Month: April 2021

Calling Out Civilian Deaths By Drone Under Yet Another Democratic Party Warmonger

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Screenshot from video of protest blocking the road at Creech AFB on April 5. Group chanting, “Arrest Col. Jones, the war criminal, not Daniel Hale, the whistleblower!”  Posted by Toby Blomé at https://shutdowncreech.blogspot.com

Today I am reposting a press release from the dedicated drone resistance that converges annually at Creech Air Base in Nevada. 

These people of conscience work tirelessly to shine a light into the dark crime of U.S. relentless bombing of civilians with each successive administration in Washington DC, whether Democrat or Republican. 

Many of them will risk arrest to bring attention to these atrocities.

April 2, 2021
Contact: Toby Blomé, 510.501.5412 Maggie Huntington.602.459.5257
For more details: https://shutdowncreech.blogspot.com

ANTI-DRONE PROTESTORS FROM AROUND U.S. CONVERGE THIS WEEK TO CONDEMN KILLING BY CREECH AFB DRONES

LAS VEGAS/CREECH AFB, NV – Anti-war/anti-drone demonstrators from the East and West coasts announced they are converging here April 4-10 to hold daily protests – which may lead to arrests – at the U.S. Drone Base at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

Many military veterans, now members of Veterans for Peace, will be joining. The event is co-sponsored by CODEPINK and Veterans for Peace.

At Creech, U.S. Air Force personnel, coordinating with C.I.A. officials, are, regularly and secretly, killing people remotely using unmanned armed drone planes, primarily the MQ-9 Reaper drones. 

Thousands of civilians have been killed and injured, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and elsewhere, since 2001, according to the activists.

In the aftermath of the recent and tragic U.S. massacres by lone gunmen in Georgia and Boulder, activists will hold daily two hour vigils between 6:30-8:30 a.m. and 3:30-5:30 p.m., during commute hours to underline the connection between mass violence at home and the “normalized” mass violence of the U.S. covert drone program and U.S. military.

Over the last 20 years, U.S. armed drones have been used to commit horrible atrocities that have included strikes on wedding parties, funerals, schools, mosques, homes, farm laborers, and in January, 2020, included direct hits on high level foreign military and government officials from Iran and Iraq.

“A man walks past a graffiti, denouncing strikes by U.S. drones in Yemen, painted on a wall in Sanaa November 13, 2014”
KHALED ABDULLAH/REUTERS

These drone massacres have, at times, resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians with a single drone attack. Not a single U.S. official has ever been held accountable for these ongoing atrocities, 

yet, an important drone whistleblower, Daniel Hale, who leaked truths about these atrocities faces potentially harsh sentencing later this July.

The daily vigils will include different themes each time, but two notable ones include:

Mon, April 5, 3:30-4:30 p.m. “WE STAND WITH Drone Whistleblower DANIEL HALE.” On Wednesday, March 31, Daniel Hale pled guilty to being the informant who anonymously leaked classified military documents to an online media publisher, The Intercept, that revealed secret military statistics documenting civilian casualties under the covert U.S. targeted drone assassination program. (See The Drone Papers, 2015).

As a U.S. citizen and USAF analyst, Daniel acted out of conscience to reveal the truth about these serious war crimes that he felt the public had a right to know. Protesters will stand in support of Daniel’s courageous act and demand that the real criminals be prosecuted, including the commanders of killer drone bases like Creech AFB, not the whistleblowers, who reveal the atrocities. Some of the messages will include: “Free Daniel Hale, Exposing war crimes is not a crime” “Prosecute the War Criminals not the Truth-tellers”

Tues, April 6, 6:30 – 8:30 a.m. THE DRONE MASSACRE MEMORIAL: Activists, will display a long series of banners, stretched along the highway, each highlighting details of past U.S. drone massacres, including statistics on civilian deaths.

“It is our hope,” said Toby Blomé, one of the organizers, “that the military personnel that drive into the base everyday will reflect deeply about their role in this criminal activity that causes innumerable deaths and untold suffering around the globe, and that just maybe some of them will make the difficult but ethical choice to not participate.

“Militarized drones are expanding at an unbelievable rate, replacing conventional warfare, without any meaningful public debate. It is therefore the obligation of the military personnel to embrace their own individual responsibilities.”

-END-


A pre-pandemic crowd of protestors at Creech in April, 2016.

Guard Against The Greed And Ignorance Driving Climate Crisis

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Research in the UK turns up the unsurprising fact that a tiny group of humans cause the lion’s share of air pollution via air travel. I’m old enough to remember when the fawning press called these elites “the jet set” due to their excessive use of machines that allow for swift travel. 

The wealthy use travel to show off their privilege. For example, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz flying to Cancun during a statewide power outage last winter in Texas. 

Or, in an anecdote I was told by an Afghan friend, a bride in Kabul flying to Dubai for her wedding makeup.

Of the two examples, one was the direct result of unprecedented freezing weather crashing a U.S. state’s (unregulated) power grid. 

Thus, climate change begets climate change.

Then there’s greedy capitalist Elon Musk’s SpaceX flops that belch carbon and other greenhouse gases to exalt his ego if not to consolidate his wealth.

My friend and neighbor Barry Dana, past chief of the Penobscot Nation, has been ringing the alarm bell about air travel for years. His response to my sharing the news that a handful of people cause most of the climate damage due to aviation was, “I see flying to be one thing we have in our daily choices that we have the power NOT to do.” He is critical of Native environmental activists who fly in indigenous experts from around the globe to confer about our climate problem.

My response is to listen to Barry, an educator for traditional wisdom about how to live sustainably on this planet, and to make my choices accordingly.

But the elephant in the climate change room is actually military aviation.

Neoliberal rag The Guardian naturally did not offer this context in their article about elite air travel.

Source: Brown University, Watson Institute, Costs of War Project

Luckily for us, academics have been studying military contributions to climate crisis for a while now. I’ve been collecting their reports here for a few years and was excited to learn that peace activist emeritus Kathy Kelly referred to my collection in an interview recently. Podcaster Kollibri terre Sonnenblume characterized this as:

“most US Americans are ignorant of the consequences of US militarism.” 

No kidding.

Like The Guardian, the corporate press here in the U.S. works overtime to ignore the real drivers of climate change. To help craft this false narrative, military emissions were exempt from being quantified in the Kyoto climate protocols, and were made optional in the Paris climate accords. Because our planet’s atmosphere isn’t affected by pollution if it has the right flag on it?

Now, with a former Raytheon board member heading the Pentagon, this problem is unlikely to be addressed. The U.S. military is well aware that climate change is a thing and they have lots of contingency plans for dealing with the coastal flooding of many of their 800 bases around the planet.

I founded the Maine Natural Guard to help people connect the dots between climate crisis and U.S. taxpayer funded military aviation. So few people seem to care that we bomb civilians constantly no matter which of the two corporate parties is in power at the moment, but many do care about the existential threat of climate emergency. 

I’m glad to see Veterans for Peace has a web page for their Working Group on Climate Crisis and Militarism with their focus: “The unequal burden of both climate change and militarism on people of color and the poor.” 

This point is important to bear in mind as we witness the ramp up to war with China, Russia, or (are the generals insane?) both. When I read Ann Wright’s comprehensive review “In Alarmist Turn, NATO Is Increasingly Positioning Itself In Opposition To China, I saw our carbon bootprint spreading like the stain it is.

Want to be part of the solution?

Add your name to join the Natural Guard effort from wherever you are!

I pledge to speak out about the effects of militarism on our environment, because the commons we all share that sustain life are valuable to me.

In discussions about security and safety, I will remind others of the need to count in the cost in pollution and fuel consumption of waging wars all around the planet.

In discussions about acting soon to protect our loved ones from the effects of climate chaos, I will remind others of the need to examine the role of the Pentagon and its many contractors in contributing to planetary warming.