The Murder Machines

Unspeak labels it collateral damage, but murder is murder. Remote operated drone missiles shot from Nevada have killed an estimated 2000-plus Pakistani civilians in the last five years.

Eamonn McCann, 10 May 2011

The drone operators sit before glowing screens at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or in the command-and-control facility at Creech airforce base, Nevada, and tip-tap on a console to send missiles spearing onto targets in some dusty region of a far-off land.

A missile from a drone guided from Nevada reduced a house in Miranshah in North Waziristan to rubble last January 23, crushing 13 civilians to death. The gamesters at Creech had been told that the coordinates referred to a building or bunker or whatever – theirs not to reason why – occupied by insurgents/terrorists/Taliban/Al Qaida, whatever. Legitimate targets of one sort or another. Three children and five women were among the dead.

14 women and children were killed in a village near Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in North Waziristan on May 19, 2009 when the cluster of homes they lived in was demolished by a Nevada-triggered drone bomb. A NATO spokesman explained that the victims been thought to be “aiding insurgents”.

On January 5, 2006 a drone aimed at Al Qaida number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, demolished a house near Demadola, seven kilometres from the Afghan border. Al-Zawahiri wasn’t there. None of the family of eight whose home it was survived.

Seven days later, a drone destroyed three houses in Demadola, killing 22 civilians, including five women and five children.

Geoff Simons, author of Drone Diplomacy, estimates that 2,043 civilians have been killed by US drones in Pakistan, in the last five years.

Philip Alston, UN special representative on extrajudicial executions, is quoted in the Guardian lamenting the “PlayStation mentality” of operators playing video-games with targets dehumanised and apprehended as virtual constructs.

Now Obama has signed an order authorising the deployment of drones in yet another country, Libya. Alston comments: “I am particularly concerned that the US asserts an ever-expanding entitlement to target individuals across the globe, an ill-defined licence to kill without accountability”.

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Eamonn McCann

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While they may disagree about context and certain details, the two new television documentaries about Bloody Sunday, far from being the "bloody fantasy" alleged by critics, offer accurate and powerful recreations of the events of that tragic and pivotal day. EAMONN McCANN, an eye-witness on Bloody Sunday, reports

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1999-09-29 - Frontlines

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1999-09-15 - Frontlines

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1999-05-26 - Frontlines

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1999-02-03 - Frontlines

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1998-04-01 - Frontlines

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1997-06-11 - REVIEW

PROFESSOR RICHARD LYNN of the University Of Ulster has produced a body of research designed to prove that ‘blacks’ are less intelligent than ‘whites’. A major influence on the authors of the controversial bible of the New Right The Bell Curve, Lynn now stands accused of “a truly venomous racism, combined with scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity.” Report: Eamonn McCann.

1995-02-22 - Frontlines

1994 was the year when paedophile priests were finally forced out of the closet. But the Church is still refusing to answer the vital questions. Report: Eamonn McCann.

1994-12-14 - Frontlines

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1994-09-07 - Frontlines

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1989-04-06 - Interview

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1988-01-14 - Interview

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