Biden houdt deportatieprogramma van Trump aan: intussen al honderdduizenden vluchtelingen gedeporteerd

De kop op dit artikel suggereert dat Trump de kwaadaardige 'genius' is die deportaties van vluchtelingen op een 'hoger plan' bracht, echter dat is onzin, ook onder Obama werden honderdduizenden vluchtelingen (mensen) gedeporteerd en onder Obama was Joe Biden, de huidige president, vicepresident en daarmee mede verantwoordelijk voor dit walgelijke beleid. 

Onder Trump werd wel een nieuw beleid toegevoegd aan het deporteren van vluchtelingen, gebaseerd op de Coronacrisis, met de zogenaamde 'Title 42' maatregel, onderdeel van de Public Health Safety Act (wet). Afgelopen donderdag zou deze maatregel worden geschrapt in lijn met een uitspraak van een 'lagere rechtbank', echter de Biden administratie is in beroep gegaan tegen deze uitspraak, dezelfde administratie die met gebruikmaking van Title 42 al honderdduizenden mensen heeft gedeporteerd...... Mensenrechten experts inclusief beambten van de Verenigde Naties (VN) hebben deze Title 42 deportaties volkomen terecht veroordeeld.

Deskundigen van de Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC >> te vergelijken met ons RIVM) hebben het gebruik (beter: misbruik) veroordeeld van bevoegdheden voor de volksgezondheid om niet VS burgers te kunnen deporteren. 

Advocaat Lee Gelernt van de American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), die als belangrijkste jurist tegen Title 42 wordt gezien, heeft gezegd dat wanneer de Biden administratie asielzoekers werkelijk humaan wil behandelen, het deze wetteloze politiek moet laten varen en het beroep moet intrekken, me dunkt geen woord Spaans. Gelernt voegde daaraan toe dat: "we zullen blijven vechten om deze illegale politiek te beëindigen".

Tami Goodlette, directeur procesvoering van het Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), tevens mede-raadgever van Huisha-Huisha*, heeft zich ook uitgesproken tegen het gebruik van Title 42 om vluchtelingen uit te zetten** en heeft Biden opgeroepen niet in beroep te gaan. Een lagere rechtbank heeft geconcludeerd dat Title 42 illegaal is en niet mag worden toegepast om families uit te sluiten van het asiel zoeken in de VS. "In plaats van gezinnen toe te staan toevlucht te zoeken in ons land, wat legaal is onder VS en internationale wetgeving, heeft de Biden administratie gekozen om de racistische en xenofobe politiek van de psychopathische fascist Trump voort te zetten", aldus Goodlette (de toevoegingen voor Trump zijn van mijn hand zoals je waarschijnlijk al had begrepen), wat bevestigd wordt met het beroep dat deze administratie heeft ingesteld tegen de uitspraak van die rechtbank en is doorgaan met het deporteren van duizenden Haïtianen die vastzaten in Del Rio in Texas en dat onder de vermaledijde Title 42 maatregel.......

"De Biden administratie is van het pad geraakt en moet zich de verkiezingsbeloften herinneren", voegde Goodlette toe om te vervolgen met het volgende: "Migranten verdienen beter. Ons land verdient beter"

Biden beloofde tijdens de verkiezingen in 2020 dat hij een humaan asielbeleid zou invoeren, echter zoals zoveel beloften van Biden is ook deze belofte een uiterst valse gebleken...... Biden volgt niet alleen de racistische en xenofobe politiek van Trump, maar vervolgt in feite de smerige inhumane politiek die zoals gezegd al onder Obama werd ingezet en ook toen al werden kinderen gescheiden van hun ouders en opgesloten in wat je niet anders kan zien dan concentratiekampen..... Alleen al in de eerste 3 maanden na zijn aantreden (in januari dit jaar) was Biden verantwoordelijk voor de deportatie van 300.000 vluchtelingen.... (!!!)

Zoals al zo vaak op deze plek verzucht: de VS het land van de ongekende mogelijkheden, in negatieve zin wel te verstaan..... Al hoeven wij ons bepaald niet op de borst te slaan, ook de EU voert een uiterst inhumane politiek tegen vluchtelingen en dat geholpen door de reguliere media, zoals de zogenaamd onafhankelijke NOS dat een aantal weken geleden in het nieuws vluchtelingen die hun leven riskeren om de Middellandse Zee over te steken, 'migranten' noemde...... Ook die vluchtelingen zijn voor dik meer dan 90% op de vlucht vanwege de westerse terreur in hun thuisland, dan wel de steun die het westen geeft aan uiterst barbaarse regimes, zoals de door het westen gesteunde terreurregering in Libië...... Om over het dumpen van door de EU gesubsidieerde landbouwproducten op de markten in arme landen nog maar te zwijgen, waardoor boeren daar brodeloos worden en volkomen terecht vluchten naar Europa (immers elke verantwoordelijke ouder wil het best voor zijn/haar kind, al helemaal als het zeker is dat voor hun tiende jaar één of meer van hun kinderen zullen sterven; wat zou jij in dat geval doen??).....

Het volgende artikel werd geschreven door Brett Wilkins en werd gepubliceerd op Common Dreams, hierin noemt Wilkins nog een paar mensenrechtenactivistenen en hun organisaties die zich inzetten voor vluchtelingen: 

(On the top right hand side of this page you can choose for a translation in the language of your choice, first choose 'Engels' [English] so you can recognise your own language [the Google tranlation is first in Dutch, a language most people don't understand, while on the other hand most people recognize there language translated in English]). 

(als je het Engels niet machtig bent, klik dan in de rechterbovenhoek van deze pagina op Nederlands in het Google translate zoekvlak, alle artikelen op de pagina worden dan in het Nederlands weergegeven en dat razendsnel, met een redelijk goede kwaliteit) 

Asylum-seekers prepare to be taken to a U.S. Border Patrol processing facility after crossing into the U.S. on June 16, 2021 in La Joya, Texas. (Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Advocates Blast Biden for Embracing Trump's 'Racist' Policy as Court Upholds Title 42 Expulsions

"Title 42 must end, and every day the Biden administration fights to uphold it, they choose xenophobia and racism over protecting human rights."

Brett Wilkins

October 1, 2021

Migrant rights advocates on Friday accused President Joe Biden of embracing his predecessor's racist policies and endangering families following a court ruling that will allow the administration to continue expelling asylum-seekers under the pretext of protecting public health during the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in Huisha-Huisha v. Mayorkas that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can continue removing asylum-seeking migrants under Title 42, a section of the Public Health Safety Act first invoked by the Trump administration as the coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020.

Title 42 was scheduled to be lifted Thursday in compliance with a lower court's order. However, the Biden administration—which has deported hundreds of thousands of migrants under the law—appealed the decision.

Human rights experts including United Nations officials have condemned Title 42 removals, which plaintiffs' attorneys in Huisha-Huisha called "a pretext" to deport migrants legally seeking asylum in the United States.

"Expert scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rejected the use of public health powers to expel noncitizens as unnecessary," a court filing in the case asserts, "but the process was nevertheless imposed on the CDC by White House officials seeking to limit immigration, and not as a bona fide measure to protect public health."

ACLU  @ACLU

Oct 1, 2021

BREAKING: A federal court has temporarily failed to block Title 42, a cruel policy that misuses public health to unjustly expel asylum seekers. 

If the Biden administration really wants to treat asylum seekers humanely, it must end this lawless policy NOW and withdraw its appeal.

ACLU

@ACLU

We'll keep fighting to end this illegal policy. Join us and tell the Biden administration to protect asylum seekers now.

Protect Asylum Seekers: End Title 42 Now

Vulnerable migrants are being turned away at the border because of the misuse of a public health order known as Title 42. It must stop.

action.aclu.org

2:07 AM · Oct 1, 2021·Twitter Web App

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ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer in the Title 42 challenge, said following the ruling that "if the Biden administration really wants to treat asylum seekers humanely, it should end this lawless policy now and withdraw its appeal."

"We will continue fighting to end this illegal policy," he vowed.

Tami Goodlette, director of litigation at Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) and co-counsel in Huisha-Huisha, said in a statement that "the Biden administration should never have appealed this case."

"The lower court concluded Title 42 was illegal and should not be applied to exclude families from seeking asylum in the U.S.," Goodlette continued. "But rather than allow families to seek refuge in our country—which is legal under U.S. law and international law—the administration chose to further promulgate the Trump administration's racist and xenophobic policies by appealing the case, and then [proceeded] to expel thousands of Haitians from Del Rio, Texas under Title 42."

"The Biden administration has lost its way and needs to remember its promises from the election," Goodlette added. "Migrants deserve better. Our country deserves better."

Todd Schulte

@TheToddSchulte

 

Title 42 was wrong in 2020 Title 42 was wrong in 2021 Title 42 was wrong when it was used to block Haitians and other predominantly Black migrants from seeking asylum last week Title 42 is still wrong tonight with this ruling—and the administration can and must end Title 42

 

Camilo Montoya-Galvez

@camiloreports

BREAKING -- The D.C. Circuit Court pauses a federal judge’s order that would have barred the Biden administration from using a Trump-era border policy to expel migrant families. The U.S. can continue to expel migrant families with children under Title 42.

1:06 AM · Oct 1, 2021

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Neela Chakravartula, managing attorney at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) and another co-counsel in the case, said that "the Biden administration's embrace of Title 42 has exposed people seeking safety to untold violence and suffering."

"The administration's decision to defend the policy in court is unconscionable, and a complete betrayal of the president's promise to restore access to asylum," asserted Chakravartula. "Recent events have laid bare the tragic consequences of Title 42. In less than two weeks, the administration has expelled over 5,000 Haitians to a country plagued with widespread violence and insecurity—a human rights travesty, and no small operational feat."

"They could have used those resources to safely welcome Haitians seeking refuge," she added. "Instead, the president has adopted Trump's racist policy as his own, without regard for the families and children harmed as a result."

Sawyer Hackett

@SawyerHackett

Title 42 shouldn’t be a punchline to dunk on reporters. The CDC pushed back on it and every public health expert says it’s nonsensical. It’s a Stephen Miller policy being protected by the Biden admin.

(Klik hier voor de video in dit bericht )

From

Acyn

11:53 PM · Sep 30, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

2 Retweets

15 Likes

Amy Fischer, Americas Advocacy Director at Amnesty International USA, said that "once again, the Biden administration has shown that it is more committed to defending Title 42 than upholding the human rights of asylum-seekers."

"The continued weaponization of the pandemic to expel people from our border will result in serious harm for the thousands who have been denied protection, including thousands of Haitians who have been brutalized and expelled under the policy in recent weeks," Fischer added. "There is simply no way around it—Title 42 must end, and every day the Biden administration fights to uphold it, they choose xenophobia and racism over protecting human rights."

Karla Marisol Vargas, senior attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) and Huisha-Huisha co-counsel, said in a statement that "by fighting to keep Title 42 in place, this administration is doubling down on its commitment to continue the racist and violent policies of the Trump administration and to further entrench cruelty and racism into an immigration system in sore need of change—a system that continually violates the basic human rights of migrants, especially Black and brown migrants."

"The violence against Black migrants in Del Rio showed us not only this administration's utter lack of humanity, but it also showed us the absolute lack of will in upholding the promises it claimed when on the campaign trail," she added

RAICES

@RAICESTEXAS

Biden is the new deporter-in-chief. Just like Obama did, he's backtracked on promises in favor of enforcement.

Hamed Aleaziz

@Haleaziz

ICE removed more than 700 Haitians on Wednesday to Haiti from Texas— another single-day high since the flights began on Sep. 19. The Biden administration has expelled more than 5,000 Haitians since Sep. 19.

5:42 PM · Sep 30, 2021

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Thursday's ruling came hours after DHS issued new guidance for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies prioritizing the expulsion of people in the country illegally "who are a threat to our national security, public safety, and border security."

While DHS says the guidance is meant to empower authorities to exercise greater discretion and weigh the "totality of the facts and circumstances" when considering deportations, Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, warned that "the memo places a dangerous amount of discretion in the hands of ICE agents."

"Given the agency's long history of operating—and even rewarding—a culture of cruelty and impunity, it is crucial for the agency to commit to ensuring that these priorities are implemented fairly and justly," said Hincapié, "and that DHS leadership ensures ICE agents are held accountable."

---

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

===================================

*  Huisha-Huisha is de achternaam van een vrouw (en haar kind) die van de rechter door het U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) mag worden gedeporteerd.......

** Opvallend dat men in de VS amper of niet spreekt over vluchtelingen, terwijl de overgrote meerderheid van de mensen die naar de VS willen bestaat uit vluchtelingen.... Nota bene mensen die voor 99% op de vlucht zijn voor regimes die ofwel door de VS in het zadel zijn geholpen, dan wel bloederige regimes die worden gesteund en in het zadel worden gehouden door de VS....... 

=============================

Zie ook: 'Bennett (Israëlische premier) in VN: Israël is een baken van licht en vrijheid en haar steunen is een morele keus....' (en zie de links in dat bericht naar meer artikelen over de zwaar ongelijke strijd van Israel tegen de Palestijnen)

'Joël Voordewind speciaal ambassadeur van ZOA, een organisatie die zich o.a. inzet voor vluchtelingen' (en zie de links in dat bericht!!)

''Rechter' bepaalt dat etnisch profileren door Marechaussee is toegestaan'

'Sigrid Kaag (D66 minister BuZa) neemt geheel hypocriet ontslag: meer ratten die het zinkende schip Rutte 3 verlaten' (o.a. over het deporteren van Afghaanse vluchtelingen)

'Afghanistan: Biden heeft ervoor gezorgd dat er geen 'Amerikanen' zijn achtergebleven, door iedere achterblijver het beloofde burgerschap te ontzeggen.......' (en zie de links in dat bericht, links naar meer artikelen over de oorlog tegen Afghanistan)

'VN Vluchtelingenverdrag 70 jaar oud en zo goed als dood.......'

-----------------------------

Voorts nog wat links naar artikelen over Joe Biden (en 'het verschil' in beleid t.o.v. de Trump administraite): 'Australië laat zich chanteren door de VS: niet langer 'het beest China' voeren'

'Joe Biden: als de NAVO niet bestond moest deze worden uitgevonden..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Het verschil tussen totalitaire regimes en 'vrije democratieën' flinterdun en soms zelfs niet bestaand....'

'Joe Biden over orkaan Ida en de klimaatverandering: als de vos de passie preekt, boer pas op je kippen'

'Joe Biden heeft alweer een verkiezingsbelofte gebroken: toch olieboringen in Alaska'

'Joe Biden spreekt met gespleten tong over terugdringing klimaatverandering'

'Joe Biden belazert het volk van de VS met zijn beloften en dat op een ongekende manier'

'De gezondheid van gekleurde mensen in de VS wordt opgeofferd voor de winsten van grote bedrijven: Sacrifice Zones......'

'Met Joe Biden is er niets veranderd op de wereld, anders dan dat 'het Trump fascisme is weggestemd''

'Kamala Harris, vicepresidentskandidaat voor de Democraten, geeft aan dat China ook onder Biden te maken zal hebben met een koude oorlog'

Daniel Hale: een klokkenluider die 10 jaar gevangenisstraf wacht voor het openbaren van VS drone terreur

Daniel Hale is een ex-drone piloot van de VS, die een aantal overheidsdocumenten heeft gelekt naar de pers waaruit blijkt dat de VS verschrikkelijke oorlogsmisdaden begaat middels die drones....... Eerder was Hale één van de weinige militairen die het aandurfden om te protesteren tegen de gevangenneming van destijds nog Bradley Manning, nu bekend als vrouw onder de voornaam Chelsea. Hij heeft zich met anderen zelfs verweerd tegen de poging van burgemeester Michael Bloomberg van New York om een kampement van Occupy in Zuccotti Park te vegen, voor zijn steun aan Manning had Hale een week vrij genomen van zijn  werk. De poging van Bloomberg mislukte toen de duizenden demonstranten, waaronder georganiseerde transportmedewerkers (transit workers dat overigens op meerdere manieren kan worden vertaald, bijvoorbeeld ook als wegwerkers), onderwijzers, vakbondsleden van de Teamster vakbond en communicatie medewerkers, die zich rond het park opstelden, met hun leuzen de politie terugdrongen (hoe kan je iets dergelijks beter doen??).

                 

           Daniel Hale: foto overgenomen van Intelligencer  Photo: Courtesy of Bob Hayes

Uit de documenten die Hale heeft gelekt blijkt dat het doel van drone aanvallen terreurverdachten zijn, echter zoals hier al vaak opgemerkt gaat het bij 90% van de slachtoffers niet eens om verdachten, veelal vrouwen en kinderen, waarbij de VS loog dat het om terreurverdachten ging...... (overigens is het vermoorden van verdachten uiteraard een enorme oorlogsmisdaad) De VS draait zelfs de hand niet om om eigen burgers in het buitenland te vermoorden zoals de 16 jarige Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki die in Jemen werd vermoord middels een drone, hij was de zoon van Anwar al-Awlaki, een radicale geestelijke, die een week voor zijn zoon op dezelfde manier werd vermoord.... De Obama administratie loog destijds dat Al Qaida leider voor het arabische schiereiland, Ibrahim al-Banna, het doel was en dat hij zich ophield met de 16 jarige Anwar en diens neef (die ook omkwam bij deze terreurdaad...)..... 

Het vermoorden van deze 'onschuldigen' (dat is een verdachte ook tot het tegendeel is bewezen voor een rechtbank) kwam in de openbaarheid, maar er zijn duizenden meer van dergelijke gevallen, die alleen bekend zijn bij ingewijden die een hoogste veiligheidsmachtiging hebben, zoals Hale destijds...... Ofwel dergelijke zware oorlogsmisdaden en in feite misdaden tegen de menselijkheid werden tot staatsgeheim verklaard.......

Over oorlogsmisdaden gesproken, de VS laat ook verdachten vermoorden in landen waartegen het niet eens oorlog voert, zo bleek eens te meer uit de documenten die Hale lekte....

Hale wordt aangeklaagd inzake de Espionage Act, een wet uit 2017 die het strafbaar stelt als staatsgeheimen aan een vijandige staat van de VS worden geleverd, echter deze wet is niet van toepassing op het openbaren van staatsgeheimen aan de eigen bevolking zoals Hale en bijvoorbeeld Edward Snowden en Chelsea Manning hebben gedaan..... Bovendien is deze wet niet bedoeld klokkenluiders te vervolgen maar spionnen..... Middels het meer dan achterlijke plea bargain heeft Hale toegegeven een aantal documenten te hebben gelekt naar een journalist, daarmee zou hij kunnen worden veroordeeld tot 10 jaar gevangenisstraf, als hij had gepleit onschuldig te zijn zou hem een veel langere gevangenisstraf wachten...... (alleen daarom al zou Nederland nooit meer iemand mogen uitleveren aan de VS, een land dat overduidelijk geen rechtsstaat meer is....)

Chris Hedges heeft een artikel geschreven over Hale dat ik overnam van Information Clearing House (ICH), eerder gepubliceerd op Scheerpost, daaronder nog een link naar een ander artikel over Hale, geschreven door Kerry Howley, gepubliceerd op Intelligencer (onder het ICH artikel kan je klikken voor een 'Dutch vertaling' dit neemt wel enkele tientallen seconden tijd in beslag):

Bless our American traitors

By Chris Hedges

Afbeelding overgenomen van Scheerpost

July 20, 2021 "Information Clearing House" - - " Scheer Post"  Daniel Hale, an active-duty Air Force intelligence analyst, stood in the Occupy encampment in Zuccotti Park in October 2011 in his military uniform. He held up a sign that read “Free Bradley Manning,” who had not yet announced her transition. It was a singular act of conscience few in uniform had the strength to replicate. He had taken a week off from his job to join the protestors in the park. He was present at 6:00 am on October 14 when Mayor Michael Bloomberg made his first attempt to clear the park. He stood in solidarity with thousands of protestors, including many unionized transit workers, teachers, Teamsters and communications workers, who formed a ring around the park. He watched the police back down as the crowd erupted into cheers. But this act of defiance and moral courage was only the beginning. 

At the time, Hale was stationed at Fort Bragg. A few months later he deployed to Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Force Base. He would later learn that that while he was in Zuccotti Park, Barack Obama ordered a drone strike some 12,000 miles away in Yemen that killed Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of the radical cleric and US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who had been killed by a drone strike two weeks earlier. The Obama administration claimed it was targeting the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Ibrahim al-Banna, who it believed, incorrectly, was with the boy and his cousins, all of whom were also killed in the attack. That massacre of innocents became public, but there were thousands more such attacks that wantonly killed noncombatants that only Hale and those with top-security clearances knew about.

Starting in 2013, Hale, while working as a private contractor, leaked some 17 classified documents about the drone program to investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, although the reporter is not named in court documents. The leaked documents, published by The Intercept on October 15, 2015, exposed that between January 2012 and February 2013, US special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. For one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. The civilian dead, usually innocent bystanders, were routinely classified as “enemies killed in action.”

Hale was coerced by Biden’s Justice Department on March 31 to plead guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act, a law passed in 1917 designed to prosecute those who passed on state secrets to a hostile power, not those who expose to the public government lies and crimes. Hale admitted as part of the plea deal to “retention and transmission of national security information” and leaking 11 classified documents to a journalist. He is being held in the Alexandria Adult Detention Center in Virginia, awaiting sentencing on July 27. If he had refused the plea deal, he could have spent 50 years in prison. He now faces up to a decade in prison.

Tragically, his case has not garnered the attention it should. When Nick Mottern, of the Ban Killer Drones campaign, accompanied artists projecting Hale’s image on downtown walls in Washington, D.C., he found that everyone he spoke to was unaware of Hale’s plight. Prominent human rights organizations, such as the ACLU and PEN, have largely remained silent and uninvolved. The group Stand with Daniel Hale has called on President Biden to pardon Hale and end the use of the Espionage Act to punish whistleblowers, mounted a letter-writing campaign to the judge to request leniency and is collecting donations for Hale’s legal fund. 

“Daniel Hale is one of the most consequential whistleblowers,” Edward Snowden said on a May Day panel held at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst on the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the Pentagon Papers.  “He sacrificed everything — an incredibly courageous person — to tell us that the drone war, that, you know, is so obviously occurring to everyone else, but the government was still officially denying in so many ways, is here, it is happening, and 90 percent of the casualties in one five-month period were innocents or bystanders or not the target of the drone strike. We could not establish that, we could not prove that, without Daniel Hale’s voice.”

Speaking on Democracy Now! with host Amy Goodman a few weeks later, Daniel Ellsberg agreed that Hale “acted very admirably, in a way that very, very few officials have ever done in showing the moral courage to separate themselves from criminal activities and wrongful activities of their own administration, and resist them, as well as exposing them.”

Because Hale was charged under the Espionage Act, he, like other whistleblowers, including Chelsea Manning, Jeffrey Sterling, Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou, who spent two-and-a-half years in prison for exposing the routine torture of suspects held in black sites, was not permitted to explain his motivations and intent to the court. Nor could he provide evidence to the court that the drone assassination program killed and wounded large numbers of noncombatants, including children. He faced trial in the Eastern District of Virginia, much of whose population has links to the military or intelligence community, and whose courts have become notorious for their harsh sentences on behalf of the government. 

The 2012 “Living Under Drones” report by the Stanford International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (IHR&CRC) provides a detailed documentation of the human impact of US drone strikes in Pakistan. Drones often fire Hellfire missiles that are equipped with an explosive warhead of about 20 pounds. A Hellfire variant, known as the R9X, carries “an inert warhead,” The New York Times reported. Instead of exploding, it hurls about 100 pounds of metal through a vehicle. The missile’s other feature includes “six long blades tucked inside,” which deploy “seconds before impact to slice up anything in its path” — including, of course, people.

The numbers of civilian dead from US drone strikes run into the thousands, if not tens of thousands. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), an independent journalist organization, for example, reported that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, drone strikes killed between 2,562 and 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom an estimated 474 to 881 were civilians, including 176 children.

Drones hover 24 hours a day in the skies over Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria. Without warning, the drones, operated remotely from Air Force bases as far away as Nevada, fire ordinance that obliterates homes and vehicles or kills whole groups of people in fields or attending community gatherings, funerals and weddings. The leaked banter of the young drone operators, who often treat the killings as if they are an enhanced video game, exposes the callousness of the indiscriminate killings. Drone operators refer to child victims of drone attacks as “fun-sized terrorists.”

“Ever step on ants and never give it another thought?” Michael Hass, a former drone operator for the Air Force told The Guardian.  “That’s what you are made to think of the targets — as just black blobs on a screen. You start to do these psychological gymnastics to make it easier to do what you have to do — they deserved it, they chose their side. You had to kill part of your conscience to keep doing your job every day — and ignore those voices telling you this wasn’t right.”

The ubiquitous presence of drones in the skies, and the awareness that at any moment these drones can kill you and your family, induces feelings of helplessness, anxiety and constant fear.

“Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities,” the 2012 report reads of the drone war in Pakistan. “Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. These fears have affected behavior. The US practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims. Some community members shy away from gathering in groups, including important tribal dispute-resolution bodies, out of fear that they may attract the attention of drone operators. Some parents choose to keep their children home, and children injured or traumatized by strikes have dropped out of school.”

Drones have become killing machines that mete out random death and usually permanently cripple those victims who survive.

“The missiles fired from drones kill or injure in several ways, including through incineration, shrapnel, and the release of powerful blast waves capable of crushing internal organs,” the report reads.  “Those who do survive drone strikes often suffer disfiguring burns and shrapnel wounds, limb amputations, as well as vision and hearing loss.”

Hale, now 33, always had doubts about the war, but he enlisted in 2009 when Obama assumed office. He hoped that Obama would undo the excesses and lawlessness of the Bush administration. Instead, Obama, a few weeks after he took office, approved the deployment of an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan where 36,000 U.S. troops and 32,000 NATO troops were already deployed. By the end of the year, Obama increased troop levels in Afghanistan again by 30,000, doubling U.S. casualties. He also massively expanded the drone program, raising the number of drone strikes from several dozen the year before he took office to 117 by his second year in office.  By the time he left office Obama had presided over the killing of at least 3,000 suspected militants and hundreds of civilians. He authorized what are known as “signature strikes” allowing the CIA to carry out drone attacks against groups of suspected militants without getting positive identification. He spread the footprint of the drone war, establishing drone bases in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other overseas locations to expand attacks to Syria and Yemen. The Obama administration also indicted eight whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, more than all previous administrations combined. The Biden administration, like the Trump and Obama administrations, continues to launch widespread global drone strikes.

“Before I joined the military, I was well aware that what I was about to enter was something I was against, that I disagreed with,” Hale says in the 2016 documentary film “National Bird.” “I joined anyway out of desperation. I was homeless. I was desperate. I had nowhere else to go. I was on my last leg. The Air Force was ready to accept me.”

In the film, Hale alludes to a difficult and chaotic childhood.

“It’s kind of funny, a little ironic too, because so far I’m the only adult male in my entire family, immediate and external, who had not been to prison so far,” he says. “I come from a long lineage of prisoners, actually, a very proud tradition of fuck-ups who get drunk and go driving, or sell pot, or carry a gun when they shouldn’t be carrying a gun, in the wrong place at the wrong time, a lot of that where I’m from.”

He was assigned to the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg and underwent language and intelligence training. He worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) in Afghanistan as an intelligence analyst identifying targets for the drone program. His Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance gave him access to the vast, global drone war hidden from public view and Obama’s huge secret “kill lists.”

“There are several such lists, used to target individuals for different reasons,” he wrote in an essay titled “Why I Leaked the Watchlist Documents,” originally published anonymously in the book “The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program” by Jeremy Scahill and the staff of The Intercept. The book is based on the leaked documents provided by Hale that first appeared as an eight-part series called “The Drone Papers” published by The Intercept.

“Some lists are closely kept; others span multiple intelligence and local law enforcement agencies,” Hale writes in the essay. “There are lists used to kill or capture supposed ‘high-value targets,’ and others intended to threaten, coerce, or simply monitor a person’s activity. However, all the lists, whether to kill or silence, originate from the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, and they are maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center at the National Counterterrorism Center. The existence of TIDE is unclassified, yet details about how it functions in our government are completely unknown to the public. In August 2013 the database reached a milestone of one million entries. Today it is thousands of entries larger and is growing faster than it has since its inception in 2003.” 

The Terrorist Screening Center, he writes, not only stores names, dates of birth, and other identifying information of potential targets, but also stores “medical records, transcripts, and passport data; license plate numbers, email, and cell-phone numbers (along with the phone’s International Mobile Subscriber Identity and International Mobile Station Equipment Identity numbers); your bank account numbers and purchases; and other sensitive information, including DNA and photographs capable of identifying you using facial recognition software.”

Data on suspects is collected and pooled by the intelligence agencies known as the Five Eyes, the intelligence alliance formed by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Each person on the list is assigned a TIDE personal number, or TPN.

“From Osama bin Laden (TPN 1063599) to Abdulrahman Awlaki (TPN 26350617), the American son of Anwar al Awlaki, anyone who has ever been the target of a covert operation was first assigned a TPN and closely monitored by all agencies who follow that TPN long before they were eventually put on a separate list and extrajudicially sentenced to death,” Hale wrote.

He also exposed that the more than one million entries in the TIDE database includes about 21,000 United States citizens.

After leaving the Air Force in July 2013, Hale was employed by the private defense contractor National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency as a political geography analyst between December 2013 and August 2014. He said he took the job, which paid $80,000 a year, because he was in desperate need of money and hoped to go to college. But by then he was disgusted with the drone program and determined to make the public aware of its abuses and lawlessness. Inspired by the peace activist David Dellinger, he, like Dellinger, had decided to become a traitor to “the American way of death.” He would make amends for his complicity in the killings, even at the cost of his own security and freedom. 

“When the president gets up in front of the nation and says they are doing everything they can to ensure there is near certainty there will be no civilians killed, he is saying that because he can’t say otherwise, because anytime an action is taken to finish a target there is a certain amount of guesswork in that action,” Hale says in the film. “It’s only in the aftermath of any kind of ordinance being dropped that you know how much actual damage was done. Oftentimes, the intelligence community is reliant, the Joint Special Operations Command, the CIA included, is reliant on intelligence coming afterwards that confirms that who they were targeting was killed in the strike, or that they weren’t killed in that strike.”

“The people who defend drones, and the way they are used, say they protect American lives by not putting them in harm’s way,” he says. “What they really do is embolden decision makers, because there is no threat, there is no immediate consequence. They can do this strike. They can potentially kill this person they are so desperate to eliminate because of how potentially dangerous they could be to the US. But if it just so happens that they don’t kill that person, or some other people involved in the strike get killed as well, there are no consequences for it. When it comes to high-value targets, every mission you go after one person at a time, but anybody else killed in that strike is blanketly assumed to be an associate of the targeted individual. So as long as they can reasonably identify that all of the people in the field view of the camera are military-aged males, meaning anybody who is believed to be age 16 or older, they are a legitimate target under the rules of engagement. If that strike occurs and kills all of them, they just say they got them all.”

Drones, he warns, make remote killing “too easy, too convenient.”

On August 8, 2014, the FBI raided his home. It was his last day of work for the private contractor. A male and female FBI agent shoved their badges in his face when he opened the door.

“Immediately behind them came about 20 agents, basically all of them with pistols drawn, some wearing body armor,” he says in the film. “At this point I was extremely scared. I did not understand what was going on. Altogether, there might have been at least 30 to 50 agents in and out of the house at different points throughout the evening taking photos of every room and everything, searching for different things.”

By the time they finished his house was stripped of all electronics, including his cell phone.

For the next five years he lived with the uncertainty of his fate. He struggled to find work, fought off depression and contemplated suicide. He was barred, by law, from speaking about his plight, even with a therapist. In 2019, the Trump administration indicted Hale on four counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of theft of government property. 

The thousands of targeted assassinations carried out by drones, often in countries that are not at war with the United States, are an egregious violation of international law. They are turning huge swathos of the planet against us. The secret kill lists, which include US citizens, have transformed the executive branch into judge, jury and executioner, obliterating the right to due process. Those that commit these killings are unaccountable. Hale sacrificed his career and his freedom to warn us. He is not a danger to the country. The danger we face comes from the secret drone program, which is spiraling out of control and ominously being adopted by domestic law enforcement agencies. If left unchecked, the terror we impose on others we will soon impose on ourselves.

Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

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Hier de link naar het artikel op Intelligencer: 'Call Me a Traitor'

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Zie ook: 'Vervolging van drone klokkenluider Hale moet worden gestopt' (10 februari 2020)

'De VS heeft de meest agressieve regering'

'Het verzwijgen van belangrijk nieuws door de massamedia: het einde van de journalistiek' (zie ook de links in dat bericht naar meer artikelen over 'onafhankelijke journalistiek')

'Zaak van VS tegen Assange gestrand op de belangrijkste getuige, westerse media aandacht: nul komma nada'

'Julian Assange en het instorten van de rechtsorde door de onterechte vervolging van deze gelauwerde journalist'

'VS heeft ook voor eigen burgers een geheime moordlijst, gebaseerd op metadata, aldus voormalig hoofd NSA en CIA' (!!!!)

''Klokkenluidersbescherming' in VS: Obama en Biden lieten journalisten en redacties afluisteren om klokkenluiders te pakken' (en zie de links in dat bericht naar meer artikelen over o.a. Julian Assange en de fascistische opperschoft Navalny)

'Het verschil tussen totalitaire regimes en 'vrije democratieën' flinterdun en soms zelfs niet bestaand....'

'Antony Blinken (VS minister BuZa) leest de wereld de les over persvrijheid terwijl zijn eigen regering deze zwaar geweld aandoet' (waarvan Assange wel het grootste voorbeeld is!!) (!!!!)

'Julian Assange bijna 2 jaar lang in isolatiefolter voor het openbaren van oorlogsmisdaden.......' (een bericht van 1 april 2021, ofwel intussen zit Julian Assange ruim meer dan 2 jaar in isolatiefolter.......)

'Joe Bidens bescherming van de moorddadige Saoedische despoten legt andermaal de werkelijke VS buitenlandpolitiek bloot en die is niet gericht op vrede of democratie' (maar wel hypocriet kritiek hebben op de Saoedische moord op journalist Khashoggi, terwijl Biden onderzoeksjournalist Julian Assange laat wegrotten in de cel......)

'Navalny gebombardeerd tot oppositieleider, of hoe men Rusland geheel hypocriet blijft demoniseren' (Navalny, een fascist en wat een verschil in westerse behandeling vergeleken met Julian Assange.....) (en zie de links in dat bericht)

'Navalny slachtoffer? Assange is het echte slachtoffer!!'

'Navalny wordt geprezen terwijl Assange wordt gemarteld'

'Assange (nog) niet uitgeleverd aan de VS tegen een hoge prijs: het verpletteren van de persvrijheid'

'Julian Assange het slachtoffer van de grootste persbreidel in deze eeuw'

'Julian Assange moet onmiddellijk worden vrijgelaten!' (zie ook de links in dat bericht, o.a. naar berichten over Assange en censuur)

'Snowden vindt het ongelofelijk dat de media VS politici niet aanspreken op totaal verschillende reacties n.a.v. 'klokkenluiden'' (9 oktober 2019) (en zie de links in dat bericht!!)

'Trump administratie klaagt weer een klokkenluider aan voor spionage' (16 mei 2019)

'Chelsea Manning blijft voor onbepaalde tijd in de gevangenis'

'Het westen vervolgt journalist Assange, Rusland laat journalist vrij na onrust over diens gevangenschap' (en nog hadden de reguliere media een grote bek over Rusland, media die niet anders hebben gedaan dan collega Assange besmeuren.....)