the wanted men if they were present in Waziristan instead of killing innocent people in the drone attacks.
Supporting the mover, the former chief minister and opposition leader in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Akram Durrani said they had been adopting resolutions to condemn the drone attacks, but the US instead of halting the drone strikes enhanced the hits.
He said innocent people were being killed in the drone attacks. He expressed concern over the migration of the people from North Waziristan and asked the government to spell out its policy in this regard.
The PML-Q’s Qalandar Lodhi, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Inayatullah Khan Jadoon and Javed Abbasi condemned the drone strikes and called for adopting unanimous resolution to ask the federal government to take up the issue with the US.
The PPP’s Abdul Akbar Khan said his party had no objection if the House wanted to pass a resolution.Senior Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour said they condemned drone attacks and considered them violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.
He also condemned the killing of innocent people, including women, children and elders, at mosques, Imambargahs and bazaars in bomb blasts.The minister said some people were fanning sectarianism and killing others in the name of Islam.
He insisted the followers of a particular sect were killed in the Babusar attack and posed a question whether Islam allowed such acts.
Without naming anyone, Bashir Bilour said a religious party leader offered funeral prayer in absentia for a person who was involved in the killing of innocent people.
He said it was unfortunate that some people involved in killing of innocent people were being portrayed as heroes. He held the religious parties responsible for the disintegration of former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The minister said the Awami National Party had termed the Cold War as a tussle between the US and former USSR, but the religious parties dubbed it jihad.
He said the US would not have been able to pursue its hegemonic policies had the USSR not been disintegrated.
Mufti Kifyatullah of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl offered fateha for the departed soul of all the innocent people killed in the drone attacks. The speaker did not allow him to move the jointly drafted resolution. Bashir Bilour suggested to him to present it today (Tuesday) instead of moving it in haste.
ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office on Thursday lodged a protest with the US Embassy over drone attacks in North Waziristan Agency.
According to a press release, the Foreign Office summoned a senior US diplomat who was informed that drone strikes were unlawful, against international law and a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.
The press release further said that it was emphatically stated that such
attacks were unacceptable.
The senior US official was also given a letter which stated the protest.
According to a spokesperson for the US Embassy, the dialogue process is ongoing between the two countries. The spokesperson acknowledged that the US Embassy had been given a letter protesting the drone attacks.
State sponsored murder using some of the most powerful weapons on earth is not murder. If he was using "assault rifles" to kill the "terrorists" instead of drones, then it might be a tragedy.
"Collateral Damage" of innocent women and children caused by drone attacks is acceptable because it saves the lives of U.S. soldiers. In a country that claims to be spreading "freedom" and "democracy " around the world with bombs, "our" government has an official policy that ranks humanity by assigning value to lives, and a U.S. soldiers life has more value than a 6 year old Pakistani. So killing ten innocent victims with a bomb, in order to kill one "terrorist" is an acceptable practice by the state's mililtary.
Or maybe "our" government now shares the Box-a-Rox philosophy that no citizen of a nation is innocent because the collective citizens are guilty of supporting their leader. They are guilty of being born under of government that the United State considers an enemy. If the Pakistani people would just overthrough their leaders and install leaders that comply with U.S. demands, they wouldn't be getting bombed. Too bad Pakistani's, you are ALL legitimate targets.
US must hand over drone strikes footage or face UN inquiry: report
2012 From Print Edition
NEW YORK: The US must open itself to an independent investigation into its use of drone strikes or the United Nations will be forced to step in, Ben Emmerson QC said on Tuesday.
His comments came as Pakistani officials said that a US drone strike had killed at least four militants after targeting their vehicles in North Waziristan on Sunday. Attacks by American unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are deeply unpopular in the country, which claims they violate its sovereignty and fan anti-US sentiment, says a story in The Independent.
Mr Emmerson, a leading London Barrister and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, said America is facing mounting global pressure over its use of UAVs, and he is preparing a report for the next session of the Human Rights Council in March. The issue, he insists, will “remain at the top of the UN political agenda until some consensus and transparency has been achieved.”
American UAV strikes, most notably in Pakistan and Yemen, have shot up since Barack Obama came to power. Estimates state that while there were 52 such strikes during George W Bush’s time, this number has risen to 282 over the past three and a half years with officials justifying it as international “self defence” against a stateless enemy.
Mr Emmerson said it was time for the US to open itself up to scrutiny as to the legality of such attacks. While it remains nigh on impossible for observers to establish the truth on the ground in many of areas, each strike is visually recorded and videos could be passed to independent assessors, he explained.
“We can’t make a decision on whether it is lawful or unlawful if we do not have the data. The recommendation I have made is that users of targeted killing technology should be required to subject themselves, in the case of each and every death, to impartial investigation. If they do not establish a mechanism to do so, it will be my recommendation that the UN should put the mechanisms in place through the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly and the Office of the High Commissioner,” he said.
He continued: “The Obama administration continues formally to adopt the position that it will neither confirm nor deny the existence of the drone program, whilst allowing senior officials to give public justifications of its supposed legality in personal lectures and interviews. In reality the administration is holding its finger in the dam of public accountability. There are now a large number of law suits in different parts of the world, including in the UK, Pakistan and in the US itself, through which pressure for investigation and accountability is building.”
“During the last session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in June, many states, including Russia, China and Pakistan, called for an investigation into the use of drone strikes as a means of targeted killing. I was asked by these states to bring forward proposals on this issue, and I am working closely on the subject of drones with Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur, on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary execution. The issue is moving rapidly up the international agenda,” explained Mr Emmerson, who has called for the “end to the conspiracy of silence”.
Only last week, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan vowed to defy the Taliban threats to attend a rally in Pakistan’s tribal areas aimed at highlighting the human cost of US drone strikes.
Imran Khan, who heads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), intends to join a rally in Miranshah, North Waziristan, next month to protest against the US policy of using drones to target suspected militants, when civilians get caught in the crossfire.
Recently Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistani High Commissioner, said the US strikes “violated” his country and encouraged extremism while last month Navi Pillay, UN Commissioner on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, said she was “seriously concerned” by reports of civilian deaths in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
Last month, the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a law suit against senior CIA and military officials over the killing of three Yemeni-American citizens, including a 16-year-old boy. The first hit in September 2011 killed the extremist imam Anwar Al-Aulaqi and alleged al-Qaeda propagandist Samir Khan.
“Two weeks later, on October 14, US drone strikes killed Anwar Al-Aulaqi’s son, 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi as he was eating dinner with his teenage cousin at an open-air restaurant,” said the CCR, claiming that the “escalated and expanded” use of drone strikes since the Obama administration came to power had killed hundreds of civilians amongst the estimated 2,500 deaths.
Wow! L4Life is on another roll. (I wish his therapist would give him a call)
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
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