Drones: A rain of terror

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

1/11/2013

Daily Tribune

The recent discovery by fishermen off the island of Masbate of a US drone focuses our interest on the drone wars of the US.  Before this latest news of the mysterious US drone, another US drone made the local and international news in February 2012.  Jacob Zenn wrote in Asia Times, entitled "US drones circle over the Philippines" and reported on a drone attack in Mindanao that killed 15 Abu Sayyaf elements, including three most-wanted by the names of Zulkifli bin Hir, Gumbahali Jumdail and Mumanda Ali who are all wanted by the US with prices on their heads amounting from $50,000 to $5 million. The attack highlights the role of the US in the operations of the Philippine military against its targeted enemies, as well as raises the question of who really controls the Philippine military operations.

The Philippine military says the drone found off Masbate does not appear to be a surveillance drone, which we take to mean that no camera of any sort was found on it. Some reports claim it is a BQM-74e Chuka, a model produced by Northrop and used as targets for anti-aircraft shooting practice. I researched the drone photo, it also looks like a Hunter, a small drone used for communications relay or monitoring. It was later reported that the US claimed the drone was used and was lost in a naval war game outside Philippine waters, and drifted into Philippine waters. I don't expect that we'll ever really know the truth as there is no reason for the US to level with the Philippines anyway.

As Jacob Zenn wrote, US drones, with emphasis on the plural, already circle the Philippines and few are aware of them until they crash or kill somebody.
Drones are still strangers to the Filipino's consciousness. We should be thankful for that. In many other countries the impact of constant drone flights cause sleepless days and nights, fill wedding celebrations or community meetings with anxiety in countries experiencing US drone strikes.

US drones have been used extensively by the US the past two decades, from the war in the Balkans and Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan, and probably Syria soon from the late 90s to this day. Today, not only the targeted countries of US military adventures are affected by fear of these terror drones, even US citizens are fearful of drone flights over their own cities and communities, as highlighted by the article by Susanne Posel in Occupy Corporation entitled "Drone Over American skies: Obama is Watching You."

The highly controversial The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) approved by Obama that endorses detention of suspects, even US citizens without charge also "established six national drone test sites where the unmanned planes could fly through civilian air space."  Posel cites congressional representatives' concerns about drones in civilian airspace: "The potential for invasive surveillance of daily activities with drone technology is high." In February of 2012, Congress demanded the Federal Aviation Administration to create "rules to guide domestic drone flights," which ironically paved the way "for defense and aerospace lobbyists to vie for profits amid the hopes of using drones against American citizens…" from the acquisition of drones by the anti-terror Department of Homeland Security (DHS). People can never really know when drones are already hovering above and targeting them. They fly so high up that people won't know if their conversations are already monitored, pictures taken, e-mails or short message texts recorded, or dive bombing already under way on targets beside innocent peoples' activities and taking them down as "collateral damage." 

That's what drone do to people in Pakistan or Afghanistan — traumatizing communities that never know when their mothers and daughters, brothers and/or grandparents are going to be killed in a wedding rite where suspected Talibans may just happen to be walking by. But the drone masters may also be its ultimate victims, as US studies have shown — drone use is backfiring on the US and Obama, victims of backlash and backfire.

A study by Stanford Law School and New York University's School of Law put the percentage of "high-level" targets killed by US drones in Pakistan at only about 2 percent. From June 2004 through September 2012, various drone strikes killed between 2,562 to 3,325 people in Pakistan. The most evil part of the US drone war led by the CIA, is the "double-striking…. moments after the initial hit" killing those extending help. One Pakistani is quoted, "Before this we were all very happy… But after these drones attack a lot of people … have lost members … family. A lot of them, they have mental illnesses."

Drone uses desensitize war and killing, making it a video game for the US war machine and soldiers. With its drones, the US wages a reign and a rain of terror over the World.

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Friday; Watch GNN Ch. 8, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., 11:15 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m., and at www.gnntv-asia.com: this week "Gun Ban"; tune to 1098AM radio Tuesday to Friday 5 to 6 p.m. and visit http://newkatipunan.blogspot.com)

Gun ownership is a right?

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

1/7/2013

Daily Tribune

Are the guns used in the Cavite massacre and the New Year's Eve "to whom it may concern" celebratory gunfire killing of Stephanie Nicole Ella registered or unregistered firearms? In the Cavite case, it should be easy by now for the authorities to announce the legal status of the firearm since the pinpointed gunman who was shot dead after the rampage was quickly identified, with his firearm purportedly recovered by the police.

In the stray bullet shooting case, the slug that killed young Nicole has also been in police possession and one would assume that forensics is being applied on it.
However, scanning as many news reports of both cases, I am perplexed to find no mention yet of whether the guns used in the two cases are registered or unregistered; whether these are regular branded firearms or paltik. If these were unregistered or paltiks, then the real issue is failure of enforcement by the authorities. The defense of legalized gun ownership advocates is that banning legal gun possession by citizens would result in only criminals or potential crazies owning guns; leaving honest, law abiding, peaceful citizens defenseless when under threat from these elements.

It is likely that there would have been fewer casualties in the Cavite rampage if there had been citizens with arms right there at the scene to defend the community even before the police arrived. Against the "to whom it may concern" shooters, such as in the case of Nicole, there is no defense except community conscientiousness and vigilance in restraining drunkards and irresponsible, crazed revelers from firing guns randomly into the air without a thought for the random reentry of the bullets to the heads of human beings.

The gun ban controversy was still raging in the US when the Philippines found itself in a similar situation. The Sandy Hook massacre of 20 tots and six teachers by an Asperger-stricken young man spurred anti-gun citizens and US politicians into a frenzy of initiatives to amend or repeal the "second amendment" to their Constitution guaranteeing citizens "the right to bear arms."

The historical experience and principle behind that Constitution's second amendment is the deep distrust of governmental authority, emanating from that country's experience with British colonialism and oppression, a powerful argument which the gun advocates have raised again. Thus, despite the wave of strong anti-gun sentiments, which even Obama openly supports, second amendment advocates are fighting back with cogent arguments.

Anonymous Coward posted an article that spread on the Internet, entitled, "Why Americans must NEVER relinquish their weapons!!! DEMOCIDE WILL be the result," with "Democide" now added to my lexicon as the "genocide of a people and democracy." The article provides a list of historical "Democides," a few of which we quote here: "1911 — Government in Turkey disarmed its citizens, and between 1915–1917 murdered 1.5 million Armenians; 1938 — Government in Germany disarmed its citizens, and between 1939-1945 murdered 16 million Jews, Hungarian Gypsies, mentally disabled, physically disabled; 1956 — Government in Cambodia disarmed its citizens, and between 1975-1977 murdered 1 million educated people, identified as those wearing glasses; over 2000 Australians were SWAT-teamed since their government hijacked the country and took their guns."

In my own discussion with colleagues, I added the cases of Indonesia where 800,000 unarmed peasants, many Indonesians of Chinese descent, were massacred by the Indonesian military under Suharto; and Rwanda where Hutus massacred a million defenseless Tutsi men, women, and children mostly with machetes. The argument can precisely be made that firearms possession in the homes of the Hutus, for instance, could have equalized the fight for the weak.

There are many "do gooders" in Philippine society who have a "shoot from the hip" to citizens' right to own firearms for self-defense. Among the gun-control measures gathering dust in Congress is the proposed Citizen's Protection Act of 2010 filed by pro-life groups and signed by 86 Roman Catholic bishops, along with Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and Wigberto Tañada, who had said, "Possession by civilians or private persons of such deadly weapons is not a matter of right…"

It is my belief that the citizen's right to possess arms is a right because of the inherent right to "life and liberty." It is just too easy to succumb to the anti-citizens' gun right hysteria over the multiple killings of 26 in Sandy Hook and of eight in Kawit, Cavite; or the 77 killed by Anders Breivik in Norway. In these cases, scores needlessly died but, when citizens are defenseless, millions can even die from organized armed forces.

Just think about it: One of the worst massacres of innocent civilians in Philippine annals, the Ampatuan Massacre, may have turned out very differently if some of the journalists in the entourage had been armed.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN's HTL show, GNN Channel 8, Saturdays, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m., 11:15 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m., and over at www.gnntv-asia.com; and visit http://newkatipunan.blogspot.com)

Taxpayers pushed off 'cliff'

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

1/4/2013

Daily Tribune

The Establishment-controlled US and RP mainstream media make it appear that a great deal by Obama and the Republicans was achieved to keep the US operational without new debt, taxing only the rich and without increasing fiscal burdens on the people. But the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) itself says that the "deal" results in $620 billion in tax hikes over the next decade offset by $15 billion in spending cuts now" as many critical American blogs like Zero Hedge reports. This is happening because "millions of wage-earners, will see a smaller paycheck as a result of the lapse in the 2 percent payroll-tax cut, enacted in 2010, which lowered the employee portion of the Social Security tax from 6.2 to 4.2 percent." That's $125 billion annually taken from the tax cut intended to help beleaguered Americans after the 2008 Financial Crash. In the end, the people are being made to pay again.

The Philippine mainstream media have seen written opinions "welcoming" the "fiscal cliff" deal. The opinions range from claiming that the resolution should help keep US investments coming, to a sigh of relief that the Philippines will continue to benefit from the US "recovery." Such raw views based on deliberately half-baked news and information from US mainstream reports and analysis simply miseducate and mislead the Filipino public. The reality is, Obama and the Republicans just gave another, maybe final shove to the teetering US economy and the tail-spinning purchasing power of the US consumers (read "US Holiday Sales disappoint" — various business news) and further pressure on employment and economic recovery. US investment in the Philippines, the lowest in the region, will not see any uptick; that's an illusion as many RP commentaries believe about the US.

The Obama-Republican deal on the "fiscal cliff" was a big farce, a cliffhanger to enrapt the US public to portray a working democratic political system where debates on crucial policies are engaged, similar to the Bush versus Democrats drama over raising the debt ceiling earlier. But, as we see with the CBO's report, in the end the oligarchy controlled government will return to taxing the people, robbing the future of the working class and the nation to pay for their profligacy. What profligacy will see no cutback? The most vital issue that a fall of the US government (not the taxpayers) over the "fiscal cliff" would have been the cut back in "war spending" by the US government which will cost the US "at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project 'Costs of War' by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. – Reuters."

The US and Philippine governments are controlled by global financial and banking mafias, and their various alliances, intertwined with major transnational corporations into a whole gamut of industries, from the arms industry to giant pharmaceuticals. Archetypal of such mafias is the Carlyle Group which, Wiki reports, invests in "aerospace and defense, automotive, consumer and retail, energy and power, health care, real estate, telecommunications, media." In the US Carlyle will benefit again from the fiscal cliff deal as taxes from US working classes will go up while the defense budget stays as is (US will not leave Afghanistan voluntarily, strategic goals are at stake) while in the Philippines Carlyle lurks somewhere behind the labyrinth of contraceptives and tobacco companies that will rake in P10 billion annually from the new Reprodcutive Health laws and billions more from cigarette smuggling to the RP.

They, the oligarchy, when they control government will always tax the people, US or RP or in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) to feed the corporate financial and banking beast. They will always push the people off the cliff, lest they themselves be made to jump over the chasms they create. Mainstream media are the oligarchy's handmaiden in all the swindle of all the peoples of the world, brainwashing, diverting attention and focus, browbeating with misinformation and disinformation overload to deaden the protesting minds of nations, and for those that continue to resist there is the final enforcer — the mercenary, professional, pay-rolled-form the taxes military and police forces. The only alternative for the people, and we quote co-organizer of Occupy Wall Street Kevin Zeese: "People can expect much worse in the months to come unless they get organized and mobilize against austerity in a big way. Elected officials will need to be scared by the public in a big way to stop the bi-partisan assault on the people." 

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Friday; Watch GNN Channel 8, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., 11:15 p.m. and Sunday 8am, and over www.gnntv-asia.com; tune to 1098AM radio Tuesday to Friday 5 to 6 p.m. Visit http://newkatipunan.blogspot.com)