Saturday, March 3, 2012

Press Release: Last 5 Hancock 38 Drone Resister Sentenced / + Laura Flanders- Drones Article

Please Post to Lists and Media. Video links below.  Watch for Press

Conference & Sentencing Statements video posts coming this weekend.

Fines of $5,300 ordered by Judge Gideon were withheld by 14 of the

co-defendants and redirected to Voices for Creative Non-Violence who

is sending the money to Afghan youth who are working for peace in

Afghanistan. Join us this April 22nd, when we go back to protest at

Hancock Air base.  We must stop the drones on behalf of the whole

human family. (web site below)

 

N E W S    R E L E A S E

March 1st, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Contact:

Carol Baum 315-472-5478 (SPC), 315-383-5738 (cell)

Mary Ann Grady Flores 607-273-7437, 607-280-8797 (cell)

Vicki Ross 716-884-0582,

Judy Bello 585-733-4058

 

Remaining Hancock 38 Drone Protesters Sentenced

 

On April 22, 37 people were arrested for lying down in a blocked

access road leading into Hancock Air National Guard Base along with a

support person.  On February 29, the last members of the Hancock 38

were sentenced in DeWitt Town Court by Judge David Gideon.   Each

defendant was given a 1 year conditional discharge and fined $250.

 

Kathy Kelly, Ann Wright, Martha Hennessy of NYC Catholic Workers,

Elliott Adams, past President of Veterans for Peace and Jules Orkin

appeared in front of Judge David Gideon in DeWitt Town Court yesterday

evening.

 

Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Non Violence, who had not been

previously tried because she was in Afghanistan, India and Australia

supporting youthful Afghan peace activists, plead guilty to the two

counts of Disorderly Conduct so that she would be free to return to

her work.  However, she did not elocute to the charges as she was

unwilling to make false statements before the court.

 

Each of the defendants made a uniquely powerful sentencing statement.

Kathy Kelly told the stories of Afghan victims of Drone strikes;

Martha Hennessy spoke for our youthful Afghan friends, who said that

they would like to live in peace.  They asked “Aren’t we human beings

like you?”  Retired Colonel Ann Wright and Elliott Adams spoke from

their experience in Military and Government roles about the dangerous

proliferation of the Drones and aggressive US foreign policy.

 

Jules Orkin enumerated instances where the government of the UK and

the United States asserted their support of the first amendment rights

to assemble in public and to ask for redress of grievances, the most

recent examples being quotes from President Obama and Hillary Clinton

talking about the rights of the people of Syria and Libya.

 

The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars will

continue to resist the use of drones. As we argued in court, drone

warfare violates the Nuremberg Principles and other international, as

well as moral, laws. We resist those who would normalize the use of

robotic assassins as mode of warfare and reject the policy of

dehumanization of peoples in other land.

 

By Mary Anne Grady Flores     We did this action to say "NO MORE EXTRA

JUDICIAL ASSASSINATIONS OF BLACK AND BROWN PEOPLE IN OUR NAME!!  Not

here in the city of Ithaca by our police force, as was done to our

brother Shawn Greenwood or by police in the Bronx, killing

18-year-old Ramarley Graham, as is done routinely in our inner cities.

Not one one more killing of our Latino brothers and sisters on our

borders patrolled by drones, and of our American Indian brothers and

sisters on the reservations. Not one more

assassination by US military drones in Afghanistan or Pakistan, or in

Gaza as is being done with drones by our proxy Israel.  No more

assassinations anywhere in our world. We say no more!  NO MORE WEAPONS

CONTRACTORS BEING THE WINNERS. If we didn't do these actions against

the drones, we would be guilty of war crimes, standing by as a crime

is being committed in our name, according to the Nuremburg Principles.

We stand on the side of our human family remembering that we are all

one.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApDsCOoKzLE

 

http://centralny.ynn.com/content/top_stories/575471/final-five-drone-protesters-sentenced/

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xhdtj89k4I - Anti-Drone Rally @ Hancock

Airbase-April 22, 2011

http://upstatedroneaction.peaceworksrochester.org/

 

Drone Strikes?  What's to Feel Bad About?

by LAURA FLANDERS

 

“Three major investigations were under way on Wednesday into the Koran

burning at Bagram Air Base by the American military last week, the

event that plunged Afghanistan into days of deadly protests…” So

begins a New York Times report.

 

To read the New York Times you’d think the only American offense that

truly riles people up after ten years of war is book burning. It’s

certainly the only offense that’s so far merited “three major

investigations.”

 

“There’s been real blowback from the burning of the Quran, but there

has also been real blowback from the killings from continued drone

strikes,” says Ann Wright, a former State Department diplomat and

retired Army colonel who stood trial this week for protesting US drone

attacks.

 

Wright’s riled up. So is Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Britain,

Wajid Shamsul Hasan. Just last week, Hasan warned Britain to stop the

American “Drone Wars” that, he said, are slaughtering hundreds of its

innocent civilians, or else the nuclear power “has the means” to

retaliate. The British Sun quoted Hasan as saying that his country’s

relations with America are at their lowest ebb.

 

A nuclear power threatening retaliation unless US robo-killings cease?

“Three major investigations” into drone attacks might not be too much.

 

The CIA claims that since May 2010, drones have killed more than 600

militants and not a single non-combatant. Recently the British-based

Bureau of Investigative Journalism concluded after a long

investigation that that is simply bunk. According to the Bureau, at

least 45 civilians were killed in 10 drone strikes on the

Pakistan/Afghanistan border region during this past year alone.

Between 282 and 535 civilians, including 60 minors, have been credibly

reported as killed as a result of drone strikes since US President

Barack Obama took office.

 

Most damning, the Bureau reported that at least 50 civilians have been

killed in follow-up strikes after they rushed to help the wounded. More than

twenty other civilians were killed in strikes on funerals.

 

Clive Stafford-Smith, the lawyer who heads the Anglo-US legal charity

Reprieve, believes that such strikes ‘are like attacking the Red Cross on

the battlefield. It’s not legitimate to attack anyone who is not a

combatant.’

 

Wright, with Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and other

activists were sentenced Wednesday for their participation in a symbolic

‘die-in’ at the main entrance to Hancock Air National Guard Base in upstate

New York.

 

“From Hancock, they are flying killer drones over Afghanistan and Pakistan,

and killing civilians” explained fellow defendant, Judy Bello of the Upstate

Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars. The 174th Fighter Wing of

the New York Air National Guard are stationed at Hancock, the target of

annual Earth Day protests, including last year’s at which more than 38

protestors were arrested for lying in bloody shrouds in the street at the

base gate.

 

Kathy Kelly wrote this week (right here in CounterPunch) “Drone warfare,

ever more widely used from month to month from the Bush through the Obama

administrations, has seen very little meaningful public debate…. An

expanding network of devastatingly lethal covert actions spreading

throughout the developing world passes with minimal concern or comment.”

 

How about one “major investigation” – just to start?

 

Judy Bello, a retired firmware engineer, brought and prepared the “bloody”

sheets that the protestors wore April 22. The defendants wore them again

this Wednesday in a crowed upstate court.

 

“I have friends from Pakistan; I’ve been to Iran several times, I don’t

think we should be out there killing people with robots and calling it a

war. If other countries were to play by the same rules that we play by –

they could logically attack someone they think is a pilot, right here in his

SUV as he’s taking his kids to baseball practice.”

 

Maybe if the next drone attack killed a child with a Koran actually clutched

in her hand, the President would be forced to apologize and we might see a

major investigations. Maybe the Coalition could work some Korans into their

protest. Just a thought.

 

On Wednesday Wright and Kelly joined Bello and the rest in pleading no

contest to the charges. They face fines of $250 and court fees of $125. Most

intend to redirect their fines to The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. To see

their video: http://vcnv.org/2-million-candles-to-end-the-afghan-war

--

Mary Anne Grady Flores

514 N. Plain St., Ithaca, NY 14850 1-607-273-7437/ 1-607-280-8797

Ithaca Catholic Workers  /  Los Obreros Catolicas de Ithaca

 

 

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