this is about an hour-and-a-half. [applause] >> thank you. it is wonderful to be here in buffalo and cb talking about an issue that is obviously very dear to my heart, "drone warfare." i wanted to give you a little background first about why i wrote a book on this topic. it really dates back now to over ten years when the u.s. first after september 11th invaded afghanistan.

i don't know, some of you are too young to remember, but others of us might remember looking at our tv screens and seeing the pictures of these very fancy, new weapons that we had. this idea that we know had these precision weapons that would only target the people that we wanted to get and would not result in collateral damage. and it was almost a way to say to people, calmed down, don't be worried. we will be killing innocent people. so, i was worried because i don't have as sense that the latest and greatest new weapon is going to protect innocent people and went to afghanistan three weeks after the invasion with several other colleagues. it was before we even got into

afghanistan on the border of pakistan that we found already people who would be considered collateral damage. the first young woman i met is somebody who sticks with me because she looked like my daughter. she was 13 years old. my daughter at that time was 13 years old. i felt an affinity with her and asked her if i could learn about her story. she took me back to her home. with the help of an interpreter i learned she had recently come from kabul. when the u.s. started bombing her family had lived on the outskirts of a taliban compound. her home was bombed by mistake. she was not there, and her father was not home. in the house where her mother and three sisters and brothers. when they came home that evening they found the whole house had been destroyed, and the only thing they found were pieces of flesh on the trees.

that was all that was left of the family. and of course she started crying as she retold the story. and also retold the story of her father who was a big, strapping man picking up the pieces of flesh, burying them, prang, and never speaking again and never working a day in his life again. and at that moment at 13 she found herself the head of a household with red meat father and to the brothers and sisters and had to start walking, walking, and walked in very dangerous territory through the pass all the way into pakistan where she was living hand to mouth begging on the streets of a very, very poor city. i realize that no matter how precise our bombs are, no matter how smart these bonds are, they are still killing innocent people and leaving a lot of people suffering.

so, that is really the reason that i researched the drones and the reason i do this work. as americans we have to be thinking about the lives of people everywhere, not just our own children, children in pakistan or afghanistan are anywhere as precious as our own. the other reason i wanted to do this book is because i realized that now that we are ten years into war that the american people are tired of war. the system not in poll after poll. in fact, the most recent polls show that it is not just democrats or independents or green party members, it's republicans as well. in fact, for the first time now we have a majority of republicans saying that the war in afghanistan is not worth fighting, which is something

very significant because it is often hard for people when all war is going on and you still have american troops there to say this just is not worth fighting. and also, we have to recognize that with this country in a financial crisis more and more people are recognizing that these high now trillion dollar words that we have been in, part of the reason our economy is in the shape it is a now. >> i think the government understands that. if you are going to keep the words going instead to be through other means, now with the boots on the ground where americans are killed, now with the expensive old way of doing more, but with a new way of doing more, and that is withdrawn strikes. drone strikes are a -- are shown to the american people as a way to do more without putting our

own soldiers at risk because there is no pilot in the cockpit as an alternative to boots on the ground. i use of whole blood to kind of counter those documents. let me step back and talk about drowns. for anybody who does not know, at drones come in all shapes and sizes. there are a little bit the ones the size of insects, once the size of birds. in fact, there are drones that are mimicking the hummingbird, different types of birds, dragonfly drones. there are drones that soldiers used to put in their backpacks and can launch them individually these added to go out and survey the terrain before the soldiers killed. and then there are the larger drones the size of a small airplane, the reaper and predator drones, those are the ones that are being used in these lethal attacks.

and they are made by a company called general atomics based in southern california. and then there are very, very big surveillance drones like the ones called the global lock that are the size of a commercial airplane. these can fly at 60,000 feet, altitude and give you the site of an entire city at once. there are all kinds of drones. most are surveillance drones, but a larger surveillance at the two can easily be equipped to be lethal drones as well. so who is piloting these drones? well, some of you in this audience actually have been protesting at the hancock air force base which is one of the places where drones are being piloted. and other places outside las vegas, nevada. the air force base. there are many bases around the united states where drones

pilots are either being trained or drones are being tested were being piloted. said this is a new kind of warfare where you don't even have to be in the area of the battle. you can be thousands and thousands of miles away looking at the battlefield through a video screen. in fact, the manufacturers admit that the screens are really that -- the design is taken from the video games that teenagers have grown up playing and that it's easier for them when they are recruited in become the drone pilots, they are used to using these kind of positions. in fact, the u.n. has said that the u.s. has created a playstation mentality toward. it is a very surreal kind of thing to think about pilots being in an air force base in the united states or when that

drones are being run by the cia. they can be outside of virginia. and they are in an air-conditioned room. sitting in an ergonomic chair, and they are looking for hours and hours on end at as seen in a place that they may never have been to comment on speak the language, don't know the culture, and they are hovering over people's homes for days at a time, sometimes weeks at a time. and they are the ones then that press the kill button. now, it is -- studies have been done that show that these pilots are often times having the same kind of trauma as soldiers on the battlefield have because they are being asked to do something that i think our brains are not required to do. that is to kill people remotely

during the day and then go home in the evening to their families where there are supposed to be loving fathers, loving husbands, integrated members of their community, part of their church group. there is another problem that the pilots talk about, and that is boredom. they're just sitting in front of the screen for hours and hours and hours and and. in fact, some of them said they would rather be in the battlefield. they signed up with the military to be in the battlefield. they want to be with their bodies on the ground. so sitting in front of the screen, they're actually looking for some action meeting, looking for some kind of suspicious behavior. well, the drawn strikes are happening in two different ways. one is that there is a kill list where you are actually going after an individual whose name

you know. you, for example, we have you wanna kill list and they're going to go after you and try and try and try again until we get you. you are a high-value target. there is another type of list, and that is called -- yours is call the personality strike. the other is called a signature strike. that is based on suspicious behavior. so think, as i get this talk, about those remote pilots who are sitting thousands of miles away, and there are looking for suspicious behavior, what they might surmise as suspicious behavior when it is really just a community meeting. in the kill list. let's take a minute to talk about how they kill list is determined. well, when i was writing the book was trying very hard to figure that out and getting all kinds of contradictory dearies

about it. it was not until the new york times came out with this long story of may 209th of how intimately involved president obama is in this catalyst. and to me this is a jaw dropping piece of journalism because it was so detailed and it came from people who were presently in the administration or had been recently in the administration. what was shocking to me was to learn that president obama brings in his advisers once a week on what they called terror tuesday's. they sort through these profiles of people that they have some informations and the federal. they say these look like baseball cards. they decide who is going to live and who is going to die. they play the role of prosecutor

, judge, jury, and executioner all at once. some might say they play the role of god. some of the most shocking things in that article word that they admitted that the administration defines all men of military age in the zones where we are using those terms as militants. that's coming to me, was just astounding, to think that by definition a young man living in the wrong place at the wrong time is the militants and can only be proven innocent post to mislead, after their killed, quite astounding. when that article came out, there were a couple of different reactions. one from congress was not, oh,

my god. why are they doing these gillis? declining militants. instead, why the leaking information to the press jack which actually is a pretty good question because these are supposed to be secret programs that congress was not even supposed to talk about. it would be nice if more people in congress were shocked about that kill list itself. it seemed that this speculation is that the obama team thought it would be a good election strategy to have this piece come out and show how tough the president is on terror. in case there were people like independent voters who he is trying to win over that might think that this president is soft on security that this would be an example to show the that he was a tough guy. in fact, they quoted people saying that it was easy for him

to put people on the list. not a lot of hand-wringing when it came to this. i think that this article actually backfired because, as i travel around and talk to people , i find people who are suddenly aware of this program and who are really shocked by it . so let me talk about some of the examples of who is being killed. if pakistan is the place where the drums have been used the most we have also used the drones a lot in iraq and afghanistan as part of the larger wars. the u.s. is also using jones and puff yemen, somalia. it appears that they had used drugs in the philippines. in libya as well. now, libya is an interesting case because when there were

discussions among the public about the pros and cons of u.s. intervening in libya there was one thing that was really left out of the equation, and that is whether or not it was a good thing to get involved militarily to overthrow khaddafi, the way in which it was done is to cut congress out altogether. the administration's justification for not even bringing this up for discussion in congress is that when it is just an air war and we are using drone is and no u.s. lives are at risk in the congress really should have no say in that. and so think of that kind of usurpation of power by the executive branch taking this away from the legislative branch and what kind of precedent this sets for future people in the white house. we have also in the case of iraq when the u.s. troops left, left

drone -- attitude behind and put them in the hands of the state department. we have the diplomatic branch of our governments in iraq having its own fleet of drones. and we left drones across the border in turkey where they have been used to give information to the turkish government in its conflict with the kurds. in fact, the u.s. supplied information in an attack that was wrong and left a lot of innocent kurds killed. it puts the u.s. in the middle of another conflict that we should not be in. in the case of pakistan there were drones strikes under the bush administration, but there were a total of 46 strikes during the entire time of the bush administration, which works out to one strike about every 40 days once they started using these drone strikes. in the case of the obama administration they become one strike every four days.

there have been over 320 drone strikes, the vast majority under the obama administration. some would say that people in the obama administration decided they would not choose the bush tactic which was to capture people and put them in guantanamo because that turned out to be very messy. it was then a big debate whether they should have civilian trials or military trials or what you do with the people you found her innocent. they have nowhere to go. it was at nine air cleaner to just kill people. and the outcry that many people in this country had toward indefinite detention, guantanamo , the torture, an extraordinary rendition, we don't hear that kind of outcry against and obama administration policy of simply telling people. in the case of pakistan it seems that there are no good statistics because our government does not tell us

about these programs. there are several different organizations that have tried to compile the statistics. very difficult because journalists are not allowed into the northern part of pakistan where the drones are being used. some of the best figures say that there are, perhaps, about 3,000 people that have been killed in pakistan. 175 of them were children. now, another astounding thing is that you probably have never seen a picture of a child u.s. been killed by an drone strike. you probably never seen a picture of anybody that has been killed by hadron strike. our media does not seek out those stories, does not show as the photos. i will show you a couple today because, again, this is not what you see on your tv screens. this, for example, is in a year old child who was killed in a drone strike february 14th. happens to be valentine's day.

this is a -- to boys who were killed in an drone strike in pakistan. we have many of these pictures that you can see on the website. this is quite a gruesome looking picture, and i know it is hard to look at. but this is what happens in drone strikes. in fact, most of the times the victims are just pulverize, and you won't even see this kind of grisly picture because there will be almost no remains. i wanted to read a little bit from the book about a case of somebody killed in a drone strike just to try to humanize this a little bit freer. this is the case of the family of a man called charon connecticut. his -- that draw on strike his family compound in northern pakistan on december 301st,

new year's day for us. well, new year's eve, 2009. it says, the drone did not just hover overhead that night watching the movement of the villagers below as it had done on so many other occasions. no, this time it let loose a missile into the very heart of the family compound. when the chaos of the explosion dissipated his brother and son had been blown to bits. news reports alleged that the target of the drone had been a taliban commander. the villagers insisted that he had been nowhere in sight. the tragedy that forever scarred the lives of his family appeared to be the product of a mistake. a mistake by a far away aggressor who had faced no punishment for pressing the fire button without looking long enough, without checking, without double checking.

his son had just graduated from high school. his brother was not a militant or even a militant sympathizer but a school teacher with a master's degree in english literature. for eight years he had been teaching at the small village school with whatever meager resources he could muster. he left behind a young wife, now well, so distraught she could not speak for weeks after the attack. a 2-year-old boy who would never remember his father. he said the drone were constantly buzzing around his village and they were terrifying the people, especially the children who would go to bed at night not knowing if they would wake up in the morning and not. but little did the people at this conference in islamabad no that the first drone strike that would be documented was two days later, and it was an drone strike that killed this year man

now, the lawyers that were at that conference were outraged. they went to the u.s. embassy. they went to the u.s. government. it went to the pakistani government. they said, why did you kill this and man? the u.s. government said, he was a militant. and the lawyers said, well, we would like to see the proof that he was a militant. in any case, if you had any proof why didn't you just come into the hotel where he was staying or the meeting where he was for four days and arrest him and give him a chance for a trout jack there was no answer to that question. what have the people of pakistan that? well, we know from the wikileaks documents that originally the government of pakistan, the prime minister said, okay, you do the drone strikes, and we

will say -- we will express our outrage to the public about them. that went on for a while until the government realize that so many innocent people were being killed. and this drone strike program was counterproductive, it was driving people into the arms of the taliban. it was turning them against the pakistani government itself and turning them against the american people. so, the government of pakistan went to the u.s. and ask them to stop the drone program. the u.s. government said no. then it went to the national assembly where they voted once, twice, three times unanimously not to ask, but to demand that the united states stop the drone attacks. the u.s. government refused to do that. and so the pakistan people have

been going out in huge numbers, by the hundreds of thousands, protesting the drone strikes. most of the pakistan people hate the taliban, haiti al qaeda, and hates the drone strikes. there was a poll done recently that showed that of the pakistan people who had heard of the drone strikes, because there is not a lot of animation in the media there to my 97 percent of them said that they were against these strikes. 97 percent of the population. you would think that would tell something to the obama administration, to the pentagon, to the cia that maybe this was not a good program. unfortunately it is not. in fact, but the u.s. government has done is just transfer this to another country, and that is to human. the drone strikes in yemen under the obama administration began

in 2009. the first drone strike was a mistake, hit the wrong target, left 14 women and 21 children dead. only one person of the dozens who were killed was identified as having strong ties to al qaeda. if you want to get a sense of how successful the drone strike has been in yemen, when it first started in 2009 there were maybe 200 members of something called al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, and they control no territory. today there may be over 1,000 people who identify as members of this group, and they control substantial territory. there was a very good op-ed piece that came out in the new york times on june 13th written by at 23-year-old yemeni activist. it was really a plea to the united states government.

the title of it was, how drones help al qaeda. he said, the drone strikes are causing more people to join a radical militants, not driven by ideology, but by revenge and despair. he said, the short-term gains from killing military leaders is miniscule compared to the long-term damage that the drone program is causing. so, in even if it is not only in case of killing people inside to him in, and i should mention that when the drone program started there it was under the dictatorship. the people as part of the arabs spring had started to rise up against him. well, he was the one that was providing information to the united states about who was al qaeda. he was picking people out. that is al qaeda. that is al qaeda. of course committees are just as political opponents.

so, in the case of yemen to the u.s. drug strikes have not only been killing people from that country, but they have been killing american citizens as well. i wonder in this group if you have heard of the case of anwar. some of you have. a muslim cleric barn in the united states, moved to yemen, known for his fiery sermons. he was put on the kill list and killed by antron strike along with another american. there are organizations like the center for constitutional rights in the aclu that then ask the u.s. government to provide the affirmation to say, how can you justify the killing of an american citizen? the u.s. government has refused to provide the intermission. in fact, until recently the u.s. government has refused to talk

about this whole program and all . two weeks after the killing there was another drone strike that killed an american citizen, and that was a 16-year-old boy who was the son of on war. his name is abdul. i just want to hold up his picture for you to see because he was a born in denver. these are his pictures. said that he liked rap, hip-hop, swimming. he was just an ordinary american boy with no interest in politics . he was basically killed in a a drone strike, again, perhaps being in the lebron place in the wrong time, perhaps being born to the wrong family.

you might remember in the case of trayvon martin how president obama was very sympathetic and said if i had a sun he would have looked like trayvon martin. i can't thinking -- i can't help but look at this picture and think perhaps the president obama had a sun he might look like this boy. it would be nice if he has some sympathy for this young man as well. it is really quite astounding that as a young american teenager can be killed a u. s. drone strike without a huge outcry throughout this country. the administration has felt some pressure to justify this killing spree. attorney-general eric holder spoke in march of this year trying to give some legal

justification. now, i have a whole chapter in the book about the legal issues because it is so important to talk about how illegal this program is according to international law, the geneva convention, the u.s. constitution. i mean, all kinds of laws that are being broken. and the u.s. government, to summon up for you, is basically saying that we have the right to self-defense. enemies are mobile. they go from one country to the other and we can go there as well. now, according to legal definition of self-defense, it very narrowly defines. has to be an attack against you is imminent, an army massing on your border, somebody about to bomb you, and you have given your enemy a chance to surrender now, tell me, how can somebody surrender to a hellfire missile? you can't. the u.s. government is also saying that it has the right to

go anywhere because in the aftermath of 9/11 congress gave the administration and a green light to attack and attack anybody associated with 9/11. well, there is a problem there as well. a lot of the people that are being killed today or maybe ten or 11 years old at the time of 9/11. there is another problem, which is that some of the organizations that are being attacked, like the one in yemen, did not even exist at the time of 9/11. then there is this very strange and i would say macabre justification for the killing of american citizens overseas. and that is that it appears that the american public had been misinformed about what our constitution actually guarantees us. he might have thought that 800 years after the magnet carter when people had established over

centuries, somehow you were guaranteed the right to a fair trial. did you think that? you were mistaken. you are not guaranteed the right to a fair trial. you are only guaranteed to something that is mysteriously called to process. and it seems that the definition of due process by this administration, a constitutional lawyer heading it, is that they call in the guise for terror tuesday and decide whether to put you on the killers to not. it is terrifying. i look for a response to eric holder's idea that we were not guaranteed any kind of judicial process. the best one that i found was not from a harvard lawyer or any constitutional lawyer, it was from a late-night comedian.

he said, yes, the founders or not picky. trial by jury, trial by fire, rock, paper, scissors. who cares? to process just means their is a process that you do. the current process, the president meets with his advisers, decides on and kill and then kills them. if we're ever going to win our never-ending war on terror there are bound to be casualties, and one of them just happens to be the u.s. constitution. let's give hand. [applause] >> well, you might think that the u.s. can get away with it because might makes right and we are thinking of the drones. well, we are fast becoming one of many, many countries that have drones, and that puts it in a whole different light. so the u.s. is number one

producer and, by far, number one user of drones. but coming up from behind is israel. that's right. israel. the u.s. and israel have had a long collaboration in the development of drones that go back for several decades now. the predator and reaper drones that we are using today were developed by an israeli engineer who was working for the israeli defense forces. israel has used the drones. the operation invasion in 2008 and 2009 in which over 1400 people were killed, over 800 of those people were killed by john attacks. israel also sells drones extensively overseas. in fact, the number one exporter of drones and have sold them to

over 50 different countries. and then there is another country that always seems to get on the bandwagon when it comes to good markets and manufacturing, and that is -- >> china. >> china. go figure. so china seas cannot, this is a multibillion-dollar market. we are going to get in here and produce drones faster and cheaper than anybody else can make these aptitude. lo and behold the chinese are now producing several dozen different types of drones and selling them all over as well. so this is an arms race. definitely an ongoing arms race, and it is fast and furious because people like leon panetta have called drones the only game in town. everybody wants an drone. we are not talking about nuclear technology. this is a lot simpler. they can get their hands on an drone. let's think of the case that happened in our on.

you might remember just a couple of months back that the iranians said that they had hacked into a very sophisticated u.s. surveillance strong and brought it down without a scratch. they showed it to the world tv cameras and said, thank you very much, president obama for this very sophisticated gift to have given us. lo and behold a couple of months later said they reversed engineered it and are now making their own very sophisticated surveillance drones. so, you can see that what goes around, unfortunately, usually comes around. you have got to wonder what other countries are thinking. what are the iranians thinking? one of the chinese thinking? they say that there are terrorists like the -- like the tibetans that are living all around the world, including here in the united states. why shouldn't they come and kill

them here? what about the russians to say that they are at war with these chechen terrorists. why shouldn't they just follow them wherever in the world they are and kill them with these terms. i wonder about the cubans to have been trying to extradite someone terrorists in miami like a man named luis known for having downed a commercial airliner, a known terrorist living very happily in miami. i have actually been to the apartment where he lives, and i wonder what would the cubans be thinking about maybe sending an drones into that apartment and killing him and perhaps a couple of neighbors in the process. well, of, that is what happens. well, they don't do it right now certainly the cubans because there would be very afraid of a counterattack from the united states. but, there are very powerful countries and non state entities that, perhaps among would like to do the same kind of thing

that the united states is doing. it is very dangerous. the possibility of blow back is very real. but that brings me to the other issue, and that is drones here at home. so, there is any -- there is an entity in the united states that runs our airspace, and that is called the federal aviation administration. they have a mandate to look out for the safety of our airspace. they take that mandate very seriously, which is why they have been very reluctant to give out permits to be using drones in the united states because they know something that most americans don't know which is that the drones crash a lot. the crash all the time. the air force has admitted that one-third of their drones crashed. there was a huge one of those blocks that just crashed last month in maryland.

luckily it crashed in a swamp and did not kill anybody. it could have very well killed people in the crash. and so, the faa has given out just a couple of hundred permits. unfortunately they have not wanted to let the american public know who has these permits. it was thanks to lawsuits and a freedom of information act request that we are starting to get information that there are about 300 current performance, and they have been given out to federal agencies like homeland security, fbi, border patrol using them on the southern and northern border. they have been given up to a company's. permits have also been issued to some universities that were working with the pentagon. they have been given to about 30 police departments to experiment with drones. well, the drone manufacturers have been very upset with the faa and said, look, this is a

growth industry. we need a market. we need to sell these drones here at home. let's speed up this process. what did they do? they formed their own lobby group and they wrote a new piece of legislation and they got their own members of congress to form a drone caucus. now, think of all the things you can have a caucus about to help schoolchildren, to feed the homeless. i mean, you know, a million things. there are a group of 58 congress people that think that it is there duty, elected by we the people to go into congress and address what they say is the urgent need to see more of these unmanned vehicles being used both overseas and here in the united states. so, they passed a piece of legislation on february 14th of this year, signed by the president on valentine's day, a big valentine's day gift to the drones industry that mandates

the fa to open up our air space completely to drones by the end of september 2015 at the latest. earlier for a law-enforcement agency. so, that is going so -- we are going to see 20, 30,000 drones being used here at home in the decades to come if we did not do something about it. well, what do -- what is the market that the drone manufacturer see? there are many commercial uses. they would like to see. they are drilling at the thought of 18,000 police stations in this country all having their own drone. and so i mentioned that 30 police stations are already experimenting with these. you might be -- you might say, well, this is the time of budget cuts across the board. the police stations, where are

they getting the money to pay for these drones? anybody have a suggestion? homeland security to the rescue. taking our tax dollars and going to the police stations and saying, wouldn't you like to have an drone? here, we will give you the money to go out and buy it. to me it is like a drug pusher. wouldn't you like to try some of this and getting her heart on it and then the other police stations around saying, hey, we want some of that as well. well, that is what is happening right now. i'm going to just give you an example of the police station outside of houston in montgomery county. a $300,000 grant from less security. the ceo of the company, vanguard defense industry, said that it was for things like search and rescue missions, it was for things like surveillance purposes. but that this groan could be

outfitted with what we call less lethal systems. so let me just give you an example of what less lethal systems could be. you can imagine your own. ♪ that can electrocute suspects on the ground, beanbags firing guns called stunned batons, grenade launchers, teargas, rubber bullets, even a 12 gauge shotgun they also talked about how we can use these for surveillance purposes, recognizing that these can be equipped with thermal imaging, facial recognition techniques, wi-fi networks come back tracking capabilities, systems said intercepted messages and phone calls. so -- zero, but there was a share of that the press conference. he said, no matter what we do in law enforcement somebody is going to question it. we are going to do the right thing, and i can assure you of

that. so, are you feeling reassured? >> no. >> no. >> well, for good reason. and you are not the only ones. in fact, the aclu thinks that everything is being put in place now for a 24 / seven surveillance society that would profoundly change the nature of public life in the ad states. the people who are getting upset about that, this is not people just on the left or right. this extends to many americans who value their privacy as well as their safety. in fact, there are some interesting collaboration is that we are now looking into. i just did an op-ed piece in the new york daily news with the cato institute. some of you might know. interesting collaboration between code pink and the cato institute in which we wrote about that dangers of these drones and said that there should be legislation that says

no government agency can use our tax dollars to give police departments or other law-enforcement agencies money to buy drones. senator rand paul introduced a piece of legislation saying that drones could not be used to spy on americans without a warrant. so there is a possibility of a broad collaboration to try to stop that 24 / seven surveillance of americans before it starts. and we are asking people as they travel around to do a very simple thing, and that is, call your police department. i'm going to pass around three questions for you test your police department. they're very simple. steel you have any drones? do you have any plans to buy any drones? have you applied for a grant from the government agency to get any drones? then, of course, it's at your own opinion about them getting

drones. we are compiling this information on the website of the electronic frontier foundation that is doing a really wonderful work on this issue. the other thing that we are asking communities to do is to bring resolutions before their city councils to declare their city a drone-free zone. so wouldn't it be wonderful if you're in buffalo and declared your city a drone-free sound? [applause] well, thanks to your very active occupy movement here as well as the very active peace committee, the resolution has already been introduced into the city council , and there will be a hearing about this on july 30 in city hall. [applause] show up one and all and let's send a very strong message to

the drone manufacturers as well as the city and the government that we don't think that drone in the hands of the police will make us any safer. so, a couple of other things that are being done on the international level i wanted to mention. one is that while we are concerned about drones in the hands of the military, at least there are some rules in place about what happens when the military kills innocent people. in the case of the cia, there are no rules in place of all. the cia is not a military agency. it is a civilian agency by any kind of international law, illegal for them to be having a lethal drones and killing people with these terms. we're passing around a sign that she that is going to take into meet with senator dianne feinstein who is the head of the intelligence committee and say, senator, please do your job, get

drones out of the hands of the cna. >> here, here. [applause] >> we have been making connections with people in pakistan said tell them that the american people are not all silent and going along with this program, that there are many of us who are speaking out now. and once we made this connection is they came up with the proposal and said, it would be so powerful if a group of americans came to pakistan and linked arms with us and walked in ghandi style to the region where the drone strikes are killing so many innocent people. won't you please do that? we said, of course. we would be honored to do that with you. we have decided to take a delegation the week of

october 3-10. we are inviting people and the public to come and join us. we have them permission on the website called drones watch. you can check the box that is going around if you want more and permission about that peace delegation. finally, i wonder if any of you are thinking, what about the u.n.? shouldn't you in be doing something about this? well, the people in the u.n. have been speaking out against the drone program for years now. but it is just recently that more action has been taken. in fact, for the first time when the u.n. met in june of this year they have commissioned a report on the drug program and came out with a very critical report saying that the u.s. had to justify why it was killing people instead of capturing them and letting them have a fair trial. so obviously many people are

wondering the same as we are wondering here. and they also said that the u.s. must be accountable, transparent , and should give reparation to the victims of the drone families. then there is a question at the international level. what about getting some regulation about these drones? there have been successful, the difficult campaigns that have regulated other weapons like land mines and cluster bombs. in the case of drones, it is going to be harder, one, because it is really big business and they're is a very strong lobby and, too, because in no way the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to drones. there has to be regulation. there is a group called the international committee for robot arms control made up mostly of scientists who recognize how dangerous this technology is and they came to a conference that we gathered in washington d.c. they said, if you think things

are bad now, wait until you see what is in the works because where we are today in drones technology is where the wright brothers were when it came to the airplane. and what is being developed would knock your socks off. well, of course, it would blow you up. [laughter] what they are worried about is something called autonomous drones. that is when there is no human in the loop at all. there is no pilot even remotely 10,000 miles away. these are preprogrammed drones that would be told where to go, what to look for, and then would go out on their own to do it. they can call in other drones in what they call us warm and just have an drone attack. and the scientists are saying, we must stop autonomous lethal drones before they are used, and we must put some rules and to place for the use of any kind of lethal drone. the technology has now outpaced

the regulations that we have internationally and of course domestically to deal with this technology. so, these are some of the things that are happening both locally and internationally. and i want to end looking for just a minute at the drone as a symbol because it really is only a piece of technology. it is symbolic of a kind of attitude toward the world as well as a kind of economy that i think is keeping us on the wrong track here at home and in our relations overseas. in terms of here at home, we are suffering from a financial crisis that is really grounded in things like trillion dollar wars that we should have never been as well as an economy that is based on a benefit for the 1%. included in that 1 percent is the 1 percent that benefits from

these wars, the 1% of corporations that are getting all the contracts from these wars, the 1 percent of the weapons manufacturers. we have people desperate for work in this country. on my travels i have met drone engineers are desperate for work and are working making drones when they would much rather be using their extensive talents to be making things that benefit people here at home. we need jobs where engineers don't have to make a killing machines to make a living. [applause] and then in terms of the way that we are looking at the world, i have a -- i give an example in the book of a study that was done of 268 different entities that were called terrorist groups. and in the last 60 years how did

they dissolved? and this study, which is a very extensive study by the rand company, shows that the vast majority of them, the demise came by negotiation, something very rare these days. came by better policing and only 7% came from the use of military force. now, we are in our 11th year of trying to use military force against a problem that cannot be solved by military force. [applause] just about everybody who was associated with the attack on 9/11 seems to have been killed according to our own government. and so now we are doing is creating more enemies faster than we can kill them. we are only perpetuating a war machine. our government has said, we

either have boots on the ground here and we have an extensive war in which the american soldiers can get killed or we have drones. i think it is time to say to the american government, we want another option, and that is pull our troops out of afghanistan and ground the killer drones. under the bush administration there was a very strong vibrant anti-war movement. it was so strong and vibrant that on february 15th of 2003, before the invasion of iraq, we organized the largest mobilizations of people in human history about any issue. [applause] for eight years people came out into the streets in this country to say no to war by the hundreds of thousands. and then president obama got elected. many people thought, okay. he is going to end the wars.

let's give him a chance. let's give him a honeymoon. other people then got caught up in a financial crisis and had a focus on issues here at home. for whatever reason the anti-war movement fizzled out. but there is another reason, and that is partisan politics. because many people who are sensitive to the killing of innocents overseas might find themselves in the democratic party and might find themselves supporters of president obama. at this point might find themselves very anxious to see him reelected. and so they don't speak out about a killing spree that president carter said in a new york times op-ed recently, would have never been allowed in any other administration. and so we are allowing this administration to get away with something that is murder. and we have to build a movement that is not attached to a

political party. we have to build a movement that is attached to values, to morals, that says to whenever government is in power that we want to relate to the rest of the world not through drones, not through bombs, not through troops, not through tanks, not for killing, but through kindness, compassion, love, and to respect international law and our own constitution. [applause] that's build that movement. [applause] okay. let's open it up to a discussion , suggestion, whenever you would like. >> it seems to me, number one, the parent technology for this drone is that not see the one. that is number one. secondly, since 1980 and may be said that we have been involved

in a structural drift toward fascism in this country. and it is bipartisan. and it has its highest point currently with this demonstration, but one time in the past james madison said the charity of the executive would come in the future. interesting observation. so, taking along this idea of a movement among what is going to be the mechanism for the architecture of this movement? ..

and we have to use that ability. we have to recognize that we can mobilize in the streets. we can use civil disobedience. we can do sit-ins and we certainly have done them and our congressional offices. there are a lot of things we can do and we have to do more of them. and i do think that the occupy movement gives us a lot of new energy and thank goodness for the occupy movement giving up a lot of younger people. [applause] way too many people in the peace movement happened from the vietnam generation, including myself, and it is so important that we get this just energized by the younger generation and that that is happening now. and i tried to put us in the

context of the larger war economy, because that is what it is and i think what the occupy movement is focusing on is the problem of a country that is no longer really of, for and by the people that out, for and by the corporations. [applause] when you have so much corporate control, and that wouldn't say a fascist state -- but we have the ability and the need to mobilize not just about the foreign-policy issues but about how are we going to move our society from the present one to one that is based on an economy for the good of the 99%, for the good of all of us and an economy that takes care of one of the bigger problems we have which is global warming and let's face it, as we are sweating ourselves during this number, if people don't finally recognize that we are destroying the planet and that we have to

take money out of the military and put it into green energy, come on. [applause] >> hi. i am an organizer. >> it is a for the book review. >> i don't hear myself. the one thing i have heard especially the other day is obama and the difference between obama and mitt romney coming up in 2012. a lot of the progressives that i work with on the left, not the way left, anarchist, i wouldn't go so far as to say occupy, very anti-obama. there was the pizza came out the other day that talked about occupy -- whatever. my question to you is this 2012 election coming up i know if mitt romney gets elected my work as an organizer will be more difficult. i am wondering and i can explain it if you would like but i'm wondering where you stand on the 2012 election.

>> he i don't feel that it's my job to go around and really encourage people to vote one way or the other. i think everybody has to vote their conscience and vote about what issues are most near and dear to you. i personally could not vote for obama given what i know and i spent a year talking to victims families and i just can't do it. i will vote for the green party candidate. [applause] i understand that people have all kinds of issues that are important to them, and you have to make a list of all those issues and who would be the best possible candidate based on those issues. we are not given enough choices in this country. we have a two-party system that is so limiting to us and it's so hard in this country for a third party to get any traction. i look with envy as so many other countries around the world but have a representative

democracy where you get 5% of vote you get 5% of the representation and you can really shift the whole tenor of the debate when you have stronger third-party as a part of the. we don't have it in our country, so i say look at what's important to you, make that decision. by what is most important to me as building movements that are independent of political parties and that we aren't in the position every two years, every four years, in which we have to vote for the lesser of two evils or in which we have to put down the important independent work we are doing because we are going to start organizing for one of the two major parties. i personally won't do it. >> i just wanted to say that i believe the movement we are talking about does exist right now and i believe it regardless

romney or a bomb is going to win, probably obama but it's our job not to allow him to contest you need to do this and still remain a viable politician so if you are going to organize and support obama because of other issues make sure this becomes an issue that's important to you so it can -- not continue to lead corporations act with impunity and no matter who the present president is there've always been progressive movements to hold those presents a comical for what they do. we have all gotten extremely lazy and it's our job to make sure that he doesn't intend to do this and make sure the democrats are reelected. july 31, 2:00 p.m., council, please -- [inaudible] >> you could very well say that the real culprit in this is off, the american people, because no matter who is in office, we should have this strong movement that forces our government to have a foreign-policy that

reflects their own values and instead what do we have? what we had a republican race in which ron paul was the only one that was speaking out about foreign-policy issues against a warfare state but all of the other candidates were pulling obama to the right. and then we have now a presidential race in which mitt romney is pulling obama in two-way more militarized position and of course we have the whole military industrial complex it pulls a bomb into a more militarized position and what does obama have pulling him in the other direction? a demobilize peace movement, to mobilize so you are absolutely right. we have to look in the mirror and we have to look at ourselves and say, how do we let anybody in the white house get away with the foreign-policy like we have now? >> i wanted to ask about domestic turns. as far as regulation, i know

they are very limited. someone gets a permit to have a drone. is there any follow up to make sure that they are not equipping these drones with weapons or anything if it is not a police department or just a corporation or some company or some rich person that wants to get one for fun? is there any type of follow up to make sure that they are not using these for anything other than recreational or any other activities? >> well it's a great question and right now all we no, or all i know, is that the faa has given out these permits for specific users but they won't tell us what those are and that is a real problem. and we also know that those specific uses have already been violated. for example, the drones that are -- have been permitted to be used at the border in the northern border have already been -- to the police department in north

dakota and used it to find somebody who stole six cattle. and then touted it as, isn't it great that the drones could be used to find a cattle rustler? it's already a violation seems of a permit they were given so it's a very important question and these are the kinds of things that i'm trying to find out working with other institutions that are meeting with the faa and asking how the regulations are. you know the faa has really only to do with our safety. doesn't have to do with our privacy so then you are in another area. we know how awful the regulations are in terms of individuals buying firearms and we have seen the results of that in the violence in our communities. i do not know what kind of regulations there will be for the less than lethal uses as they say for these weapons. >> that is what is scary. that is what is scary because the research i've done i have done i can't find anything so i

was just curious to see if there was something. >> i agree that is scary and i think we have to meet with our police departments and talk about this and we should go to the national association of police. we should be asking at all different levels of our government because you are absolutely right. we do not know. [applause] >> see king of police and the drones, the drums are simply a continuation of militarization of the police in this country. something like $3 billion in the last 10 years have been distributed to local law-enforcement to buy basically, i mean every law enforcement unit and a part in this country has a military armed squad is not a platoon called swat teams as well as armored vehicles and then under the rubric of homeland security is the formation of fusion centers and cross intelligence

and it is called the terrorism task force which consists of all the various departments, police departments in the area. so i mean the drone issue is about the militarization of the police which i think goes back to the fascism that we are seeing. >> yes i am and they think they are taking advantage of the occupy movement to act as if this is a very dangerous movement and justifying -- [laughter] successful in switching the corporate rule to rule by the people but in terms of being a violent movement, certainly it's being used to justify a further taking away of our civil liberties and the further militarization of the police. >> i think -- the last comment goes to where i'm going.

the work that lies ahead because with presidential elections, whatever, it is the unorganized masses that we need to get engaged because they become the layer between those that consider themselves progressive better locking the forward movement and i would argue that it is not a dangerous movement. it's a necessary movement. [applause] >> i just wanted to ask him in terms of when you were talking about due process, of course you know when we put that in the context of the national defense authorization act, which actually specifically took away our due process and said that now it is legal, made it legal to hold people without any charges and put us back to pre-magna carta level of civil liberties is shocking, so what i

would like to get back onto, what can we do ourselves, and you did give us a number of things so if you would just like summarize them again, what you would if i says to do to really make some forward motion in this area? >> i would and it buys you with what other people have been advising that i will tell you what other people have been advising. [laughter] people like charles krauthammer who have said the first american who shot down a drone will be a folk hero. there are others who have said that we should hack down these drones just like the iranians have down the drones. i don't use those as my tactics. i say that our tactics of targeting the peace movement at this point is intervention

because we can do this right now. we can form a relationship with our police departments. we can go to our congresspeople and have discussions about this. we can get these things passed in our city council. i think throughout the united states there should be city after city and not just the berkeley is in the madison wisconsin's and the santa monica. they should pay rural towns and they should be conservative america. that is also the thing we have to appeal to people of different political stripes. we have to make this a nonpartisan issue and we have to reach out to people that we often do not speak to. and i say that in all seriousness. sometimes those who are seen on the other side won't talk to us like recently happened in philadelphia when we tried to join a tea party gathering that was happening and we thought they wanted to meet with the occupy movement and it turns out they wouldn't let us in.

but we have reached out and we did want to talk to them. we need to reach out in this area because i think we are going to find a lot of support. even in your own family. i don't know about you but i have a lot of -- people in my family and this is one area where we have really found common ground. and so oftentimes in congress you can't get a bill going because it's introduced by the progressive democrats so poor dennis kucinich does not usually get much traction on a bill. put on these kinds of bills, we can get some conservative republicans as well as some blue dog democrats as well as some progressives and maybe we can even make some headway. there was a very good article put out by "associated press" that said the complaints about the drones, which had just been on the fringe so far, and that is the fringe of us -- but now it is much more

mainstream and quoted a republican congressman from louisiana who said, now i going to walmart and people are coming and asking me about these dam drones. this is a broad issue and we can get these no drone resolutions passed in many different kinds of urban and rural cities and we can try to stop the drones but i'm very glad that others who are putting it into the context of the militarization of our -- i was in california couple weeks ago and i was giving a talk and tivo said oh my good as i can come to your talk. were going to flood the city council because the city of berg lee is talking about buying a tank. so it is much more of a larger issue and keep it in that context. military-industrial complex.

yeah. >> is there any chance of having some congressperson or some religious group that just comes out and says the killing aspect is wrong and has to be discussed, you know, publicly? >> dennis kucinich introduced a bill that didn't even say that killing is wrong and has to stop. is as we want some accountability and transparency and please explain what the hell you are doing and he could only get 25 other congresspeople to sign onto that which is astounding to me. not even the entire progressive caucus sign onto that. sneed do we know why? >> well because it's an election year and they want to show their support for the administration. and then you have one other piece -- [inaudible] speedo company yes. that is a really good question and it's been something that has

just puzzled me to no end. in writing the book, i searched far and wide for people in the religious community and what they had to say about this and i have a chapter on the ethics and morality of drones and you would think that there would be reams written about this. we have been doing this program now for over a year. it was very very hard to find religious leaders speaking out against this. and i think we have got to change that and change that quick way. i think we need to encourage our pastors, our priests, art imams, our rabbis, all people who have a community, a faith-based community, to speak out. there is a big exception to that and that is the catholic workers. the catholic worker community, who are probably some of the

most soulful, heartfelt, the best i think our country has to offer in terms of caring for the poor, it caring for the planet and caring -- trying to stop the killing -- have been putting their bodies on the line and going to jail in their protests around this. so have my sisters who have been doing this now for several years in front of the air force bases, in front of the headquarters of drone manufacturers. the veterans for peace, there are a lot of faith vietnam era vets as well as more recent vets that have been joining in these protests. i would thank everybody who has done something and say, make sure that more of us come out with you and that we make these protests more frequent and more visible and would be good for somebody in the community who has been involved in these protests of just explain what

you have been doing. >> i would just say actually come i wanted to get the microphone at this point because here in buffalo we have the interfaith peace network, which is a faith-based group, interfaith group that has been a supporter of the coalition to ground the drones and end the wars which is where the protests at hancock are coming from and i'm one of the hancock 38. i think we have a couple -- we have jaime over here who has been part of the hancock peace walkers. actually anybody who has been with hancock, we have numerous people. russell also is a veteran for peace has been part of the hancock peace walkers. [applause] if we could just have everybody who has gone to hancock field, just stand up. i know there are quite a number, quite a number.

iras, charlie, valerie, maurice. thank you all. we are working hard and we are hoping to not get people thinking that this is a solution to some of the niagara falls problems there because it is a big problem. we know it's a lose lose and we are looking for a win-win. >> and for those who don't know -- >> i would just say hancock field, writes out as -- right outside of syracuse is one of the three largest drone operations where they are doing drone management and some training including working with fort drum and they are operating the drones that are in afghanistan. so they are very busy out there with the drones and the head to building process. first of all they had the peace

council sponsoring biweekly protests out there and have been for years to ground the drones and in the wars have been one of the arms and that itself is a coalition of different groups from upstate new york who are working hard to stop this. we are getting some traction because for the very reasons that we just said -- all of the problems with the violence are solidified. anything that makes violence easier to perpetrate is going to work in a bad direction and i believe that fighting violence with violence is like fighting fire with gasoline. it just doesn't work. so we are glad to be part of the whole larger movement against the violence that is not helping us in working in a life-sustaining direction and that is one of the things we have been doing at hancock field. thanks.

[inaudible] for the hancock 38, our first charge was obstruction of governmental ministries in and disorderly although i will say that the author -- officer who booked me did not write disorderly conduct. i was so shocked that he was suggesting it in the he said the only way we could have been more orderly if we would have done the diane and more alphabetical order. for the hancock peace walkers, i was arrested again as the police liaison, which was highly irregular, and they first arrested 60 to 70 people for walking without a permit and 10 of them made before assembling without a permit in front of the base. assembly without permit and also walking or marching.

[inaudible] now we have a northern city against the drone wars. >> and with the preemptive arrests, and it seemed very clear because there have been meetings between the base and back to what you mentioned joe, that it seems because of these meetings with the base people, meeting with the sheriffs department, that they are finding ways to try to prevent our petitioning the government for redress of grievances and actually we we are working under the nuremberg principles trying to stop the illegal act of our government. we had ramsey clark in the courtroom with hancock 38, testifying as a legal international law expert to the illegality of the drones. so it's thrilling to be here with medea who is at the forefront of all of this. [applause]

a couple of you actually had talked to me before about seeing me when i spoke out when the counterterrorism chief john brennan was speaking in washington d.c. for the first time really addressing the drone program. i was getting dragged out and still speaking in trying to keep myself from being pulled out the door before i finish talking. but it's not an easy thing to do and it's not easy to get arrested. it's not easy to speak out before the counterterrorism chief of the united states. these are hard things to do, but we have to do them. in the case of john brennan, he had said in 2011 that we had not killed one civilian with our drones. he also called the drones ethical, just, surgically precise and wise. and it's very sad that this is coming from somebody high up with an art administration. so i want to end on a note of

one thing, how proud i am to be with the people here who have put their lives on the line and crossed over into the basin had been willing to go to jail, who have taken the road of martin luther king, to stand up for all human life, and i also want to recognize the work that we have ahead of us, not just in convincing our government what to do but convincing other americans, because while other americans might be quicker to agree with us that they don't want their privacy and their safety violated at home, they are still living under the cloak of fear that allows them to think it's okay t be killing people overseas that are named militant by our government no matter what a militant really means, and militant because you have to be somebody who wants the occupier to leave their

country and who allows the american people allowing us to kill a lot of innocent people, including american teenaged boys without speaking out about it. one of the saddest poems that i ever read was a recent one that said that eight out of 10 americans said it was okay to use drones against terror suspects and that included people who define themselves as liberal democrats and of those 79% who said it was okay to kill an american overseas who was a terrorist suspect. so we have a lot of work to do. on the other hand, there is one case and that is that there was a similar poll that was taking in 22 different countries and that poll showed the vast majority of people around the world think that these drone strikes are atrocious, think that this is a barbaric way of addressing these kinds of international conflicts and are

really anxious to see the united states stop this program and to see the american people join the world community in denouncing these killer drones. so at least we can feel that we are part of a local community and that should give us some inspiration. >> i wanted to start with a note. thank you for everything you have done. [applause] all the people that do stand up for justice and compassion and do so in a very visible by and your tactics. your assessment that this is a sleeping peace movement is different in ways that is difficult to see right now. occupy a still nascent. it has not yet really begun. there are a lot of things that are happening right now, sort of like arguing that -- because it's only six inches tall and there is not enough shape.

something is happening. so i want to thank all the people i see her here from occupy. i see all these movements collectively standing for something. at the specific clinical question for you. what in your opinion have you discovered is the administration's political goal or military goal of killing people in a country in the northern half of pakistan which doesn't have much infrastructure what exactly are they hoping to do by killing people? what specific military goal is being achieved? speech so, you think the fact that the drone program is happening in pakistan is a reflection of a, that the surge in afghanistan has been unsuccessful and that while the obama administration sent 30,000

more troops into afghanistan thinking that they could win this war with more troops, they realize that just wasn't happening and that pakistan is where some of the people that are fighting us and our troops in afghanistan are spilling over. now of course the troops weren't in afghanistan they wouldn't be spilling over into pakistan and trying to kill our troops that so much of this is political. so much about -- so much about this is about showing military strained when it comes to pakistan. i would love to be the little fly on the wall and some of these meetings where they are probably saying we must do everything we can to make sure there are no other terrorist attacks between now and the november election. if it means we are we are going to launch more of these hellfire missiles and unfortunately kill