The matrix broke today and an actual Yemeni was allowed to testify about drones in the Senate -

[Fire Walk With Me]

Glenn Greenwald ?@ggreenwald 23 Apr

The matrix broke today and an actual Yemeni was allowed to testify about drones in the Senate - he was brilliant
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/04/23/drone-war-terrorizes-yemenis-expert-tells-senate-committee/ …

Drone War ‘Terrorizes’ Yemenis, Expert Tells Senate Committee

The Obama administration’s drone war in Yemen “terrorizes” the local population, kills civilians regularly, and helps al-Qaeda recruit new members by sowing anti-American sentiment, according to testimony from a Yemeni activist in a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

“Just six days ago, my village was struck by a drone, in an attack that terrified thousands of simple, poor farmers,” Farea Al-Muslimi told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing on the legality of the drone war. “The drone strike and its impact tore my heart, much as the tragic bombings in Boston last week tore your hearts and also mine.”

“What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village,” al-Muslimi said, “one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America,” adding that he has ”seen Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula use US strikes to promote its agenda and try to recruit more terrorists.”

Rosa Brooks, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, told the Senate that the Obama administration’s drone war undermines the rule of law.

(More at the link. Cross-posted from Occupy Underground.)

[awoke_in_2003]

1. We must create new enemies...

so the MIC can keep rolling.

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[woo me with science]

3. Huge K&R

Thank you for posting this.

[cantbeserious]

4. Never Fear, The Dike Will Be Plugged Quickly - Can't Have Any Truth Leaking Through The Cracks

eom

[treestar]

5. Does Yemen have a plan for dealing with Al Qaeda?

What would they do differently and better to close that down?

[UnrepentantLiberal]

8. You mean the new al Qaeda recruits

that are being created by drone strikes?

[treestar]

14. In fact does Yemen not allow the US to use the drones there?

Needing help with containing Al Qaeda. If they objected, we'd be at war with Yemen and we don't seem to be.

[Downwinder]

6. How can we complain about Syria's chemicals

while we are deploying drones?

[Cali_Democrat]

7. because we're like awesome and stuff. n/t

[malaise]

11. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Why do you hate America's freedoms and values?

[Downwinder]

9. The good old Ugly American.

[Mnemosyne]

10. K&R nt

[enjoyingyourpeasyet]

12. It would be easier if someone just told the people of Yemen the truth

Look here is what is going down we, the USA, are going to destroy your country until you allow us to install a puppet government and allow a corporate takeover to exploit your resources and people. You will get to work in sweatshops making stuff you will never afford for a bowl of rice a day. Why you ask well because we can and our corporations are running out of cheap exploitable labor so to speak so it is back to Africa the original American source of cheap labor! So you have a choice we can kill your people till we get what we want or you can just do what we want now and save everyone all the bother.

Am I cynical, yup. Why because history is on my side.

[polly7]

13. Drone Wars: How White Privilege Obscures Real Dialogue

By Noor Mir and Rooj Alwazir

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Farea wasn’t there to try to win the hearts and minds of Senate by giving them policy or reform suggestions. He was there to tell his story. But white privilege and its associated subjectivities were clearly in action.

“I have been to Yemen,” Lindsey Graham said to Farea al-Muslimi. Our blood pressures rose. “Isn’t your country in turmoil?” Graham continued. “We have some problems.” replied Al-Muslimi. Graham ended his questioning, self-indulgent smirk on his face, as if to say, “I rest my case.” Although we doubt he is even aware of the terminology, Graham’s neo-colonial presumptions about Farea’s understanding of his own country were disgusting.

No, Senator, you do not rest your case. We, as citizens of the United States and witnesses to the turmoil in this nation, do not accept your reasoning. Schools are shutting down across the country and students are staging walkouts on this very day to protest this blow to their rights to a fair and equal education. Affirmative action is still a subject of debate, as though structural inequalities are a myth. We are still waging an endless, futile and racist war on drugs and extending a school to prison pipeline that is tearing apart families and disenfranchising youth. Racial profiling is rife, with a Palestinian woman in a hijab being assaulted in a Boston suburb last week following the bombings and a Bangladeshi man being savagely beaten in the Bronx on account of the color of his skin. This country is ripped down the middle when it comes to gun control despite the serious shootings that have devastated Aurora (and remember Columbine?). Monsanto damages our food diversity and destroys our health but props up our elected officials with one hand and stifles small farms with the other. There are uprisings, there is dissent, there is police brutality. This country is in no lesser turmoil than Yemen, or Pakistan, just because the standards to which you hold our homelands in comparison to yours is whitewashed by your condescension and insensitivity to difference. Your bigotry precedes you, Senators -- your causation is fundamentally flawed.

Lindsey Graham was not the only one whose self-righteous “understanding” of the political and cultural landscapes of places like Pakistan and Yemen barred him from actually exploring the human cost of war. The majority of the hearing focused on analyzing the flaws of the current administration’s reliance on an overbearing executive authority and reforming the AUMF. We waited with bated breath for it to go beyond what we had hoped was only a self-obsessed, stagnant battle of the egos, but it did not. Questions prized legal, constitutional and operational aspects over ones actually pertaining to stories that Farea could have told, their commentaries punctuated with “We thank you for coming such a long way,” or “We thank you for that chilling perspective.” Nobody apologized for bombing his village, Wessab. They ascribed so profoundly and unwaveringly to forceful measures of “counterterrorism” as a given strategy with no room for questioning that they, in turn, tried to reject the validity of his personal experiences.

http://www.zcommunications.org/drone-wars-how-white-privilege-obscures-real-dialogue-by-noor-mir

[Junkdrawer]

15. K&R

[cali]

16. this is important but the source sucks. On the old DU, antiwar.com was banned as a source

with good reason. Raimondo is a paleo-conservative pig and many of the contributors are equally disgusting. It's a right wing site that holds many views antithetical to DU and liberal values.