Drones protest gains local and national support

stopwar.org.uk · 020 7561 9311 · 23 April 2013

1) Drones protest gains local and national support
2) Shaker Aamer - parliamentary meeting & demonstration

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1) Drones protest gains local and national support

The news of the Ground the Drones protest at RAF Waddington this Saturday has provoked discussion in nearby Lincoln about Britain's use of drones abroad. In a statement from Lincoln Trades Council, Nick Parker, a Lincoln resident, said “as a trade union movement, it is vital that we support [the Ground the Drones protest on the 27th]." The TUC statement went on to say

We reject the massive amount of money spent on armaments while there are cuts taking place in jobs and services in Lincolnshire. Our group recognises that the armed forces are an important part of the local economy and we support the unions who represent civilians in defending their conditions, while calling for public investment in socially-useful jobs.  

A public meeting has been called which will take place this evening at 7pm at the Revival Centre off Sincil Street. The protest has also caught the interest of local media, with stories in the Lincoln Echo and The Lincolnite. The news of the protest also led to a debate on the BBC's Sunday morning debating programme The Big Questions.

Take action

• Join the protest this Saturday 27th in Lincoln. 12.30pm at Lincoln South Park.
• Full details here. Please share the Facebook event with your online contacts.
• Low cost transport from Birmingham, Bradford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Coventry, Doncaster, Leeds, Manchester, Norwich, Sheffield and York.
• Add your name to our statement against Drones along with thousands of others including Rowan Williams and Denis Halliday.

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2) Shaker Aamer - parliamentary meeting & demonstration

• Wednesday 24 April
• Parliamentary meeting 9.30am to 11am
• Demonstration at 11.30am

The Save Shaker Aamer Campaign is calling a debate on Shaker Aamer on Wednesday 24th April in Westminster Hall from 9.30am to 11am. Shaker has been on hunger strike for too many weeks and the campaign has now learned from his lawyers that Shaker's life is in danger.

The Government must act urgently to demand the return of Shaker, a long-term British resident, from eleven years of torture and abuse in Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Though he has never been charged with any crime, and the US has produced no evidence against him, the UK Government’s repeated requests for Shaker’s release and return to the UK have been ignored.

The e-petition calling for Shaker’s immediate return has a total of 117,372 signatures, reflecting the strength of public demand for Shaker’s return to his home and family in the UK and has led to the parliamentary meeting tomorrow.

Please join our friends at the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign in a demonstration tomorrow outside Parliament. For more information, please visit the Stop the War web site.

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Michael Isikoff To Rachel Maddow: Obama Has 'More Elastic' Concept Of Imminent Threats

Michael Isikoff To Rachel Maddow: Obama Has 'More Elastic' Concept Of Imminent Threats

Published on Feb 5, 2013

YouTube - ThePrincessHira

Rachel Maddow spoke to NBC News' Michael Isikoff Monday night about his acquisition of a Justice Department white paper that lays out some of the Obama administration's thinking behind its practice of killing American citizens with drone strikes.

Isikoff landed a major scoop for NBC, which immediately splashed the white paper on its website. In it, the Justice Department says, according to Isikoff, that: The U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be "senior operational leaders" of al-Qaida or "an associated force" -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

Although evidence suggests that the paper is not the official memo which laid out the administration's guidelines for the killing of Americans such as Anwar al-Awlaki, it does provide a partial look at how Obama justifies such strikes.

Maddow noted that the details of the paper, as well as other questions surrounding the Obama administration's policy, are certain to come up when his counterterrorism czar John Brennan faces Congress during his confirmation hearing for CIA director on Thursday. She wondered, in particular, whether the administration thought its rights to kill Americans extended to people inside the United States.

"Could the CIA or any other intelligence agency come kill you if the appropriate high-ranking official in the Obama administration -- say, President Obama -- decided that you were affiliated with al-Qaeda and you were a threat and you might act imminently to endanger this nation, could you then legally be killed as you laid in your bed?" she asked.

She then turned to Isikoff, who said that the paper "fleshes out some of the arguments that have been made publicly, and in ways that in some instances contrast with what has been said publicly."

The paper says that anyone targeted for killing must present an imminent threat and that their capture must be unfeasible before they can be hit with a drone. Isikoff noted that the interpretations of what a threat means are "a bit more elastic and open to interpretation" than previously known.

"They refer to a 'broader concept of imminence' than direct active intelligence of a plot against the US," he said. "In fact, it explicitly states that imminence does not mean that the United States has to have clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons or interests is underway. If the US believes that the target has in the past been involved in such violent activities and the target has not renounced such activities it can be assumed that they are an imminent threat now and that that would justify an attack."

"The definition for why a capture [instead of a killing] is impractical also seems to be very, very wide," Maddow said.



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Drones protest gains local and national support

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